PATREONItems tagged with call
Skyping on your couch. Who would have ever thought that would be "a thing." Crazy as it sounds, some people actually do prefer video chatting on the big screen, not on the handheld ones, and that's where companies like Warpia step in. They've just announced the new ConnectHD (SWP400VC), which brings a wide-angle camera (HD) and multidirectional microphone to your TV. The purchase? To enable video calls in the living room. Furthermore, there's a second major ability tucked in: it gives users an easy way to stream content wirelessly from any laptop computer to an HDTV without limitation. The ConnectHD can be used for additional entertainment such as playing PC Webcam games, watching movies and...
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Facebook is a popular way to communicate with friends. However, one form of communication is lacking from Facebook: voice. That is, it was lacking until now. Recently, Vonage launched a new mobile application that will let Facebook users make VoIP calls. The app is currently available for iPhone and Android smartphones. To use the Vonage app, you must download and install the app from the App Store or Android Market and enter your Facebook log-in. After this, you'll be able to instantly start making free calls by tapping a friend's name. The app will even show which of your friends have installed the app and who is available for IM chats. Of course, if you download and install the app, you're...
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France Telecom-owned Orange is planning to make high definition telephone calls available to British customers sometime this year. The HD voice service will require customers to buy new handsets. In return for upgrading to HD voice service, customers will enjoy clearer mobile phone calls that are said to make you feel as if you're in the same room with the person on the other end of the call. Orange is the first mobile phone company to announce a British HD voice service. The company hopes the service will help encourage a new standard throughout the industry. "HD Voice really does inject a level of innovation into mobile phone calls, making it sound as if callers are actually in the same room....
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Jaduka Offers Free Group CallingDallas, Texas - Jaduka®, a leading provider of Web-integrated communication technologies, has launched dukaUS®, an easy-to-use group calling application that dials out and connects up to 6 participants by phone for free. dukaUS group calls are easy to start and moderate, enabling friends, family, business colleagues, or student study groups to get together by phone to rant and rave or just catch up. With dukaUS, you can easily host daily or weekly calls or just start one anytime the mood strikes you!Most group phone services require all users to dial a number, enter a PIN, and then follow an often-confusing phone menu," said Jaduka president Jack...
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Ever had a bad blind date? Or, here's a different way of looking at it: have you ever worried about a blind date and set up a call from your friend, just in case it was bad, so that you had an excuse to leave? Well, with Fake Calls, an iPhone app, you don't need to infringe on your friends' spare time any longer. The idea is the application will simulate a call to your iPhone, and you can customize the time, caller ID, number and more. Of course, the developer doesn't use a bad date as an example, rather an annoying conversation, but come on! This is perfect for bad matchmaking. The developer (Magic Tap) says: Simulate calls with this great application! Have you ever been in the situation where...
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It's been about two years since millions of Sony notebook batteries across many different OEM lines were recalled, due to overheating --- and fire problems. We assume you haven't forgotten about that, because here we are again. Here's hoping this isn't the beginning of another long list of recalls involving Sony batteries. At any rate, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the recall on Thursday. According to the recall, There have been 19 reports of the batteries overheating, including 17 reports of flames/fire (10 resulting in minor property damage). Two consumers experienced minor burns.Check out the full list below. It's pretty long, bug only consists of about 35,000 batteries...
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Whoops, don't start strumming yet. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Performance Designed Products (PDP) announced on Thursday a voluntary recall of the Rage Wireless Guitar controller for the Nintendo Wii. As the CPSC announcement says: Hazard: A circuit board defect can cause AA batteries used in the guitar to leak if the batteries are installed incorrectly, posing a risk of chemical burns to consumers. Incidents/Injuries: Performance Designed Products has received one report of a burn to a consumer. Description: The Rage Wireless Guitar controller is designed to be used on the Nintendo Wii system. The guitar is blue or white and is 31 inches long. The guitar contains battery-operated...
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Another day, another iPhone 3G "oops." Apple has just recently released the 2.1 software upgrade for the iPhone 3G, which seems to have fixed many of the issues with the device's 3G performance. While it dodged a bullet in terms of recalling millions of phones, it still has to make a major recall: millions of the small, square-shaped power adapters shipped with the phones.As Apple said on the recall website:Apple has determined that under certain conditions the new ultracompact Apple USB power adapter's metal prongs can break off and remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock. We have received reports of detached blades involving a very small percentage of the...
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When microprocessor manufacturers ran into increasing complications as they tried to make chips runs faster, they shifted gears, and started building more powerful processors using multiple cores. We're still at the early part of the multi-core revolution, but researchers at the University of Rochester claim that microprocessor manufacturers will eventually run into similar challenges with today's multi-core processor design because of the "limits of miniaturization." So what comes next? The answer still lies with multi-core processors; but instead of just packing cores in next to each other on the same plane, the cores will be stacked on top of each other vertically. The concept of a three-dimensional...
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Sony has been dealing with the fallout from overheating batteries for a couple of years now, so it should be used to the fire drills associated with running damage control on overheating products. That practice should come in handy, as the latest hot potato form Sony is an entire line of overheating laptops. In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Sony has issued a voluntary recall of about 73,000 units of its VAIO TZ-series notebooks that were sold in the U.S. between July 2007 and August 2008. The potentially affected models are:VGN-TZ100 seriesVGN-TZ200 seriesVGN-TZ300 seriesVGN-TZ2000 series Today's press release states:"Hazard: Irregularly positioned wires near the...
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The high-speed Internet advocacy Web site, Speed Matters, has just released a report on the average Internet connection speeds by U.S. state. If you live in Rhode Island (6,769 Kbps), Delaware (6,685 Kbps), New Jersey (5,825 Kbps), Virginia (5,033 Kbps), or Massachusetts (4,564 Kbps), you can take pride that your state has one of the fastest average Internet downstream connection speeds in the U.S. But before you get too smug, compare your speed against the average 63 Mbps downstream speed that the Communications Workers of America (CWA) claims Japan has... Or South Korea (49 Mbps), Finland (21 Mbps), France (17 Mbps), or even Canada (7.6 Mbps) for that matter. Credit: Speed MattersThe report...
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OpenID is an service which allows users to log on to many different web sites using a single username / password. This eliminates the need to create and remember a strong username / password for each site. The assumption, of course, is you create a strong OpenID.Of course, if that information is lost or stolen, you're in big trouble. What if there was another level of authentication, however.The new system, CallVerifID, uses your mobile phone to perform an extra security measure before it will authenticate you on its service. It works like this: When you want to authenticate a site using MyOpenID, first you sign on as usual, with your user ID and password. Then the service calls your phone...
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On Monday Skype, announced new subscription plans that allow flat-rate unlimited calling to 34 countries. It should be noted that for Skype defines unlimited as 10,000 minutes / month; after that standard fees apply. Of course, 10,000 minutes equates to about 5 hours a day, so what the heck?The company said it was offering unlimited calls to landline and cell phones in the U.S. and Canada for $2.95 a month.It also offers unlimited calls to phones in 34 countries including Australia, China, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, for $9.95 per month, it said.Skype users in Europe can choose from unlimited plans ranging from 2.95 euros to 8.95 euros a month depending on the destination of...
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Vista certainly had a less-than-smooth delivery, and there are still lingering issues that keep some away. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently addressed the issue in a speech he gave at Microsoft’s Most Valuable Partners conference.Here’s an excerpt:“Windows Vista: A work in progress. [Laughter, applause.] A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on? Because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting....
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There's an old joke about a young fellow that kills his parents, then asks for mercy from the judge because he's an orphan. Sony seems to be trying a weird version of that approach to sell laptop computers. If you agree to pay them an extra $50, Sony will wipe your new laptop computer clean of pre-loaded crapware, the resource-gobbling program junk you never wanted in the first place. Nowadays, many people pay little or nothing for the copy of Windows loaded on PCs because manufacturers charge suppliers for bundling "crapware" -- trial software, Internet services, the Google Toolbar and similar rubbish. (And anti-trust regulations mean there's nothing Microsoft can do about it.) Since the bloatware...
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Well, not exactly. It keeps your information on its central, very secure servers. But by using a new software utility for shopping at websites that don't yet accept PayPal payments, PayPal allows you to submit a number for each transaction that is recognized as a valid MasterCard number. They call it PayPal Secure Card."From a merchant's perspective this looks like any other MasterCard transaction," said Chris George, director of financial products for PayPal. "And it's just another PayPal purchase to the customer."Secure Card has been tested by 3 million PayPal customers in the past year. The plug-in will be available to U.S. customers on Tuesday, with international customers to follow.When...
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TiVo, makers of that marvelous television set-top digital video recorder, have inked a deal with Rhapsody to offer streaming digital music through your TV. TiVo has made similar deals to offer services to their subscribers with Amazon.com for movie downloads, and Yahoo for photo sharing. Rhapsody is considered one of the leading providers - along with Napster Inc. -of subscription music, where users can listen to as much as they want as long as they continue to pay the monthly fee. It's not as popular as a la carte download services such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. Rhapsody also offers songs for 99 cents per download, but not throughTiVo. TiVo says it will roll out the Rhapsody feature in stages...
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What's everybody doing at work? According to Patricia Wallace, a Johns Hopkins University professor and author of "The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology Is Transforming Work," we're goofing off by looking at all sorts of things on the internet. How much are we slacking? About a fifth of our working time is spent engaging in personal activities. Seems low. A recent survey by online compensation firm Salary.com showed about six out of 10 employees in the United States acknowledged wasting time at work. About 34 percent listed personal Internet use as the leading time-wasting activity in the workplace. Employees said they did so because they were...
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All cell phones have the ability to make a 911 call even if the service on the phone is disconnected. This is a requirement of the Federal Comunications Commission, and while this is an obvious safety measure, it's also being mis-used by some to make prank calls to 911. Emergency dispatch operators say they're getting an increasing number of prank calls and hang-ups made by children playing with disconnected cellular phones that can still be used to make 911 calls. "Kids call us and swear at us because they know we can't do anything about it," said Clearfield Dispatch supervisor Wendy Brimhall. Brimhall said dispatchers are helpless such calls come in because emergency-call-only...
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The sheer number of recalls for Chinese toys has placed a burden not just on retailers and toy companies, but on consumers as well. Parents have quite a long list to go over if they want to be sure the toys they have purchased for their children are safe. But online toy companies are making things easier on parents. Online stores -- like eToys.com, Amazon.com and Walmart.com -- are taking the sting out of the recent run of recalls by sending e-mail notices to customers who bought an affected item on their sites. The notices point out exactly what the product is, when it was purchased and offer detailed online information about the recall and what a consumer should do with...
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For once it's not a Sony battery being recalled, but it is a huge number. 46 million BL-5C batteries made by Matsushita are being recalled by Nokia because of possible overheating. Replacements will, of course, be free. The batteries were manufactured between December 2005 and November 2006. Nokia has identified that in very rare cases the affected batteries could potentially experience over heating initiated by a short circuit while charging, causing the battery to dislodge. Nokia is working closely with relevant local authorities to investigate this situation. Consumers with a BL-5C battery subject to this advisory should note that all of the approximately 100 incidents have occurred...
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Yes, even we posted that Thomas Martel altered his thumbs to better use the iPhone - it's been all over the Internet, and even appeared at a place as studious in their research as ZDNet. But, sorry to say, it's a hoax, and all it required was a little thought and research to debunk it. I suppose we've seen the birth of a new urban legend. Just Google it to see how many fell for it. But a little investigation shows how faux it really is. First of all … why would he need to do this? As the story said, “From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses.” Well, the Treo has buttons...
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