Regular Pocket Picks readers will know that we are crazy about both the iPhone and mobile VoIP apps. Imagine our excitement then (some of us still haven’t stopped jumping up and down clapping our hands together and grinning like porcelain dolls) at finding out about Jajah, the iPhone’s first VoIP client.
The application works through the Safari browser and though sign up is free, it is not a completely costless service. Still, after typing a number into Jajah you can make international calls for 3 cents per minute instead of AT & T’s 23 cents per minute price and calls between Jajah users are free.
What is particularly interesting is that because this service is browser based, it sidesteps a lot of the legal wrangling that many mobile VoIP software providers are finding themselves in with the big hitting carriers just now. Let’s hope there is plenty more of this sort of thing available when the iPhone finally ships in Europe.
When looking at the iPod touch, you have a choice: you can either see it as an evolutionary leap for iPod, or a slight downgrade from iPhone. You gain a thinner shell, up to 16GB of storage, but lose a bunch of apps, the phone, and some other surprising things. In our opinion, it's both the leap and the downgrade, and therein lies the rub.
• Physically, it's almost more of an attention grabber than the iPhone, at about 2/3 the thickness and wearing the signature iPod chrome jacket. Yes, the back is more prone to scratching, but it's oh so shiny. Removing the recessed headphone jack was also a smart move, as you no longer need compatible headphones, or a silly adapter to make it work.
• Much of the iPhone experience remains intact: the wonderful multitouch navigation, the supreme Safari browser, the ease with which you can sync to iTunes, then grab and go without that annoying Eject delay. New minor features like adding a period by double tapping the space bar and bringing up the music HUD by double tapping the Home button are both welcome additions that make using the iPod touch even easier.
• The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is thrilling to use, and works as billed. Not only is it easy as hell to find a song, click its animated icon for a preview and download it, in seconds, to your iPod; it's also impressive how it syncs back to your computer's iTunes library without any weirdness. (Hey, as people who have lived through all of the Microsoft-PlaysForSure-compliant software, we are always impressed when DRM music apps work as billed.)
• What we haven't yet reported is that the battery life is ridiculously good, well over the 5 hours of video advertised by Apple. In a NYC-to-SF flight today, it refused to die, playing video almost constantly for 6 hours and 45 minutes. We had the Wi-Fi turned off, but if you're smart you would turn it off on planes too. At least until Virgin launches Wi-Fi in 2008.
There are, however, some issues with the thing. We have brought some up, but here they are, out in the open, for us to discuss:
• Our biggest complaint is that the touch's screen is not as good as the iPhone's screen. As Adrian has already mentioned, when you look directly at the screen while playing video, the deep blacks look strange and opalescent, almost like a film negative. We have tried this on three iPods and they all returned the same result. The only way to solve this problem, in my experience, is to tilt the touch away from you slightly, so that the top left corner is angled down. Not a fun way to watch video. The iPhone does not have this problem in any noticeable way.
• One of the quieter breakthroughs of the iPhone was the physical volume buttons on its side. We were hoping this was a sign that Apple had recognized the need for quick, no-look volume adjustments. With an iPhone, you can turn volume up or down without pulling it out of your pocket. We view the lack of physical volume buttons on the iPod touch as a step backwards.
• We found that there can be some lag when doing video-intensive activities. We were trying to find a single frame of a movie to show off, and we skipped forward and back so much that the thing eventually just froze up for a spell. After say 10 seconds, it was back in action, but everyone hates a freeze. The software can also experience crashes in the same way iPhone apps do: the app you're in closes out quickly, and you have to relaunch. Fairly painless, but potentially annoying.
• Old iPod video accessories don't work with the iPod touch. As we reported with the nano, the iPod touch doesn't support video through its headphone jack. All future video out will be through the 30-pin connection, but old third-party video products using the pin connector don't work either. While future products are on the way, anyone with old hardware is going to have to upgrade. On the bright side, component video out is now supported.
• No disk mode. We're not quite sure why this disappeared on the iPhone to begin with (cellphone data sensitivity, perhaps?), but its the same on the iPod touch and we don't like it one bit.
• Here are some less extreme gripes we'll just get off our chest: No video downloads in iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, no wireless syncing to iTunes, no external speakers, dumbing down the calendar, and no Mail or Notes apps. This falls into the same category as our bitching about the lack of stereo Bluetooth A2DP on the iPhone: would be nice, might happen with a software update. Seriously, Steve, we're just planting the seed.
• So far, we've had no luck with AppTapp, but we don't think that it will be long before we can load third-party apps onto the touch, too.
The bottom line, if there is one, is that this will certainly be a great product for people who are unable or unwilling to sign up for AT&T. But spending $399 on the 16GB touch is not better than spending $399 on an 8GB iPhone. There are real reasons why the iPhone is a better iPod than the touch, especially now that both will have equal access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Choosing the touch over the iPhone is like choosing a fully loaded Toyota Avalon over a Lexus ES.
How small businesses can make sure IP telephony is right for them.
Patent-infringement suits, corporate collapses, service outages, and static-filled, near-incomprehensible Internet calls. They don't all happen at once, and their causes and cures all differ. Still, with so many such problems afflicting the VoIP business these days, it's only natural for small companies to ask a serious question: Is depending on IP telephony for all your voice communication needs a good idea?
The answer is of course that there's no easy answer. All you can do is sort through the concerns and ask questions to help decide whether VoIP's disadvantages outweigh its benefits in your particular case. Here are some of the concerns; the questions will come in the second installment of this article.
For years, the leading concern of small-business VoIP users was voice quality. Unlike large enterprises, small companies couldn't send their calls between branches or to the public phone network via big-bandwidth corporate IP networks. Similarly, they may not have been able to afford professional-grade VoIP services provided by larger operators such as AT&T, EarthLink and Global Crossing.
Such services typically give voice packets priority over data traffic, both on the broadband link to the customer's premises (which the operator usually provides as well) and on the provider's managed backbone network. As a result, small companies often had to make the hard choice between the hit-or-miss quality of Internet telephony and no VoIP at all.
Recently, however, concerns over service providers' staying power have threatened to overshadow any and all quality questions. Vonage started it off, when its loss to Verizon in a patent-infringement suit led to worries that it was going out of business. Then SunRocket, which had no such legal excuses for failure, collapsed all on its own. Stability anxiety even spilled over into the IP PBX (Private Branch eXchange) world. Observers wondered, for example, whether the patent suit and countersuit involving vendors Mitel and ShoreTel would raise further roadblocks to VoIP adoption.
Technical reliability used to get less attention, but recently, it has gotten plenty. The main reason: Skype's recent outage, which left users without service for a day or so. Other services have suffered lower-profile failures as well. A more subtle problem is the inherently lower reliability of the technology itself. As long as VoIP runs not on bulletproof telecom switches but rather on servers, as it usually does, it will have trouble approaching the fabled five-nines, or 99.999 percent, reliability of traditional phone networks.
Worries about emergency operation have typically focused more on residential than business customers. While the inability of a Vonage user to reach police by dialing 911 made headlines a couple of years ago, business VoIP users have had no such notorious incidents. That doesn't mean you shouldn't think about emergencies, though. For one thing, data networks and VoIP equipment need external power, so only battery backup will ensure that your IP phone service will work if a storm knocks out the electrical grid. But batteries will only last hours or days at most, and consequently, so will your VoIP service.
On the other hand, when the emergency is really big — a regional disaster, for instance — VoIP actually has some advantages. If some future Hurricane Katrina forces you to relocate your office, it will be relatively simple to have all your calls routed to a new physical or IP address, so you can be up and running with the samephone numbers in short order.
And that points to one factor that complicates all the others: There can be a significant downside to not going with VoIP, which small businesses have to weigh against all the other issues. Once you get used to features like Web-based call management or free calling between locations, for example, it's hard to imagine getting as much done without them. Avoiding VoIP because of quality or reliability concerns could, in fact, make you fall behind your competitors and your own goals.
Added up, then, it's clear that you need to ask a lot of questions about VoIP before you decide whether it is right for you.
1. Turn on Wi-Fi signal for connecting to Internet
2. Select menu Wi-Fi for searching Wi-Fi signal
3. Select VoIP that you have been setting (below menu Profile) and Change status of VoIP from "Available" to "Selected". Now, You can use Thaitel SIP Account for calling to world wide with cheapest rate by enter phone number and dial.
4. Press Hang up when finish calling
How to make a call from HP iPAQ 510
Method 1 : Call to worldwide with SIP Account only. It is easy to call to international with cheap rate. You can act on step 3
Method 2 : You can switch signal between GSM signal and VoIP Signal by Change status of VoIP from "Selected" to "Available" .
Note : You can notice that you are using VoIP signal or GSM signal when you calling to destination. It will show selected signal.
HP iPAQ 512 Voice MessengerThe HP iPAQ Voice Messenger offers professionals a powerful, easy-to-use Smartphone that combines the mobility of a cell phone, the capability of a handheld organizer, constant contact of a push e-mail device, and the power of an office phone system. Talk for hours Up to 6.75 hours of talk time. Save your wireless airtime minutes while in the office with VoIP (Voice Over IP) over your company’s wireless LAN (WiFi) and PBX phone system. How to install HP iPAQ Setup Assistant
1. Run setup from CD, which packaged with your device
