I have never had another smart phone so I don’t really have anything to compare it to. However, so far I am really impressed. It’s pretty snappy, and with the ever growing Android Market the Apps available make the phone just that much better.

I have only downloaded about five Apps and I use them pretty much everyday (Facebook, GMail, Twitter, Google Voice, etc…). There are a ton of Apps already, but there’s so much cheesy stuff in their marketplace right now. Maybe I have a wrong perception of Apps, but I see all the IPhone commercials, and I want some Apps like that. Maybe they are out there and I am just missing them.

Anyway, the Eris is a quality phone with plenty of features for most users. I am not overly impressed with battery life. You better keep a charger handy because this phone is not gonna get you through the day on an overnight charge. For that reason I will probably turn it back in before my 30 day test period is up and get a Nexus One.

It’s worth mentioning that I got a smoking deal through Amazon on a Home & Car Charger, Case, and Screen Protector for $4.99!

I know that won’t be popular with most of my Republican brethren, but then again I don’t really care. I am a Republican mainly because they side with my Religious beliefs, Environmental issues, and Capitalistic ideas. That may not be your American dream, but it is mine.

President Obama doesn’t “check every box” in my list of requirements of the ideal President. Sorry if this offends you, but I wish he wouldn’t side with the gay rights community. Don’t get me wrong, I believe every human being should be treated equally and with respect, but from my standpoint that is more of a moral issue than it is about equality. I don’t like his ideas about abortion either. I think the legalization of abortion is the biggest travesty that our Nation has ever perpetrated.

With those strong differences it would seem that I could not stand the man, and if you think the respect I have for him has come lightly you are wrong. Idealistically I wish he was everything that I wanted him to be. Unfortunately we don’t live in that world. I love and respect my wife, my children, my parents, my family, and myself despite shortcomings and beliefs, and I would dare to say that most other people feel the same about the people in their lives. So, why do we put these idealistic goggles on when we look at our Political leaders?

I loathe the attitude that someone is different from us and therefore we, and our group, are obviously superior and the other side and their leader must be evil incarnate. I loathe the blind, ignorant criticism that both sides spit out. Have we regressed into a Country that labels everyone and every group without actually listening to what they have to say?

I am not saying we should not question each others ideas, and even have the right to disagree with those ideas, but we have to be careful about what we say, and how we treat each other in light of those disagreements.

So why do I like Obama? He’s the first President other than maybe Reagan that I actually have confidence in. The man is wicked smart, and I believe he means what he says. I believe he genuinely cares about the American people and their plight. I believe if most Americans would take those idealistic goggles off and listen to him that they would be inspired, and that they would have hope. I believe they would see an imperfect man simply striving to make our Country better.

In case you can’t see it below, here is a link to the video that inspired me to write this post. http://tr.im/M79P

Ever since RSS feeds came out I have wanted to be able to pull those feeds in and display them on some of my websites. I have tried many different ways but never came up with a viable solution. A week or so ago I ran across this free script RSS2HTML.

RSS2HTML is a php script that you upload to your server. It pulls your feed in and gives you the code to display that feed on any website. It allows you to choose what parts of the feed elements to display, as well as how many entries you would like to display from the feed.

I didn’t want to be pulling the feed every time that particular page loaded though, so I needed to find some kind of cache script. RSS2HTML has a cache script but you have to pay for it. I am a cheapo so that wasn’t an option for me. After a few google searches I found an old PHP cache script that fit the bill. It worked, but it was really slow to load. The script actually creates a static html page that’s rewritten if it’s past the time frame that you set, so what I did was load the actual html page versus the cache script. That alone will not produce an html page/php include that updates at your given time frame, but what I did was create a cron job that “hits” that cache script at the time interval that I wanted it to.

Long story short, I finally have a RSS to Html solution that works like I need it to.

To be more accurate I should say, “How I cut my cell phone bill $100 per month.”

The first of this year we switched from Sprint, whom we had been with for 6 years. It seemed our bill kept going up, and honestly it was becoming a burden financially. We were trying every way possible to lower our bills, and although we had a “good run” with Sprint it was time to make a change.

We switched to from Sprint to TMobile. This immediately saved us about $40 per month. We had less minutes, but with TMobile’s Fav5’s we only came close to going over our minutes once in the 6 or 7 months we were with them.

The savings were great but what we didn’t necessarily like was the coverage. There were a lot of dead spots, and we just put up with the below average coverage to save a little money. However, the last straw so to speak was when I went to work one day and didn’t have any coverage in a 20 mile radius. I don’t mind being somewhere that is in a dead zone if I know I can drive up the road if I absolutely have to make a call.

My wife had found this company called Page Plus Cellular a month or so before. She mentioned it to me, but I had never heard of them and really did not want to take that kind of risk with an unknown company. After a month or so of doing some reading and hearing how others had switched I made up my mind to give it a try.

Long story short, I am thoroughly impressed. We got the best possible coverage and the absolute cheapest rates I have seen anywhere. Our bill came down another $55 per month from what we were paying TMobile ($95 total savings), and we had more minutes than when we were with Sprint or TMobile.

Page Plus has a 1200 minute $30 plan and an Unlimited $40 plan. Pretty much any Verizon phone will work with their service, and the coverage is nearly identical to Verizon’s as well (they use the same towers).

If there is any downfall to the service it’s their Customer Service. It takes a long time to get through to them, but once you do they are courteous and handle your issues. We have only had to contact them to initially setup our service.

Have you saved any money with a new cell phone plan, or a new cell phone service? Let me know.

It’s also worth noting that WalMart has partnered with Tracfone and come out with a new service called Straightalk. Straightalk has a $30 plan and a $45 unlimited plan.

Testing posterus.

Posted via email from Trai’s posterous

Recently I found a Firefox plugin/add-on for Google Voice. It’s pretty amazing! It finds phone numbers in webpages that you visit and turns those numbers into click to call links. As far as I can tell it’s never been submitted on Digg before, so a few nights ago I submitted it. I check back in tonight and it’s got three Diggs. Three Diggs? What?

Am I a little sore? You are darn right I am. I don’t think Kevin Rose could honestly say the current state of Digg is what he had in mind when he dreamed up this user generated content site.

I will still visit Digg because sometimes I get bored and there are some good stories posted there, but I’ll never submit another story there. It’s pointless, and I am sure thousands of others have already realized that.

By the way, don’t dare digg this post.

The transition was really smooth, and I was able to link my main Google account with Google Voice in the process. So, this means all my contacts from GMail are available in Google Voice and vice versa. The interface has the same Google simplicity as every other service they offer, so in just a few minutes I had navigated around and made the necessary changes.

One obvious change was the new feature allowing you to call International numbers (for a fee of course). I don’t remember the rates, but your new Google Voice account will come with a $1 credit so you can test it out.

Another new feature that I really liked was the ability to send/relay SMS messages. You can send SMS messages to any phone within Google Voice. From my understanding the message will appear as it is coming from your GVoice number. (Tired of typing Google Voice out so that’s what I am calling from now on. Why didn’t they call it that to begin with?) When the recipient replies GVoice forwards the SMS message to your phone(s).

All in all it was a really easy transition and I am happy to have it linked with my main Google account. Now I am wondering what Google plans to do with GVoice. I think I remember reading the FAQ on the Grandcentral site and it saying something about eventually charging a monthly fee for the service. I could have read that somewhere else though. As of now the FAQ says that there are “no specific product plans to discuss at this time.” I hope they keep it free. It’s a good service, but I wouldn’t pay much over $5 per month for the service personally.

I would like to see GVoice integration into Gmail. I am sure it’s coming through Google Labs soon enough, but you know us techie types – nothing is ever good enough.
Already available through Google Labs and a Gadget for IGoogle. Click below for the instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=29f67f1d8daa7585&hl=en

If you are not already a Grandcentral user then you will have to wait until Google opens this up for everyone. You can go to https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ and request an invite.

Update: This feature may or may not have been available under Grandcentral, but I just realized you can call your GVoice number (from any of the phones you have set up with GVoice) and it will give you a prompt to enter in a phone number to call. After you enter the number it will place the call to the number you have entered. I setup my GVoice number as one of my Fave 5’s for TMobile so this is going to be a handy feature. I have already given out my GVoice number so all those incoming calls will be free to my cellphone, and I can also dial it to make free outgoing calls on my cell if I need to. Pretty sweet.

Update #2: I found a really cool Firefox Add-on for Google Voice. It will make any phone number within a webpage a click to call link. You can also enter a phone number right from your browser and your phone will ring. When you answer the call will be connected. I installed it tonight and it works great. Check it out.
http://thatsmith.com/2009/03/google-voice-add-on-for-firefox/

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How To Get Free Phone Service

I use Facebook and Facebook Chat alot. This would be cool to have GTalk available in Facebook.

While I was typing this something else came to mind. I ran across a tip tonight on how to make your Facebook Chat available in a sidebar of your browser. Basically when you click on the bookmark it opens as a sidebar. (Anyway, it’s really simple. I’ll put a link to the “How To” at the bottom of this post.) It got me to thinking that I could just create a page with two IFrame’s and put the FB Chat at the top and the GTalk at the bottom. It works.

This tip/trick is for the FireFox Browser.

Click below and bookmark the page.
Facebook Chat and GTalk in your sidebar.
After it’s bookmarked right click and go to properties. You want to check the button to load this bookmark in the sidebar. Next time you click on that bookmark it will load Facebook Chat and GTalk in your sidebar.

Facebook Chat Hack – Run in Sidebar

Times are tough so everyone is looking for a way to save money. I am no different. We have had very inexpensive internet phone service for years through Voicpulse. The price was great at $15/mo, and the service was outstanding, but I would rather pay $20 per year than $15 per month.

My sister had a friend who owned a Magic Jack but never used it so she asked her if we could borrow it. We picked it up one evening and brought it home. I am the tech savvy one in the family, but before I even got a chance to install it my wife had plugged it in and had it working within minutes. I was pretty impressed.

We’ve been using it for a few weeks now and I have to say the call quality is perfect. I don’t really care for the software that comes with it but I am going to remedy that. The software pops up a window every time you use the phone or when someone calls. I have found a way to suppress that, but what’s even better is I have found a way to get the sip credentials from the software so I can input those into my Pap2 phone adapter and use that. This will allow me to not always have the computer on (It’s always on anyway.) and still be able to use the phone, but it will also allow me to do some custom things that will fix a few things that bug me about the Magic Jack. For example, you can’t do 7 digit dialing with the Magic Jack (with their software). So every time you call someone in your area code you still have to dial the area code too.

One thing that concerns me is the company’s business plan. Is this company gonna rake in all the money it can by selling cheap phone service and when it stops making a profit decide to file for bankruptcy? I hope not but they have been around for a few years, so maybe they will do something to build customer confidence in that area.

All in all I am really pleased with the service and that’s why I am recommending it to anyone looking to save some money. This product can be a 100% replacement for your home phone service.

Update: I got my sip credentials using a program called Magic Jack Utilities. I then entered those sip credentials into my PAP2-NA (same thing as a Vonage Phone Adapter). I had to reset my PAP2-NA to factory defaults, but after that it registered and worked fine. I setup a custom dialing plan so that I don’t have to enter my area code for local calls anymore. It sounds great, and works great too. Reply to this post if you have any questions.

Update #2: You will also need to give your PAP2 phone adapter an IP address (take it off DHCP). After that you need to forward ports 5060-5070 in your router to the IP address you gave your Pap2.

Update #3: Magic Jack made some changes which disabled the use of an ATA/Pap2 and I was out of service for a month. Well, I had to use the USB Dongle for a month. However I recently found a workaround that someone posted up and I am able to use my Pap2 again. Read the comments for instructions.

The internet still “feels the same.” The only thing I thing I have noticed is that when you load a page with a bunch of pictures it takes another second or so for them all to download, but most people would never notice anything. It’s not noticeable enough to me to make me switch back and pay another $18/mo though. Our internet phone still works fine, so if you have something similar, Vonage, etc., you will be fine.

DSL has offered these slower speeds for a while now, and I am surprised that Comcast hasn’t done this sooner. It could be them trying to compete with DSL or maybe trying to keep customers because of the economic slowdown. Anyway, thought I would share my review of it. Has anyone else switched? If so, what do you think?