(this next bit can affect everything from certain web transactions, to VoIP, to full disk encryption . . .)

AES-NI Performance Analyzed; Limited To 32nm Core i5 CPUs

Google poised to become your phone company

(Wired) — Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.

Seriously.

Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype  but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company.

Google announced the Gizmo acquisition on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Gizmo5′s founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, will become an Adviser to Google Voice.

It’s a potent recipe — take Gizmo5′s open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google’s massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice’s free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop.

Meanwhile you can use Gizmo5 to make ultracheap outgoing calls to domestic and international phone numbers, and free calls to Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM users. You could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on your smartphone.

Then layer on deluxe phone services like free SMS, voicemail transcription, customized call routing, free conference calls and voicemails sent as recordings to your e-mail account, and you have a phone service that competes with Skype, landlines and the Internet telephone offerings from Vonage and cable companies.

That’s not just pie in-the-sky dreaming.

Ask longtime VOIP watcher and consultant Andy Abramson, who introduced the idea of integrating Gizmo5 and Grand Central (now Google Voice), long before Google bought either.

“Google is now the the uncommon carrier,” Abramson said, punning on the iconic 7-UP commercials and the phrase “common carrier.” That refers to phone companies that operate on the traditional publicly switched network — a status that gives them benefits and obligations.

“If AT&T is Coca-Cola, Google is now 7-UP,” Abramson added.

“All of a sudden you have something that offers more than Skype,” Abramson said, saying the combo could now put Google in competition with phone and cable companies, IP “telephony” (VOIP) companies and Vonage. “But now you can do everything with Google and pay nothing and have a platform where engineers can build new things.”

(excerpted; more via http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/13/google.phone.service/ )

Thursday, November 12, 2009 | 2:30 PM

I’ll reiterate to folks, I’m software agnostic.  Open source and on Linux?  Grand.  Often closed source, straight from that-supposed-devil company Microsoft?  Nifty.  OSX and whatever you want to run there?  Sure enough.

I’m just looking to get the job done well.  There really are times when one choice is better in my work, and times for the others also.  Each of us may have reasons to choose a ‘preferred’ system, or package type.  This is fine – live and let live, and all that. (your day will go better if you start to adopt that; I’m sure trying!)

I’d like to briefly hit a fave topic – cryptography. I suppose it all started with reading books too early, but that’s another story and I won’t bore you with my vice.  Suffice it to say, I was interested in simple transposition ciphers by the age of six or so, pencil and paper style.

Now we have other options.  Which is good, as my writing is terrible.  PGP commercial style.  GPG open source style.  Phil Zimmermann, with two N’s please! (kudos to Phil for making the world a better place)

Hushmail for secure email.  Full disk encryption by TrueCrypt, among others.  Much more secure VoIP that most other implementations.

Be careful of snake oil; noted security folks tend to frown on this and generally have a “doghouse” category for things that just aren’t right.  If something relies on security through obscurity, it automatically fails in my estimate.