My first thought when I read Palm’s press release today about its new Foleo Mobile Companion was: Damn, for less than what I’ve spent in the past year to keep my five year-old iBook running, I could have had a Foleo. My regret isn’t because the Foleo does more. On the contrary. It’s because it does less.

Like V-8, Foleo delivers your daily requirements — email, Web browsing, contacts, and document editing — on a 2.5 pound device (half the heft of the previously-noted iBook) with a full keyboard and a 10 inch screen (about the same as the iBook’s usable real estate).

Also like V-8, you get all of it in a much smaller, more palatable package. Not to mention cheaper. The Foleo’s initial price is $500, after a $100 rebate. Less than an Apple iPhone.

You could call Foleo a “subnotebook,” but Palm, wisely, isn’t doing that. (Consider what Wikipedia says about the category: “Subnotebooks are a niche IT product and rarely sell in large numbers.”) Instead, positioning Foleo as a mobile phone “companion” plants the device right dead center of the mainstream.

Today’s smartphone is the mobile computer that Palm envisioned when the company was founded 15 years ago. Right now smartphones can do everything my antique iBook can, and then some. And smartphones are way cheaper than computers, especially very lightweight computers.

“The smartphone will be the center of most people’s computing experience,” said Palm Founder Jeff Hawkins in a webcast today.

But while we want the phone to be smaller, there are some times when you need a keyboard and full-size display, as anyone who uses a phone for email can attest. Instead of replacing the phone, Foleo uses the phone as its mobile connection.

“Today there are 24 million people getting email on smartphones,” Hawkins said. “We first created the Foleo for them.”

In keeping with that mandate, Foleo does things in a simple and basic way. Basic applications are built-in. The Foleo syncs up automatically with the phone using Bluetooth. And everything works instantly, like picking up the phone. There are only two “states” — on and off.

The design is clean — no latches or lights. It’s small enough to be comfortably usable in a bus or on a plane. The top is rippled so it’s easy to grab with one hand. The keyboard is standard and the screen goes right to the edge. And Foleo has a true five-hour battery life that follows the cell phone model: charge it all night and use it all day. “When you’re in the airport you no longer have to sit on the floor,” is how Hawkins put it.

Foleo also has built-in WiFi, a USB port, video-out port, headphone jack, and slots for SD and compact flash cards for memory expansion. The device runs a Linux-based operating system, shielded from users with a GUI and the Opera Web browser, as well as a PDF viewer and editors for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Applications can be run stand-alone as well as synched with the phone.

There are no menu bars; instead Foleo has one-button access to basic applications. There’s an “apps” button for other applications, which presumably will be delivered from a menu. There’s no save, close, sleep, launch, shut down or resume modes — and no delays waiting for these operations. When you turn it off everything just stays the way it was when you left it.

When you want to read your email, you press the email button and the Foleo automatically connects to your email server via the phone. Your email appears on the screen instantly. Likewise Web browsing. Setting up the connection with your phone is a point-and-click operation.

Palm has opened up the architecture and is actively recruiting developers to build applications for the Foleo. The company expects to announce other productivity applications soon, for both stand-alone and synched modes. The device can’t handle video yet, but Palm plans to add that so we can watch those YouTube videos.

You do, of course, need a mobile phone and a data plan to use Foleo in synched mode. Initially, the device will work with Palm Treo phones running Palm OS or Windows Mobile and the company says that Foleo should work with any Windows Mobile phone with “little or no modification.” Palm plans to support RIM and Symbian devices as well as Apple iPhone, if Apple opens its device. “Our intention is to work with every smartphone,” said Hawkins.

So what’s not to like? Only one thing: Foleo won’t be available until sometime this summer. So I guess I’m going to put a few more miles on the iBook.

If you can’t wait to get a Foleo, sign up here to be notified when it hits the shelves.

Your smartphone just got smarter. Toronto-based Voice On the Go just announced its hands-free service that lets you:

• Listen to email, both a summary and details
• Compose, reply and delete emails
• Review your calendar and make appointments
• Search contacts and place calls
• Dial a phone number

Voice on the Go works with any phone or BlackBerry smartphone on any network and no download. It’s available in the US and Canada and some European cities. The company also offers an enterprise version.

And now that every mobile phone is as smart as a PDA and a whole lot cooler, it’s easy to forget PDA pioneer Palm. This week Palm founder Jeff Hawkins unveils what the company is calling a “new category of mobile device.” A webcast is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. PDT on Wednesday.

When is the Internet not democratizing communications? When it’s delivered by a big telecom company apparently. AT&T and Qwest have been accused of “cherry picking” affluent neighborhoods for IPTV offers, says PC World’s Mark Sullivan.

Nevertheless, almost 60 million people are going to be watching some kind of IPTV by 2012, says research firm Parks Associates. And if they’re in Japan, they’re going to have a lot of choices because a Japanese panel has proposed loosening copyright laws to allow anyone to post broadcast content as long as they pay a compulsory fee.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Apparently that’s what Deutche Telecom is thinking as it joins in a $20 million funding round for Web-based VoIP startup (or is it upstart?) Jajah. Intel is also in on the party.

What do Wal-mart and Bluto have in common? They’re both best noted for being, well —big.

So Skype is trying to reach the people in the marketplace bigtime. The Wal-Mart marketplace, namely, in more than 1,800 of the ubiquitous big box stores in all its forms: Wal-Mart Stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam’s Clubs.

Ten years ago VoIP was the domain of hobbyists and uber-geeks. What they were doing involved a headset and what most people — think Wal-mart shoppers here — would consider rather arcane knowledge. In fact, doing what most people including the Wal-Mart greeter would have had trouble recognizing as a phone call.

So broadband phone call companies tried to meet the people where they were, through the obvious retail distribution partners, stores where people ordinarily go to buy electronics.

But with this move, anybody can mosey over to the dedicated Skype Internet Communications boutique in Wal-mart’s electronics section and throw down $8.00 for a pre-paid calling card. For $25 they can get a webcam so they can send the home movie of the birthday party to all their relatives.

Skype brings Wal-Mart something Wal-Mart customers want. Skype started out providing computer-to-computer VoIP. One of its least elusive charms was that the software was free and so were calls among Skypers.

Now, manufacturers like Plantronics, Philips, and Logitech make Skype Certified hardware that currently lets millions of people Skype voice and video calls and send instant messages. In short, it’s a lot easier for everyone get in on Skype’s action.

And Wal-Mart’s action is, well, everyone, right? Wal-Mart brings Skype a huge market right in the demographic where Skype’s value really rules. And Wal-Mart gets to offer that market Skype certified headsets under $15, webcams under $25, and handsets under $30 from nine different manufacturers.

Customers will also be able to buy pre-paid Skype cards for $20 that let them make international calls for as little as 2.1 cents per minute, or one for $8 that gets them three months of unlimited Skype calls to any landline or cell phone in the US or Canada.

But Skype isn’t the first to try this. Last year, Vonage was already pushing its broadband telephony service through such retailers as RadioShack, Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples and Office Depot. And Packet8 has been out there too.

But they’re partnering with all the usual retail distribution chain suspects. And that’s the difference this time around. And now Skype is going there, too, with this difference: Wal-Mart is so much, well—bigger.

Reactions are mixed. Some are glum. The naysaying views point up the fact that people don’t go to Wal-Mart for Skype’s kind of product. Others cite the great Sears Roebuck curse. In other words, if someone asks you if you got your driver’s license at Sears, do you take that as reflecting favorably on your very own personal brand image? So will Wal-mart reflect well on Skype?

So the question in this story is whether Wal-Mart is going to end up like Bluto in the Popeye cartoons. Sure, Bluto’s planning to take Olive Oyl, Skype, to the dance. But Olive Oyl always ends up with Popeye, the little electronics stores, right?

But others are sunny, seeing the Wal-Martization of Skype as one giant step in the democratization of VoIP technology.

“Skype is already hugely successful. Economically, Skype is undercutting Vonage because it’s pay-as-you-go, putting Skype within anybody’s reach,” says Infonetics Research Matthias Machinowski. Skype’s boutique presentation of the products that will make Skype work at all levels of technological know-how and equipment, obviates any geek-knowledge barrier. “It’s the right form factor,” says Machinowski. “Wal-Mart is low prices and inexpensive technology. It’s perfect.”

Another way to look at this is that Olive Oyl gets to go out with Popeye AND Bluto.

Kevin Fleming, Digium Senior Software Engineer and co-maintainer of Asterisk, opened his talk at last week’s Communications Developer conference by asking how many in the audience knew what Asterisk was. About half raised their hands. Then he asked what Asterisk was. Most answered that it was a PBX.

Which was his point.

“Asterisk isn’t a PBX, it’s a platform,” he said. A PBX is only one of the things it can be used for. Fleming spent the remainder of his time sharing some of the other things that Digium has been doing to make it easier to build applications on Asterisk.

One piece of the effort is this week’s announcement of the partnership with San Mateo, CA- based Vyatta to integrate Asterisk into Vyatta’s open source router. The integrated appliance will eliminate network management issues for Asterisk developers and will automatically request the necessary resources for the traffic.

Another of those efforts is the productizing of Asterisk.

The Asterisk GUI project not only provides an easy-to-use interface for the platform, but also allows developers to easily customize the interface as well, according to Fleming.

Another new offering is the Asterisk software appliance, Asterisk Now. Developers can bundle software applications into the box and deliver the whole thing as a turnkey package. Digium also plans to offer Asterisk as an on-demand software service.

The company has also enhanced Asterisk, adding more redundancy so the system can handleSS more calls and increasing performance. “It should be practical to handle 1,000 SIP calls on a garden variety server,” Fleming said.

Digium is also exposing more complex dialing features to allow the implementation of features like find me-follow me. Call event logging will support more complex applications like call transfer and increase visibility of data like call wait times for call auditing. SS7 support allows Asterisk to be connected to SS7 networks.

Digium is also getting more formal about security advisories and coordinating with other reporting agencies. (http://www.asterisk.org/security).

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.