The news this week will be interesting. With both CES and MacWorld flying high, there's a flood of stories about everything imaginable. I'm watching for the ones I think are key stories and trying to ignore the news that really just isn't relevant to unified communications. There are a few that may warrant brief mention, so I may post some I won't dig into very deeply.

Here are a couple that warrant a quick mention -

VoIP, Inc. and VariTalk Team Up on a Personalized Voice Marketing Campaign for the Hit Show 30 Rock
Fans Can Send Personalized 30 Rock Holiday Messages from Star Alec Baldwin

CHICAGO & ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--VariTalk, LLC and VoIP, Inc. (OTCBB: VOII) today announced the launch of a personalized messaging campaign for the new hit show 30 Rock, which premiered Wednesday, Oct. 11 on NBC and features famous actor and Golden Globe nominee Alec Baldwin and Saturday Night Live cast members Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan. The messaging campaign allows fans to send personalized phone and e-mail messages from 30 Rock’s Alec Baldwin through the website: http://30rock.nbc.com.

VariTalk is best known for the highly successful personalized phone message marketing campaigns for "Snakes On a Plane" featuring the voice of Samuel L. Jackson and for “Americas Next Top Model” featuring personalized voice messages from Tyra Banks. VoIP, Inc. is VariTalk’s preferred VoIP (Voice over IP) service provider for these campaigns.

Chris Cobbs | Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted January 9, 2007 PHOTOS

In the past month, technology provided by a Central Florida company has enabled more than 100,000 people to receive personalized messages from Alec Baldwin promoting his NBC television series, 30 Rock.

But Baldwin hasn't actually dialed a call or typed a message to any of them.

Instead, VoIP Inc. of Altamonte Springs has delivered customized messages from Baldwin to cell phones, standard landline phones and e-mail accounts across the country.

The promotional campaign is an example of new ways to use the Web to market products with personalized messages rather than conventional messages geared to the masses.

The message-delivery technology is part of a portfolio of services from VoIP Inc., which also counts Google Inc. and the NFL Network among its clients.

The local company, founded in 2001, now employs about 70 but could grow to 100 people in the coming year, while revenue is projected to grow 20 percent to about $60 million, Chief Operating Officer Shawn Lewis said.

"We originally chose Orlando because there was the talent here that we needed after Siemens laid off 300 software engineers," he said, referring to the giant German corporation that still employs nearly 5,000 people locally in several divisions, including communications and power generation.

VoIP Inc. takes its name from an increasingly important technology, VoIP, which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In simple terms, it means transmitting voice conversations over the Internet, or a computer network, rather than through dedicated phone lines.

"Everybody is looking for a niche to market in VoIP technology," Lewis said. "The current NBC marketing campaign is the very beginning of using this type of technology to make marketing more focused, directed and effective."

NBC hired VoIP Inc. along with Varitalk, a Chicago-based high-tech marketing agency, to create and deliver the new-fangled, Web-based campaign for 30 Rock.

"Varitalk's technology can take multiple voice recordings from a single individual and put them together in a single sentence," Lewis said. "We provide the ability to send those messages via e-mail, cell phone or standard phone call."

Baldwin recorded about 500 first names as well as phrases pertaining to a person's job and hobbies, which are used by Varitalk's new technology to create fill-in-the-blank computerized messages accessible at nbc.com/ 30-Rock.

Fans of the show can visit the site (http://30rock.nbc.com/) and enter information about a friend, then click a button and send a personalized message from Baldwin to the friend's phone or e-mail account.

"NBC is very pleased with the campaign," Shelley McCrory, senior vice president of comedy series for NBC Universal Television Studio, said in an e-mail.

"Fans of the show are passionate. Allowing them to send content they create and personalize, using the voice of Alec Baldwin, is a blast for the audience, leading to organic, word-of-mouth promotion for 30 Rock."

A couple of Central Florida women who have received messages from Baldwin had similar reactions.

"I was at work, and hearing his voice was a surprise, because the caller ID said it was [my] daughter" who forwarded the message, said Sharon Howard of Casselberry.

Howard was familiar with the technology, having previously received a similar message from Samuel L. Jackson promoting the movie Snakes on a Plane.

Another local businesswoman, Tina Wolpow, thinks it'll appeal more to the younger generation.

"The idea was cute," said Wolpow, who works for Art of the Party, a local event planner. "I can see how fun it would be for college kids. My 18-year-old would think it's awesome."