Tru phone introduces unlimited plans to india mobiles

Truphone,once a great Free Mobile VOIP Service lost the ground when they stopped offering free mobile voip calls to 40 countries. However they are now back in the VOIP market with a flat monthly billing Unlimited Calling Package which included 40 countries around the world including India,Pakistan, bangladesh and many more.



If you don't know what TruPhone is, its basically a Mobile VOIP Service that means you need to have a Mobile which supports Wifi and SIP. Truphone also works over GPRS, but the call quality could be poor due to lack of bandwidth. Most latest Mobile Phones supports SIP and Wifi, mostly all N and E series Nokia phones do support SIP and VOIP Calling.

TruPhone's TruUnlimited Landline package starts at $17, however it does not include all the countries and calls are restricted to Landlines only. Don't worry, They also have a TruUnlimited Mobile package which offers unlimited calls to landlines + Mobiles in all the countries including India and most other asian countries.

You have two options to choose from:

TruUnlimited Landlines ($17)

Unlimited calls to landlines* in 38 countries worldwide. Call any time of the day, any day of the week. No long-term contract. Also includes unlimited calls to mobiles in 9 countries including the USA and China as a bonus!

TruUnlimited Mobiles ($40)

Along with unlimited calls to landlines* this plan includes unlimited calls to mobiles* in 69 countries, including the USA, the UK, Germany and China. Call any time of the day, any day of the week. No long-term contract.

IPhone Support
Truphone also has an iphone application which will enable international mobile calls over wifi. Cool feature.

Orange to provide TV channels on iphone

Over the Channel, Orange iPhone users will have access to 60 TV channels, live, in high definition quality, over the 3G network.

This is in relation to orange losing its exclusive rights over iphone contracts in france. From April 7th, SFR and Bouygues will be offering contracts for iphone in france as well. In order to add an added advantage, orange launches yet another scheme to attract users.

The application itself will be free from Apple’s store, whilst several of Orange’s tariffs will incorporate unrestricted access to the service itself. For those without the relevant tariff, an add-on can be purchased for 9 euros per month.

Navigating the channels takes full advantage of the iPhone’s interface. They can be browsed in a Coverflow fashion, and double tapping the screen will bring you out of the full screen view to access details of the programme, or alternative options.

NOTE: This is one more tricks by orange to take some money out of your pocket. If you have not upgraded your scheme to watch unlimited TV then don't even bother downloading the app. Its just a waste of money.

Simple video and music search

I came across this site, http://fizy.com/. A very simple, ad free, video search site. Just lists all the videos and music. The attractive thing about this site is the simplicity and the ease of finding something that you are really looking for. The search engine is pretty good in finding the songs and videos that you are exactly looking for.

The capture is an example of the ease of access to a video you are looking for. Buffering is simply amazing and it has two options for every result found, watch video or just listen to the song. A site to try out. Of course the videos and songs are limited as its a pretty new site i guess. But should pick up pretty soon.

One more music search engine, equally good and simple in its looks and use is http://songza.com/

Apple to release iPhone OS 3.0

Just came across the news that apple is going to launch iphone OS 3.0 which would include all the missing features of OS 2.x. Some of the main features are listed below

• Search your iPhone
• Cut, copy, and paste
• Send photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS*
• Read and compose email and text messages in landscape

Some of the other interesting features include stereo bluetooth, shake to shuffle, notes sync, youtube accounts etc. In addition, the iPhone Mail app is getting support for sending multiple photos simultaneously - they can be selected in the Photo gallery and then pasted into the message.

There are also new applications and tweaks to existing Apple software. Voice Memos allows you to use the onboard microphone or an external mic to record sound files. Stocks now has improved data and news stories, plus a landscape orientation view. Speaking of landscape, the keyboard is now available in landscape orientation across all “major apps”. Mobile Safari gets a password manager and form auto-fill, together with new phishing protection, while Calendar gains support for the CalDAV format (as used by Google and Yahoo!) and .ics subscriptions. Notes can by synchronized via iTunes to a Mac or PC, and there’s newly added YouTube account support with favorites, sharing and subscriptions.


New : Google Maps API are released (including turn-by-turn direction support, though only if the developer brings their own mapping data). This will enable developers or companies to develop navigation software for google maps which will transform iPhone into a GPS navigator. One of the most expected features coming into life.

Movies, Videos, Entertainment - OVGuide.com

Well if you are looking for sites where you can watch free movies, free TV serials, bollywood stuff etc., then heres the site for you, a collection of all the movie screening and video sharing sites that you would ever find over the internet. www.ovguide.com


I watched a couple of movies through this site till now. Believe me, the movie you want you will find it. The interesting part of this site is the search functionality. You could just type the name of the movie or TV series that you wish to find, and it lists all the search results from relevant movie/video sharing sites. I never thought that internet would have so many online sites sharing movies for no cost.

If you have a decent broadband connection, then this site would be of interest to all the movie lovers out there.

Some of the sites listed in this I found interesting were

Movie Lab TV

DivX movies

Good site to check out!!!

Sync up your life - Dmailer

I stumbled across this when I was looking for a new development project. Dmailer is a software which comes preinstalled on all the Western digital hard drives, Sandisk drives. Of course its a trial version for 30 days, after which you need to buy it. Its an useful utility to back up your harddisk and sync you computer data on to your harddisk.

With Dmailer Sync software you can synchronize & save all your personal data such as your files, photos, music, emails, contacts, calendars, Favorites/Bookmarks and even your desktop background, to your potable storage device (USB key, external hard disk drive, SIM card, mp3 player…). Tried it recently and its quite good, offers an email client which you can set up and be updated on any PC.


Apart from dmailer, I came across a set of relating interesting technologies. Portable applications which will work from your USB key! To be more precise, this technology allows you to install an application on to your mobile HD. Now this HD acts as your personal computer, which can be plugged into any other computer. The data you browse or create using these applications, will be stored on your mobile HD rather than the computer you are browsing on. Cool stuff... You just dont need to install any software on to the PC which you would be using. Some companies which deal with such technologies are listed below










These sites offer software packages that you could just install on your mobile harddisk or a usb key. The package comes with a preinstalled set of application, of course offering addon capability.Try it out when time permits, its free.

A skype Update - Better voice quality

Skype has finally released SILK, a New Skype-designed and developed default audio codec for all Skype-to-Skype calls. SILK is currently used in the latest version of Skype. If you don't have latest skype version, I strongly suggest you download one, its way better than older version and has superior audio quality.

Skype claims that with SILK, a super wideband audio codec it redefines the entire VOIP market by giving the best audio quality on VOIP calls with almost 50% less bandwidth usage.

What did they achieve with SILK codec:

-improved audio bandwidth going from 8 kHz to 12 kHz, meaning that a SILK conversation sounds like you are in the same room as the person you are speaking with. SILK can go upto 24 Khz.
-provides real-time bandwidth scalability to deal with degraded network conditions

-balancing codec optimization between voice, music and background noise, each of which can have an impact on the overall user experience.

-delivering a robust solution that delivers a more consistent audio experience, regardless of network conditions and an individual user’s voice signature

Skype is now expecting that industry and third party application developers will adopt SILK as a standard in wideband audio. SiLK is available for FREE. It would be interesting to see SILK adoption with Trixbox, Asterix and the likes with wideband hitting the entire VOIP world.

Scribd - A document sharing site

Many of you may have come across this site, but I recently discovered its worth when I was searching for a study document for a course. Man this site really has a lot of documents, Documents on any subject you may need, it is there. The search functionality is quite good and returns relevant results to your search.


The best part is that you can download documents in pdf format, embed a document in your blog. You can follow recent updates from scribd on their blog site http://blog.scribd.com/ . Apart from their search one could browse through a vast category of books if you don't have any particular subject in mind. Simply a great online tool to learn and spread the knowledge around by uploading your documents online.

Of course you can also buy ebooks apart from the free ones they have. If you didnt know about this site, do check it out.

Watch Live Cricket streams and Highlights

eCric.Net
I have been using this site for quite some time now. Its been one of the best sources of live streaming cricket links. Frequently updated with live link to every ongoing match. Although the server may be down at times due to heavy traffic, otherwise it works like a charm. I would recommend this site.


Another point to be noted. What if you miss the live cricket match, don't worry, you can always catch up with highlights of all the matches within a day or two of the live broadcast. Has helped me to follow cricket even when I am abroad. No hassle of signing up or registering, just go to the page and stream to your wish.

Video sharing Sites

Some video sharing sites that Ive come across till now. Click on image to visit the specific site. Am just sharing the sites which I feel are good.

Hotmail on your desktop

Microsoft has launched an e-mail client, similar to outlook. This is yet another program which can manage email account. Although hotmail does not offer pop settings, this program works as a normal email client, with the default configuration for your hotmail account. You just need to have a free hotmail account. Additional accounts like gmail etc can also be added/configured


Click here to go to the download page.

Watch non-stop videos with inifinitube

Here's an addition to youtubes' videos. Infinitube.net claims to play videos non-stop. All you have to do is to enter a search string. Infinitube searches for relevant youtube videos on youtube and creates a playlist which is played nonstop. The buffering is quite fast when compared to youtube.

Amazingly, infinitube doesn’t just let you play videos non-stop. It also lets you watch videos full-screen if your heart so desires it. If you want to visit the video on the original YouTube page, there’s a page for you to go to. Infinitube even supplies a link for you to download the video in .flv format, so if you have the correct codecs in your computer, you can watch your favorite videos offline too.

To sum it up, to use infinitube, all you have to do is to:

• Enter whatever search term you like into the searxh bar on top
• A list of videos related to the search term will come up.
• You can either choose to play the first video that comes up or check the playlist for something you like
• infinitube will go through the automatically generated playlist non-stop
• links are provided at the end of the playlist, so you can either visit the original link or download the video in .flv format.
• if you’re too lazy to search for your own keywords, the column at the righ lists some of the recent searches, or you can even seacrh infinitube for random playlists.

Infinitube has become one of my favorites and a convenient tool to watch videos with just a search string

Sprint joins the lay off race

Faced with persistent subscriber losses and questions about its long-term prospects, Sprint Nextel Corp. is slashing its already shrinking work force by 8,000 people as it seeks to cut annual costs by $1.2 billion.

The layoffs, announced Monday, are just the latest attempt by the nation's third-largest cell phone carrier to right its financial ship in the face of tough competition and a brutal economy. They come slightly more than a year after the company cut 4,000 jobs and closed 125 retail centers as Chief Executive Dan Hesse, then new on the job, aimed to show he was serious about streamlining operations.

Sprint said it expects the latest round of layoffs, which represent a 14 percent reduction of its 56,000 employees, will be largely completed by March 31. The company said it will take a first-quarter charge of more than $300 million for severance and other costs.

About 850 of the layoffs are voluntary, through employees taking buyouts. They will make up about $45 million of the total severance costs, the company said in a securities filing.

In addition to the cuts, Sprint said it will suspend its 401(k) match for the year, extend a freeze on salary increases and suspend a tuition reimbursement program.

Yet another company to join the race, hope the situation improves soon.

Tweaks to make firefox perform better

Some tricks to make firefox perform faster

Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for its cache feature

1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)

Increase the Speed at Which Firefox loads pages

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter.
(Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10.

This means it will make 10 requests at once.

3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)

Reduce RAM usage to 10MB when Firefox is minimized:

This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

Today I came across the term LTE viz Long Term Evolution. It is the technology into which the 3GPP and WCDMA networks will evolve. In other words, it can be called the 4th Generation network. I remember the times at University where I produced a report on the study of mobile technologies. The report contained technology till the convergence of the 3G and CDMA networks to WCDMA networks. Technology advances so fast that we are already thinking of 4G.

LTE has a new kind of access scheme, a new modulation technique OHFDM (Orthognal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and an antenna technology called MIME (Multiple Input Multiple Output) which should enable 10 times as many users per cell as 3GPP’s original W CDMA radio access technology. It also enhances the use of Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (ULTRA), which would increase the spectral efficiency by 4 times comared to ULTRA.

Would be quite interesting to work on emerging technologies like these, to be a part of it.

Microsoft slashes jobs due to economic cricis

Microsoft joins the rest of the world in layoffs, pertaining to the company's dismal second quarter financial results. Sales of microsoft windows have decreased considerably due to the economic situation. To help it cope with that lower base of demand, Microsoft said that it would lay off up to 5,000 employees, or about 5 percent of its work force — the first significant cuts in the company’s 34-year history.

Intel also a leader in chip industry announced the plan to lay of around 5000-6000 employees and shut down some production plants. Rather than recession companies are witnessing a fall in consumer base. Of course this seems to be a loop around effect, with individuals and business units cutting costs thus leading to declined sales. In turn this causes further unemployment. This may on for a while unless governments eases the cash flow into the economy.

Free.fr provides unlimited calls to Indian Landlines

With the voip call rates touching ground level, yet another French Internet Service Provider will be providing unlimited calls to landlines in India. This service is included in the monthly package of 30 euros. This promotion is scheduled to take off from Feb 2009. Free.fr is the largest Internet Service Provider in france having around 60% of customer base in france. Very well known for its connection speeds, Ive heard both positive and negative reviews about this operator. I my self have been using free for the past two years and haven't faced a problem till now. Although if a problem arises, I think the customer service is not that good, as this is what I heard.

Apart from providing unlimited calls to India, they also provider unlimited landline calling to 86 other destination all over the world. Check out their site to get more info. If you are in France and looking to change your internet service provider, then heres one reason to switch to free.fr, and join the huge community of free users in France.

Nymgo

Nymgo - Yet another cheap Voip provider

Nymgo is a recent addition to cheap calls to India. It is provided by Splendor Telecom UK. As the other voip providers have, nymgo also has a client to make calls over the internet. They have two kinds of plans, charge per min and flat rate monthly (of course theres a limit you can talk). The scheme which attacted me was the monthly plans. For example the asia and australia plan costs $20, which comes to approx 15euros. This plan gives you monthly talk time of 1750 minutes, hence the cost per min comes up to 0.008 euro cents, even less than 1 cent. This is the cheapest viop provider I have come across till now in comparison to Freecall.com (2 cents/min), justvoip and others.

Their pay as you go scheme is also quite comptetive compared to other schemes. The voice quality is superb. I havent had any problems with the voice quality. Although when I signed up there were acute problems with call setup, but the support team are very prompt in their reply and fix issues quite fast. I would say its a rather reliable voip provider.

BonnesMinutes - Make cheap calls to India from France

Yet another cheap call option from BonnesMinutes. Enables you to make cheap calls from landlines in france through an access number. They have promotional offer for calls to india presently. The rate you would be charged is local tarif. This differs from provider to provider (for eg, free, france telecom, neuf etc). I tried using free, but the number is not yet accessible through free. But generlly looking at the tarif for 0811 numbers, free charges 0.078eur for connection fee (one time), and 0.014eur/min (7pm to 8am) and 0.028eur/min(8am to 7pm).

Simply follow 2 simple steps to make your calls

1. Dial 0811 318 318 from your landline.
2. Dial the landline or mobile number in India and you are done.

All you need is a landline

Make easy and low cost international calls

I had been on the look out for some cheap options to make international calls to India, and bingo, recently I got hold of this site http://www.fizzcall.com. from some of my friends. Its a revolutionary Voip calling site, where calls are charged per connection and not per minute.


To mention some details about it.

• The charge per call is 0.25 cents and the calls last for 1 hour. This is the cheapest in the market for the moment.
• The call rate is the same irrespective of the phones used (mobile, landline etc)
• Internet is needed only to initiate the call
• Can dial calls directly from mobiles if you have data access facilities
• Calls can be placed between any two countries (just verify if your country is not listed in the unsupported numbers list)

This site has been discontinued as it was using BT to provide calls at such cheap rates. BT had to shut down its web21c SDK in order to cut down losses as it was going on an unsustainable business model.