No, I have not gone on vacation. Instead, I am busy writing the next cover story for the magazine, along with a couple of other short pieces, and am horribly late. So posting is going to be light for a couple of days. And if I haven’t answered your email, don’t take it personally – there are 600 messages that have piled up in just day. Still, couple of things which have been sitting in my inbox and are worth sharing.

* Future of The Bells Is DSL

Did anyone notice that AT&T introduced a three tier DSL pricing structure and are now offering a 6 megabits per second connection for $28 a month. (1.5 Mbps and 3 Mbps cost $13 and $18 a month respectively.) That’s twice as much as what BellSouth is charging for the same speeds. In other words, either AT&T will raise its prices after the deal with BellSouth closes or BellSouth will drop the prices.

Nonetheless, BellSouth added a record 263,000 DSL net adds in the first quarter equating, while AT&T added 511,000 new DSL users for the same period.

John Hodulik of UBS thinks that while voice might be making them the most money, it is DSL which is strategically more important and is now the “anchor product of the consumer bundle.” In other words, it is going to be the proxy for their future (residential) market share.

* The New Vongo Boys

Talking about the new Ma Bell, AT&T will soon start offering “Vongo” Internet movie-delivery service to its DSL customers. The companies will feature a co-branded AT&T and Vongo Web site and special promotions. Vongo works only on Windows-PC and costs about $10 for unlimited access. PPV is $4 a month. First Akimbo, and now Vongo, I tell you that either someone is having a change of heart over in San Antonio, Texas or that IPTV this isn’t going too well.

* For Comcast, Broadband, VoIP are hot

So just to ensure a little balance, a quick take on Comcast’s earnings report for the most recent quarter - they added 437,000 new broadband subscribers, better than most analyst estimates of 345,000. Average revenue per unit (ARPU) – $43.14. Doesn’t look like the competition is having any impact, because it is higher than fourth quarter ARPU of $42.38. Broadband revenues: $1.1 billion. Forget all that – the biggest news is that Comcast added 211,000 VoIP subscribers, though 141,000 are “net new customers.” And this when VoIP is not even available in the entire footprint of Comcast. Someone should be extremely worried... don’t you think?

[Clarification from Comcast PR: we added 211K net new Comcast Digital Voice (VoIP) voice subscribers, and lost 70K customers for our circuit switched phone business (this was expected – we’re not trying to grow or expand). Netting those two out, we gained 141 K total voice customers (digital voice and circuit switch combined)we added 211K net new Comcast Digital Voice (VoIP) voice subscribers, and lost 70K customers for our circuit switched phone business (this was expected – we’re not trying to grow or expand). Netting those two out, we gained 141 K total voice customers (digital voice and circuit switch combined) ]

This week’s PodSession is about eBay shopping for partners. This is inspired by recent buzz about eBay looking to take on Google with new allies such as Microsoft and/or Yahoo.

EBay is voicing its concern with its checkbook and looking for new preferred advertising partners and cross-promotional opportunities. Should eBay be afraid of Google? How many management consultants did it take for eBay to wake up and realize its business direction? Is anyone safe from the growing power of Google over search and commerce?

Here are five things we suggest they do instead of mucking around with half-baked alliances.

1. Come up with eBay 2.0 and figure out a role for the company in the digital future.
2. Focus on core strengths. Buy Intuit (Quicken) to give eBay buyers and sellers accounting features.
3. Focus of the company should be Paypal and turning it into Citibank of online world. (Very Very Important.)
4. Figure out a way to get into shareware sales business. Perhaps acquire eSellerate. This is where Ebay can put its heft to good use.
5. Get into digital media sales. The recent Skype-EMI deal could be a good start.

This is just for starters. In the very near future, I am going to write a five-day series on eBay’s strategy and what they can do to grow even bigger. Funnily enough, Skype might be part of that strategy, though not as eBay might have thought. And the best part – all the advise is going to be free. McKinsey not required. I am sure one of you can even cook-up a nice PowerPoint presentation as well.

Anyway more here in week’s PodSession which is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.

A couple of days ago, I pointed out that it pays not to listen to McKinsey. Continuing in that theme, Paul Kedrosky, skins Gary Hamel’s blatent play to get some Google love in today’s Wall Street Journal. Super consultant Hamel has two of his former big clients – Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling – both of now defunct Enron on trial. Just read the editorial or Paul’s summation, and then put it in the -whataloadofyouknowwhat bin!

Karl Jacob used to be a regular fixture at most Red Herring conferences and events. As a serial entrepreneur he started Dimension X and then later went on to found be the CEO of Keen.com, the company that became infamous for being the home of “psychics” and other 900-number crowd. (These days the company is called Ingenio.) Karl’s next act was as the CEO of email spam-killer Cloudmark.

And then he just vanished. I was quite surprised to hear from after these many years. He confessed he spent a lot of time on Kite-surfing or something equally hideous involving sweat and physical labor. The reason for his call – the very same reason most entrepreneurs call reporters – his new company. Its a social network whatshouldicallit spin-out from Microsoft Research called Wallop.

Jacob is one of the long list of Internet 1.0 guys to make a comeback to the Valley. Is that a sign of the times? Of a Boom or a Bubble? I don’t know. One thing, I do know – Wallop better be good, for the number of social networks are growing faster than the number of pimples on a teenager, and most if not all, have failed to so much as cause a dent in MySpace’s popularity.

The details are sketchy, and no details of funding either, except that Microsoft has a minority stake in the project, and Bay Partners’ Eric Chin led the investment. Jacob says it was a sandbox project at MR (which incidentally spends nearly $7 billion.)

Jacob says he worked with the big guys up North to turn this into a company. Jacob added that it also addresses some of concerns regarding security and privacy in today’s social networks. “We are trying to bring the elements of off line (physical) interactions into online social networks,” Jacob says. Though he doesn’t elaborate. So at this point – well its just a dash of Wallop!

Another day, and another online video start-up. This one with a name that only the founder can love: Dave.TV. Unlike a series of me-too You Tube clones, this one is at least attempting to do something different. Dave.TV CEO and founder Rex Wong says his plan is to come up with AdSense for online video. Well, I have heard that story before, but Wong had sold his previous company, Applied Semantics to Google for $102 million, and claims that it was the foundation of what we today call as AdSense. So his big idea is something like this…

imagine if a computer could identify when somebody said “shampoo” or “burger” across millions of videos, and you could insert a text ad for Prell or Wendy’s along with a clickable logo graphic next to the video when those words are spoken…We will be using the same technology used by Homeland Security to monitor [telephone] chatter. Audio keywording will allow us to contextually figure out where to sell ads and to place more than just pre- and post-roll ads.

Don’t blame me for being skeptical. Or as Techdirt writes, “Imagine trying to serve ads for an episode of Lost based on what the characters are talking about. You’d get a bunch of ads for deserted islands.”

So here is a one we didn’t see coming from a mile ;-)

A tipster tells me that Yahoo has started offering Meedio DVR software as a free download to one-and-all, without much fanfare. Isn’t it dandy – that it took just eight days to brand Meedio as Yahoo Go (TV.) (Yahoo had acquired the Meedio technology last week.)

Still you don’t say no to freebies, especially ones that are as good as Meedio. Since it is a Windows only product, I have not tested it out. Maybe I will, but not until this weekend.