Last night, my 8 year old son and I hooked up a new video telephony system to our home PC. I was reaching for the directions while he just went ahead and clicked on the right buttons on the computer, informing me that he was smarter! There isn’t much that is wireless about this, except that this technology allows you to make an audio or video call to any kind of phone - wireless, voice-over-IP or a standard phone.

The system, called IVE (pronounced Ivy) is from Sony Electronics and a company called Glowpoint and was just launched today.I spoke with David Trachtenberg, Glowpoint’s CEO and Mike Brandofino, the CTO as well as with Eric Murphy, vice president for integrated visual communications at Sony Electronics. They explained the service lets you make free, unlimited video and voice calls worldwide. The strategy, of course, is to build up a big base of users. Then, with a community in place, IVE will start hosting advertising and perhaps make you listen to an ad before initiating a phone call.

There are also upgrades that buy you special features and no advertising for $9.95 per month or $19.95 per month. For now, the free version is just fine. The companies are hoping to start raking in customers, by leveraging Sony’s distribution network.

What makes this service interesting is that unlike other Internet-based communication applications, this service combines VoIP with video. It lets you make a call not by connecting to some obscure IP address but by, keying in a phone number - a process we are all accustomed to. You are no longer limited to talking only to other video users on the same proprietary service.Instead you can call other standards-based video users and even those who do not have video access or webcams.

I generally liked the service, though the people I called told me that when they spoke, they heard an echo. IVE has told me that there is a way to remedy that - I’ll try. A nice feature is the service’s Video Call Mailbox. Here, video and voice callers can leave a video or voice message when an IVE user is not available. IVE users can also personalize their full-motion video outgoing messages.

This is another step on the way to convergence - where we all communicate via video over any kind of device and any kind of network. You can read more about IVE and download it too, by clicking here.