On the iPhone, Vonage calls can be made by dialing in the app, or from your imported address book—but you need to have the app open. The BlackBerry version only works over the voice network, and the iPod touch version is obviously limited to Wi-Fi.

Available now, the app is only pay-as-you-go for the moment. Support for Vonage World subscribers is expected by the end of the year. The limitations suck, but it's better than the outright rejection that Google Voice received. [Vonage via New York Times]

According to CNET, Vonage is currently beta testing the Mobile VoIP app and expects to announce availability soon. Reports say that Apple is working with Vonage to settle a few technical issues with the software which made us curious. There have been statements from AT&T in the past that Apple may not actively assist developers in building a VoIP app:

Both parties (AT&T and Apple) required assurances that the revenues from the AT&T voice plans available to iPhone customers would not be reduced by enabling VoIP calling functionality on the iPhone."

This sounds more like Apple may not assist in VoIP over 3G, so will the soon-to-be-released Vonage app allow for VoIP over wi-fi instead? We'll be waiting to see what happens, especially since "approved" doesn't exactly mean "available" just yet in this case. [CNET]

The Spin Comcast launched Digital Voice nearly three years ago, making it one of the first cable behemoths to capitalize on the trend toward IP telephony. But don't tell Comcast it's a VoIP provider—it much prefers (nay, insists on) the term "true home phone replacement system." The euphemism is designed to reassure potential customers that their calls won't be traveling along that big, scary internet backbone that's prowled by the most nefarious characters this side of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Comcast takes advantage of this consumer paranoia by stressing that Digital Voice data doesn't travel over the public internet. The idea here is that you'll be willing to pay a premium over Vonage's lower rates in exchange for peace of mind. And, hey, you're still saving a bundle over what you fork over for copper wire, right?

Counterspin Yeah, you save, but the service still seems a tenner or so overpriced. The $39.95 rate that Comcast usually trumpets is only if you sign up for the company's triple play package. Take away the TV component and rates vary widely, often fluctuating due to introductory promotions. Once those teasers run out, consumers can experience sticker shock. Check out these reviews from DSLReports; a lot of folks once enraptured with Comcast Digital Voice ended up switching away purely for fiscal reasons. My big question is, Why is there such a spread between Comcast Digital Voice and Vonage? Comcast obviously has higher capital costs, but it can also partially subsidize its phone-service offering with TV loot. And keep in mind that Vonage has kept its prices static despite incurring massive costs from various patent disputes. Oh, Vonage customers also don't have to tip the cable guy for installation—though, granted, most consumers would rather stick a fork in a toaster than fiddle with a router.

Mission Accomplished? This ad's humorous (if slightly macabre) all-about-price pitch is just a short-term play. At CES, Comcast bragged ad infinitum that it had become the nation's fourth largest provider of residential phone service, eclipsed only by some Baby Bells (Verizon, AT&T, and Qwest). But Comcast's pricing advantage will rapidly disappear as those companies go large with their own VoIP services—er, sorry, "home phone replacement systems." So Comcast is scrambling with the pricing message now, but seems prepared to replace it with a tech-centric campaign once AT&T's U-verse gets cranking. In the next few months, expect Comcast to start touting its service's up-and-coming features: caller ID that appears on your PC and TV, remote programming of DVRs, and even Comcast-branded cordless phones (watch out, Uniden).

Hype-O-Meter 6 (out of 10). A mildly funny, mildly successful attempt to reach technophobic consumers who've yet to grasp the value of IP telephony. But, man, I feel for that mom—isn't there a chestnut about Ritalin being easier than parenting?

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired, a columnist for Slate, and author of the forthcoming Now the Hell Will Start. His Hype Sheet column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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With staff cuts already taking place to remain above board, this may be one cut too many for the firm to deal with. Having said that, as ever, anything could happen. We shall keep you posted on any developments. [Bloomberg via Gadgetell]

Our first test call was from a landscaping service that we used here at the Midwest Test Facility three years ago. See if you can decipher the meaning of this message:

"Good Afternoon this is linda for me well branded sign I'm i'm getting a hold of Truly whites residents or Company Evil goes out your neighborhood and he said that one you're properties looks like it could Use some pruning it's been three years now since we were out there And well wondering if you'd wanna a proposal from us Please give me a call At two six two two four four Nine four zero zero And let us know if that Is something you would like for us to do Thanks I'll wait for your call back up right of"

Then a second message came in, and this one fared a little better:

"Hey, it's Kim. I'm calling about lunch today. I was just calling to see if it was alright if we met at 12:30 instead of 12, 'cause I (??) have to work till 12 and I'm (??) but I can be there by 12:30, no problem. If that gonna be a problem for you, can you please give me a call back. Otherwise, I will see you at the (??)'s place at 12:30. I look forward to seeing you. I hope that's gonna be okay. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye."

We wish the implementation was a little closer to perfect for these transcriptions, but the idea of having your voicemails delivered to you in text form is highly appealing. Imagine in a meeting, you could a quickly glance at the text of all your voicemails and immediately catch up with what's going on.

However, that $.25 price for each transcription is just not cost-effective enough. If you get a dozen voicemails a day, your monthly tab would hover around $90 for this convenience. We're thinking more along the lines of 5 cents apiece would make it more practical. We're canceling the service right away.

And that's $400—or $399, to be exact. This is what happens. You buy your Ooma Hub and connect it. It gives you free internet calls, but also works with your existing landline. If you have to dial 911 it does so on your landline (VOIP apparently can have problems connecting to the emergency number). International calls are automatically routed through the internet—which means they are gratis.

There are other benefits as well: Ooma gives you a virtual second line, meaning that if another call comes in while you are already on the phone, your butler/gimp/special friend/warthog can answer it from another extension. It comes with a built-in answering machine, and you can check your messages and call logs online. So, kind of like Skype, but not Skype.

WSJ's Mossberg has just had a go on one and gave it the Walt thumbs-up, with just one niggle: He had a bit of trouble with incoming calls until he connected to another jack.

The Ooma comes out in September but until then they're making it rather exclusive—rather like the launch of Gmail. Over the summer, 1500 lucky people will be getting freebies, as well as three Ooma tokens to give out to their friends so that they can pick up a hub for free. Lucky them. [Wall Street Journal]

I'm by no means an audiophile, but I've never quite gotten the appeal of low-end iPod speakers. I mean, it's definitely a sign of mankind's genius that $8.99 can now buy you the means to pump audible music—cavemen would've no doubt killed for that sort of powersorcery. But the sound quality is invariably pretty abysmal, either annoyingly tinny or obscured under a soupy dither. Your typical cheapo iPod speaker system is really just one-and-a-half steps above the ChipCorder.

But I'm obviously in the minority here, because few low-end product categories have flourished like iPod speakers. I noted this $4.99 unit in last week's column, about the panoply of gadgets on display at Bed Bath & Beyond. But those speakers were only the iceberg's tip—the sector's current taxonomy is a wonder to behold, and a testament the creativity of low-end designers. If you thought the Lords of Guangdong Electronics were only good at knockoffs, you've got to reboot those brains of yours.

Granted, knockoffs is where the low-end product cycle tends to start. The model for a lot of the first-gen low-enders seems to have been the Logitech mm22, a rectangular speaker system I once reviewed for Wired (back when it's list price was a whopping $79.99). The Logitech's shape is a classic, in that it sorta resembles a conventional hi-fi system—speakers on the sides with visible woofers. The most popular knockoff seems to be the I.Sound Digipod-322, which can now be found for right around a tenner. (It also appears to be sold under the Airnet brand; perhaps a Shenzhen factory is playing all the angles?) The speakers don't swivel up, but the design concept is the same—lots of right angles, and everything more-or-less symmetrical.

But somewhere along the line, the low-end manufacturers realized that when you're playing in the $8-to-$12 range, it's often novelty that attracts buyers; it's not like us low-enders really expect one iPod speaker to vastly outperform another in terms of sound quality, right? So about 18 months ago or so, you began to see a flood of ingeniously shaped speakers, featuring lots of curves and fold-up schemes. This off-brand model, shaped like an apple, is new enough to boast of compatibility with the Zune, though I guess that's sort of like a dog dish boasting of being compatible with all breeds. And these folding speakers kick out a monstrous one watt per channel—skimpy, but what more do you expect for a measly $6.58?

Low-end designers have also felt the Nature's tug toward miniaturization, coming up with such thumbnail-sized options as the Nino Portable Dual Speaker (pictured up top) and, from column favorite Coby, the CS-MP3. These strike me more as emergency devices, rather than something you'd rely on to serenade a picnic. If you ever really, really need to clear up one of Ghostface's hotly disputed lyrics ("Is he saying 'jewels' or 'juice'?"), the CS-MP3 could sure come in handy; otherwise, not so much.

The final phase in the low-ending of iPod speakers has been feature creep—that is, design attempts to integrate speakers into multi-functional products. Exhibit A is certainly the AquaPod (pictured at right), which is half speaker, half water-resistant case. Even loopier is the Princess Speaker Pillow; please click through to the link, as my limited descriptive powers cannot possibly do this frou-frou product justice.

I wonder, though, if the end of the inventiveness is in sight. You know the market is saturated when a Florida department store is marketing these cool-looking speakers as "women's accessories" (perhaps because they so obviously resemble earrings). Part of the problem may be that the novelty is wearing off; consumers are less wowed by the simple fact they can finally pump their music to the masses, and are perhaps starting to notice how truly dreadful the sound is. And in the end, all the design hooks in the world can't obscure poor specs, even when the fat part of your market is composed of non-geeks.

There is, I believe, just one more milestone for the low-end iPod speakers market to reach, after which we can consign the entire sector to history's dustbin—or, more accurately, the same utter unsexiness now endured by the cellphone earpiece industry. I'm still waiting for someone to come up with the sub-$10 inflatable speaker system; the current price champ, this relative old-timer from Ellula, still goes for $12.95 at the lowest, and often closer to $20. Can somebody over in Shenzhen get on this, please? I'll totally owe you a Coke if you do.

WHAT NEXT FOR VONAGE?: Vonage seems to have escaped the noose for now, though I stand by my not-so-bold prediction that they're toast over the long run. My question is, If Vonage goes under rather than sells out, what's gonna happen to its 2.4 million customers (including your humble narrator)? Anyone out there with a tech-law background know what the procedure is when a critical service goes into receivership? I know the airlines keep flying, but I'll venture that Vonage ranks a few notches less important than Delta.

Most importantly, if Vonage does go under, does that mean the new owner (if there is one) will finally fix my freakin' caller ID? Because I'd really, really like it back.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Ordinarily there'd be no good reason to get worked up about the new Motorola VT2542 router, which Vonage is now selling for $59.99. Voice-over-data prioritization? VPN pass-through support? Puh-leez. Wake me when it can make cinnamon toast.

But these are by no means ordinary times at Vonage. America's most visible VoIPer announced the new router mere days after suffering a serious gutpunch: Verizon won a longstanding patent infringement suit against Vonage, to the tune of $58 million. A second suit brought by Sprint Nextel is winding its way through the courts, as well. As much as Vonage is trying to spin these legal woes as no big whoop, and continue on with its innovation as if all was cool, you've got to think the company's executives are none too thrilled about the situation.

The most obvious question to arise from all these suits, as well as Vonage's other troubles, is whether the company will survive. But the bigger issue for us cheapskates is what all this hullabaloo portends for the future of VoIP, the technology that rescued us from the Baby Bells' cold, brutal grip. After the jump, ruminations on who you'll be paying for phone service in 2010. PLUS: Prizes en route to my beloved beta testers.

First off, journalistic ethics mandate that I should lay bare my ties: I am a Vonage customer, though not a particularly enthusiastic one. I use their VoIP service for my home office; if number portability hadn't been a priority, I would have been happy enough sticking with my mobile and Skype (of which I'm a fan). That said, my complaints about Vonage's service mostly boil down to little things—hiccups in the connection, long stretches where I can't surf and talk at the same time. I'm by no means a member of this disgruntled clique, and Vonage has surely saved me hundreds of dollars over the last two-plus years. I was previously with Talk America (now Cavalier Telephone), and those copper-wire taxes were killing me.

The lawsuit loss to Verizon is just the latest inkling that all's not going swimmingly for Vonage. My first tip-off came last year, when I got a recorded phone call inviting me to buy into the company's IPO. When you're asking the folks who use your service to prop up your Wall Street offering, yikes, that ain't good. Then came an e-mail offer, declaring that I could save $60 by pre-paying for a year's worth of service—again, a classic sign of, if not desperation, at least distress.

It's not hard to see why Vonage is struggling: they're a classic victim of the first-mover disadvantage. When they rolled out wide, they way undercut the copper-wire alternatives. But the traditional providers have caught up, especially with those bundled phone-cable-Internet packages. Yeah, those deals still rip you off on phone service a bit, but they're easy—no worries about number portability, and a service guy will actually come to your house and install the router(s). Installation may be easy for those of us who frequent Gizmodo, but a lot of people are still freaked out by Ethernet cables, as well as by the prospect of having to deal with yet another monthly bill. Never underestimate the prevalence of both technophobia and financial anxiety.

If Vonage goes—and, in fairness, they seem pretty insistent that they're gonna fight tooth-and-nail to stay alive—I can see the VoIP market splitting one of two ways. You could see cable-based VoIP services like AT&T CallVantage win out, even going so far as buying Vonage's entire customer list. Or Vonage's rebellious mantle could be seized by a bunch of now-miniscule upstarts like Packet8 and Jajah—assuming the Baby Bells won't slap them around with patent infringement suits, too. (Since it's based abroad, Skype might be a tougher legal target. But until they can introduce number portability in the U.S., I don't think they can step it up to that next level—remember, Joe Q. Consumer still loves his phone number! It's part of his identity.)

As a low-ender, all I really care about is paying as little as possible for phone service. (I confess to once being a client of a long-distance service that made you listen to ads in exchange for free talk time.) And I'm cautiously optimistic that the broadband wars will keep pressing fees down, as phone service becomes more of an inducement than anything else. In 2002, I wrote a Wired piece about Japan's Softbank, which was then offering 12-Mbps DSL plus VoIP for around $21 per month. (They were also spending roughly $250 to acquire each new customer, but let's shove that fact aside for now.) The VoIP was the deal's most alluring bait, but I also discovered that it cost Softbank next-to-nothing—I believe it was Joi Ito who first opened up my eyes to the fact that voice really should be free.

The future cash cow for broadband providers has to be more pipe-hungry content, especially video. Voice? A drop in the bucket, a throw-in on the deal. But getting the providers to acknowledge that will require competition—between each other, of course, but also from the VoIP indies like Skype, Jajah and myriad others. I encourage our pals in Washington D.C. to make sure that competition continues, by making number portability simpler (mandating a 48-hour turnaround time?) and guarding against Big Telco shenanigans. Meanwhile, the VoIP upstarts might need to rethink their ease-of-use—Americans may be getting more comfortable with technology, but they still need their hands held from time to time. (One ad idea: rip off Geico's ingenious tagline, stating something akin to, "10 minutes could save you $200 a year. Call us to find out how." No more Vonage yodeling, please!)

The most important thing is that skinflints like me should someday enjoy haypenny-an-hour calls to mobiles in Ouagadougou. Anything short of that will be a travesty against Man and Nature.

WINNING FEELS GOOD: Two weeks ago, I appealed for y'all to help me beta test my new site. As a little carrot, I offered two copies of Best of Technology Writing 2006, edited by your humble narrator.

Happy to report that I drew for the books last night (supervised by my wife in lieu of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and we have two winners—David Hunt and Kris LeMoine, your books will be in the mail next week. For the rest of y'all, thanks and don't fret—you can read the book's contents (for free!) here.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Rumor: Vonage to Offer Calling Cards [CrunchGear]

Vonage wouldn't say when we might be seeing such a design in the real world, but if you want to see the ass-end of this little froggie, you'll have to jump:

You gotta like that caller ID screen. Anyway, this nonworking prototype was under glass, and they wouldn't let us fondle it no matter what. – Charlie White

Linksys PAP2 Phone Adapter for Vonage Internet Phone Service [Amazon]

As the hype from Vongage suggests, it really is just a matter of plugging the USB drive into a Windows-based PC's USB port (again, us Mac and Linux folks get the shaft) and waiting for under a minute for the software to automatically run. From there, a simple GUI greets the user, where the only input field visible is the space for a phone number. I gave our favorite News Editor John Biggs a call and his sweet, soothing voice came through just fine. It doesn't sound as good as POTS, but since we've gotten used to cellphones that sound like 9s7f4m NES sound effects, the V Phone gets the job done. The included headphones resemble the earbuds packaged with the iPod and the mic works well enough for what it's tasked to do.

As an added bonus, I took to repeatedly inserting and removing the V Phone from the USB port without properly unmounting the drive first, just to see how durable it really is. Several insertions and removals later, it still worked, so there should be no problem if you forget to properly unmount the drive first.

The Vonage V Phone works as advertised, and if you're already a Vonage customer, the $39.99 price tag isn't unreasonable. But if you're not a Vonage customer, there's really no need to all of a sudden become one, especially since its much-touted portability is no match for that cellphone you've got in your pocket. – Nicholas Deleon

Product Page [Vonage]

Imagine having your home Vonage phone with you when you travel to Germany for the World Cup—your wife can reach you at any time. Well, that's probably a bad example, but you get the idea. – Jason Chen

Jeffrey Citron defends Vonage, announces new V-Phone USB device [Tech Effect]

Pro Pod Power Tips: iPod phone Part 2: Get Phone Messages on your iPod [MacMerc]

Product Page [SunRocket]

At $49.99, this is a cheap way to hook up two lines of VoIP to one device. Beats a stick in the eye. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Vonage via Digital Trends]

Product Page [Vonage]

One problem: because it uses WiFi, any hotspot that asks you to pay will be off-limits to this phone, which could be annoying (thanks a TON, Starbucks).

Vonage to sell Wi-Fi phone [News.com]