Iotum- Let it snow, but let's talk about it....

Quick post - a twofer for Canadian cohort Alec Saunders and the team at Iotum.

First,Ottawa got buried with its worst snowstorm since anyone can remember - about 2 feet yesterday. A lot of Eastern Canada got hit - we got it pretty good here in Toronto, but Ottawa got way more. The US Northeast got socked last week, but that was a different storm. Well, there's no doubt now it's going to be a white XMas.

Anyhow, if you want a geek's take on the weather, Alec has a great post today. Oh, as I'm writing this post, Alec has just updated his blog with some photos - nice work.

I was in San Jose last week for Cisco's analyst event, and even though it was quite chilly there - and even an outdoor skating rink next to the hotel - I'll gladly head back there now compared to what we've got here. I don't ski, but it's not hard to see how the Alpine set is over the moon about all this snow - no thanks....

Second item - since I have your attention - today Iotum announced something really interesting and fun with their Facebook conferencing app. For those of you who plan to be online on New Year's Eve - and I'll bet that's a lot of you, Iotum has a great way to reach out and touch 1,000 of your closest friends. They've been building some nice traction with their voice conferencing application on Facebook, and are using this opportunity to add some festiveness to social networking. Alec's post tells you all about it, so if you want to have some social networking fun on New Year's, and do a virtual midnight countdown with a cast of thousands, you just gotta be there.

It's a great idea, and to help promote it, Iotum has even produced a demo video, which you can view off of Alec's post. Aside from all the fun people can have doing this, the promotion is a great test to demonstrate the scalability of Iotum's platform, and I think that's the real story. This is the kind of proof point that up and coming vendors like Iotum need to convince large operators that their application will work for them and that they can make money today using it. In the world of social networking, New Year's is about as social as it gets, so hats off to Iotum for connecting the dots and creating a great opportunity for themselves. Can't wait to hear how it turns out.


Technorati tags: Iotum, Jon Arnold, Alec Saunders, Facebook