Category: Uncategorized

Since Skype kicked fring and Nimbuzz in the back for using their protocol in their multi-protocol clients, more and more competitors are hitting the mobile voIP app market. One of them is GeeVee.

GeeVee started in December 2010 and thanks to Jean Mercier’s reference to my latest Skype decision related post, I was invited to be one of the earliest tester and test their new VoIP application since day 1.

I am using the iPhone version of the GeeVee application on my iPhone3G 8gb.

instant messaging related features

GeeVee offers a broad range of instant messaging features. I will only mention some as many of them I couldn’t test as yet my contact list is very small.

Features that are special compared to other IM apps:

You can see when your message has been seen and read! You can see when somebody is in the middle of typing a reply to you (yep, most applications on the iPhone don’t offer a typing indicator!).

You can share stuff like your current location on a Google Map with your contacts. You can place a call right from the message window and/or leave a voicemail. Contacts get a assigned a GeeVee number you can use to call them.

Very important to me is also how the online status is handled as my iPhone 3G doesn’t offer multi-tasking! If you are online, you are online, your session never times out!
If somebody sends you a message while the app is closed, it will be sent to you as a push notification message! So never miss anything!

Call quality

I generally had two options to place a call: Call-Back or VoIP.

Call-back will call you back to a number you supply and then call the other party you want to speak to! This way you pay both directions of the call as you also have to pay the way back to you.

But more interesting is “VoIP” as this will work in 3G and wifi.

Call quality is outstanding! I have tried many difficult destinations!

Peru e.g. is a very difficult destination as the VoIP infrastructure is very weak.

Calling from GeeVee gives you a new experience in terms of call quality, calls are crystal clear! No more “mickey mouse” voices, no more stutters or low frequency ranges so you can only guess what a person is about to tell you!

I had the exact same experience with calls to mobiles in Vietnam and Syria. All destinations where even PSTN providers fail to provide a decent connection!

Technical support

When you place calls using a normal PSTN or VoiP provider (let’s say e.g. whatever your cable TV provider or phone line provider offers) and you have a connection problem (e.g. routing issues, so the call isn’t routed through at all or call quality is just bad or calls keep dropping!), then you can tell your provider, but it may take weeks and months till it’s fixed, if ever!

This is why Skype was my preferred way of calling to abroad, including to mobiles.

Let me point out how it works for other providers:

Example:

Skype: You describe the problem of your call.
You need to tell them:

-Type of connection problem (one-sided call, stutters, drops, routing errors, etc)
-Date and time of placing the calls
-Phone number of the destination you have tried to call

Now this takes about a week then you may try again and in most cases, the call quality is better.
If it isn’t re-reply to Skype Support and they will place a test call and then you may try again.

In some cases they might tell you that they can’t improve the connection quality to the destination 🙁

Rebtel: The famous free international call-back provider usually fixes routing problems within 2-5 days.

However if a country changes the Number Plan and the way of dialing, then you are with bad luck, e.g. in case of Peru, I am waiting since September for the routing to be fixed as – according to them – their carrier to Peru denies doing so.

Also you are out of luck if your friends have a pre-paid card and tell you “I have no credits”, so they can’t tell you back!

Granted, I didn’t try since November but I was promised I would being told as soon as the routing has been corrected.

O2: I was told on the hotline “I guess you are our only customer trying to reach Peru” and that was about it. Later I was told by email that they indeed didn’t know that the Numbering Plan of Peru has changed and they thank me for this information.

GeeVee: You can contact support by either email or telephone. (one thing I have noticed: Despite pointing it out that a ‘ + ‘ sign is missing in front of the support phone number, this error hasn’t been fixed by the time of writing this review here).

If you want a routing problem to be fixed, you can either tell them directly, or hit the “rate call quality” button inside the GeeVee applications and call quality issues/routing problems are fixed within 24h at latest. GeeVee is placing test call then to assure the call is working.

In some cases you are even just told to “try now” within 2 mins.

Calling rates

The calling rates are awesome!

Want some example:

Call to Peru “Claro Mobile”. Skype: 36.2 USD ¢, GeeVee: 17 USD ¢
Call to Syria mobile: SKype: 44.9 USD¢, GeeVee: 18 USD ¢

Now there are no more excuses to NOT call to any mobile phone abroad!

Space for improving

Of course for such a young product , there is always space for improving, despite the outstanding performance that outruns all its competitor!

-Caller ID: This feature isn’t available yet so you get a random caller ID (don’t know how “random” random is but sometimes, I placed calls with a caller ID from USA/Canada and sometimes from Brazil), so your friends wonder why you call from “strange places”.

-Line is busy detection: GeeVee doesn’t have this yet. It will just tell you that the “call didn’t go through”.

-iPhone app stability: Yet the app is slaggish on an iPhone3G at times and sometimes crashes. Occationally I have to evenr restart my iPhone. But I was told the problem has been found and fixed. A new updated version should be in the AppStore anytime soon!

Why it outruns, Rebtel, Skype, your local phone provider and even most instant messaging programs::

-GeeVee-to-GeeVee calls are of very good quality
-You get a feature rich instant messaging function.
-You get working customer support that is quick and decent!
-It pushes mobile connection quality to a new level
-Incredibly low calling rates to any destination out there around the globe. No more expensive calls!

If you are searching for something that just works, has very good customer support, provides a very good call quality and is very cheap, then GeeVee is your new VoIP app on your mobile phone!

Technorati Tags: ICQ, skin—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

It has happened! Windows 7 Service Pack 1 final has been finally released!
(Download the 32bit and 64bit versions from here).

Now you wonder, how can I reinstall Windows 7 in the future including Service Pack 1? This is described in a very nice manual here.

What if you have a general problem like this?:

E.g. you own an Acer netbook as a backup computer and it didn’t come with an installation DVD for Windows but only an ISO imaging program that creates a customized DVD for factory resetting?

If you happen to know German, then you can find a neat manual for creating your own installation DVD here. Please bear in mind, that RT7Lite will detect the self-created installation DVD but intergrating Service Pack 1 into it will fail for some reason!

Technorati Tags: sp1, win7—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

After using the the webcam for half a year now, it suddenly stopped working.

Thanks to InStore, who gave me the hint, it works again:

“In order to continue enjoying your Skype video calling, you should update the firmware on your camera” if you are using your Everyman Webcam with Windows.

The update didn’t even take 5 seconds and now it works again 🙂

Technorati Tags: Skype, webcam—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

Update: Delicious just posted on their blog that the nwws that Delicious will be shut down are false!

3 Years ago I was invited to the beta test of English Mister Wong, the competitor of Delicious, the social online bookmarking service which Yahoo bought a couple of years ago told the masses that it will close soon. A big shock.

But let’s be serious. Yahoo didn’t do good to them. One example was that I had problems with vanishing bookmarks for a couple of days a while ago, I can’t remember that anybody of Yahoo Support ever replied or helped me in the process while Mister Wong Support seems to be more supportive and caring, at least when I beta tested it 3 years ago. I hope they still are as it’s now time to move.

Let’s hope for the best!

Mister Wong made an according announcement on their blog today

Technorati Tags: Delicious, Mister Wong—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

Creative Labs: won’t fix bugged SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Windows 7 drivers.

That is what Creative Labs told me in a Twitter message today!

I have been pointing out an issue that even was once in their Vista 64bit drivers back in the days however in Windows 7 64bit there is no workaround! So rear channels play in front speakers on optical output, it is definately a driver issue as in Windows Vista 64bit and Windows XP 32bit and 64bit it’s working perfectly well!

But Creative Support only always replied with the default answer to check out their homepage for possible driver updates. They even replied with the same answer when I sent them the issue in an airmail letter to their headquarter in Singapore.

So I decided to contact Creative Labs over Twitter instead and make the issue public this way.

(read the full issue description here, it can happen that you maybe much click on the “old server” link if available to read the message).

So here is their reply which I received over Twitter today:

” Hi Joerg, not sure if you have received a reply from us. I’ve checked out your case, and i was told that due to the ‘age’ of the (…)of your soundcard, it’s unlikely that the Product Group will continue releasing drivers beyond 2.18.0015. I know it’s a less than (…)satisfactory reply, and we have provided your feedback to the Product Group. Please accept our sincere apologies for this.”

So that means in the end I will have to sell my soundcard and buy a new one! 🙁 or constantly boot up to Windows Vista if I want to watch BlueRay in surround sound.

Technorati Tags: X-Fi, hardware—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

In the 2nd part of the series about really bad decisions that cut user experiences I will shed a light on the recent topic Skype was involved into: Kicking competitors:

First they kicked the multi-protocol fring in a way that they had to remove Skype support for their clients. SkypeJournal recently explained the _why_..

Still bad for the users. E.g. for people like myself who still use an iPhone3G that doesn’t support multitasking.

fring not only offered voice and video support for Skype, but they also offered a promptly replying customer support, sometimes quicker than Skype itself.

SkypeJournal states fring violated their ToS. This is true, but they didn’t do it since just yesterday but since years and Skype didn’t bother.
What nobody mentions: Skype even supported fring and sent people their way as soon as somebody asked Skype “When is Skype for iPhone coming out?” or “is there any Skype for iPhone planned?”.

Even weeks after Skype officially offered Skype for iPhone in the AppStore, I was still sent to to fring when asking about certain things regarding Skype for iPhone.

Conclusion: It was perfectly fine for Skype to send people to fring for using Skype on their iPhone because despite the violation of SKype’s ToS, it still meant money for Skype: People e.g. could do SkypeOut calls on their iPhone using fring which means Skype earns money here this way.

When Skype forced fring to stop supporting SKype, people like me moved to Nimbuzz, the competitor of fring. The client for the iPhone is way slower and the customer support takes a week or two to reply on emails and fix issues sometimes but hey it was multi-protocol supporting Skype, and it worked.

Then a month ago, Nimbuzz got kicked by Skype as well.

A huge let down for Skype lovers like me who want multi-presence in the IM world (which would mean in my case, being available on ICQ/AIM, Skype and Facebook Chat at the same time) who still have a non-multi-tasking mobile phone like the iPhone3G.

We learned from the past, that the fact that newer iPhones have been relased doesn’t mean the older ones will suddenly disappear. If you check the markets there are still tons of old iPhones around. Just because there are old doesn’t mean they are not worth using it anymore. Even Apple saw this and still includes the IPhone3G in their newest iOS updates (even though not supporting some features the 3GS and the 4 have).

Skype is going to lose a huge mobile user market here. Just because Skype is available for iPhone and Android doesn’t mean people are going to use them.

So what are the alternatives?

Well, another alternative is imo.im. You will notice the tons os positive user reviews regarding this application. But there is one big problem: They cannot handle strong passwords so in many cases you have to change your password into a less secure one to be able to login to any network they support. I have emailed them a couple of times about this and even wrote it in the forum on their official Facebook page (in which they sometimes reply to people) but well, they never replied to me and even bothered fixing this pretty important issue.

Looking for alternatives, I was finally forced to buy IM+ (the lite version doesn’t feature Skype support).

MY experience with Shape was always a good one (hey offered Skype on iPhone long before many other companies).

If multi-protocol IM (especially on mobiles) is the future what did Skype about this?!

They went with supporting MySpace IM, which failed so horribly that they simply removed it recently.
(Quote: “Important: This feature is not available in Skype 5 and above.“).

Anybody to prove me wrong?

Technorati Tags: Skype, iPhone—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

Sometimes, I simply have to slap my hand on the forehead looking how decisions by previous heroes of the industry cause a huge impact to the user experience.

First example: Opera. Whatever have driven them to change their way of loading the mails when opening Opera browser (oh right, it was made to make the browser itself startup faster….uhm.), fire this guy.

Sure, I am a die-hard Opera fan, using it since 10 years now. But what they did to the Opera Mail client earlier this year, is unacceptable: Instead of loading it together with the browser, now the mail database is loaded afterwards which means I can watch 5 (!) minutes until my emails are loaded up, which is a pain if the browser crashes for some reason or I want to “quickly” check my emails in the morning! (this is not possible anymore to do it quickly).

It only saves a couple of seconds in the startup of the Opera browser but it causes such a huge negative impact to users like me who have gigabytes of emails!

The solution? Get a faster system!

I am not the only one complaining. Feel free to check out this thread in the Opera Forum.

Technorati Tags: Opera, mail—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

So Skype released Skype 5.0 final now. And there are some changes and some facts about it for the world of users (so you and me).

Skype now intergrated Facebook in their new Skype 5.0 final. Facebook is now everywher, it seems!, unlike ICQ, friends are not on your contact list (Facebook Chat) but it’s about calling them by SkypeOut or SMSing them from Skype

But I can see why. Facebook Chat is instable. It often disconnects or you are often thrown offline. If Skype includes it, it will affect the functionality of SKype (as it does at ICQ, everytime, Facebook has a connection problem, contacts are removed and ICQ freezes for 2 mins).

when Facebook chat goes offline on the Facebook homepage itself, the same happens inside ICQ, it is just a problem of the Facebook chat servers.

This would cause thousands of incoming support request. ICQ has no problem here, as they closed the whole support department years ago!

Skype made an announcement on their The Big Blog (ex Share Skype Blog) here.

Also many Mac users will be happy to here, that they announced: “For those of you who are Mac users: we intend to release an update to our Mac app soon.”

See more about this, here.

Also, the RTX USB SKype DualPhhone stopped working since SKype 5.0 for Windows Beta 2 and since RTX put an end in the firmware update development it will never work there anymore. So time to sell it.

In case you are interested in buying it (it works up to Beta 1 of 5.0 of Skype for Windows), you can bid on it here 🙂

Technorati Tags: Skype, DualPhone—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

Recently, more and more people asked me how it comes to happen, that I know that much about international telecommunication, their problems, their shortcomings, the solutions for calling to abroad for free or at a very good rate.

So, I have decided to share my experiences with my readers out there.

(This blog post will cover the years 2001-2003 and 2008-2010 because 2004-2007 I basically only did use Skype for calling to abroad)

In 2001, when somebody sent me an email asking: “Do you have ICQ?” it all started with installing it. speaking by voice was still terrible at that time. Quality was awful and it sounded like you are speaking to somebody from the radio rather than directly to you.

Thanks to call-by-call it was cheap to call to abroad to landline phones. So I would speak to people from abroad using that.

Back in the days there were some troubles. Russia had this (I don’t know whether it still is this way) Numbering Plan….. I mean, in many countries you have something like a “hidden ‘0’ when calling from abroad, this zero of the city code would drop off…. Russia had a “hidden ‘0’” but only in certain cases. A pretty weird system even no Russian understood, but I figured it out 🙂

There was also this weird problem, that SMS to any Brazilian mobile phone would never get delivered and calls (I wasn’t planning to, but at least this way I could see whether the routing to those numbers work) didn’t either.

So, after exchanging half a dozen emails with ANATEL, I finally could obviously convince them to have a look into the issue, as a few week later it all worked!

Also Amenia had a problem around the end of 2002/beginning of 2003.

Calls would abort after 5 mins (more often after 30 seconds), calling the national phone company “ArmenTel” (now called “Beeline”), resulted in being re-routed to random numbers in Yerevan rather than the actual phone company. Which resulted in calls like: “Uhm, why are you calling me? Do I know you?” and people screaming on me “LISTEN, YOU HAVE TO DIAL THE CORRECT NUMBER!!!”

Emailing them was also no solution, as they wouldn’t answer you.

At that time, ICQ still displayed email addresses in the People Search. So what I did is, tracking down all ArmenTel workers that used ICQ and copied their email addresses.

I explained the whole situation in an email….. 3 days later, I received an email from the “Head of Planning and Engineering” department….he gave me his direct phone number and invited me to discuss this situation in a phone call…. which we did….. 3 months later, ArmenTel announced that they expanded the network capacity. They also introduced a system that detects whether you are calling from abroad or not, so you would hear all the messages by the phbone network in either Armenian, Russian or English.

(Most other phone providers first say it in the national language and then in English).

So, instead of just connecting you randomly to somewhere else when a route was overloaded, a voice would say “route overload” or you would hear stuff like: “The person you are trying to call is currently in a conversation, please try again later”.

There was another unique problem, but that was just for one evening. As probably many of you know, +1 is the country code of USA & Canada.

So instead of being connected to Ontario, I was being connected to a random place in South/Latin America. (I have tried 5 times in total then I gave up). I guess I was quite lucky that people were too tired to scream on me. It was something like: “Hola?” … “I guess I am not speaking to Canada?” … (with a very strong Spanish accent) “Well, no you are not.” …. “Oh, sorry so!” … “Never mind, good night! (click)”.

Then in 2006, JaJah came up with their unique service “Talkster”.

A service that wasn’t widely known by the people out there (me included)…but suddenly in 2008, it all changed when SkypeJournal reported about this service.

It was a service that replaces the number of your friend from abroad (doesn’t matter if the destination is a landline number or a mobile phone number) with a local landline number of your own country. The same happens to your friend. And once you are connected you ask the other to call you back on the local number they got for you while you stay on the line, and voilla, there you go with the free international call! (You only have to pay the local costs that is like calling to a friend, but if you have a flatrate for national landline calls, it is free for you!).

At first, I have tried it with a friend from Sweden (it worked) and then from Peru (didn’t work at first, then after one fix by Talkster it worked one way and then after a second change it worked both ways).

Here, it paid off that Talkster had a good, nice and supportive customer support.

In December 2009, Talkster was acquired by RebTel which was the first that could have happened. More countries supported for free calls, even faster customer support.

And the dealing with the fact that Peru changed their Numbering Plan for calling mobile phones showed that they do care about problem reports.

Back in 2008, I wanted to surprise a friend from Bulgaria with this new possibility, but since I know that certain providers in some countries still change roaming fees for receiving calls from abroad on your mobile, I wanted to assure she won’t have a problem with that. Vivatel (now VivaCom), was hard to come by, as they ignored emails, and most numbers they posted on their English homepage only worked if you lived inside Bulgaria. Finally having found a number that worked, I was welcomed by the automated voice system with “…..Vivatel. For English, press ‘1’.”

….”Please wait…. Please hold the line….please wait….. blah”

Then somebody answered my call…… and I was like “Hello there, I am calling from ….” …. “(click)”.

2nd try…. same game.

The 3rd try I said: “LISTEN, DON’T HANG UP THIS TIME!!!!!! OK????????”…..”OK. moment….”

*music* *music* *music* *music* *music* …. and finally somebody that spoke to me without hanging up……

As many of my blog readers know, I have written blog entries about my experiendes from time to time, and together with the iPhone3G and Talkster hype, there were half a dozen new voip companies that promised you super cheap calls to destinations like India, Pakistan, Latin America and any other country you could think of.

2008 and 2009 was also the time where those phone companies read my blog, emailed me and offered me up to 2h of free calls to any destination I like to test their call quality.

The result was sometimes bad and choppy connections and confused reactions because the connection was so terrible.

Not many telephony providers can match the very good call quality Skype and Rebtel can offer.

If you have a problem with a connection, you can tell them and they will go and fix it.

Conclusion is: If you are doing a lot of calls to abroad, subscribe to the Numbering Plan newsletter (see Numbering Plan link above).

To complain about bad or non-working phone connection is a good thing but sometimes it can turn out being pretty difficult.

Positive to mention is the very much improved customer support of Skype, the very caring and responsive crew of Rebtel and the Peruvian Regulator of Telecommunication “OSIPTEL” who translated the Numbering Plan of Peru in English for me back in 2008 when it was only available in Spanish then.

Thanks to all phone services out there who allowed me a bunch of free calls to abroad and if you want, ask me to test call connection qualities again anytime 🙂

Technorati Tags: phone/a>, calls—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-

Skype recently released new Skype 5 beta (5.0.0.123).

Interesting snippets from the changelog (http://www.skype.com/go/release-notes.windows-beta)

* Offline instant messaging
* Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions

Finally (!) it seems to be possible to send offline messages (as known from ICQ and others). _important_ is that this doesn’t influence my Skype phones (because the “Skype on Devices” client is no longer updated by Skype since end of 2007!).

Furthermore, the 5 beta version fixes some issues of the 4.x versions:

text messages are sometimes not delivered eventhough both parties are online and have no connection problems, Mic doesn’t work on some DELL laptops, HD video

So for those who have problems with the latest final, it might be worth the update for you despite still in beta status! But bear in mind that beta means it has bugs and some things might work not as expected.

Also something very nice is automatic resuming calls thatr dropped, if the other party comes back in time. it looks like this:

Also they re-designed the look of the contact list and it’s now matching more the look of the iPhone client in my opinion. Here an example:

An in all a very worthy and nice release that supplies long missed features or features we didn’t know we would miss before they were offered to us 🙂

Technorati Tags: Skype, beta—-Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂—-