VOIP calling on latest gingerbread is tasty with Android!

By -
With Vodafone's troubles yesterday, the value of my Android phone's ability to call using a wifi connection, was again demonstrated.

Essentially, my set-up is this: I signed up for a sipdiscount customer, which allows me to make cheap calls to family in South Africa and elsewhere abroad. I've got a Fritz!Box at home (an old one bought on ebay, that was originally issued by a Greek Telco) that are connected to my broadband, my TalkTalk phone line and also my normal home DECT phones. When my non-IT family place a call to 002711.... or any other international number (as I've defined in Fritz!Box rules), the call is not connected to my landline, but rather routed over broadband, via sipdiscount, and it just cost me €0.06 per minute to SA (or free to the UK).

On my Android (a Nexus S), I've configured the same sipdiscount account, and when I now dial a number - any number - it gives me the option to dial using the cellular network or the wifi/voip/sipdiscount network. Yesterday, that meant I could call as if nothing happened. :)

What was a bit annoying on the Android, was that this prompt (to select wifi or mobile network) always popped up, even when there was no wifi... which was sort of stupid. But the latest over-the-air (OTA) update for Android fixed that... I only get prompted when I'm connected via wifi too.

All goodness... love the solution!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Planning what we feed our brains

By -
Inspired by my very smart niece, Ilana. I’m no expert on how the brain works, but I do find it fascinating to understand snippets of how I can optimise this fantastic super computer tuned for *real* (as opposed to artificial) intelligence, that we all always carry around with us. TED is jam packed with fantastic presentations about this . Yesterday my niece told me about the early evidence and research in progress of how the brain process facts and data from short term memory to medium term memory to long term memory. From my limited understanding, I’ve translated it to a field I know a bit more of: Just like computers (or the cloud ), the brain also have various kinds of memory, some faster but more scarce, other slower and in greater supply. Data pipelines would process some of the streams of incoming data, and keep relevant info, discarding noise. And eventually data scientists and analysts would process the data to find insights, or train new machine learning mod...
Read more

I told you: Google I/O sold out quickly

By -
I recently suggested that developers interested in attending Google I/O should act quickly... Yesterday the public ticket sales for Google I/O opened... and less than an hour later, all were sold out! ... and we're thinking about how we can create a fairer distribution of tickets, rather than just see who can fire up Chrome the quickest after registration opens... If you have any smart ideas, please shout! Also remember that you can watch the live stream of the event and follow the IO team on twitter .
Read more

Notes on BMJ presentation by Googler Alfred Biehler

By -
Image
Thank you to the BMJ for the wonderful opportunity to present the keynote #qfk4 at the International Forum for Quality and Safety in Healthcare #quality2015. It was a real privilege and honour to share the stage with HRH The Royal Princess and other distinguished presenters and experts. The content below is intended to provide links for further reading to support the presentation I delivered yesterday at Excel, London. Part 1: recent changes in technology that opens up new opportunities With the story of Mihir Garimella  and his cheap quadcopter, I highlighted four huge shifts in technology: Smaller cheaper more connected  and smarter (using data and processing power to become more relevant, proactive and our of the way) This change was mostly driven by the growth of mobile phones . As examples, I discussed Google Iris Google Nanoparticle platform  (and especially this ) Google Flu trends (and how you can do this yourself ) and this Jawbone...
Read more