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Pal Aswath Rao has made his move into the Enterprise 2.0 space and submitted EnThinnai for the LaunchPad competition.

The "autonomous communications" platform has been a passion and work of love by our very intelligent pal for a few years now, and if for no reason beyond sheer friendship, I want to see this get its opportunity to be discovered. Aswath has a very solid idea EnThinnai, so while it is in its formative stages it's goal of making communications between peers easier certainly is timely.

Ribbit, which has proven it can do what Adobe can't accomplish despite a never ending stream of product people running the voice business there, have formally unveiled there next level of efforts, as we reported last week.

I really like this post from Rich Tehrani. Rather than add more, just read it and draw your own conclusions.

Following up on my post of the other day, it seems now IDG's Network World is on the same track and feels there won't be another VON this year.

According to this press release it looks like a cool $1.7 million was recovered from PulverMedia by TICC when they seized the assets as a secured creditor.

For many in the wireless and mobile world, the name Jeff Belk is rather familiar. In San Diego circles he's the recently retired Senior VP of Strategy and before that Sr. VP of Marketing at Qualcomm. He's also a close personal friend.

Today he debuted on Unstrung and shares some insights from a real wireless insider with a neat editorial piece on the state of wireless from his perspective, one forged by 14 years of experience. Give it a read.

Pal Pat Phalen has launched TwitterPhone, a service that delivers dictated text messages via their mobile to be sent out to everyone on their Twitter social network.

This makes access to the network of Twiters voice and phone capable.

I'd say this is rather ingenious.

Om breaks a story about the death of XOHM, the rebirth of Clearwire and a lot of interesting partners.

This story by Om is rather interesting on the possibility of a global telco led initiative to compete with Skype.

My take is that it would have a better chance of succeeding if the cable companies were involved, and not on the sidelines. Here in the USA they control more of the access than the telcos with the kind of pipe that makes voice work better.

There's one more point that needs to be raised. It's the crossing over of two of the most powerful communications bodies in the world. The GSMA (mobile) with the ITU (wireline and all communications). The companies that are listed are very active with them and to me that has to spell some degree of concern for eBay and Skype.

It will be interesting to see how the new Skype CEO responds to the challenge.

Then again, we can always look at Concert (which failed) as an example of how in the past ideas like this have been tried......and the end result.

Back on November 11, 2007 I called the possible merger/acquisition of Sprint by T-Mobile back when Rich Tehrani was postulating that Google as the possible. Now the blogosphere and media is abuzz that it may happen.

Regulators aside, I have it on good authority, and did back then, that the two sides had begun having talks to discuss merger.

This also underscores that last week I wrote that T-Mobile will have a data play in reaction to Matt Miller's blog post about the Seattle based mobile operator's 3G plans. Now it seems it appears I was right, on both counts.

With this post from Carl Ford, the long time VON Conference leader and evangelist, I think it is fait acompli that VON is not happening.

Here are some other indicators:

1) There isn't anyone left to run things. Jason, Jeff and Scott have reportedly through the whisper mill moved on.

2) Companies that were getting paid for services prior to Spring VON have not been paid. Who will do the work?

3) Communications with speakers and exhibitors for upcoming VON events have not been contacted with any details.

4) No one has even issued a holding statement.

What this means in my book.

1) Jeff and others are taking the high road, saying nothing. That's smart and likely comes from some wise legal counsel.

2) The owners of the assets are hunkering down, and feeling that they got out without losing too much more after their investment.

3) The current asset owners are likely looking to sell the VON name, but candidly, VON was the collection of people who made it up. In reality someone can put the VON name on another Voice event but it won't be VON. It will be nothing more than a licensed name.

After a more than 10 year association with VON, seeing Carl's one line post brought sadness to my eye, and a lump in my stomach.

This is not at all though indicative of the VoIP industry, just an example of anti-greed at work on a variety of levels.

To Carl, Jeff, Scott, Jason and all who were a part of it...Thanks for the memories.

Update: It looks like iLocus has the same feelings about VON.

The other day Jonathan Greene posted about the lousy performance when it came to Broadband that he had at the Hotel Monaco in Seattle. The Monaco, like the Palomar here in San Francisco where I am for the week are both Kimpton Hotels and have a long tradition of catering to technology types on the road.

In the past I've always had a better than average experience at the Kimpton Hotel properties when it comes to broadband, but today, on the eve of Java One, my experience is nothing less than disappointing.

First I couldn't log on, as the auto sign on said I wasn't the guest in the room I was listing (wrong) and then it went on to say there wasn't a credit card on file (wrong again as I already had checked in.) That required a call to support from ElevenWireless, the company which handles the connectivity.

After I was on, I realized the support person didn't give me the service I was trying to activate, the more expensive ($4.95 vs. Free) service that promises higher speeds and better throughput vs. the free service.

Here's what I found out:

Free service gave me 300 k down, and 150 k up. That's not really broadband.

The paid service is giving me between 330k and 500k down and between 150 and 500 k up over a series of tests.

As JG says, "sorry. This isn't broadband."

I'm on my way to the Bay Area for a week's worth of meetings, meet up and to also assist winemaker friend Sylvain Fadat of Domaine d'Aupilhac on Monday at the annual Kermit Lynch Client event that starts tonight.

As I await my slightly delayed Southwest flight to SFO I ran a fast  speed test.

Download  14403kb/s
Upload 8359 kb/s

To me, that rocks and shows that making pointed comments directly to the airport management as I have really didn't fall on deaf ears.

This would be interesting if it's true.

Apple using WiMax.

But what continues to be the untold story is how Apple keeps lining up with other chip makers separate from Intel.

When I first read this post from Stowe Boyd I remembered back to when Apple had a division for software called Claris and thought...hmmm..

Well now that Microsoft has told the crew leading Yahoo that "we know what you are, and all that we're dealing with is the price" in so many words, the Valley hotshots have to look in other directions, so why not take two of the Valley's more successful, well run and loved companies and put them together.

Stowe's post, which is largely amplification of Robert X. Cringely's post would be good for all. While Apple has a rock solid software team, most of it revolves around the Mac and iPhone OS. The addition of Adobe would give them a lot, lot more.

Check this out. This may be the best darn deal on wireless data anywhere.

I was picking some friends up at San Diego International Airport this past Thursday and took my Mac Book Air along as I knew they might be delayed. Having experienced their anemic speeds before in the East Terminal where SouthWest flies, and in the West Terminal when flying US Air and Jet Blue, I was expecting nothing more than at best a few hundred K speeds.

Wrong. They were blazing fast. I got speeds of over 10 megs down and close to 20 megs up, indicating that someone has taken the service offering way, way up. That's smart, and being that's it's free, a very good move.

If you own and use an Apple iPhone there's isn't a Boingo Mobile client for it, but now can have free WiFi access on your iPhone in 28 airports which Boingo operates in, and get it for free.

The catch? You have to watch a 15 second ad.

As someone who uses Boingo just about everywhere, and is a true fan, it seems worth it. The ads are powered by JiWire, which wants to be the Google of mobile ad serving.

It looks like Vonage is gearing up for some efforts in the media if I read the tea leaves properly.

They hired a new PR firm and one of the things they plan on doing is deploying a social media strategy focused on blogs.

Personally I love when another company decides to enter the social media game to move their needles. I've been in the space since 2004 and know what is right and what is wrong. I'm hoping the revitalized leadership at Vonage gets it right.

The unfortunate death of a toddler in Canada is making VoIP out to be the culprit when in reality technology kills the same way as a gun. It comes down to people.

The call being sent to the wrong call center, the one where the family previously had their service forwarded usually occurs as a result of most VoIP operators not requiring a "heartbeat" which means that the connectivity to the IP network stopped.

Here at home my AT&T CallVantage literally will not allow a call each time we have a power outage that impacts the analog telephone adapter. It slows me down for five seconds, and is a very important reminder of how important the heartbeat service is. Without verifying the heartbeat calls can't be made.

The second reason calls go to the wrong call center usually is the fact that even though credit card companies require and address change, most times once a credit card is used and set up for auto-payment, until the card becomes invalid, due to its expiration, there's not usually another check off. If the card's registered address didn't match up to the residence, another block could be placed on the phone.

The PSAPS (Public Service Access Points) also have to be prompt in updating the information. Even if the carrier did notify them, and even if the consumer had notified the carrier, if the updated information had not been updated, this also impacts the success of

The most efficient way for VoIP operators and IP network operators to prevent things like this from happening would also be IP number location based lookups. Moving from one community to another, while remaining with even the same providers would also trigger the need for the user to re-register.

The death is unfortunate, and the carrier has to shoulder some of the burden. Consumers as a rule don't know better. Carriers do.

Another irony here is the company Comwave also owns the iPhone trademark in Canada. I wonder if Steve Jobs will be offering to help the family out.

Carolyn Schuk is no stranger to the VoIP world and her VoIPPrincess blog is going to be one to keep tabs on.

Yesterday she gave a butt whoopin' to both Yahoo and Jaja...I can only wonder what she's going to say to AOL!!!

AOL has been behind SIP for over three years or more. They are not jumping on board now. They are simply using what little they have left to SPIN this. Alec pretty much nailed it here as did Ken Camp.

What's really here?...and more importantly, is anyone going to use a platform which is:

1) Pricier?

2) One way calling?

3) May not be there in six months?

Over the past 18 months the entire Voice team at AOL has been cut layer by layer and dismantled. Their mobile group also.

What's more, before that AOL made a big deal about the Vonage/CallVantage Competitor (whatever it was called) then canned that, leavingcustomers hanging. Why? Could it have been Time Warner Cable. Rumor has it they didn't want AOL to have a major voice play and guess what? TWC looks like they have won that battle as the triple play only helped inflate their revenues.

So now at a time when TWC is being spun out someone says "oh, now we can launch voice again because they are no longer our big brother."

Caring about SIP and developers? I don't think so. If there isn't an advertisement in the window, AOL/TimeWarner can care less. It's that simple.

AOL had the opportunity, the platform and the people. Now all they have is a bunch of code, some infrastructure and a team that's hanging on to keep their jobs or have something to put on their resume.

Alec and Bill Volk have both heard the promises,,,,what has been delivered? ????

I'm not an engineering type. I just use technology. So when I read Matt Miller's post this morning it got me thinking.

The downloading of music at Starbucks was tested last year in a few markets. That was with T-Mobile. Then the music stopped. Market expansion stopped.

Now the rumor making the rounds is that iPhone customers can get online for free at AT&T Hotspots which will include Starbucks by year's end.

So let's connect the dots.

1. Apple iTunes is the platform

2. AT&T is the carrier

3. Yahoo is the ad sales agent

Yahoo and Apple are not even close to ever mentioned in the same breath. AT&T is partners for on ramp with Yahoo, though that relationship is always described as tenuous at best. But back to this model.

Yahoo has Yahoo Music, but you don't see that being the platform (or at least not yet.) Why was that not part of the deal? Simple. AT&T is making more money via Apple long term with the iPhone, so now you add in downloads and a cut of the action, with Yahoo doing what they do better than Apple or AT&T. Sell ads.

So, imagine free music downloads, ad supported, no cost to access, but you need to be an AT&T customer with your iPhone or iPod.

Sell more ads. Sell more coffee. Sell more iPhones.

Game. Set. Match.

P.S. Who is left out of the deal? Microsoft.

Having spent a considerable amount of time in Europe the last year I can relate to Jeff Pulver's comment about travel time and the need for in flight WiFi, especially here in the USA. That said, needing access to broadband on the go is key to this mobile/portable/nomadic lifestyle.

I for one miss the Boeing Conexxion service that I used on Lufthansa and SAS in 2005 and 2006. It has made it almost essential that I have broadband access on the ground at airports and access to mobile data and low priced voice calling while on the go.

Here are some of my tips, both old and new that keep making the working life on the road easier.

1. If you're going to one of the Hutchison 3G serving mobile countries invest in the Skypephone. Buy a prepaid card, toss in the extra money for a pay as you go data plan and make all the calls you want to back home. Every time I'm in the UK I toss 20 pounds on to my phone and buy a top up for the same amount before I leave. The credit doesn't expire. Figure 15 pounds for unlimited calling back to the states and elsewhere if I need to dial someone, and five pounds for the month or as low as 50 pence a day for the data connection.

2. Client Truphone and a travel router on a Nokia N or E Series phone. Okay, so both companies are clients. And you know what, the combo can't be beat. I had to spend over 90 minutes last Friday when I was in London on the Nokia E90 with Apple Care over a self inflicted wound caused by a bad install of Meebo/Tokbox and Adobe Flash audio/video that hosed my audio settings so bad a trip to the Apple store had to be booked in Philadelphia on Sunday. Cost. Zero as it was a Truphone WiFi call over my E90's speakerphone via Truphone.

3. MAXroam--if you're going transborder this is much easier than flipping SIM cards in and out.

4. CradlePoint-I got turned onto this by MAXRoam's Pat Phelan. Yesterday Alec Saunders and I had a Skype call over my EvDO connection using Sprint from my house. Basically you create a hot spot anywhere you are and can share with friends. Word of warning, it works best when you have only one data transfer intensive action if you are having a VoIP or Skype call. It won't easily support video though and that is a factor of throughput and the network.

5. Plantronics Internet Phone Booth 480 Headset. Day in and day out this is the best headset and mic combo to use. Its light and sounds great. Need a speakerphone. Nothing beats the Polycom Communicator. When I need a conference call I turn to client VAPPs and their High Speed Conferencing. The sound quality can't be beat.

Alec gets up to bat and swings a heavy club this morning as he lays out his perspective based on experience of working with AOL and their now apparently defunct AIM PhoneLine developer program.

His event by event account isn't a pretty picture and should be noticed.

It should make for an interesting Sqawk Box today.

Technorati Tags: AOL

I woke up this morning and found VoIPWatch being cited in Business Week's TechBeat by Olga Kharif. This made me think back to one of the reasons to start VoIPWatch, which was to always be a helpful source of information to the media and to provide a perspective that offers insight and viewpoint.

Right after that I read a post from our client ifByPhone's founder, Irv Shapiro offering his take on the same deal as he details how the future of telephony rests in the applications, a viewpoint that I have agreed with for a long time.

With minutes dropping to almost zero, or being at zero in many ways, Irv's business is based on delivering the new services to business in the same vein as Jajah and how they're bringing services to Yahoo.

Its the apps baby. Its the apps.

Technorati Tags: IVR, voicexml

For years there have been services which let you receive all your flight data via your cell phone, but none have been approved as boarding passes. Now Lufthansa, which experimented with in flight WiFi with Boeing, is making the paper go away on two routes in Germany.

This is great for those of us who are connected. It means you can be SMS'd your flight details, run the screen past the bar code reader and get on your flight.

That said, don't expect it to happen anytime soon here in the USA.

PhoneBoy covers Voice 2.0 client ifByPhone and explains why their services are so meaningful and how easy they are to use in multiple business applications.

This comes at the same time that Ribbit announced their relationship with Salesforce.com.

Luca has a post about the potential of RIM being deployed in the iPhone. Since Blackberry Connect is already on the Nokia N and E series phones this is a logical platform move by them.

After a few months of dormancy, and a series of tech issues pal Ted Wallingford blog is back up and running.

I've long been a fan of the infrastructure that Wayport provides that makes for a really good hotspot experience. WiFi Net News deep drill down is a nice look at why they're successfully building out so many hotspots including those for AT&T at McDonalds.

Skype 3.8 is out and it features reportedly better video. I'll have to check that out when I'm not on my Mac using version 2.6 as 2.7 for the Mac remains buggy.

A quick look at 3.8 today showed that Skype is working on making the Windows interface less cluttered and easier to get around.

Om has some insight.

Om's post about better speeds from your broadband provider is music to my years. As a home based teleworker and global traveling nomad speed is my connectivity lifeline. Bad broadband for me is the equal to a bad hair day.

But it's his closing paragraph which really nails what the important part of having better pipe is all about. The upstream path.

Broadband 2.0 is all about collaboration and sharing, and that requires just as much upstream bandwidth as it does downstream speeds. Regardless, this coming year is going to be fun as the cable companies and phone operators will do unnatural things to entice new subscribers, starting with offering faster connections at lower prices. Nothing wrong with that.

Basically for client companies like Vapps with their HiDef Conferencing, Yugma, SightSpeed, Truphone, Junction Networks, iotum, and their competitiors, the upstream improvements will really help make for a much better user experience.

Jonathan Green explodes at his recent experience in Newark Airport where he had WiFi but found the power outlets all without juice.

Just this past Monday night I found myself in Phoenix's Sky Harbor, one of the airports that a national publication called the best for WiFi. Sure the signal was there, but on my Mac I couldn't get even to the home page. Of course I was able to at least get to the SouthWest Airlines pilots and flight attendants portal page, proving there was nothing wrong with my Mac.

Let's face it, the whole concept of WiFi and technology in airports is broken. The older established airports either do it right or turn the service over to a company that understands, or the lowest bidder. Sometimes contracts with telecom carriers decide who has the rights. Compared to Europe, where I get a standard experience country by country for the most part, like in Spain with Kubi, France with Orange, T-Mobile or BT in the UK, etc. here in the USA it's purely Russian Roulette unless you see T-Mobile, AT&T or Boingo's Concourse Communications as the SSID.

Gateway services seem to be the biggest challenge, and airports and their providers who insist on supporting only PC's with Windows and Internet Explorer seem to lead the list of hurdles. That and not enough bandwidth on the property of course.

But this power issue, spurred on by 9/11 is another challenge. In Phoenix Southwest Airlines built up these cool work spaces, complete with power outlets. Think of them as mini airport lounges without the lounge. Unfortunately while I had the juice, I didn't have the WiFi....

Open source developers have another place to play, with the start of FACE by Fonality.

According to this report, the consumer version of Microsoft Messenger 4 Mac is hardly worth downloading.

Tomorrow pal Paul Kapustka begins promotion around his very well prepared Sidecut Report on the state of XOHM and WiMax in America. I had a chance to read it today, and have to say, its a good read for those interested in knowing the current state of WiMax here in the USA.

It's taken Lee Dryburgh a while to get all his eComm video posted, but one of the waits was worth it.

Client Fonolo captured the eComm Best New Product.

You can view CEO and founder Shai Berge's presentation on the page as well.

With the possible merger of Yahoo with Microsoft this agreement between Jajah and Yahoo can be very good, or much to do about nothing. But for now its all very good for Jajah and they deserve the credit for being the number one minute stealer, taking advantage of an opportunity when everyone has their eyes elsewhere. Well done.

Here are the facts as I see it:

Jajah picks up the inbound and outbound call management for Yahoo voice, which has not really set the world on fire. Isn't that why Yahoo bought Dialpad? Score lots of money to Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet. Yahoo, doesn't score any points.

Jeff Bonforte has left Yahoo for XOBNI. Reportedly Microsoft wants to buy XOBNI. Jeff developed Yahoo voice with the help of some very talented developers. He also developed the guts of GizmoProject for SIPPhone. Candidly, since Jeff left Gizmo the product hasn't been as stable, but it still works. Score one for Jeff, nothing for Yahoo as they let a talented whirling dirvish like Rockstar slip away.

Brad Garlinghouse is still there at Yahoo trying to help clean up the sticky situation brought on by the Peanut Butter Manifesto (and things are showing he was right). So the two guiding lights who moved Yahoo big time into voice are not paying any attention. Give Brad some Skippy.

Now this is where you have to really wonder whose paying attention to what at Yahoo. AT&T and Verizon are/were big parts of the Yahoo on-ramp strategy. This Jajah relationship can't exactly appeal to them given how may DSL customers they drive to Yahoo as their home page. Also since Yahoo powers AT&T's portal for WiFi with its ad engine, one has to wonder if the right hand at Yahoo knows what the left hand is doing.

So Jajah shows off smarts in landing a deal that has lots of marquee value, will enable Yahoo to not be in the phone infrastructure business and likely has some community and ad delivery value for them.

Score Jajah 10, Yahoo 0.

AOL is making noise about releasing API's for voice with OPEN AIM and their desire to work with developer.

I wonder what developers who have worked with AIM PhoneLine have to say about that?

So far the announcement applies to AIM Call Out. One reason is that AIM Phone Line is pretty much dead and AOL doesn't want to be in the inbound call handling market it would seem.

Years ago, Joe the Beerman would lead cheers in the stands of The Spectrum, my work home for 15 years basically, when I worked in PR for both the Philadelphia Wings, and then fan development for the Philadelphia Flyers before it was called Fan Development.

Esme Vos is WiFi's cheerleader, and yesterday she posted about what will happen in the city of Bern, Switzerland during the Football Championships this summer. WiFi for free, subsidized by a local energy company, a media company and a leading ISP. It's part community service, part ad driven revenue and a big part, proof of concept.

It's also a very good idea.

I use client Truphone and my T-Mobile HotSpot @ Home services a lot because they help flatten the phone bill and keep things manageable. I also make lots of use of the Skypephone when I'm somewhere I can use it, like the UK.

So in seeing this report about some market research from ABI I can't but be anything but more than a cheerleader here. This is so accurate in perspective that its got to be something the incumbent wireline guys are worried about.

The experience of WiFi VoIP using Truphone and TMO the last two weeks from inside my London apartment and elsewhere was very good. Only downside I saw seemed to impact TMO where they seemed to have less control of the media and I would suffer from latency when the apartment's broadband was being slammed.

When you take the ABI report and add in some thoughts from other analysts like Dean Bubley, plus commentary from the land down under's Jo Best of ZDNet/AU you have to realize that FMC is not just someone's dream, it's someone else's reality.

I spend a lot of time in France and one of my peeves has been the lack of PrePaid data rates.

Well, not any more. Now with Orange France for 9 Euros a month you can get some type of pre-paid data. This is a boon for me, as I'm really loving my Nokia E90 as an alternative to my Blackberry Curve. As a matter of fact, the last two weeks I used the E90 more than the Berry in the UK and Spain.

Now with this new Orange plan I can get more use out of the E90 and N95's, and upload those famed coffee cup photos that's I've been neglecting to do (more out of respect for someone who had to recently give up coffee)

Pre-Paid data is the future, especially for travelers and tourists who want to stay connected.

Hot on the heels of the PhoneBoy discovery about iSkoot, and all the corrective action the iSkoot team has taken, comes another interesting post.

This post, from Martin Sauter of Germany, shows that G711 VoIP over WiFi can be snagged.

Sadly I'm not in San Francisco until next Sunday night, but this new GigaOm PM Meetup sounds like a pretty cool idea.

PhoneBoy and to some extent Dan York get the gold stars here.

Both are security experts and have a real expertise in Voice. Dan hosts a regular podcast and Dameon does a wide range of blogging. But at heart both are white hat hackers, and what Dameon did in finding the flaw in a released version of iSkoot so quickly was worth its weight in gold.

This is just one more example of how the Blogosphere helps the startup community, whether asked or not.

It reminds me of the time when an former eBay executive said to some bloggers who were only trying to help "I'm not sure if you're reporters, developers or consultants so I don't know how to deal with you" and then repeated the same comment to me in a slightly different way. Basically, shortly after the eBay purchase Skype had a great chance to embrace the blogosphere, but only in the last six months or so has that really happened well, and largely at the direction of their out of house PR agency in NYC and Chaim Hass, who leads it.

Compare that to iSkoot whose team since the moment the first post went up, were engaging with the bloggers and after a first, reply, after some behind the scenes work a few of us to people we both know at iSkoot (as Dameon points out) the real mystery became clear and iSkoot did the right thing.

This is how the blogosphere helps and will continue to do so. Smart companies embrace passion. It's only insecure executives who fear their help.

Bravo Dameon, Dan and Jim. Bravo iSkoot.

The New York Time's Brad Stone has a very interesting Sunday story about RIM (Research In Motion) communicating how much the iPhone is a threat to RIM today.

What I'm finding interesting is how the world of mobile phones is really shifting to "smarter phones." If you look at who is on the decline in the USA, Motorola is no longer the powerhouse they once were, losing market share to everyone in every direction. On the CDMA side of the fence LG and Samsung have gobbled up the bottom. HTC and RIM have really carved into the Smartphone market. On the GSM side of the house client Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others are their enemy, and of course RIM pretty much has the Enterprise market or did.

Now Apple is entering the fray with the ultra cool iPhone. For most people who don't send lengthy emails, it is hard to not enjoy so the market is really there at the start for Apple, once 3G comes to the iPhone 2, or will that be 3? Geee. I wonder.

If the law passes in France, then the all new buildings and high rise apartments will be fitted with fiber optic cable as part of a 15 billion dollar program to modernize and provide the citizens super fast Internet.

Now, why can't we do that in the USA?

PC World's Stephen Manes has a mixed review about the trials and tribulations of canceling phone service with Quest and migrating to T-Mobile.

I totally agree though with the closing line though, and it mirrors my advice some years back where I suggested consumers choose a company that will be around.

GigaOm's Texas Rose Stacey Higginbotham tells us that AT&T has hotspots running in San Antonio.

Yesterday KenRadio's Ken Rutkowski told me he was in a New York City Starbucks on an AT&T connection and was already doing his best imitation of me...Complaining about the speeds vs. what they used to be like.

Wanna guess which Starbucks have a lower geek factor while the ramp up occurs? It will be the ones that become converted first.

Alec asks an interesting question about Broadsoft and like before when their PR department played something wrong in the blogosphere they've done it again by creating more questions than providing answers.

All they needed to do was reveal who some of their top developers are. I can easily guess and I'll win the bet of a case of 1982 Lafite if anyone wants to take me on. But child's play bets aren't my game, and Alec, who has been on top of his game for quite a while makes some valid points in his post.

For a program to really be meaningful you need to have customers, not simply developers. It's one of the reasons why the Apple WWDC that comes up in June in San Francisco, or Java One or likely Google I/O will all have throngs of developers filling up the hotel rooms quickly. Why? Because the customers are there.

In a short and polite but still corrective email I was notified by iSkoot that my guess that they were supplying Skype with the mobile client for 30 new handsets was incorrect.

They're not.....HMMMM. That makes me realize some things, and apparently, so too is PhoneBoy who seems to have identified a very interesting problem that may have the folks at Skype a wee bit nervous about them.

So this begs the question, if iSkoot isn't Skype's provider of choice, then did the recent management shakeup at iSkoot that moved much of the USA based aspects of the business from Boston to the Valley in some way hinder the relationship?

The H3G SkypePhone is one of the most amazing platforms around. And, personally I can't beat the cost savings for calling back to the USA when I'm in the UK. For twenty pounds each month I get global unlimited calling over the combination of Skype and the regular 3 mobile service. When I'm in my apartment I use Truphone on my Nokia E90 or N95 and if I end up somewhere where I don't have a SIM card, I've got MaxRoam.

I have to admit upfront that having the best of breed clients all playing in the world of VoIP is probably one of the most exciting parts of my job. Just like the Master of The Mashup Thomas Howe gets to take the best of the best tools and make something new and different happen in the sense of great new Voice 2.0 applications, my team and I get to play mixologists when it comes to how our clients and their technologies, either amongst themselves or with our pals in the media and the blogosphere get to tell their stories. But more importantly, what we're demonstrating is how to use the tools and media opportunities that exist today to flatten and level the 1.0 media world by being agents of change.

Yesterday iotum's Alec Saunders continued to show off the feature rich capabilities of the iotum Free Conference Calling platform that works from within Facebook during his daily Sqawk Box podcast with the usual group of suspects including Voxeo's Dan York and ATS's Adam Somer to name a few. Alec artfully interviewed SightSpeed's VP of Marketing, Eric Quanstrom about SightSpeed Light for MySpace and extracted many of the key points that really paint the picture of where SightSpeed is headed. This wasn't interpretive journalism or opinion based blogging. It was facts and information straight from the so called "horses mouth" as Eric took the group and listeners through the direction SightSpeed is heading with Google and Open Social.

Later that same day, Skype Journal's new master of the microphone, Jim Courtney, proved that at any age, anyone can learn how to use the tools of podcasting after taking the VAPPS High Definition Conferencing service's built-in record the call feature and turned his interview with VAPPS founder Ben Lillenthal into a podcast. During the call Ben signaled the market giving Jim the heads up on the new name change from High Speed to HiDef Conferencing and also revealed how more is coming from VAPPs.

It looks like Skype (and my guess iSkoot) are slowly rolling out Skype on Mobile phones beyond what I experience in the UK over 3.

While not yet available on every phone, I see it works on the Nokia N95 which I use in the USA, while unfortunately, it's not yet on the E90 which I make extensive use of when in Europe with it's 3G capability there.

With a 3G data plan on the N95 I'll be connected while mobile. That means more use of my headset in the USA when I'm sitting in traffic in California in my soon to arrive new 2008 Infiniti G37 coupe.

It's been almost a year since Google made its move and smartly scooped GrandCentral (for sake of transparency my agency represented them through the purchase and for a short time after handling blogger relations.)

Now the usually tightlipped co-founder, Craig Walker, has updated the largely dormant GrandCentral blog with a signal that something new is coming. How soon, soon is, is unclear, but this likely means that GC will be rolling out something tasty.

Om reports that OOMA is not dead yet and has hired a new Chief Marketing Officer.

What I love is the comment from Om about PhoneGnome, a company which I helped launch and remain an advisor to.

The continual comparisons, rightly so speak to the smarts and insight that TelEvolution founder, and PhoneGnome creator David (Mr. Blog) Beckemeyer has when it comes to the Voice over IP market.

PhoneGnome was developed for far less, cost less to produce and has likely sold more with a significantly smaller marketing and PR spend.

Beyond that, what's interesting is it sounds like OOMA is going away from their "Hollywood" star spokesperson approach, and starting to realize that its a retail game. Now lets see how much hey have to pay to the retailers to get onto the big box store floor. Given how every VoIP company from Vonage, to Earthlink's TruVoice to AT&T's CallVantage has paid the retail piper, and not really seen heavy return that makes them a profit, a retail play seems like someone has an uphill battle.

My good friend Danny Klein, who many long time VoIP industry execs will remember from his days at Yankee Group has just made a really solid career move. He's leaving Boston based venture capital firm Vesbridge to make the move to Dallas and is joining Hunt Ventures.

As in Bunker, Lamar and the rest of the Hunts.

Danny joins as a Director.

For the always personable and insightful Klein, this is a move that will likely pay off.

In what must have been one of the hardest decisions of his life, this morning Jeff Pulver resigned from the Board of Directors of Pulver Media, the company which now only carries his name, but since the beginning of the VoIP era has embodied his spirit and vision.

Obviously, given the uncertain state of Pulver Media and their investors Jeff is taking good counsel and saying only as much as possible. For the equally transparent and always honest Jeff Pulver this can't be made any harder.

As a Pulver Media advisory board member, I think I speak for all by saying "thank you" and "your contributions were endless in creating an industry around your beliefs and dreams. We, as a community THANK YOU and hope for your return in whatever form or fashion that may be."

The Daily Mirror points out that in the future video conferencing will be standard part of everyone's life, and that we'll have locator chips embedded so as we get on in years we can be found.

The SFGate news site touts how green telecommuting is. Candidly we've been on that push since 2006 when my agency started to work with SightSpeed. Yesterday SightSpeed took a bold step to leverage the Google Open Social concept and build for the future and unleashed their MySpace plug in, which the very insightful and ultra hip 2.0 site, Mashable took note of, as did VentureBeat the day before.

While Ken Camp thinks the SightSpeed Light strategy is off the mark, having been a part of things with the company now as an advisor and agency for over two years I have to differ and fully agree with the comments posted in the rebuttal by CEO Peter Csathy. Why? While Ken may look at Facebook as the more grown up and adult/business ready Social Network, which it may be, but may also implode due to the lack of controls over just what becomes a plug-in, MySpace is the future users of technology today. They are the most hard to reach, and desired target group that any marketer worth his salt knows is important. Second, by being FIRST out of the gate with video conferencing with that crowd SightSpeed preempts the rest, making the others "Me Too" and SightSpeed "Me Different." Third and most importantly is the strategy that Peter articulated in his comments very eloquently, saying that Facebook and others will be there as they get deployed and most importantly INTEROPERABLE. This is a bottom up future game, and while I won't be spending time in MySpace, the younger members of my team who have younger siblings and friends will. They're the future of the net, society and social organizations. Then they move to adulthood and eventually places like Facebook. SightSpeed is working to debalkinize the communities, and is using SIP to do it, and that makes total sense to me.

Someone has finally found a reason for Twitter. To offer people in need some help.

Yesterday pal Mr. MaxRoam Pat Phelan was delayed at Heathrow airport as he was leaving London (my flight to London from Madrid into City was early.) Pat fired off a Twitter note about being delayed and someone inside Boingo sent him a day pass. Now that's SMART and a reason to watch the Twitter feeds.

I wonder if the next time I report how bad iBahn's broadband is in a hotel back in the USA if I'll get offer from them?