Lots of people are worried about SPIT. Security start-up Bharosa has an answer.

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The trademark battle is over - for now.

After writing about mywaves mobile video, I’ve been on the qui vive for more on the dissolution of the boundary between telephone and television. So I sat up on my virtual hind legs this morning when I saw a press release announcing the beta launch of Newport Beach, CA-based Wi-FiTV, a free-to-consumers service that delivers [...]

mywaves doesn't care what kind of mobile phone you have or what you'd like to watch on it. The Sunnyvale, CA startup just wants you to use its free service to get it.

HTC's new smart devices prompt the question: why are we still buying handsets from mobile carriers?

HP's new iPAQ 500 series of smartphones aims to cure "PDA thumbs."

Why did free international VoIP calling provider FuturePhone falter so fast? GigaOM's Paul Kapustka details the service's fall and the role played by AT&T's legal hammers to go after FuturePhone where it hurts the most: in the cash flow.

This year world famous Mavericks Surf Contest is counting on Pinger to get contestants to the beach on time.

Andy Abramson speculates on why tech startups "iinnovate and die." Failure to communicate also adds to the promising ideas that end up in the morgue.

With its stock is anchored at all-time lows, The Deal's David Shabelman speculates that Vonage may be prowling for acquisitions.

There’s yet another way to take Skype with you when you’re on the go, thanks to a licensing agreement announced today between Skype and embedded VoIP software pioneer HelloSoft.

Tired of being dinged for $8 every time you want to use the Internet away from home? Grass roots community WiFi networks may be the answer.

Fed up with exorbitant mobile phone roaming charges when you're traveling overseas? Roam4Free's Pat Phelan says that his company can cut your mobile phone bill by 80 percent.

Cisco CEO John Chambers says his company's suit against Apple over the name "iPhone" is a "minor skirmish" that could have been avoided had Apple agreed to interoperate with Cisco products

Conferencing calling provider Vapps has hooked up with Microsoft to deliver free conference calling for users of Microsoft Live Messenger, the software giant’s next version of its MSN Messenger instant messaging service. The conferencing plug-in will allow up to 500 simultaneous call participants and provide standard conferencing features like participant announcing and moderator tools.

Hoboken, NJ-based Vapps’ services are currently used by Skype, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, and Project Gizmo.

Every day I get at least one report about trends in telephony. Deleting these items has become so automatic that hitting ‘del’ takes less time than the seconds it takes my brain to process that the information is actually something I’m interested in.

Such was the case this morning with inCode Telecom Group’s Top 10 Global Wireless Predictions for 2007. Here’s what caught my attention and sent me searching back through the trash:

These trends include widespread use of mobile social networks, greater choice in multi function devices and more wireless home entertainment options.

The disappearing distinction between the mobile phone network and the Internet isn’t news if you approach wireless from the VoIP, rather than the telecom, perspective. We’ve been seeing the facts on the ground for the past year. What the San Diego, CA-based analyst firm’s report provides is validation.

“We’re ready for the next level, where Internet services are mobilized and deeply woven into our everyday lives, whether we’re at home, work or play,” said inCode Chief Strategy Officer in today’s press release.

Some of the more interesting insights of the report are its predictions about the Asian market.

The first is socio-economic change fostered by low cost wireless technology. “Flourishing infrastructure and handset businesses in Asia will help bring low-cost wireless to emerging markets, enabling many small businesses to join the economic mainstream.”

Second, wireless technology leadership will increasingly come from Asia as new technologies are developed and deployed in China and India rather than Europe and North America.

inCode also sees “compelling Internet brands, such as Google, Yahoo and Skype” taking a bite out of the businesses of traditional wireless service providers. Also expect to see more all-you-can-eat service packages. And finally, 2007 will be the year that hackers and fraudsters turn their attention to mobile targets.

Mobile VoIP is a hit with consumers according to the “Mobile and WiFi Phones and Subscribers” report released today by the Campbell CA-based telecom analyst firm Infonetics Research.

While mobile phone sales worldwide were up a healthy 13 percent in 2006, the interesting number is a 327 percent growth in WiFi phone sales during the same period.

Still not impressed? Consider what Infonetices predicts for the rest of the decade: A compound annual growth rate close to 200 percent for cellular/WiFi dual mode phones.

Consumers are choosing these two to one over single-mode WiFi equipment. In 2006 71 percent of WiFi phone revenue came from dual-mode handsets while single mode WiFi made up only 29 percent of the total.

The report is certainly good news for makes of dual mode handsets; a rapidly growing field that includes established mobile phone players like Nokia as well as newcomers like San Jose, CA-based Hellosoft.

The numbers reflect user impatience with juggling multiple devices, according to Infonetics.

“Users are demanding single number/single device services, and operators like T-Mobile announced converged services based on Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) in 2006,” said directing analyst for wireless at Infonetics Research Richard Webb in today’s press release. “UMA is a good example of early fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), prior to the eventual shift to IMS in the long-term.”

“More operators are transforming into integrated multimedia service providers, creating converged mobile, wireless LAN, and VoIP solutions that support voice and data services across enterprise, public, and home networks,” Webb continued. “The appeal of such converged services is driving WiFi phone adoption, especially in dual-mode WiFi/ cellular handsets.”

Other highlights of the study include:

• 2G/2.5G GSM handsets made up 49 perent of worldwide mobile phone revenue in 2006; the remainder was made up by 2G CDMA, W-CDMA, and CDMA2000 handset sales.

• Worldwide mobile subscribers are estimated at 2.5 billion in 2006 (up 26 percent from 2005), and are forecast to grow 42% to 3.6 billion in 2010.

• Cisco leads in single-mode WiFi handset revenue market share in 2006, followed by SpectraLink.

• Samsung leads in dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue market share, followed by Nokia.

• North America leads in worldwide revenue for single-mode WiFi phones, and Asia Pacific leads in revenue for dual-mode WiFi/cellular phones.

Yesterday I saw something in the New York Times that got me really excited. It wasn’t a preview of Vista or yet-another-article about the Apple iPhone. It was a story about something distinctly low-tech and backwards looking, and that I’ve wished existed for a long time.

The subject of the story was a turntable that sends audio output directly to a computer.

Now, this isn’t for those of you who have already converted your vinyl collection to CDs or MP3 files, like my friend the satellite communications engineer whose idea of an exciting weekend is reconfiguring his home network. This is something for those of us who like to talk to friends on a telephone, watch video on a TV, and listen to music on something we used to call a “stereo.”

In other words, someone like me.

There’s a reason electronic entertainment and communications a hundred years ago grew around single purpose devices. It’s not because those people were less smart than we are now in the Internet age.

As a matter of fact, in one way they were smarter.

Inventors of the gramophone, telephone, radio and television intuitively understood that ease of use was key to the widest possible market. Thee more things a device does, the harder it is to use. How many of us ever learned to program our VCRs?

If using a telephone required the same level of technical knowledge as using a PC, I doubt the number of U.S. homes with a telephone would be the 98 percent that it is.

Because I write about technology, people are surprised to discover that I use a single-purpose Uniden cordless VoIP phone for my interviews rather than a soft phone on my computer. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I hate being connected by a cord — I want to be free to walk around, get a cup of coffee, or even let the cat out while I talk.

Second, it keeps me focused. Because I prefer written notes to recorded conversations — it takes too long to get to the statement or information you want — a single purpose “appliance” plus my detailed note-taking keeps my mind on the subject, rather than letting me get distracted with incoming email or other phone calls.

And that’s the point. The physical device provides a clear delineation for activities that keeps your attention on the task at hand. Even if the activity is relaxation, aren’t we better off not answering email or installing software upgrades at the same time?

It’s possible that my attachment to single purpose devices is just an anachronistic fetish having more to do with age than some innate characteristic of human psychology.

So consider my 16 year old who never owned or played a vinyl record and grew up connected to the Internet. It’s true that the computer is his music appliance. Or was until he got an iPod. Now the computer is merely a conduit.

Another telling piece of evidence is that one of the first things he saved up his own money for was a…TV. Which is where he prefers to watch South Park and play Grand Theft Auto.

That’s why I vote for the Linksys iPhone over the Apple iPhone. The Linksys phone is designed around what ordinary non-techies do with a telephone, like ordering pizza. And it does what it needs to at a price tag that doesn’t bust the family budget. My son is squarely in the Apple iPhone demographic and his comment when I asked him if he wanted one was, “What for?”

It’s certainly interesting to see how the Internet’s unifying technology enables us to combine many different ways of communicating and entertaining ourselves; as well as letting us take entertainment and communications wherever we go.

This richness of innovation definitely can make life easier. For example, replacing my overflowing Rolodex with a Treo made my life so much better (despite its awkward user interface) that I can’t imagine how I lived without it. It’s so much a part of my life that I sometimes have anxiety dreams about losing it.

But my attachment isn’t because the handy little gizmo can surf the Internet, read email, film video, play music and a host of other things that in two years I haven’t even attempted to do. It’s because I can do three important things with it: talk on the phone, keep my calendar, and carry a copy of my address book. Occasionally, when I forget my camera, I take a picture with it.

There is one thing I wish it did: record. It’s telling that designers of this device didn’t think of that. Perhaps they would have, had they consulted a few writers and journalists.

In her column the other day Paula Bernier of New Telephony posed the question, “What’s Really New in VoIP?” That was my thought exactly after trolling through recent “news.”

Skype has a new Internet video service. It brings validation to the net as a platform for video, but it’s news because it’s Skype.

In the race to zero, FuturePhone is offering free VoIP calls to 50 countries until 2010. SunRocket’s offering once cent a minute calls to Asia. Nice if you have overseas relatives.

Yet another service is offering WiFi VoIP calls on cell phones. VoIP Service Blog has an item about using your Nintendo DS for VoIP calls. Nimbuzz is offering a new IM service on mobile phones.

And despite oceans of ink spilled on the Apple iPhone, nobody has actually used or even touched one.

About the juiciest news lately was Talkplus’ ShadowNumber calling service, designed to accommodate your secret life — the one your spouse doesn’t know about. Now, maybe I’m a cynic, but I confess to being skeptical that grownups are shocked, shocked that VoIP is being put in the service of illicit liaisons.

Five years ago, of course, all of this would be headline news. Today it’s not even novelty.

But just because new breakthroughs aren’t bursting on the scene daily, doesn’t mean that there aren’t significant developments in telephony. Take for example, GotVMail of Weston, MA. The start-up company has skyrocketed to 35,000 customers of its small business virtual phone system in three years using analog telephony technology.

It’s an interesting mix of marketing with old and new technology.

Tellingly, the company doesn’t call its service a hosted PBX, which it closely resembles. GotVMail isn’t about making phone calls. It’s about having a professional “voice” when customers call regardless of what you’re using to answer the call. The company’s tag line is “Give your small business a big company sound.”

It’s a good example of understanding what customers get from any product isn’t the elegance of the technology — too often lost in the high tech world. It’s the value they get in terms of doing business smarter, cheaper or better. In other words, more profitably.

The value in this case is having a reliable “big company” phone system that sounds professional, routes calls to the right person, and lets people stay connected on the road. Hence, the choice of analog technology.

“Calls go over the PSTN to our data center which is full of tried and true analog technology,” explains David Powers GotVMail’s VP of Communications and self-described chief cook and bottle washer. “In the telecom business part of what customers are buying into is an expectation that when you pick up the phone anywhere you have a dial tone.”

The company’s business grew from founders Siamak Taghaddos’ and David Hauser’s own experiences with phone systems in startup companies.

“All of these [problems] had to do with putting network infrastructure in place,” explains Powers. “Both found out what it’s like being a small entrepreneur trying to get an issue resolved with a Verizon. It’s like the Lily Tomlin joke, ‘we don’t have to, we’re the phone company.’”

GotVMail is not just delivering phone service. It’s delivering a phone service uniquely tailored to small and home-based businesses.

“We see ourselves as entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs,” Powers continues. “We tell people if there’s a more cost-effective way of doing business with us. When was the last time Verizon called you and said, ‘Let me save you money?’”

The guiding principal of GotVMail’s design is that small businesses have “infinitely finite resources,” explains Power. “The platform is built from the ground up for small business. We weren’t an enterprise telecom company going down market.

“We don’t want them to have to buy anything except our service,” he continues. “So what we set out to do is make our technology talk to anything — landlines, cell phones, PDAs, smart phones. We’re technology-agnostic.”

Why not a VoIP system? “I like what VoIP does for me, but I don’t want to spend $189 for every phone,” answers Powers.

GotVMail’s service looks to be a competitor for Grand Central. In fact GotVMail is seeing a lot of transferred numbers coming from the service, Powers reports. But while Grand Central is a solution for the individual, GotVMail is a solution for business.

Being in GotVMail’s target demographic myself as a one-person office, I decided to try out the service myself.

You sign up on the website with a credit card. You can transfer an existing number, get a new number or request a ‘vanity” number. Alas, 1-800-CAR-OLYN was not available. So I went with an assigned 877 number.

Calling plans start at $10 plus per-minute charges that range from $0.048 to $0.074. You get 10 to 20 extensions with each plan and can add new extensions in groups of five for $10 a month. The average GotVMail customer pays $30 to $40 a month total, reports Powers.

The service comes with a slew of built-in PBX features like extension transfer, after hours calling mode, and music-on-hold. Additional features like dial-by-name and information extensions are also available at a $5 to $10 charge. You can forward calls to up to six different numbers.

GotVMail has an online manual that steps you through setting up your account. Account and extension management can be done through a Web browser or the phone. The Web interface is simple and intuitive and has a nice flow tree that shows you where you are in the process.

Using the phone keypad to configure an extension is, well, no more complicated than any other telephone system. And with GotVMail’s clear diagrams and spoken instructions to help you along, at least you don’t have to squint over mouse type in a printed instruction book.

I can attest to the fact that the system is well designed for its targeted audience of small and home-based businesses like eBay “power sellers.” From start to finish, setting up my account took 19 minutes, including time for a do-over after making a mistake.

Now, if you married GotVMail with ShadowNumbers…