Alec Saunders SquawkBox

For those still baffled by Microsoft’s acquisition of Zurich-based mediastreams.com, EWeek provides further insights. 

Media-streams.com’s ePhone click-and-call product, which is a small-enterprise system with a subset of PBX features designed to assist in desktop-oriented telephony and to provide telephony based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

The product contains an advanced architecture based on SIP-CSTA (Computer Supported Telephony Application).

CSTA, of course, is a popular PBX integration API for applications. What this means is that (a) existing small enterprise PBX applications (small call centers and so on) should theoretically be easily portable to the Mediastreams system, and (b) we should look for more click-to-call features in Communicator and LCS.

Another building block in Microsoft’s communications platform.

Kevin Burton, one of the founders of Rojo, has a new service out called TailRank.  Beta was announced today.  The basic idea is that blog postings that are relevant to you are likely part of the reputation network that is defined by your blogroll.  By uploading your OPML file to TailRank, you create a personalized relevance filter. 

He’s got a bunch of cool features, including the ability to include relevant posts from other people’s blogs on your own blog.  Check out the "TailRank Recommended" section in the right sidebar on this blog if you want to see it in action.

This is a whole lot like the email filter I use today which prioritizes email based on whether or not I know the person mailing or not.  Very clever!

A new version of the Gizmo Project softphone went live this morning.  It now includes the ability to import your Outlook Contacts, customizable voice mail greetings, SMS notification of new voice mails, customizable ring tones, and call forwarding. 

I, for one, will get tremendous use of the Outlook contact import.  Even better — integrate Gizmo with Plaxo, and then I will never have to worry about importing again.