Review 3147

VoIP is huge right now. The uptake is only now beginning to surge as broadband users around the world choose providers and hardware to setup their own residential VoIP connections, and save themselves a pretty packet. I’m happy to review this site because I am a VoIP consultant myself, webmaster of a VoIP choice consumer website and Sys Admin for an ISP so I feel a little qualified to review the content.

Content aside for the moment, the CSS breaks down in my Safari browser so I reluctantly fire up IE. I like the clean blogstreet template, but its a little dull. VoIP is a dry topic at the best of times so a little pizzaz on the design wouldn’t go astray.

The blog discusses issues with this relatively new technology such as PC to phone dialing, VoIP and autodialers, VoIP disadvantages, USB phones, Wifi VoIP, industry news etc. The author writes succinctly and easily and its refreshing to read tech info in layman’s terms. I was disappointed however to read the December 8 post about Flyphone VoIP (USB based) that reads more like an advertisement than a review and based on my prior knowledge of this companies aggressive online marketing strategy I’m pretty sure it is.

As blogs take on a more prominent role in mainstream media, I believe authors will need to make their own decision with editorial guidelines for where posts and ads become harder to distinguish. In major print media, these lines are clearly defined so blogs need to think about their editorial standards. This blog certainly seems to be linking commercial websites within posts so the relationship is unclear.

Voice Over IP and Internet Telephony could do with a more imaginative title, but I suspect this site is just trying to be googlebot friendly in order to pull more traffic for its sponsors. Its content is generally good and well written but risks falling into the splog (spam-blog) category without better execution. A good read mostly, but could use a spit and polish. NULL