At the 2008 Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) conference in Austin, New York Times personal-technology columnist David Pogue offered his thoughts on the topic. Speaking at the group's Past Presidents' Celebration, Pogue--one of the world's best-selling technology "how-to" authors--cited the convergence of phones and the internet, ubiquitous wireless, and Web 2.0 technologies as key tech trends with important implications for schools.

Voice over IP, or the ability to make phone calls over the internet, has driven down the cost of making calls by 30 percent over the last three years, Pogue said.

Skype, which is free software that lets you make calls from computer to computer, has been downloaded some 250 million times, and "it's huge for college kids," he said, because it allows them to call their friends from high school free of charge.

Having this capability is nice, Pogue said--but what really would be useful is if a version of Skype came on your cell phone, so you could make internet-based calls free of charge from wherever you are. The technology to do this exists, he said--yet "for some reason, the cell-phone companies are not interested in helping you avoid calling fees."

There is one exception, though: T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, which launched last June 29.

With this service, any time you're in a Wi-Fi hot spot, all your calls are free, Pogue said. What's more, he said, T-Mobile will give you a Wi-Fi box to use in your home or office free of charge, because the company wants you to give up your telephone land line--it's the only cellular provider that isn't also in the land-line business.

The HotSpot @Home service seamlessly hands off your call from hot spot to hot spot, or from a hot spot to a cellular network and vice versa, Pogue said. And if your call starts in a Wi-Fi hot spot but is transferred to a cellular network, it's still free of charge for the duration of the call.

Another service Pogue cited that takes advantage of the convergence of phone and internet service is Google Cellular, which is a no-cost way to eliminate those pesky $2 surcharges on your cell-phone bills when you dial 411 for information.

If you're looking for directions, or the telephone number of the nearest pizza delivery place, you can send a text message to Google at 46645 ("Google" without the "e")--and in five seconds, Google will send this information back to your phone at no charge, Pogue said.

The service also works for getting weather information (e.g., "weather austin"), flight information ("aa 152"), stock quotes ("amzn"), movie show times in your area ("shrek 44120"), word definitions, unit conversions, and currency conversions.

Pogue also highlighted various services that convert voice messages to text, and vice versa. He said he uses a service called Simulscribe, which automatically transcribes phone messages and delivers them via eMail. "I don't check my messages; they come to me--and they're written out," he said. Callwave is another software program that turns voice mail to text.