White Spaces in Canada?
I've been of the opinion for years, that at some point soon, people will no longer have to pay for Internet access; that it will devolve from a product itself, into simply a product delivery system.
Not only that, but all our services (cell phones, home phones, TV, and of course, "Internet access") will be delivered over this network- which, if everybody is connected (end-users and businesses alike), will open up huge opportunities for competitive companies in all sorts of markets.
And, of course, it will all be that much easier if this magical Internet connection was fast, and wireless; just give your new TV some power, and it will connect to your services provider automatically using it's wireless card; forget about cellular- your new portable VOIP phone will connect over the same wireless network.
No longer will whole provinces/cites/states be subject to incumbent providers, who's only grip on our patronage, is that they happen to be the current guardians of the copper.
Well last Nov, the FCC voted unanimously to approve the use of the unused airwaves between broadcast TV channels (aka the "white space"), for wireless broadband service for the public (which, I have to say is pretty surprising that the FCC would support something good for the people, and not special interest groups)- of course, it was only after years of testing and poking and prodding by the Wireless Innovation Alliance (of whom some notable members are Google and Microsoft).
The spectrum itself is also ideal, as it has a much longer range than wifi, which means fewer base-stations to cover larger areas, which ultimately means lower costs to operate- so while it's been hinted at, it doesn't say this wireless Internet connection is going to be free- but definitely affordable (cheap even)- and one step closer to free.
On the coat-tails of the FCC, the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) is meeting on Feb 17th to discuss doing the same for Canadians, but Canada isn't set to shut off analogue TV until February 2011- which means a few years until it's even possible.
Maybe I can fake my geo-location, and get access through Buffalo. 
VoicePHP by TringMe
TringMe, an Indian start-up just released its new VoicePHP service, which allows you to develop voice applications using PHP.
This is definitely cool stuff, though I see quite a few issues with implementation. HTTP, is, by design, a non-persistent transaction, and a phone call requires persistency while the call is in progress; therefore, there is no way for PHP alone, to handle "Voice" requests.
The only way to really make this work, is to have an external server (effectively a PBX of some kind) that handles the call traffic, that is simply polled (in some fashion) by PHP on a per request basis. Those requests could be polled via Ajax, or even a comet-like system, but it's still not handled directly via PHP. I assume this is where their VoicePHP "Server" comes in.
So, in this sense, it sounds simply like a PHP wrapper around the TringMe REST API, which is something that can already be done in other ways, like accessing the Asterisk Manager interface via PHP using asterisk-php-api, but with one interesting twist-
It looks like (according to their FAQ) you can access the audio streams directly from PHP- which is pretty interesting, depending on how they've implemented it. Given the (generally) short transaction lengths of an HTTP request, I'm not sure how you would realistically pull audio from a real-time source (like a phone call), or play-back an audio clip on to a call, unless you used some sort of scheduling system.
ie- use PHP to decode and audio file (say .wav or .mp3), and then send the file to the VoicePHP server, which schedules the audio clip for playback, and returned immediately. It's then played over the call in "real-time". PHP could then poll the VoicePHP server to get status about the playback.
I've signed up for a beta account to play around with it, hopefully I'll see something from them soon.
SIP Softphone for iPhone
I've been using an iPhone for quite sometime now- I bought one just before the 3G's came out- I was going to wait, but I figured I'd be able to pickup a first gen pretty cheap with the 3G's coming out, and I wanted to get an unlocked one anyway, as I didn't want to end up getting stuck with the Rogers plans/term contract.
I just installed a new app the other day, that gives you a native SIP/IAX2 client for your iPhone- which is pretty awesome, and something I've been waiting (and considering writing) for a while now. It's called SiAX, and currently only available through Cydia (jailbroken phones).
The app works fairly well- the audio quality is good, and seems to be pretty solid. Unfortunately, you only seem to be able to receive calls through the app while you have the application running; it doesn't maintain any SIP registration information when you close the app, which is a little weird. But for a quick call here and there, especially to avoid roaming charges on the road, it's pretty decent.
I've actually disabled my data plan with Rogers, as it's a rare occasion that I'm not around a wifi connection- even when I'm travelling, there's usually at least one Starbucks around. Of course, this was only after incurring hundreds of dollars in roaming data usage.