Holiday Blog Takeover - bwahaha!!!

5thsister is tied up (insert evil laugh here) and cannot post today. This is Mr. Sister and I will be your holiday substitute blogger today. Since I don't know anything about cooking, I will continue on with 5thsister's holiday serenades.

But, first, let me blog about one of the electronic items I've been testing this year.... I usually don't buy infomercial items and I actually purchased this before they came out with a bunch of infomercials. I bought a Magic Jack. You ask what a Magic Jack is? This is a dongle that you plug into a USB jack and allows you to make and receive phone calls (with a standard phone) anywhere you have high-speed internet. To test this, I asked a friend who was going over to India, to bring this with him so that he can make calls to his family without paying exorbitant long distance rates. He tried using the company's WAN, but the firewalls blocked that port. So, when he was in the hotel at night, he tried and was able to communicate affectively with his love ones in the US.

There are a number of reasons why I like the Magic Jack..

1. The price --- $39.95 for the first YEAR (Not Month) and $20 for each additional year!


2. You get a local telephone number. Meaning people can call you and you can be anywhere in the world!


3. You use an ordinary telephone to plug into the dongle! No special headsets such as with Skype (which is also quite cool!).


4. It comes with call forwarding, three-way calling, and voicemail. How great is that!

Now, before you say, "I'm going to buy one and replace my home telephone!", there are a few things to take into account...

1. You can only call to US and Canadian numbers for free from anywhere in the world. International calling (that is calling a number in another country) is an extra charge


2. The call quality is just as good as your internet connection. If you have a constant 4-5 mb/s rate for your internet connection or better (which I'm jealous!!!), then this should be ok, but sound quality goes down from any traffic that the packets hit.


3. You get a lot of places to choose from for your local number, but they may not have a local number available in your area. My first number was based in Cleveland Ohio because they didn't have a local number for where we live (we don't live in Ohio). But, later they acquired local numbers and you are allowed to switch numbers once for free.


4. You have to keep the computer on and connected to the internet in order to talk and receive calls. This could be a pain if you lose internet connection; you've lost the use of the Magic Jack.

So, with all that information, it is a fun and somewhat useful toy. Hope it was useful to you!

Hopefully, in future episodes, I can take over the blog again and give some nice technology advice. Afterall, nothing says Christmas like Consumer Electronics!!!

And now, back to the task that my wife put me up to.... Here is our daughter doing a selection from Wicked...

I now release...err... return control of the 5thsister blog back to Mrs. Sister. If you liked my rantings above, please comment and maybe I can arrange to come back.

Merry Christmas

Mr. Sister.