Looking to emulate the highly successful Asterisk ecosystem business model, IP-PBX pioneer ShoreTel has launched a partner program to extend the choice of integrated solutions available to customers.

Skype Inside: First, an agreement between Toshiba and Skype will build Skype into Toshiba notebooks. Second, German mobile software company Shape Services has launched beta versions of IM+ for Skype software for Java phones, Symbian S60 and Palm OS.

Home networking pioneer Netgear announced a new collaboration with British Ubiquisys to build a residential gateway that integrates a DSL modem, Wi-Fi, VoIP and a femtocell 3G access point. (Femtocells are being promoted for fixed-mobile convergence.) It seems like a natural progression for the company that first made it possible for the average Joe to connect to the Internet. A side benefit is that your cell phone will also work better at home.

For those of you who wish you could take your VoIP service with you when you leave home or office, Chinese manufacturer ATCOM announced a new Mini ATA AG110 that fits in your packet. The company’s website is less than helpful to the English speaker, with howlers like this: “With the powerful R&D capability, ATCOM will keep lunching all kinds of VoIP terminals and devices….” Sounds like Godzilla.

When you take your VoIP service on the road, you’re going to need a broadband connection. Boingo is helping road warriors escape being nickeled-and-dimed to death by WiFi service providers with its global, flat rate, unlimited use service. The company claims to have about 100,000 hot spots. U.S. price is about $40 a month. Earthlink and Nokia are also aiming to let travelers roam free by equipping the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet with Earthlink’s WiFi service at no charge.

Polycom’s Spectralink WiFi phones now comply with the federal government’s security specifications for ’sensitive’ — but not classified — communications. This is the first WiFi phone to achieve this, according to the press release. But it is secure enough for Vice President Strangelove?

If you’ve ever wished you had that great picture of your Maui vacation right there on your cell phone, wish no more. Glide Mobile lets you bring all your files to your phone — even documents. All for free. You’d never guess this from parent company TransMedia’s description of its business: “TransMedia is leading the emergence of rights and identity based, compatible and integrated multipurpose software and services for corporations and consumers.” Huh? Anyway, you can read Glide Mobile’s press release here. (It’s not on the website — go figure.)

With only 2 days left until “i” Day, Ajax software company Backbase is prepping its Ajax framework and developers kit for the Apple Safari 3 browser, Apple’s chosen avenue for value-added applications. Backbase says that its framework will run on the Apple iPhone without modification. You can give it a test run here.

And speaking of tech’s Cabbage Patch Kid, how many people are actually planning to buy one? Not many, according to an online survey at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. As of this writing, only five percent of the people taking the survey say they’re going to buy one “immediately.” At the other end of the spectrum, 16 percent say they will “never” buy one, 11 percent say “not as long as it’s tied to AT&T for service,” and 27 percent — the largest cohort — say “not while it’s so much more expensive than other options.” You can weigh in here.

P.S. Gartner says the iPhone doesn’t belong in the enterprise.

European peer-to-peer IPTV network Babelgum launched its public beta. The angle here is full-screen, broadcast quality, personalized TV. TechDigest offers a hands-on review. Bottom line, right now the offerings are minor league.

Nokia is investing in Web video sharing site kyte.tv, joining Swisscom, German media company Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck and Skype founder Niklas Zennström’s investment company Atomico Investment Holdings.

The number of websites offering video jumped this year from about 200 to over 300, according to a study by Baton Rouge, LA-based Rider Research, publisher of the digital media newsletter The Online Reporter. Quantity isn’t quality, of course. But where the audience is the quality will follow. Remember TV in the 1940s? There were probably plenty of media people then saying the poor quality pictures would never catch on.

Quick: The Apple iPhone is open to third party applicatiions? If you said “yes and no,” you’re right. Gizmodo thinks allowing third party “Web 2.0″ Apple iPhone applications — in other words, applications running via Safari — doesn’t make the much-hyped device open.

And BTW, now you can chat with AIM and MSN buddies via Gizmodo’s network.

SIP phone maker Snom’s North American visibility is going up with a new distribution agreement with GenTek.

Natural disasters these days tend be followed by a flurry of Satellite IP stories, which inevitably subside shortly after like a storm surge. Asevotech of Tampa, FL is taking aim at the as-yet unproven market potential of satellite IP communications with its Disaster Lease Program (DLP) for SMBs, giving these companies the disaster protection benefit of assured satellite IPO communications backup without the upfront cost. The key, for both customers and Asevotech’s business model, is that you buy it before you need it.

Apple iChat, the “next wave of VoIP?” I’m not sold, but Network World’s Greg Royal is and explains why here.

When you needed special equipment to do it, it was called video conferencing. When you did it on a futuristic gizmo with a handset and a dialpad, it was called video phone calling. Now that IP has made this a distinction without a difference, newly-launched ooVoo is calling it video conversation. Whatever you call it, ooVoo lets you do it for at a price that’s right: free. The service also offers video messaging and a directory that lets people ooVoo you from MySpace pages, websites, and emails. Currently the downloadable beta client is only available for Windows. Release of the Mac version is expected in a few weeks.

Hope on the horizon department: In the U.S. we might see personal broadband soon. DigitalBridge Communications is launching its BridgeMaxx WiMax service, with both fixed and mobile service. The only catch right now: it’s currently available only to 7,000 addresses in Rexberg Idaho. Cudos go to a forward-looking City for promoting the first U.S. commercial WiMax Internet service.

By year end open source fans will have a unified platform for networking and VoIP thanks to a partnership between Digium and Vyatta to integrate Asterisk with Vyatta’s Open Source Router.

EQO has added long distance mobile VoIP and messaging at local rates to its mobile social networking service.

European WiFi hotspot provider Trustive reports that hotspot users are paying for way more than they get. No surprise there. Trustive also predicts that VoIP will be the killer app for hotspots.

Apple has found a way to marginalize the iPhone even before it hits the market by giving AT&T an exclusive five-year distribution deal. Leslie Cauley of USA Today sees this as an aggressive move that will put competitors on the defensive. The VoIP community might think differently. We just may be used to having it our way — not The Phone Company’s way.

Everybody knows that Verizon won its patent suit against Vonage. But how many people understand the patents that were the basis of the case? Robert Green at Briefing.com has laid it all out in a helpful chart format describing each of the patents. Plus, a discussion of the how the court ruling is highly likely to have an impact on cable companies’ VoIP offerings. Here.

By 2010 46 million of us are going to be watching some kind of video on our phone, according to Infonetics. Here.

Skype released updated Macintosh software today, debuting a new call transfer feature that’s not available on Windows yet. Here.

The Apple Rumor Mill has been operating overtime on grist that the company is planning a WiFi version of the iPod, planned just in time for Christmas 2007. The source of the rumor is Taiwan’s Digitimes, which has a notoriously poor track record predicting Apple news.