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Living a cheaper life without Telecom Italia

I cannot express my joy enough: I finally got rid of Telecom Italia!!!

It has been a long project but it went a lot smoother than I expected. I renewed  my ADSL contract with SiADSL last year and paid a one time fee of 99 euro to get a new line installed without Telecom Italia.

I spent a lot of time this autumn evaluating the various VoIP technologies. My main requirement was that I wanted a solution that did not require a PC that was always one. That ruled out most Skype based solutions as they integrate with the Skype client on a PC. This LinkSys cordless Skype phone was a possible compromise as it has a separate base station that I could connect to a server but leave the phone and docking station in a separate room.

After careful consideration I decided to go for a device that supports SIP:

• It is a standard protocol, and not a proprietary one like the one used by Skype that may change from one version to the next
  
• There are many VoIP providers that supports the standard
  
• There is a wide range of hardware, from the simple VoIP gateway I got to large SIP systems, that supports the standard

The next step was choosing the VoIP provider.
Gizmo/SIP Phone offers dial in numbers in the USA but not in Italy. I was about to go for SIP Phone anyway when a colleague, Mirco, pointed me to Skypho. I used it for several months using the X-Lite client software and the quality is as good or better than the other options; Skype, Gizmo, MSN, ...

But what really impressed me about Skypho is all the features they offer:

• a free dial in number
  
• free voice mail
  
• free fax to mail service
  
• it is cheaper than Skype

I did not get my VoIP gateway until a few weeks ago because of shipping problems (but more about that later on crap and crapability).

I cut the Telcom line in January and so far so good: I am a very happy Skypho client. Cool Or What?

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Google Pages

Google Pages is  very simple and intuitive to use. Best of all; the free hosting service does -not- automatically insert loads of advertisements like many other free hosting services do.

No technical knowledge required as you see what the finished page will look like every step along the way:

The editor is simple to use and lets you choose from a set of templates and layouts without having to write a single line of code:

The online editor solution offers one big advantage over the work offline and upload to the server option: you can edit your site any where, any time. Google has a -lot- of bandwidth and takes cares of backups so it beats hosting a site at home over a ADSL connection.

I guess they will offer custom domains like they do for gmail soon.

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Full motion video on Dutch postal stamps

These 0.39 euro stamps issued by Dutch post look great:

They are made with lenticular technology developed by Lenticular Technology:    

Lenticular is a specialised printing process that can show depth, motion, HD video, film or combinations of these.  The lenticular material is made up of tiny ridges or lenses (hence the name "lenticular" printing). We take raw images and process them through a computer algorithm, which matches the lens surface of the lenticular material. When the two work together it enables the image to be replayed back to you.

Check out their gallery for more examples.

The technology would be great for making personalized stamps. Imagine sending a Christmas card with a short video of the family!

Via Core77 Design Blog

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Monolith Premium MX7000: the indestructible MP3 player

Tired of MP3 players that break if you sit down with them in your pocket? Then the MX7000 should be the right thing for you:

The Monolith Premium is fused into a solid 1.5mm aluminium casing (called X-Protect); not stuck together with glue or screws – ‘fused’, in a unique manufacturing process pioneered by the manufacturer, Estar Laboratories. This makes the Monolith Premium practically indestructible; we have run the player over with a car, shot the player with a BB gun, thrown the player against a brick wall – it just doesn’t break.

The MX7000 plays MP3, WMA, OGG, WMA DRM files and has a FM tuner/recorder.

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Ariel Atom

The Ariel Atom looks mean:

And it is mean. Check out the video of the Top Gear review by Jeremy Clarkson as it gives you a feel of what the go-kart car can do. It is powered by a super charged Honda i-VTEC 2.0 in a very light body which gives it 3 times the horsepower per kilo compared to a Porsche Carrera 911!

Via [paultan.org]

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Gmail for your own domain

This is great news; Google is offering Gmail for users at any domain like live.com. You no longer have to worry about running a 24x7 operation to have e-mail up and running for your users as Google takes care of everything. Users have access to their e-mail any time any where and you don't have to worry about end users loosing all their e-mail due to client hardware failure or a virus:

This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.

   Gmail - 2 gigabytes of storage and search tools that help users find information fast.
 
   Control Panel - Easily manage user accounts, aliases and mailing lists.

Cool Or What?

Via eXtensible Mind Lounge

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Cool tool: Automatically compress attachments with bxAutoZip

bxAutoZip automatically compresses attachments in Outlook and Outlook Express. A great way to save space in your inbox and bandwidth. bxAutoZip is free for personal use:

bxAutoZip is a dedicated add-in utility for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express which automatically and independently compresses any files attached to an e-mail message.

Compression dramatically reduces the size of e-mail attachments, allowing much faster transfer times. The result is significant savings in time and money for both the sender and the recipient.