How to approach VoIP

Lately nearly everybody tries to get into the VoIP arena. Some take the same route as Skype (like Yahoo, MS, Google etc.) and some try to find other ways to make VoIP happen.

Yahoo works together with at&t in the U.S. What i find let’s say interesting due to the fact that at&t has it’s service CallVantage. But they provide DSL together so they provide VoIP… I think. Basically they try to make call to traditional phone cheap. Having better prices than the at&t service. But the prices seem to change quickly in these days…

Next we have Lycos. They call it Lycos Phone and focus on calls and payed video content (?). The trick for them is that they work together globe7.com. Through this services you are able to watch advertising or participate somewhere and get free minutes voucher for it. What could virtually make your calls free then… But looking into all the ads all the time to save the 1-2 cents / min.? Decide yourself…
Great feature is that you get your own VoIP Number reachable from e.g. land line phones, a voice box and fax receiving once you have become a Gold Member.

Than we have a totally different approach to VoIP: Jajah. Like a combination of VoIP over the Internet and a land line phone. You simply type in your number and the number you do like to call. Jajah is then connecting the two and you simply pick up your own landline phone. The connection is established to the destination number and you have a cheap call AND use your existing phone. No headphone and mic needed! Nice!
And there is the recent attempt of Skype to get all of the market in making all calls free to any land line or mobile phone in the U.S. Beat this!

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The first open source movie: elephants dream

It is out! The first professional movie rendered with the open source 3D renderer Blender. You can download it here. It is also distributed as a Torrent. I have downloaded the 425 MB version in about 2 h. The HD version with 5.1 Surround Sound took a bit more than 4 h. The original servers have been overloaded by requests at that time….

All production files and the movie are free for the public and can be viewed, studied and reused.

The film is about 10 mins long and very cool to watch with super nice sound effects! I do strongly recommend watching it!

This shows that “the public” is now able to produce professional film 3D rendered movies without the big pocket full of money! Let us see more!! Spread the word.

You enjoyed it, too?!

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Go to the Songbirdnest

Songbird Screenshot I am now using Songbird for some month to play my music. And wanted to use my blog to maybe add some more people to the user base! Try it out!They are still working on a bug in Mozilla Firefox getting fixed to move on…

Firefox is the base for Songbird and extending it to a music player. And it is open source, too!!

Some call it the iTunes killer… Can you say that with Songbird being version 0.1.1? Let me know!

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VoIP Testrun

For some days now I very intensely tested different VoIP Programs and Services. And while there is still for sure some way to go to be really mainstream… You get already a lot out of the Services offered today!

Sure there is Skype (you can make free calls over the Internet and buy credits to make calls to normal land lines…) and now Gizmo. But many VoIP Service-Provider are coming up.

I even started to use different Provider depending on which country I am calling in.

A great and free prgram to combine different providers is x-Lite. I used it to connect two German (Web.de FreePhone & GMX NetPhone) and a US (Gizmo) provider. I was able to receive calls on my VoIP Phone number and make calls in both countries.

The big advantage is that you are able to dial 0800- (free call) and 0900- (toll call) numbers with some of these services not reachable through traditional land line calls from abroad! Additionally every service offers different prices for calls to different counties and you can make the cheapest call depending on where the call terminates.
I will add more to this topic as I work with these services.

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Is Music distribution changing?

The music industry is still unsure if they should change anything in their business model or move into completely new territory.
This article in “FAST Company” with statements from the music industry is showing that there is some movement happening: Fast Talk: Sounds of the Future

And new music matching services are coming up and grow in usage: Last.FM or Pandora (Article in FAST Company: Algorhythm and Blues)

But until now mostly the only real change that we have seen remains the added copy protection to the music disc….. Or?

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Your PC-TV: Yahoo! Go

Yahoo has launched a public beta of their new DVR-Music-Video-DPG Platform: Yahoo! Go. You get all the Content of Yahoo and more aggregated into a PC-Media Platform. The beta looks promising. You can even see what films are playing in a theater near you and watch previews. What else: share Photos, News etc.
But still I have the impression that we still speak of a PC not a TV with Internet…. What do you think? Is this the future?

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