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An IP-based videophone service called GlobalLinx will launch in the US in the second quarter, offering a US$200 videophone and $30 monthly service for consumers and businesses.

Imagine an IP voice and unified communications system that can be integrated into any application and customised to meet business needs. Sounds great, right? Well that project is the Asterisk IP-PBX and it's free to use and you get the source code. A far cry from proprietary PBX systems perhaps, but Asterisk has a vibrant ecosystem and is replacing systems from more established telephony vendors. Following interviews with the leaders of the Horde and Free Telephony projects, the Open Source Identity series talked to Asterisk founder and Digium CEO Mark Spencer about how one application can have such a profound effect on businesses and how open source can be a tough competitive landscape.

Using teleconferencing technology has lately become an obvious and financially practical choice to offset rising business travel expenses. Yet sometimes simple chatting doesn't cut it. There has been growing interest in the notion of online conferencing with a "virtual presence" emphasis, which enables people to share information and their very selves with one another with a stronger sense of near-tangible "face time."

Citrix has bought Vapps, a provider of high-definition voice conferencing services geared for businesses and service providers.

Adobe Systems has released a public beta of CoCoMo, a hosted service that developers can use to add video conferencing, voice-over-IP and other collaboration features to applications built with its Flex developer tools.

Ribbit Monday released for general availability its Web telephony platform, designed to extend telephony development to the world's Web developers through the use of its APIs (application programming interfaces).

Former pro basketball superstar Earvin "Magic" Johnson recently gave a ringing testimonial on the value of high-definition videoconferencing technology to his business and charitable work.

The Royal District Nursing Service (RDNS) has connected its 1200 mobile staff on Telstra's Next G mobile network.

Charles Giancarlo spent more than a decade at Cisco Systems and was widely considered a likely heir to Chairman and CEO John Chambers before he left last year for investment company Silver Lake Partners. Then Silver Lake orchestrated a private-equity buyout of Cisco rival Avaya, and Giancarlo stepped in as interim president and CEO. In January, former JDS Uniphase chief Kevin Kennedy will take over day-to-day operations as president and CEO, and Giancarlo will become chairman. Stephen Lawson of the IDG News Service spoke with Giancarlo on Tuesday after he delivered the opening keynote at VoiceCon in San Francisco.

Vendors at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 pushed a message that unified communications can cut operational costs and help businesses get more out of the people they have.

Just because you don't have a large enterprise doesn't mean you can't run your IT operation like the big guys. Here are seven ways to help your SMB--a small or medium-size business--implement some of the lessons big IT operations have learned over the years. Using these tips, you should be able to improve productivity, cut costs, and keep your business running smoothly.