Technology

Anyone who’s read my blog lately knows about the interesting problems I had with SkypeIn. My first problem was simply user error: when trying to test my SkypeIn number, I was dialing the wrong number. D’oh.

However, it then turned out that even though my SkypeIn number was in the same area as my landline, calling the SkypeIn number counted as long distance. D’oh #2. So, I requested a refund from Sykpe, and they gave it promptly. Not a huge deal.

I bring this up because I find it interesting that I had trouble with Skype, and now I’m having a different problem with a different VOIP provider: Vonage. A few weeks ago, I started the signup process at Vonage to see if our landline number was portable. Vonage showed that it was indeed portable.

Fast forward to yesterday. We had decided to go ahead and sign up with Vonage, because it’ll let us save quite a bit of money on our phone bill (not to mention unlimited free long distance). I went to Vonage’s website and started the sign up process again. I entered our landline number as the one we’d like to keep, transporting it to our Vonage service.

No dice. Instead, I get this:

We’re sorry, telephone number portability is currently unavailable for your number.

Argh. What gives? It was portable a couple of weeks ago. What happened during that time to make it to where we can’t keep our number?

Anyone know if phone companies are signing deals with Vonage to keep Vonage out of a service area? If they are, I think I may be calling Verizon and raising some hell.

Update: It looks like I’m not the only one experiencing this problem.

Technorati Tags: skypein, skype, vonage, voip

I wanted to post about this and end the Skype Saga: Skype refunded my SkypeIn money without question. Promptly, too - it only took a day after I submitted my ticket.

Granted, I’d prefer to have a working SkypeIn number in my area, but ah well.
Technorati Tags: skypein, skype

As noted previously, I bought a SkypeIn number a few weeks back. After I finally realized that I was dialing the wrong number, the number worked just fine. Mostly, anyway.

I bought the SkypeIn number so that it had the same area code as my home phone. This would also make it so that any of my friends who wanted to call my SkypeIn number could do so at no charge to them. In theory, anyway.

Today, I got my regular phone bill. Guess what? Even though the SkypeIn number is in my area code, it’s counted as a long distance call. The area code that we use here is actually spread out quite a bit, so sometimes, you have to dial the area code, and it’ll count as long distance.. even if, technically, the area code is the same as your own.

It never occurred to me that my SkypeIn number might have the same numerical area code, but not be located in my actual area. Doh.

Because the SkypeIn number is essentially useless to me now (why would I want friends to call me at a local number if they’re going to have to pay long distance for it?), I submitted a refund ticket earlier.

Oh well. It’s still neat in theory!
Technorati Tags: skypein, skype

When I first started using FolderShare a few days ago, I figured it was only useful for sharing data files (mp3s, text, etc.). I guess I was wrong.

Tonight I installed FeedReader on our downstairs computer. I wanted to be able to access the (few) feeds I read from any computer (we have 1 down, 1 up), but I wanted to use a desktop application to get to them. I figured it’d be a real pain in the ass to keep the 2 installations synced up, in regards to what items I’d read, etc. Nopers. FolderShare handled it wonderfully.

I just set up a regular FolderShare from one PC to the other. I went upstairs and checked the folder: FolderShare was already copying over the files from the downstairs computer.

A few minutes later I was able to launch FeedReader and pick up right where I’d left off downstairs.

I don’t know how well this would work for programs that depend a lot on the registry in Windows, but for a basic application like FeedReader, it works quite well.

It seems that it is now possible to write on water.

From the Sci Fi Tech blog:

Researchers at Akishima Laboratories have developed a way to spell out words and draw pictures on the surface of a pool by using 50 wave generators. The generators create “pixels” in the water and combine them to create the letters. Earlier versions of the pool had trouble creating straight lines and took up to 15 minutes to input each letter. This latest version, however, handles Ks and Ls with ease and takes between 15 and 30 seconds to input each letter.

That’s pretty damn cool. Having said that, this image is still making me feel a bit.. off. It just looks like something that shouldn’t be possible.