Like store-brand cough syrup, VoIP (Voice Over IP) has left a bad taste in many peoples mouths. Expense, reliability, and complications have plagued many small business VoIP adoption. Although not often viewed as a complete VoIP system, the scrappy software based solution known as Skype can be an excellent free alternative for testing the VoIP waters, or even adopting as your business’s De facto VoIP solution.

You Can Call Your Clients From A Beach In The Bahamas and No One Is The Wiser

Voice Over What?
Simply put, VoIP is a way to make phone calls over your computer, mobile phone, or specialized desk phone’s Internet connection. With VoIP you don’t incur any costs from the phone company on a per minute basis or for long distance. Generally, if you make a lot of long distance calls a VoIP provider’s monthly fees will be less than what you would usually pay the phone company.

The biggest VoIP advantage is the ability to bring your phone, and number, anywhere you go. You can call your clients from a beach in the Bahamas and no one is the wiser.

Skip The VoIP Headaches With Skype
Because Skype is a software based solution there is no need to buy an expensive specialized phone to get started. Simply download Skype for your computer or supported hand-held device. Skype also works on hundreds of cell phone, including the iPhone (I use Fring), and is now coming pre-installed on many Nokia handsets.

Once installed signing up for an account and making calls is a snap. Calling from one Skype user to another (Skype-to-Skype) is always free, and has the added benefits of accessing all the other Skype features that go beyond simple voice communication. Calling from Skype to a normal phone requires a paid plan. Paid plans fall under a pay-as-you-go model or unlimited service. Unlimited US calling is less than three dollars a month.

Skype For You, Your Business, and More
Skype also offers free tools to help manage your companies Skype implementation. There are also a multitude of partners offering additional services, and a constantly expanding set of business centric tools that leverage the Skype communication network.

A few of the great things you can do with Skype beyond just making calls:

• IM (instant message), conference call, and send files
• Hold a web conference, share your screen, and collaborate on documents
• Video chat, screen cast, and send faxes
• Run a call center, run your help desk, and dial from SalesForce.com

Flattening The Communication Landscape

With Skype There Is No Large Upfront Investment And No Need To Dump Existing Infrastructure

Although the web 2.0 revolution (coupled with the explosive use of smart phones) has opened up many new avenues of communications, Skype stands out for many reasons. Skype has a multi-dimension / multi-media / multi-device approach to communication, and melds old-world networks with the latest cutting-edge trends. With Skype there is no large upfront investment, no need to dump existing infrastructure, and virtually limitless potential for creative applications of the Skype protocol.

If you have used Skype in the past let me know what your experience was like in the comments of this post.

Happy Skypeing!

Next time you make a run for the border don’t forget to bring along all the old decrepit cell phones from your junk drawer. As our rock-n-roll programmer Shawn demonstrates, recycling your old phones is easier than ordering two bean burritos.

Taco Bell’s new marketing slogan is “The only thing greener than our guacamole is our phone recycling bin.” Although catchy, I think “The only thing greener than our guacamole is any other restaurants guacamole” would be more accurate.

All joking aside, it’s nice to see big companies making an effort to help out the Earth, which has given so much to them.

In my ongoing series on on-line advertising faux pas, anomalies, and general weirdness, I have come across quite a few examples of what I call “competeverts”. Competeverts are ads placed in a page where the content of the page expunges about a company in direct competition with the advertiser.

One of, if not the finest, example of this was on Gizmodo today. As you can see from the screen capture above, Blackberry took advantage of some prime advertising real-estate on a iPhone article to advertise its competing device.

With opportunities like this, it’s no wonder ad dollars are transitioning from print to the web.

Well, it’s June 9th. We can expect the announcement 10 am PST (noon here in Minnesota). Will the new iPhone go on sale today? Tomorrow? This week?

Will it be cheaper than ever?

Will I buy it in white, black, or red?

Will it be thinner, sleeker, more beveled?

Will it have solar panels?

Will Twitter crack under the strain of the anticipation and excitement?

You can check WWDC 2008 live blogging coverage over at CNET for news as it comes in…

Who knew auto-fill could be so dangerous?

You start entering a name or email address in the “to” field, and auto-fill completes the rest for you. But in your haste, before you even check if the correct “Spock” is chosen from the auto-fill list, you’ve tabbed down to the subject line and are on your way to sending the email.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Spock the child-rearing guru is calling to ask why you sent him blueprints for a starship, and you sheepishly have to explain that those files were meant for a Vulcan’s eyes only.

Thankfully, I am not in the habit of sending love letters or lewd jokes via email, or I might be hiding in the server room pretending I didn’t exist. Still, auto-fill is a hazard for those who must regularly send potentially sensitive materials. It behooves us all to make sure we are actually sending our email to the intended recipient.

On the other hand, predictive text software on mobile phones now rewards those who leave an incorrect word unchanged. Presumably out of laziness, texters intentionally don’t correct mis-predicted words. Yes, suddenly it’s cool to get your mords wixed up.

Predictive Text Gives Birth to “Textonyms”

Here’s an example: You mean to write “home,” so you punch the corresponding numbers “4663″ on your cell. The predictive text feature thinks you meant “good,” but you leave it as is and continue your message. According to some sources, avid texters will still know exactly what you mean. They’re called textonyms.

I’m not sure I quite believe the apparent popularity of these textonyms. This article cites the use of the word “carnage” when the word “barmaid” was intended. I mean, really — who uses the term “barmaid” while texting? But who knows, maybe there are merely some very poetic texters out there.

Technology has really spoiled us.

CES, the largest annual trade show for consumer gadgets, is quickly drawing to a close and I haven’t seen Google’s mobile OS make much of a showing. Although it has been only two months since it’s unveiling, I expected to see a handful of companies exhibiting at least early prototypes.

Considering this is an industry only show, and not open to the public, most companies show off products still in the early stages of development. Android’s release should have lit a fire under the metaphorical butts of handset developers everywhere, and CES is where these early stage efforts would first surface.

Keep reading for a quick Android refresher and more of my thoughts on Google’s mobile endeavors.

(more…)

There have been a lot of rumors about Google releasing a mobile phone. Well folks – they’re not gonna do it, they’re just going to give away the software for you to create your own phone. I’m calling mine the _Phone.

Available as of yesterday, programmers can download Google’s SDK for Android. Android is Google’s open source mobile phone operating system. This is probably a very good strategic move for Google – remove obstacles for accessing its applications, making it very, very easy to work within Google’s burgeoning framework of applications from Google Docs to Google Maps….

Anyway – I’ll let Sergey tell you all about it.

Many have suggested, and I agree, the iPhone is bad for web developers. Travel back in time with me to 1997. Microsoft releases a relatively competitive browser, for free, that can render standards based websites well.

With the help of Microsoft’s excellent marketing, the new browser quickly became a hot platform to develop for. However, some features developers were utilizing were specific to IE, and broke compatibility with other browsers.

Today a similar situation is brewing with Safari 3 and the iPhone. Although the iPhone is supposed to render standard sites well, many iPhone-only sites are popping up.

Thus, the suffering of web developers everywhere continues…

So you’ve bought the iPhone. Now you have to inform everyone your number has changed.

Or do you?

Not if you have a Grand Central phone number. The new web-based service will allow you to sign up for one number that you keep for life. It’s a pretty sweet service and as of this writing, it’s free, unless you have a gajillion phone numbers to unite. (more…)