Tag: Skype

Making and Receiving Calls Overseas

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Image representing Google Voice as depicted in...
Image via CrunchBase

For many of us, our phone usage has migrated from voice to text and data. Few phone calls are made. So, this means, either the higher costs of making a call are not an issue, since you will not make many calls, or you need an alternate solution.

Enter…at least for Android users, GrooveIP. (Market Link) GrooveIP, in conjunction with Google Voice, lets you make and receive calls using data on your phone. You set your Google Voice account to forward to a Google Chat account.

Google Voice is currently free to use for calls to the U.S. or Canada and will remain so through 2012. Rates to landlines in other countries are reasonable at less than 10 cents. To Cell Phones abroad, it is somewhat more costly.

For us, on our recent trip, we were able to use GrooveIP and Skype to make and receive calls as if we were in the United States. Some people, aside from some tinniness on the line, had no idea we were even out of the country.

The common international alternative is Skype. Skype offers pay per minute and subscription plans. However, like Google Voice, the charges to mobile numbers in countries other than the U.S. or Canada are more expensive, and not included in their subscription plans.

To be fair, we have to remind you that neither of these are 100% alternatives for landlines or mobiles, as they do not provide 911 emergency support. But most carriers, even if you do not pay for service, allow emergency calls.

For text messages, Google Voice also offers free text messages sent and received. There are similar apps that can be used elsewhere.

It is why the future of voice for cellular phones, as has been gradually shifting for landline phones, is VoIP. But, like in many other industries, carriers will do the best to hold onto their business models instead of pivoting into new ones.

More on this to come…

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Adventures in Global Smartphone Travel – Call for Feedback

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For use on the English Wikipedia page LG Ally
Image via Wikipedia

Recently, we started making plans to travel out of the country for the first time since most of us here at the Weneca Media Group got a smartphone.

Since that time, the advice given about smartphones(once you get one, it is hard to go back), has rung true. The idea of being without one and its instant data access wherever we go seems a strange one.

However, most of us have selected a CDMA carrier. Mostly Verizon, but Jere over at Android Buffet has a Sprint phone. The majority of the world uses GSM as its standard, rendering these phones useless. However, Verizon offers a limited series of global phones, including the Droid 2 Global and the Droid 3, both available in the Gadget Wisdom collection.

So, our conversation started with Verizon. Despite the fact Vodafone owns nearly half of Verizon, they do not offer a good deal on data. Signing up for a 50MB plan is $30.

Looking around at prepaidgsm.net, which summarizes rates around the world for prepaid gsm, there are better deals to be had. The downside is that you can’t keep your U.S. number, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

As a Verizon customer, we would need to unlock our Global phones. Verizon Global Tech Support advised they would unlock one phone every ten months for a customer in good standing. The phone would have had to have been on the account at some point. So, time to decide which phone is going overseas. Perhaps the one not being used in daily life…

If we wanted to chuck all data concerns out the window, Telestial offers inexpensive prepaid world SIM and prepaid phones, and can be purchased through Amazon. They offer both a U.S. and a U.K. phone number, with cards starting at $5. We may get one of these as a backup.

Our plan is to go for something decoupled from the phone for the U.S. issue, Skype. Skype offers a service called Skype-To-Go numbers. They will assign a number that will forward to an overseas number at your expense, which is significantly less than the cost of having same done by a phone company. You can even forward your normal or Google Voice number to this number, making it seamless for friends and business associates. It would also, if we set it up after arriving and purchasing a prepaid SIM card, allow us to use the cheap local plans, instead of other options.

What do you think? We haven’t done any of this yet, but what do you suggest?

Skype Updates its Linux Offering

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Image representing Skype as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Skype, long lagging in its Linux support, after nearly two years of nothing, released version 2.1 in Beta, bringing with it a multitude of new offerings. It shows that Skype is renewing its commitment to cross-platform support.

One of the most important and significant fixes is Pulseaudio support. Most distributions of Linux now use Pulseaudio, so having Skype not cause a conniption when it is use is a major improvement. Improvements in audio and video handling also improve the overall experience.

The reason it took so long was a complete rewrite of some sections of the code, and likely the lower priority placed on Linux support, which got renewed interest now that so many embedded devices and netbooks had been running it. They are working on providing a native 64-bit version, but they currently have a helper application to set up the 32-bit libraries on a 64-bit system so it will work.

They say there is more to come soon. We’ll be testing this new version soon.

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