Brady Forrest reports on ETel Launch Pad on his O’Reilly Radar today. Get an overview of each start-up, plus the results of the first-ever audience vote for Launch Pad favorites.

One of the companies that earned a big margin of the vote was Grandcentral, a company that offers telephone aggregation via one number and a very cool, web-based control panel. Read Brady’s overview of Launch Pad and discover some of the most innovative ideas in telephony today.

It’s the next best thing to being here. . . VoIP News blogger Tatiana is posting session overviews as they happen on site. If you were unable to attend ETel, or can’t make it to all the sessions, you can still learn some of the important information being communicated at the conference. Connect with ETel on VoIP News.

Dan York blogs about the outstanding program and important networking opportunities at ETel this week, and even identifies some of those “Who’s Who” types I mentioned earlier today.

Check out Dan’s namedropping and more on Disruptive Telephony.

Registration is now open for the inaugural O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) Conference, happening June 18 - 20 at the Fairmont in San Jose, California.

We’re launching the TOC Conference to raise the level of technology knowledge among book publishers and to spark conversation and creativity to shape the future of publishing, particularly new trends in publishing and emerging business models in publishing products and services.

The preliminary list of speakers is up, as well as tutorials. If you’re thinking of participating, just keep in mind that the early registration discount ends May 8.

Alec Saunders has posted an excellent and thoughtful overview of Stowe Boyd’s presentation at ETel this morning, “Communications Underload.” Among other pearls of wisdom, Boyd postulates that flow determines what is important and that,

Everything important will find its way to you many, many times: don’t worry if you miss it.

If this idea is true, what a relief! Read the whole post on saunderslog.com.

It’s opening day at ETel and the buzz is that the program this year is really interesting and unique. This has drawn attendees that include some of the who’s who of the telephony community (more on that later).

Event insider and co-chair Brady Forrest has offered his initial thoughts on the sessions he won’t want to miss at the conference this week. Get the scoop on O’Reilly Radar today.

“The public switched telephone network is now open to Web developers,” reports Thomas Claburn of InformationWeek.

That’s right, Jaduka’s new application programming interface makes it possible for developers to create web services that interact with the standard public switched telephone network.

For more information on this groundbreaking API announced at ETel today, read the story on InformationWeek.

To view the full press release, visit Jaduka.com.

Which is great news–unless you were planning to attend and didn’t get a chance to sign up before we closed registration. We’re trying to find more space at the Oregon Convention Center, and in case we find it, we’ve started a RailsConf waiting list. If you still want to attend, please add your name to the list and we’ll let you know if we are able to re-open registration.

“Over a steaming hot bowl of miso soup, it occurred to me that next week’s ETel Conference in San Francisco is a bit like a bento box,” writes Alec Saunders, “full of small portions of really delicious stuff that will no doubt leave you hungry for more.” Love it! Alec continues in his post to list some of the ETel sessions he finds most intriguing.

We’ve just revealed the finalists for ETel Launch Pad, which will kick off the ETel Conference the evening of February 27, 2007. The companies listed below will be showcasing their groundbreaking start-ups and innovative technologies to the telephony community at the event. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to be the first to learn the details!

* GrandCentral Communications (www.grandcentral.com)
* Peerant (http://peerant.com - coming soon)
* Flat Planet Phone Co. (www.flatplanetphone.com)
* Cellcrypt (www.cellcrypt.com)
* mySay (www.mysay.com)
* Jive Software (www.jivesoftware.com)
* Mig33 (www.mig33.com)

ETel Launch Pad is co-organized by Om Malik and co-produced by GigaOm.

For more information about ETel Launch Pad, visit:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/50/launchpad.html

Registration is now open for the 2007 O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, happening May 29-30 at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Come join us as we explore the future of geospace in high profile keynotes, lightning talks, panel discussions, demos, and lots of audience interaction. It’s the only place where neogeographers will mix with activists, researchers, VCs, entrepreneurs, and a variety of alpha-geeks.

The conference is in its third year and we’re planning the best lineup yet of outstanding visionaries in the field of new mapping. Back by popular demand is the Where Fair — a cool science fair-style event where developers of cutting edge, location-based projects will showcase their creations.

For more information on the Where 2.0 Conference, visit:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2007/

We hope to see you in San Jose!

The Call for Participation is open for RailsConf Europe 2007, happening 17-19 September in Berlin, Germany. If you’re a qualified Rails practitioner with insights and anecdotes you’d like to share with IT professionals and the Rails community in Berlin this year, you’re invited to submit a proposal.

Proposals should focus on helping attendees by teaching from experience. Any Rails-related topic will be considered. The deadline for submissions is April 2, 2007.

For more information or to submit a proposal, visit the web site: http://www.railsconfeurope.com/

If you’re using Rails, make plans now to attend RailsConf Europe. Registration will open in June.

O’Reilly Media and CMP Technology have just announced the addition of Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo to their 2007 lineup of Web 2.0 events. Given the large number of businesses in Japan interested in Web 2.0 technology, O’Reilly and CMP executives determined that the market was more than ready for this event. Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo is happening November 15-16, 2007, at Izumi Garden Tower in Roppongi, Tokyo.

In the same spirit as the other Web 2.0 events, Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo is designed to be the major annual Japanese gathering of the technical, design, marketing, and business professionals who are building the next generation web.

For more information on Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo, read the press release.

For future updates, visit the event web site at: http://www.cmptech.jp/web2expo/eng/

Here’s a great chance for all you phone hackers to show off your brilliance! StrikeIron, Sylantro, and Tellme have teamed up with O’Reilly to organize a Mashup Contest during ETel. Any original application that combines content with telephony services is qualified for submission.

All entries must be submitted by February 21, 2007. Contest finalists will demonstrate their mashups on March 1, the last day of ETel. The winner will be chosen by ETel attendees immediately thereafter. Over $3,000 in prizes will be awarded to the creator of the winning mashup. So go for it - and be as clever as you can!

Read ETel co-chair Surj Patel’s enthusiastic take on the contest on O’Reilly Radar: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/phone_mashup_co.html

For more information on the contest and how to enter, please visit: www.strikeiron.com/developers/contest.aspx

Internet Event Pioneers Launch First Tradeshow and Conference to Address Web 2.0 Community in Japan

SAN FRANCISCO — O’Reilly Media, Inc. and CMP Technology, co-producers of the annual Web 2.0 Summit and newly created Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, today jointly announced the launch of a new conference and tradeshow that will bring together top leaders and technologists who are building, leveraging and driving the Japanese web economy. Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo, scheduled for November 15-16, 2007, will be held at Izumi Garden Tower in Roppongi, Tokyo.

Read the full announcement here.

It’s no secret that our society is being affected by technology in a big way (witness how bloggers affected the last U.S. election). Ergo, O’Reilly Media has agreed to bring this conversation into the upcoming ETel conference program. Here’s how FreeTel’s organizers describe this special event:

FreeTel: Calls for Change is a one-day miniconference (February 27th @ ETel) bridging emerging telephony applications and social change. A series of talks and workshops targeting activists, advocacy, fundraisers, and organizers will be held by technical innovators who have been successfully using telephone networks as a powerful tool for social change.

For the full story behind FreeTel, check out the O’Reilly Radar blog.

Grab a seat while you can–we just opened registration thirty-five minutes ago, and we’ve already broken all previous conference sign-up records!