I remember reading Doug Mohney back in the days of Boardwarch, but have not been keeping up with him since then. But the VoIP Princess Carolyn Schuk brought to light some very relevant opinions from Doug related to Voice 2.0:

[Jeff] Pulver wanted purple minutes, minutes of IP traffic part of an enhanced application that might include voice, data and video content. Six years later, Jeff is still looking for his honest purple minutes and innovative applications. Voice 2.0 is here, but there's been no big killer application, it's all just variations of a theme for call forwarding and voice mail and some APIs to slap voice into a web service.

Giving voice an API is, in and of itself, a wonderful thing. We shouldn't discount that development, but I think I have to agree that we're still waiting for that killer app. What do you think?

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood, but the latest news from Nimbuzz does not excite me. Oh sure, the client does multi-IM support-including Skype, and either supports VoIP calls over the PSTN or even VoIP with the new S60 3rd Edition client, but so what? Fring does this.

The problem I have with both Fring and Nimbuzz is that neither one seems to do anything truly revolutionary, nor do they seem to have a business model to speak of. Am I blinded by my bad mood or am I right?

One of the things that I missed out on at eComm 2008 was the fact that Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens proposed, in his session at eComm, proposed a country code for VoIP users: 883.

As part of it's proposal, Voxbone is giving away telephone numbers, called iNums, in the 883 country code to internet telephony service providers for free. The numbers will be, at minimum, 12 digits long. Voxbone will also handle sending the calls to their respective VoIP providers.

Initially, the 883 numbers will only be available within the VoIP providers. It will be an adjunct to existing identifiers on the various networks and is expected to be Eventually, calls from the PSTN will be able to terminate calls on the 883 country code, though it is not expected to happen until 2009.

I'm looking forward to having my own, global phone number that's reachable from anywhere and isn't geographically bound!

Via VoIP News

While I was hunting around on the Bell System Memorial site the other day, I ran across this audio file that demonstrates how long it took in the 1940s to connect a call from Los Angeles to Murphy, Idaho. Time from the initial dial to a connection on the other end? Nearly two minutes, and listen to how many people it took to connect that call!

I pretty much take it for granted these days that calling someone else, be it on Skype, my mobile phone, or some VoIP provider, that zero humans are involved in connecting my call. In fact, with point-to-point calling, calls are connected in just a few seconds!

I ran across this video from 1982 where Jane Barbe and John Doyle-Mama and Papa time respectively-were interviewed. Why were they called that? Watch the video and see:



I miss the POPCORN service-something I frequently dialed as a child living in Northern California. Up until AT&T decided to discontinue the service in September 2007, I continued to use it to check the time when a computer wasn't handy.

Of course, if AT&T really wanted to, they could have easily replaced the service with equipment that didn't break down as much as the old Audichron machine did. An Asterisk server synched up with an NTP server could have easily provided the service-complete with Jane Barbe's voice!

Meanwhile, you can still hear Jane Barbe's voice on WWVN at +1 808 335 4363 or on a shortwave radio near you!

Back in November when Jajah and Jangl announced their partnership, I wondered aloud whether or not this might turn into something else. Turns out it did, but not exactly the way I was thinking it would.

Michael Cerda, the former CEO of Jangl, posted on his blog today that him, Ben Dean, and five others are going to Jajah. Meanwhile, a skeleton crew is left at Jangl to keep the services running and try and find a buyer.

Wonder how much of the Jangl magic will make it into Jajah, which is turning into quite the telephony platform.