If you recall, I interviewed Jeff Black at ITEXPO back in October and discovered that Talkplus had reverse engineered Skype and built their own Skype gateway so you can dial Skype usernames. Specifically, I wrote:

One final interesting thing we talked about at ITEXPO is that TalkPlus has built their own Skype gateway. In fact, when pressed further, Jeff mentioned they actually reverse engineered Skype's protocol. Although the Skype gateway isn't part of TalkPlus's launch today, Jeff explained that they have tested it in their labs and it's working very well. He explained that from the TalkPlus Java application you will also be able to view the presence of your Skype buddies and initiate a Skype call or even receive a Skype call or even initiate a chat session.

Today, Skype Journal posted a cool demo video of this in action. Go check it out. Now if only I could find some time to try out the closed beta. Actually, as of today, Talkplus is inviting West Coast mobile subscribers using Cingular, T-Mobile and Sprint to participate in the TalkPlus Sneak Peek, a public beta program for the company's first mobile service offering, the TalkPlus Number.