JADUKA NAMED 2007 W³ AWARD WINNER

JadukaTV - Gold Award Honoree

Los Angeles, CA - (October 15, 2007) - The Winners of The 2007 W³ Awards have been announced by the International Academy of the Visual Arts today. Receiving over 2,700 entries, The W³ Awards honors outstanding Websites, Web Marketing, and Web Video created by some of the best interactive agencies, designers, and creators worldwide. Please visit www.w3award.com for a complete list of W³ Award Winners.

"We were incredibly impressed by the quality and creativity of this year’s entries. W³ winners continue to raise the bar in Web development and design, push the limits of web advertising creative and pioneer the use of web video. We are thrilled to honor Jaduka with a Gold Award for 'JadukaTV,' its interactive application entry in the communications category," said Linda Day, the director of the IAVA. "On behalf of the entire Academy, we applaud Jaduka as it continues to advance Internet creativity and contribute to the burgeoning online world."

W³ Awards Info:
The W³ Awards honors creative excellence on the Web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning Websites, Web video and online marketing programs. Simply put, the W³ is the first major Web competition to be accessible to the biggest agencies, the smallest firms, and everyone in between. Small firms are as likely to win as Fortune 500 companies and international agencies.

The W³ Awards is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. Please visit www.iavisarts.org for a full member list and additional information. For more information about the W³ Awards, please visit www.w3award.com.

About Jaduka:
Jaduka provides Web-integrated communication tools that enable businesses to improve operational processes and better acquire and retain customers. Jaduka’s versatile, Web services API empowers developers to easily integrate voice communication into existing applications or create new solutions that access the global public switched telephone network. The company's technology lets Internet applications trigger regular telephone calls and alerts, manage voicemail, review calling history and administer account information from any phone on the planet. For more information, visit www.Jaduka.com.

This Mother's Day send a FREE Jaduka eGreeting - The card that calls you back!

 - Great for your parents or in-laws.

 - Don't be late - Instant email delivery.

 - Eliminate expensive printed greeting cards and postage.  

 - Customize with your own photos.

Every Jaduka eGreeting has a clickable icon so the recipient can call you back instantly.

It's easy to send and it's FREE!  Click here to sign-up now!

After having dug to a depth of 1000 meters last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than a millennium ago.

Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 2000 meters and shortly after headlines in the UK newspapers read:

    "English archaeologists have found traces of 2000 year-old copper
    wire and have concluded that their ancestors already had an
    advanced high-tech communications network a thousand years
    earlier than the Scots."

One week later, Texas newspapers reported the following:

    "After digging as deep as 5000 meters in West
    Texas, scientists have found absolutely nothing. They have
    therefore concluded that 5000 years ago Texas inhabitants
    were already using wireless technology."

"Life is too important to be taken seriously." -- Oscar Wilde

Happy New Year!
Team Jaduka

For the past couple of days, I have been in our Austin office talking about our technology and how we make it relevant and useful.  Today, the conversation has centered around the new realities of communicating our value proposition and joining the worldwide conversation, aka "the blogosphere."

What we've realized today is that we're probably like many companies who are trying to figure out the rules of engagement.  There are no best practices.  We're all just trying to figure it out by trial and error.  So, what it comes down to for us is everything you need to know about blogging, you learned in kindergarten:

a) Share (the Blogosphere is about sharing ideas and commenting on others ideas)
b) Play fair (this is a community)
c) Be honest (never lie and be transparent about your company affiliation)
d) Be supportive of others (link and promote others)
e) Be yourself (lose the tie)

For more information check out postings from the Business Blog Summit (Lessons from the Business Blog Summit or Small Business Blogging or Searching & RSS).

Please join Jaduka at eComXpo, the world’s largest tradeshow for eCommerce Marketers. Visit our virtual booth online at www.eComXpo.com.

The online event is being held October 24-26, 2006. Registration is completely free! Keynote presentations from Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine; John Battelle, Founder Web 2.0 Conference; and Steven Denton, President, LinkShare.

Learn more about Jaduka, the company that is leading the worldwide adoption of web-integrated communications. We'll be featuring Click-and-Connect, a technology that lets users trigger a regular telephone call from virtually any Internet application. Find out how you can let your website visitors or email recipients make calls instantly by simply clicking a button.

While you're there, sign up for a free Click-and-Connect account and get a button to use on your website, blog, in your email signature, or send a Jaduka eGreeting.

With Jaduka, Your Web is Calling!^SM

"See" you there!

I borrowed the following from the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference homepage:

"VoIP isn't about making cheaper phone calls -- that's a marketing and business dead-end as was witnessed by the Vonage IPO. When the cost of a call is driving towards zero, the greatest challenge is to make phone calls more apt, meaningful, and useful. Services are the key and the potential that is heralded by the bridge to the Web. Web services are a big precursor for that potential. The people most likely to make that potential happen will be the researchers, entrepreneurs, and bedroom hackers with vision and promising new ground."

The publisher of this webpage is either paraphrasing or independently in full agreement with Thomas Friedman, who wrote in The World is Flat, a Brief History of the Twenty-First Century that:

"Voice will become free.  What phone companies will compete over, and charge for, will be the add-ons.  The old voice platform did not lend itself to innovation.  But when you put voice on an Internet platform, all sorts of innovative options for collaboration become possible."

I think these guys have it mostly right.  It is about innovation and add-ons.  It is about giving access to researchers, entrepreneurs, and bedroom hackers.  Where I depart is with the coupling of "innovation" and "VoIP."  To my way of thinking, VoIP is just a transport and, as such, does not have nearly the installed customer base as the ubiquitous public phone network.  So, I pose the question, "If all else were equal (i.e., the ability to develop services, options, and add-ons), where would you rather innovate; a network with 6 million users or one with 373 million users?" 

I've talked about Jaduka's Click-and-Connect in several posts and realized that I've not introduced MyPrivateLine.

MyPrivateLine is a portable toll-free phone number that re-routes calls to any existing phone line, home, office, or mobile, providing convenient accessibility and privacy protection for the person on the go.

It's great for small business clients who save on their long-distance charges - which encourages them to call more often and place more orders. Plus it can be transferred to any phone, so the business owner can be reached at the same toll-free number regardless of his location. Similar services have previously been affordable by only very large companies. 

In addition, if you're concerned about giving out your real phone number to a new acquaintance or one-time customer, MyPrivateLine protects your privacy by providing you with a disposable number for people to call you while keeping your existing, permanent number intact and undisclosed.

When the private number is dialed, the call is routed to the customer's designated phone number, which is kept completely anonymous and secure.

Click here to get your free MyPrivateLine account now!

While we were building the e-commerce application for Jaduka, I received a post card in the mail from my dentist requesting that I call them to schedule and confirm my next appointment.  As it turns out, there are a number of professionals, salespeople, and others who manage busy appointment calendars that use these kind of reminders to address the very big problem of "appointment no-shows." 

I saw a perfect application for Click-and-Connect and said, "Let's create virtual appointment reminders sent through email that patients or clients could respond to instantly and conveniently by simply clicking a button to call and confirm their appointment."  The creative minds on the Jaduka team furthered the idea to include all kinds of electronic greeting cards.  "Wouldn't it be cool for my mom to get an electronic Mother's Day card with the gift of a free call to me?"  "How about one to set up lunch plans?"  "What if we made them available for promotional offers - you know $5.00 off on a large 3-topping pizza, click here to order yours now?"  "I'd like to use it for 'Just Thinking of You' cards."

Needless to say, we got pretty excited about the idea and Jaduka eGreetings was born.

During our free account offer you can send as many Jaduka eGreetings as you like.  It really is pretty cool - check it out today.

We issued a press release today that speaks to our company's legacy, "PrivateTel Is Renamed Jaduka : Reflecting New Commitment to Voice-Enabled Web Technologies."  To view or print the full release (.pdf) click here.

Yes, before Jaduka, we were known as PrivateTel and focused on a narrower niche, with some success -clients include: cars.com, HouseHunt.com, OBC, New Times, Performance Communications Group, GoldbarOne, and others. 

But, frankly, with new product enhancements and capabilites coming down the pike, the old name just wasn't big enough to accommodate all that we're now about.  Look for some exciting announcements coming soon.

Jaduka provides voice-enabled web tools and technology that enable businesses to better acquire, delight, and retain customers (and, as I've mentioned, it's kind of fun for individuals too).  The sandboxes in which we now play include:

Lead generation and sales conversion
Phone leads are a proven way generate sales and to build customer relationships... (more)

Call tracking and reporting
Jaduka's Click-and-Connect® and ClassAdd® offer a means for companies to identify online advertising effectiveness... (more)

Customer service
By enabling live one-to-one communication between customers and small businesses... (more)

Performance-based advertising
Jaduka facilitates Pay-Per-Call advertising to help small businesses grow... (more)

Privacy-protected calling
In an online dating or social networking scenario... (more)

(and fun!)

Take Jack Rynes, our company president, up on his offer, "To celebrate the debut of our new moniker and the launch of our corporate website, we’re offering free accounts loaded with 60 minutes of utility to all who register at www.Jaduka.com." 

Thanks for the entertaining messages!  A lot of readers figured out that they could actually click on the screenshot of my email (showing how Click-and-Connect appears in my auto-signature) and initiate a call.  In case you missed the subtle implication, this means that you can place Jaduka's Click-and-Connect code behind practically any image.  Just swap out our ready-made button images for anything you want - .gif, .jpg, .png, even text.

I thought I'd invite a few more calls by showing how easy it is to register for a free account at www.jaduka.com and put a Click-and-Connect call button in my blog.

Go ahead, give it a try. Then click here to register for your own Click-and-Connect account.

When I was growing up, my next door neighbor worked for an automobile manufacturer.  What this meant to me, as a 10-year old kid, was that he was really cool.  He always drove the latest model shiny new cars.  By comparison, we drove a family station wagon and a Volkswagen Beetle (both had a few years and a few miles under their hoods).  Needless to say, I was more than a little jealous.

Being part of the Jaduka launch team, I now know how my neighbor must have felt.  One of the best things is that I get to be among the first to try out our new products.  So, the other day, when the site went live, I went to www.jaduka.com and registered for a free Click-and-Connect account.  Click-and-Connect is a web-initiated calling service that let's you put a call button in your email signature, on your blog or website, or on virtually any Internet application.

For example, when someone clicks on the button in my email signature (see below), a form pops up that allows them to input their telephone number (they're not tethered to their computer and they can use any phone - work, home, cell, whatever).  When they click "Connect Now," their phone rings, my phone rings, and Jaduka makes a seamless voice connection.  Check it out!

The irony is that now I wish I still owned the Beetle.

Get your free Click-and-Connect account today at http://shop.jaduka.com

Jaduka.com officially went "live" yesterday.  The team really pulled together in the last few weeks as the push was on to hit our self-imposed deadline of October 4th.  Great individual and group efforts - everyone deserves a huge pat on the back.

Check out the technology that is leading worldwide adoption of voice-enabled Internet applications @ www.jaduka.com .  Learn more about Jaduka in the About Us and Products sections.  Stop by the Store to take our products home with you or, for a limited time, try them for FREE!  Enter the DevZone for technical information and gain access to the world’s public telephone network through Jaduka’s API.  For firms wishing to resell our technology, click on Channel Partners.

I previously mentioned that one alternative meaning for our name is, "a magician."  I think that minting fits us well, especially in light of our corporate vision and belief that we are about to unleash truly disruptive technology.  In the words of Arthur C. Clarke:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)