Review of VoipCheap 3.0.409.0 For Windows

FREE CALLS to regular phones over the internet!

We were rather intrigued by this proposal. However, there is one thing you should know about this service before using it:
* Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded the normal rates apply. With your FREE DAYS you can call for free to all the destinations listed as free! when you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply. You can get extra Freedays by buying credit

Still, it looked good. We downloaded it, and were amazed.  It simply worked.  One funny thing was that everytime you made a call it said, “Skype would have charged you $*.** for this call.”

Voice: Terrific!
Video: None.
File Transfer: None.
Smileys: None.
Games: None.
Interface: Good.
Bottom Line: VoipCheap is pretty cool. If you can survive 300 minutes of calling for 7 days (about 43 minutes a day), it might work for you if you dislike iCall.

http://www.voipcheap.com/

Getting Rid of Those Yahoo! Messenger Ads

From http://www.benh.org/techblog/2006/07/no-more-ads-in-yahoo-messenger.html :

WARNING!  THIS IS AN UNTESTED REGISTRY EDIT!  DO NOT ATTEMPT IF YOU ARE NON-TECHNICAL, AND/OR HAVE NOT BACKED UP YOUR REGISTRY!

If you have installed the newest Yahoo Messenger 7.5 or Yahoo Messenger 8.0 beta you’ll notice a very annoying animated ad at the bottom of the main window, webcam & chatroom. I’m sure it’s hard to resist to Yahoo’s update dialogs. Here is a howto tutorial to remove ads in Yahoo Messenger 7.5 and higher.

Save the below code with .reg extension and double click the file.


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager\YUrl]
"Messenger Ad"="*"
"Webcam Upload Ad"="*"
"Webcam Viewer Ad"="*"
"Webcam Viewer Ad Bid"="*"
"Webcam Viewer Ad Medium"="*"
"Change Room Banner"="*"
"Conf Adurl"="*"
"Chat Adurl"="*"

or alternatively Open Regedit, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Yahoo\pager\YUrl and create a new string value named Messenger Ad that has the value * (an asterisk). Similarly create the following keys and assign ‘*’ as the value.

Webcam Upload Ad
Webcam Viewer Ad
Webcam Viewer Ad Big
Webcam Viewer Ad Medium
Change Room Banner
Conf Adurl
Chat Adurl

Now you will not see ads anymore in your yahoo messenger.. 🙂

Skype Sued

Net2Phone is suing Skype for patent infringement.  Net2Phone is saying that Skype violated its “point-to-point Internet Protocol” patent.  After all, Skype uses P2P, unlike Vonage and AT&T’s VoIP.  If Skype loses, eBay is going to have to do serious recoding.

Review of iCall For Windows

Everyone’s been raving about how Skype has allowed free VOIP calling to phonelines.  But iCall (named ironically, because it doesn’t work on a Mac) has been doing this for a year!  You can call in the US or Canada for free.  It’s ad supported (there are contacts that don’t go away), and they sell international rates.  Don’t worry about getting a free iPod, its a raffle, not a spyware link.  It includes voicemail for free!  It doesn’t let you call other iCall users, but it’s not meant for that.  Here’s what we found:

Voice: Terrific!  Sounds better than our phones.
Video: None.
File Transfer: None.
Smileys: None.
Games: None.
Interface: Good.  Looks almost like a real Apple product.
Bottom Line: iCall is really a nice product.  We’ve got friends who use Skype, so we’ll stick to that, however.

Skype!!!

Skype is now  offering free SkypeOut!  For those who don’t understand the profound implications of this, this means that you can now call regular phones (though right now only US and Canada) for free!  This is probably because of AIM’s recent AIM Phoneline announcement, which will let you receive calls.  Skype will only keep this until the end of the year, but it’s still big!

http://skype.com/

AIM Phoneline

AIM is close to making AIM Phoneline, which lets you receive calls from a local phone number FOR FREE!!!  Now, AIM is bloatware (I DONT NEED PLAXO, VLC, AOL EXPLORER, AOL TOOLBAR, OR AOL!!!), but this I could live with.  Now, you should be thinking, “How will AOL make money off of this?”  The answer, AIM Phoneline Unlimited, will cost $14.95 a month for calls to all local and long-distance numbers and 30 foreign countries.  AOL plans to launch the service in the top 50 U.S markets in late May, according to the USA Today.

Searchforvideo IM Service

Ever visited http://www.searchforvideo.com/? Basically, it searches thousands of video sites (Ourmedia.org, iFilm, ect.) and spits out the results. Now, they’ve created a services that lets you search via IM! You need AIM, MSN, or Yahoo!. Of course, Gaim and Trillian are also fine. Here’s how to do it, from http://www.searchforvideo.com/misc/im.jsp

To get started, choose your preferred Instant Messaging Client

AIM™ (AOL Instant Messenger)   |   MSN Messenger™   |   Yahoo Messenger™

Getting Started with AIM

Getting started is easy. First, make sure you have AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) installed. (Download AIM) Once you have AIM installed, all you have to do is add searchforvideo to your Buddy List.

Using Searchforvideo IM Service

Search for video

Search
for video inside AIM. Type “search keyword(s)” to see a list of videos
matching the keyword search term(s). Don’t forget to replace keyword(s) with the words you want to search for. Example: “search super bowl”.

Alerts

Stay
up to date at all times with Headline video alerts. Type “alert on” to
turn on alerts. Turn alerts off by typing “alert off”.

Spy on searchforvideo

See the most recently watched video clips at searchforvideo. Type “spy watched”.

See the most recent searches at searchforvideo. Type “spy searched”.

See the video clips most recently added to searchforvideo. Type “spy added”.

AtomFilms and IFILM inside AIM

See a list of AtomFilms’ most recent videos at searchforvideo. Type “AtomFilms”.

See a list of IFILM’s most recent videos at searchforvideo. Type “IFILM”.

Help Menu

Don’t
forget, help is there if you need it while using Searchforvideo IM
service for AIM. Type “help” at anytime to see a list of options.

Getting Started with MSN Messenger

Getting started is easy. First, make sure you have MSN Messenger installed. (Download MSN Messenger) Once you have MSN Messenger installed, all you have to do is add searchforvideo@hotmail.com to your Contacts List.

Using Searchforvideo IM Service

Search for video

Search
for video inside MSN Messenger. Type “search keyword(s)” to see a list
of videos matching the keyword search term(s). Don’t forget to replace keyword(s) with the words you want to search for. Example: “search super bowl”.

Alerts

Stay
up to date at all times with Headline video alerts. Type “alert on” to
turn on alerts. Turn alerts off by typing “alert off”.

Spy on searchforvideo

See the most recently watched video clips at searchforvideo. Type “spy watched”.

See the most recent searches at searchforvideo. Type “spy searched”.

See the video clips most recently added to searchforvideo. Type “spy added”.

AtomFilms and IFILM inside MSN Messenger

See a list of AtomFilms’ most recent videos at searchforvideo. Type “AtomFilms”.

See a list of IFILM’s most recent videos at searchforvideo. Type “IFILM”.

Help Menu

Don’t
forget, help is there if you need it while using Searchforvideo IM
service for MSN Messenger. Type “help” at anytime to see a list of
options.

Getting Started with Yahoo Messenger

Getting started is easy. First, make sure you have Yahoo Messenger installed. (Download Yahoo Messenger) Once you have Yahoo Messenger installed, all you have to do is add searchformedia to your Friends List.

Using Searchforvideo IM Service

Search for video

Search
for video inside Yahoo Messenger. Type “search keyword(s)” to see a
list of videos matching the keyword search term(s). Don’t forget to
replace keyword(s) with the words you want to search for. Example: “search super bowl”.

Alerts

Stay
up to date at all times with Headline video alerts. Type “alert on” to
turn on alerts. Turn alerts off by typing “alert off”.

Spy on searchforvideo

See the most recently watched video clips at searchforvideo. Type “spy watched”.

See the most recent searches at searchforvideo. Type “spy searched”.

See the video clips most recently added to searchforvideo. Type “spy added”.

AtomFilms and IFILM inside Yahoo Messenger

See a list of AtomFilms’ most recent videos at searchforvideo. Type “AtomFilms”.

See a list of IFILM’s most recent videos at searchforvideo. Type “IFILM”.

Help Menu

Don’t
forget, help is there if you need it while using Searchforvideo IM
service for Yahoo Messenger. Type “help” at anytime to see a list of
options.

Google Talk Themes

Recently, we reviewed the new Google Talk. In that article, we mentioned that it now had themes. However, the themes are, well, boring. Anthony Sottile has the answer. His page is full of themes. There’s a Blue Screen of Death theme, a PHP theme, a Windows 9.x theme, a digg theme, a Bubble Picture theme, and even a Star Wars theme!

No More AIM Ads!!!!!!

Man, aren’t those AIM ads annoying? You can get rid of them! There are several options.

1. Get a multi-protocol program. We recommend Gaim, Miranda or Trillian, but that’s up to you. Jabber also works, if you have the right transport!
2. Use AIM Ad Hack or middle_man. AAH has claimed to be around for 2 years, but no advanced features. mm has Buddy List Customization, Cloning (more than one instance), Logging, Buddy Aliasing, Window Transparencey, Away Message Groups, Talking While Away, Idle Control, Local/Remote Commands, Scripting, and Invisibility. Of course, there’s also no ads!
3. Use a smaller AIM, such as miniaim or DeadAIM. Both have a ton of features, but (obviously) not as much as AIM.

We haven’t tested any except the first option, but there are a lot of good reviews out there….

QQ

Why haven’t we done something on the popular Chinese IM? First of all, we don’t speak Chinese. But, you can get an English version at http://www.qq.co.za/. Well, there are other reasons. First, we don’t like ads. But we can live with that. And themes and games are always nice. VV is nice as well. It runs on Windows only, but there are several options. Linux users can talk to friends on the QQ network by installing a plugin for Gaim, or by using the Eva IM client. A client called isQ, which is currently at the Public Beta stage, claims to be the first QQ client for the Mac OS X platform. We don’t like internet dating (remember the MySpace problems that are still going on?), plagarism (from Wikipedia: QQ is known to copy its competitor’s features. The interface of Tencent Messenger is very similar to MSN Messenger and the interface of QQ is Luna themed. In addition to interfaces, QQ is also known to copy code and text from its competitors. For example, one release contained Skype’s EULA.), or adult content on the teen-centered homepage. Still less do we like the amount of memory or space. But, QQ lovers, not to worry. We will be doing a review soon.