CHICAGO, Dec. 18, 2007 - Employees may get away from the office during the holidays, but most of them will be taking their work with them. Just as technology has made it simpler than ever to work on the go, it's also easing holiday stress.

Global conferencing leader aligns with Sustainable Development International and United Nations Environment Program for worldwide communications initiative

As CO2 emissions, pollution, global warming and a number of other factors threaten the environment and our future, an increasing number of people and businesses have shifted to a greener awareness that includes choosing alternative energy resources and finding green technology solutions to reduce their carbon footprints.

InterCall, a subsidiary of West Corporation and one of the best-known conferencing service providers in the world, is reportedly using Ditech Networks' (News - Alert) voice quality solutions to enhance voice quality on its VoIP network.

With the proliferation of VoIP technology to generate web conference calling services, the latest conference calling technology news is encouraging for budget maintenance, reducing travel costs, and gathering the right information at the right time to make informed decisions. Web conferencing combines the best elements of face-to-face meetings with audio teleconferencing, which makes the conference experience better because of the web conferencing tools designed to enhance the quality and productivity of the meeting. For example, during a web conference, data is transmitted via the Internet to the participants' computers, and this data sharing lends itself to stronger collaborative sessions. Small businesses need to maximize their workforce in order to gain the most return for their dollar and by using web conferencing services, their bottom line and competitive edge should improve.

Up until recently, you needed an enterprise grade video conferencing hardware solution costing thousands of dollars to achieve near broadcast quality video conferencing. Polycom has changed all that with their new PVX software (about $150) which brings the same type of video quality to personal computers (with CPUs above a Pentium 4 2.2 or Pentium M 1.6) as the expensive hardware based solutions. Perhaps if Sean Maloney of Intel had used PVX to demonstrate video conferencing over WiMAX using his own companies flagship CPUs, he wouldn't have had such a embarrassing display of poor picture quality and jerky video in front of a thousand Interop attendees. I personally winced every time Maloney kept boasting that it was "8 mbps video" that we were being treated to when it looked more like broken-up 128 kbps video being projected on the wall. It was ironic that Maloney pinned the blame on the CPU for the choppy video instead of the WiMAX network he was demonstrating because one has to wonder what message Maloney was giving about his own CPUs.

As part of its ongoing antitrust case against Intel, Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday served Skype with a subpoena demanding documents related to its deal to make one feature in Skype 2.0 available exclusively to Intel users.

Merrill Lynch is the prize in an increasingly competitive tug-of-war between Cisco Systems and Avaya over emerging Net phone services.

Workers are sharpening their multitasking skills--but the boss might not be so happy about how they're using them. Ninety percent of people who participate in conference calls find things to keep them busy besides following the discussion, according to a new survey from audio and video conferencing company Raindance Communications.

The Internet phone service also said it would make roughly $140 million in spending cuts over the next several months as it reduces spending on marketing and eliminates jobs.