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CommentA couple of years back, you would not have seen anything like this
interesting development
Suresh***
CommentIf you want to talk only for 2 minutes then the call is free, otherwise 100 minute for $2 60 minutes or more for 40¢ or less for most of the countries, including India
Yesterday, I was at my friends place, and I saw a nifty Java program , that allows to make calls to India or anywhere in the world for approximately 100 minutes per 2 dollar 60 minutes or more for 40¢ or less range.
NO, you don’t need to be a programmer and you may use your land line or cellphone or VOIP phone to make calls. To initiate the phone call, you will need a computer connected to the internet, but I believe it is not necessary to have broadband connection, and you could make calls for others from your computer also( not sure of the legal issues associated to this part)
Before you get all exited, let me start with a disclaimer, I am not associated or affiliated to any of this companies, all the information is AS IS, so use it at your own risk, and yada, yada.
This can be done using Java,C#, PHP or Python – I am going to use Java and Eclipse IDE. If you have Java SDK 1.5 and Eclipse 3.3 installed on your machine, then skip the next step.
Go to http://java.sun.com and download and Install JSDK 1.5 or up. Once the installation is complete, download Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and unzip it c:eclipse directory. Double click on the Eclipse icon, to start Eclipse IDE.
To start with , you need to create an account, at web21c , use a valid email address, since you you need to activate the account based on a email message. Once your account is activated, login, go to download section, download “Java based SDK -> Web21C-JavaSDK-5.2.1.zip” – or your language of choice.
Next step is to download Certificate Tool
Click MyApps menu -> from there select “Register New Application” sub menu and download Certificate Tool stand alone version.
Unizip the downloaded SDK and Certificate Tool zip files , say into directories “C:Web21C-JavaSDK” and “C:Web21C-Certificate-Tool”. Inside the Web21C-JavaSDK directory there is a couple of sample programs, unzip the sample programs also.
Create a certificate – There are two types of certificates, “Production” and “Sandbox”, Sandbox is indented for testing purpose, and it is free charge, but the calls with get terminated automatically after 120 seconds. For production type certificate, you need pay and buy credits, and the calls will not get terminated after two minutes.
Lets start with a Sandbox type certificate, Launch Certificate tool by clicking certTool (JNLP) application, which can be found inside “C:Web21C-Certificate-Tool” directory. You should see something like as follows
provide an application name, your user credentials you created and activated earlier, press submit for signing button, application will prompt you for a password, enter a password and remember it. For this example, I am going to use “vps” as application name and password as “PASS”, and going to save the generated “vps_Sandbox.pfx” file to C:My Documents directory.
Launch Eclipse, Create a new Java project, add required libraries to the project ( right click on project, go to properties, select Java build path, selected libraries tab, click on add external Jar files button, add “Web21C-JavaSDK-5.2.1” jar file and all the Jar files inside the lib [Web21C-JavaSDKlib] directory) – it should look something as follows.
Now there is a sample Java Program called third party call, add that program to project ( right click, Import -> File System -> Web21C-JavaSDKsamplescombtsdksamplesThirdPartyCallSample.java ). Likewise add the certificate we generated to the project and
“security.properties” file. security.properties can be found at C:Web21C-JavaSDK directory. If you completed everything, right then your project would look something like as follows
All right we are almost there, make a couple of changes in security.properties file as shown in above picture.
open ThirdPartyCallSample.java, comment out the package line [//package com.bt.sdk.samples;], change values for caller and callee – For example – enter your mobile number as callee and you home number at India as caller number, it would look something like this
String caller = “tel:+91XXXXXXXXX”; //whichever number you want to call.
Now execute the program, by right clicking and run as Java application as shown below.
If everything goes fine, your phone should ring first, then there will be a silence until the application connects the call to other end, be patient and wait. You wont hear any ringing at other end. with the sandbox certificate you can talk for two minutes, exactly after two minutes the phone gets disconnected.
If you liked it so far, and ready to pay for a ‘production’ certificate, read along. Since the service is provided by British Telecom, you need to buy credit in pounds, for 10 pounds ($20) you will get 500 credits, for each leg of the call you need 5 credits, so the call we made earlier will take 10 credits.
, and you can talk 20 minutes ( not sure of exact time, but it is cheaper and clear) or so with it. So for $2 , you will get 50 credits using which you can talk approximately 100 minutes. About a $1 you could make 2.5 international calls, and talk as long as you can, so far have not found someone willing to talk more than 37 minutes yet, so I do not know the exact time/minute limitation per call yet.
To create a production certificate, launch the certificate tool again, this time, give a different application name and select the “production” radio box, give password, save. And once the file is saved, add it your Java project, edit the security.properties file, so that the file points to production certificate and parameters
change certificate from Sandbox to production
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.file=India_Production.pfx
#org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.file=vps_Sandbox.pfx
Comment Sandbox constant, uncomment production constants
#constants.provider=com.bt.sdk.common.SandboxConstants
constants.provider=com.bt.sdk.common.ProductionConstants
Before executing the program, you need buy credits, for buying credit, logon on to Web21C account, click on to my applications,
you will see a buy credits near your production certificate click the link follow the instructions. Once the transactions is complete you will see 500 credits next to that certificate.
Now find a person you can talk to for 60 minutes or so, change the caller field, execute program. If it is a short call, use sandbox certificate, if it is a long use production certificate. The moment you dial out, you will loose 5 credits per leg.
As they say, this is only the tip of the Web21C SDK, dive deep into the details, and write your own applications.
Suresh***
CommentOne question I get asked a lot is, what is the best way to copy/data files from one machine to another. Nowadays I prefer using the firewire/IEEE 1394 interface, since it is faster and available on most of the new laptops.
If you have two computers with firewire ports, then this would be the best option to copy large amount of data. Say you could copy a 4GB file under 6 minutes, and could save your CD/DVDs
So before you get started, make sure that your machine has firewire ports. Where is my fire wire port?
If the firewire ports are not available, you could get a Firewire PCMCIA card for Laptop or a Firewire PCI Card for desktops.
If you have firewire port on both machines, next thing you need is a firewire cable, and you can get a fire wire cable shipped to you for around $2.50 at http://www.dealextreme.com or you could pay a little more at local Wal-Mart (it takes 2-3 weeks since they ship from Hong-Kong)
Once you have all the required hardware, follow this set of instructions for PC to PC data transfer.
How do I do it
If you are migrating from PC to Mac or vice-versa try this instructions
PC to MacThe same approach should be possible with USB ports and cables, but I have not tried it yet, and I heard USB requires some special software which is not free yet. Oh, well some day some one will write a free version.
Suresh***
CommentSuccumbing to the Apple hype (OSX, Tiger,Leopard,Chimpanzee …), I decided to give it try. Ordered a MacBook along with the VMWare fusion. As expected it costs twice the price of a PC of same configuration. But I was aware this price difference in the get-go, so I can’t really complain about that part.
Solid construction and some intuitive design was a change from normal PCs. But migrating to 1 button mouse was tough, a three button blue tooth mouse resolves that issue.
I could not connect to my wireless router, due to Incompatible Security error. I tried Apple Customer support, and after 30 minutes of waiting, I was able to talk to customer support engineer, he suggested to try a couple of things that I already tried (with the help of Google ). For the amount of dollars I paid, I was expecting a little bit better support, but the end result is, my wireless network is still NOT working, and t the irony is that, Wireless network works properly from Vista (Bootcamp partition)
I was able to install Vista using Bootcamp, and was able to use the same Vista installation as a virtual machine within OS X, using VMWare Fusion. I installed the rEFIt boot loader for Mac. Everything is working. But as expected, the machine need a little more RAM, and can be easily maxed out to 4Gig under $100.
In two weeks I learned a couple of small/silly things about Mac.
MacBook: How to find the Serial Number ?
The Apple docs says How to find the Serial Number ?Alternatively you could try this, select “about this mac” and then double click on the version number, that will show your serial number.
Mac users don’t take that many screen shots, hence there is no dedicated print screen key in the key board.
How do I take screen shot ?
PC’s has a Print screen button, and the Mac equivalent is to press Apple/Command button, shift button and number 3, it will automatically saves the image on the desktop.
If you want to do a selective part of the screen, similar to PC’s ALT+ Print screen button, you can do a Apple/Command button, shift button and number 4 – then Mac let you choose which portion of the screen you want. or You could use the program called Grab. IF you cant remember any of this, make sure that, you have access to Google ;)
Need to figure out how to fix the Wireless Network issue (since Apple CS put me in YO-YO mode for this issue), how to turn MacBook into SmackBook, and try to install GNU/Linux as third OS and see how it goes.
Suresh***
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