Most of the apps are geared toward businesses users, while a few are for personal use. The directory features just under 25 apps, whose functionality includes things like call recording, screen sharing and integrations with third party services.

Naturally, Qik, the mobile video app Skype acquired earlier this year, is included as a "featured" app in the directory. Qik is not offered as an add-on to Skype, but rather its listing links off to the iTunes App Store where users can download it for iOS.

Other popular apps include InnerPass Screen Sharing and Zaplee, a cloud-based phone system for businesses that forwards Skype calls to phones, routes calls and handles voicemail.

Developers who use Skype's API to build applications can submit them by generating an XML file of their content, hosting it somewhere and sending Skype a link to it for consideration.

What third party apps would you like to see in the Skype app directory? Give us your wish list in the comments.

According to TeleGeography, growth in international call traffic grew by an estimated 4% in 2010, to 413 billion minutes, down slightly from a 5% growth rate in 2009 and down substantially from the 15% average growth rate from the previous two decades. Skype, however, has seen a huge uptick in growth, particularly in the last two years.

However, the challenge to international telcos isn't simply an economic one, as TeleGeography's data shows phenomenonal growth for Skype, which is now by far the largest provider of international voice-based communications. Skype's growth rate outpaced that of international phone traffic in 2009. But it skyrocketed in 2010, growing by 45 billion minutes - more than twice the volume added by all the world's phone companies, combined.

"Demand for international communications remains strong," says TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert. "But ever more people are discovering that they can communicate without the services of a telco."

That discovery isn't simply for international calls, as Skype is increasingly used for domestic calling as well. The service has also added video calling features, most recently to its iPhone app. And Skype is one of many companies rumored to be looking at an IPO in 2011.

ICantFindMyPhone.com is an adorable little website made by New York graphic designer Dave Dawson (whose personal site, IAmDaveDawson.com, implies that he has a habit of personal declaration URLs). The site simply calls your phone, so you can find it.

The site was highlighted by design blogger Tina Roth Eisenberg today and in comments there Dawson explains that he built it using the API of upstart popular telephony service Twilio. Update: It appears that Dawson may have run out of Twilio credits again...

The latest version comes with some cleaned up design features, built-in Facebook integration and the group video chat we've watched develop in the beta releases. For Skype, it's improvement all around and all we can say now is that the ball is surely in Facebook's court.

We got a quick tour of Skype 5.0 and the first thing Rick Osterloh, head of consumer product management, showed off was the group video chat feature. Allowing up to 10 people at once, the chat takes advantage of Skype's high-quality audio and video. It offers some nifty features, like "dynamic view", which highlights the person speaking by enlarging their video feed and shrinking everyone else. While group voice and text chat will be available for free, Skype plans on charging for group video chat in the near future.

A Clean-Cut Interface

The next big feature was the new "Skype Home", which features a cleaned-up contacts list, recent contacts, and the Facebook integration.

As Osterloh called it, it's a "nice central place for users to go." The contacts list now shows users' avatars next to their names and the recent contacts list shows just that, along with recent Skype transactions.

Here Comes Facebook

Now for the Facebook integration - it's basically your Facebook feed pulled directly into Skype. You can "like" things and post comments, but anything beyond that - like viewing profiles, photos or events - opens separately in your browser.

Viewing your Facebook feed in Skype offers another advantage - for friends who include their phone number in their Facebook profile, you will see two buttons. One lets you call either their Skype number or their home/mobile phone, while the other allows you to send an SMS. If they have a Skype account linked to their Facebook account, a "+" will appear, letting you add them as a Skype contact.

Even better than the Facebook feed - because we really don't see ourselves browsing Facebook in Skype - is the importing of your Facebook Phonebook. Suddenly, everyone you know on Facebook that lists a phone number will be easily contactable via Skype.

The Ball's In Facebook's Court

We were really hoping to see Skype integration on the Facebook website. Osterloh told us that they don't have anything to announce there today, but we're hoping to see the vice-versa integration in the near future.

So does this embody the endless potential we wrote about last month? Not really, but it's a decent first step. What we're really hoping to see from this partnership are Skype buttons on Facebook that launch Skype calls and SMS capabilities. Even more, we would love to see a Skype integration in the iPhone and Android apps. Imagine using Skype's background capabilities for ever-present chat and free, quick Skype-to-Skype phone calls connected directly to your Facebook account. What about quick connections from Facebook to businesses as a part of its fledgling Places product?

While the Facebook integration in Skype is nice, it's the other way around that we're really excited to see...so what do you say, Facebook? Will we see on-site voice and video calling? SMS integration?

It would be pretty neat, is all we're saying...

The latest version of Skype is now available for download.

Google Voice gives you a new phone number that can ring all of your landline and mobile phones simultaneously and provides automatic voicemail transcriptions. In addition, Google Voice offers free calls and text messages in the U.S. and Canada, as well as cheap international calls.

The service is based on GrandCentral, a service that Google acquired in July 2007. Last November, Google also acquired Skype competitor Gizmo5, though the company hasn't integrated any of Gizmo5's functionality into Google Voice yet. In the long run, though, Google Voice could easily morph into a full-blown competitor to Skype.

A number of other services, including the newly launched Phonebooth.com and Ribbit have launched Google Voice competitors with very similar features, though Google's name recognition and ability to integrate this telephony service into its other products gives Google a competitive advantage.

Our Favorite Features

If you are not familiar with Google Voice, here are some of our favorite features:

• transcribed voicemails: whenever somebody leaves a voicemail, Google Voice will transcribe the message as best it can (this only works for English right now). These transcripts are then forwarded to your email account and you can also opt to receive an SMS notification.
• listening in to voicemails: whenever you receive a call and decide to let it go to voicemail, you can also choose to listen in and even pick up the call if it turns out to be an important message. This feels just like the old days when answering machines with tapes were still a novelty.
• call screening: one neat option in Google Voice is the ability to screen calls. If you activate this feature, callers will be prompted to leave their name once they call, and once you pick up the phone, Google Voice will play the name back and you can choose whether you want the call to go to voicemail or actually speak to this person. You can opt to let all unknown callers who are not in your Google address book go through this procedure or just those calls from callers who have blocked their caller ID.
• recording calls: at any time during a call, you can press 4 and the call will be recorded. This only works for calls you receive on your phone for now, and doesn't work for outgoing calls.
• conference calls: just ask participants to call your Google Voice number and as more callers arrive, you can just conference them in - this works for up to 4 callers.
• switching phones: if you want to switch phones during a call (say you took a call on your landline and decide you want to take a walk and continue the call on your cell), just press * and all your other phones will ring again and you can continue the conversation on any othe rphone.
• SMS: you can send and receive text messages from your Google Voice account and web interface
• integration with Google Contacts
• it just works: the call quality is good, we didn't experience any outages during the last few months, and calls aren't dropped. Google Voice does what it says it does, and it does it well.

We have used Google Voice ever since it was still GrandCentral (Google acquired GrandCentral in July 2007) and couldn't be happier with the service, so here is our rundown of what you can expect once you get your own Google Voice number.

How Does it Work?

Just like GrandCentral did when it was still available, Google Voice (GV) will assign you a new number, and then you can set up GV to forward calls from this number to your cell phone, home phone, or office.

For calls within the US, GV also allows you to place free calls, though instead of running through a flash widget or a desktop app, GV will actually call your phone and then place the call, so you will still use your cell phone minutes. Google Voice also offers cheap international calls with prices that rival those of Skype and Vonage.

Nothing on your own phone changes, of course, so when you place a call, your home or cell phone number still appears on your friend's caller ID, though you can always opt to call your own GV number first and then connect the call from there.

GV features a Gmail-like, stripped down interface that puts transcribed voicemails and recent calls at the center of the screen, with the ability to also see recently placed and received calls, your contacts, and other standard features you would expect from a telephony app.

Our Favorite Features

• transcribed voicemails: whenever somebody leaves a voicemail, GV will transcribe the message as best it can (this only works for English right now). These transcripts are then forwarded to your email account and you can also opt to receive an SMS notification.
• listening in to voicemails: whenever you receive a call and decide to let it go to voicemail, you can also choose to listen in and even pick up the call if it turns out to be an important message. This feels just like the old days when answering machines with tapes were still a novelty.
• call screening: one neat option in GV is the ability to screen calls. If you activate this feature, callers will be prompted to leave their name once they call, and once you pick up the phone, GV will play the name back and you can choose if you want the call to go to voicemail or if you want to actually speak to this person. You can opt to let all unknown callers who are not in your Google address book go through this procedure or just those calls from callers who have blocked their caller ID.
• recording calls: at any time during a call, you can press 4 and the call will be recorded. This only works for calls you receive on your phone for now, and doesn't work for outgoing calls.
• conference calls: just ask participants to call your GV number and once more callers call in, you can just conference them in - this works for up to 4 callers.
• switching phones: if you want to switch phones during a call (say you took a call on your home phone and decide you want to take a walk and continue the call on your cell), just press * and all the other phones will ring.
• SMS: you can send and receive text messages from your GV account
• integration with Google Contacts
• it just works: the call quality is good, we didn't experience any outages during the last few months, and calls aren't dropped. GV does what it says it does, and it does it well.

But What About Making Calls from my Phone?

As we mentioned above, making calls from your own phone will still display your old caller ID, but at least if you have an iPhone, you do have the option to use GV Mobile, which provides a nice phone interface and comes in a free (iTunes link) and paid version (iTunes link).

A Few Things We Would Like to Change

• the ability to set your cell phone to display your GV number in the caller ID  - this is still a big barrier for users who might otherwise be willing to switch. As long as your old number still appears in the caller ID, others will continue to call you on that number and will continue to route around your fancy new GV account with all its bells and whistles.
• no call chains: you can't set one phone to ring first and then, when nobody picks that up, transfer the call to the next number (GrandCentral offered this feature)

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This week, John Fontana of Network World reported that Google has reserved 1 million phone numbers with communications and information services company Level 3. The company has not announced anything yet, but on the GrandCentral website it says "if you are a GrandCentral user, over the next few days you will be prompted to upgrade to Google Voice". These look like clear signs that it is getting ready to go live any time now, so check those emails and get ready to claim your number, they could go fast.

Judge for yourself. Below are three videos that show how easy it is to place calls, set up a conference call and how the phone calls are routed. There is some speculation about future integration with Android and we are certainly looking forward to that as well.

There's no good reason for phones to continue to exist as distinct devices for voice communication. For all intents and purposes, there will be no phones in the future - only portable data devices used for all kinds of communication, voice being an equal partner with the web.

Would you carry a device with you if it was larger than an iPhone? Many people say they would - if the gains in features and productivity increased a lot as well. Maybe this is just a Netbook, but maybe it's something in between.

We expect things to change drastically in the near future. If someday the concept of a voice-centric device called a "phone" will seem antiquated, here are three factors we expect to contribute to that shift.

Voice and Data Cannot Remain Separate

Forcing users to pay one fee for voice communication through telephony and another fee for use of other data like the web is not a tenable long term business model. It's comparable to expecting music fans to pay for music when it's all available for free online.

At least when it comes to portable communication there is a clear need for customers to pay for something, connectivity. Voice and web access are all just digital data, though, so it's not realistic to expect people to pay twice in the long term. Paying separately for home internet service probably won't happen forever, either.

The introduction of the Skype iPhone app last week showed how much demand there is for integrated communication. The fact that voice calls can't be made with the app using 3G is just not the kind of barrier that stands much of a chance in the face of tech history marching forward.

Which OS is most likely to integrate voice and other data first? Not the iPhone - but maybe Android. Android on a tablet, Android in your gaming portal, Android in the side of your refrigerator. Why not?

Voice and the Web Will Become Inseparable

If you've tried out Google's iPhone app then you can see that quality web search by voice is a clear winner. Different mediums are substantially more appropriate for different circumstances; just like text is far more scannable and better suited for rapid sharing of information than video or audio are, voice is a much faster and more convenient way to search the web than text input into a keyboard is.

Google believes its voice interface is a very important part of its future and Tim O'Reilly identified it at the 5th anniversary of the Web 2.0 conference as one of 5 key technologies he believes point past the current era of the web.

Voice and the web go hand in hand together like peanut butter and jelly. Google voice search and the Google OS are a natural integration as well. There's no reason for that union to occur within the limitations of the "phone."

Demand for Web Access Is Ubiquitous

Remember when only yuppies had cell phones? These days a substantial portion of the people in the world don't have smart phones with Web access - but for how much longer will that be the case? As hardware prices fall, the wall between voice and other data comes down and the mobile advertising puzzle gets solved - web access in your hand held communication device will be close to universal.

Who's going to figure out how to monetize ads, probably search ads in particular, on portable devices? Android seems as likely a candidate as any.

Why Android?

Android seems a particularly likely candidate to usher in this future because it was engineered to be open to 3rd party developers because Google has access to huge distribution channels and because Google is a company with a business model fundamentally based on plenty - not scarcity. The more the web grows, the more Google can advertise there. That's very different from the phone model, including Apple's model.

We look forward to seeing what comes next with Android on it, the future seems relatively open ended so far.