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Remember when phones were used for, you know, phone calls? Janet Hall, senior consultant for TMNG, does. What's more, Hall says that voice communications will rise again away from a commodity to a growth market.

In 1906 John Philip Sousa criticized the gramophone saying, "These talking machines will ruin the artistic development of music in this country." Nevertheless, because Sousa did not forsee user-generated culture proliferating alongside "mechanical music" he could not have been further from the truth. Not only have machine technologies aided in musical development, but there are a variety of mediums to choose from. While audio engineers may scoff at the idea of making music on the iPhone, there's no denying that a number of options exist for the pocket DJ. Below are a few tools to get you started:

This weekend, developers, UI designers and testers combined forces to share ideas and collaborate at the third annual iPhone Dev Camp. The event encourages individuals at all levels to continue to stretch the development boundaries of the iPhone and iPod touch. The event's Hackathon competition offers an exhibition of attendee projects and is a showcase of some of the industry's brightest innovators. Below are some of the latest trends amongst those innovators.

Ribbit, the VOIP platform that was bought by British Telecom last year, announced the winners of its $100,000 KillerApps challenge today. The contest was obviously meant to stimulate interest in Ribbit's APIs among developers, and judging from the line-up of winning applications, a lot of developers came up with highly creative ways of using Ribbit's platform in their apps.

Communications company British Telecom (BT) has acquired innovative web telephony platform Ribbit for a reported $105 million. BT has been sniffing around the Bay Area for startups to acquire for some time and this one is a great fit. Not just because both companies are in the voice market but because as a means of folding click-to-call functionality into any web application - Ribbit is fascinating.

BT was supposed to be a big mover and shaker in the communications industry of the future. Telephony expert Om Malik has been watching the company's progress closely though, and says that it has largely failed to live up to its promise. Can Ribbit move the needle for BT? We think it could in a big way.