Michael Robertson Is Calling, But Will Anybody Answer?

to settle the case—and as part of the deal, Robertson changed the name of his company to Linspire. The business was acquired earlier this year by Xandros.

Robertson started another venture in 2003 called SIPphone to develop free VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software to compete with Skype. The technology was based on SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, a network protocol often used for VOIP. Robertson initially called the peer-to-peer network he was creating the Gizmo Project, but he now uses Gizmo5 for both the network and the proprietary free software used for the network. (SIPphone got $6 million in venture funding two years ago, in a round led by New York’s Dawntreader Ventures.)

On Monday, Robertson launched a new version of the Gizmo5 technology, dubbed GizmoCall.com, which enables users to log onto a Web site to make VOIP calls. The Web-based service can be used with any computer running a Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating system.

“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to make a call on your computer, and to offer it at very low cost.” Robertson says the new service allows users to make phone calls to any phone number or Gizmo5 or SIP address. The Flash-based call service is free for SIP computer numbers, and costs 1.9 cents per minute using Gizmo5 credits.

The way Robertson sees it, “The public switched telephone networks are crashing into PC-Internet technology, and the Internet is going to win because it’s better, cheaper, faster and easier.” In this economy, he predicts people who are tired of paying $65 a month for mobile phone service will look for cheaper options for making calls.

Or maybe not.

Robertson described the offering on his “Michael’s Minute” blog, which includes an online survey that enables readers who read his blog to say whether or not they agree with him. Of the 114 people who had voted on his GizmoCall.com idea as of Thursday evening, only 9.6 percent (just 11 voters) agreed that it was a good idea, while 89.5 percent disagreed and less than 1 percent had no opinion.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.