Why I am sticking with Vonage

Vonage has been in deep sh!t recently after a court found it of infringing on 3 of Verizon's copyrights over VOIP. Stock prices for Vonage has lost more than 80% of its value in less than a year and people are talking about the death of Vonage and maybe the whole VOIP industry.

But I am sticking by Vonage.

Vonage provides good telephony service and affordable rates. There is no other telecommunication company who is comparable (ok, maybe Sunrocket) or is even close! I love the fact that I can just bring my router anywhere in the world and connect to a broadband connection and have phone service - not just any phone service but I have my same phone number! (Ok, you can do the same with Skype)

But the fact of the matter is Vonage is a good company. The problem with the patent system now is that everything is patented, there is no room for competition or innovation, contrary to what the patent system might have been established to do.

VOIP is the future of telecommunications, period. What other traditional telcos are doing now is just buying more time to squeeze the last profits it can from people. In another 5 years, I would think that VOIP would overtake traditional landlines as the primary residential phone line (with cell phones leading the way in overall usage).

The stupidest thing I've read recently

I was browsing the Philippine Star website and bumped into this article - $10-B RP Las Vegas to rise.

It is not the article that is stupid, per se, but one of the comments by Pagcor chairman and CEO Efraim Genuino.

"The reason why we lack tourists is we lack hotels," he said.

This just shows the narrowmindedness of our government officials. Sigh, when will they ever learn?

South Park in HD

There's nothing better than watching four foul-mouthed 4th graders in high definition.

Xbox is offering an episode of South Park (Good Times with Weapons) as a free download via its Live Marketplace in Xbox 360. I've watched this episode before but watching it in HD is definitely better. The video quality is superb and the episode is hilarious!

Recommended download - even for a 1 GB file!

Save the Sonics

This issue might not mean anything to people outside the Greater Puget Sound area or Western Washington but there's no harm in throwing this plea out to the general public.

Last year, the Seattle Supersonics and WNBA team Storm were sold to out of state investors led by Clay Bennett of Oklahoma City. This is one of the worst decisions of Starbucks owner and previous Sonics owner Howard Schultz.

The Sonics are asking the state for a new $500 million arena to replace the KeyArena as the Sonics and Storm's home. Legislature in Olympia are against this and saying the money might be better used for education, healthcare, etc.

Having an NBA franchise in the state is imperative to keeping the identity of the Northwest alive, keeping Seattle in the map. Giving away the only sports franchise in town to win a national championship is stupid. Let's just hope the politicians in Olympia understand this.

http://www.saveoursonics.org/

The Police are BACK!!!

The Police has just announced their world tour today and released dates for the North American leg.

They will be at the KEY on the 6th of June! That's right, Seattle will be the second stop on the tour after Vancouver BC.

Can't wait to grab the tickets to this show. I just hope it won't be sold out.

The Perils of Vista

I finally got my hands on the new operating system and let me just say this - I'm not sure that it is a good idea to upgrade.

Although installation was a breeze, software incompatibilities were a lot! I don't have antivirus software installed (Zonealarm hasn't released a Vista compatible version yet), I almost lost my Microsoft Money file, my Outlook files can't be imported (although I figured out a workaround and worst of all - I LOST MY F*CKIN ITUNES PLAYLIST!!!! That's right! For one reason or another, my Itunes library was corrupted or damaged and can't be imported to the new OS. All my ratings, playlists, and all other metadata were erased from the library and I have to rebuild everything from the ground up.

I won't say I didn't expect this, but actually it went better than I thought it would. The graphics are much nicer, although my laptop didn't fare very well with a Vista experience rating of 1.0(!) which meant that it could only run the Vista Basic software. My primary computer though was average (3.3) - with dual NVIDIA Geforce 6600 on SLI, 2GB DDR RAM, two 300GB SATA HDD, AMD 64 X2 4200+ (overclocked).

Upgrade-wise, I think I will do the video card in the near future, when DirectX 10 cards won't cost more than $400!

Do you need a second life?

One of the most popular things online today is Second Life where people create online incarnations of themselves and do things they are supposed to do in the real world in front of a computer screen.

Personally, I find this idiotic. How boring does your real life have to be before you resort to this crap? Sure, people are making money off this website/game but do you really want to spend the rest of your life in front of a virtual world?

I guess this is one of the downsides of living in a connected world. You don't need to interact face to face with people. But by doing this, I believe that society in general is not moving forward. It's a case of one step forward and two steps back.

A hilarious sidenote - visit Get a First Life.

Will you upgrade to Vista?

I have asked the same question myself a million times ever since I downloaded and tried the first public beta of Vista. Sure, it looks cool and all but is it worth all the money? The most basic of the versions, Vista Basic, is not even worth upgrading to - as it doe not include the aero graphics that makes this version cool.

But the Home Premium version is my cup of tea, I don't need all the security features that the Ultimate version has and I just want to have the Media Center capabilities of the Home Premium, but it will cost more than 200 bucks to upgrade!

So the question for me now is - is this worth that much money? Sure, I would love to have the latest version of anything and everything, as long as it is free or reasonably priced, but Vista will not offer me that much features I already have with XP and a few freeware downloads. Help me!!!

Do You Really Need an iPhone?

Don't get me wrong, I was just as excited as the next guy (or girl) refreshing the engadget and cnet websites for live updates to Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote speech. But after the initial shock of "God! I need to have that!!! NOW!!!!!!!", I have settled down and realized that I don't need it.

Here's why...

a) I have a perfectly working 80GB Ipod Video, sure, the screen is only 2.5 inches compared to the 3.5 widescreen of the iPhone but honestly, I only use my iPod while I'm driving, so the issue of watching videos is nonexistent.

b) I love my phone. I have a Blackberry Pearl which I really like and does what I bought it to do - make phone calls.

c) It costs $599 for the 8GB model - with a two year plan from Cingular! $599!!!! Without a plan, this phone would cost 200-300 bucks more. Lets see, I got my iPod for $309 (after rebates) and my Blackberry for less than $280. No contest here.

d) Now how would I feel if I lost this phone? Or scratch it? I would be completely devastated. e) It is almost impossible to text using this phone. There is only one button and everything else is touch controlled.

As with all other things Apple, this iPhone would surely be a must buy in most lists. There might come a time that I might reconsider and get one. But for now, I'm a skeptic. Until they prove that this phone is worth all that money and that it works as advertised, I'll keep my money. Thank you.

Techie Vendo

Found this inside Macy's. A vendo selling iPods and accessories!