The Websolace

A friend of mine just lost an important file on his USB drive and since he didn’t have a backup, I was quick to recommend file recovery programs. Prevention is always better than treat me so I was thinking if there were any programs that backed up whole USB drives. I came to a conclusion that for most end users its probably impractical. So instead of giving him a program that would chop his space capacity in half in no time (a graphic artist, those huge PSDs) I went with a solution that’s already in Windows.. none other than Briefcase!

I’ve never used it since Windows 98 or was that 95? It’s always there for anyone to use but sadly just highlighted by in the New context menu. Some probably use it, I would starting right now!

There’s no point in making another step-by-step since Symplebyte.com has a fantastic tutorial in the following link. Read about it here:

http://www.symplebyte.com/microsoft_windows/the_basics/synch_files_using_briefcase

Wow, what a title and yes this is real.

You see (you can skip this part if you’re eager to make that call fast) I have a sister and a brother who are both living somewhere else now; Japan and America respectively. I have a G-Flex 3500 Globe subscription and that’s not even enough for my local calls not to mention when the international fees are added! Globe and Smart (not sure with other networks) both charge forty cents ($.40 USD) a minute for calls to the US which is roughly sixteen pesos ($1 USD = 40 PHP conversion), it may not look expensive but when you pill up all the five-ten minute calls you’d come up with a four digit to a five digit bill for international alone.

For so long I’ve been wanting to cut that in half without cutting them out.

I have a solution!

How do you make five peso calls to the US?

Okay, the five peso calls are only for Globe subscribers but Smart subscribers get to save too.

What do you need?

• 3G phone (explained later)
• Globe SIM (preferred)
• Skype account with Skypeout
• Fring
• Credit card

1. Get yourself a Skype account if you didn’t already have one here.

2. Top up that Skype account with Skypeout which enables your Skype account to call outside (PC to landline/cellphone) anywhere in the world. It costs $10 which is awesome partnered with their cheap rates, take note that countries differ (Calls to the US are $0.02 per minute which gives you more than 600 minutes worth of calls to the US with $10 and 100+ to Japan which is $0.154). From this point on you’re actually able to make eight centavos per minute calls to the US. You can also check their other promos here.

3. Install Fring on your 3G mobile phone. Alternatively, you can use any other Skype client which works for you. I chose Fring because it’s feature rich as it can also run as a background process (even main) on my phone.

4. For Globe subscribers, if you haven’t already, text TIME to 1111 to activate time based mobile internet access. What this does basically is change how you’re billed for acccessing the internet through your mobile. By default you pay per kilobyte you download, by texting this you’re requesting that you be billed five pesos per fifteen minutes you surf or access the internet wirelessly regardless of how much bandwidth you use. You should receive a confirmation text within an hour.

4. Login to Fring on your mobile using Globe 3G which now costs only five pesos per fifteen minutes compared to Smart’s ten pesos per thirty minutes. This is where the five peso calls really come in; you see through Globe 3G and your Skypeout account. You pay five pesos for mobile internet access for fifteen minutes which in most cases is even more than enough for one call, you maybe using up your Skypeout account but with $0.02 USD or 0.8 PHP rates it’s disregardable. That $10 will last you a very long time not unless you really religiously call the US, either way I still saved you a ton of money!

You can still do this with Smart but it costs double as their time bracket is allocated at thirty minutes. I suggest getting a Globe SIM specifically for this, prepaid will do anyway at 50-100 PHP per sim pack.

What makes this cheap? I’d like to thank two technologies at work. VOIP and 3G.

VOIP - It stands for Voice over Internet Protocol which is fancy talk for a technology that allows digital phonecalls ergo it uses the internet to route calls anywhere in the world whether its destination is another computer, an analog phone or a mobile.

Don’t be confused, Skype is company that delivers VOIP solutions like Skypeout. It’s cheap because rather than travelling through analog phonelines, Skype uses peer to peer technology (research that on your on!) which lets Skype use it’s great big pool of users (their bandwidth, not actual phones!) to help hop phonecalls to their destination. Read more about Skype’s VOIP technology here.

3G - The third generation of mobile phone standards and technology. It is NOT synonymous to video calling as it is only a feature, be it, one of the most popular uses though. You can actually relate it somehow to it’s cousin WiFi who basically is a faster 3G network (bandwidth!) but with shorter range. First developed and implemented in Japan to say the least! 3G mixes in data transmission for uses such as surfing with broadband like speed on your phone, video calls, calling through the internet to make cheaper calls of course and more.

Yep, again, I saved you a ton of money didn’t I?!