It would be a massive understatement that I have nothing but contempt for the cellular networks… I’m so repelled by them in fact, that I have boycotted CDMA and GSM wireless networks for the past 3 years and not regretting a single moment without their service. I don’t expect people to be as committed as me, but surly people reading this will discover there is a huge benefit and savings to be made and that is what I want people to understand. I’m sick and tired of hearing my friends and family say that they can’t call me at this or that hour and how they can’t make calls during the day because they will use up their daytime minutes or that they have data or SMS overages or some mysterious hidden fee. I know I’m outraged and I suspect many people are…

Instead of whining about it, I want to take this time to share my knowledge and help to be part of the solution. I’ve been using GrandCentral/Google Voice since 2006. Prior to using Google Voice, I went from having an $80 monthly phone bill to practically zero. Google Voice is an Internet telephony technology that is free just like all Google applications and Google has been quietly in the background ironing out the kinks and growing awareness of the Google Voice service by offering telephone calls for free. People think there is an angle when the words “FREE” and “LEGAL” are mentioned in the same sentence, but I have no angle and I’m not selling anything. I’m just spreading the word and doing my part to offer an alternative to the cellular networks.

FOUR EASY STEPS TO MAKE FREE CALLS IN USA and CANADA.

STEP 1.. You MUST be from the USA and have a cellphone or landline number. (NOTE: It will not work if you do not have a USA cellphone, landline or a USA SIP number from a service like Skype ). I’m in Canada at the moment and for the past 3 years I have been traveling back and forth between the two countries and making calls with no issue.

STEP 2.. You MUST sign up for both a Gmail and a Google Voice account. (NOTE: it wont work if you apply from outside of the USA). Follow the on-screen instructions. First log into your Google Voice account >> once you log in, go to ‘gear’ icon  in the upper right hand corner >> in the drop-down menu go to  ”Voice Settings” >> It will bring you to the “Phones” section which will ask you to input your USA cellphone or landline number (follow the instructions) and then choose your Google Voice Number. Once approved you will now have a free Google Voice number that anyone can call or leave a message on.

STEP 3A.. On your laptop or desktop: install the Google Chat app. It will enable you to make calls from Gmail. Once installed, open Gmail. You are now able to use the app to make phone calls.

STEP 3B.. on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: download the Talkatone (Google Voice) app. At the time of this posting the Talkatone application is an iPhone application, but it will work on iPhone, iPad and iPod-Touch devices. Once installed, go to your desktop and open Talkatone.

STEP 4A.. On your laptop or desktop: open Gmail in a web browser. Locate  the “Call phone” feature, its usually in the middle on the left hand-side of Gmail account right below “Chat”.  Once you locate and select the “Call phone” feature a “Call” widget will pop up in the bottom far right-hand corner of the Gmail application. Now you are able to make FREE calls anywhere in the USA or Canada from your computer.

STEP 4B.. On your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: open the “Talkatone” application located on your desktop and sign in using your Google account information. Once you are logged in you should be able to locate the dialpad icon the fourth icon from the left. Once selected you will be able to make FREE calls anywhere in the USA or Canada from your device.

Let me emphasize that Google Voice is legit and FREE, all you need is a WiFi enabled laptop, a desktop computer, an iPhone, an iPad or an iPod Touch. Eventhough I do not have any examples cited for Windows PC’s, I would gather its similar to the desktop and laptop instructions provided above. I  also do not have access to Android devices, but… seeing how Android is Google, I’m certain its much more seamless to get it to work on Android devices. At any rate, once you get your device running the Google Voice telephony application you can go anywhere in the world and make calls to any USA or Canadian landline or cellphone for FREE as long as the WiFi is enabled on your device and there is an open WiFi signal. I hope that this blog post is helpful and reaches many people. If you like what you’ve read please pass this link around and if you have any questions please feel free to email me at codedsignal@gmail.com.

Lets show these cellular networks that we are no longer whining and taking matters into our own hands by taking our voice business elsewhere.

- Bendrix

面包屑 = Breadcrumbs:
“面包屑” is the Chinese translation of “Breadcrumbs”. This link “面包屑” represents the trail of my digital realizations and residual thought bits as it relates to observations in an ever-changing digital landscape. The concept comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairytale.

What if you subscribed to an internet service with your local cable provider and before you could get the service, they got you to sign a 3-year contract, imposed a 2 GIG a month data cap, subjected you to hidden fees and you are warned not to install any unauthorized apps or hardware to your personal computer? Here’s another scenario… you inform the local cable company that you are moving to a new city out of their jurisdiction, but instead of taking the modem back and ending your contract, they instead provide you two options – either pay an early termination fee – OR – continue paying the monthly service till the contract runs out!!! Now lets Imagine how you would feel if your provider did credit checks and the cost of setting up service would depend on your credit score and not the promoted advertised price?

This may sound like bizarro world, but its exactly what AT&T and Verizon have gotten away with year in and year out. The CDMA and GSM/UMTS cellular networks have one of the most brilliant profitable rackets on the planet, sadly we consumers have bought into it and feel we can’t do much about it. Lets face it, we live in a society where 24/7-always-on communication is practically a necessity. Twenty-five years ago cellphones and the internet (as we currently know them) did not exist and we got along fine without them; but due to the way our culture is evolving, the internet, tablets and smartphones are a huge part of our daily routine. The mobile-carriers know this and they are using abusive slap happy pimp tactics to keep us in line.

So here is the typical consumer to mobile-carrier relationship: they get you to sign a 1, 2 or 3 year contract, do a credit check and penalize those with poor or no credit history… they boast about their 3G or 4G “unlimited data” networks then provide limited and throttled data on congested sometimes unreliable networks… they also lock down the device forcing you and the manufacturers to conform to their rules and regulations – as to what hardware and software can work with that device. The sad thing is, the carriers don’t even make these devices yet they have the audacity to cripple them and lock people out from doing what they wish with their device. The mobile-carriers have convinced the public this is the only way, so either deal with it and shut up, or be disconnected from the world.

This consumer to mobile-carrier relationship works today, but I believe that the tech industry has had enough and they are taking the lead, showing us another alternative. They are sick of the mobile-carriers crippling their devices and cannibalizing additional profits. I am predicting that tech companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft-Skype will incrementally chip away at AT&T-Mobile and Verizon business, just like Apple chipped away and over-ran the music industry… and how Netflix is doing to Hollywood CD, DVD and BlueRay sales. I will even go out on a limb and say that AT&T and Verizon will be incrementally marginalized by 2015!!! Matter of fact its already begun:

June 29, 2007 iPhone debuts
July 2, 2007 Google purchases GrandCentral
May 7, 2008 Sprint Nextel, Google and Intel invest in Clearwire
July 10, 2008 the iTunes App. store debuts
October 22, 2008 T-Mobile G1 Android Debuts
August 03, 2009 Eric Schmidt resigns from Apples Board of Directors… hmmmm!?!?!
April 3, 2010 the iPad debuts
Februrary 24, 2011 Facetime debuts
March 9, 2011 AT&T to acquire T-mobile
March 30, 2011 Google fibre initiative
May 10, 2011 Microsoft buys Skype
May 11, 2011 Chromebook announced

I’ll go on record saying that I do not believe that Google and Apple are the fierce rivals that the fanboys and industry folks blindly believe. Its all a smoke-screen I tell you… A smoke-screen. Google and Apple have been intimate partners for years, I mean Eric Schmidt was an active member of Apples Board of Directors for a number of years for goodness sakes. I believe they are performing a calculated well crafted assault on the cellular industry. It seems like too much of a coincidence that all this recent Google, Apple and Microsoft activity is happening so aggressively in such a short span of time – I mean this is the slow moving tightly controlled dinosaur cellular industry after-all.

The reality is, both Apple and Google have a score to settle with the cellular-carriers. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have steamrolled over Apple and Google, keeping them out of the cellular market for years. Now that the techs are in, they are injecting FaceTime, Google Voice/Talk and Skype as ways for people to communicate cheaply. They are providing app stores and getting more products to work with their devices which takes control away from the cellular partners. Jailbreakers and hackers have been incrementally showing the world how a smart device can function without the traditional cellular carriers calling the shots.

The iPhone was a Trojan-Horse. AT&T should never have let them in. They don’t realize it yet, but all the profit made off the iPhone gave Apple supreme control. Apple was able to dictate that pre-pay unlocked iPad deal and AT&T didn’t even blink an eye when it was proposed, In their eyes its not a phone. Soon the iPhone, Android and other smart-devices on the market will follow this prepay unlocked model. AT&T’s greed made them loose focus of controlling the platform, they also lost their exclusivity deal with the iPhone and iPad and let it slip into the hands of Verizon. Soon Verizon will profit, they will see the dollar signs and gain AT&T customers… at the same time they will not upgrade their strained networks and will try to pass the blame on heavy data consumption, hoping to add larger data caps to increase profit. Little do these mobile-carriers realize, continued data caps and expensive voice plans will force customers to start seeking out more reliable cheaper alternatives to get their streaming data and communications fix.

CDMA and UMTS/GSM service is expensive and inefficient and they are on their way out the door. People don’t need separate voice and data plans they NEED VoIP. They need simultaneous voice and data technology like WiMax 2 or Advanced LTE. The mobile-carriers are greedy so they will continue to put up data caps, keep charging for voice calls and take their sweet time building out their Advanced LTE networks… AT&T will spend all its resources to acquire T-Mobile and allow their customer service and infrastructure to dwindle futher… meanwhile they will loose business to Sprint and the cable companies and CLEAR will help to give them the edge by getting WiMax and LTE to play nice together.

Telco’s BEWARE!!! PEOPLE DO NOT WANT YOUR RIGID DATA CAPS ON STRAINED 3G NETWORKS. People want to download apps, use Facetime, Skype, Google Voice, watch streaming videos and be able to purchase these devices just like a computer on the shelf at the store. Three years ago it would have been impossible to do internet telephony or video chat, but the telco’s are so sloppy with greed that they can no longer block out what has been set in motion. People want to connect to fast unlimited data service with no hassle, just like they do at a WiFi hotspot. Mobile VoIP, data and video chat are the future and once people learn there is a better and cheaper way, the inflexible cellular providers will quickly loose their grasp of the wireless market.

Keep a close eye on Clearwire (CLEAR) they will be a big part of this transition with their LTE/WiMax solution. The Cable Companies and Sprint will be providing the subscriber base. Google is another one to watch, they are planning to build fiber-to-the-home connections, delivering Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second!!! I firmly believe that Google, Apple and Microsoft are carefully positioned now to set the bar higher. As telephony and data service become fused with traditional cellular voice networks, the lines will blur and the mobile-carrier’s will be less relevant to the wireless market.

- Bendrix

面包屑 = Breadcrumbs:
“面包屑” is the Chinese translation of “Breadcrumbs”. This link “面包屑” represents the trail of my digital realizations and residual thought bits as it relates to observations in an ever-changing digital landscape. The concept comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairytale.

EUREKA!!! I figured it out!!! The Apple, Inc. engineers are working on an Apple Branded Wireless Electricity – A/C Powered USB connector, plug, adapter, dongle, igadget, whatever you want to call it. In other words it will be an A/C powered device that you plug into the wall and it will wirelessly send electric energy through the air (via. magnetic field) to an empty or draining iPad, iPod, iPhone or Macbook battery. I’m talking about consumer based WIRELESS ELECTRICITY (WiTricity) to power our beloved gadgets wirelessly!!! It will be another device that Apple intends to extend to their “idevice” arsenal and “iprofits”… another gadget for newbies and vets to crave and covet… and most importantly another device that will further distance and distinguish Apple from the Microsoft, Android and Blackberry crowd.

So how is it possible to send wireless electric currents through the air in a room full of living breathing HUMANS!!! Its not wavelength radio transmissions like Bluetooth or WiFi signals that we are talking about this is high voltage alternating currents that comes from an outlet in a wall… Somehow scientists have figured out a way to separate the (human deadly) high voltage alternating currents from the (human friendly) electromagnetic field currents in the form of a grounded electrically charged object. This electrically charged object would be something that would plug into the wall socket or some type of powered source and it will send out magnetic field currents to a close proximity device with magnets and coils housed on a computing circuit-board like an iPod, iPad or iPhone.

The concept of Wireless Electricity is not new its about 170 years old… In the 1830s Francesco Zantedeschi, Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry all did extensive papers on electric currents in closed circuits. The highly acclaimed Nicola Tesla has a plethora of patents and theoretical works which formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems throughout the mid to late 1800s. In modern years MIT led the way in using resonant magnetic fields to transmit wireless power or “WiTricity” as coined by MIT Professor Marin Soljačić in 2007. In June 2009 Intel did a wireless power demonstration at IDF (see clip below). Sony, Haier Group and HP/Palm are among a handful of consumer branded companies that have successfully demonstrated wireless power in the last two years. Apple feels the pressure and making a concerted effort to create their device sometime this year.

In 2010 Apple was granted 563 patents… over the past 2 months alone Apple has been granted at least 8 key technologies that suggest they are building a wireless gadget that will be able to magnetically transfer electricity to their low powered IOS devices. The most notable patent was the “Harnessing Power Through Electromagnetic Induction Utilizing Printed Coils” which was submitted to the patent office on September 4, 2009 and approved on March 10, 2011. When this story broke techies and analysts started speculating about an internal generator within the IOS device that improved the battery life cycle by shaking it up or by running or some other physical activity! Definitely a cool concept and a good guess but it appears that this patent is not the intent of this technology… at least not yet. Then there was another article published in January 2011 stating the 10 Apple future technologies to watch for… surprisingly, not one technology in the top ten mentioned wireless electricity.

So here are 8 key Apple, Inc. Patents that have been approved recently.
1.. Harnessing Power Through Electromagnetic Induction… (March 10, 2011)
2.. Power Adapter with Internal Battery (March 31, 2011)
3.. Component Assemblies in Electronic Devices (April 7, 2011)
4.. Electronic Device and Connector (April 14, 2011)
5.. Type A USB Receptacle with Plug Detection (April 21, 2011)
6.. Portable Computer Electrical Grounding and Audio… (April 21, 2011)
7.. Magnetic Connector Having a Unitary Housing (April 21, 2011)
8.. Mounted Shock Sensor (May 5, 2011)

After scanning through each of these patents and referencing a variety of scientific notes and videos on the topic its all starting to make sense. There is mention of “a metal Faraday cage of a size that is slightly larger than said main logic board.” there’s talk about the “modified Series A universal serial bus (USB) receptacle connector, is equipped with the functionality to allow the electronic system in which it resides to be configured either as a host device or a peripheral device.” It goes on to even talk about “Upon detection of a plug, an algorithm may allow the system to determine… which device supplies power.”

So think of a wireless Apple device currently on the market. The AirPort Express BaseStation with 802.11n and AirTunes comes to mind. It already can transfer data wirelessly and provide internet connectivity so why not add wireless A/C power (ie. wireless electricity) while we are at it??? The patents seem to imply that Apple is focused on building a wireless (USB) receptacle that can act as a bridge to communicate, sync data and wirelessly store and charge Apple IOS hardware. I’m banking that they will produce a new AirPort BaseStation with the WiTricity label on it and put a bigger price tag on it.

When Apple makes this industry altering announcement it will be at an exclusive event where industry gurus and media giants will be present. Seeing all the recent high activity approvals for Apple, Inc. patents I am projecting that this announcement will take place on June 6, 2011, the Steve Jobs Keynote at the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). And they will be releasing the product sometime in September or October of 2011… sorry guys its highly unlikely that the fall announcement will be an iPad 3, so give it up. The way I see it, Apple won’t need to do any major new iPhone, iPod or iPad upgrade for while with this kind of EPIC announcement.

It looks like NASA, Sony, HP/Palm, Intel, Apple and many scientists over the past 170 or so years have been toying around with the idea of electric currents in closed circuits, so I’m sure by now kinks have been worked out to prevent fried logic boards or terrifyingly freakish hair raising events. At any rate this will be a gold mine for whomever harnesses wireless power and packages it to the public in the portable media and communications market. I mean there are already wireless electric energy toothbrushes and televisions but they have yet to capture the imagination of the mass consumer market. From portable media players, to touch screen phones to tablets… Apple is the one company who can take abstract scientific breakthroughs and make them accessible and adaptable for public acceptance. Soon they will be known as the worlds largest and most notable producer of consumer based WiTricity able gadgets.

- Bendrix

面包屑 = Breadcrumbs:
“面包屑” is the Chinese translation of “Breadcrumbs”. This link “面包屑” represents the trail of my digital realizations and residual thought bits as it relates to observations in an ever-changing digital landscape. The concept comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairytale.