Cisco today announced the Linksys by Cisco Wireless Home Audio system at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. From the world leaders in networking, the Wireless Home Audio system utilizes Wireless-N technology to deliver a rich audio experience to any room in the home. Users can create a party atmosphere with immaculate synchronization when listening to the same song throughout the entire home, or send different music to customized "zones". The Wireless Home Audio solution also puts millions of songs at your fingertips through integrated Internet services such as Rhapsody, AudioLounge, and RadioTime. An optional Docking Station for iPod enables your content on Apple iPods, including Podcasts, Audio Books, and purchased iTunes content, to be played through any Wireless Home Audio device on the network. Wireless Home Audio products also work great with the newly announced Linksys by Cisco Media Hub that gathers and presents the available media on a network.

Cisco will introduce next year its Entertainment Operating System (EOS), a platform for delivering multimedia content to online communities. EOS will be the first major product of Cisco's push into helping media companies connect with their customers. It will combine a delivery system, a social networking platform and a set of tools to help consumers find the content they want, said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's media solutions group. It will go on sale in 2008, he said. Two online fan communities, run by the National Hockey League and the NASCAR auto-racing organization, are using elements of EOS today, Scheinman said. NHL Connect, launched last year and uses technology from social networking company Five Across, which Cisco acquired in February. Content providers like the sports leagues have large and loyal fan bases but don't know how to enrich the fan experience or get them to spend more time on their sites, he said. EOS will be a standardized solution for doing that.

Although Cisco President and CEO John Chambers claimed that the company was planning to kill off the Linksys brand last week, it seems that there's a bit of internal confusion within the company as to what will be happening with the name. The Linksys division of the company, which ultimately takes its orders from Chambers, yesterday released the following statement:

Linksys consumer and SMB products will continue to be marketed under the Linksys brand and co-exist in the market with Cisco-branded connected home products over the near term. We will continue to examine our branding strategy going forward (as we have to date) and make changes if and when these changes add value to our customers' decision-making processes and our channel partners.

So it would appear that Cisco thinks it's getting rid of the Linksys name, whilst the Linksys division thinks that it is here to stay - at least until the company is confident the Cisco name can sell as well a the Linksys brand.

It's official: John Chambers killed off the Linksys brand name, which is very well known throughout the United States. Cisco is replacing Linksys with the new, aggressive product line that Cisco has to offer. John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, says "It (Linksys) will all come over time into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that".

Cisco products will appear in place of Linksys products very soon.

A few days ago, Duke University blamed Apple and its iPhone for causing problems with their wireless network. More specifically, the problem involved failures of up to 30 wireless access points at a time across Duke's Durham, N.C. campus. Now Duke's chief information officer Tracey Futhey had this to say:

Cisco worked closely with Duke and Apple to identify the source of this problem, which was caused by a Cisco-based network issue. Cisco has provided a fix that has been applied to Duke's network and there have been no recurrences of the problem since

Ever since Apple introduced its iPhone, lawsuits against the product have going on. Happily for Apple, it has managed to reach an agreement with Cisco Systems. The networking company had held the iPhone name since 2000, and was a bit miffed at the new product - but it seems the two companies can share after all.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Cisco and Apple officially announced an end to the feud over the trademark. That's right, iPhone-gate is over without a single shot being fired, no loss of life, and (oddly enough) both companies able to use the brand name.

The companies publicly stated a cessation of all litigation over the dispute in a joint statement, and promised to allow each enterprise to market its product worldwide. The financial terms for the agreement were not disclosed, but one can bet that it wasn't cheap for Apple. In what is likely a nod of favor to Cisco for dropping the suit, the statement also talked about a new partnership between the two firms, with Apple working to provide better integration with future Cisco products.

The two companies previously agreed the deadline was on Thursday, but on Thursday evening( the 15th of Febuary ) Cisco extended the deadline nearly another week. I see this as an interesting strategy, Cisco seems to be aiming at at achieving a settlement here.

While Cisco is busy worrying about whether or not Apple will get to use the iPhone name, Canadian telecommunications provider Comwave is threatening to take legal action against Cisco if they do not change their own iPhone's name. Comwave has owned and been offering an iPhone service since 2004. The president of Comwave claims that "there has been a Comwave iPhone for years, and, (according to)Canadian law on first use, iPhone is ours". Comwave claims that both Cisco and Apple should have thought of other names for their various telecom devices.

On December 18th, 2006, Cisco released a set of Skype compatible wifi phones, basically claiming the iPhone name. Cisco and Apple had been talking about who should rightfully get to use the iPhone name since then. When Apple unveiled it's iPhone at Macworld this year, Cisco sued. Cisco wants to halt all sales of the Apple iPhone.

Cisco has started a large campaign to put video phones into hospitals. What is so special about these video phones though, is that they have a direct button that calls Santa Claus. This means that children who want to talk to Santa, but can't get out of the hospital to visit him, need not go much farther then their room to call Santa Claus and have a video chat with him. Cisco posted a video of it's technology in action here.