Windows Live messenger gets face lift and new functions

This is obtained from the Windows live messenger blog
Posted by Leah

Microsoft Origami project - new handheld device

This video on the Microsoft Origami project due to be released on the 2nd of March. Since I already own a pocket pc I am definitely getting on this bandwagon. It is really an awesome handheld gadget with infinite possibilites. Check the video out Once I lay my hands on it I will let you know what my experience is. Additonal info can be gotten from this Wikipedia stub

30 minutes of phone charging for $3

I travelled to Sacramento California last weekend and while waiting for my connecting flight at Seattle Tacoma Airport I saw the funniest vending machine ever. A machine that supports mosts cell phone chargers from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and RIM's blackberry and for $3 you get to charge your phone for the same amount the charger costs on eBay and the machine accepts all major credit cards. I wont be surprised if it even accepts paypal at a later date. Its called a Chargecarte. I am sure the company too might soon increase the number of chargers to include digital cameras and pda. I know last summer at Chicago’s airport it was extremely difficult to find an outlet to plug in my laptop or charge my phone and I had to wait for a free socket to plug in my laptop infact I ended up time multiplexing with a good Samaritan in other to charge my phone. So soon even electrical outlets at airports won’t be free

Spoofing your Caller ID and the gender of your voice

I actually tried out Spoofcard a few weeks ago and I have decided to blog about it.
Spoofcard allows you to spoof or masquerade your caller id to any number in North America at this time but there are plans to allow international calls in the future.
The site also allows you to specify what you want your default caller id to be or during the call you can set a new caller id.
The cool thing about it is also allows you change the gender of your voice so you can select your voice to be either a computer synthesized male or female voice. The voice is actually very realistic and can fool almost anyone.
The web panel allows the whole conversation is recorded and you can download the conversation as a wave file when you log on to your account after the conversation. The cheapest calling card is $10 USD and it gives you 60 minutes of “Spoofing time” and you even get a buck for each individual you refer to Spoofcard.

Yahoo messenger with Voice 7.5 - a no go for calling to Nigeria

As has been prevalent in the past, the tech companies trying to out do each other by first copying what ever new feature the other one has then adding a new feature to their software. Yahoo has released a beta for its Yahoo voice service with its Yahoo messenger pretty much the same thing as Skypein and Skypeout. You can get telephone numbers anywhere in US, UK and France for $29.90 a year or $2.99 a month with their “Phone in” service which is cheaper than Skype’s charge of 30 EUR and you can call countries all over the world (the cheapest being the US for 1 cent and it goes up from there)
The call charge to Nigeria is cheaper than Skype and the call credit are in $10 and $25 denominations. There is no pay by Paypal option so you have to divulge your credit card information (but its Yahoo so I guess it is safe).
The cost
Skype(USD) Yahoo(USD)
Nigeria Lagos 8.6 cents 8.9 cents
Nigeria Mobile 25.4 cents 19.0 cents
Niger Landline 11.7 cents 8.9 cents
UK Landline 2.1 cents 1.5 cents
UK Mobile 25.3 cents 17.0 cents
U.S.A. 2.1 cents 1 cent

I decided to try it out and my experience with the service is that it is nothing to write home about (I mean that literally too),.I tried calling Nigeria it connected but it was obvious that the party at the other end was having difficulty hearing me as they complained that there was a lot of jitter, to cut the long story short I tried calling 3 people in Lagos, Abuja and Benin and we couldn’t communicate. I use Skype all the time and although it doesn’t connect 100% of the time but you can have a decent communication and so far they can’t tell if its different form some of their not so great calling cards that are available.
The verdict if you want to use Voice stick with Skype, If you want call conferencing still stick with Skype and If you want Video conferencing go with MSN messenger ( now live messenger).

Internet Explorer IE7 review text

Microsoft has released a second beta version of IE & which includes new features like the long awaited tabbed browsing.
It supports RSS feed with enclosure unlike IE6 that only displayed the text in an RSS feed.
It gives you the choice to select your favourite search engine, by default it is set to use MSN search.
You also have the advantage of being able to have "multiple" home pages and you can select anyone you want, more or less like a mini favourites.
They have also implemented a nice print preview and you can zoom in and out of any page.
The quick tab features allows you to view all open tabs in a single window as large thumbnails just like in the Vista presentation at CES or thumbnail view in "My pictures" folder

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 beta 2) podcast

Cool stuff from Google Part 1

Google missed their numbers this quarter and their share price took an immediate hit :( ... here are the Google tips:

Online Dictionary:
To find the definition of any word. Enter define:wordtodefine where “wordtodefine” is the word you want to look up its meaning on Google’s search field on its home page and you are presented with a list of definitions of your selected word.

RSS reader to read blogs and RSS feeds
1. At the google home page. Click “Personalized home” at the top right hand corner of the google home page.
2. You can then add the url for the RSS feed of the url or select any of the popular feeds available

Google Personalized home:
In other to turn your classic Google home page into a portal, sort of like Yahoo’s MyYahoo. Follow step 1 in R.S.S. reader then Click “Add content” and add whatever content you want e.g Weather, Gmail or any of other content.
You can move the contents around by dragging and dropping them into any of the 3 columns

GMail…… 2GB of email and counting
Get a gmail invite from a friend on on ebay its now about a dollar, it started out at $100 more than a year ago . I still have gmail invites if you want one leave a comment.
One other cool thing about gmail is you can also subscribe to RSS feeds and it scrolls at the top of you gmail page. You can also search your emails very quickly and you have free POP access and email forwarding

Google Earth
If you have a really fast internet connection and a good graphics card then you can view satellite pictures of most parts of the world, I read that Kano State is life on Google earth I haven’t check it though. So if you have friend in North America you can actually see where he lives and in some cases if you look hard enough you can spot his car parked on the driveway, try mine 1939 Lee…

In the spirit of keeping my blog posts short from the comments I have gotten I will continue on another post………To be continued with Google desktop, Toolbar for Outlook, Google Talk, Picassa, blogger, Adsense and Adwords, Video e.t.c The list is endless

P.S Google is also in yoruba I know it’s no longer news but I thought I should drop that in and to let u know you can help them translate to your own language there is a link to languages on your Google personalized home page