In the six months or so he spent building Skype video chat into Facebook, Philip Su had a particular person in mind: your mom. Well, not just her—when you’ve got a user base 750 million strong, there’s a big contingent of folks who aren’t early adopters or tech geeks. And even though video calling has been around for several years, lots of people probably haven’t used it yet.

The big hurdle? Setup and installation—for every download, new username, term of service, and on and on, you lose handfuls of mainstream users. And that puts a real crimp on those made-for-TV marketing moments where a grandparent coos over the newest member of the brood from thousands of miles away.

“Like my parents, right? I bought them a little laptop, and it has a little webcam. And I bought this two years ago. And they didn’t even know the thing had a webcam—it was just like a little black thing on the top,” Su says. “But [now] you video call them, and they’re like, ‘Oh this is magical! I can’t believe it! This is so cool!’”

Of course, there’s plenty of work behind all that magical stuff. I stopped by the Facebook offices in Seattle recently to talk with Su about the Skype project, which was announced earlier this month at a big press event down at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA.

The debut of video calling was the biggest public showcase yet for Facebook Seattle, the collection of roughly 40 engineers who represent the social networking behemoth’s only significant engineering office outside of Silicon Valley. The flat-topped Su represented the Northwesterners at the Skype project unveiling in Palo Alto, wearing the Seattle office’s distinctive Space Needle-logo T-shirt (which got some love of its own in the tech press).

Facebook-Skype video calling still isn’t live for everyone in the Facebook universe. Like most things in the social network, it’s being rolled out in stages, and Su continues to quarterback the process. He was the only full-time Facebook engineer on the project, although some others chipped in with part-time help.

As GigaOm’s Ryan Kim detailed in this piece, the big problems for Skype were paring down its service to work inside a Web browser, making sure the back-end connections with Facebook were smooth, and getting ready to handle a flood of traffic—Skype CEO Tony Bates said the Facebook deal is tied directly to Skype’s goal of getting to a billion users.

On the Facebook side, Su says, the huge user base meant working through a rat’s nest of different configuration scenarios and making sure the video calls stayed “magical,” stable, secure and easy to use.

“For instance: users running Windows XP SP3, with user access control on, that are non-admins—what happens in their case, when they install in a home where a husband and wife share a machine, but have two different logins? And both are logged in at … Next Page »

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On his way to work today, Mark Zuckerberg says he ran into a neighbor who’d heard reports that Facebook was about to unveil a new video-calling feature. Get on that, he told the youthful billionaire, so I can chat with my grandkids.

That’s now possible, with Facebook’s announcement that its 750 million users will be able to connect with friends and relatives through a quick, embedded Skype video-chat feature. The two companies had previously worked to tie their products together, but in a news conference from Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters, Zuckerberg said the Skype integration makes a bigger point about the way Facebook wants to leverage its platform in the future.

“We want to leave the individual apps, as much as possible, to individual entrepreneurs and companies that are best in class,” Zuckerberg said. “We just have this belief at Facebook … that individual entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that focus on one specific thing will always do better than a company that’s trying to do a million different things. That’s what we’re banking on.”

Zuckerberg also announced a couple of other chat-related features: Group chats and a redesigned interface that is aimed at wide screens (not mobile devices). But the Skype integration was the highlight, particularly after the debut of “hangout” group-videoconferencing feature recently unveiled as part of Google+, the search giant’s rival social networking platform.

Unlike Google+ hangouts, Skype on Facebook is right now a one-on-one feature. Without saying so directly, Zuckerberg and Skype CEO Tony Bates suggested that group video calls could be an upcoming addition, with Zuckerberg saying they would begin working on new versions almost immediately. The new Skype on Facebook also isn’t working on mobile devices yet. It’s free, with a possibility for paid features in the future.

The entire feature was developed in about six months, the two CEOs said. On Facebook’s side, the primary work was done in Seattle, where Facebook has its only standalone engineering office outside of California. Zuckerberg, in fact, hinted at today’s announcement during his visit to Seattle last week, saying the company was about to launch “something awesome” developed in the offices overlooking Pike Place Market.

Seattle engineer Philip Su, sporting the Facebook Seattle office’s Space Needle logo on his T-shirt, ran through a quick demonstration of the feature by video-calling some coworkers up north, who gathered around the camera to wave hello.

In a blog post, Su noted that he was the only full-time engineer on the project—although he had some help from other Facebookers (some Skype people were no doubt involved, too).

“As my first project at Facebook, I’m amazed that so few engineers are needed to put together such a fun and useful feature,” Su wrote. The video-calling feature isn’t embedded in Facebook home pages right now, but you can test it out here.

Su pointed out the easy interface, which doesn’t require leaving the Facebook window and only a quick download. Once it’s set up, video calls can be started with just a click or two, … Next Page »

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Microsoft’s blockbuster $8.5 billion deal to acquire Skype dominated headlines far beyond the Puget Sound region last week, raising all kinds of interesting implications for mobile computing, business communications, video games, and more. Many commenters were walloped by the sheer scope of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) products that Skype could be plugged into, but in our initial report, we called out mobile and video as the two broad areas to watch.

Xconomy writers from around the country also weighed in with follow-up reports from different angles. Xconomy Boston’s Greg Huang sat down for an exclusive interview with Microsoft’s Qi Lu, president of Microsoft’s online services division. Skype won’t report to Lu, but he praised the power of bringing a big consumer brand under Microsoft’s umbrella. Lu also pointed to “powerful scenarios” in combining Skype with Windows Phone, Xbox Kinect, and the Lync messaging service on the business side.

In San Diego, Xconomy’s Bruce Bigelow had this Q&A with Bryan Hertz of Telcentris, a small California-based startup that makes a Skype competitor. Hertz pointed out that some of the initial mixed reaction might have to do with Skype’s upstart profile, including its roots in the music-sharing service Kazaa: “People saw Kazaa and then Skype as a way of ‘beating the system.’ Microsoft IS the system, so it’s easy to assume the worst.”

Here’s the rest of the news making headlines at Xconomy from the past week on the Seattle-area tech scene:

—Speaking of Microsoft, co-founder Bill Gates was on hand for an event from environmental nonprofit Climate Solutions focusing on the future of clean energy. As Luke reported, Gates said he was bullish on the science and business opportunities—but less optimistic about leadership from the government in setting carbon limits and paying for research and development. If Gates’ talk is up your alley, you should definitely check out our next power-packed Xconomy Seattle event, Separating Hype from Reality in Alternative Fuels, this Thursday.

—Xconomy San Francisco’s Wade Roush interviewed Dan Reed of Microsoft’s Extreme Computing Group—basically, the guy who’s in charge of figuring out what the future will hold for the world’s largest software company. Reed and Roush chatted about smart radios, data center design, artificial intelligence, and more—and all this was just a preview to today’s Beyond Mobile event in San Francisco, where Reed will join Bill Mark of SRI International, Larry Smarr of Calit2 and others for an in-depth discussion on the next 10 years of computing.

—Lest Microsoft steal all the headlines, we also had a couple of interesting items from the world of gamification—the drive to apply common video game features and experiences to a broader array of consumer life, from shopping to health and beyond. First up was BigDoor Media‘s announcement that it was partnering with Major League Baseball to bring game mechanics to the league’s live game-tracker site. Following that, we got an in-depth interview with Scott Dodson of Bobber Interactive, a Seattle startup that’s bringing game features to children’s finance. Dodson, a leading thinker on gamification, is optimistic about what the future holds—but he’s also worried that too much use of shallow elements could saturate the market and bring the whole thing down.

—Finally, a pair of great guest posts from people in the Seattle-area technology community. First up was Kal Raman of GlobalScholar, who wrote about the opportunity that entrepreneurs in the region have to bring innovation and data-driven solutions to the country’s education system. We also cross-posted this piece from Eric Koester of Zaarly, who recounted his recent trip to Washington, D.C., to speak about on the importance of maintaining a strong ecosystem for startups.

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EDF Ventures and the University of Michigan Wolverine Fund could be looking at a nice pay day.

The two funds, based in Ann Arbor, MI, are both investors in IntelePeer, which recently filed for an initial public offering that could fetch up to $100 million, according to documents filed with the SEC.

IntelePeer, based in San Mateo, CA, offers on demand, cloud-based data and communications services. The company generated $111.5 million in sales last year, compared to $43.3 million in 2008, according to the SEC filing.

EDF Ventures is one of IntelePeer’s largest investors, owning 4.4 million shares, or 8.2 percent of the company. EDF founder and managing director Mary Campbell formerly sat on IntelePeer’s board of directors.

The student-run Wolverine Fund, which Campbell advises, did not disclose its investment.

Tech IPOs are starting to show signs of life. Last year, 44 tech companies went public, compared to 163 in 2000. Investors expect around 60 IPOs this year, including the much anticipated LinkedIn offering. The professional networking site expects to raise as much as $274.4 million, according to a recent SEC document.

Investors are carefully watching LinkedIn’s IPO because it could indicate how Wall Street will receive other tech IPOs coming out of Silicon Valley, Jay Hoag, founding general partner of Technology Crossover Ventures in Pala Alto, CA, told a luncheon crowd at the annual Michigan Growth Capital Symposium.

“LinkedIn could be a bellweather, [an IPO] that could really reignite people’s enthusiasm,” says Hoag, a U-M business alumnus whose venture firm has backed Netflix, eHarmony, and RealNetworks.

Of course, that enthusiasm could lead to another bubble, Hoag says, earning laughs from the crowd.

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C2Call, a Dortmund, Germany-based Internet telephony company whose CEO, Martin Feuerhahn, operates from the startup’s Mountain View, CA, office, said today that it has raised $2 million in Series A venture funding. Taking part in the round were Draper Investment Company, High-Tech Gründerfonds, and angel investor Klaus Wecken. Using C2Call’s software, Internet users can embed click-to-call links in websites, e-mails, instant messages, blog posts, Tweets, or Facebook status updates. The links open voice connections over C2Call’s FriendCaller network; Internet calls are free and land-line and mobile calls cost 2 cents per minute. The company said it will use the funds to expand into international markets.

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Today San Diego-based TelCentris is announcing at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it has incorporated a new free offering—a “universal translator”—as part of VoxOx, its free, cloud-based, unified communications service.

Some online services, such as Babelfish.com, currently enable users to copy and paste in foreign language text to get a translation. But TelCentris says its VoxOx Universal Translator is the first translation service built into messaging and VoIP messaging software—making VoxOx the first to provide an instantaneous foreign language service that automatically translates e-mail, text messaging, Internet chat, and certain social networking messages.

VoxOx client

It’s a cool feature, kind of Star Trek-y, and the announcement is tailor-made for the wireless industry’s biggest international conference, which just happens to be held this week in a big international city. TelCentris spokesman Erik Bratt tells me the VoxOx Universal Translator is an ideal application for companies that do a lot of international business. The company’s cloud-based translation software currently supports 50 languages for instant messaging, e-mail, and social media; it also supports 37 of those languages for text messaging.

In a statement issued by the company, TelCentris president Michael Faught says … Next Page »

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Vivox, the Natick, MA, startup best known for voice software that allows inhabitants of virtual worlds such as Second Life, EVE Online, and EverQuest to talk with each other over the Internet, has completed a third round of venture funding totaling $6.8 million. New investor IDG Ventures SF of San Francisco led the round, with existing investors Benchmark Capital, Canaan Partners, and GrandBanks Capital pitching in.

The 35-employee startup, founded in 2005, has now raised roughly $21 million in its effort to adapt Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to virtual environments and social networks. Co-founder and CEO Rob Seaver says the company has “seen fantastic growth and acceleration” since the last time Xconomy featured the company (in a September 2009 profile). Command and Conquer 4, an Electronic Arts title heavily anticipated by gamers, went into open beta testing this month with voice services from Vivox, and Global Agenda, a voice-enabled combat game for PCs from Alpharetta, GA-based Hi-Rez Studios, went live just yesterday.

Altogether, the gaming and social networking communities using Vivox’s voice services have 20 million members, up from 11 million in September. And their users spend about 3 billion minutes chatting per month—a figure that has increased by 50 percent just in the last 45 days, according to Seaver.

“The financing round came together because we’ve seen this explosive growth and we’re getting great traction, but we are barely scratching the surface,” Seaver says. “We estimate that there are 2.5 billion active accounts in online games and social networks globally. People are spending more and more time engaged with other real people in social experiences, and as humans the way we want to socialize is by talking to each other. So we raised the capital in order to capitalize on that opportunity.”

The bulk of the new money will go toward business development efforts to “broaden the reach” of the Vivox platform, Seaver says. “The platform is scalable and efficient, so the investments needed to support growth there are not major. The big thing is to get our service into more online games, and then use that as a stepping stone to other shared activities.”

Those activities could eventually include mobile games such as iPhone or iPad games or shared media environments where remote users could communicate by voice while watching a movie or TV show together, according to Monty Sharma, Vivox’s co-founder and vice president of product management and marketing.

IDG Ventures SF was an ideal choice to lead the new funding round, Seaver says, because of its focus on social media ventures. “The IDG group overall has its finger on the pulse of technology and social media globally, and between their consulting business at IDC, their various publishing businesses, and all their touch points with online games and the gaming industry, they make a fantastic partner for us.”

Phil Sanderson, managing director of IDG Ventures San Francisco, returned the compliment. “Voice is the key ingredient missing from a huge range of online experiences, and Vivox has proven itself able to provide mission-critical voice and exceptional service to leading companies around the world,” said Sanderson, who has joined Vivox’s board, in a statement. “I look forward to working closely with the team at Vivox to seize this tremendous opportunity.”

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Just a few weeks ago, Michael Robertson sold his Web-based phone service venture, Gizmo5, to Google for a reported $30 million. So he was in a good mood when we sat down yesterday to talk about what might be next for San Diego’s patriarch of Internet startups.

“One of my goals for the year was to sell my company so I could work less,” he says. He remains involved with a couple of local startups (more on that below), but also talks about easing off “working six and seven days a week and for big hours.”

At the outset, however, Robertson says he’s constrained by multiple confidentiality agreements with Google, so he’s prohibited from saying much about the Gizmo5 deal or about Google’s plans to integrate Gizmo5′s VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology with its emerging Google Voice phone service.

Robertson says in many ways he’s more proud of Gizmo5 for what they managed to accomplish than of MP3.com, which became an icon of the dot-com revolution and was one of San Diego’s biggest IPOs at the time it went public in July 1999. Two years later, Robertson still owned roughly 27 percent of MP3.com when the French media conglomerate Vivendi paid $372 million to acquire the company.

“If you’re one of the big guys like eBay, Facebook, or MP3.com, you get that network effect going,” Robertson explains. “Business is very easy. But if you’re an also-ran, you have to be more strategic. If you’re not that leader, it’s a totally different business dynamic. You have to source the business opportunities, chase the partners, and work for every deal.”

Gizmo5 had only about 6 million subscribers at the time of Google’s acquisition. That contrasts dramatically with Skype, which has more than 405 million registered users and currently ranks as the largest VoIP provider. That seems likely to change, however, once Google absorbs Gizmo5—which will enable Google to provide phone service directly to Internet users without going through a telephone service provider like AT&T or Verizon. When combined with the sheer scale of Google’s operations and with Google Voice, the application that allows users to have a single phone number that connects to a variety of features, including conference calls, phone call recording, and text messaging, the implications could be ominous for both Skype and the telecoms that provide phone service.

As Robertson told me last year, “The public switched telephone networks are crashing into PC-Internet technology, and the Internet is going to win because it’s better, cheaper, faster and easier.”

It is a little-known fact that Robertson had been working for years as a help desk technician at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (and writing a local advice column about Apple computers) when he founded MP3.com with Greg Flores in 1997. Even when he was answering … Next Page »

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Derry, NH-based Cedar Point Communications has raised $2 million out of a planned $3.4 million round of debt, the company revealed in regulatory documents filed November 24. The company, which makes voice-over-Internet-Protocol switching hardware used by cable and telephone operators, has raised $70 million in venture funding to date from Ascent Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Comcast Interactive Capital, Focus Ventures, JP Morgan Chase, Star Ventures, and Motorola, according to its website.

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San Diego’s Gizmo5, which was rumored to be a Skype acquisition target for $50 million about three weeks ago, is now reported to have been sold—except the buyer is identified as Google, and the price is put at $30 million.

Both the Skype and Google reports were exclusives from TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, who initially explained that Skype’s acquisition of Gizmo5 was the perfect backup plan in case Skype lost control of certain patents to its core technology that were the subject of lawsuits filed by Skype’s prospective buyers. Now Skype doesn’t really need Gizmo5, since eBay reached a comprehensive settlement with Skype’s founders last week. TechCrunch now says, citing “multiple sources with knowledge of the deal,” that Google has therefore stepped in to acquire Gizmo5.

Gizmo5, which was founded by Michael Robertson of MP3.com fame, provides free VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software and related technology for making Internet-based phone calls. After seeing the TechCrunch account earlier today, I sent an e-mail to Robertson asking, “Can you confirm? Can you discuss?”

He replied by e-mail, saying, “No and no. Can’t comment on any rumors. Sorry.”

The deal could make sense. While Google Talk is among Google’s many free offerings, the on-line chatting service is not set up to call specific phone numbers, and both parties in a call must have the Google Talk client running for it to work. TechCrunch says, anyway, that the Gizmo5 acquisition would enable Google to combine Google Talk with Google Voice, the application it has been testing that allows users to have a single phone number that connects to a variety of features, including conference calls, phone call recording, and text messaging.

While Google was mum on the Gizmo5 report at the time of this writing, it did confirm one acquisition today, saying that it has agreed to pay $750 million to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider based in San Mateo, CA. Wade offers his perspective and some reaction among Boston’s mobile ad startups to the deal here.

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When I wrote about MP3.com founder Michael Robertson in December, the San Diego serial entrepreneur had just launched Gizmo5, an updated version of his free VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software and peer-to-peer network for making Internet-based phone calls. In my headline, I asked, “Michael Robertson is Calling, But Will Anybody Answer?”

Ten months later, it looks like Skype might just pick up. Citing “multiple sources,” TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington reports that Skype is in negotiations to buy Robertson’s Gizmo5, with the price tag “in the $50 million range.” I queried Robertson about the report last night, and he responded, “I can’t comment on the skype acquisition rumors.”

EBay, which paid $2.6 billion to acquire Skype four years ago, is now trying to sell the company to an investor group. But as TechCrunch notes, Skype doesn’t have all the corners of its core technology tacked down. That technology is now the subject of separate patent lawsuits filed against Skype and prospective buyers Mike Volpi and Index Ventures. As Arrington points out, the IP suits put Skype’s core technology at risk, which puts its service at risk, which is why acquiring Gizmo5 and its competing peer-to-peer technology makes sense.

Aside from any funding that Robertson has personally sunk into Gizmo5, the startup got $6 million in venture capital about three years ago in a round led by New York’s Dawntreader Ventures. Robertson also tells me that Gizmo5 currently has about 6 million subscribers. Skype has more than 405 million registered users.

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For a long time, Second Life was stuck in the cyber equivalent of the silent-movie era: people communicated by typing, and their words showed up in little thought bubbles above their avatars’ heads. All of that changed drastically around 2007, when Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, hired an obscure outfit called Vivox to equip its 3-D virtual world with a voice communication system. Now any Second Life citizen who has a headset connected to their computer can simply speak, and everyone whose avatar is standing nearby will hear them in living stereo.

For the Gloria Swansons of Second Life, like myself, the changeover from typing to talking was a bit traumatic—and indeed, 20 percent of Second Life citizens still abstain from voice communication. But the other 80 percent gab for a billion minutes every month, which is a rather convincing demonstration that most people inside 3-D computer environments prefer talking to texting.

And now Vivox, a four-year-old startup based in Natick, MA, is about to introduce its technology to three new communities that could vastly increase its user base. The company announced this morning that it has formed a partnership with Redwood City, CA-based Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS), the world’s largest entertainment software company, to add its voice services to several online EA games. First up is Command & Conquer 4, a continuation of EA’s hugely popular real-time strategy game that’s expected to launch early next year.

At the same time, Vivox is announcing the launch of Vivox Labs, an incubator-within-a-startup where the company is trying out different ways of delivering its voice services over the Web. And the first two Vivox Labs experiments are aimed at big targets: Facebook, where the lab’s “Vivox Web Voice for Facebook” application will allow members to invite their friends to instant Web voice conferences; and World of Warcraft subscribers, who will be able to use a new Vivox-powered website called Puggable to assemble teams of players for in-world campaigns. Both the Facebook and Puggable applications are in private beta testing and are expected to go public by January.

“We started the company about four years ago with the goal of making voice a seamless, natural part of every online experience,” Vivox co-founder and CEO Rob Seaver told me when I visited the company last week. “Our view at the time was that more and more human interaction would take place online, and the richest form of communication we have is talking to each other. So we thought there would be an opportunity to turn the Web from this silent, barren place into one filled with the warm sounds of human voices.”

That’s exactly what could happen if even more gaming, virtual-world, and social networking communities turn to Vivox’s services. Not bad for a company that started out as a wacky idea from Jeff Pulver, the founder of the company that became Internet phone service provider Vonage.

You’ve probably heard of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP; it’s the technology behind Vonage and Skype, and the one that has turned the telecom industry upside down by transforming phone calls into digital data packets and routing them over the open Internet. Vivox’s system works on similar principles, except that … Next Page »

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You’re an unfunded early-stage startup and your sole venture backer sends you a check for millions of dollars. Unfortunately, it’s made out to the wrong company name, so you can’t deposit it. What do you do? You change your name, of course.

That’s how Primary Networks became Acme Packet. The Burlington, MA, maker of Internet switching equipment and software was founded in 2000 and went public in 2006—today you’ll find it on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol APKT. But when it got its first capital infusion from Menlo Ventures in Menlo Park, CA, says co-founder and CEO Andy Ory, it was still so new that it hadn’t even printed business cards.

“We’d been using the name Acme Packet in all our presentations, because we thought it was funny, but [Menlo] actually took the name seriously,” says Ory. “They sent us a $12 million check made out to Acme Packet. We changed our name that day.”

In a way, the company’s whole history is about adapting to change. The Acme part of the name may or may not refer to the fictional company that supplied Wile E. Coyote with the rockets, anvils, and other gear he used to pursue the Road Runner. (Ory won’t say, perhaps out of concern for treading on Warner Bros. trademarks.) But the “packet” part definitely refers to the packets into which all data is divided before it can cross the Internet—and Ory and his co-founder Patrick MeLampy saw early on that if the Internet were ever to become a medium for real-time communications such as voice calls and video conferencing, the way these packets travel would have to be rethought. Their big idea: If Acme could come up with faster, more reliable way to shepherd high-priority packets through the existing Internet, telecom providers would beat a path to their door.

[Editor's Note: Every startup has a "big idea" that it thinks will catapult it to success. With this story, we continue an occasional column highlighting the big ideas---and the resulting challenges---at companies in Xconomy's home cities.]

Traditionally, Ory explains, the thousands of Internet Protocol (IP) packets that may comprise a file such as an e-mail message, a photo, or a spreadsheet are dispersed and sent across the net along unpredictable paths before being reassembled at the destination address. Packets often get lost along the way, meaning replacements have to be sent. Engineers call this approach “best-effort” networking.

Meeting with me at the company’s headquarters last week, Ory held up a piece of paper. “If I dip this document in liquid nitrogen and break it into 10,000 packets and put them into the network like little pachinko balls, it doesn’t matter what order they arrive in—eventually the sequence gets completed, and you’ve got your e-mail. That’s great, and it usually takes less than 500 milliseconds. But now imagine you and I are doing a voice-and-video-over-IP call, and 24 times every second, a visual of me is being dipped in liquid nitrogen and shipped as packets. They can’t arrive out of order, or with more than 200 milliseconds of delay.”

Best-effort networking just isn’t good enough to handle unidirectional communication with that kind of alacrity, let alone bidirectional communications, Ory explains. So if Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony were every to be a reality—and back in 2000, that was still an open question—something new would be needed.

Ory and MeLampy came up with the idea of installing special boxes at the boundaries between the hundreds of privately owned networks that together make up the Internet. These boxes would act as way stations. The packets in a voice or video stream—what Ory calls “signaled media”—could still travel dispersed paths through the cores of the local networks. But at the edges, the way stations would reconstitute them, like regiments of infantry forming up for battle, before handing them off to the next network.

“What emerged was an infrastructure where … Next Page »

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Marlborough, MA-based ThinkEngine Networks, a telecommunications company whose media servers unify traditional circuit-switched and Internet-based voice signals, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in U.S. bankruptcy court in Worcester, MA, according to reports today in the Boston Business Journal and the Boston Herald. The American Stock Exchange delisted the company last March due to underperformance.

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If nothing else, Michael Robertson gets credit for stickin’ it to the establishment. Maybe it’s because he was born in 1967, amid America’s flaring protests. Maybe it’s just a result of his penchant for libertarian views.

When I saw an announcement earlier this week from Robertson about GizmoCall, his new browser-based calling service, my first thought was, “This looks like another one of Michael Robertson’s guerilla campaigns.”

When I bounced that off Robertson in a call Wednesday while he was finishing lunch, he replied, “Right. That’s where the money is. Whether it’s telephone companies, or music companies, [or Microsoft---let's not forget Microsoft], it’s where disruptive technologies can add value.”

That’s the way many entrepreneurs think. But where other entrepreneurs approach technology disruption as a delicate matter, akin to tickling a dragon’s tail, Robertson seems to relish a more direct provocation.

As the founder of MP3.com, Robertson was at the center of a legal firestorm that pitted his dot-com startup against major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America. Of course, he had become an overnight sensation as San Diego’s most-prominent dot-com millionaire in 1999, when MP3.com raised more than $370 million in its IPO.

As MP3.com’s largest shareholder, Robertson pocketed an estimated $103 million when he sold his company to French media conglomerate Vivendi in 2001 for $372 million. Since then, he has self-funded most of his new ventures.

Later in 2001, Robertson started a new business around technology for a Linux-based operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows. He provocatively called his startup Lindows, unleashing a predictable flurry of trademark lawsuits from Microsoft. The software giant, which apparently feared losing its Windows trademark, later paid $20 million … Next Page »

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Westford, MA-based Sonus Networks (NASDAQ: SONS), which makes servers, switches, and software for Internet-based residential and business telephony, said yesterday that it will lay off 50 employees, or roughly 5 percent of its global workforce, as part of a cost-management plan. The company did not say how many of the affected employees worked from the Westford headquarters. We’ve updated our Boston Tech Layoff Tracker accordingly.

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Back in 2006, Cambridge, MA-based Art Technology Group (NASDAQ: ARTG) spent north of $48 million in cash and stock to acquire eStara, a maker of software that allows Web surfers to open voice-over-Internet connections with sales agents by clicking on Internet ads. Yesterday the company announced that it’s extending eStara’s capabilities to Flash-based video ads. “While consumers are more comfortable watching video clips online now than ever before, direct-response advertisers—many of whom are small, local businesses—have struggled to find a video advertising model that is cost-effective and measurable,” said Ruth Habbe, vice president of ATG’s eStara Business Group, said in a statement. “eStara Video Connect solves this problem by making video ads actionable, and by giving media companies a rich tool for tracking consumer actions and leads generated from each and every video ad.”

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Billerica, MA-based NextPoint Networks, the telecommunications equipment maker just formed last December from the merger of Billerica’s Reef Point Systems and Gaithersburg, MD-based NexTone Communications, has been acquired by Plano, TX-based GenBand, the company announced yesterday. GenBand, which is paying an undisclosed sum for NextPoint, makes devices called session border controllers (SBCs) that are used to set up calls in voice-over-Internet networks; as an article in Mass High Tech explains, the acquisition puts GenBand into more direct competition with other Boston-area SBC makers such as Acme Packet and Starent Networks.

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Chelmsford, MA-based Aspect Software, which makes call center equipment and software, said yesterday that it has bought most of the assets of BlueNote Networks, a Tewksbury, MA, company with technology that helps companies integrate Internet-based communications into their existing business software. Aspect CEO Jim Foy said the acquisition would help Aspect’s customers treat their call centers as part of an overall “unified communications” strategy—industry slang for the new generation of Internet-based communications techniques such as Voice over IP and instant messaging. Aspect didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

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Everyone Needs a Gigabit by 2015

The government must take steps to push the availability of broadband Internet access if the U.S. is to remain competitive, a telecom law firm is recommending. The Baller Herbst Law Group, in a report to a North Carolina agency, calls for 100 megabits per second of affordable access for all Americans by 2012, with 1 gigabit per second service three years later, Ars Technica reports. Like electrification, it will require government action to ensure poorer and more rural areas get service, the report says.

Will VoIP Kill the Telephone?

The companies that offer phones calls using Voice-over-Internet Protocol, such as Skype and Vonage, currently piggyback on telephone networks when one of the parties to a call doesn’t have a VoIP device, a strategy that brings the VoIP companies revenue. But an essay at GigaOm argues that this model won’t last forever, as VoIP achieves greater penetration. In the long run, the writer argues, the telephone companies may go the way of the Dodo.

Safety Standards Developed for Online Health Records

There’s been a lot of talk lately of the advantages to patients of making their medical data available digitally, but one big concern has been keeping the records private. Now, Bloomberg reports, Microsoft, Google, and dozens of consumer groups have come up with a set of standards to safeguard e-records. Among the proposals is giving patients the ability to see just who is looking at their records.

McCain’s Battery Prize Gets Mixed Reception

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain this week suggested offering $300 million to the person who can build the next generation of battery for plug-in hybrid automobiles. Technology Review asks a pair of MIT battery experts what they think of the idea. While one says the prize will focus attention on a key problem, the other feels that, without benchmarks, the idea is mainly a political stunt.

Toyota Plans Plug-in Hybrid in Two Years

And speaking of batteries, Toyota will offer two new hybrid models in 2010, including a new plug-in hybrid, AutoWeek reports. To that end, the company is ramping up production of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for the cars. It’s also investing in new battery technology, considering possible chemistries that include a metal-air battery.

Much Work Needed to Make Renewables Affordable

It’s going to take a major effort for the United States to use renewable sources for a quarter of its energy needs by 2025, a new report says. The study, from the RAND Corporation, was commissioned by the non-profit Energy Future Coalition, which has set a “25 by ’25″ goal for renewables, according to Science Daily. The study warns that, if done wrong, a conversion to that much renewable energy could be expensive and have a negative impact on land use.

‘Digital Manners’ Face Threat of Abuse

With police installing remotely operated kill switches on buses, and the Pentagon seeking to do the same on airplanes to prevent the vehicles being used as terrorist weapons, Microsoft is looking to expand the concept with a technology called “Digital Manners Policies.” Theaters might use the technology to switch off DMP-equipped cell phones, while museums could shut down cameras. An essay in Wired wonders how to prevent such capabilities from being abused, by a burglar shutting down security cameras, say, or a terrorist turning off the wrong airplane engine.

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