Local and Free Long Distance US/Canada $20 Year!

This morning I did something different. Due to an overwhelming urge to click on the TV instead of the mouse, I found myself at the very beginning of a paid infomercial on the Sci-Fi channel. The significance of this is that I own and use the product (MajicJack) in my own home/office! Imagine, $20 a YEAR for local and long distance phone service! No additional taxes, surcharges, or fees of any kind. Just your broadband Internet connection and an open USB port on your PC. Plug in a cordless phone or wireless headset and you get crystal clear, dead-zone free reception anywhere in your home or office.

Important: This is NOT a paid endorsement; I am a VERY satisfied customer who saves hundreds of dollars each year on monthly phone bills that no longer exist!

It is time the big telcos had some real competition; time YOU had more money in your pocket. Featured on the Savings Shopping Network which aired 24 June 2008 at 7:30 AM on the Sci-Fi channel. Ironically, The TV service provider in my area has been pushing its own "special deal" on phone service for $20 a month.

MajicJack also received the PC Magazine Editors Choice award published 17 January 2008 and has been featured on multiple TV networks and major newspapers as well. You get: free Voice Mail, Call Forwarding, Caller ID, Directory Assistance, PLUS a new portable phone number all for only $20 per year! Why are you still paying the phone company's outrageous fees? Get to the MajicJack site now while the free trial offer is still running! Do it for yourself, do it for your business, do it for family and friends, do it for a lifetime of savings; just do it now: MajicJack.

At the time of this post their website lists a free trial offer - try now, pay later with your savings! Super simple to install and use. Plug it in to an open USB port and wait for the pre-installed software to do most the work for you. Sorry, you WILL have to select the nearest physical hub (a city near you, the internet does not really care). Plug in your phone and make a call. That's it.

Call any number in the US and Canada FREE! Do you have friends or relatives outside the US and Canada? Maybe you are outside the calling area? Like any good network plan, you can call any other MajicJack number where ever it is installed - FREE! Travel a bit? No problem, take your MajicJack with you; it will work on any hi-speed Internet connected PC anywhere in the world.

Check the MajicJack website for a free trial offer - try now, pay later! Bye-bye, phone company...

You might want to review the commentary on: GigaOM which contains a LOT of issues, complaints, and resolutions. As of 7-27-2008 there is NO TECH SUPPORT available from the company. There is; however, a growing MJ community trying to help. You will have to scour the comments because there are a LOT of them; some people have reported spending a couple hours reading them all! Even I was there for an hour and had difficulty with my comments being posted. As a nearly sole source for information the sites' host may be overwhelmed.

All content © 2008 Keith E Larson

Hellifino

I have not made a recent post because I have found NOTHING worthy of noting. The forums to which I belong are full of children and other immature types - the former need "raised up proper", the latter put out of my misery. Really, grow up already; lose the diapers. Baby poop belongs not on the Web! I have become so disgusted even my own stuff reeks to me. This is bad. Maybe a cold beer and a slamming stereo will break this hellifino what... Cya

I tell it like it is. My rep on the forums took a dive because I exposed a FRAUD posing as a web designer. I could make a better website with WYSIWYG editing, default templates, and a few snippets of code from people who KNOW what they are doing. KMLWA losers. Yep, I'm pissed off and there is nowhere else for me to vent. You don't like it? Leave a comment; see if I don't blast you off the Web too. Or not, maybe I want the company. LOL

Listening to WIMZ, broadcasting out of Knoxville, TN. Recent: Copperhead Road and Bullet Bites the Bone. Thanks to all the Workforce Rockers for listening. Thanks to the guys and gals who make it real - the WIMZ crew! Pink Floyd now, run Rabbit run...

All content © 2008 Keith E Larson

Reviewers at W-T seeking sex!

The following conversation with the folks at Webmaster-Talk Forums has run its course:

"This is a farce! The respondents are replying to sexy avatar pics rather than honest requests for a review. As a professional reviewer I look for the lessor marked and go for them first to give the "little guy/gal" a shot at infamy. The two top reviews at this time both have a girls pic as the avatar, one of them is a guy who is deliberately using sex as a marketing tool on this forum. My site is honest and so is this duplicate request for review. This is a test of the viewer mentality, moderator judgment, and value of continued service at this forum. I do NOT have time to waste on disingenuous sites. V.O.I.D."

I thought I had found a good place to get noticed while providing a valuable free service to webmasters which might give me a boost as well. Maybe I could find some friends there? Maybe. I have not given up hope, though I have a different opinion since my recent discovery. Just look at the response numbers as I do, then check the low #s versus the high. Its obvious. Sex sells.

This quote is taken from a PM from a moderator at W-T: "I'm not certain I understand what you're so irate about in your rant in the blog reviews section. Would you mind explaining what the problem is ? I read your blog entry too, I'm still not sure what is wrong.

Is it just some member's avatars that you are finding fault with ?? If so, who are they ? We do have fairly strict rules here about adult-oriented stuff - we do not allow it.

Thanks."

I thought I was being quite clear. At the time of this alleged rant the two top posts both had human female avatars quite obviously oriented to attract attention not to the blog but, to the image. This avatar from sizzler_chetan was painfully obvious. This is a MALE poster presenting a sexy female image to the world which at first appears to be the poster "herself". This is blatant use of sexual connotation and is also misleading advertising. What about this is difficult to understand? Where is your morality? What about simple honesty? Why should I continue to review here with such an obvious bias toward sex? There were multiple blogs listed yet, the only two with major responses were attached to female avatars. Perhaps you do understand, and are denying accountability. Adult oriented? Get real. This is all about how YOUR VIEWERS look at the posts. It is ALL ABOUT SEX because that is what it is.

"I would hardly go so far as to call it false advertising.. the guy's not advertising.. it's just an AVATAR in a forum."

In the USA this is DEFINITELY advertising, as such it would fall under the preview of misleading. All avatars are expected to be a reflection of the poster in some way. I do appreciate your contact and continued discussion of this matter. Since I need to participate in a global format, and my views can be somewhat rigid at times, your assistance in this matter is very gratifying/enlightening. Thank you.

"What would that say about me if I used a photo of my cats ?? It would say nothing more than 'I like cats'."

And when you use a pic of a sexy girl it says two things; I like sexy girls, and I'm using this one to sell my blog. That's close to prostitution, it's technically legal but, not very honest. He withdrew the avatar? Hmm, wonder why. Not. You want to sell your blog with *****cats make em furry and four legged; there's way more than enough reference to sex on the web. We do NOT need it here at W-T.

Haha! Got censored when I meant the literal psycats! Thanks for the continuing epic.

LadynRed, there is a certain expectation from your avatar, followed by your demeanor and attitude. When what is found behind the avatar is FALSE it is a LIE. Period. Yours seems to suit your position as a Mod and a commentator in general. Does this help you find my objection?

Liars, cheats, and thieves are intolerable. Where is the proper forum for the discussion of misuse of sexual innuendo? I am not alone in the recognition of this blatant disregard for appropriate use of avatars. This is avatar abuse at the level of misrepresentation leading to an inappropriate expectation of service which will be denied at first contact. Sex sells. Abusive innuendo hurts all of us.

All content © 2008 Keith E Larson

Widget for PCWorld Added to V.O.I.D Phoenix

When I need to get out of the house for a while but, have no particular destination in mind, I often wind up at our downtown public library. This is a relatively quiet place with a large magazine section full of a variety of publications. One of my favorites has always been PC World; with their link URLs listed for a great many of the magazine features it is easy to hop on the Web and get the expanded version. Today I noticed the widget. This handy, embeddable tool provides headlines and highlights right in your web page or blog. The widget installer for Blogger has two options: install to a new post; install to the sidebar. Adding a bit of centering code makes a perfect fit. The install to sidebar function got confused by the existing widget in this post; a simple cut/paste operation took care of that issue.

News, reviews, and video on the latest tech products.

All content © 2008 Keith E Larson

Vista and McAfee Woes

Talked about forever, rumors and promises mixed together, and finally SP1 came out as a regular update. I took a deep breath and held it; the anxious tension making my heart race and my palms sweat. What have I to fear? My reasoning self-assurance was of no comfort. Then I clicked the update button. Not long after I discovered the need to breath; this was going to take quite some time. I waited, watched, and dutifully did what I was told. Trust? Not really but, I do have faith in Restore Point. That was a good idea well implemented.

At first glance, everything seemed to be alright, which is suspicious in itself. This is Windows Vista: temperamental at best; a nightmare more often than not. Why must they insist upon reseting all of my desired settings to their own ludicrous defaults? Only I know what is best for me and my PC, not Microsoft! Even my Hotmail account was dysfunctional for several days, and I didn't know about it until all of the backlogged messages burst through at once. What has that to do with SP1? Who knows, maybe it's just a coincidence. Why are there no "lemon laws" for software, particularly operating systems? Ironically, I went to msconfig to lock out all future updates; now I won't be tempted to allow the tyrant "one last chance".

Realize that all of my security applications were disabled for the install, as recommended of course. So, the first discoveries occurred immediately following restart. As I attempted to re-secure my system. My replacement choice for the resource hungry McAfee Security Suite included ClamWin AV which would no longer load due to some esoteric error which I did not think to record. With no suitable alternative at the ready, I was forced to re-install McAffee. Now, which of the remaining security applications must remain disabled to avoid internal bickering? Ah yes, the Comodo firewall I had been training for weeks. And naturally, the on-access scanner added due to the lack thereof within ClamWin.

Due to a previous issue with the McAfee "Quick Clean" which required a re-install, I knew that SpyBot would be reported as incompatible and "...must be un-installed prior to..." This is simply NOT TRUE! They can be taught to play nice with each other and make a very nice team; each one senses and reports a little differently in accordance with their parameters. Sometimes they report together but, generally one or the other finds something amiss. Therefore, I left SpyBot and TeaTimer unloaded while I got McAfee back on-line. Next was Comodo Anti-Malware which would have reported and stopped the install but, works wonderfully in the background otherwise.

Somewhere along the line KeyScrambler got knocked out; MetaCrawler flawlessly pulled up the necessary page for a quick and painless re-install. What I did not know was whether there would be issues with CCleaner and Total Privacy 5 as they were added to the mix without McAfee's presence. Proper set-up with each cleaner is essential to both proper operation and clean start-ups and shut-downs. CCleaner is set to run at start-up as soon as it is loaded, then shut down; this works out fine because McAfee loads first and keeps control until it is finished. TP5 is set to load to the system tray in anticipation of an eventual shut-down; Vista recognizes and waits for TP5 to finish prior to actual shut-down. SpyBot has a delayed run option which is wonderful as this application takes even longer to load and run than CCleaner. The two of them fight over resources when started together which makes boot-up even slower than waiting three minutes for everything else to finish.

As a final tweak I have disabled every available splash screen except SpyBot. All of the others will appear in the system tray should I be wondering about progress. The final indicator of imminent start-up is the three minute SpyBot timer; this will take several minutes to update and run then, I'm good to go once again. Everything is now updated, cleaned, and standing at the ready...

"In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time." -Thomas Carlyle

Total Privacy 5 - Software Review

Pleasant surprises are always welcome on my world; today's GOTD offering is right up there with discovering a new friend.

Background from the download site:

"Total Privacy provides the most advanced information removal solution for protection against today’s malicious online and offline threats. Total Privacy 5 makes use of the most advanced washing and shredding methods available today to make sure that your own private business and computer use remains exactly that - private.

Securely clean Internet tracks, system activities and program history information stored on your computer with this safe and easy-to-use Windows privacy protection tool. Also Wipes the free space to make sure that previously delete files cannot be recovered. Supports all major browsers in addition to over 450 popular third-party applications.

My initial summary for the GOTD site:

Get this program installed NOW! I am a supporter of multiple security
products and Total Privacy 5 just hit the top of today’s list of MUST
HAVE security applications. All issues are clearly explained in a
separate description box on mouse-over so you know exactly what it
intends to clear. I strongly encourage, no I insist, that you do NOT
check any box you don’t understand! Has several “exclude” functions
such as the cookies list. Take the time to set this one up properly. My
PC runs CCleaner on start-up; the only thing I’ve run is Flock >
GOTD > TP5. This is the summary from my test run; Total Items: 43;
Custom Items: 14; Total Recovered: 3MB disk space, 29 Files, 7 Registry
Entries. Be careful with index.dat and registry streams - these
erasures WILL affect certain performance and display properties. The
full report will be available shortly on my blog, “V-O-I-D: What’s
REALLY out there?”.

The Full Report:

All of the following items were listed after CCleaner and the download; some files are there because of the TP5 download, others were not listed at all by CCleaner. I use my cleaner at least once a day on start-up, mostly to clear the useless files and registry entries that accumulate throughout my workday. As an Internet Investigator of many genres, there are also instances wherein I encounter files which I do not want in my possession, nor bugging my machine. Set-up of Total Privacy will take a little time, especially when preserving certain settings such as cookies.

In the case of cookies and dat files it is best to make a written note of those for which you are uncertain prior to erasing them. When next you encounter an item from this list you will recognize it as being from either: a friendly program with a funny named cookie, or an executable you got AGAIN from an unknown source. The latter case goes beyond the scope of this post to explain.

This is what Total Privacy 5 found and erased:

Document History 1 file; Start Menu Clicks 5 files; index.dat 3 categories/files 39 items and 96KB; Favorites Order History 1 item; Downloaded Components (DO NOT check box unless you want to eliminate your plug-ins!) 8 items and 4MB; Messaging detected ALL installed IM clients and offered 3 items for clean-up on each; Custom Plug-in Cleaners, checked "show only detected programs" and found 16 (Again, read what each does as you may want to keep certain items - my quarantine list from SpyBot being one of them.); Warning: Windows Direct Input will erase all user generated data files; Windows Temp 3 files and 270KB; Sys Temp 4 files and 3MB; DO NOT CHECK Registry Streams or Registry Streams MRU as this will adversely affect the PC you have set up as you want it! It also detects MS Office .doc files accessed even when opened with OpenOffice.org

Read the description box for everything you ever wanted to know about what you are about to obliterate. Most people can safely use one of the 3-pass options, mine took less time than a single intake of breath! It also has start-up and security management tools. Altogether, I am impressed enough to give this one a 10/10 rating for PC cleaners and highly recommend you get to the GOTD site and get this one installed while it's free.

A quick trip back to GOTD revealed this post direct from the application provider:

Regarding the question about how Total Privacy affects the registry, many privacy items are stored inside the registry (MRUs, Registry streams, history information for many programs, IE AutoComplete data and much more) and so, if you select to clean any of those items, Total Privacy will obviously have to access the registry to remove selected values.

Accessing the registry to remove any of those items is completely safe and Total Privacy is smart enough to only remove items that do exist (as opposed to some other similar applications we encountered before that just try to remove anything and everything without any safely checks first).

Total Privacy was tested on Windows Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000 and so it targets the correct registry locations depending on the operating system you are running.

I hope I was able to shed some more light regarding this question. If anyone have any questions or comments (good or bad) that wish to discuss with us feel free to contact us directly at http://www.pointstone.com/support/support.asp

Comment by Steven Martins — April 1st, 2008 at 6:25am

Another positive reinforcement from the GOTD comments section:

Mr Martin

I just downloaded the program and started reading the comments, as they sometimes influence my decision to install the program. This is the first time I have seen anyone associated with the program present and fixing problems as they occur — not to say it has never happened — it is just a first for me.

Don’t know about anyone else but this REALLY impressed me. Want you to know Mr Martin that because of your interest in helping us with bugs and gliches, even though you will show no profit from our download, that I will be buying the product directly from the site as opposed to taking it free. It is rare and refreshing in todays product market to see integrity in ones work and creation. It gives me the impression that questions and problems would be addressed by your software support system quickly and efficiently.

Thanks GAODT for the numerous free and useful products and games you have given me.

Comment by MamaBunny — April 1st, 2008 at 9:04 am

BurnAware HE Evaluation

BurnAware allows you to easily perform the most common disc burning operations: write to all CD/DVD media types, including Blu-Ray (BD-R/BD-RE); create and burn disc images; write multi-session discs; verify the integrity of files; burn your compilations directly on optical media, without having to wait for hard drive staging first and much more. Its proprietary burning algorithm provides the highest level of fault-tolerance, error-free burning and data integrity.

Unlike the basic free version, the Home Edition writes data discs with additional options (data mode, label, date, etc.), creates bootable discs, creates ISO images from discs, supports ISO/UDF/Bridge file systems and CD-TEXT for Audio CD’s.

(The following are copied from my posts at http://www.giveawayoftheday.com)


#31) It’s 8:49AM in eastern USA and I am happy to report a flawless download and install on Vista HB. Running with a mere 512M memory. Microsoft's DEP plagues me no more; I disabled it many months ago. Keep in mind that I maintain a constant watch on Restore Point generation but, have not yet had to use it. As for the program offered: many thanks to GOTD and GloryLogic! The GUI is clean and quite friendly; a direct link to the company website is available from the launch window. The $33 one year free UPGRADE license is self-explanatory; company rep please verify continued functionality. Even without free up grades to the the latest bells and whistles, this will still be a fine GOTD delivery!

My morning flex-time routine has now been determined for today: I go now to challenge this fine looking software to an as yet uncompletable task. A full report will be seen first at GOTD.

#62) #31 Continued at 1:24PM: Using BurnAware HE, I erased a CD-RW for this test. The sample was a 700MB ISO packaged as a Rxxxx file and as such posed an issue on my machine which doesn’t like MS/HP bundled software. The simulated burn option provided configuration and compatibility verification prior to the actual burn which can be vital if you’re low on disks and might otherwise create a coaster. Burn began at 9x and progressed to 10x by the four minute mark. Total elapsed time; BurnAware 8:29 vs Rxxxx 20:20. Way to go. I’m impressed and you should be too.

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