As the New York Yankees take on the reigning champion Philadelphia Phillies in the 2009 Major League Baseball World Series, there's more on the line for two unified communications providers. After last year's World Series bet with a Tampa-based company (Oranges for Cheesesteaks), Philadelphia-based Alteva, North America's largest enterprise hosted VoIP and unified communications solutions provider, has initiated another friendly competition with Stage 2 Networks, New York's leader in hosted PBX and converged network solutions.

Downloading TV programs, watching online videos and making online phone calls posted the biggest year-to-year percent increase among adult Internet users, according to new data from Mediamark Research & Intelligence.

E-mail, news gathering and paying bills online continue to be among the most widely used Internet activities by U.S. consumers ages 18+, the MRI data show.

According to responses from MRI's just released Fall 2008 Survey of the American Consumer, 3.2% of adults said they had downloaded a TV program in the last 30 days. That represents a year-to-year increase of 141.4%. The number of adults who reported they watched online video increased 35.4% during the same period, to a total of 23.3% of the adult population, while 4.0% of respondents reported they had made an online phone call, an increase of 32.0%.

I could hardly contain myself when I saw this press release come across the wires: Bat Phone meet the PizzaPhone!

An exciting alternative to the traditional ties and wrench sets that often appear at this time of year, the PizzaPhone is a unique gift for Father's Day, Graduation Day or almost any day.

It can be easily programmed to call a favorite pizzeria, and the number is dialed as soon as the handset is lifted. If another restaurant becomes the new favorite, it takes just a few seconds to re-program the phone's memory. A manual-dialed PizzaPhone is also available.

VoipReview.org has been acquired by an undisclosed buyer. Company founders and Denver entrepreneurs Eric Laughlin and Gary Gaessler successfully built and sold the company over a five-year period. Founded in late 2003, VoipReview.org features an interactive online search tool which helps shoppers find the best residential and business VoIP service providers based on price, features, local availability, and user ratings and reviews. Last year, the company announced it had helped 5 million visitors find, compare or purchase VoIP provider services -- a number that has swelled to more than 8 million.

Happy Earth Day! I just wanted to give everyone a heads up about another website we've been working on. Going Green Matters helps individuals find green products, going green tips and information for your home, work, and community to become eco-friendly. Checkout Going Green Matters today and find out how you can 'go green' not just on Earth Day but every day!

American consumers have a wide array of choices for personal communication services, but, when it comes to their home, an overwhelming majority -- including those who have a cell phone -- say they plan to keep and continue using their landline home phone indefinitely. Most often the service's proven reliability and safety were given as reasons in a new nationwide survey commissioned by Verizon.

The telephone survey, conducted by KRC Research last month, polled more than 800 consumers aged 18 and over who pay their landline phone bill. It found that:

• Eighty-three percent of the respondents intend to continue using their landline home phone indefinitely -- a strong vote of consumer confidence for landline voice service in a survey group that included a large number of participants who also have a cell phone (74 percent).
• Ninety-four percent of the respondents cited reliability and 91 percent cited safety as the key factors for retaining landline service.
• Seventy-six percent of landline phone owners use their landline phone every day.

AT&T announces the immediate availability of two new music applications mSpot's Make-UR-Tones and Remix and plans to significantly expand offerings for Napster Mobile over-the-air downloads. Make-UR-Tones allows customers to customize ringtones by using their mobile phone, and the Remix application gives customers access to their PC-based music collections directly from their phone. The result for mobile music lovers is more freedom to listen to the songs they want, when they want, on their AT&T mobile phone.

mSpot Make-UR-Tones
With the launch of mSpot Make-UR-Tones, AT&T — the exclusive provider of the application becomes the first national carrier to allow customers to easily use their wireless phone to create a ringtone from their favorite part of a song. The Make-UR-Tones application is designed to give users the flexibility to customize a one- to 30-second ringtone from a full song. AT&T's Make-UR-Tones subscribers can enjoy exclusive access to more than 250,000 titles from music labels EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, INgrooves and IRIS.

Since news has been fairly slow today, which is a good thing VoIP Monitor would like to wish everyone a Happy Valentines Day. I'm currently busy wrapping up plans for tonight for my special someone and lets just hope she enjoys it. Not to mention I still have to pack for my trip to St. Louis, Missouri tomorrow. I'll be going for a 5 day vacation to visit with family and friends, so news could be delayed tomorrow as well. Anyways back to packing and getting everything in order for my early flight out tomorrow.

Oh and don't forget to book those reservations or purchase those flowers gents!

I'm a huge UFC fan and who doesn't love the Super Bowl right, so this weekend is going to be a great one. Saturday night UFC 81 takes place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. This event has lots of hype around it because of Brock Lesnar's debut in the UFC. He'll be matched up against Frank Mir who's current 10-3 record isn't anything to overlook. However, in previous fights Mir has looked sluggish and at times out of shape after coming back from a motorcycle wreck back in 2004.

I could see this fight going two different ways both of which will be on the ground. Either Lesnar will ground and pound Mir into a pulp, or Mir will submit Lesnar with a submission hold while on his back. That being said it's not even the main event of the evening! There is still Tim Sylvia vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira as the headline fight. I have a feeling Antonio Nogueira will win this match up, but then again I've never been a fan of Tim Sylvia.

No matter what fights I win or lose money on, I'm sure it'll be a blast at our UFC 81 party.

Now on to Sunday and early pre-game shenanigans. I'm sure the grills will be fired up from 11am till just before game time. Giving me and friends plenty of time to gorge on all the super bowl snack goodness. I'm going to have to go with the Patriots in this Super Bowl. However, I'll be putting a cash bet on the Giants to not lose by more than 12 points and hopefully keep it exciting.

I've got a friend who's a big Giants fan and he's already laid down this years side bet. If the Patriots lose, I'll be buzzing my head (with the largest attachment of course). That being said might I remind you how cold it is in Nebraska at this time of year! If the Patriots win he'll be returning the favor, so either way one of us is getting a new haircut in February.

Who are you picking to win in the UFC 81 fights?
or
Who you are picking to win the Super Bowl?

Let us know!

Ipswitch announces the results of its ninth Spamometer survey, revealing that 96.4% of all email received is spam, the highest rate since recording began. This compares with 95% the previous quarter and only 84% over the same period last year. The biggest category of spam, finance, accounts for 41% of all messages received in an email inbox; a quarter of spam emails were categorized as medication; with pornographic emails accounting for 21%. The rise in financial spam mirrors the current trend for emails requesting recipients to call illegitimate call centers and pass over personal financial information known as 'Vishing.' Ipswitch's research also found that spam from botnets accounted for 72% of all spam generated.

Medication spam has been knocked off the top spot for the first time in three quarters. Finance spam emails have risen from only 12% the previous quarter to 41% over the holidays. Pornographic emails descended to third position this quarter, down from 21% to 16%.

SpinVox has used its expertise in mobile phone and voicemail etiquette to name America's top ten most annoying voicemails.

"In the US we spend almost 100 billion minutes each year leaving or listening to voicemail so most people will have received one or more of these types of messages. At best they are annoying and at worst couterproductive, using up the valuable time that people increasingly don't have to spare in their busy lives," says Christina Domecq, SpinVox co-founder and CEO.

According to SpinVox, the following are the worst offenders -- voicemails that people should avoid leaving at all costs.

Find out the top ten after the jump.

JAJAH released version 2.0 of its calling application for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. In addition to saving on international calls, users will have an iPhone style dial pad, iPhone address book and full calling functionally with the device.

Hand-in-hand with JAJAH's developer community, the enhanced application enables users to make ultra-low cost international calls directly from the iPhone and iPod touch. The application combines the best of both worlds: The reliability and quality of a standard landline or cell phone while profiting from the cost savings of Internet telephony. Apple users have modified the application on top of the JAJAH platform to make it look exactly like any other phone call on an iPhone device! There is no need to install an application so users globally can use the service without any jailbreaks. This new JAJAH Web app is available http://iphone.jajah.com

ICT announces the addition of Apple's iPhone to the "Cannes Project" integrated voice and data platform. ICT's selection of the iPhone was based upon the popularity of the product and the user profile. This platform will enable the 1 million iPhones reported sold as of September 26, 2007 to send voice and data between any broadband capable mobile devices, the over 246 million Skpe users and all VoIP carriers without using cellular plan minutes and not requiring a cellular carrier wherever WiFi/WiMAX is present. The "Cannes Project" platform is intended to be a browser-less platform but in the case of the Apple iPhone, ICT will adhere to Apple's requirement to develop applications through the iPhone Safari browser.

Klausner Technologies files patent lawsuits under its visual voicemail patents against Comcast, Cablevision and eBay Inc.’s Skype with damages and future royalties estimated at $300 million.

The lawsuit asserts that the above companies’ VOIP voicemail products and services infringe Klausner Technologies’ U.S. Patent 5,572,576. The patent has already been licensed to various other companies which provide the same visual voice messaging services, including Time Warner’s AOL for its AOL Voicemail services, Vonage Holdings for its Vonage Voicemail Plus services as well as others, under the Klausner Patents.

Some of you might have noticed that VoIP Monitor went without updates for nearly two weeks in mid September. The reason being our staff and friends went on vacation to St. Lucia! Since today's a rather slow news day, it has allowed me time to gather up some pictures to share from our trip. Enjoy!


Much more after the jump if you want to see photos of our vacation.