February 2006 Archives

I mentiioned the VOIP enhancement. Now this feature can be found in Shaw's site.

It is used to improve the VOIP quality. Shaw's Digital Phone does not use this QoS enhancement service. Its digital phone uses its own network and own QoS service.

I received my free Consumer Reports 2006 buying guide last week.
This article, "Protect Your Identity in Stores and Online", is very helpfull for everyone, I think.
The following is the excerpt of it.

It is very hard to go shopping without worrying about identity theft. Credit cards, debit cards, personal checks, and registrations can put you at risk of joining the estimated 10 million people who have been victimized in the past year. Fortunately, there are some simple steps you can take to reduce your vulnerability to identity theft.

One of the best shields against ID theft is being vigilantly aware of the status of your finances and your credit report.

Keep an eye on your accounts.
Check every items on your monthly statement.

Watch for monthly utility bills.
Check with your utility companies if a bill doesn't arrive on time.

In USA, everyone has the right to a free copy of their credit report once every 12 months from the each of the three credit reporting agencies - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. To order copies of your reports, go to the site authorized by the Federal Trade Commission, www.annualcreditreport.com. or call 877-322-8228.

Freeze your credit.
Some states have security-freeze laws that require credit reporting agencies to lock up your credit reports upon your request. This prevents anyone from seeing your report without your unfreezing it.

Keep your data to yourself.
Take care of your own security information.

I list following VOIP service providers, which I put into my research pool.

www.dialpad.com
www.teliax.com
www.freeworlddialup.com
www.sipbroker.com
www.ipkall.com
www.voiptalk.org
www.stanaphone.com
www.mutualphone.com
www.broadvoice.com

And also following service providers:

HOW-TO configure the SPA2002 with VoIPStunt for dummies.
First of all I would like to say thank you to this Guy Chris Järnåker. I don't know who he is, but his post is very helpful to make the free call dream comes true.

Step 1 Picking a VoIP provider
Calling over the internet will not work if you don't have a VoIP provider.
What is that? Well imagine this, your computer calls over the internet -to- a server somewhere -and- this server has a connection to the regular telephone network. The company that owns the server is the VoIP provider. They provide you with Voice over the Internet functionality.
Skype is such company, another one is Vonage, another one is Net2Phone. But then you have the smaller companies that try to beat themselves into the market, like VoIPBuster, by using "Call with us for free to landlines" deals. Simple business knowledge tell us that there is not such thing as "free" so what is this all about? Let me explain (my theory at least, the companies themselves won't tell us, duh)
A company, lets call them AAA, starts providing free internet calls to fixed phones in many countries. To be able to use their service you need to buy credit worth of €10 / $12 and it will be valid for 4 months. People flock to that company with their great deal.
After six months AAA has enough users to start earning money so they remove the expensive free destinations like China and countries in Africa, and start charging below average rates (so you'll still save money with them even though it's not for free)
But now AAA will not get that many more new users as it's not for free any more so then they start company BBB with the same initial deal as AAA. A new company, a new website, but using the same infrastructure as AAA. The old users of AAA are still satisfied and will probably stay but the new users rather go to BBB.

VoIPBuster is one of these companies (AAA), then came SIPDiscount, VoIPCheap.co.uk and last VoIPStunt.com
Compare their websites and you'll see that they're looking basically the same. To sign up doesn't cost anything and you're allowed to test out their service but the free calls are limited to 1 minute.
Go to www.VoIPStunt.com and sign up for an account. It won't cost you anything as long as you're testing.
By paying 10 bucks every four months you can call for free to a number of countries. And when the time comes that it's not for free any more then you can still call for very very little money. Example from the Netherlands to USA: VoIPStunt currently for free, VoIPBuster (used to be for free) 1ct / min, Tele2 (regular phone) 5ct / min, KPN (state landline) 7ct / min.

VOIP Stunt Free call list: (current list on Feb.20, 2006)
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States.

I tried a lot of disk optimization tools. I recommend Diskeeper 10.0 for the current market because of its advanced features.

The version I tested is Diskeepre 10 Professional Premier, which has Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) .

Let me introduce some for this product.

Targeted performance for your most demanding users
Your organization has spent thousands of dollars on powerful workstations for your power users. Not only does Diskeeper 10 Professional Premier Edition keep them running at top speed, but it actually gives these systems improved performance above defragmentation alone, for your user’s most important tasks. How is that possible? The answer lies with new breakthrough I-FAAST™ technology, exclusive to Diskeeper 10.

Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) improves file access and creation by up to 80% (average 10%-20%). Using specially-engineered benchmarks Diskeeper learns disk performance characteristics, and then transparently monitors volumes over time for file access frequency applying proprietary techniques to prevent Diskeeper from being "fooled" by files that have been recently accessed. During special I-FAAST defragmentation jobs, Diskeeper organizes the most commonly used files and applications to increase file access performance. Like other intelligent technologies featured in Diskeeper 10, I-FAAST can automatically adapt to changing usage patterns—so there's no need to reconfigure if the system is transferred to another user.

Let me introduce this VOIP adapter, which cost me CND88.75 including TAX.
I bought it from Voxilla. Its store is located in downtown Vancouver. I pick up it there.

It is so compact. When I first look at it, I think it may be cost me too much.
After using to make some phone call to USA and China, I feel it worth.

Features:
This unit features 2 phone ports for connecting standard telephones. This unit is superior to the Cisco ATA 186 in that the two ports are independently programmable for different SIP Proxies. A user may have one service on line 1 and another service on line 2.

I bought a Sipura SPA-2002 Voip adapter yesterday. It works well with my Voipstunt account.

One of my concern is the bandwidth requirement for conversation.
The FAQ of Sipura said:

Bandwidth usage depends on the audio codec being used. For best voice quality
and FAX, the audio codec should be G711 (by default)
The estimated bandwidth requirement is shown below for 1 channel usage
G711 ~ 64Kbps (can be 90Kbps with overhead), G729 ~ 24Kbps, G723 ~ 17Kbps

Tonight, I cannot stand the crowded desktop of my computer. I decided to uninstall or delete some, which are not used oftenly.

Guide line:
The program is not used in the past three months will be treated as a unusable program.

The following is the list of them:
Google Video Player,
Hide IP Platinum 1.4
Monitors Matter checkscreen 1.2
OfficeReady Profession 3.0

I bought a LCD monitor, Acer 1716B, last week.
The following is its specifications:
Display Panel: 17" color active matrix LCD (TFT)
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 Native
Contrast Ratio: 700:1
Brightness (Typical): 300 cd/m2
Viewing Angle (H/V): 150/135
Cabinet Color: Black
Video Inputs: Analog RGB, DVI-D
Environments: PC compatible
Warranty: Three Year Covering Parts and Labor

I search the phrases with double quotes. The results shown below.
The test is happen at 10:40 AM PST, Feb., 10, 2006.

Search "Great Firewall"
Google.cn returns 106,000 hits (0.42 seconds )
Google.com returns 498,000 hits (0.23 seconds)

Search "falun gong"
Google.cn returns 11,700 hits.
Google.com returns 2,270,000 hits.

Search "intel inside"
Google.cn returns 975,000 hits.
Google.com retuns 3,000,000 hits.

Search "baidu"
Google.cn returns 4,230,000 hits.
Google.com returns 2,550,000 hits.

Search "超女"
Google.cn returns 6,500,000 hits
Google.com returns 6,330,000 hits.

When I remove the double quotes of Chinese word, Google.com won. It always returns more results.

Shaw Cable provide digital phone service in Vancouver city in 2006.

I got the information that they offer a new service to enhance your IP phone quality. This service is not shown publicly, even in their site. It can distinguish between data package and VOIP package. Then shaw give the VOIP package higher transfer priority. The IP phone conversation can get better quality almost without delay.
They charge $10 per month for it.

Look at the bird's view below which provided by Windows Live Local.

When I first try this site, I think it is similar to the Google Map or Google Earth product. They all provide the maps and aerial images.
Today I found the Windows Live Local can give us much real image of the building in the street like above.
Compared with Google Maps, Google Maps have more coverage on the earth and more high-resolution photos. The Windows Live Local has some bird view images in some location like San Francisco, Seattle, etc.

OpenType® is a new cross-platform font file format developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe now offers hundreds of fonts in the OpenType format.
The two main benefits of the OpenType format are its cross-platform compatibility (the same font file works on Macintosh and Windows computers), and its ability to support widely expanded character sets and layout features, which provide richer linguistic support and advanced typographic control.

One cross-platform font file

Any OpenType font uses a single font file for all of its outline, metric, and bitmap data, making file management simpler. In addition, the same font file works on Macintosh and Windows computers. As a result, OpenType lets you move font files back and forth between platforms with noticeable improvement in cross-platform portability for any documents that use type.