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.

Seems our Director of Engineering may have ignighted a bit of a dust-up with his VON wrap post, wherein he gave his honest opinion about the IP Communications Industry confab held in Boston from September 12 - 14.

Today, a full two weeks after the fact, I've got people in my ear and in my face pointing out how Tom Keating over at TMC and Garrett Smith at VoIPSupply picked up on Eric's post and used it to get a little conversation going about the health and direction of the IP Communications space, and about the purpose and value of trade shows in general.

I understand Jeff Pulver even had a few WTF comments for our CEO, though this whole thing makes me think just a little bit about Marcelo's very first post in this space about the very nature of the VoIP blogosphere.

So, I'll toss in my two cents and see if I can help straighten out a few things, or whether it just rattles more cages.

To begin with, this isn't the first time Mr. Keating has used his forum to divert our attention here at Voxilla from our main purposes, which are to serve our customers and to provide timely, accurate information about the people, products, and policies that drive our industry. Last year he raised a great stink claiming our reporter, Carolyn Schuk, had stolen one of his ideas for a story we ran on our front page, and basically asked the industry to question our credibility if Ms. Schuk didn't print an apology and give him credit for the story.

Turns out Carolyn had been working on the story for several weeks, long before Tom posted anything about it in his blog, and the "ideas" underlying the whole thing were matters of common knowledge and common sense, accessible to anyone who might care to think about them. After it was clearly proven that Voxilla's reporter had done none of the things of which Mr. Keating accused her, rather than offer an apology to her, he simply removed his original post from the TMC site.

With today's post, Mr. Keating comes at Voxilla in a slightly more oblique manner, but it wrankles me none-the-less. Why lead your item with reference to something two weeks old? If you want to start a conversation about whether Jeff Pulver is turning his focus from Voice to Video after 10 years at the forefront of IP Communications, why not just do that? It seems to me there are any number of good lead-ins that can accomplish the goal of getting a conversation going without using one individual's personal comments to set the stage.

In addition, it's incorrect for Mr. Keating to have said "Voxilla…was disappointed in this past VON show." Eric was personally disappointed for reasons he mentioned in his blog item, but as a company — and I gave Pulvermedia representatives positive comments to this effect at the conclusion of the show — we were actually pleased with the turnout, the vibe, and the opportunities we had to reaffirm some longstanding alliances, and to open doors to new ones.

Now, I think it's all fine and good to have a conversation about the maturation of the IP Communications industry and to speculate on whether video is poised to overwhelm voice as the driver of innovation in the technology, even to fantasize about Jeff Pulver's future focus and motivation. It's also good to question the economic health of the industry and to read in the success or failure of shows like VON and ITEXPO the future of the industry and of the economy in general.

The fact of the matter is there's an awful lot of money floating around out there chasing the Next Big Thing and it seems like a whole lot of people still believe in the money-for-nothing dreams created by the original Dot Com Boom of the Go-Go 90s.

I've been paring down my own expectations for the past several years and looking for people and things of lasting value in my life and in the investments I make of my time and my resources.

I happen to believe the innovations coming out of the globalization of the marketplace and out of the shrinking of barriers to communication being provided by the Internet lie at the heart of some very valuable processes and technologies that will define the way business is conducted and the way people will interact for many years to come. And I feel fortunate to have an opportunity to participate in the development of some of those things, perhaps even to influence them in some small way, by my work with Voxilla.

So, by all means, let's have a little more conversation, but let's keep it to the things that matter, can we?

This was my first VON show. Turnout appeared light and my peers confirmed that turnout was around 20% lower than past years. It’s been a while since I worked a trade show and maybe I’ve spent too much time in Berkeley, but it felt like we were nickel-and-dimed for every little thing at the show. It didn’t feel like the show was an effective use of resources.

I spent most of my time during the show working on our new website and forum. But I did get a chance to walk the floor and didn’t really see anything inspiring in the VoIP space. If you’ve seen one E-911 provider, you’ve seen them all.

One booth that did catch my eye was TiVi, a Latvian company with two-way cell phone video. The video quality was pretty good; the picture updated smoothly and didn’t have the typical video jerkiness. I like seeing innovative solutions from countries that aren’t traditionally known for technology.

Our industry has reached a plateau, even with VoIP usage increasing and more companies entering the market space. VoIP is at the point in the adoption lifecycle where it needs to transition from early adopters to general consumers. Manufacturers and providers need to transition their offering focus from novelty to simplicity.

The video phone has for the most part been a thing of the future and of ancient Jetson cartoons. It’s not that it hasn’t been available, it’s more that no one has come up with a good reason to use it.

But it looks that someone — specifically Packet8 — has taken steps to pitch video telephony in a way that makes it something more current, and useful. In short: Forget business, get it in the home.

Over the past couple of years, there have been a handful of video phones available using SIP that have gained very little traction. I’ve tried a couple for 5 minutes, said “Cool,” and never used them again.

For some reason, video telephony has been focused on the business sector, as though seeing the person you’re talking to on a 4-inch screen will make an important transaction go a bit more smoothly.

Wrong.

When it comes to work, I’ve got a look made for voice, not video. I won’t remember to brush my hair when the phone rings in order to appear business-like. And I won’t wear a tie to the office daily in the off-chance the CEO of AT&T calls to chat about the future of internet communications.

Here at Fall VON in Boston, Packet8 announced a new offering called the Freedom Unlimited VideoPhone Plan (Packet8 Video Phone Plans) tailor-made for the home. For $20 a month you can make unlimited video phone calls over a softphone client (made by Counterpath) on the Packet8 network.

It’s a good start.

Of course, with a small amount of tech knowledge and the right gear, any two parties can do what Packet8 offers for free. I’ve been videoing with my daughters back home in San Francisco nightly from my hotel room the past few days using the built-in cameras on the Mac I carry and the one that sits semi-permanently in our living room at home.

Using the built-in capabilities of iChat in OSX, it’s been relatively easy (save for the occasional glitch caused by the very poor broadband connection at the severely overpriced Sheraton I’m at) and free (save for the usurious $10 Mr. Sheraton is taking each day so that I can access the internet).

To connect this way, my wife and I have to arrange to be at the computer at the same time, usually by cell phone. Packet8’s offering removes this inconvenience in that I can just “call” home from my computer, and the computer in our living room will “ring.”

Ultimately though, the way video telephony will take off is to take it off both the phone and the computer. The right way is to make it part of the home entertainment system. The hardware to do that is already, for the most part, readily and cheaply available.

Imagine a typical eyeball camera attached to the top of your TV and connected directly to a home theater PC. Place a well-made microphone at your coffee table (Hello Polycom . . . you can do this . . . are you listening?).

Now, sit down with your kids on the sofa and click to call their grandma with a similar set-up. In an instant, and with a big enough TV, your mother-in-law is in your living room, sitting down in front of you. Click, and she’s gone with no need to call a cab.

We’ll see this because it makes sense and its cheap to do. But first we have to get over the idea of the video phone as a business tool (and as a way for geeks to geek).

You’ve made it part way, Packet 8. Now take the next step and make it something we can all use. Someone will soon.

If there is one thing the schlep to Boston proves, it’s the versatiltiy of IP communication technology.

Voxilla is a small company and because we recognize the value of presence at our industry’s premier confab, we’ve got every one of our key players outside the shipping and fulfillment department here, thousands of miles away from home base.

While it might be nice to spend our time here schmoozing and socializing, cementing relationships with people and companies we only ever have a chance to meet on-line or on the phone, negotiating new alliances, and even nosing around for new and interesting developments coming over the horizon — all the things an industry event like VON is designed to produce — we actually have a business to run.

So what we’ve done the past three days is move our operation across an entire continent, though you’d never know it by calling us on the phone.

The mobility afforded by IP communication technology allowed us to establish an East Coast outpost in a matter of hours, proving that IP telephony works.

Many of the exhibitors here show off the latest and greatest iterations of the technology, but the devices are “dumb.” They are here, you can see ‘em and touch ‘em and hear all about how they work in any number of deployments in the real world, but in large measure it’s theory.

Here in the Voxilla booth, the PBX solution we’re selling is the PBX we’re using. The IP phones we’re demonstrating are connected to our PBX and live to our offices in San Francisco, Montreal, and Manila. Our PhoneLabs cell phone stations are synched to my cell phone and we have two separate analog phones making and receiving wireless calls on my Cingular account.

Now, if I could just find time to do a little schmoozing.