PhoneFromHere.com today announced a 5 year agreement with Digium. They have been working informally in the past. The goal is to improve and commercialize the embedded Java softphone created by Digium engineers. PhoneFromHere.com creates web call me button widgets for use on websites, blogs, social networking sites, etc. that not only enables visitors to call you but it protects your privacy as well.

Also, PhoneFromHere has a cool iGoogle 'Phone Home' widget currently in beta. Simply add the PhoneFromHere.com widget to your iGoogle homepage and use your laptop, headset and internet connection to place calls.

Interestingly, PhoneFromHere doesn't use SIP - instead they use Nomasystems' IAX2 opensource library. The IAX2 protocol was of course developed by Asterisk guru Mark Spencer from Digium with the goal of being able to traverse firewalls more easily & interconnect multiple Asterisk IP-PBXs in branch offices. But lest I fall into a SIP vs. IAX2 debate let me just share the rest of the news after the jump... PhoneFromHere.com, providers of customized real-time verbal communication for Websites and social networks, announced today that they are working with Digium®, Inc. The five-year agreement formalizes this relationship, which aims to improve and commercialize the embedded Java softphone created by Digium engineers.

“Digium continues to work closely with the development community which allows us to keep in tune with new innovations. Working with PhoneFromHere.com is another good example of this,” said Jim Webster, Director of Technology Partnerships at Digium. “PhoneFromHere.com has a specific expertise that will help Digium add value to another one of its many assets.”

The code will be used to empower PhoneFromHere.com’s verbal communication application. PhoneFromHere.com gives Web users the opportunity to leverage person-to-person (or person-to-group) speech within the context of a Website - increasing its traffic and stickiness by delivering worry-free, live voice chat opportunities. What makes PhoneFromHere.com different is that Web users are not required to download any software, surrender personal information, or even use a phone.

“The Digium code will greatly improve the audio quality of our technology. Plus, it comes from a prominent pedigree of code and developers that created the likes of Asterisk and IAX, among others,” said Tim Panton, founder and CEO, PhoneFromHere.com. “This opportunity presents the chance for us to contribute new ways to add value to a particular pre-existing asset of Digium’s.”