Andy from VoIP is smiling these days … stop in and found out why.

VoIP Now takes the 3D Interface vs. Voice Recognition debate.  Which side do you come down on?

Russell Shaw from IP Telephony has been doing a countdown of sorts lately.  Check out what his most read post from 2006 was.

The Jeff Pulver Blog takes to the skies with a thought-provoking Q&A by way of DC and politics.

And lastly, Smith on VoIP discusses the state of affairs on VoIP and residential customers.

California-based Convenos is providing an added bonus to Skype users - Convenos Meeting Center Extra is now available for Skype 3.0. By using this feature, users can launch a meeting directly from Skype, going so far as to share and edit files with multiple users and have the ability to move between Skype chat and a web meeting with ease.

Thomas Torf, CEO of Convenos, said in a recent statement, “This solution makes it even easier to collaborate with anyone online — a few clicks in Skype, and you’re instantly in a Convenos meeting with your Skype contacts. We’re extremely excited to deliver this solution to Skype customers as an early participant in the Skype Developer Program, and we anticipate delivering additional offerings as a top Skype for Business partner.”

“We value our ongoing partnership with Convenos and are delighted they have delivered the Convenos Meeting Center Extra for Skype 3.0,” said Paul Amery, Director of Skype Developer Program. “The integration of Convenos Meeting Center and Skype 3.0 follows a natural evolution of business communication toward the use of collaborative technologies to drive business success. We look forward to our continued joint successes though the Early Adopter Program, Skype for Business, and the Skype Developers Program.”

You can download a free 2-week trial and take it for a test spin right here.

IT Managers face many difficult challenges, and one is to make sure the money they spend goes far.  In a recent Computerworld article, VoIP was tagged as one of the surest ways to accomplish that goal, with the fastest payback.

They highlighted the moves of IT Director Jeff Brittain, who was in charge of making decisions concerning the Hickory, North Carolina, municipal government’s telephone system.  He had to be very sure of his moves and decisions, since it would affect 40,000 residents.  No pressure there, right?

At the time, the city paid a monthly fee for phone service using its vendor’s equipment. “We didn’t own anything. We had to call them to make a change. They had full control of everything, and we were just a customer,” Brittain explains.

By capitalizing on the city’s existing infrastructure and vendor relationships, Brittain was able to implement a VOIP system in about six months, and he expects to recoup the city’s US$165,000 investment in three years.

I won’t spoil the story for you, but in the long run, he’ll end up saving the city over $50,000 a year!  I’d say the man earned his salary.  Go on and read the article to see how he did it.

Towards the end of the year, everyone breaks out their statistics, “best of” lists and predictions for 2007.  It’s as predictable as Britney Spears landing on the cover of an entertainment magazine this week.

The New Paradigm Group is no exception, and they’ve recently done a study on the changing VoIP market.  Interesting, theirs is the second piece I’ve read today that described VoIP as “disruptive,” a unique choice of words.  I don’t necessarily, myself, think that “disruptive” is a positive word, but carry on.

VoIP has been proven as a disruptive technology, and providers are emerging using multiple business models to promote variations of the service.

And now for their predictions:

Based on our VoIP research and broadband Internet penetration statistics, NPRG estimates that there are approximately 6 million VoIP users in the United States. It is expected that this number will climb to 9 million users by the end of 2006 and 24 million by the end of 2008. Future growth rates are subject, in part, to the increasing availability of broadband Internet to residential and business locations.

They also have a list of VoIP Providers and Vendors up, as well as the Rankings of VoIP for the 3rd quarter of 2006.  Their previous rankings right here.  How does YOUR favorite stack up?

PC World Contributing Editor, James A. Martin, touted VoIP under his new column on Lessons Learned in 2006.  Like many others before him, he admitted that he was hesitant to take the plunge.  For every “good” story of a switch to VoIP, there are always going to be a few that weren’t as good. 

I hesitated because I’d read too many reports of consumers who had experienced headaches when they made the switch. For instance, some have complained that porting their landline phone numbers to a VoIP service took months.  Given that I’ve used the same landline business phone number since 1994, this potential problem alone gave me pause. 

But then he stuck his toe in the tepid waters of the VoIP shore…

And so, nervously, I decided to take the plunge, signing up for a $15-per-month Vonage account, which includes 500 minutes of phone calls to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. Fortunately, I have nothing but positive experiences to report. The transfer of my landline phone number happened without any delays or hitches. The audio quality of my VoIP phone calls is consistently good and nearly the same as on a landline. The only difference is that VoIP calls sound just a tiny bit muffled. I’m saving approximately $500 a year, compared to what my landline business phone cost. And when I’m out of the office, the ability to receive voice mails as e-mail attachments is a convenience I highly recommend.

Now that isn’t to say VoIP is necessarily for you.  This is just a survival story … from someone who took the leap and lived to tell about it.   Just like hiring an IT Consultant - it’s a personal choice, and everyone has different criteria on what’s important to them.  You’re the judge and jury on this one.  Just presenting another case.

“You’re not just changing the technology in the back room,” with IP telephony, says Craig Hinkley, senior vice president and manager of strategy, architecture and security for enterprise access and desktop services at Bank of America. “What you’re doing has an impact on the way associates are using the technology every day; it’s a little more disruptive.”

I thought that was a great quote, and it comes by way of an article in CIO-Today.  They’re taking a closer look on where we are with VoIP, and what kind of effect it’s having on business today.  When organizations like Bank of America, Amazon.com and the New York Times are rolling out VoIP in their very own offices, you know that IP telephony is here to stay.  Statistically, a mere two years ago, only a third of business phones were IP, but now, it’s over 60%.  That’s quite a leap in a short amount of time.  It hasn’t been that sharp an increase with residential customers, however, and they’re coming along a bit slower.

Why are business customers migrating to VoIP more now than a year ago?  It could be that they are seeing VoIP isn’t just a new fad.  As with any big advancement in technology, people need time to adjust to change.  I know I do.  I balk at change until the very last second.  I took forever just to switch from VHS movies to DVD.  Of course, once you make the switch, you can’t imagine ever going back.  I mean, really, who remembers life before Tivo?  But now that VoIP has been here for a few years, people are starting to warm up to the idea, and see that it works, saves them money and has the potential to make them more efficient.

You can read the rest of CIO-Today’s piece right here.

Take a look down on the side there. No - further down - on the right - below Categories - below Archives - that’s right - the ‘Other VoIP Blogs To Read section.’ They are all smart, well-informed, good reads - almost as good as us in fact. Check them out - we guarantee you’ll want to add more than one of them to your regular VoIP reading.

Just like our top ten predictions, we also have some cherry picked quotes from our leading blog luminaries features on the main site in a new feature article. For bonus points see if you can find the original piece from where the quotes are taken and come back here and post them all! No prize except some pride.

VoIP bloggers provide a valuable service for all of us involved in VoIP and how it is changing our lives. So here at VoIP News we are paying our friends back a little by running a top ten predictions from VoIP bloggers as a feature article on the main site. Go check it out!

Here Comes Web 3.0

December 27, 2006

Just when we started getting comfy with the term Web 2.0, along comes the term Web 3.0.

Web 3.0, according to most of what I’ve read, refers to a “Semantic  Web” that relies on attaching metadata to information residing on Web pages to create a framework for turning the Web into one humongous, relational database. The advantages are said to be much deeper and flexible Web searching, and much tighter integration between all manner of applications.

For more information, check out this piece from the International Herald Tribune.