Blogging ideas

Ppl! Today I found myself scratching my head, wondering about what our next post should be...so I said to myself, why not post a post about what should we post. So here I am, asking for cooperation from you, the client, co-worker, bored Internet surfer or whoever. One idea that came to mind was to post pics of everyone here in the Admin. depart, when we were all younger; I wonder what Sergio (our CTO) looked like when he was in high school...
Who ever posts the best pic will receive any chocolate bar of their choice; in case you were wondering I will be the judge of who wins; and if you think that i can be bought well... I love soccer and need some new boots (my size is 91/2 USA).
Please remember we are always trying to keep this blog fun and unique. To accomplish our goal of having a great company blog we NEED feed back!!!

A little 'bout the JN team

I have so many things that I want to write about here on the company blog...I honestly don't know were to start! So i guess i will try to tell you a little bit more about myself and JetNumbers Inc.
I was born on January 16 back in 1984 (yes my b-day is a few days away) in Buffalo, NY; I am the second child of Bruno and Ghilda both of whom are Uruguayan and were college students at the time. Over the next few years my family moved around the world, from Buffalo to Kansas City to Riyadh, SA to Montevideo, Uruguay. Besides the moving, I had a wonderful childhood...a childhood that greatly shaped who I am today. I am currently attending Universidad ORT Uruguay and am majoring in business and administration; I have about a year left to finish up with my studies.

About two months ago, I was approached by Karina Szmulewicz a friend/classmate to join a communications start-up company called JetNumbers Inc. So when Kari told me about the company and its objectives, I was immediately attracted to the idea of taking up my first full-time job, about a week later on the 17 of November I became a member of the JetNumbers team here in Uruguay. So that is my history in a nutshell. Now I've got to tell you a little about JetNumbers Inc. and it's management team.

Company History:

JetNumbers Inc. is a pioneer in the area of virtual numbers, offering numbers in over 30 countries. It was created by Andrés Bzurovski and Sergio Fogel in December 2005, with its launching a few months later on the 10 of July of 2006 JetNumbers’ goal is to provide a simple and cost effective form of communication for users around the world. JetNumbers Inc. is currently made up of 11 techies and the management team.

JetNumbers Inc. is based in East Bushwick, New Jersey. Our management team and costumer support division is located in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The JetNumbers administration is made-up of four teamates: Andrés (CEO), Sergio (CTO), Karina Szmulewicz (Account Executive) and myself.

Andrés has studied technology at the University of Northampton in the United Kingdom as well as a degree in marketing from the University ORT Uruguay. Andrés is the founder of Before, a software company, leader in Uruguay.

Sergio Fogel posses a BA and a Master’s of Computer Science from Technion in Haifa, Israel and an MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau). He has worked as a Laboratory Investigator at IBM in Haifa, Israel. Sergio was also the commercial manager for Oracle in Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. He also founded elAgora.com and Uniotel S.A.

Karina Szmulewicz is currently finishing up her studies at the Universidad ORT Uruguay and is majoring in business and administration.

Uniotel, the parent company of JetNumbers was started in 2001. Uniotel is the leader of private international telephoning in Uruguay; the company has developed a high quality fibre optics network which permits us to lend a quality telephone service which meets international standards. Uniotel owns operating licenses in Uruguay and USA, as well as agreements with more than 20 carriers’ world wide. The company has and will continue to export technology to countries in North and South America as well as Africa.

Technological aspect:

A virtual phone number is a telephone number is used to route calls to the user's actual phone number or numbers. Virtual phone numbers are often used to enable long distance service without incurring long distance charges in IP telephony and for call forwarding services, such as find-me/follow-me.

A virtual phone number makes it possible for someone within a specified area code call anyone in another area code as if it were a local call. Here's how it works: A customer asks their service provider to assign them a virtual phone number within a desired area code. When someone in that area code dials the virtual phone number, the call registers as if it were local, but seamlessly maps to the customer's actual telephone number.

In find me / follow me, a user may be assigned a virtual phone number. When that number is dialled, the call may be routed among a number of phone numbers at various locations.

Our technology does not require any type of installation for the user. We assign the user a phone number in the desired country or region. The user has a web page where they can decide where the calls should ring. For instance, the user can choose to have a phone number in New York, and take the calls in their mobile phone in Barcelona. That way, their friends and family back home can call locally. If the client later go for a trip to France, they can buy a SIM card in France, and change the number so that it rings there. The user can also set the number to take voice mails, and send these via email.

Blogging:

Just like I stated in my last (first) entry, JetNumbers got mixed up in a discussion between social net workers, Jason Calacanis (ex-CEO of Netscape.com) and Kevin Rose the founder of Digg.com. Everyone here at JetNumbers felt that we were unfairly portrayed by Calacanis and were unable to defend ourselves against the trashing brought on by Calacanis´ poor investigating. Although the accusations were horrendous and off the wall...we got what we set out to do...our name all over the net. We went from 700 sites that mentioned us, to nearly 11,000 from one day to another! Any publicity helps at this stage in time. The investigation translated into nearly 120 new accounts for JetNumbers, so our betting on ruffling feathers paided off! As a consequence of our inability to defend ourselves, we decided to start the blog! The blog will not only provide a window into our offices but will also keep everyone up-to-date with news about tech developments at the office as well as a place to get customer feed-back and questions.

Here are some links to people that wrote about the Digg incident:

• http://digg.com/tech_deals/JetNumbers_New_Approach_to_Virtual_Telephone_Numbers (this is the actual article posted on Digg)
• http://news.com.com/Digg+continues+to+battle+phony+stories/2100-1025_3-6144652.html (this is the article that blew the hinges off the door...I was interviewed for the article)
• http://themulife.com/?p=412 (this is the most detailed investigation about the incident)
• http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/technology/23online.html?ex=1324530000&en=3bcd94e359a90222&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss (this is the NY Times article)
  

Please feel free to comment about this subject...actually please comment about my marketing tactic; I want to know what you think about it!

I will try to post about twice a week.
Salutations to everyone and remember...GET LOCAL!