Leave a comment and win a free pass to the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference in San Francisco. Be sure to leave your email address, Skype name optional, so we can contact you. I'll pick a commenter at random on Monday and post the results.

If you couldn't make last week's Consumer Electronics Show, compare the hundreds of photos on flickr to my photos: I have all the phone and software geek shots, while everyone else seems to get the celebrities, parties, and hot people. (Reminder to self: prioritize.)

Apple upgrades GarageBand to include iChat interview recording. At the moment I can't imagine any product better for podcasting that iChat AV with GarageBand 3.0. It is now more sophisticated at capturing audio, video snapshots, manipulating the audio, and publishing than Skype alone or with any four other products. Sharing conversations is fundamental to serving the enterprise market and to continued access to pioneers and early adopters of social media.

China Tech News tips that eBay China launched their Skype promotion site. Here is the banner.

IT Conversations is carrying an interview with Skype marketing vp Saul Klein. Haven't heard it yet; what do you think? Thanks to John Maas for the tip.

Skype Journal is not Skype. We cannot refund money you paid to Skype, reset your password, or make Skype legal in your country. Please recognise our limits; we sure do.

Stuart Henshall is off to Wien for a few days, so if you're in the area, Skype him this weekend (GMT+1).

Jan in Malaysia posted about a new Skype-blocking filter for Ipoque's network management software. Notice the LAN admin companies aren't making your Skype conversations better (the huge market opportunitiy) but are charging you to get in the way of your employees talking with each other and with customers (the horror!).

AmiciPhone is in a new beta. Skype-like functionality but working to beat Skype's network performance by an order of magnitude in areas like file transfer. Remember, you don't want to be the last carrier standing without a softphone.

9skype blogs that Netopia's PC/Mac remote control software Timbuktu is now Skype compatible. English via Google or by Yahoo!.

Last, I'm not the best joke teller, but this hillarious blonde joke about using Skype and penguins sets the bar high.

Skype Journal is pleased to announce our sponsorship of the first O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. We'll have at least three of our people there, maybe more. And we hope to see you there too. January 24-26 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. One of the reasons we're sponsoring is to offer our readers a 40% discount; use the code "etel06sms" when you register. If you're going, please leave a comment so we can meet you at Etel.