I hate writing about something that we sell through the Voxilla Store, but news is news (and no-news is no-news) and our friend Andy Abramson gave us the opening.

A German company, 4S newcom, is pitching an IP PBX that is loaded on an Apple iPod Shuffle (news?) and runs on a Mac Mini (no-news).

The system, called iBlue, will begin shipping on November 6th, to coincide with the VON Europe conference in Berlin.

An entry level system will be priced at 2,999 Euros (about US$3,750) and consists of a Mac Mini (version not disclosed), an iPod Shuffle, and five snom300 IP telephones. The low-end offering licenses up to 250 users and allows 30 concurrent calls.

It’s an interesting enough idea to get some notice from VoIP bloggers like Abramson and Rich Tehrani. But as Abramson points out, a Mac Mini based PBX is not new.

For the past year, we (meaning Voxilla) have been working with the folks at Communigate Systems (based across the Golden Gate from us in Marin County) to get the company’s full-featured cross-platfom internet communications server into the business marketplace. You can read about the product here, (please pardon the shameful internal linking).

The Comunigate Pro server runs on dozens of platforms, including Mac OSX, and comes with a SIP-based PBX, full switch, session border controller, an email server (like Microsoft Exchange, but it actually works) and an XMPP-based IM server. We run Communigate in our offices.

When five of us went to Boston for the VON show last month, we set up Communigate Pro on a Mac Mini to provide telephone service for all of us at the booth. Though the spotty internet connectivity at the Boston Convention Center provided a challenge, Voxilla Director of Engineering Eric Chamberlain got the system up and running with relative ease. The total cost for hardware and software for the system Eric set up is less than US$1,800.

The set-up was definitely a big hit at the booth. Quite a few people were startled to see a full-fledged communications server on such a small (and Mac-elegant) footprint.

We don’t sell the Mac Mini and I prefer to use the iPod as it was intended. But the Communigate Pro-Mac Mini system is slick and easy to set up by the Mac-savvy, and doesn’t have to cost a pretty Euro.

Loren Baker, the editor of the respected Search Engine Journal, is convinced the short-lived item on the official Google blog that purported to announce the cancellation of the Google-eBay “click-to-call” partnership is a hoax.

We’re very much inclined to agree.

Baker writes that “such a message would not come from Google blasting eBay, nor would it be full of misspellings, unsigned or end with the ‘This message has been translated using Google language tools’ line.”

The item in question was deleted from the blog less than an hour after it appeared (you can see a screen shot of the item here). And it is inconceivable that such an announcement would be made in a poorly written blog post that calls the month-old agreement “monopolistic.”

So was the Google blog hacked? It sure looks like it may have been.

Ironically, the blog item posted before the “click-to-call” cancellation note, entitled “Our Security Stance” and posted by Heather Adkins of Gooogle’s security team, asserts that “Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security.”

“We keep the bad guys out of our systems,” wrote Adkins.

Well, not all the “bad guys.” Chinese government censors seem to have free rein. And so do, apparently, “monopoly”-bashers.

[ADDED AFTER ORIGINAL POST]

Om Malik, the journalist/blogger (whose work, thankfully, tilts more to the left part of that slash) at GigaOm writes that Google has confirmed the post to be a hoax.

According to the spokesperson who contacted Malik, “A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog claiming that we have discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. Our click-to-call test is progressing on schedule and we are pleased with the results thus far.”

Has the Google-eBay click-to-call marriage come to an end? Already?

It may appear that way from a posting on the “Official Google Blog” (Official Google Blog) that appeared earlier today (Saturday) and quickly disappeared.

Ironically, a link to the post, entitled “Google Click-to-Call project cancelled,” continued to exist on the listing of “Recent Posts” on the blog on Saturday evening (as this item is written), though the link leads to an error page.

We managed to get a screen shot of the original post, which can be seen below.

If true, this would imply that the “multi-year agreement to connect users, merchants, and advertisers around the globe” jointly announced by Google and eBay on Aug. 28th is off.

But there are serious questions about the veracity of the post. Though in its approach to business Google has been refreshingly progressive (if one can overlook the company’s regrettable decision to abide by the censorship demands of the Chinese dictatorship), it is difficult to believe that Google would back off an agreement barely 5 weeks later because it is a “monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area.”

The race is on to bring some semblance of peace in the SIP v. Skype melee.

No, Niklas Zenstromm and Janus Friis haven’t dumped their proprietary protocol in favor of the open source SIP. And, no, the protocol hasn’t been hacked.

Instead, enterprising telegeeks have been hard at work getting Skype and SIP to simply “talk” to one another, and the fruits of their labor are starting to show up in the marketplace.

Already there are three products available that offer Skype-to-SIP connectivity, and two more on the immediate horizon.

“Why does this matter?” you might ask. There’s a simple answer, and a more complex one.

The simple one is that if Skype and SIP can truly work together, users of each can contact each other using only internet bandwidth, avoiding the tolls, and degraded communication quality, extracted by the PSTN.

The more complex answer is that interconnectivity can marry Skype’s market share (it’s huge in Europe, though reports are that its popularity has waned somewhat) and SIP’s plethora of devices (Let’s be real: Skype-only devices are basically brain-dead).

Forget the silly debate over which technology is better. There’s no answer because as with any such debate (think Windows/OSX/Linux, GSM/CDMP, plasma/LCD) everyone is partially right.

Yes, Skype is easier to install, looks flashy and feels as hip as a Prius. And, yes, SIP is more powerful, allows you to keep your computer off, doesn’t eat up your bandwidth while you’re not on the phone, and feels as hip as Ubuntu.

Either side can win the battle of words, but users are losing a big advantage of VoIP if the two sides can’t get along well.

It’s pretty clear that the technology clash isn’t going away soon, the way VHS squashed Betamax a couple of generations ago. Some time in the future, one may win out over the other or, much more likely, a whole new approach will replace both.

As it stands, the only real solution today is to make Skype and SIP like one another a bit more.

At least they’re shaking hands now, which is a good first step. With a bit of work (and a couple of bucks) it is possible to make a virtually seamless Skype-to-SIP connection. But beware: interconnection is a bit kludgy, requires the Skype client (or multiple clients) installed somewhere and works best when paired with a PBX, like Asterisk.

If you’re ready to take a plunge into the pool if IP telephony harmony, here are a few solutions:

VoSky Exchange

In the VoIP world, the folks at ActionTech are best known for the low-cost “Internet Phone Wizard,” which allows the use of a regular analog phone with any PC-based software phone (such as Counterpath’s Eyebeam and Skype).

ActionTech was first to market with a “Skype box” that allows connectivity to a regular PBX for up to four Skype accounts. And as the first to market, they are charging a premium for VoSky Exchange. At US$999, it isn’t likely to find a place in many homes.

And the bundle of cables required (4 USB cables attached to a dedicated computer running Skype and 4 RJ-11s connected to the PBX, requiring pricey add-on cards on the PBX side) makes it the type of contraption only a deep-pocketed Rube Goldberg could love.

Skype2PBX

This Skype to PBX gateway developed in Italy is pitched primarily as a way for companies to use the SkypeOut termination service to save on phone bills. If this is all that it did, however, it makes little sense in that a good SIP-based termination provider can accomplish much the same thing, often at even bigger savings.

Fortunately, the package (which starts at a whopping US$760) has quite a bit more going for it, including the ability to store Skype accounts in a “speed list” for outgoing calls, and the ability to accept incoming Skype calls using an add-on USB adaptor. The company also sells a Skype2PBX SMB bundle (US$1,750) that includes a low-end computer, USB adaptor and up to 10 concurrent Skype calls.

If the price doesn’t scare you off, this may: Unless you’re fluent in Italian, don’t look at Skype2PBX as an easy solution as the English instructions might as well be in Italian. Currently, that’s perhaps not a huge deal though. The company is not yet selling the product internationally.

Uplink

From Australia comes a Windows-only software “Skype-to-SIP adapter” that, appears to be getting a bit of traction. Though Uplink designed the software primarily for use with its Windows-based PBX product called Axon (http://www.nch.com.au/pbx/index.html), it has been made to work with Asterisk.

At US$38.50 for a “professional license” (a free version is also available on the site), it’s not a bad solution for someone looking to connect a single Skype account to a PBX. Unfortunately, though it works relatively well for incoming calls, on the outgoing side the software is designed primarily for use with Skype’s “Skype-Out” termination service. In other words, don’t expect to be able to easily call your Skype pal in Oslo using your Linksys phone regisered to your Asterisk box.

For personal use, Uplink is a nice addition to a small scale PBX. As a business solution, however, it’s a bit lacking. If you want to provide a single Skype contact to your customers, only one can be on the phone with you at any given time. And the company has yet to work out DTMF limitations that allows a SIP call to be made from a Skype client (though a solution is expected in a future release).

ChanSkype

Get your Linux cheat-sheets out. This new offering comes from a team of Brazilian Asteriskistas and is made specifically for their brethren the world over. If that doesn’t make you want to click the page, ChanSkype may be a decent solution.

The software comes in two flavors: A US$19 “personal license” allows a single Skype account to connect to the Asterisk server (the developers warn that it’s “a waste of money” to install more than one personal key in Asterisk “as only the first personal key will be accounted.” A commercial license costs US$99 and allows up to 30 Skype channels on a single Asterisk box.

One advantage to the ChanSkype approach is that it only needs a single computer. The same box that runs Asterisk runs the Linux-based Skype client.

This does reduce hardware costs, of course, but for some is a bit or a show-stopper. The Skype client requires that a Linux GUI interface (such as Gnome or KDE) and the X-system interface be installed on the Linux box, which most asterisk advocates strongly advice against.

Pika Connect for Skype

This product, from Ottawa-based Pika Technologies, a well-regarded manufacturer of TDM cards for PBXes (including Asterisk) looks to be very promising. Unfortunately, we can’t look at it yet as it’s not even in beta (that’s promised for early November).

What we do know comes from company announcements, and it seems like a product worth waiting for.

Pika’s solution (unlike ChanSkype’s) requires a separate computer (initially Windows only) running Skype (or multiple Skype clients) which connect to the PBX via ethernet. On the Asterisk side, a single “conf” file manages the interaction.

If your principal Skype “line” is in use when a call comes in, the software automatically rolls the call to one of your unused Skype accounts, and then back to the PBX. The number of accounts you can roll over to is unlimited, though the company expects to be licensing for each channel (at about US$45 per).

Pika Technologies is seriously looking at an embedded approach, a separate box that holds all the Skype accounts and can either act as a PBX itself, or connect (again, via ethernet) to a separate PBX for companies needing a beefier solution.

Initially, the software will be for Asterisk installations only, though other PBXes will follow.

What does all this mean? The day is not far off when you will be able to use any IP phone (or even your cell phone) to make a Skype call out, to receive a Skype call on any telephone you wish to forward it to, and to receive multiple Skype calls at the same time in a business setting.

Peace is indeed coming to internet communications.

This is probably a futile attempt to prevent a flood of discontent with a pinkie’s worth of words, but I’ll try anyway.

The so-called VoIP Blogosphere, which is rapidly moving from a mutual admiration society to a constantly-mention-each-other-in-order-to-jointly-grow-our-Google-dollars society, has grown enough to actually have an impact on the success of new products.

It looks, from posts from a number of sources in the past day or so, that the latest target of the chummy “me too” nay-sayers is GrandCentral (GC), a product that launched, in clearly marked “beta” form, three days ago.

The attacks are undeserved.

Carolyn Schuk wrote more extensively of GrandCentral here, so I’ll just describe the basic idea behind the brainchild of former Dialpad execs Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet: Get a phone number and use it as a sort of hub for all your phone services. Give your GC number to anyone you want, and when a call is made to you, the service will find you wherever you tell it to (your home phone, your cell, your work phone, your weekly meeting of the “Getting Things Done” support group, wherever). If you don’t answer, the call goes to a single voice mail account, stored on GC’s servers.

It’s a simple but powerful idea aimed at people with too many phone services, too many numbers and, for me most importantly, too many voice mail depots to keep track of.

Some of the criticisms — minor glitches when GrandCentral.com is viewed in Firefox, a clumsy address book import feature — can easily be dismissed as typical of a beta offering . . . and just as easily fixed in new releases.

The nay-sayers main beef is that they don’t need another phone number. I have 9, wrote Ken Camp. I have even more, Dameon Welch-Abernathy followed.

Perhaps GrandCentral is nothing special to people who collect phone numbers (for reasons that escape me) and have little trouble wading through an Asterisk conf file to make some sense of a mess of their own making.

For those of us who have trouble remembering our three numbers (home, cell and work), and find it annoying to check for voice mail at all three, being able to easily combine all our numbers into one is quite nifty.

And some of GrandCentral’s other features are definitely innovative. The ability to annotate voice mail messages for later referral, for example, is something I am finding very useful, and something that is not available with any other service (why not?). A single-click to mark a call as “spam,” an elegant method to record individualized outgoing greetings, and easily made customized outgoing ring tones are all interesting features.

The keyboard-armed critics of GrandCentral say they have too many numbers already. They probably also have too many telephone devices that they have played with and thrown in the their closets after 15 minutes. And they have 15 softphone clients installed on their computers, and about 8 different methods to make video calls.

I would want a simpler life too. That’s what Walker and Paquet are offering with GrandCentral. Let’s hope the bloggers don’t kill their efforts before they get it out of beta.