I think the first topic to address must be VoIP, or voice-over-internet-protocol, largely because it is finally capturing a wide interest, but also because it's current success and what it holds for the future is founded upon industry protocols and open standards.
We owe much to Jeff Pulver who founded Free World Dialup or FWD, www.freeworlddialup.com and instituted the now famous VON conferences. FWD was established so early in the development of VoIP that most of the industry used (and probably still do) that platform as the compatibility reference, knowing that if they could inter-operate successfully with FWD then their systems would work with anyone else's. The tremendous development that has been accomplished by the FWD team is shown by the huge number of features that their system offers.
Another highly significant and very forward-thinking player is GIZMO, www.gizmoproject.com formerly known as SIPphone. The team here has produced one of the most versatile VoIP systems out there. It naturally uses the industry standard protocol SIP, and offers incredible flexibility in terms of interfacing with other VoIP hardware and software.
It was in fact the recent interconnection between Gizmo and Google that led me to want to help "spread the word" to more people. Google-Chat uses XMPP (another open standard protocol which also leads into a discussion on Instant Messaging which I will talk about soon) established by Jabber and plans to incorporate SIP in the near future. I have just discovered to-day that Gizmo announced a co-operative deal with Live Journal, www.livejournal.com which results in an impressive instrument that offers not only normal "blogging" but now the voice-blog...this sounds like some sort of talking diary straight out of a Harry Potter story. Now linked into the Gizmo network it takes another step in social networking with the opportunity for live chat from within a blog!
