This video pretty much explains my views on global warming.

Computer World Magazine

Blogging after a long time to inform you guys about a nice promo. ITW0rld Canada is currently giving away free subscriptions to Computer W0rld, Network W0rld, CDN and CIO Magazine. They also have one french magazine. There is no catch really. They just want to increase some Canadian readership. If you sign up now then you are up for free subscription forever.

I think in terms of my visitors, computer world would be the most attractive of all. The reason is because this magazine talks about overall industry news. I have gone through these magazines and I find them to be an excellent read.

Sometimes internet has too much information and you are not sure where to begin if you are looking for some ideas on current industry. These magazines are great read for that purpose. Anyways, check them out. They are currently free only for Canadians. This promo will last until the end up April.

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CIO Magazine

MagicJack After a Week in Toronto

Using MagicJack from Toronto, Canada

I was really excited about MagicJack at the beginning. I did make a few calls. Once I talked with a customer representative in the US for like an hour using this. The experience was good and was pretty cool. However, as time goes on I am really losing interest on MagicJack. At this point, I have the magicjack unplugged because I need that USB port to connect my external HDD. 

I know people who use Magic Jack a lot. However, if you like me and have a cell phone and a landphone and a phone at work, I don’t understand when you would be using this device. Yes, when you make long distance calls, then it does become handy. However, I don’t make that much long distance calls. The reason is because you cannot have people call you.

If we had a local number for Toronto, then it would have been really good. However, we don’t have it. Therefore, people cannot call us, we have to call people. This is very stupid. They have been saying that we will have a local number soon and we haven’t got it. I don’t want to be cynical but the owner of MagicJack sounds like a shady person to me. When have you seen people promoting the owner as well as the product? 

The lack of improvements with MagicJack and constant lies about making magicjack available for Toronto make me feel like as if MagicJack was created for a short-time project. 

Please don’t get me wrong. I do understand it helps a lot of people. However, I don’t understand why isn’t there any improvement with this device. The sound quality isn’t that great for the non-MagicJack people you are talking to. There is no proper customer service. For no reason sometimes it stops working. 

I don’t want to complain because I paid only 40 dollars for a year. I have had nothing to lose to invest that amount and that’s why I did. However, I really got what I paid for nothing more. Sometimes you pay some money and feel you got a way more. However, this was definitely not that case.

It’s not living up to my expectations to tell you the truth. I do have the 30 days money back guarantee. Should I return in? Well, I decided not to return this because as I said in my previous post I got what I paid for. I cannot expect a smooth connection with 20 bucks/year. I will leave this. I am also currently doing some research to figure out if there is any way I would be able to use this device with skype. This VOIP service from canada is really good as I have heard and I will try this out in the future.

Also, I am thinking that MagicJack will improve their services along the road. If that happens then that would be great. Until then I am not sure how much I would be using this.

Figure: Picture of MagicJack

Voice Over IP is becoming an interesting topic to discuss overtime. We see so many VOIP services popping up every where. People are becoming more open to using Skype and other services for their long distance rather than expensive landline phones.

Since there are so many services it’s becoming increasingly hard to choose the service that would be the most reliable of all. MagicJack is relatively a new player in the market. This device has been endorsed by various media for being very simple and also cheap. Basically, you get a small USB device that you plugin to your USB port and then you connect your phone jack to that device. After that you will be able to use MagicJack immediately. The device costs only $20 so far and the subscription cost is $20 per year. As part of your package you get a local phone number that other people would be able to call even from their landphones. For skype, it costs $60/year but with monthly subscription it’s $30/year.

After reading so many reviews against and in favour of this device I have finally decided to give this a shot.

I bought mine from the MagicJack Canada website. With shipping costs it came down to approximately $60. Apparently, we do not get to choose a local Canadian number yet. Still, we can get an American number and then switch to a Canadian local number as soon as it becomes available. I decided to switch to a cheaper cellphone plan and get this. Looked like a good deal.

It was very easy to install. My first problem was that I was not able to make any calls to toronto cellphones that had Rogers/Fido as the carrier. I could make calls to Rogers cellphones outside of Toronto but not in Toronto. It worked fine with bell and telus. It was a bit of problem for me since most of my friends use Rogers phones. It seemed to have been defeating the whole purpose of my purchase. I tried so many workaround for this. I talked to a bunch of people in the livechat and they couldn’t help me. After searching a lot I finally came accross a workaround for this.

Basically purpose of this post of mine is to help out those Toronto users of magicjack, who are having problems calling Rogers cellphones in Toronto. Basically, if you have a number let’s say, “416-123-4567″ you dial it like, “*67+4+*+16-123-4567. This seemed to have eliminated my problem.

MagicJack is very new and it has lots of bugs. However, I believe you get what you pay for. I paid 40 bucks for the first year and 20 bucks per year after that. I do not expect a landline experience out of this. On the other hand, the cellphone carriers charge us a way more than they should. I don’t get enough out of my money from them. Therefore, with magicjack, be patience and think about the money you are saving. Also, you are becoming known to a new technology that not a lot of people are familiar with.

So, goodluck with MagicJack. If you are from Toronto and a magicjack user, give me a shout and I will give you my number and we can have a chat in our magicjack . Even if you are not a Torontonian but just wants to talk to me shout anyways and we can talk.

The word this afternoon is that Industry Minister Jim Prentice will not introduce the Canadian DMCA tomorrow. The thousands of letters and phone calls over the past week have urged the government to adopt balanced copyright reforms that meets everyone’s needs and does not unduly harm education, consumer rights, privacy, and free speech. The delay provides an exceptional opportunity for Minister Prentice to consult more broadly and to factor those concerns into the forthcoming bill in the interests of all Canadians.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that people made a strong noise about this issue. The facebook group got more than 14,000 members in one week. A lot of bloggers started writing about this issue. I wrote to my local MP as well. However, I am not sure if we should start celebrating about this yet. Michael Geist has clarified that he is not sure why the introduction has been delayed. It could be that it was just delayed for a couple of days. Maybe this deal might be introduced tomorrow.

To tell you the truth, I am just too excited to see what is going to happen next. If Harper introduces this then for sure his party will not be coming to power in next 12 years. It’s sort of like a political suicide for him. We also shouldn’t forget that our previous Liberal government also tried to do something similar. However, they failed. I am pretty sure that these Corporate Conservatives will fail too.

For now, here is an interesting video made by a musical artist from Montreal expressing his views on this drama. This law is supposed to protect people like him. Let’s see what he has to say.

Fortunately, there are people like Dr. Geist, University of Ottawa Law professor, who are fighting against this move. If you want you could check out his website.

You are wondering what might happen if this law gets passed. Read the following excerpt from this article…

This puts the whole Canadian tech industry at the mercy of the US industry, unable to innovate or start new businesses that interact with the existing pool of devices and media without getting a license from the States.

how exactly?

If this law passes, it will render all of the made-in-Canada exceptions to copyright for education, archiving, free speech and personal use will be irrelevant: if a technology has a lock that prohibits a use, your right to make that use falls by the wayside. Nevermind that you’ve got the right to record a show to watch later — or to record a politician’s speech so you can hold him to account later — the policeman in the device can take that right away with no appeal.

Here is a video composed by Dr. Geist outlining how you could fight back.

I was totally unaware of this issue as I have been busy with studies. Thanks to Dan from More Notes From Underground for informing about this. Dan writes from Toronto, Canada like me. He does have a very nice informative style of writing. You should check out his blog and leave a nice comment for him.