DigitalFX announces that it has made a $700,000 investment in Fusion Telecommunications that is furthering DigitalFX's global expansion efforts and creating the first of many synergistic relationships that, among other benefits, combine Fusion's superior VoIP with DigitalFX's superior streaming video and online digital communication capabilities.

DigitalFX offers its flagship product called "The Studio" to individuals, enterprises, and social networks giving them the ability to easily create, upload and manage all their digital assets online, including live web casts, streaming videos, email correspondence, including video email, pod casts, music, pictures, and more.

Is the end in sight for mobile phone networks vying to get the edge over competitors with that extra few free minutes or handful of texts? If mobilephonesontheweb.com have anything to do with it, it soon could be.

This month Orange released their Unlimited tariffs for sale through independent retailers such as mobilephonesontheweb.com. Previously only available in Orange stores, and without the additional benefits of purchasing from an independent web retailer, the Unlimited tariffs look set to offer a market-beating proposition to customers who want to use their phone as much as they like and know exactly what the bill will be at the end of each month.

JAJAH has received funding from Intel Capital. Intel Capital has invested an undisclosed amount as the lead investor in JAJAH's Series C round. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of next generation communication solutions on a global scale.

Additionally, a business agreement was made with Intel Corporation that includes business and marketing components. Intel will provide JAJAH access to their extensive community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, to further their reach into global development communities. As an Intel Capital portfolio company, Jajah will also be able to participate in Intel Capital's IP Access Program, which will give Jajah access to Intel's extensive VoIP patent portfolio.

Network-1 announces it had agreed to a settlement of its patent infringement litigation against D-Link Corporation and D-Link Systems in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division for infringement of the Network-1's Remote Power Patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,218,930).

Under the terms of the settlement, D-Link has agreed to enter into a license agreement for the Remote Power Patent the terms of which include monthly royalty payments of 3.25% of the net sales of D-Link branded Power over Ethernet products, including those products which comply with the IEEE 802.3af and 802.3at Standards, for the full term of the Remote Power Patent, which expires in March 2020. The royalty rate is subject to adjustment beginning after the first quarter of 2008 to a rate consistent with other similarly situated licensees of the Remote Power Patent based on units of shipments of licensed products. In addition, D-Link has agreed to pay Network-1 $100,000.

The products covered by the settlement include Power over Ethernet enabled switches, wireless access points, network security cameras and VoIP telephones, among others. The terms of the License Agreement are subject to a definitive agreement between the parties, which will be accompanied by a dismissal with prejudice of all claims and counterclaims in the litigation currently pending in the Eastern District of Texas.

A quick follow up to my post on, "VoIP Action Hits the Auction Block". After curiosity got the best of me I decided to email VoIPAction.com founder Chris Lewis to have some questions answered.

My first question was "What's your reason for selling VoIPAction.com?"

Chris replied, "Our reason for selling is that our core business is a news technology platform (in fact it powers the www.voipaction.com news channels)."

"We've been using www.voipaction.com to test delivery of that service over the past 12 months, and to test various approaches including how to drive free organic search engine traffic through automated news. That testing phase is now complete and we are moving forward to commercialize that business. VoIPAction just has much greater value to a VoIP industry business than it does to us now. The real value of the site is its' highly targeted traffic, 75% of which is brand new people every month."

He then provided some respectable monthly and annual search and visitor stats the site has driven through Google.

My second question was in regards to what an established VoIP portal website goes for these days?

I won't disclose the asking price, but Chris wasn't shy about it.

Chris added, "The site is completely automated and has zero monthly maintenance costs other than hosting. Price includes a perpetual (free) license for our news platform which updates www.voipaction.com continuously, 24/7, with the latest VoIP news."

It should be noted VoIPAction has a Google page rank of 6/10, Alexa rank 639,275 and a Technorati rank of 208,948. So if you are a serious buyer interested in the purchase of www.voipaction.com you can contact them via feedback@voipaction.com.

I also want to say thanks to Chris for answering my questions in a timely manor and the kind words he had about VoIP Monitor. We wish you the best of luck in the future.

SIPphone launched its web-based SMS service Gizmo SMS, located at gizmosms.com. Gizmo SMS lets people easily send SMS text messages to mobile phones around the world, from any web browser, for free. No registration or account setup required.

Gizmo SMS now allows users to send SMS messages from any web browser, for free. At gizmosms.com, users enter a mobile number, select the country of the number, type a message, and click send. Gizmo SMS allows users to compose messages using a full size keyboard, instead of a mobile device, making it easier to type long messages. Gizmo SMS now provides one of the easiest and fastest ways to send text messages.

It seems as of today VoIPAction.com is up for sale, which isn't a big surprise with all the new VoIP websites popping up. We're not interested in the domain, but I couldn't help wondering what the asking price is and the reasoning for wanting to sell? If anyone knows or has heard anything about what an established VoIP portal website goes for these days I'd be interested in hearing.

Recently we've been working hard to provide users with expanded VoIP content here at VoIP Monitor. You may or may not have noticed some of the changes. Having just received 8 inches of snow with 40 mph winds outside (what some like to call a blizzard); I figured why not stay warm by the fire and shed some light on changes made over the past few months.

• New logo - Introduced in Feburary 2007, since we felt our old logo had out lived its life and this one was more suited for the site.
• Search button moved - We moved the search button to the top right of the page (above sponsored events) to help free up some space on the right side.
• Recent comments - Added last month and I wish more people commented on articles here. This allows you to track the last comment quickly and easily.
• VoIP jobs - Looking for a job dealing with VoIP? We've got the solution to that. Jump over to our VoIP Job listings powered by careerbuilder.com. This makes it simple for you to search eight VoIP job categories we've filtered for you. So post your resume today!
• VoIP Providers page - Has a new look and feel to it. It's currently a work in progress and we plan on making it easier for you to pick which VoIP Provider works best for you. Currently you can view voip providers by country and see their price for unlimited residential calling plans. We also provide you with their ranking 1-5 stars and whether or not they have an activation/cancellation (hidden fees) attached to their contracts. Special deals or promotions offered by the company are also highlighted so you can decide how it might impact your decision.
• VoIP Monitor RSS Feed - Got and RSS feed reader? Get VoIP Monitor's RSS feed with the click of a button.
• VoIP Monitor newsletter - We offer a daily newsletter via feedblitz. So subscribe today and receive the latest VoIP news to your email of choice. Just enter your email and hit subscribe on the right-hand side.

Coming soon!

• VoIP Products - It's currently in the works and look forward to bringing you sometime early this month.

Last Thursday I was one of the lucky few to attend the first meeting of Nebraska People Making Money Online (NPMMO) in Omaha, NE. The event was put on by Jeremy Schoemaker aka (ShoeMoney) and we had guest speakers from Proxibid. Now if you haven't heard of Proxibid don't worry. They asked that during the meeting and I didn't see one hand go up and they're a company located here in Nebraska. I guess the ShoeMoney crew was out in full force for this first event and really wanted to meet him.

Overall it was an informative event in learning about Proxibid and what they do and how they do it. If you wish to find out more about Proxibid you can visit their website Proxibid.com. But basically they allow "auction companies the ability to broadcast their sales over the Internet in real-time to their customers who cannot attend the auction, and to reach new customers worldwide. This web-based application allows bidders to participate as if they were attending the auction in person."

Their most memorable auction sale dealt with two frozen mount lion or cougar cubs (sorry I can't remember). Which had been abandoned and died after their mother was killed so the Games and Parks office offered to sell them for science purposes. I guess it is true you can purchase just about anything on the internet these days.

The meeting was my first to such events. I had a great time talking with people and getting to know more about what other Nebraska's are doing online to make money. I look forward to attending more of these events and getting a chance to hear Jeremy's ideas on SEO/SEM/PPC/Arbitrage and other guest presentations.

You can read comments and more on ShoeMoney's post 'Proxybid Last Nights Guest Speaker At NPMMO'.

Buzz Technologies announces that its search engine at www.12buzz.com will now be operated by Google.

Google will supply search engine advertising sales electronic management of revenues and some hosting services. Buzz Technologies Inc. will be promoting Google Advertising products and promoting AdWords and AdSense to Buzz Customers.

A co-branded Buzz/Google AdWords Website has been established. Users may visit the co-branded site by going to www.12buzz.com and clicking “Advertise on this Site.”

Sutida Suwunnavid, Chairwoman of Buzz Technologies Inc., said, “We are very pleased to be working with Google. We will be promoting the site usage by offering free VoIP and SMS. This will drive our subscriber base at a faster rate than ever before. We will make this available to any site using Buzz Search.”

It seems everyone is talking about the Apple iPhone these days. Conan O'Brian even did a spoof of the iPhone with his iPhone commercial. He goes on to show us the many uses of the iPhone including a camera, movie player, tv remote, to a bottle opener proving the iPhones got it all! "The iPhone, it's everything!" Including a hard to use cell phone.

So sit back and enjoy the clip.

Every now and then I like to take a little break from the daily VoIP news and just write about whatever's currently on my mind or bugging me. Lately, the increase in spam email has really become an annoyance. It makes my job harder in replying to your email questions, comments and press releases. It seems the increased spam is affecting everyone these days reports GigaOM in Spam is sucking life out of Email.

Which is why I'm applauding MySpace for going after Scott Richter, one of the most successful (spammers) high volume email deployers ever, was named in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles court last Friday.

Richter and his associates “arranged for millions of spam ‘bulletins”‘ to be sent from MySpace users’ accounts without their knowledge by gaining access to them illegally, according to the lawsuit.

You can read more on this over at shoemoney.com a website I enjoy reading daily and he included this funny video clip from The Daily Show.

Better late than never, I've been wanting to write about Alec Saunders "The ultimate VoIP bloggers ranking" for sometime now.

We're very pleased and would like to thank Alec Saunders for his article that ranked us #57 as an Ultimate VoIP blogger and we realize that our blog juice rating could be better. So this year, I'm recommending that Barry Bonds be hired on to write for VoIPMonitor.net to help us hit the ball out of the park in 2007.

Happy 2007 to all our readers. As you probably noticed, there has been a brief hiatus in the news here at VoIPMonitor.net due to the holidays. We are now back in action after a festive holiday and ready for the year ahead. There is no doubt that it will prove to be an exciting one for VoIP.

News will be slow today as many are not yet back from the holidays, while others are probably still waiting for their hangovers to subside. For those who did venture into the office today we're looking forward to providing you with the best and latest VoIP news in 2007.

CEOcast conducted an interview with Anthony J. Cataldo, VoIP, Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In the interview, Mr. Cataldo discloses, for the first time publicly, that the Company’s network and incorporated technology is currently being deployed by Google, Inc. in its online advertising product `Click-to-call', which was launched yesterday in India. The product allows users to call directly to an advertiser on Google search pages. `Click-to-call' ads allow users to speak directly to an advertiser they find on a Google search results page over the phone utilizing VoIP’s technology. VoIP receives an undisclosed fee each time it connects a call between the consumer and advertiser.