I just saved $320 by cancelling an extra phone line and signing up with magicJack. It works as advertised; I like it; and it’s a keeper. I also have tips to make magicJack better, and if you’re intrigued, hack into it. (Fair warning: My magicJack review is long, way more than I usually allocate for one newsletter.)

Making the Switch to magicJack

I used to have three phone lines, and for years I needed all of them. But with almost all of my communication through e-mail, I decided to dump one and replace it with a magicJack. And save myself about $320 a year.

You plug the magicJack into a free USB port, then plug your phone line into the gizmo. Now you can make free calls with VoIP — they’re routed through the Internet. (The magicJack comes with a 6-inch USB extension cable in case it interferes with other devices plugged into your USB ports.)

Plug one end into a USB port and connect the other end to your standard phone.

Hey, I’m Connected

To see how easy it was to get started, I connected the magicJack to a USB port on my PC. (If you use a hub it has to be powered; if it’s not, or underpowered, the magicJack might not work.) Then I plugged a phone into the magicJack using a standard phone cable. Cordless phones also work; just plug in the base unit.

The computer recognized the magicJack like any Flash drive, then it took about 5 minutes to download software updates. I picked up the phone, heard a dial tone, dialed as I normally would, and made my first magicJack call. Cousin Judy in New York said I sounded unusually good, a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. It took another few minutes to create a 911 location and set up voicemail.

You can call by dialing your phone or do it from your PC.

Once I saw that the magicJack worked, I connected it to my ancient Nortel Venture three-line phone, the one that I rigged up to use a Plantronics wireless headset. If you prefer, you can use your PC’s speakers and a microphone, or a headset, just as you would with Skype.

What’s the magicJack Catch?

There really isn’t any. There are a few inconveniences, and one not-so-minor hassle, and I’ll get to them. But first I want to cover the basics.

One thing to consider is that you need broadband: magicJack requires speeds of at least 100KB. And if you have DSL service, magicJack will work just fine, but don’t call the phone company to shut off your regular phone line as it’s needed for the DSL connection

The magicJack service costs $40 for the first year, which includes the USB dongle. The cost for subsequent service is $20 per year, but chances are good the fee will increase. So the company pushes a 5-year service plan for $60. You get unlimited calling to anywhere in the United States, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Canada. International calls are 2 cents a minute.

If you make a magicJack call to a friend’s magicJack number — anywhere in the world — the call’s free. Calling the United States or Canada from another country with your magicJack is also free. Yep, that’s right: You can carry the magicJack while you’re traveling, connect it to your notebook, and all your calls are free.

You can call as much as you’d like, but magicJack’s Terms of Service obliquely says, “If magicJack sees excessive use, including but not limited to, a customer whose usage is twenty (20) times more than the average magicJack’s customers usage” they’ll cut off service and won’t give you a refund. Swell.

All your 411 calls are free, but you need to listen to a 20-second commercial first. I prefer Google’s free Goog-411 (800-466-4411).

Other features? You have access to 3-way calling and call forwarding. What’s missing is caller ID blocking.

Of course you’re worried about voice quality, and so was I. Most of the time it ranges from very good to great. I talked with my TechBite partner, Mike, in Denver, for about 2 hours and it was a perfect connection. Yet when I tried magicJack’s 411, and then checked voicemail, the connection cut in and out; I also experienced a disconnect when I called my mother (really, Mom, I didn’t hang up!). I got better quality if I stuck the magicJack in a port on my PC instead of using the USB hub.

Is MagicJack For You?

Maybe.

Some forums say that magicJack is good only to use as a second phone line, maybe for a teenager, or just for saving money on long-distance calls. I agree; I wouldn’t advise you to drop your only landline or cell phone for magicJack for a couple of reasons.

First, I wouldn’t depend on the magicJack for emergency 911 calls. Say there’s an emergency and you lose power. Access to the Internet is gone, and magicJack is useless.

Second, you have to keep the PC on. When your PC isn’t running, incoming calls to the magicJack phone number are routed to voicemail. (Here’s a neat option: If someone leaves a voicemail, magicJack sends you an e-mail with a sound file of the message.)

I thought I’d get smart and try a work-around. I attached the magicJack to the USB port of my server, an always-on Seagate Network Attached Storage device. The magicJack had a hearty laugh and refused to be recognized. The designer of the magicJack said it couldn’t be done.

BTW, magicJack includes a local number as part of the service; most metropolitan areas are covered, but you might not be in one of those spots.

Try magicJack for 30 days. If you don’t like it, all you pay for is shipping. The trial starts when you order the device, and you have to get it back to them within the 30 days. (I know you have more concerns, you always do. So read the FAQ for all your picayune questions.)

Two Not-So-Magic Quibbles

One thing I didn’t like: I had to click the Minimize icon to get the magicJack program into the system tray. I’d prefer it automatically minimize when magicJack loads. I haven’t been able to find a way to do it, and no, I don’t want to use an extra software tool to do it. The designer said, “… anything is possible, but this is not on the drawing board; the magicJack is built for the people who need to see it loading.” Whatever.

The company includes an Outlook add-in that lets you dial directly from Outlook’s contacts. That’s handy, but I’d also like a way to import directly into magicJack’s contacts from an Excel or CVS file.

You’ll also have to remember to add an area code no matter where you’re calling, even if it’s a local call.

MagicJack Tricks and Hacks

There are lots of ways you can play with the magicJack. Here are a few:

• I don’t need to see magicJack’s splash screen, so I disabled it.
• If you want run the magicJack from your hard drive rather than the USB dongle, here’s the trick. It doesn’t seem like it’s worth the bother, though, because you still need the dongle in order to connect to a phone line.
• When I connect an external USB drive, I expect it to be drive letter “G.” Without asking, magicJack grabs the first two available drive letters — “G” and “H” — for its USB dongle. It’s easy to fix that.
• You can run magicJack as a Service, spoof its caller ID, reveal more magicJack features by changing the skin, and maybe get your Chevy to get more miles per gallon. It’s all in the magicJack hack site. The Unofficial magicJack forum has more ordinary fixes, hacks, and advice.
• If you have a PBX system, and a nimble mind, you might be able to hack the magicJack to act like a trunk in any Asterisk-based IP PBX. If that’s not Greek, get the details at VoIP Insider and INTJ Geek.

Disney joins Hulu video site

By Paul Thomasch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Walt Disney Co will buy a 30 percent stake in Hulu.com, bringing popular TV shows such as “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” to the video website founded by NBC Universal and News Corp.

Disney’s entrance, which comes after months of negotiations, means that three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks now have stakes in Hulu: NBC, News Corp’s Fox and Disney’s ABC. Only CBS Corp is absent.

Hulu officials declined to provide financial details on the deal on Thursday. A source directly involved in the deal, who did not want to be identified because all sides in the deal decided that the terms would be confidential, put Disney’s stake at 30 percent, the same as the other networks.

Disney will get three seats on the 12-member board, the same as News Corp and NBC Universal.

Hulu has emerged as one of the most popular online video destinations since its launch in 2007. Though it still lags Google Inc’s YouTube, some 380 million videos were viewed on Hulu last month, up 14.3 percent from February, according to market research firm comScore. It is now among the top three online video sites in the United States.

Conversations with CBS are continuing, said Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar. “We’d love to have them be a part of Hulu … ultimately it’s their decision,” he told Reuters in an interview.

In a statement, CBS did not directly address its future plans regarding Hulu. The company said it believes in “controlling our own rights” for content across media.

“CBS has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships that allow fans across the Internet to engage with our programing in such a way that we control our distribution, sales and profit,” it said.

When asked if CBS could join Hulu as an investor, News Corp Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin told Reuters, “I’m not sure there’s room, legally or economically, for another partner, but I think Hulu has consistently said they’d like to license CBS content.”

Other media companies, including Viacom Inc, provide movies or TV shows to the website, but in deals that involve advertising revenue sharing and not ownership stakes.

The only other ownership stakes are held by Providence Equity Partners, which has two seats on the board, and employees of Hulu, whose chief executive has one seat.

Disney has previously sought to expand viewership of ABC shows offered on its website and its local affiliates’ sites, on AOL.com and on Comcast Corp’s Fancast site.

HULU EYES MUSIC, WORLD

To grow further, Hulu is studying adding music videos, sports and news, while it is also looking at expanding the service outside the United States.

“We would like to continue to have as much premium content as possible,” said NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker in an interview. NBC is a unit of General Electric Co

“Then expand Hulu internationally — that should be the goal for 2010,” Zucker added, declining to say what markets the partnership is considering.

Elsewhere, big cable network owners are working on plans to move more of their shows online but are trying to devise strategies that do not undermine the lucrative cable-network-affiliate-fee business model.

Time Warner Inc Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes is championing “TV Everywhere,” a plan that will allow subscribers to watch cable TV shows online that they’ve already paid for with their package. Comcast is working on a similar plan called Online On Demand.

Disney shares rose 4.2 percent to $21.90 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Additional reporting by Yinka Adegoke and Robert MacMillan; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Brian Moss and Brian Moss)

magicJack working with magicFCC and magicCarriers on magicFemtocell

by Chris Ziegler, posted Apr 22nd 2009 at 3:48PM

It’s been revealed that perennial SkyMall and late-night TV favorite magicJack has a bunch of new features in the works for its low-cost, USB-bedongled VoIP service including landline number portability and Linux compatibility, but that’s not the real news — what’s got us all worked up is word that they’re allegedly working on a GSM-based femtocell that’ll hook your cellphone into magicJack’s service when it’s in range. Even better, it all fits into a box “just a little bigger” than the current USB stick, which would make it considerably smaller than any femtocell we’ve seen launched so far. We’re not sure whether these guys have bothered consulting with the FCC or carriers on this, but we’ve got dozens of questions:

• Are these guys licensing spectrum from the gub’mint, sublicensing it from carriers, or just going rogue?
• Are any carriers in on this, and if so, why?
• If carriers aren’t involved, why would they establish roaming deals that would allow carrier-branded phones and SIMs to roam on magicJack’s rogue airwaves?
• If they’re not working on roaming deals, the femtocells will need to spoof a carrier ID — never mind the fact that TDMA femtocells are virtually impossible to design and install for technical reasons, which means these would have to be 3G. So magicJack’s going to offer a UMTS femtocell?
• Do you get to keep your phone number when you roam on the magicFemtocell, and if so, how?

Helluva mess, isn’t it? We’re sure we’ll eventually be able to find out the answers — and a whole lot more for just one low price — in a few months’ time at 2 in the morning on your local Ion affiliate.

Three longtime media executives are building an automated system to allow newspapers and magazines to charge for online access, including an “all you can read” subscription that would allow access to multiple publications, the executives said on Tuesday.

Their company, Journalism Online L.L.C., aims to supply publishers with ready-made tools to charge Internet fees, an idea that has gained currency as advertising revenue plummets, but whose prospects of success are doubted by many media analysts. The company, which says it may have a product ready by the fall, says the advantages are that publishers would not have to develop their own systems and readers could use a single system for many different publications.

Their plan might not draw much attention save for the stature of the people involved. The founders and investors are Steven Brill, creator of Court TV and American Lawyer magazine, among other ventures; L. Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, one of the few newspapers to charge online; and Leo Hindery Jr., who has headed communications companies like Tele-Communications Inc., Global Crossing and the YES Network, and now runs InterMedia Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in media.

The company has a board of advisers that includes two of the nation’s most prominent lawyers, David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general of the United States.

No publishers have signed on as yet as clients, but several major newspaper and magazine publishers have been in active talks with Journalism Online about how such a system should work.

As the company envisions the system, a nonpaying reader on a magazine or newspaper site would reach a certain point and see a page asking for payment — the Journalism Online system, operating within the publication’s Web site. But a reader who wanted a subscription to multiple sites would go directly to the new company’s own site.

“The most important thing is it’s simple to use,” Mr. Brill said in an interview. “Much of the barrier to charging online is the transaction friction, as opposed to the actual cost. With this system, you’d have a single password, give your credit card number just once.”

He said that for the unlimited subscriptions, “we’re playing with a figure of $15 a month.”

Building an online payment and billing system “is complex and costly,” said Mr. Crovitz, who has experience in that. He said publishers would also need a lot of trial and error to decide what material to charge for, “and we will gather best practices and data to help them make those decisions.”

Each publisher would be free to set its own policies, like determining which items are free and which are not, setting its own prices, and deciding whether to use a pay-per-click system or a daily, weekly or monthly subscription rate.

“There are all these religious debates going on about how to do this, and it’s too early for anyone to be making those decisions,” Mr. Brill said. “No one knows which approach is going to work. So we’re offering all of them.”

The company also plans to negotiate licensing and royalty fees with search engines and news aggregators for the use of the publications’ work, and has retained Mr. Boies’s law firm, Boies Schiller & Flexner, for that work.

The operating system that dares not speak its name

By Tom Conlon Posted 04.10.2009 at 10:37 am 4 Comments

Linux Baby: patrick_haverkamp (CC Licensed)

Hey kids! Have you heard of the cool new program for Windows PCs that lets you boot your system in a jiffy and gives you instant-on access to e-mail, IM, and the Web? Yeah, it’s called Linux.

Huh?

That’s the basic sales pitch for a new software package called Presto — though the official verbiage doesn’t dare go anywhere near that dirty “Linux” word. On its web site and in its documentation, Presto is positioned simply as a program for Windows. You download it as an .exe file and install it like you would any other application. To remove it, run the uninstaller or go to Add/Remove Programs in your control panel. The spiel reads:

“Presto is an easy to install program that works with Windows XP and Vista PCs. Next time you turn on your computer, you’ll have the choice of running Windows or Presto… Start up your computer in seconds – like magic. You will be able to instantly start to email, Skype, instant message, listen to music, surf the internet or download apps — before Windows XP or Vista even boots — and you will automatically be connected to the best available network.”

You guessed it: Presto isn’t actual “magic,” but rather a Linux installation. In fact, it’s a very stripped-down and highly customized distro from Xandros, the same company that makes a similarly sanitized flavor of Linux that powers the Eee PC. The categorical lack of the word “Linux” anywhere on the Presto site or within Presto itself is kind of shocking. Coupled with the way you’re required to install it, it’s clear that this total avoidance of the L-word is a very calculated move to hide it from the public. Why, I wonder? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because Xandros figures the average person wets himself with fear a little bit any time he hears the word “Linux.” If that’s the case, then is Presto any less scary? I installed it to find out.

The short answer is that, as promised, Presto is blissfully simple to use. It’s also fast. On my HP Compaq laptop, I have to wait two minutes and six seconds from pressing the power button until Windows XP is ready to use. Presto shortens that time to 36 seconds — not exactly instant-on, but a lot faster than Windows.

The installation painlessly takes care of everything: my monitor functions, the sound works and I’m connected to the Internet. And once I’m in, it’s easy to figure out where to go next. The taskbar — docked to the left by default — gives me four giant icons to choose from. They’re so big, they remind me of the old person phone my Grandma has with the comically oversized number buttons. The icons are for Firefox, IM, Skype, File Manager and the Application Store (more on that soon). At the bottom the taskbar, there are some slightly smaller icons for turning the computer off, controlling the volume, seeing all of the programs I have open, adjusting my screen resolution and informing me of my network status. Basic stuff. Visiting my favorite web sites, checking e-mail and IMing with friends is a cinch. OpenOffice is also installed by default for creating and editing Microsoft Office documents (as well as non-Microsoft Office docs, of course).

But what if I want to do more? I pop into the Application Store and simply download new programs ala the iPhone. Within minutes of installing Presto, I’m streaming my music collection from Last.fm and drawing mustaches on friends in the Gimp photo manipulation program (think Photoshop, except 100-percent free). The app store is loaded with tons of games, utilities and productivity software, most of which is free. Otherwise, I can download a free trial.

Fast? Check. Simple? Check. Perhaps a little too simple? Hmm….check. As I said, Presto is a watered-down version of Linux in disguise. But what about folks who want its instant-on advantages with a little less handholding? No dice. Take for example, the icons in the taskbar. I can resize them to more sensible proportions if I so choose, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to remove them. Worse, I can’t figure out how to put new ones on there for the programs I download from the application store. The same goes for desktop shortcuts. In fact, right clicking on the desktop seems to have been completely disabled. I also can’t find a control panel of any kind to customize the look of Presto, which means I’m stuck with the default background image and color scheme. Simplicity, it seems, has come at the expense of functionality and customizability.