Category Archives: Technology

Is The Heyday Of The International Calling Card Over?

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Low Cost International Calling CardsWith both sales and traffic to my international calling card sites falling over the last year, I have been asking myself whether there has been a change in the way that people communicate when overseas, with the advent of smartphones that have built in WiFi and that allow internet connection without costing the user anything.

Traditionally making international calls was something that most people did only in emergencies, or ones a year at Christmas to say “Hello” to the family overseas for 5 minutes.

With the advent of the international calling card, people were no longer at the mercy of their phone companies, and could place calls by dialing a local number, entering a pin, and then dialling the overseas number, for a fraction of the cost that their phone company charged.

Some calling card companies included hidden fees, and tricked customers into thinking that they had a good deal, but this guide to the best international calling cards identifies several providers that are not only cheap and reliable, but who have no hidden costs either.

Indeed, for the last 3 years before I moved from the USA back to the UK, I did a lot of research to find the best calling card to suit my needs, and it’s amazing how varied the prices are, yet if you follow the recommendations in the guide, you can save a lot of money on calls.

Prior to moving to the UK I would be on the phone for several hours a day, and yet with the right calling card, I didn’t have to worry about the cost.  It used to cost me less than $1 an hour to call the UK from anywhere in the USA, not exactly a vast sum!

But now the market is changing again, with many people owning smartphones that have built in WiFi which can connect to internat hotspots anywhere in the world.  This allows virtually free emailing and with programs like Skype, audio and video calls to anyone with an internet connection for free.

So obviously if you travel overseas it pays to have a smartphone to help cut your calling costs, but where an internet connection is not available, especially a free one, or where your only option is to use a regular phone, purchasing an international calling card in advance is a wise decision.

 

Should Google Buy Yahoo?

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Should Google Buy Yahoo?

This is a question that has been a subject of much speculation recently, especially with Yahoo performing poorly in recent times.

In my opinion, I have to say in no uncertain terms: NO, NO and THRICE NO!

Once upon a time, Yahoo could be said to have the best search engine there was – until along came Google and not only created a better one, it did everything so well that people now “Google for things” – the word “Google” is most definitely in the modern dictionary.

Now if it was just about search engines, absorbing Yahoo into Google might not be a bad thing at all, but there is a lot more to Yahoo than just the search engine, and here is where a lot of the problems lie.

As far as search engine popularity, Google has dropped from 85% in 2009, to 83% in 2010 and 79% in 2011.  Yahoo has gone from 7% in 2009, to 6% in 2010 and risen slightly to 9% in 2011.  The main rival to both of these, Microsoft’s Bing has gone from just 3% in 2009, to 7% in 2010 and currently stands at 9% in 2011.

While this looks as if Google is losing market share and Yahoo is gaining, there are some factors behind this that ought to be considered.  Firstly, Bing is a relatively new search engine, and it’s rise in popularity has almost certainly had an effect on Google.  Secondly, the algorithm change that Google underwent early in 2011 (known as “Panda”) hit many sites hard, especially Yahoo, and some users of Yahoo in particular have moved away from using Google more as a boycott than because they prefer the functionality in Yahoo.  The extent to which this move remains firm will probably be seen by 2012, and I personally expect to see a slow move back to Google.

But aside from the search engines, Google is well known and respected for Google Maps, Google Earth, Blogger, YouTube, Google Mail and the latest offering Google Plus.

None of these products are known to have major problems across the whole Internet community.  Practically anything that Google releases works, and works all the time as well, without crashes or errors.  The name Google is synonymous with quality products.

This is sadly far from the truth when it comes to Yahoo, and it’s publishing arm, the Yahoo Contributor Network seems to exhibit more errors than most systems do during a Beta testing phase.

Since purchasing the Internet publishing company Associated Content in May 2010, the problems that writers who contribute to Yahoo publishing sites have just gone from bad to worse.

While Associated Content had it’s share of programming bugs, they were usually dealt with fairly quickly and the system was fairly reliable. 

Within months of Yahoo taking over, they replaced certain parts of the system with code that was so broken, junior programmers would be red-faced by it.

The fact that Yahoo articles do not rank well in Google since the algorithm change is just another slap in the face for Yahoo, but truth be known the slip in traffic began months before that and soon after yahoo took over the company.

Recent problems that most people in IT would consider extremely embarrassing in a live environment include (a) the wrong day of the week being displayed for statistics, and (b) links in RSS Feeds being incorrectly formatted.

The wrong day of the week only took weeks for Yahoo to fix, whereas the RSS Feed issue has been ongoing for a good 10 months and currently has no due date for it to be fixed.

With RSS Feeds being a major way in which articles are propagated across the Internet, and a source of backlinks and traffic for articles, the fact that Yahoo seems incapable to fix something which ought to help boost it’s traffic, rankings and earnings, is a little worrying.

In summary therefore, should Google, a company that is known to create software that is reliable, buy Yahoo, a company that is becoming increasingly known for it’s incapacity to achieve this?  My answer – most definitely NO!

Google would be far better creating it’s own systems that would compete with Yahoo, than to take over those which are so full of bugs as to be a corporate embarrassment.

In case you were wondering, YES I am a big fan of Google.  I have used many of their products and found few problems.  In many ways (such as built in conversions and translations in their browser) Google are one step ahead of the user, adding features that are really useful and easy to use.

I have been writing for Yahoo Contributor Network and previously for Associated Content since January 2010, and seen traffic to my articles rise dramatically until Yahoo implemented it’s first major changes, and then the slide began.

You can find my articles HERE – I doubt you will find many of them easily in Google.  You are more likely to find where I have added them to Digg or blogged about them than to find the original articles.  And as for the RSS feeds – some readers do correctly fix the links, but others don’t.

Apple: too fruitful?

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Apologies for a horrible pun but i’ve been pondering Apple’s latest financial pronouncement. They counted up the cash in their piggybank and found they have the small sum of $76.2 billion floating around! This is more than enough for a good night out and a cab home, this is riches bordering on insanity.

To put it into some perspective, $76.2 billion is more than the GDP of 126 countries. Ecuador, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka and Costa Rica all do less well than Apple. Greece’s latest huge EU bailout is not far off the same amount.

What could Apple do with the money? Huge dividends for shareholders? Endow chairs at MIT and Cambridge? New internal research labs? Hire a few accountants to look into not accumulating so much money? Bring down the price of their products? Not much chance here – if people will pay hundreds of dollars for a mobile phone with facilities they don’t want, and then pay more for apps to try to justify the hundreds of dollars purchase price …

One suggestion that won’t be featuring too strongly in the business media is that they could do something about the awful conditions endured by workers in Chinese manufacturing facilities. Cut the working day to just twelve hours perhaps, or add a second fifteen minute break. Increase their wage to something that a kid with a paper round wouldn’t spit at. Return some jobs to the USA?

I vote for giving millions in dividends to billionaire shareholders. You know they need it more than others…

Sansa Fuze Hold Button Changes

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Sansa Fuze+ Hold Buttom Firmware UpdateI just bought a Sansa Fuze last week, and I really like it, however today I went to charge it, downloaded and applied a Firmware update, and now the Hold Button won’t work.

I suspect a lot of other people will find the same thing, so I thought I would document the change here for anyone who finds it.

Previously, you had to press the Play/Pause button for 5 seconds to lock the keypad on the Sansa Fuze, then slide upwards on the pad to get it to unlock.

Well after the latest firmware updates, that no longer works, and from what I can see it’s not only me who found that a bit annoying and fiddly to use.

Now, to lock the keypad, you have to press the Power button briefly.

Then to unlock it, you press the Power button briefly again.

Hope this helps a few people figure out what’s going on.

To Power the Sansa Fuze+ off, you still have to hold the Power button for 5 seconds.

Fake Job Offers By Email

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A sly little twist on the fake job offer scam This used to be a promise for a job after payment of an “agency fee”. Now there’s a new technique.

Find someone looking for a job – plenty of ways to get details, often illegal but who ever gets prosecuted? Send them a nice personalised email promising a job in their home town, so they think it’s kosher. Get them to do an online IQ test or something of the sort and give you their mobile number. Then send them several reverse charge texts (£1.50 each) about their test results.

The poor mug will usually accept the texts as he needs the score to complete the application form. If he’s unemployed and desperate he’s even more likely to accept the costs even if he’s less likely to be able to afford them.

That’s the scam being operated by best-jobs-today.com Their domain records are hidden, the office address on their website has never heard of them. Hopefully you never will again.

It’s easy to get confused when you’re hitting lots of sites; keep records of the ones you’ve applied to. Preferably only use sites that are recommended to you by trusted sources. Don’t assume an ad is kosher just because it’s in a newspaper. Read terms and conditions before signing up. Don’t go with anyone who says they may pass your details on. And don’t accept reverse charges on a mobile, or call a number you don’t recognise.

For more information on how to avoid the crooks, see Avoiding Fraud And Scammers On The Internet

Another DotCom Bubble On The Way?

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Pandora, the music streaming company, has just floated a small percentage of its shares and seen its valuation soar to $4.2bn in the first hour of trading on the New York stock exchange. Pandora has lots of users and loses lots of money.

The company reported revenue of $51m, with a net loss of $6.8m in the three months to the end of April. Most of its revenue comes from paid advertisements.

As a long time internet programmer who would love to come up with an idea like Google or Pandora or Facebook, my first reaction is “lucky beggars”. Then reality hits and I ponder my pension fund and a share-based bond I have – neither is doing particularly well and I suspect both are investing in stocks like Pandora. Wise or not? I’d say the answer is “not” unless you sell at the right time.

Look at the Pandora business model, translate it to the real world. I sell shirts. I don’t make them, I buy from other people (Pandora paid $29m in music royalties in three months to the end of April). All I do is buy in the shirts and sell them on. Now I’m going to start giving them away. Each one will come in a bag with an ad on it. I’ll also start a premium members club where, for a very small fee, you can get extra shirts and ad-free bags.

Sounds daft, doesn’t it? But here’s yet another technology offering defying all the laws of sensible economics and the pension funds and loads of others are piling in. I suspect the wiser people took a quick profit and sold after a couple of hours. I also suspect my pension fund will still be holding the shares when the world realises the emperor has no clothes and consigns Pandora to the pit where so many other technology companies go.

See my technology blogs at Internet Marketing: Avoiding Scams and Fraud and Review Of Five Internet Gurus. On a lighter note, try Web Designer versus Client.

Success And Endeavour Mean A Lot Today

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 This week’s topic on GBE2 is Success, and I couldn’t think of exactly what to write about, until this morning, when I checked the NASA web site to see when the space shuttle Endeavour was due to land, and it was just under an hour away.

Landing safely at 2:35am at Kennedy Space Center on 1st June, this was the last mission for Endeavour, the last of the shuttles to be built, and I had to reflect on what a successful project the space shuttle program has been.

Although there have been several truly low points in the program, the breaking up of Challenger 73 minutes into it’s launch on 28th January 1986, and the equally sad loss of Columbia on 1st February 2003 just minutes before it was due to land, if we step back and look at what the space shuttle program has achieved, it’s remarkable.

Since the first flight of the shuttle on 12th April 1981, 30 years ago, man has built an orbiting space station, which is not just an American but an international effort.

The shuttles have been back and forth to the International Space Station over a hundred times, have both launched as well as captured and repaired satellites, including the Hubble Telescope.

STS-120 (1) The launchpad 12 miles away across the Indian River, waiting for the launch of Discovery from Kennedy Space Center.

NASA has proved that it is possible to build a re-useable space vehicle, and other than problems with the heat shield, which caused the loss of Colombia, I have never ceased to marvel at how smoothly the shuttle comes into land, especially if you consider that it’s descent and speed are far greater than any conventional airliner..

We have overcome many problems while constructing the space station as well, and I think if you look back, the Space Shuttle Program has been nothing but an outstanding success.

Congratulations to the crew of Endeavour on what has been another successful mission, it’s good to see you back on the ground.

Good Luck also to the crew of Atlantis, who are due to depart on it’s last mission in July, the final mission of the Space Shuttle Program.

While I remember the Apollo Program and the missions to the moon in the late 1960’s, it’s remarkable to think that for many people, the space shuttles have been operating for most if not all of their lives.

It will seem strange not being able to witness a shuttle launch again, but the next generation of shuttles might be even more impressive.

This article was a project for the week for GBE2 (Global Blogging Experience) and was based on the word “Success”.

Some Things Never Change In IT

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Although I have worked in the IT industry for longer than I car to remember – since the mid 1970′s since I know you are going to ask anyhow, I never cease to be amazed by the number of strange acronyms that exist.

Every so often, when I change jobs or have to use some new software, I come across some new acronyms that I have never heard of before, and the worst thing is that every piece of documentation that I find on that software assumes everyone knows what they mean.

I am used to working on the IBM iSeries (although I prefer to call it by it’s original name of AS400) mini-computer, but recently I have had to try and become familiar with Object Oriented Programming (OOP) which is like trying to teach an old dog new tricks.  It’s just so completely different to everything I have done before.

Although I have used some Java routines before to create an Excel spreadsheet from an RPG (Report Program Generator) program, I have done this by cloning an existing program, and not needed to fathom out too much exactly how it works.

Now, however, I need to do create an Excel spreadsheet that is rather more complex in nature, and need to look more into how these Java routines work.

Having found documentation on this, I quickly became aware of a number of acronyms that meant nothing to me, yet obviously mean a lot to those who work with Java.  When I did manage to find an article on what the acronyms all mean (thanks to my trusty Google), I chuckled to see what a sense of humor the creators had.

The first thing that I kept finding is that the Java implementation kept mentioning the Jakarta Project.  I realized eventually that this was a name given because Jakarta is a city in Java, not because the project had any connection with Indonesia.

Next I keep finding references to POI, which to me mean those pompoms that Maori women in New Zealand twirl around when they are dancing.  In this case however, POI stands for Poor Obfuscation Implementation, and related to this is POIFS (Poor Obfuscation Implementation File System).  Well the whole thing is pretty obfusticating to me…

It’s well known that the format behind Microsoft Excel is pretty awful, and so the next acronyms I come across are HSSF (Horrible Spreadsheet Format), HDF (Horrible Document Format) and HPSF (Horrible Property Set Format).

You think I am jesting?  Just take a look at this article from Javabeat and it’s all for real!.

 It’s bad enough when you have to learn a new programming language, but when the documentation is filled with acronyms that you are not familiar with, it just adds a whole new level of obfuscation.

Maybe I should just make this my word for the day…

Do The Taskbar Shuffle

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I don’t know about you, but when I power on my PC, I always open tasks in the same order, and expect to see the tabs in the taskbar appear in the same sequence.

Have you ever found that for some unknown reason Windows resequences these tasks for you, and it’s impossible to change the sequence back?

Yes I know, call me anal retentive, but I am a creature of habit ok, and it really annoys the heck out of me!

I have even gone as far as to close all the tasks and re-open them, which is annoying when you have a lot of browser tabs open.

Apparently Microsoft have fixed this in Windows 7, and users can now drag the tabs to the order that they want, but help is also at hand for those of us using Vista or even XP (like me).

A small FREE program called Taskbar  Shuffle provides this functionality, and it’s just brightened up my day, having seen my 8 open programs do a quick random reordering.

It’s easy to install, did I say FREE, it’s free of viruses too, and you can download it from the Nerdcave.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Internet Marketing: Fake Review Sites

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We’re all Internet Marketers these days: whether we’re selling our own products, affiliate marketing or just blogging – we’re putting something up on the Web that we want other people to buy/eat/read/consume. There are millions of us, literally, and so of course there are huge numbers of people who see us as a market ourselves. Just published a few blog pages? Waited a week and had a comment from one friend? Gone to Google and typed “how do i get more visitors to my site?”. You’re a potential customer for somebody who knows the tricks and techniques.

Sadly, you’re also a potential mark for someone who loves newbies, especially newbies who’ve put their toes in the marketing water. Imagine a credit card held in those clenched toes and there will be a thousand beady little eyes lighting up as they sense fresh blood, There will also be a lot of genuine sources of help, genuine sources of information, free and paid for. Your innocent Google query will return more hits than “Britney Spears Naked” used to – so how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? How do you find out if Paul’s Infinite Free Links (PIFL) is worth buying?

Check the URL: If it looks anything like www.piflreview.com, forget it – if the product name and the word review appear in the domain, assume it’s a fake review.

Check for duplicated text: Go to the main pifl site, cut and paste a sentence into Google advanced search – if it appears over and over, ignore the sites – they’re either mine or affiliates who can’t be bothered rewording my sales blurb.

Nice big BUY links: If it claims to be a review but features several buy links, usually with an affiliate code on, it’s a fake.

Does it have any hard info? Does the review actually tell you any details about what it does, how it does it, good and bad points? Or is it just a load of waffle with one message “it’s good, buy it”?

Forums should be safe? Not necessarily: look to see who owns and runs them – anyone can set up forums in minutes and then pay cents for fake posts.

You’re better off hunting for a larger site that specialises in reviewing a wide range of products. Look for good and bad reviews, look for serious comment on how a product works. It may seem like a lot of work but if you don’t want to waste your money and your time, it’s worth it.

For further discussion of this and related topics, see Avoiding Internet Marketing Scammers. For some info on products that are definitely kosher and some more sources of free advice have a look at Five Internet Gurus Reviewed. And good luck with your search.