Skype has released a new beta version of Skype for Windows that supports videoconferencing with up to 10 participants.

more info Skype extends videoconferencing to 10 users

Skype announced the official launch of Skype Connect 1.0 (formerly Skype for SIP). Previously available in beta, Skype Connect delivers a business solution that enables IP-enabled private branch exchange (PBX) or Unified Communications (UC) systems to connect to Skype.

more info Skype Connect 1.0 Officially Launched

Cisco has reportedly made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process. Skype was expecting to raise $5M, so the bid would have to be hefty. — UPDATE: This rumor appears to be false.

more info Cisco May Be Making A Run For Skype

With the acquisition of TANDBERG by Cisco, we expect to see the current niche videoconferencing market explode into a major business opportunity for all vendors.

more info As Cisco Grows the Videoconferencing Market, Polycom will Benefit

The group that licenses patents for the widely used H.264 video encoding and streaming technology has committed to charge no royalties ever for use by Web sites that use it for freely available video.

more info H.264: Free forever for free video streaming

Google reported that in the first 24 hours that it enabled Gmail with the ability to make telephone calls, more than one million phone calls were placed.

more info Google: 1 million Gmail calls during first day

Google launched the ability to make voice calls to any traditional phone number from a Gmail account.

more info Google makes it official: Phone calls now in Gmail

The number of people who subscribe to LTE next-generation wireless broadband services is expected to reach 300 million by 2015, compared with 500,000 this year.

more info LTE subscribers to hit 300 million by 2015

Mobile operators expect app downloads to become their biggest source of income in developed markets within three years and want to charge content providers for preferential access to their networks, raising further questions about net neutrality.

more info Telecoms: App sales to overtake voice sales

Nimbula, a Menlo Park "cloud computing" startup founded by two former Amazon.com executives, has won $15 million in funding in a round led by Palo Alto venture capital firm Accel Partners.

more info Nimbula: 'Cloud computing' startup wins $15M from Accel, Sequoia

University of Washington researchers are testing a tool called MobileASL that uses motion detection to identify American Sign Language and transmit images over U.S. cell networks.

more info Engineers test sign language on cell phones

Dell is set to acquire storage specialist 3Par, which offers highly virtualized storage arrays designed to help businesses treat storage as a utility, for about $1.15 billion to beef up its enterprise cloud offerings.

more info Dell to buy 3Par for $1.15 billion

Polycom continued to make strategic agreements for its videoconferencing solutions as it announced a partnership with Microsoft to supply standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions covering a wide range of customers, big and small.

more info Microsoft, Polycom Team On Unified Communications

Internet telephony giant Skype is seeking up to $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO) that, it hopes, will lead to a future laced with new features, advertising, and premium services that will stoke its growth engine.

more info Skype Dials Into a Public Future

ITU-T SG16 initiated work on the study of Telepresence systems with the creation of a new experts group (or, “Question”) focused on the topic. For more information, you might wish to subscribe to the itu-sg16 mailing list (see http://lists.packetizer.com/) and review the complete text of the new Question.

more info ITU-T Focuses Effort on H.323-based Telepresence

Android is now the leading smartphone operating system in the U.S. in market share.

more info Android hits top spot in U.S. smartphone market

Vonage announced the release of a new app for the iPhone and Android mobile operating systems. Users can now make free VoIP calls to Facebook friends who have the app and a Vonage plan.

more info Vonage App Brings Free VoIP Calls to Facebook Friends

Shipments of Android smartphones worldwide jumped 886 percent in the second quarter from a year ago, and if you've ever used one, you'd know why. They're amazing phones with the power of a computer.

more info Android smartphone shipments surge 886 percent

Google and the city of Los Angeles have hit a speed bump in the full implementation of Google Apps into the city's various departments, and the costs of a delay could top $100,000—for Google.

more info Google, LA hit speed bumps on move to cloud

The second quarter saw 60 million smartphones shipped around the world, a 43 percent jump from a year ago, with Apple gaining more market share.

more info Smartphone shipments jump 43 percent

Nokia took home a profit of 227 million euros ($291 million), down from the 380 million euros a year earlier. Sales for the quarter that ended June 30, 2010 were virtually flat, inching up 1% to 10 billion euros from 9.9 billion a year ago.

more info Nokia profit plunges 40 percent

VoIP operator Skype has shelved plans to charge users for 3G calling, claiming that operator plans to bill by the byte make such charges redundant.

more info Skype shelves call charges as operators will collect the money instead

One of the “tent-poles” of Apple’s iOS4 is multitasking, and one of the biggest features of iOS multitasking is letting VoIP applications continue to run in the background, alerting you when a call comes in, for instance. Until today, though, this has been largely moot as the big daddy of VoIP — Skype — had not been updated to use this new feature.

more info Skype for iPhone Now Runs in Background, Replaces Phone App

Mobile phone giant Nokia is looking for a new chief executive to replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

more info Nokia seeking new CEO

Rackspace and NASA have paired to deliver an open-source cloud computing platform, dubbed OpenStack, and cloud providers and partners are pumped for the possibility of more open cloud computing and possible standardization.

more info Can OpenStack Change The Cloud Computing Game?

With the eyes of the technology world squarely on Apple's iPhone 4, Google quietly announced it will stop selling the Nexus One, its first and possibly only foray into the smartphone world. — And what a shame, too, since it is a really cool phone without all the baggage carriers add to their phones.

more info Google quietly kills its once-hyped Nexus One phone

Server virtualization created cloud computing. Without the ability to run multiple logical server instances on a single physical server, the cloud computing economics we know today wouldn’t be possible. At that point, though, the value of server virtualization will go down substantially.

more info VMware Knows the Cloud Doesn’t Need Server Virtualization

VocalTec, the inventor of VoIP including the softphone, and YMAX, the creator of magicJack and other products and services, have successfully merged and will be traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol CALL.

more info VocalTec and YMAX/magicJack Announce Merger

Apple plans to give iPhone 4 users a free case in hopes of satisfying concerns about the design of its antenna and signal problems.

more info Apple announces free case for iPhone 4 users

SIP is being used more widely these days than before, but almost exclusively as a means of reducing communications costs for businesses with multiple physical locations and existing high-speed data connections between sites by removing PSTN equipment at each site and consolidating the voice infrastructure.

more info SIP trunking: A primer