Been trying Opera Mini on my Nokia 7610. While i have some security concerns, this free software is really good at compressing typical websites to mobile readable ones. The result is lesser download bytes. Im posting this entry from my cell phone. Cool eh?
I’m not really into VoIP thing — not my techie line I guess. But just recently, I installed Yahoo Instant Messenger 7.5 beta. And guess what it comes along? Voice In and Voice Out! Sounds familiar? If you’re a Skype user, it better be.
Skype, considered as the leader (and pioneer?) in low cost VoIP solution, must be going back to the drawing board — trembling, huh? Here’s why:
1. Yahoo has a huge user base. In fact, in my observation, the highest outside of the US.
2. Yahoo Voice Out to the US is cheaper (Yahoo – 1 cent; Skype less than 2.1 cents)
3. Yahoo Voice In is cheaper (US$29/year; Skype – US$37 or 30 euro)
Now, I’m not sure about encryption and technical stuff like that. But would you agree with me that Yahoo’s on it’s way to dominating the VoIP business?
For reasons I will tell later, I’m using a Mac OSX (Tiger) right now. This is my first blog entry using the mac via the blog too Dashblog. More later about my thoughs on the Mac OSX.
Update: I ended up trying ecto.
Gmail is getting better and better!
I liked Gmail from the very start. I like the search functionality, the speed, the capacity. One feature, though, that is keeping me from using it for business purposes is its lack of ability to give “alias” to each emails I send. Alias is a feature that allows you to send email as if you’re not sending it from a free web based email service. That means, the best that I can do is to forward my corporate email (@teamsparrow.net) or my church email (@graceplace.ph) to gmail or use a different mail client e.g., MS Outlook Express to maintain those emails so that the receipient will feel “corporate” one way or another by receiving a “corporate” email. In fairness to Google, no company — not Yahoo! Mail, not anyone — offers that kind of feature.
But here comes the wave! Google Mail has a new feature. You can now add as many “send mail as:” (or alias) to your gmail account. This means a lot to me because this will stop me from sending my corporate and church email identity (or from any important email address identity for that matter) from other sources and simply pipe all these emails to my Google Mail account (which, as of writing, has 2.6 GB of space). Can you imagine what kind of benefit this means to heavy email users?
Next feature, Gmail WAP? :D
… or are they just about to really go out of the beta version and go public?
I’m used to seing 50 available invites from my Gmail account (which I give to those who asked — incidentally, the most popular page in this blog). But, I’m trilled to see that the limit is now 100!
Update: So Gmail is now for public consumption — that is, for US residents for now. The difference with Yahoo Mail is that you can’t sign up at will. You will need to register your mobile phone and receive SMS confirmation. A good way to track users, eh! Good or bad?
