Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Telephony
SunRocket is Dead. Celebrate with Free Unlimited Calls via Voip.com
Aug 8th
Everyone had their eyes on Vonage to see if they would go kerplunk with the patent issues.
But in the meantime, Sunrocket VOIP provider suddenly shut their doors in the last weeks. Too bad for their customers, especially those that shelled out $199 for their pre-paid 1-year unlimited calling plan.
But what other Voip provider will you go to? Although there are differences, most require you to shell out money up front for hardware or even the shipping cost to test them out.
Vonage Tip: How To Turn Anonymous Caller ID Block On or Off
May 27th
One of the reasons why you signed-up for Vonage is the pleathora of features that come included in the calling packages – unlike the a la carte pricing that Verizon and other landline local carriers charge.
If you have Caller ID, you want to know who’s on the other end before you pick-up. But sometimes, people BLOCK their own Caller ID, so that you have no clue because they become anonymous. In fact, sometimes the Caller ID display literally says “Anonymous”.
Did you know that there is a feature that blocks those calls which are witholding their own Caller ID number when calling you? Read the rest of this entry »
How to Send an Outbound Fax If You Have Vonage (Free)
May 21st
Most of us have access to a fax machine with we really need to send a fax — either a work or home or perhaps the local Staples store. But it’s usually not the most convenient thing to do when we really need to send a document via fax.
If you’re a Vonage customer, there’s a new way to send almost any document via Fax through Vonage’s website. You can fax Microsoft Office files like Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and even PDF files. The new “alpha” V-Fax service is available to all Vonage customers free of charge. Here’s how . . .
How to send a fax via Vonage online:
- Log into your Vonage account at the V-Fax page: https://v-fax.vonage.com/
- Enter the destination fax number
- Click “BROWSE” and find the document you want to send (any Word, Powerpoint Excel or PDF file)
- Click “PREVIEW” to submit the file to fax and see what the recipient will see on their fax machine
- If you like what you see, simply click on “FAX FILE” and Vonage will send the fax on your behalf
- You’ll receive a confirmation email with a copy of the faxed document that was sent
This service combined with any of the free e-fax inbound services like j2.com, k7.net, etc basically solves most of your faxing needs! You now have a free out-bound fax service from your PC and also free inbound fax services. What else do you need?
How To Get Instant Up-to-the-Minute Traffic Conditions on Any Bridge Or Tunnel From Your Cellphone
May 17th
If you’re in the New York metro area and commute a lot into/out of the city, you already are braced for traffic jams at any minute. You might hear that there’s NO wait at all to cross into the city when you’re leaving your house, but by the time you get to the bridge or tunnel, it could be backed-up for miles.
There’s nothing like “driving blind,” so if you’re like most people, you turn to the radio to help figure out what you’re facing. So you probably already know the following radio traffic report sequences so that you’re never more than 4 minutes away from the next traffic report:
- On the “1′s” – 12:01, 12:11, 12:21, 12:31, etc: 1010 AM WINS NEWS
- On the “5′s” – 12:05, 12:15, 12:25, 12:35, etc: 1030 AM Bloomberg Radio
- On the “8′s” - 12:08, 12:18, 12:28, 12:38, etc: 880 AM WCBS Radio
GoogleMaps on the cell phone also has live traffic indicators if you’re browsing the web on your Samsung Blackjack or other smartphone while driving (not recommended!). But voice is the killer app, so there’s 2 other services that you really should know about. . . Read the rest of this entry »
Fiber Optic TV is Better Than Comcast Cable Television
May 2nd
If you have both Comcast Cable TV + Comcast Hi-Speed Internet, your monthly Comcast bill is undoubtedly north of $100/month. If you have digital cable or have a shiny new plasma TV with HD, your Comcast bill is probably something like $180 every month.
Do you realize that’s $2,160/year!?! Are you getting your money’s worth? If some guy shows up to your doorstep and asks for $2,160 for ANYTHING, I bet you’d be demanding enough to make sure you really got everything you deserve.
You may have noticed Verizon trucks blocking traffic in different parts of town over the last several months. They’re not repairing damaged lines or anything like that. They’re spending billions of dollars re-wiring the whole town with fiber-optic cable so that they can deliver fiber optic TV services to every house that wants it — including yours.
Basically, you can get *super-high-speed* internet services — about 5 faster than Comcast, just with the cheapest Verizon FiOS Fiber Optic Internet Service. Which means you can really share the internet connection with everyone in the house and have internet phone lines (called VoIP) *and* have everyone use it at the same time — but no one will ever notice the difference. It’s that fast.
Now, Verizon has announced that it has started to sell TV services, called Verizon FiOS TV – yes, your telephone company wants to sell you television services – which compete head to head with the cable provider. What do you get? Super cool features that are now available only because fibre optic cables can carry more data than regular cable tv cables. It’s a lot of techno-super-babble involved, but basically, you get more than Comcast – they have DVR services so you don’t need a Tivo anymore, they have more HD channels for the plasma you just bought, and they basically bundle their super-high-speed internet service with the FiOS TV service if you want.
How To Leave A Voicemail for Multiple People In a Group At Once
Apr 23rd
You just got out of your client meeting and you need to chat about the reactions to your super sales pitch and get moving on the action steps…what do you do? Pick-up the phone and call someone back at the office and then tell them to relay the message to everyone else on the team…because you have to get to the next meeting pronto!
You’re finally out of work and hope that a couple of the guys might want to meet-up for a meal and drinks, but you’re tired and don’t want to call everyone up one at a time…you just wish you could tell everyone to meet-up at the Diner @ 8pm.
Somehow, the conference room you booked is taken and your meeting got bumped to another room in a different wing or different floor, you need a way to tell everyone quickly of the room change so your meeting doesn’t start late and kill the 1st half hour waiting for stragglers to arrive…you’re in the halls and don’t have everyone’s extension or cell #’s. You just want to let everyone know to go to the new meeting room.
You just found out that registration for a class 10 of your friends talked about just opened up today. How do you tell them all to call-in immediately and sign-up for the same class before it’s full?
These are just some scenarios where the ability to leave a mass group voice mail would be awesome. It’s the same message to all the people in your family, friends, team, church group, etc. But looking up everyone’s # and calling each individually to say the same thing is a big waste of your time.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just leave ONE voicemail and send it to everyone you want? Now you can. Here’s how… Read the rest of this entry »
How to Turn Off Call Waiting on Your Vonage Phone Line
Apr 23rd
Call waiting is one of the basic features that most VoIP phone lines like Vonage include that traditional off-line phone companies charge extra for, like in the case of Verizon. And most people on Earth seem to know how to use it when a 2nd call is coming through — just click the switch hook on the phone handset/cradle or some phones have a “FLASH” button on the keypad. You basically just keep pressing that button to toggle back and forth between the 2 simultaneous calls on the line.
However, most people don’t know how to TURN OFF CALL WAITING completely or at least TEMPORARILY DISABLE CALL WAITING for a given call that you’re about to make. Here’s how… Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!