HARTFORD, CT 12:15PM ET -- I’m sitting in Bradley International Airport, just north of Hartford, awaiting my flight out to the 3^rd Annual VoIP Developer Conference, which is scheduled to kick off tomorrow and will run Aug. 8-10, in Santa Clara, Calif. 

 

Among the big highlights expected from the show will be AOL’s upcoming announcement that the Time Warner subsidiary plans to open up the application programming interface (API) of its recently introduced AIM Phoneline service to third-party developers.  The news comes at a very opportune time for AOL given the fact that last week it unveiled a new strategy to shift away from its shrinking access business into more subscription-based and advertising-related revenue streams.

 

AIM Phoneline, a free service that enables AOL Instant Messenger users to receive incoming phone calls from ordinary landlines, was introduced by the Time Warner subsidiary in May. As part of the publicity campaign, I just found out that the company will be launching the AIM Phoneline Developers' Challenge, handing out $5,000 to the more innovative developers.

 

“The possibilities to innovate and create are limitless,” the company said.

 

More on this later…right now, I have to catch my flight

 

 

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.