Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Buddy Jon Arnold just tipped me off to the fact that iotum has been added to 2006 VoIP Fierce 15.  Naturally we’re pretty darn chuffed!  It’s exciting to be in the same company as great companies like Digium, Firsthand, GrandCentral and Jajah.

Right on time (alright, a little early at 7:30 AM, even!) this morning the Skype 3.0 beta was up for download.  Initial impressions?

• Pretty new UI, with lots of functionality exposed.  For example, want to add someone to a call that’s already in progress?  There’s now a pull-down widget that you can do this with.
• The Extra’s gallery has a great selection of companies with complementary products ranging from games to business applications like Unyte.
• The Skype Live chat system is now built into the tabs.  Nice. 
• Call transfer?  It might be there, but so far I haven’t seen the UI, or had an incoming call that I can try this feature with, nor is there any documentation of new API’s on the DevZone blog.
• Outlook integration is installed, standard, as part of the upgrade.  However, it doesn’t work with Outlook 2007.  A surprising omission, given that Outlook 2007 beta has been out for months, that it went gold yesterday, and will be shipping by END OF THIS MONTH.   

Here’s a shot of the xtra’s gallery, which is the new storefront for Skype Plug-In’s.

Flat Planet Phone Company CEO, and iotum Partner, Moshe Maeir pointed me to Ron Lewis’ Interviews site after I recorded a podcast with Ron recently.  Wow! 

First, egomaniac that I am, I went and listened to my own interview.  It might be one of the better podcasts I’ve participated in.  Ron’s a great interviewer, and then does a fabulous job in the post processing.  At one point the interview dissolved while I looked for a bit of paper with some information on my desk that I wanted to reference.  Ron kindly removed the offending bits.

Next, I had a look at Ron’s site.  It’s professional, great looking, and has an awesome slate of interviews.

And you know what he uses on the backend?  That’s right… Asterisk, with Gabcast.