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Magic Jack generally works well but, just like Skype on a phone through my computer, I found that people had problems hearing me. I often sounded garbled.
I found a solution. On a hunch, I bought an external, USB-based wi-fi receiver, bypassing the internal wi-fi on my new HP laptop. Huge difference. The [...]

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Magic Jack is a newcomer to the VOIP (voice over internet protocol) family of internet phoning. It’s quick to install, easy to use and the price can’t be beat for making unlimited local and long distance calls in the United States and Canada. But is Magic Jack too good to be true?

Magic [...]

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Netscape founder and angel investor Marc Andreessen is partnering with long-time co-investor and Opsware executive Ben Horowitz to launch a fund to focus on venture investments of about $500,000. Andreessen and Horowitz have been co-investing as angels for years, with average investments of around $100,000 per deal; they formed the new fund [...]

Get ready to make free calls, Skype (owned by eBay) is set to launch its first iPhone App today that will make calls from your iPhone free to other Skype users, via any Wi-Fi access point (possibly via 3G if Apple’s other deals don’t stand it the way) or users can make much cheaper calls [...]

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It didn’t take long for Carol Bartz, Yahoo Inc.’s new chief executive, to demonstrate that her style will differ dramatically from that of her predecessor — Jerry Yang, the genial, soft-spoken co-founder of the struggling Internet company.
Carol bartz Yahoo!

Twitter is becoming ever-more powerful. You can tell when businesses, brands and governments start putting skin in the game.
Were you just as shocked as I was to see the attention that the general election in Canada was giving to Twitter on the night that we chose our government? Every so often, the TV hosts would [...]

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The digital interactive marketplace will continue to take shape and even make strides in 2009. IPG Emerging Media Labs identifies five trend areas to watch next year, related to browsers, conversation, transmission, retail and consumer tech.
Digital Interactive Marketplace CRM

Social Media Smarts: Interview with Frank Eliason of Comcast aka @ComcastCares

Photo by Shel Israel
Twitter has become many things to many people and organizations for that matter, including Comcast.  It really says something when a company experiences the bite of consumer malcontent via social media and then turns around and becomes known as a best [...]

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Is satelllite radio dead? Well, the stock has totally tanked. (Yeah, I got burned, like so many others.) Here’s an interesting perspective from Slashdot:
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Only a little over a year ago, the FCC approved the merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio companies and the combined stock was trading at $4 a share. [...]

How much money can criminals make scaring naïve computer users? Try $5 million a year.
That is how much a marketing associate of one Russian operation appears to be earning from its sales of fake antivirus software through an elaborate scheme that relies on e-mail spam and indirectly controlling thousands of unprotected PCs, according to [...]