Blogcasting made easy with VOIP

Two major tech-revolutions in the early part of this century have been VOIP and blogging - and the online news service TMCNet says the two are beginning to converge.

"For bloggers that want an even easier mobile blogging (or blogcasting in this case), VOIP5000 is developing an audio blogging solution that will allow users to call into its service, record an audio message, and post those recordings to their blog sites in real-time," explains the article.

This solution is completely device-agnostic, as it doesn't even require a Web-capable mobile device. "In fact, users could even blogcast from a public pay phone if they so desired. Users will be required to incorporate a small piece of code into their blog that will enable their audio clips to be added in real-time," adds the article.

The VOIP industry for small to medium businesses is forecast to grow from $200 million in 2006 to nearly $1.3 billion in 2009, according to the Yankee Group market research firm.

CIO Today writes that a major consolidation of Internet-based phone service providers is expected this year, with a variety of providers seeking to become a national leader in serving businesses.

Dozens of VOIP companies that target business customers have launched in the past two years, but no major brand has emerged in the way that Vonage has for residential customers, adds the article.

US-based technology company Packet Island has released a solution for monitoring and troubleshooting VOIP services for smaller businesses, giving a pre-assessment of a firm's networks to test their VOIP readiness.

The solution, Software-as-a-Service, allows troubleshooting of the quality problems which are often complex in the small business environment, says the company.

"Deploying VOIP over pre-existing data networks is a big challenge that many of our VOIP service providers and VAR customers face today - very often we encounter network topologies in SMB environments that make it difficult to insert an inline device for VOIP monitoring," notes Praveen Kumar, co-founder and president of Packet Island, in a VOIP News article.