VoIP 2.0

From time to time I look on the Internet the latest news about startups and I see that most of them are Web 2.0 sites, especially social networking sites which are really trendy these days. But lately I found a couple of them related with what it's called VoIP 2.0. Having worked for many years on VoIP applications in the telco business I found this concept really interesting. Today we see 2.0 everywhere, especially if you live connected you will notice buzz words appearing and dissappearing like never seen before (maybe on the Internet bubble?). There are Web 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Marketing 2.0, Business 2.0 and more.

VoIP 2.0 brings the colaborative approach of the Web 2.0 to the telco world. Up to now, there were new applications and services that brought cheaper calls to the end-users, long-distance calls, flat rates and facilitating the way we make calls using a computer. The best of those examples is Skype. But now we are seeing new VoIP applications that not only focus on reducing your phone bill, but providing new services in a completely different approach than a telco.

GrandCentral is a fantastic example of new services applied to VoIP. Basically their goal is to give the user a central number for all their phone numbers, a central voicemail box to have all the messages in one place, and they let you manage how you want the calls to be delivered to you. This company was recently acquired by Google :)

Ooma is another startup that looks really promising and they go for a full revolution on the VoIP world. They look to create a network of devices that will route calls P2P within the Omma community by VoIP transport before using the PSTN. This way as the Ooma community grows more calls will be within the VoIP network. They will not charge users for the calls but will add new premium services.

2.0 is about new ideas that combine and grow thanks to the power of the evolving Internet, +bandwidth, mesh of service, collaboration, and influences every aspects of everything that is connected to the www.

Scalable Web

I was googling for some time about how big Web 2.0 projects scale. Hey, not me but big guys like Google, Flickr, Digg, and so others do really have to think about zillions of users and page views per seconds.

If you share my interest in this topic, I'd recommend to have a look at this slide show from Cal Henderson - (Flickr) - about performance and scalability issues in web 2.0 development.