While I can appreciate Tom Keating’s wholehearted enthusiasm for the rash of gadget deals that abound today, Black Friday and all, I do pause ever so slightly when I remember that isn’t this time supposed to be well, Thanksgiving, as in the Giving of Thanks?

I’m hardly the first person to point out that giving thanks with the right hand hand whilst brandishing our credit cards with the left seems a little crazy. In Canada, many of us watch American news stations showing the 5 am line-ups, door crashing mayhem, and fist fighting moms. But we’re no better. The traditional Boxing Day Sale, the day after the biggest “giving” day of the year, is when Canadians lose their heads.

Who started this anyway? Okay, enough sour grapes.

VCM (Very Cool Mom) Mother’s Day Report. Spent a wonderful day with the family including watching Manchester United vs. West Ham at 7 am followed by French Toast and watermelon served by Monsieurs Tremblay and Tremblay. Rest of day spent gardening, went for a jog, then dinner with my VCM and Dad. Of course, the conversation eventually turned to the Nokia Blogger Relations Program. (The wha???) My VCM still concerned (as always) that I may be doing something illegal. Much reassuring followed. Was able to demonstrate Nokia N800 Internet Tablet to Dad. Look! No wires! Using the N800, he was able to find his university Masters thesis online. Definite thumbs up from Dad.

 

In Canada that is. We just had our Thanksgiving weekend and thus begins a week of hot turkey sandwiches and leftover root vegetables. Needless to say, I’ve haven’t been blogging, I’ve been eating. 

Although fellow Canadian Alec Saunders sighs about not being able to blog from the dinner table on Sunday because of a Blackberry problem (for heaven’s sake, put that thing away and pass the pumpkin pie), I’m reminded that Turkey Day or no, the VoIP world marches bravely on.

What caught my eye? Reviews of Sony Mylo and the AMD Live Communicator powered by SightSpeed. In my world, I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my PhoneGnome.

If you saw Andy’s tip for bad hair days, here’s a little additional info for the gals. Check out my video blog post: girl tips for video blogging on bad hair days.

By now the VOIP world knows of Truphone’s victory in court over mobile giant T-Mobile. Yesterday, UK Truphone won an injunction against T-Mobile blocking calls to Truphone users: For the last month, anyone calling a Truphone number on T-Mobile network would hear a "Number not in service" message. By Monday, July 23, T-Mobile has been instructed to start routing these calls.

There’s plenty of cheering on the Truphone website, http://truphone.blogspot.com/2007/07/truphone-wins-court-injunction-against.html but I have yet to find T-Mobile’s official or unofficial response. I couldn’t find anything on their website. In the spirit of gathering the whole picture, let me know if you find a company statement or interview anywhere. 

This caught my eye today. AvantiMobile in the UK is marketing something called Least Cost Routing for mobile phones. When you make a call, the Avantimobile application in your phone checks to see if it can be routed cheaply through their VOIP network. If it can’t, the call goes through the regular cell network. You don’t have to do a thing except dial. It sounds simple and I like that.

Trying to absorb all my choices when it comes to new VOIP handsets, services and applications makes me feel like I need a flow chart just to make a call. Just look at Andy’s list of what he uses day to day!

This week thevoipgirl.com went down in flames for the first time. I think it was out for a couple of days after I upgraded my WordPress template and then managed to hose my site. After the initial shock, depression set in since I have absolutely NO idea how PHP works. Thankfully the WP template I’m using is superbly supported by its creator and other code wizards. It turned out to be something wonky with the permissions in my index.php and nothing to do with upgrading (greek to me). So, the reason for this post, in a nutshell, is to recommend this highly customizable and well supported template. Check out Semiologic Pro by Denis de Bernardy. Cheers!

Bloggers like Andy and Phoneboy have made mention of Gizmo Project growing pains and bugs. Sometimes timing is everything because I was just thinking that. Well, maybe I’m feeling a little cranky today. I haven’t seen the problems Andy and Phoneboy have, but I do see other Gizmo-related errors and general “not responding” messages regularly, and it’s getting me down.

I’ve also never been able to get GizmoCall to work for me at all despite numerous pleas to tech support and the forums. I reported on it’s launch but was waiting to give a user opinion. Never happened. I really think that Gizmo is going in the right direction with the additional services like SMS, web calling, integration with other IM networks. I recently decided to use Gizmo as my primary chat interface since I can integrate with MSN,Yahoo, Google, and others. A new features lets you import your MSN contact list into Gizmo at one shot instead of laboriously one by one. And Gizmo is SO easy to set up with the Nokia N95 which means I can use it to make mobile internet calls.  I also use Gizmo to handle all my incoming calls through GrandCentral. Another big plus.

When the sun is shining you can overlook application not responding and other weirdness. But you can also get tired of making excuses. Sigh. I feel it’s kind of like a great outfit, love the color, the style, looks good on me, perfect for the occasion, but it doesn’t quite fit right.

On Wednesday Jangl announced a new service called “Call Anyone” that allows you to get a phone number for someone just by entering their email address. With “Call Anyone” you enter someone’s email address on Jangl’s homepage www.jangl.com.  You are then given a local phone number to call them (even if they’re long distance, you get a number local to you).  During the first call, you leave a voicemail, which Jangl then delivers via email.  Once they receive that message, the person gets instructions to get a number – local to them – to call you back.  This service still keeps your personal number safe, enables text messaging via SMS and the easy exchange of voicemails, too. 

The service is free but the calls are placed and received on “real” phones so you pay the appropriate carrier or mobile airtime  fees.

I tried it and it seems to work just fine.  The email that Jangl sends to notify the person you’re calling looks a bit suspicious so I suggest customizing the subject and text of the message (you can do this in the first screen before sending).  Embedded in the email is a link to listen to the message. Once the person listens to the message, they can click another link to get the private number for calling you back.

I also noticed that Jangl updated their look and feel and it works much better for me. The control panel doesn’t seem as confusing as it was before. I have a problem displaying the Flash widgets however. They don’t appear in the preview area. 

Laptop magazine has a review of Fring, Talkster, Nimbuzz and Barablu. These four apps turn your good old cell phone into an internet phone and more. Of the four, Nimbuzz is new to me and Barablu I haven’t tried yet. Fring and Talkster I’ve used and quite like, although I think having a great handset makes all the difference. I wouldn’t bother with any of these if I didn’t have the Nokia N80i to test with.

The review does a good job of capturing the typical setup process for all applications, and gives both the pros and cons of usability, call quality and the like. Author Joanna Stern points out that “regardless of which mobile VoIP service you use, you’re going to need an unlimited data plan, which costs anywhere from $5.99 per month (T-Mobile) to $24.99 (Cingular)”.

Edited May 17, 2007:

James Wanless of Talkster clarified for me that their service in fact does not require a data plan:

Thanks James