Pleo is rescued! Jetta in Hong Kong won the auction

Pleo is rescued! Jetta in Hong Kong won the auction
(source: Robots Rule Pleo Blog) quoting them:

“Jetta Company Limited, the company that manufactured the Pleo baby robot dinosaur for Ugobe, bought the intellectual property rights and other assets at the Ugobe bankruptcy sale that occurred on May 21. I spoke with Steve Ohler today, the United States liaison for the company, and he confirmed the news. He said the company is firmly committed to re-launching Pleo and continuing the line including accessories such as the vital battery and charger components.“

They also quote Jetta’s press release:

“Hong Kong – Jetta Company Limited acquired the assets of Ugobe and will be re-launching “Pleo” in the near future. Established in 1977, Jetta has focused on manufacturing an extended range of toy, consumer electronics, juvenile, robotic and gift products and is one of the most recognized engineering and OEM companies within the toy industry. Headquartered in Hong Kong, Jetta currently operates five production campuses in Guangdong Province which combined has over 4.5 million square feet of production floor space. At the forefront of the fast-paced toy and robotics industries, Jetta continues to strive for “excellence” and is pleased to add “Ugobe” to its operations.“

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Pleo is back! pleoworld.com is back to life

The new owner of Pleo has put back up the PleoWorld.com website today ! Everything works and looks like before it was taken down by Ugobe! Inlcuding broken Forums and broken mailing list, even emailing to them works, which I just did and so let’s see whether they really give support now!

This will help a lot of new Pleo owners since it’s still available in shops locally and online in many places of many countries and often owners are shocked when they found out the homepage to register is no more!

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My experiences on getting a Pleo


Print spart., originally uploaded by mackz.

I have decided recently to finally get myself a Pleo from Ugobe. However Ugobe went bankrupt roughly a month ago so bad news for me.

So help Saving The Pleo!!! <--- click it :)

So my first step was trying to find out whether I could still buy it from one of my prefered sellers for a reasonable price. I found that ComputerUniverse still have them in stock for a reasonable price (around 250 € back then).

Then I tried to ask the remaining local companies/partners of Pleo / Ugobe whether they still support Pleo owners, etc.

Pleo Malaysia and Pleo Italy haven’t replied to date (I resent my inquiries yesterday this time directly to their HQs)

Then I found that there are stronger rechargeable batteries (Li-Polymer ) that can keep Pleo awake for 2 hours instead of just one.

I did a longer research and found that Litec Computer was very helpful but unfortunately the batteries are sold out, only some chargers are left in stock. Then I found in the forum Pleo Dino Netherlands a post quoting Ucube (Ugobe Taiwan) address.

To avoid further frustration I did a search on them and found the statement of Ucube that they will continue supporting Pleo:

“Asia-Pacific region has always been the product support is responsible for Ugobe Asia from, Ugobe Asia and the United States is Ugobe separate company, Ugobe company is mainly responsible for the United States R D and design, it is the Asia-Pacific region sales and after-sales service and will not be affected .”

Furthermore they stated:

“Ugobe Asia for the Asia-Pacific region with Pleo pet owners to provide technical support and customer service, all the rights and interests of all users will not be damaged. “

So I decided to give it a try and sent an email to Ucube asking wether they would sell me the batteries with the chargers and a dew days later I received an email with a calculation for a pack of 2.

Since some questions were left open I decided to give them a ring and the person who picked up was very nice and polite and with very decent English skills 🙂

after a couple of more small calls and emails the payment went through and I today received the EMS Tracking information for the parcel!

They also confirmed that they “of course!” will support Pleo as ususal despite the bankruptcy of Ugobe!

So much dedication for Pleo owners deserves a golden Leaf award, hehe! 🙂


(template from Liza Kliko)

Meanwhile there are rumours that Pleoworld Italy won the auction of all the Pleo stuff.

Installing Microsoft ehome Media Center Remote Control Receiver in Windows XP X64

If you are searching for a way to get your XBOX360 remote working in Windows Vista, check out this post on the All Reviews Online blog!

You got a Media Center infrared receiver and have the problem that it doesn’t install in Windows XP X64? There are some manuals (for Windows Server 2008 32bit) on the internet and some hints but they are spread everywhere and are outdated and don’t work in most cases.

So I sat down and figured it out on my own within 2 hours.

Like some some headsets and some scanners, the drivers for Windows Vista X64 will also work in Windows XP X64, however 3 issues:

1) It is downloaded from Windows Update severs for installation
2) It won’t install on Windows XP X64 without modification
3) The installation process has some issues

First of all, I copied the following files from the Windows Vista X64 Service Pack 2 folder into a separate folder (Just used search function within the Vista folder):

circlass.inf
circlass.sys
CIRCoInst.dll
hidclass.sys
hidir.sys
hidparse.sys
usbcir.inf
usbcir.sys

Then you create a sub folder and copy all files of one of the Windowswinsxsamd64_input.inf folders of Vista.

It has to contain the following files:

hidclass.sys
hidir.sys
hidparse.sys
hidusb.sys
input.inf

Now open and edit the files

usbcir.inf
circlass.inf

replace all places containing “NTamd64…1” with “NTamd64” otherwise the drivers won’t be installed.

Now you boot up Windows XP X64, it will ask for the drivers. Select to choose your own, click on “browse”, select your folder with the driver files.

It will then ask if you really want to install, confirm this.

Notice: Now at the end of the installation, the installer will crash. It might also accidently cause another action like a program start (it tried to start Sega Rally which I had installed) or it will simply freeze the installation window of the driver routine.

Afzer you killed the frozen installer talk, Windows will tell you it found new hardware and installed it successfully.

Then it will find an “unknown device” and ask for those drivers. Go now to the subfolder in which you put the 2nd driver and select this. Also here you confirm you really want continue installation! And done!

If you want the driver you can also email me.

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Skype overcharges you when dialing premium numer services of Germany

I figured out recently Skype overcharges you when dialing premium numer services of Germany.

Instead of charging 14 € cent/minute like any other landline company does (well, Skype is more likely supposed to charge like a landline /traditional voip service than your mobile phone compan who wants 90 cent/min for premium call numbers) Skype charged it 20 € cent/min so like a mobile phone call.

Pointing it out resulted in 1) sending me the info page for UK premium numbers and when I pointed out it were German premium numbers they sent me to the main rates sites.

As you can see in the Skype forums here I am not the only one with the problem.

Skype refused so far to give me the money back I was overcharged. It was only a small amount but still a bad sign.

update: I have now got my money back for the overcharging including the follwing statement:

“Hello Joerg,
Thank you for writing back.

The number you called is a shared cost number in Germany, these numbers
are unfortunately charged at a higher rate than regular landlines.

Thank you for calling our attention to the fact that these numbers are
not listed separately on our price list, we have forwarded the issue to
the appropriate department and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Please accept these Skype credit vouchers with our deepest apologies to
compensate you for the price difference:

-(2EUR)
-(1EUR)

You can redeem the vouchera here:
https://secure.skype.com/store/voucher/redeem

Again, we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

Should you need more assistance, feel free to contact us again; we will
be glad to help.

Best regards,

Eva S. – Skype Support

Skype Customer Support

Visit www.skype.com for latest news, updates and tips.”

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Dutch SkypeIn numbers available – Thanks to xoip!

There are a lot of people who want Dutch SkypeIn numbers but Skype never could make it as of yet, well the waiting is over, now there is the free xoip service who offers that and more.

The costs for this will the caller pay. See package info.

There is also a downside if you use the fax ability:

Quoted from their “terms and conditions.

” DIGITRIEVE BV COMMERCIAL FAX POLICY

7.1 Digitrieve will not make personally identifiable information such as name, address, email address or telephone numbers available to a third party. The remainder of commercial fax policy is subject to change without notice.

7.2 With reference to point 4.5 of the terms and conditions, Digitrieve BV may send commercial fax messages to XOIP numbers from time to time.

7.2.1 Faxes are sent to inactive numbers, to cover costs of numbers not in regular use.

7.3 No more than one commercial fax per week should be sent to users not making regular use of their assigned XOIP number. It is likely that less than this maximum number of faxes will be sent.

7.4 Users not wishing to receive any such commercial faxes from XOIP should either ensure that they receive one fax per month, or if they do not receive one fax per month, should call their own number for at least 30 seconds in that month.”

I sent email to them asking for more details regaring this.

update: here it their reply

“XOIP does not have any current active program of sending commercial messages. We however have this in our t&c’s so that if we need to send messages in the future, we reserve the right. This is doubtful though.

Our intention is to give you the best user experience. We’re very careful of this.

Kind regards
XOIP help-desk”

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So, I have got twitter and twitter4skype seems to be back

So thanks to a friend I have followed the hype and got also a twitter account.

And I learned that the homepage of Twitter4Skype is no more. Thanks to Google I found an Article on SkypeJournal telling about it.
So it’s not really an extra, it’s a contact to add to your Skype contact list! They appear to have been down but back now as their mood message write “sorry for long sleep and test now.”.

I have tested it and yea-ha, it works! however notice that the update delay is 60 seconds (not really a big problem)

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New Forums

Over the time my forum has been up and down thanks to problems with the db, backups had had been restored, etc. Unfortunately I was told by the old free hoster of it that this time the db got corrupted totally with no way of recovering the data.

Sad for the people that registered and posted there (eventhough not really many people in the last 1-2 years due to the technical issues).

I have got a new forum now running on SMF and its features are awesome so far, plus I can backup it myself anytime if I need to! So please visit my forum! 🙂 Thank you! And sorry for the lost posts, there was no way to recover them.

Given by the possibilities now this shouldn’t happen again!

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Push-To-Talk Client for Skype finally available!

There finally has been a Push-To-Talk client for Skype released! The download is here. More details about this client can be found Skype Forums here.

A Push-To-Talk function was requested by many Skype users since years, but unheard by Skype as it can be seen e.g. here.

One notice by the way: The client didn’t start from me from any other browser except Internet Explorer.

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According to recent IT related media’s reports Skype’s getting bright days due to the momentary world wide financial crises since everybody tries to save serious money in the telecommunication are.

So, it’s time for a guest writing about it!

By Robert Pearlstein

How to Slash Your Monthly Phone Bill with VoIP

With the economy continuing to be in a state of flux, almost everyone is actively looking for new opportunities to reduce monthly expenses. However, one household budget cut that is commonly overlooked is switching to VoIP for phone communications. This innovative, easy to use technology is not only far less expensive than traditional phone service, it is often free!

By signing up with a high quality VoIP service provider, consumers are frequently amazed by their newfound ability to make free domestic and international calls. This can be a tremendous savings for both individuals and families who are currently paying long distance charges. For those who have family and friends overseas, having free international calls to select destinations is an incredible opportunity to stay connected with loved ones without having to be surprised by exorbitant phone bills every month.

Consumers who choose to make the switch to VoIP find that calling is just as reliable, convenient, and simple as with traditional phone service. The sound quality, even for international calls, is crystal clear, and only a headset attached to a PC is required. Of course, you do need to be connected to the Internet.

However, what takes many by surprise is that VoIP systems are not only just as good as traditional phone service and far less expensive, they also deliver a variety of free, highly useful tools that enhance communications. Instant messaging with presence is one of the most popular tools that VoIP service providers offer. This easy-to-use feature enables users to let their friends, family, and business associates know of their availability with a presence indicator and even allows unlimited text messages for free.

Multi-user voice conferencing is another tool that can be used to connect with up to five participants simultaneously. For large families or home-based businesses, this can be extremely beneficial for impromptu get-togethers and meetings.

While there are many ways to cut monthly expenses, there are few that are as convenient and beneficial as switching to VoIP. The cost savings alone makes it worth the time. However, for anyone who enjoys keeping up with friends and family, the benefits are even more substantial.

To truly take advantage of the cost savings and convenience that VoIP can deliver, it’s essential to choose a high quality provider that offers a full range of calling capabilities. Look for one that lets you make both free PC-to-landline and PC-to-mobile phone calls, as well as PC-to-PC calls. It’s also important to select a provider that offers free calling to the areas that you most frequently phone. Most providers offer free calling to certain countries but may charge for other global destinations. Once you’ve done your research and have chosen a provider that can meet your specific needs, you can start enjoying the tremendous savings and convenience that VoIP delivers.

About the Author

Robert Pearlstein is vice president of business development and marketing for Media Ring, a pioneering provider of VoIP services globally. Robert has over 18 years of experience in internet and communications technology and has been instrumental in the market growth and development of several other companies including Sylantro Systems Corporation and RingCentral, Inc. He holds an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management – Thunderbird and has completed the Stanford Executive Management Program.

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