I repeat, everyone who is interested in VoIP and telephony should have
some experience with the iPhone (or at least iPod Touch) because it's
not only the future (and largely the present) of phones but it is
destined to become the standard to which everything is is held up to.
That doesn't mean that Android or something else not yet invented
won't come up and kill Apple's effort. What it means is that you
should be looking at how this stuff works and why most phone
interfaces AND web interfaces in VoIP seriously suck. Very few people
will want the old-style stuff in a short time.

So far, I bought a $7 SIP app (called iSip of course) and it looks
like it works pretty well. I say looks because I have no mic and there
isn't one built in to the Touch. However, I configured the app to work
with OnSIP and Sipgate and lo and behold I can call between my phones
now on either. Very handy for this vacation thing, being on the
terrace and messing with it, listening to Talkshoe or indeed calling
in to ZipDX (next experiment).

I've also added Fring and have messed with rf.com and of course have
the Skype app which is handy. All of this is most interesting to me
since I do not have a US phone with a dataplan or wifi. The 8g Touch I
bought was around $220 or so. Another fun toy.

So we'll be hearing more about this from Ruben Olsen tomorrow, and I'm
looking forward to learning more.

/r