Choosing the right VoIP provider

There are many VoIP providers and choosing the right one can be an arduous task and what work flawlessly on your friend from another state doesn't guarantee that it will work on you without a hitch too.

The basic concept of Voice over IP communication is that VoIP to VoIP calls are
totally free while VoIP calls towards a PSTN (i.e landline) have a cost.

Typically you get many more features and pay far less for your calls on VoIP than you would be getting from your local telephone company. In most cases the VoIP is a little box that you receive when you sign up for VoIP service through a VoIP provider. You simply plug your

internet cable into one side and then plug your telephone into the other and voila! you are ready to make voip calls.

You can imagine the cost benefits for large scale companies giving dozens and dozens of phone calls abroad or national to other subsidiaries companies, or even partners. BPOs and Call centers overseas also masively benefited from this cost effective way of communication. Most call centers now rely on voip for their customer service hot lines and the same thing for those companies who make cold calling to solicit members or looking for prospective customers.

End users or individuals like most of us will also gain from voip technology in terms of cutting cost on our long distance fees. A typical $20 long distance cost monthly now can be cut to more than half by calling through voip instead of your local provider, more if you make lots of international calls.

VoIP also allow us to make free calls locally or internationally through VoIP to VoIP or PC to PC calls. Skype, Yahoo Voice, Google Talk, Onesuite, Vonage, ViaTalk and other VoIP providers usually provides free voip to voip calls. Not all voip provider are created the same though. Skype for example has their own protocol and can not be use on your over the counter ATA devide or USB phone. You need to buy Skype phone to use it without having your PC turned on. Yahoo Voice can be use with ATA but you need to tweak your device or at least has a good voip knowledge, not for your average joe. Onesuite on the other hand is a prepaid phone card with voip feature which is SIP based so it can be use on a softphone (X-lite, Portsip, etc) or ATA device.

The thing about choosing a quality VoIP provider these days rely on the provider size and on their ability to offer a 'Pay as you grow' service. I assume you think the bigger is the better right? Well, this is precisely the opposite, not that a major VoIP provider isn't providing a good service but its network is more prone to be saturated and obviously giving poor quality phone calls to its customers. It is very similar to the multiplicity of internet connection providers available 2-3 years ago and stretching out to the horizon: If you chose a small to medium size one, you had great chance to get an excellent bandwidth but in the other hand this one may
bankrupt after one year (remember Sunrocket?). And if you chose a big and well established internet connection provider, chances are you got slightly slower bandwidth (in these early days), but with a reliable and constant service (most of the time).

5 things to consider when choosing yor voip provider.

1. Your VoIP provider should have the ability to "Port" your phone number. Meaning
that you should be able to keep the same phone number you already have, if you want
to.

2. Your VoIP Provider should have a money back guarantee so you can try their
service and if you aren't satisfied you can get your money back.

3. Your VoIP provider should have pay as you go plan or no plan so you can easily
quit whenever you want to and not worry about your unused minutes or remaining
months.

4. Your VoIP Provider should have live customer service department AND a 24/7 at
that is a big plus. You will never know what time of the day you will need help.

5. Your VoIP provider should be accessible through your computer or as a stand alone
without having your PC turned on all the time.

I personally use Onesuite services and I actually followed the guideline when I decided to go with Onesuite voip. But always remember though, what works with your friend doesn't necessesarily mean it will work for you. The best way to find out if the VoIP provider you choose will work out fine on your end is to actually try and use it.

The 2008 Emmy Awards

The 60th annual Primetime Emmys finally got real – and finally funny, too.

In terms of the former, for the sixth year running, CBS's The Amazing Race was named best reality series. But in the newly-created best reality show host category, it was Survivor's Jeff Probst who raced away with the Emmy Sunday night.

"Thank you for allowing reality in," said Probst during his acceptance at Los Angeles's Nokia Theater.

As for finally getting funny, after an otherwise slow start, 30 Rock was showered with Emmys – and an octogenarian comedian named Don Rickles showed he could still bring an audience to its feet.

Overall, the top winners were those with the most nominations: HBO's miniseries John Adams, NBC's comedy 30 Rock and AMC's drama Mad Men.

For the second consecutive year, 30 Rock was named outstanding comedy series. Its male lead, Alec Baldwin, won in the acting category. "It's the greatest job I ever had in my life," he said, calling the show's creator, writer and star Tina Fey "the Elaine May of our generation."

Fey Shouts Out to Julia Louis-DreyfusNot long afterwards, Fey picked up her second Emmy of the night – the first was for writing 30 Rock – as that show's outstanding lead actress in a comedy. She revealed that when she doesn't know what to do in a scene, her husband advises her to act like Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

"So, thanks, Julia. It's really working out for me," said Fey, as a bemused-looking Louis-Dreyfus flashed her a thumbs-up.

Damages star Glenn Close, the outstanding lead actress in a drama series, said of her sister nominees – Sally Field, Mariska Hargitay, Holly Hunter and Kyra Sedgwick, as well as Helen Mirren and Judi Dench – "We're proving that complicated, powerful, mature women are sexy, high entertainment and can carry a show."

Zeljko Ivanek, outstanding supporting actor for dramatic series winner, also on Damages, thanked Close and the TV academy voters, "who," he said, "made my parents very, very happy tonight."

Best actor in a drama series winner, Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, whose victory was something of an upset, gasped when his name was announced. Picking up his trophy the AMC-series star said of Emmy, "She's bald, too."

HBO's historical drama, John Adams, was voted top mini-series, with producer Tom Hanks collecting the Emmy from presenter Sally Field, who played his mother in Forrest Gump. She asked, "You been a good boy?" "Yes, Mom," he replied. The project's leading man, Paul Giamatti, received the genre's best actor Emmy, and said his casting proved "Anybody can be president. Anybody."

Laura Linney (who played Abigail Adams) picked up a best actress Emmy, as did Tom Wilkinson (Benjamin Franklin). Adams was also honored for its screenplay.

AMC's Mad Men creator and executive , Matthew Weiner, also clinched the Emmy for dramatic-series writing.

Biggest football blunder of all time!

How stupid can you get? I mean everyone knows the ball needs to cross the line right? Anyhow the play started as usual and after looking left abd right Mcnabb found DeSean Jackson deep and just a few yards away from the goal. He did a perfect pass, DeSean catched it with no defender in sight then the unthinkable happened.

U.S. market biggest slumped since 9/11

NEW YORK (AP) -- World stock markets turned sharply lower Monday after a double-fisted blow from Wall Street -- news that Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch would be sold to Bank of America.

Wall Street dropped precipitously with the Dow Jones down more than 504 points to 10917, the sixth-largest point drop ever and their worst showing since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The U.S. stock market suffered as investors reacted to a stunning reshaping of the landscape of Wall Street that took out Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co.

In Europe, the FTSE-100 share index was down 3.9 percent in London, the Paris CAC-40 was off 3.7 percent and Germany's DAX 30 index of blue chips sagged 2.7 percent.
Asia's biggest stock exchanges in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea were closed for holidays, but India's Sensex tumbled 3.4 percent, Taiwan's benchmark plummeted 4.1 percent and Singapore dropped 3.2 percent.

In Latin America, stocks also plunged, with Brazil and Argentina falling the hardest, with 6.2 percent and 3.28 percent drops. In Mexico, the market slipped 1.94 percent, while in Chile stocks were down 0.8 percent.

In Russia, where stocks were already suffering from falling oil prices and worries about political interference in business, the MICEX index was down 6.2 percent and RTS index was 4.8 percent lower.

The declines in Europe were led by insurance and financial stocks, with shares in French insurer AXA SA down 8.5 percent, Germany's Commerzbank AG falling 9 percent, and Britain's HBOS 17.55 percent lower.
"In the short term, we are looking at a fresh wave of weakness hitting financial markets," said Chloe Magnier, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Paris. "I'm not optimistic about the coming months."

U.S. bond prices surged as investors fled to the security of government debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, plunged to 3.54 percent from 3.72 percent late Friday. The dollar was lower against other major currencies, while gold prices rose.

Europe's major central banks moved quickly to calm markets Monday, pumping billions of euros and pounds into the financial system. The European Central Bank loaned 30 billion euros but said it received 51 bids for 90.3 billion euros ($127 billion) on its one-day tender with a bid rate of 4.25 percent -- a clear sign that demand for cash is over the top.

Similarly, the Bank of England offered up £5 billion (nearly $9 billion) in a three-day auction -- but bids were nearly five times higher, at £24.1 billion ($43 billion).

The 158-year-old Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed Monday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company was crippled by $60 billion in soured real-estate holdings and unable to find an investment partner to throw it a lifeline.

Officials from the government and various banks failed to find a solution during weekend meetings. During the talks, when Bank of America balked at buying Lehman, the government urged it to buy investment bank Merrill Lynch instead. Merrill rose 18 percent, while Bank of America fell 2.4 percent.

The $50 billion deal may stop speculators whose next target after Lehman would have been Merrill, according to Stephen Pope, chief global market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald Europe in London.

The moves will create a "firebreak in the financial structure," and once disappointment that Lehman didn't manage to make a deal has been digested, stocks will start to recover, he said.
"You are going to have a torrid day today, probably tomorrow as well, but then I think people are going to start thinking there's some opportunity out there to be engaged," he said.

Before that, markets also have to react to a possible restructuring of the world's largest insurance company, American International Group Inc. AIG's troubles a week after its stock dropped 45 percent are perhaps most worrisome for some investors because of the company's enormous balance sheet -- and the risks that its troubles could spill over to its customers.

A sharp drop in oil below $100 also weighed on energy names, including several Dow components. Exxon Mobil Corp. fell 1.8 percent, while Chevron Corp. fell 2.7 percent.

Deadly train crash in SoCal

LOS ANGELES - Emergency crews found more victims early Saturday, boosting the death toll to 17, as they delicately picked apart the mangled wreckage of a commuter train that collided head-on with a freight train on the same track.

More victims were feared trapped in the wrecked Metrolink commuter train. About 135 people were injured. The impact rammed the Metrolink engine backward into a passenger car, which rested on its side with the engine still inside it early Saturday, and accordioned the freight train cars.

Two other Metrolink cars remained upright. Crews had to put out a fire under part of the train.
It was the deadliest U.S. passenger train accident in 15 years.

During the night, the teams used hydraulic jacks to keep the passenger car from falling over and other specialized rescue equipment to gently tear apart the metal. Fire Capt. Steve Ruda said the goal was to eliminate every piece of metal and gradually work down into the passenger spaces, but by midnight crews were just getting through the top deck of the double-decker train.
"There's human beings in there and it's going to be painstaking to get them out," Ruda said. "They'll have to surgically remove them." His firefighters had never seen such carnage, he said. The crews would have to work carefully to document the incident for investigators and so relatives could identify bodies, Ruda said.

Officials say there were 222 people on the Metrolink train and four Union Pacific employees aboard the freight train. The cause of the collision had not been determined.
"This is the worst accident I've ever seen," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "Clearly the injuries are going to mount and so are the fatalities."

Asked how the two trains ended up on the same track, Steven Kulm, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration: "We are nowhere near having any information on that."
Kulm said the federal investigation will be headed by the National Transportation Safety Board, while his agency will conduct a review of whether any federal rail safety regulations were violated.

Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said it is common in California for freight and commuter trains to be on one track. "You see it a lot in California where commuter trains share tracks with freight trains," Richmond said, adding she couldn't speculate about the cause of the crash. Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director for the city Fire Department, said 135 people were taken to hospitals — about 85 of them in serious or critical condition.

In the initial hours after the disaster, firefighters treated the injured at three triage areas near the wreck, and helicopters flew in and out of a nearby landing area on evacuation flights. Dazed and injured passengers sat on the ground and wandered about. Leslie Burnstein saw the crash from her home and heard screams of agony as she ran through a haze of smoke toward the wreckage. She pulled victims out one by one.

"It was horrendous," said Burnstein, a psychologist. "Blood was everywhere. ... I heard people yelling, screaming in pain, begging for help." Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said the Metrolink train left Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and was headed northwest to Moorpark in Ventura County. The trains collided at about 4:30 p.m. in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley, near a 500-foot-long tunnel underneath Stoney Point Park.
On the north side of the tunnel, there is a siding, a length of track where one train can wait for another to pass, Tyrrell said.

"I do not know what caused the wreck," said Tyrrell who broke down crying and was shaking. "Obviously two trains are not supposed to be on the same track at the same time."
Until Friday, the worst disaster in Metrolink's history occurred on Jan. 26, 2005, in suburban Glendale when a man parked a gasoline-soaked SUV on railroad tracks. A Metrolink train struck the SUV and derailed, striking another Metrolink train traveling the other way, killing 11 people and injuring about 180 others. Juan Alvarez was convicted this year of murder for causing the crash.

That was the worst U.S. rail tragedy since March 15, 1999, when an Amtrak train hit a truck and derailed near Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 11 people and injuring more than 100.
The Sunset Limited was involved in the worst accident in Amtrak's 28-year history. On Sept. 22, 1993, 42 passengers and five crew members died when the train plunged off a trestle into a bayou near Mobile, Ala. The trestle had been damaged minutes earlier by a towboat.

Remembering 9/11

The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't point to Afghanistan.

They come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates; all across the middle east without a focus in any one region.

Indeed, even as the FBI was admitting that its list of 19 names was based solely on identifications thought to have been forged, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saudi Al-Faisal insisted that an investigation in Saudi Arabia showed that the 5 Saudi men were not aboard the four jet liners that crashed in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11.

"It was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list had nothing to do with what happened," Al-Faisal told the Arabic Press in Washington after meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House.

A sixth identified hijacker is also reported to still be alive in Tunisia, while a 7th named man died two years ago!

The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't even appear on the passenger lists of the hijacked planes. Check it out for yourself - here's the full list of alleged hijackers along with the passenger manifests.

CNN reported that the men who hijacked those aircraft were using phony IDs, using the names of real people still living in Arab nations in the middle east.

In another development, the BBC is reporting that the transcript of a phone call made by Flight Attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney to Boston air traffic controls shows that the flight attendant gave the seat numbers occupied by the hijackers, seat numbers which were NOT the seats of the men the FBI claimed were responsible for the hijacking!

FBI Chief Robert Mueller admitted on September 20 and on September 27 that at this time the FBI has no legal proof to prove the true identities of the suicidal hijackers.

Yet in the haste to move forward on the already planned war in Afghanistan, our government and the FBI (which does not have the best record for honesty in investigations to begin with, having been caught rigging lab tests, manufacturing testimony in the Vincent Foster affair, and illegally withholding/destroying evidence in the Oklahoma Bombing case) are not taking too close a look at evidence that points away from the designated suspect, ex(?) CIA asset Osama Bin Laden.

In particular, the FBI, too busy harassing political dissenters to find spies in its midst, the long rumored mole inside the White House, or plug leaks in high-tech flowing to foreign nations, has willfully and criminally ignored the implications of some vital pieces of information the FBI is itself waving around at the public.

We are being told that this crack team of terrorists, able to breeze past airport security as if it wasn't there, wound up leaving so much evidence in its wake that the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (or the FBI) could not fail to stumble over it.

The locations where the terrorists supposedly stayed are so overloaded with damning materials that they resemble less a crimes scene, and more a "B" detective movie set, with vital clues always on prominent display for the cameras.

Yet another problem lies with the described actions of the hijackers themselves. We are being told on the one hand that these men were such fanatical devotees of their faith that they willingly crashed the jets they were flying into buildings.

Yet on the other hand, we are being told that these same men spent the night before their planned visit to Allah drinking in strip bars, committing not just one, but two mortal sins which would keep them out of Paradise no matter what else they did.

Truly devout Muslims would spend the day before a suicide attack fasting and praying. Not only does the drinking in strip bars not fit the profile of a fanatically religious Muslim willing to die for his cause, but the witness reports of the men in the bars are of men going out of their way to be noticed and remembered, while waving around phony identifications.

Because of the facts of the phony identifications, we don't really know who was on those planes.

What we do know is that the men on those planes went to a great deal of trouble to steal the identities of Muslims, and to make sure those identities were seen and remembered, then to leave a plethora of planted clues around, such as crop dusting manuals, and letters in checked baggage (why does a terrorist about to die need to check baggage?) that "somehow" didn't get on the final, fatal, flight.

Fake terror is nothing new. According to recently released files, our government planned Operation NORTHWOODS to stage phony terror attacks against American citizens in the wake of the Bay Of Pigs, to anger Americans into support for a second invasion of Cuba.

The plan was spiked by JFK. If our government has ever actually carried out such plans to stage phony terror attacks, the documents have remained classified.

But given the reality of Operation NORTHWOODS, or the manner in which FDR maneuvered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor, one cannot rule out the possibility that, once again, the people of the United States are being lied to by their own government, to manufacture consent for a war of invasion already being discussed with other nations the previous summer.

It is also quite possible, indeed likely, that the United States is being spoofed by a third party to trigger a war. It has happened before. According to Victor Ostrovsky, a defector from Israel's secret service, Mossad, Israel decided to mount a false flag operation designed to further discredit Libya, and provoke the US to attack an Arab nation. A transmitter loaded with pre-recorded messages was planted in Tripoli, Libya, by a Mossad team.

The `Trojan Horse' beamed out fake messages about Libyan-authorized bombings and planned attacks that were immediately intercepted by US electronic monitoring.

Convinced by this disinformation that Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco in which a US soldier died, President Ronald Reagan ordered massive air attacks on Libya, including an obvious- and illegal (under US law) attempt to assassinate Qadaffi himself. Some 100 Libyan civilians were killed, including Qadaffi's two year old daughter. Libyan officials had no idea why they were attacked.

It is worth remembering the motto of the Mossad is, "By way of deception, thou shalt do war.

"Whether they were involved in the attacks or not, it cannot be doubted that Israel has benefited from the attacks in New York.

While world attention is focused on what the US will do in Afghanistan, Israel has escalated its attacks against Palestinians towns.

Israel has repeatedly tried to claim that Palestinians were involved in the New York attacks, hoping to bury the Palestinian cause under the rubble of the World Trade Towers.

Because of the faked IDs and stolen identities, we don't really know who planned the World Trade Towers attacks. We only know who they wanted us to blame.

And we know that the United States has been tricked in the past into bombing someone who did not deserve the attack, and that those who were bombed then embarked on what from their point of view was justified retaliation that culminated over Lockerbie. And while bombs were falling and planes were crashing, Israel was laughing at us that we had been so easily fooled into bombing Israel's targets for them.

Are we being hoaxed again, by Israel, or by our own government, or by both?

It's impossible to rule that out. Right now there are a lot of people who want war. Oil companies want Afghanistan's petroleum products. Our corporations want "friendlier" markets.

The CIA wants all that opium. And all those war-mongers, with all their greed and agendas, will not hesitate in the least to pour your tax dollars and your children's blood all over Afghanistan, to get those "friendlier" markets, oil, and opium.

Because of the vested interests at work here, American citizens must, more than at any other time in recent history, rely on themselves to decide what is happening in our nation.

Too many of those who purport to report the "truth" to us are eager to grab more tax money and more children to pour into a war of invasion, poised at a region which has swallowed up every army that has tried to conquer it since the time of Alexander The Great.

And one more thing. Take a good look at the map of Eurasia and plot out where the United States has military deployments.

They march in a straight line through the middle of Eurasia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan.

The United States is prepared to cut the Russian Federation off from the oil rich middle east, and to control transportation routes from China and India into the Middle East.

When Russia realizes that this is the real agenda, that's when "Dubya Dubya Three" will really get going!

Originally published @ whatreallyhappened.com