How to Make Phone Calls Over the Internet

Introduction

Using the Internet as an alternative to traditional telephone conversations can be less expensive, but slightly more complicated. Be sure to weigh the advantages and disadvantages before you invest too much time and money in Internet telephony.

Instructions

Steps

Step One

Make sure you can connect to the Internet at a minimum speed of 28.8 Kbps. Higher connection speeds will allow clearer conversations.

Step Two

Make sure your computer is equipped with a sound card of at least 16 bits. The sound card should also allow recording.

Step Three

Purchase compatible speakers and a microphone if you don't already have these components.

Step Four

Buy or download Internet telephony software and install it on your computer. The software you choose must be the same as or compatible with the software of the people you wish to call.

Step Five

Make arrangements with the person you wish to call establishing that you will be online at a specific time.

Step Six

Follow the instructions of your specific telephony software for making a call. This usually involves accessing a server and selecting a name from a list of users who are currently online.

Tips & Warnings

• In general, online telephone calls can only be made between two people who have computers, Internet access and compatible software, although some applications (such as Dialpad) allow you to call regular telephones.
• For optimal clarity, use a full-duplex sound card.
• Instant-messaging software will give you instant messages, but without the voice effects.

Evolution of Microsoft's Surface

2001

In 2001 Stevie Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research began Brainstorming concepts for an interactive table. Their vision was to mix the physical and virtual worlds to provide a rich, interactive experience.




2003

In early 2003, the team presented the idea to Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman, and within the month the first prototype was born, based on an IKEA table with a hole cut through its top and a sheet of architect vellum as a diffuser. The evolution of Microsoft Surface had begun. As more applications were built, the Hardware team saw the value of the surface computer beyond simply gaming and began to favor those applications that took advantage of the unique ability of Surface to recognize physical objects placed on the table.



2004

In 2004, the team grew and became the Surface Computing group. Surface prototypes, functionality and applications were continuously refined. The team build more than 85 early prototypes for use by software developers, hardware developers and user researchers.


2005

By late 2004, The Microsoft Surface software development platform was established and attention turned to its form.A number of different experimental prototype were built including the "tub" model that was encased in a round plastic shell, a desk-height model with a square top and cloth-covered sides and even a bar-height model. After extensive testing and user research, the current look and feel of Surface was finalized in 2005.


2007

Today Microsoft Surface is a 30 - inch diagonal display table that's easy for individuals or small groups to use collaboratively. With a sleek, translucent surface, people engage with Surface using natural hand gestures, touch and physical objects placed on the Surface.


The Future

A form factor continuous to evolve, surface computing will be in any number of environments - schools, business, homes and any number of form factors - part of the counter top, the wall or the refrigerator.

Google Bashes IIS on Web Security

After looking at 70,000 domains distributing malware or hosting attack code, Google took a jab at Microsoft IIS Web server software yesterday, saying it’s twice as likely to host malicious code.

Google actually found the same number of problems on Apache and IIS Web sites, but with so many more sites on Apache servers (66 percent versus Microsoft’s 23 percent), IIS servers host a much larger percentage, PC Advisor reports.

Apache and IIS host 89 percent of Web sites, but are responsible for 98 percent of Web-based malware.

In a blog, Google’s Nagendra Modadugu noted many dirty servers were found in areas with rampant software piracy, such as China and South Korea, according to ZDNet.

With FeedBurner, Google Takes the Measure of the Web

Google (GOOG) has bought FeedBurner, in a move that hits close to home for Beta. Why? Well, I'm a customer of both, using Google Analytics to track our blog networks' traffic and FeedBurner to manage our RSS feeds.

Dick Costolo, FeedBurner's CEO, had a key insight three years ago: RSS feeds are a new medium, different from the Web. "The new medium never drives dollars to the old; it drives dollars to the new thing," he told Business 2.0 last year. And sure enough: Look at all those dollars the Google truck just drove to FeedBurner.

The deal, valued at a rumored $100 million - a figure the companies have yet to confirm or deny - has been cast as all about advertising. FeedBurner sells ads that appear in RSS feeds, a Web delivery mechanism used by blog and news sites to deliver headlines, summaries, and sometimes the entire text of articles and posts.

But I think there's more to the deal - and to FeedBurner - than that.

FeedBurner doesn't just distribute feeds; it enhances them and recombines them in several ways. Business 2.0, for example, uses FeedBurner to power a feature called "The Spew," where all of the B2 blogs' posts are mixed together into a continuous, real-time feed. Today, one big thing that FeedBurner does is splice in ads to feeds, but I could see it doing a lot more. Imagine, for example, Google using its search technology to splice in related videos, Web pages, and blog posts into a feed.

And FeedBurner also fits with another Google product, Google Analytics. FeedBurner recently expanded from tracking RSS feed activity to tracking Web-page traffic, too, with the acquisition of another startup called Blogbeat. Folding Blogbeat into Google Analytics, which Google recently revamped, could make that traffic-tracking tool even more useful. By adding RSS traffic into the media types Google tracks, FeedBurner will let bloggers and other publishers will get a better picture of how their readers are consuming their content.

For those concerned about Google's growing domination, its entry into the RSS-feed business may be cause for alarm. But I imagine most publishers and advertisers will see this as a positive - one vendor to deal with and integrate into their websites, where there used to be two.

What do you think? Does this move give Google too much power over bloggers?

AT&T's Internet TV on Apple Set-Top Box in 2008?

Citing a "well-connected" source, Engadget's Peter Rojas reports that AT&T (T) and Apple (AAPL) are working on adding Internet protocol television to Apple TV, starting sometime next year. He goes on to speculate:

We're guessing that it'll be something like AT&T's U-verse TV service, but it's still way too early to say whether this would be a blown-out offering a full package of channels aimed at replacing your current cable/satellite service, a more limited selection of on-demand programming, or whether it'd even be available to non-AT&T subscribers.

A rumor like this has a bit more credibility than usual, coming on heels of the Apple-YouTube deal, and is likely to fuel analysts' newly rekindled enthusiasm for the Apple TV platform.

Only days after Fortune's Brent Schendler pronounced Apple's (AAPL) set-top box all but dead ("Why Apple TV is a Dud"), Steve Jobs has breathed new life into the business he described at All Things Digital yesterday as a "hobby" (as opposed to a $10 billion business like iPod/iTunes, the Mac and, he hopes, the iPhone).

All it took were two relatively modest changes:

1) A new $399 version with a 160 gig hard drive (as opposed to the $299, 40 gig version that had been met with derision by heavy-duty downloaders);

2) A deal with Google (GOOG) to make YouTube content available on the Apple TV menu, starting in mid-June with "thousands" of clips (added manually by a team that puts them into Apple TV-friendly format) to be followed in the fall by YouTube's full catalog. (Apple press release here)

The YouTube deal is especially significant because it represents the first time the box is being used as anything but a place to show content purchased on the iTunes Music Store (or stuff previously stored on a local hard drive).

Opening up Apple TV by just this much has fired the imagination of analysts, who are now talking about other content that could be streamed directly to the box. TV shows, for example, shown with or without commercials, but on demand, when you want to watch them, thus bypassing the cable monopolies

No wonder Viacom (VIA), which is hardly YouTube friendly -- having sued Google for $1 billion for allowing Viacom intellectual property to slip (or rather pour) through YouTube's cracks -- seems to have changed its tune overnight.

"We're always vigilant about protecting our copyrights," a Viacom spokeswoman told the BBC.
"But we would welcome the opportunity to license our content to Apple as we do with all distributors."

[Apple TV screen shot courtesy of Gizmodo]

Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone Launches June 29

After weeks of anticipation, speculation and guesses good and bad, Apple (AAPL) tonight confirmed the launch date of the iPhone: Friday, June 29.

The news came in a series of three TV ads aired Sunday night and posted shortly after on Apple's website here. The first ones aired at 7 p.m. ET, according to several sources, one before the broadcast of 60 Minutes on CBS, and another just before the 7 p.m. broadcast of 7th Heaven.

Each demonstrates a selection of the iPhone's functions and ends with the words "Only on the new AT&T," the Apple logo, and the tagline: "Coming June 29."

The ads are straightforward and ungimmicky, except perhaps for "Calimari" (see below) ,which jumps from watching the giant squid scene in Pirates of the Caribbean to searching for the nearest seafood restaurant in San Francisco to calling for a reservation. It will be interesting to see if the iPhone -- and the Net -- work as quickly and seamlessly in the real world.

The only news in the ads, besides the launch date, comes in the small print on the AT&T screen. It reads:

"Use requires minimum new two year activation plan."

That should put to rest rumors floated two weeks ago that the iPhone might be offered contract-free, with prepaid and pay-as-you-go options.

Pasted below is the YouTube version of the Calimari ad:

Pac Man finds new life on Xbox

Update of iconic video game, created by original designer, features dance music and mazes that change shapes.

Pac Man will be reborn on Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox Live online service Wednesday as a final tribute for designer Toru Iwatani, who is retiring from the $30 billion games industry he helped ignite.

The new version of the iconic arcade game is a faithful interpretation of the addictive 27-year-old original, where players wrenched joystick controllers to race a character - resembling a yellow pizza missing a slice - around a digital maze to chomp white pellets and chase multicolored "ghosts."

The new game, "Pac Man Championship Edition," is the second and final version Iwatani personally designed, and was created for the final round of the Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championship in New York, when nine finalists played it for the first time.