Free Computer Based VOIP

I’ve used a variety of computer based VOIP over the years. My current preference in this space is Skype as it’s free for computer-to-computer calls and even allows calls to and from regular phones (at a fee).

Video and text chat are also provided, as is ‘white-boarding’ with additional plugins.

Skype is available for most platforms, even mobile phones… I’ve found that while the Windows beta versions has some additional features, the Linux release is rock-solid.

http://www.skype.com/

There are also several hardware based solutions, like Vonage, available to replace your traditional phone service… perhaps we’ll cover that later.

Skype me!

Shellback initiation

I first crossed on way from the Persian Gulf to Darwin, Australia on USS Helena (SSN-725) on 22 February 1994 (15 years ago, wow!), Longitude CLASSIFIED!

As is Navy tradition, there were some initiation rituals and a ‘Steel Beach Picnic’ and swim call on the equator.

Now get below decks and swap – Pollywog!

Digital Television Transition – starts today

Today is February 17th 2009… up until a few week ago when President Barack Obama signed into law the “DTV Delay Act” officially making the new date June 12th because the government ran out of money for coupons to offset the cost of converter boxes.

Regardless, in many communities some television stations will end their analog transmissions and begin digital-only.

I’m all for digital content as the quality is obviously better, but from my background in communications it’ll likely be impaired more by foul weather and not have the range of the analog stations in the past… oh, well!

REFERENCES:

Cheers!

Open Source FTP Client (and Server)

At one time, FTP was the only means available to move large files, times have changed but the need still exists, especially for developers like myself.

For years I’ve happily used FileZilla for my FTP needs, the client is available on most platforms. There is also a server available for Windows as most Linux variants already provide FTP.

Happy file transfers!

Yahoo! Exceptional Performance (for Web Applications)

I spend a LOT of time trying to optimize web applications to run and appear as fast as possible, one of the most valuable tools I have in my “bag of tricks” is the YSlow! plugin for Firefox.

It integrates in the browser and gives a near real-time scoring of the pages you visit and suggestions on how to improve them. While some of the suggestions are not practical (for example: use of a CDN) the bulk of them can be applied to your application code or server with a little bit of work.

The rules and scoring mechanisms are well documented at the following website:

The YSlow! plugin is available here:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

Happy… Faster Surfing!