How to make free phone calls from your handphone

My father just showed me something really cool, how to make free calls to land lines from the handphone. He bought a new Nokia phone, E51 which had WiFi and could also make SIP calls. His friend recommended he use www.voipstunt.com, a SIP provider.

So what's a SIP provider? Basically, they allow you to make calls over the internet to a phone number. What's interesting about voipstunt is that they all you to call land lines in Malaysia and a few other countries like in the US, United Kingdom and Australia for free. Just sign up and you get free 60 minutes the first time. Buying credits get you more free land line calls.

Now most phone won't be able to make SIP calls on their own so you have to download a program to make VOIP calls. I use Fring on my Iphone and it works for a variety of phones too like my father's Nokia E51. I downloaded the Fring software onto his phone and signed in using his VOIP account.

The nice thing about fring is that you can also chat and do voice calls to friends on your MSN Messenger, Yahoo messenger, Skype, ICQ, Google Talk and a variety of other messenger services. There is a dialer in there that lets you call any phone number either through SIP or Skype so you can choose to use your SIP or Skype account. I tried calling a friend in Canada with the skype account, it worked. Connection was a little dodgy at times but other than that, it worked quite well. I spend 30 minutes on the phone talking to someone in Canada for almost free! (I have to pay for my Wifi connection at home after all).

So now, if I go to anywhere with wifi, I can call a Malaysian land line for free. So I can call lets say my office from my handphone at home for free. Cool right?

My Iphone wish

I want an Iphone! I want an Iphone!

I had nothing much to do today so I when over to Midvalley. I was going to stop over at the Dell showroom to check out their laptops again but I got sidetracked. I stopped over at this PDA shop I had seen before. Previously, I was looking at an O2 Atom Exec. I asked them what PDA did they have that would allow me to surf the internet and use youtube and facebook. The guy took out from the bottom of the counter an Iphone. It was the 8GB model going for RM1999.

They had brought it in from the US and unlocked the software. They didn't provide any warranty for it except software support. Quite risky buying one, but then again the normal warranty only covers manufacturer defects. If you drop or break it, Apple won't cover it under warranty anyway.

I was so going to flip out my credit card and buy it on the spot. It took a lot of will power to pull myself away from the Iphone and walk away. The salesman was very dissapointed I think.

Next, I drove over the Digital mall in section 14 to buy some stuff. I saw someone also advertising the Iphone for sale. The 8GB model was RM2000 while the 16GB model was RM2400. This guy provided a one month warranty. Plus, their phones have the new january Iphone software updates.

It's either between a Dell notebook for RM3810 or an Iphone for RM2000. The notebook, can play games, edit videos, and surf the net. Iphone, I can just put it in my pocket and surf anywhere with WiFi. That includes my office and One Utama. Argggh... I can't decide!

Either way, I'm getting either one of these on my birthday.

Photoshop Express

Whoa, check this out. Photoshop has an online version now. I found out about it at Scott Kelby's website.




This is amazing! Photoshop is trying to muscle in onto the Flickr market with Photoshop Express. Okay, I already have Photoshop but having it online makes things so much easier. Now I wonder if I want to switch from hosting my pictures in Flickr to Photoshop Express.

Trawling the internet

I have a hobby. It's like fishing but I do it at home with my PC. It's downloading stuff of the internet. Back then, the big thing was to trawl peer-to-peer networks with Limewire searching for multimedia stuff. Its either songs, pictures or movies. The harder to get, the bigger the challenge.

I hardly use Limewire much these days. If I do, its mostly to find music files. The new thing now is downloading stuff of websites like rapidshare. It's a file sharing website where they host files. There are other famous sites such as Mega Upload but they have a limit for countries outside the US. I'm still trying to find an effective way to bypass the limit.

I go through internet forums and websites looking for people who post links for the files that have been uploaded into Rapidshare. Finding a working link is like getting a bite on your fishing line. When you finally download all the files and unzip them, it's like landing the big fish. I just like the challenge of finding stuff online.

If the information is online, I'll find it. I love weaving through google and wikipedia for research materials for work. Right now I'm writing a program proposal for a client. I love learning new things online, especially when my boss challenges me to come up with something new. I like reading about things I totally didn't know about... things that make me go 'aaah, I didn't know that!'.