Today I came across a very nice free service called Ring-2-Skype. It lets you register a personal international number from about 40 countries, and whoever calls this number and dials your extension is directed to your Skype account.
The coolest thing is that you can register a number on several countries for the same Skype account. For instance on for USA, one for Peru etc.
And… it’s FREE!
The downside is that the number you get is not direct, but requires you to dial an extension number, so you can’t use it with Google Voice-like services.
UPDATE #1: I discovered a bug with the service – it is incompatible with Skype’s voicemail: meaning the call gets disconnected when the greeting is played. I contacted them and they said it’s a known issue and they are taking care of it. I’ll update the post again once I know this issue is resolved
Author: arnons
Last week I finished my first Android application. All through the development stage I had to Google a lot for examples which some were really hard to find (even though you can find reference for everything in the SDK, for me, it’s easier to understand from a code sample).
My mobile company allows you to send 10 free daily SMS through their website, and after that each text message is still half priced, so I decided to take a challenge and create a UI that allows me to send my messages from the phone through the website automatically.
The core of my software was pure java, so even though it wasn’t straight forward to accomplish, I kinda know the material.
The main issues were after – when I got to the android implementation and UI
Here are the issues I needed, and will supply examples for in this post:
(Of course – for you that are more experienced than me with Android development, please forgive if I’m not doing everything ‘by the book’, it’s simply what I could find. So if you have any suggestions or improvement please send them to me or post a comment J )
- How to find out if there is an active network on the device
- How to create options menu
- How to create and clear notification in the notification area
- How to declare your program as “SMS Sender” (‘Complete action using…’)
- Taking care of orientation (Landscape and Portrait mode for UI)
Here is the code I ended up using. Hope you find it helpful
Well, At least when it comes to SIP communication
Update:
Well, there has been a great leap in Android support with VoIP. Skype has released a decent client for most Android based phones (with the exception of Galaxy S, and USA Based clients cannot use 3G), and I have discovered another excellent VoIP client for Android called cSipSimple (If you liked Sipdroid I advise you to check this one out as well. It’s my current default).
Other than that, the upcoming Android 2.3 is said to have native SIP support which is extremely cool
Having said all that, enjoy my original post 🙂
A Smartphone, as its name implies is… eventually… a smart phone! Exactly! That’s what I thought. And as one I should have the ability to run any software that is compatible with its hardware and software.
That turns out to be almost true. VoIP is off the limit.
And it is not because the device cannot handle it, Far from it. It is because mobile companies are afraid for their revenues. When people are using VoIP on their infrastructure, it takes away money from them. Oh you poor phone companies. My heart goes out for you.
And after all the tears run out, I went out to look for some VoIP that DOES work for me. SKYPE of course was off limit. Even though there is “Skype Lite Beta” for Android, it does not support Skype-to-Skype user call. And why should it? Skype is an excellent IM software and VoIP is only secondary (wink).
I then stumbled upon SipDroid. Sip droid is a SIP client for android. This is great if you have a SIP account provider. I for instance, have an account which runs on asterisk server (open source IPBX system).
I got the installation of SipDroid at once! And installed on my phone to try it.
What can I say? It has huge potential. But it is only fully compatible with its mother ship, which is pbxes.com. Luckily (but of course – not a solution) they allow you to enter your own sip account there so you can connect to it through them (like connecting to your neighbor through china… but it works). Although pbxes.com has a strange certification error they claim is negligible.
So, using it directly with asterisk server causes poor outgoing audio which is lame. I’m sure some people might be able to tweak their server to handle it directly and properly but I didn’t manage to do that… nor found proper idea sharing on that subject.
But this client is still in beta stage so I honestly believe it will kick ass when it’s complete.
It’s no Skype, and I hope some Skype-like client like Fring will port soon for Android, but until then, it’s better than nothing.
Two important notes if you want to use it:
- If you are planning to download it from the Android Market – You will get a limited version which disables usage of VoIP over 3G/EDGE. So if you want the full one then download it directly from the project page.
- VoIP data, is currently 1.20mb per minute, so watch your data plan
Categories
No CLASSPATH for you!
As a part of my work, I was asked to create a semi-simulator for JNLP (Web-Start) loader.
The intention was to get the JNLP link, get all the necessary JARS and resources, and send the main class to another process that will run it as a host.
I had no previous in
troduction with JNLP what so ever… Well, first stage: look at the file.
Looking at the file revealed a simple XML file that contained all the necessary data.
So of course, first things first – Get all the JARS. But how?
Categories
Android And Me
Last week I got a hold of the HTC G1 Android Developer Phone. This (how else) was preceded by a big fight with my cellular operator who insisted that I will take a data plan.
Ok, I said to myself, I bought this phone so that obviously mean I will use cellular internet. “So how much is that data plan?” I asked the representative.
“It’s 1000K” she replied. “1MB?” I asked in wonder. “No, not 1MB – 1000 KB!”
That’s when I understood she has no clue what she’s talking about. Furthermore, this “joke-data plan” was limited to WAP browsing. Oh come on!!!!
And I can’t replace it for a real data plan; I have to add money on top of it!
Well, I do not want to bore you with this specific war, because this is only a prolog for this post, but let’s just say it pays off to be stubborn. I ended up with no obligation to any data plan (which of course I took one, but now I can cancel it any time).
Now that I’ve got THAT over with, I got around to checking out this wonderful phone (and forgive me iPhone fans – I’m not saying this is BETTER than iPhone, only that it’s DIFFERENT).
Categories
More than Technical now on Twitter
For those who wish to follow us on twitter, you may follow our new twit 🙂
www.twitter.com/morethantech
This is the story of my journey to find a way to run a process (or a program on a remote pc)
This wasn’t an easy thing at all…
Overall, I thought, this should be an easy thing to do.
I found this C# code on a Microsoft forums
object[] theProcessToRun = { "notepad.exe" };
ConnectionOptions theConnection = new ConnectionOptions();
theConnection.Username = "username";
theConnection.Password = "password";
ManagementScope theScope = new ManagementScope("<\\\\" + IP + "\\root\\cimv2", theConnection);
ManagementClass theClass = new ManagementClass(theScope, new ManagementPath("Win32_Process"), new ObjectGetOptions());
theClass.InvokeMethod("Create", theProcessToRun);
I tried this code, not after forgetting to disable the firewall on the remote computer – a big downside but I guess if I had gone with it I’d hunt a way to stable port to unblock in the firewall.
Then I found the big downside (which can be an upside to some of you):
The remote process this way will never have a GUI window opened (In this example, a process of notepad will be opened in the background).
This can be a big advantage to system admins which want to run scripts.
Ok, back to the quest.
Categories
Enhance your GPS device
Many GPS devices are coming with built-in (or bundled) navigation software and does not allow you to install newer version or use the device in any other way that the original menu allows.
This, of course doesn’t mean that the device is not CAPABLE of running most of the applications. After all – it is running on Windows CE platform.
Googling a bit lead me to a project called MioPocket. This is a software that patches your mobile windows and installs lots of (freeware) utilities (media player for example) that can really upgrade your usage of the device.
One of the best features (and of course the main reason why those people wrote this utility) is that it enables you to run any navigation software.
Private BitTorrent trackers require that you keep a certain upload/download ratio. This basically means that if you download, and don’t leave your client running for seeding for as much as you downloaded, you will probobly get kicked out of the site sooner or later.
RatioMaster is an open source project that emulates your favourite client and sends the tracker with false info, saying that you are uploading. What a great solution for people with low upload rate.
A guy that calls himself NRPG, created his own version of RatioMaster, which added a lot of features to the original RatioMaster. His version looks out for your opened client, and takes all the random-generated values from it, that way making the tracker very hard to spot the cheat.
So far so good, as this was only the exposition to the situation.
Lots of people own several computers. Not to mention different operating systems.
Don’t you wish you had a folder with some files that will be accessible from every single one of your PCs ?
A friend of mine recommended Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com)
This is a software, compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac, which creates a folder on your PC(/mac), that is linked to your account, and with every computer that runs the program (with the specific account) – This folder will be in complete sync.
If you need it from a shared pc – you also have a web interface to download your files.
Also, a public folder is created which you can just send a direct link for your file to a friend
You get 2GB of online storage for this matter – completely for free from Dropbox, and you can also revert to earlier versions of your files.
Dropbox claims to be encrypted – but I can’t guarantee it, so I wouldn’t recommend using it for sensitive data (passwords, etc.)
I started using it. Definately recommend it!