Voxilla

Voxilla is a great source for info on new developments related to VoIP, SIP, and other relatively new communication related technologies. Jeff Pulver from Free World Dialup and Ravi Sakaria, CEO of VoicePulse, even have their own forums where they answer questions.

One of the areas generating controversy on the website involves the Skype hype. I fall into the category of people who found Skype really interesting at first, but then was a little less amazed by it when I realized how similar it was to other IP phone software that had preceded it. Nonetheless, it may be those few differences that allow Skype to grab a big market share quickly.

I was astonished when I first read on the Skype site about how quickly they developed Skype. The sound quality was just too good to have come out so quickly from a company with no experience in developing high performing codecs for VoIP. Well, it turns out they didn’t write the codecs. That work appears to have been done by Global IP Sound. However, Skype did do a great job in using peer-to-peer technologies to simplify the use of VoIP.

I’m still impressed by Skype, but it’s far more evolutionary than revolutionary. Definitely, the best thing about it is that it has helped to really raise the visibility of VoIP in the media, which can only help all the companies developing VoIP software and hardware.