VoIP (http://www.tech-faq.com/voip.shtml) is definitely the wave of the future and there is much to learn about it so that when advances are made you aren�t left in the dark. Whether you want to receive training or professional reasons, you can get great VoIP training to help you understand all of the variables that make up voice over internet protocol. Read the rest of this entry »

• Technology used to bridge Internet calls to the traditional phone system
• Features such as call-waiting and voice-mail
• Wireless Internet phone calls

Skype Founder Janus Friis: Mile-High Bad Boy Valleywag reported a couple of days ago that Janus Friis, one of the founders of Kazaa, Skype and Joost, and a millionaire by all accounts, got drunk and frisky with his girlfriend while on a Virgin Airlines flight. Get this: his girlfriend is the daughter of Roger Moore. As in Bond, James Bond.

Skype once more releases a feature, Skype Prime [via], that's in direction competition with their developer community. While it's a very exciting feature - which allows you to bill for a Skype-to-Skype call - Skype is once more suggesting that you shouldn't even bother developing anything because they'll just take the idea or partner with someone else. Then again, Jyve, Bitwine and other similar Extras are completely safe because Skype is charging an absurd 30% of whatever you charge your callers. As one commenter at the Skype Share blog says, isn't 30% a bit excessive. Someone charging $100/h would end up paying Skype $30/h for a call that is otherwise free.

GPS capabilities are supposedly one of the current and near-future hot features of cell phones. It's been predicted, probably even before 2001, that all cell phones will have GPS capabilities, which would be particularly useful for tracking people in emergency situations. However, for tracking bike and pedestrian traffic, PNAs (Personal Navigation Assistants) are supposedly not ready. That's primarily because the necessary cartographic work for bike and foot traffic hasn't been done for most places in the world, so having a nav system for them is pointless. And for safety reasons, you cannot assume either type of traffic can use regular GPS nav maps.

This morning I was scouring the TMC FCC news page and I came across an FCC ruling which is helpful to the VoIP market. The story was written by InfoWorld Daily. Don’t I have something better to do on a Saturday morning? Apparently not. But back to the story -- the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that rural telecom providers must connect VoIP calls. Since the kids were asleep I even had a chance to see Russell Shaw’s take on his regulation blog. It is great to see positive VoIP news come out of the FCC and this ruling is obviously pro-consumer. Thank you Chairman Martin and the other commissioners for allowing this to happen.