They offer service to Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil (Rio De Janerio), Canada, China, Christmas & Coco’s Island, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland (Warsaw), Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, UK and USA, with more coming soon.
Author: David Shanske
All posts by David Shanske
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Free International Phone Calls by Calling Iowa
AllFreeCalls.net offers free calls if you call a number in Iowa. As Techcrunch reports, the founder created his own telephone company in Iowa under an FCC kickback scheme that gives telephone companies a portion of the fees generated from every inbound call to an Iowa number. So, when you call them, a portion of the fees go to the company, and they use it to cover the international calling fees.
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Comcast announces collaboration with Tivo
Comcast announced on Monday that its digital video recorder boxes will now feature Tivo software. It allows their subscribers, for an extra charge, to search for and record their favorite shows, suggest ones they might enjoy, and schedule recordings from the internet.
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Seven New Year's Resolutions for Your PC
Lifehacker recently came up with its New Year’s Resolutions…things people should do but don’t for their computers.
- Regularly back up your hard drive – We know we should…but we don’t. Admittedly, we store our data on a mirroring RAID array, but that doesn’t make us any safer if disaster comes
- Set up a self-repairing hard drive – Schedule your computer to run repair programs regularly, including things liek defragment, drive checks, etc.
- Clean out your hard drive – Over time your hard drive becomes full of programs and files you don’t use…get rid of them. If you aren’t using it, delete it or back it up to optical media.
- Organize your virtual filing cabinet – Now that you’ve cleaned things up…time to organize what you have into a good and easy to work with hierarchy.
- Keep your hard drive clean – You just did all this work…you had better work to keep it that way.
- Encrypt your private data – Protecting your important information from prying eyes is important…especially if you have a laptop.
- Securely Track Your Passwords – First…make sure your passwords are not easy to crack…and then secure them somehow. A password program, such as KeePass, among others, can create a secure password vault.
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Into the Wood
A while back, we commented on USB flash memory drives made of wood. We recently found this blog entry at Amazon. With the prevalence of cheap plastic casing, white, black, and brushed aluminum finishes…the wooden finish seems to have lost its appeal.
Perhaps the author has a point… but the current offering of wood encased products is somewhat lacking, although there appears to be a market. It inspired us to think of one forum in which wooden enclosures are still popular.
Not long ago, we thought about buying a cocktail arcade cabinet kit from ArcadeDepot.com. They manufacture kits and assembled empty arcade cabinets and we thought it would make an amusing dining table. It is one of the few options for a wooden enclosure that makes hardware a part of your furniture.
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Improving Cell Reception
Ask Meta Filter provided some advice on legitimate ways to boost cellphone reception indoors. We thought we’d expound on it.
- The first and easiest solution is…if your cell phone doesn’t work where you want it to…perhaps a new provider is in order.
- Second of course is a passive antenna and some low-loss antenna cable. Of course, it does limit your mobility, as you want the antenna to not move and you want to move. You can also tie two antennas together via a low-loss antenna cable…which is a passive repeater
- Slate.com covered amplified repeaters, which can be prohibitively expensive for the frugal techie, costing several hundred dollars at least. However, if your cell phone is your primary phone, you might think it worth it.
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Walmart Continues to Push CFLs
One of our first posts reported on Walmart’s efforts to promote energy efficient lighting, something they consider a win-win situation. Now, as our friends at the Consumerist and the New York Times report, Walmart continues to throw its energy-efficiency into the effort.
CFLs have their problems…they take a few moments to get to full brightness…dimming technology for them is not fully developed…but they do come in a wide range of colors and sizes. The spirals have been covered by globes to hide their CFL origins.
We recently put through an order to 1000bulbs.com. The dimmable bulbs we ordered were on backorder, and it took a few weeks for them to show up…and we fully plan to detail our recent experiences with these bulbs.
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Metering for Fun and Savings
The New York Times has a fascinating article on energy metering in today’s paper. Many groups are installing smart power meters that provide energy pricing hour by hour instead of a set monthly rate.
Since energy prices can fluctuate rapidly based on demand, a frugal individual can lower their electric bills and help the environment at the same time. Win-win situation.
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Software for Starving Students
We’re always on the hunt for free stuff. Lifehacker was nice enough to point us to a site which has put together a package of free software with an installer on a CD. Software for Starving Students.
It includes some games, utilities, productivity…etc. Some of the programs we may be reviewing later.
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Unlocking Your Phone
With the recent decision stating that cell phone companies have to provide unlock codes for their phones, allowing all the functionality they’ve restricted to be restored, as well as transfer to another network, we thought it would be a good idea to give people a place to start.
PC Magazine presented this article on How to Unlock Your Phone. This includes a series of unlocking services, sites, etc. For free options, try Howardforums.com, a good forum for all things mobile phone…including hacks, reviews, advice, etc.
Of course, most of the unlocking services mentioned only work for GSM phone…the ones used on networks such as Cingular and T-Mobile. CDMA Phones, used by Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, etc, have to be individually authenticated by their networks. So, even if your existing provider lets you unlock the phone, your new provider will not add it to the list of approved phones on its network.
Most providers sell different versions of the same phones, using their own custom firmware(the software that operates the phone) which could be changed to the specific firmware for a different carrier. The carriers refuse to cooperate.
For those of you who use GSM phones, check out this ABC News article on the Best Unlocked Phones. Just bear in mind that without contract you will be paying more to secure them. Of course, that means no contract, which may be to your advantage.
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Anonymous and Free Phone Numbers
Some say that with the prevalence of cell phones and internet telephony, that landlines are dead. We aren’t quite sure about that…but technology is continuing to enhance the old system.
Craigsnumber, apparently created with the goal of allowing those posting on popular site Craigslist to provide a phone number that will keep them anonymous, offers a temporary extension, although with limited area codes, that will be forwarded to your real line. You can specify the length of activation. Certainly a simple and uncomplicated service. Lifehacker has more details.
There are alternatives, of course. Freedigits.com offers a free VoIP phone line with a random US number. Their goal is to encourage you to go with them for paid service, but there are no strings attached to their free offer.
Another option is Grandcentral.com, which also offers both a free and a paid service. Their philosophy is one phone number…for life. Their free service offers three phones, caller ID, the ability to switch phones in the middle of a call, custom ringtones while waiting for you to pick up, the ability to record any call with a single button press, as well as SPAM blocking. The free service has a limitation of 100 minutes a month of calls received through them. It doesn’t offer any service not offered elsewhere as add-ons to other paid services, but it is a good option for some. Lifehacker reviews it here.
If none of these options work for you…you can always just pay for VoIP service. Just remember, despite our skepticism about customer service…if you give them money, they are supposed to help you. If you don’t…they have an excuse not to.