TheVOIPGirl.com’s had another nice welcome from PhoneBoy (no, we’re not related), a prolific VOIP, telecom and technology blogger with an affable writing style. He explains things…

Check out his review of GotVoice and you’ll see what I mean. GotVoice is an interesting service that takes voicemail messages from different voicemail services (including VOIP ones) and sends them to your email inbox. You get convenient access to all your voice messages in one place. He also points out a few shortcomings of TheVoipGirl.com that I hasten to address. Thanks PhoneBoy!

Phoneboy has a great post on how and why handsets make it to the US market, with special perspective on those from Nokia. It kind of provides an answer to questions I get from time to time from visitors to this blog. Mainly, they’re frustrated when they hear about new mobile VOIP services, especially “free” or “beta” ones that they can’t experience because a) it’s not clear which handsets the services run on b) it’s not clear if the handsets are even available, and c) who the heck knows if the network even supports them. Judging from what Phoneboy says, it’s clear that US carriers probably don’t support (or at least officially authorize) anything bleeding edge.

Such are the trials and tribulations of early adoption. Just hurry up already.

I’ve been playing catchup a little this week so I’m reading the flurry of posts that started with SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy on Video as the Next Big Thing in Social Networking. Luca Filigheddu and Ken Camp had some interesting things to say. However, PhoneBoy really put it together for me.

First, he says that until video is literally built in everywhere, like right in my laptop or as part of a web site, the masses on the whole may not bother. I see this already in my efforts to get friends and family to join SightSpeed. After all, it’s free, it works, and it’s easy. What’s the holdup? Seems that my friends are either a little suspicious of something FREE off the Internet (what’s the catch) or they simply don’t have a webcam. Why can’t they could just rush down to Staples immediately and spend $40 on a web cam and some gel pens? Not everyone’s a Staples geek like me. If the technology isn’t right there staring them in the face, it’s not a priority.

Phoneboy goes on to say that even if technology catches up and “the ability to do video is as ubiquitous as a mobile phone”, people may still not use it to interact on the Internet. It depends on what you have to say and how you want to say it. For example, I can convince my parents to use SightSpeed because they see huge value in the ability to see and talk to their kids in other cities. My friends are lukewarm on the idea of video calling me just to chat because it seems unnecessary (and they can’t do dishes or look for car keys at the same time).

That said, I’m still trying to get friends, family and colleagues into my SightSpeed network. I may have to resort to webcams as Christmas presents. Because SightSpeed has a great feature that lets you email video messages, I’m just gonna video mail them until a) they tell me to stop, or b) give in and try it.

When Jon from Fring emailed me to say that they now support Twitter, I immediately thought of Phoneboy. If you follow his blog at all, you’ll know he is a Twitter devotee and frequently defends Twitter from jaded skeptics and nay-sayers. So, does this mean that  now we can expect Phoneboy to Fritter (Fring plus Twitter)?

BTW: I see that he’s also now blogging at See Into S60. Way to go!

Katie Fehrenbacher at GigOm has a good summary of what’s going on at the big mobile conference in Barcelona 3GSM. She picks the top stories from the big players and notes that entertainment and content providers are new trends getting some notice. Check it out. Phoneboy finally also gets to add his two cents about the Nokia phones launched at 3GSM. His fave… the E90 Communicator.

I was following the thread started by PhoneBoy and SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy about the obvious advantages of communicating with someone in person. Facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language are huge non-verbal cues that say a lot. But, when face time isn’t an option, then real-time video calling (using SightSpeed of course) is the next best thing. Peter himself runs his Berkeley-based  team from San Diego, and couldn’t do so effectively without SightSpeed. PhoneBoy agrees and thinks that SightSpeed rocks, “Almost like being there”.

But, I’m curious to know if the folks who use SightSpeed today are making spontaneous or pre-planned calls. I confess that when I use it, it’s usually a planned thing. I’ll email or text someone and say, “OK to SightSpeed you now?”, or I pre-arrange a call at a certain time.

My guess is that live video from the desktop is still so new that people hesitate at “surprising” someone with a video call. Unless of course you’re The SightSpeed Guy. You may want to check out his latest blog post. He’s wearing a tie. Must be the staff Christmas lunch.

This is my first post in awhile. I checked out during the holidays (for me the “holidays” consist of the day the kids are out of school ’til the day they go back–that’s a week from now). But my-o-my, the blogging community has been going strong, even over the break. I guess the VOIP world waits for no woman. All hail the tireless VOIP bloggers…through rain, sleet, snow, etc. etc. Andy blogged from Frankfurt on Christmas Eve, PhoneBoy survived a major storm and power outage, and I can see at glance that instead of sleeping in or sleeping it off, many bloggers, Ted Wallingford among them, had something to say on New Years Day. Alec Saunders generated a great list of top VOIP bloggers if you want to keep up with these guys.

As for me, I’m excited in the near term about trying the Nokia N80i (just out the box, yippee!), FINALLY diving into iotum, and hopefully getting a new Canadian GrandCentral number.

Bloggers like Andy and Phoneboy have made mention of Gizmo Project growing pains and bugs. Sometimes timing is everything because I was just thinking that. Well, maybe I’m feeling a little cranky today. I haven’t seen the problems Andy and Phoneboy have, but I do see other Gizmo-related errors and general “not responding” messages regularly, and it’s getting me down.

I’ve also never been able to get GizmoCall to work for me at all despite numerous pleas to tech support and the forums. I reported on it’s launch but was waiting to give a user opinion. Never happened. I really think that Gizmo is going in the right direction with the additional services like SMS, web calling, integration with other IM networks. I recently decided to use Gizmo as my primary chat interface since I can integrate with MSN,Yahoo, Google, and others. A new features lets you import your MSN contact list into Gizmo at one shot instead of laboriously one by one. And Gizmo is SO easy to set up with the Nokia N95 which means I can use it to make mobile internet calls.  I also use Gizmo to handle all my incoming calls through GrandCentral. Another big plus.

When the sun is shining you can overlook application not responding and other weirdness. But you can also get tired of making excuses. Sigh. I feel it’s kind of like a great outfit, love the color, the style, looks good on me, perfect for the occasion, but it doesn’t quite fit right.

One of the things I try to do on this blog is try things–new consumer VOIP products, downloads, etc. You can get commentary on industry news like who’s buying who, or who just closed shop, in places like GigaOm.

Admittedly, I don’t get to try a lot of hardware, just software mostly, but if you’re looking for that kind of thing, VOIP and Gadgets or Smith on VOIP are good bets.

But this week Andy Abramson, in Living with Softphones, posted a neat-and-tidy roundup of some VOIP tools he’s been using, and I like it because he lists only what he’s used (or experimented with), and explains how he uses them. I think this kind of post is really useful. Don’t you really wanna know just how you’re supposed to use all this stuff in the real world? I know I do. Thanks A. Alec Saunders also posts quite often on VOIP adventures with his Blackberry, and Phoneboy writes about handsets he’s using (because all other hardware is just too boring). Check them both out too.

For my part, I use on a regular basis:

Skype: for chat and calls to Skype buddies
Gizmo: for general softphone calling
PhoneGnome: for long distance calling to reg phones
SightSpeed: for video calls
GrandCentral: for simplifying inbound calling. I’m using it to funnel calls through my Gizmo account.
Fring: for mobile calls to Skype buddies (still experimenting mostly)

Since I cancelled Vonage in August, I haven’t signed on with another subscriber service. However, I’ll be trying one soon.

So where have I been? Somewhere between snowball fights, Christmas shopping, and my other job I missed the fact that there’s another VOIPGirl in town. But thanks to some blogger friends, I’m up to speed.

Did you ever play nicky-nicky-nine-door as a kid? You know, like run up and ring a doorbell and then take off, hide behind a bush, and wait for something to happen? Kind of like Andy Abramson, Phoneyboy and Ted Wallingford. Ding, Dong VOIPGirl!

But hey, that’s all right. I think the more of us (gals) there are writing about this geeky stuff (VOIP), the better off you (guys) are. Why, between Carolyn Schuk over at Voxilla, Cate O’Malley and myself (and I consider myself honored to be in such company), we’re kind of like the women of web dialing, a trio of VOIP trialers, the chicks of click-to-call, the ladies of lose-your-landline …Well you get the idea.

So welcome Cate. The posts are flying over there at VOIP News so check her out!