Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Have a listen to this great interview between Lee Dryburgh and Thomas Howe posted yesterday.  Lee interviewed Tom about his talk coming up at eComm 2008 in Palo Alto.  It's a fabulous discussion of voice mashups, using the theme of "voice as a spice" that Tom has been talking up recently.  Worth a listen.   

Lee has posted a partial transcript of the interview on the eComm site as well.  

Rumors are flying this morning that Microsoft will join DataPortability.org, the working group thinking through data portability issues.  That would be good news, although at this point there are plenty of joiners, but only small amounts of activity in the work group forums on Google.  

MyVoIPProvider.com has accused VoIP service provider BetaMax VoIP of credit card fraud.  They allege that BetaMax improperly charges small amounts of money to credit cards of members, and that because the amounts are small most companies do nothing about it.  BetaMax offers services under the names:

www.voipbuster.com, www.sipdiscount.com, www.voipcheap.com, www.voipcheap.co.uk, www.netappel.fr, www.sparvoip.de, www.voipstunt.com, www.internetcalls.com, www.voipdiscount.com, www.poivy.com, www.webcalldirect.com, www.freecall.com, www.nonoh.net, www.voipraider.com, www.justvoip.com, www.voipwise.com, www.budgetsip.com, www.smslisto.com, www.12voip.com,  www.lowratevoip.com, www.smsdiscount.com, www.voicetrading.com, www.voipbusterpro.com

This is a pretty serious charge.  I have to say that I've purchase from VoIPCheap before.  It's true that they ask for a credit card number up front, but I've not encountered the behavior described.  In any case, if you're a regular user of their services, you might want to check your credit card statements.