Some Neat Things You Can Do With VOIP

Do you know what VOIP is? Unless you have been living in a cave for the past few years, you have undoubtedly seen VOIP advertised at electronics stores, on TV, inside your cable bill, and from some of your friends. In a nutshell, VOIP allows you to make and receive phone calls over the Internet. Thats right, you do not need to hassle with SBC or BellSouth or Verizon anymore if you dont want to. The person you are calling does not need to have a VOIP phone, you can call them or they can call you anyway.

The one thing that IS required for any VOIP servce, regardless of the provider you get it from, is a decent and reliable high-speed Internet connection. The vast majority of the time when customers complain about the quality of a VOIP phone conversation, the bottom line result is that the fault is rarely with the VOIP service, but it is the fault of the high-speed Internet connection. The VOIP provider has no control over the quality (or lack thereof) of your high-speed Internet connection, so if your connection is not reliable or is "spotty", you need to either get a different Internet provider, or perhaps VOIP is not for you at this time.

The latter situation would be bad news if you look at the economics of it. From your local phone company, you are probably paying $25 to $30 per month just for dial tone, and then you have long distance charges on top of that. For less money, you can also get dial tone, plus voice mail, plus caller ID, plus a host of other features (depending on the carrier), plus unlimited long distance calling in the continental US (or beyond with some providers). It really is a no brainer.

Let's look at a couple of neat things that VOIP allows you do to, things that you cannot do with your traditional phone. Let's say you live in Chicago, and you travel on business or pleasure to Atlanta and you bring your VOIP phone with you. When you get to Atlanta, you plug your VOIP phone into the high-speed Internet connection at your hotel. You can STILL make calls as if you were still in Chicago, and when somebody calls your Chicago phone number, it will ring on your VOIP phone in your Atlanta hotel room! It's like nothing has changed and you are still at home in Chicago!

I have a friend who does this all the time, and he travels worldwide. When he arrives at his hotel in Los angeles or even london or Hong Kong, he plugs his VOIP phone into the high-speed Internet connection at his hotel, and he is making and receiving calls just as if he were at home in Denver!

now let's say that you have friends or family in Europe that you like to talk to, but you dont talk to them very often because international calls are so expensive. The solution is for you to get a VOIP phone and get a VOIP phone for them and send it to them. (Assuming of course they have a high-speed Internet connection at their home, as do you). now, even though they are located in Paris or Munich, their VOIP phone has a Houston (or whatever) phone number, and you can call them or they can call you and you can talk for as long as you want to at no additional charge!

VOIP technology brings a whole new era to the world of communications, and if you are not part of the VOIP revolution yet, you certainly should be, because it is not going away anytime soon!

Jon is a computer engineer who maintain a variety of web sites based on his knowledge and experience. For more information about VOIP, VOIP providers and home VOIP services, please visit his web site at Home VOIP Inside Information.

Earings Meditation Yoga Mat Cool Online Stuff

Backup Xbox 360 Downloads

Xbox 360 boasts hard-hitting games in its console. Utilizing its powerful processor and graphic capabilities, It has some of the best games around. These top seller games include call of duty 2, ghost recon advanced warfare, the elder scrolls IV: oblivion, Dead or Alive 4, Saints row, Gears of war and the best-selling game Halo 3. These are just a sample of the games for the new Xbox and there are lots more of titles available not only in the market but also in the internet for download.

If you have these games, it will surely pass around friends that have an Xbox 360. Its breath taking graphics and heart pounding action will surely make you play the game again and again. But due the fact that the microsoft xbox360 is causing a lot of trouble on game discs like scratches due the malfunction of several dvd-drives and therefore you should be able to backup your own copy.

Here's a quick guide on how to do it:

Requirements:

1) A dvd-drive which can be easily taken apart
2) Your xbox360 game
3) Data/Movie dvd which is at least 8gigabyte in size
4) Philips screwdriver to open your dvd-drive
5) WxRipper can be found @ http://www.360-scene.org/
6) Optional: Wx360 which can be found @ http://www.360-scene.org/
7) Last but not least, some patience

1: Take your dvd-drive apart

First, we need to access the laser unit of our dvd-drive, this can usually be done by removing the screws which holds it casing.

2: Installing your dvd-drive

The hardest part is over now and we should now connect our dvd-drive to the computer and place it on an easy accessible place.

3: WxRipper

By now you should have extracted both files mentioned earlier and have them installed on your computer, and then run WxRipper.

a) Put your dvd in the drive which is over 8 gigabyte and wait until your computer recognized it.

b) From the menu select Hotswap and then "Find magic number".

c) After the magic number has been found you select "Stop drive".

d) Now comes the magic part, you need to switch the dvd which is in your drive with your original game.

Warning: this needs to be done without pressing the eject button!!

e) When everything is back in place you can select "spin drive"

f) When the drive is spinning again then it is time to dump the image. Clicking on "start dump" can do this

g) You can take a break now as this stage can take a long time depending on the read speed of your dvd drive.

h) After it's done, you have now dumped your xbox360 game.
- The dumped image is an exact RAW copy of the original game disc, which means any dummy data is copied with this.
- You can now burn this .iso file to an empty dvd-r dl.

With this you can now play your favorite game over and over again without the fear that the disc will be damaged.

Yoga Video Rachael Welch