Disruptive Telephony

I was rather shocked today to learn that Om Malik is recovering from a heart attack! The good news, based on his post, is that he is recovering!

My thoughts are certainly with Om. Ever since I started paying attention to the VoIP blogosphere a good number of years ago, Om was one of the folks to whom I always paid attention. I wish him well and hope for his speedy recovery!

And yes, as he notes, it's a good reminder that we all need to watch our health. (Something I've been thinking a lot about lately.)

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Fascinating development on the Apple frontier... in late December some developers posted information about a SIP phone for the iPod Touch! They included this helpful demonstration video:

The team has obviously received a lot of questions and has therefore released a lengthy FAQ list. If you have an iPod Touch, you can download the software. Of course, you really need a microphone to use it... which the Touchmods folks are building.

All in all an interesting development. I look forward to seeing how it moves along!

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod touch, sip

In learning about the new "NoJitter.com" blog recently, I also learned from Eric Krapf that Business Communications Review, commonly known simply as "BCR", was joining the ongoing exodus from the print publication business. Effective January 1, it will no longer be published in print form and, in fact, the name will retired for publishing purposes. They will continue to use the name for their training business, which is apparently going very well. The publishing focus for the BCR team will apparently be this new NoJitter blog, which I mentioned in my last post.

Personally, I'm sorry to see them go. I definitely do understand that the economics of print publishing today are quite difficult, but I did value the work that BCR did, particularly in their comparisons of products and services. It will be interesting to see, too, how well their current readership makes the switch with them. I know personally that once InfoWorld folded its print edition, I know longer paid as much attention to their writing as I once did... except when it randomly came up in searches. I'm not currently a BCR subscriber, so if anything this move may mean that I see more of their writing.

In any event, I wish them all the best with moving to the online world with NoJitter.com and look forward to seeing how that site evolves.

Technorati Tags: magazines, business communications review, bcr

Back in mid December when I received the latest copy of the "VoiceCon ENews" email newsletter, I noticed that Eric Krapf had a new signature to his post:

Eric H. Krapf
Editor & Lead Blogger, NoJitter.com
VoiceCon Program Chair

Naturally, I had to see what NoJitter.com was about...

It turns out that NoJitter.com is a new site launched by CMP to provide a focus on IP Communications/IP Telephony/Unified Communications/VoIP/whatever-we-are-calling-this-space-today. Eric, will, in fact, be the "lead blogger". I've had the opportunity to work with Eric in a few small ways (such as a VoIP security panel at Interop/VoiceCon New York in October) and look forward to seeing what he and the others there will be doing with this new site. (Hey, he already gets a "+1" from me for having "VoIP Security" as one of the navigation categories in his navbar!)

Welcome, Eric and the NoJitter team, to the VoIP part of the blogosphere!

Technorati Tags: blogs, IP communications, puppy, puppy, puppy, unifiedcommunications, voip

Over on the Skype blogs, Skype blogger Peter Parkes is having a bit of fun with a series of articles under the banner of the "Twelve Days of Skype Christmas". They are a bit amusing... although I'm not really sure I wanted to know that 40% make phone calls while naked according to one survey!

Anyway, kudos to Peter for putting together a series of posts for the season.

Technorati Tags: skype

Over at the Skype Journal, Phill Wolff had some fun yesterday with his "37 Sketchy 2008 Skype Predictions". Not all of them relate to Skype... and obviously not all are even serious, but they do make a fun read.

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News out of Digium yesterday morning that there have now been over one million downloads of Asterisk in 2007:

Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, today announced the one millionth download of Asterisk in 2007, capping off a record year for the leading open source telephony company. Digium, which will complete its 24th consecutive quarter of growth and profitability this year, created headlines with new executive appointments, industry awards, strategic partnerships and acquisitions aimed at further advancing the company's presence in the small-to-medium-sized (SMB) VoIP market.

Now, granted, we have to remember that this is one million downloads and has no real indication of: a) how many of those downloads were actually installed; b) how many of those installations were simply tests and are not in actual production use; c) how many of those downloads were duplicate downloads by the same user; and d) how many of those downloads were updates as people installed new versions.

All that aside, it is a significant milestone for any project. Congrats to the Digium team!

P.S. I'm still waiting for an answer from Digium PR about how many downloads there are total for Asterisk. This is one million in 2007, but how does that compare to the overall total?

Technorati Tags: asterisk, digium, opensource, voip

Over at ZDNet, Russell Shaw reports that Nortel is suing Vonage over patent infringement. The real question these days seems to be - who is not suing Vonage? Seems like there is blood in the water and the patent lawyers are circling...

Technorati Tags: nortel, intellectual property, vonage, lawsuits

Last Thursday, Luca Filigheddu posted the announcement that his company's Firefox VoIP extension now works with any SIP-based VoIP service. From his announcement:

A new version of the VoIP Extension is now available for download and it’s not limited to the Abbeyphone VoIP service only. You can insert your favorite VoIP service or even your company’s Asterisk PBX. The following VoIP providers are already included: Free World Dialup, Gizmo Project, VoIPStunt, VoIPCheap and Abbeyphone of course. More to come very soon.

I've not yet tried this out myself, but since it does work on the Mac as well as Windows and Linux I'm going to have to do so soon.

Cool to see... and if you want to try it out yourself, go to http://www.mozillavoip.com/

Technorati Tags: asterisk, firefox, sip, voip

Will there soon be a native SIP client on the iPhone and iPod Touch? Dameon Welch-Abernathy writes on his VoIP weblog that some developers have gotten a basic SIP stack working on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The limited details available are over on The Unofficial Apple Weblog:

iPhone hacker eok writes to let me know that he and Samuel have gotten SIP registration and signalization working. They took a few mobile terminal shots, but the real work is being done via ssh. Samuel is working on connecting the audio in/out to the pjSIP. If you have iPhone or iPod touch coding skills and want to get involved in the project, connect to #touchmods on irc.undernet.org. It looks like most of the work will be done on European time.

As you can see in the screenshots, this is still very early in the development. Still, it's great to see this kind of development taking place.

Technorati Tags: sip, voip, apple, iphone, ipod touch