Ishan's Blog

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Make Unlimited Free Calls All Over USA

Everyone is looking for cheaper alternatives to call within USA. Mostly end up getting long distance services on their phones. Or use calling cards. Both these options are very expensive. The cheaper options are some VOIP based alternatives. But they also charge a fee and are not free. It might have been great if there was a calling service that allowed us to make free long distance calls all over USA.

It seems our wait has come to an end. In this article, I am going to talk about a service that is totally free and lets you make unlimited free calls all over the USA!! Surprised ? Read on.

There is a popular VOIP provider, called VIATALK. They provide the regular VOIP service, same as the one provided by VONAGE. Their quality is good, and reliable. These guys have now come out with a completely free calling service. It is called VIATALKFREE. It is the simplest service to use, and no money to pay at all. When you open their website www.viatalkfree.com, they show 2 boxes. In first box, enter your phone number. In the second box, enter the number that you are trying to call. And thats it. It first connects your phone, and then connects the person that you are trying to call. Its that simple.

The great part is that voice quality is very good. And there is no registration required. And no credit card information to share. And there is no limit on the number of calls that you can make. So, it is totally free and the easiest to use service.

By now you must be wondering that this all sounds too good to be true. No it is not. All the above is completely true. There is a small catch, however. This service limits each free call to 10 minutes. But you can call the same number again once the 10 minutes are over. So, this restriction is really not obstrusive.

I have been using this service for quite sometime now, and really like it. I hope you find it useful and money saving too. Try it now: www.viatalkfree.com

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Make Free Calls Around The World!!

This is like everyone's favorite topic. One of the substantial part of our monthly expenses are our calling expenses. And these expenses are even higher if we need to call to some other country. As a result, people are always trying to look for ways to reduce the expenses. So, making free calls across the globe is one of the most searched for topics. But unfortunately, there is no convincing way to achieve this.

There are a lot of voip providers which provide free calls from computer to computer. But there are very rare services which actually provide ways to make free calls to landline phones. Earlier Skype used to be one such option, but it was limited to free calls within USA. Now, even that option is gone. However, there are some free calls providers, but there is almost always some catch involved. Sometimes you get just a few trial minutes, while for others you have to fulfill certain offers.

But now, there is an actual solution to this. There is actually a VOIP provider out there that provides facility to make free calls to landline phones, and that too across the globe!! Sounds too good to be true? Read on.

Globe 7 is the answer to your long awaited wish. It is one of the best long voipprovider across the globe. And the best part is that enables you to make free long distance calls to any country around the world. However, it is not doing it out of charity, but there is a strong business model around it. You start with installing Globe 7 on your system. Once it has been installed, it shows your starting balance that you can use to make calls. There is a fixed pre-defined rate for making calls to various destinations. And you use this starting balance to make calls at this pre-defined rates.

Now, to maintain and increase this balance, you need to watch free videos that Globe 7 provides. Globe 7 has an integrated Globe 7 TV that offers hundreds of free videos for all the various topics, such as fashion, sports, music, travel, regional, and news. As you watch these videos, your balance increases. So, you are paid to watch the videos. And you use this balance to make free calls. Its that simple. No catches. No gimmicks. The voice quality is superb, and the interface is really easy to use. Globe 7 offers following features:

Make Free Calls : Make Free Calls to any phone anywhere across the Globe by watching Globe7 videos .

Free SMS: Send Free SMS to any mobile across the Globe by watching Free Videos on Globe7 and stay connected always .

Free US Phone Number : Get a Free US phone number and receive Free incoming calls on your PC or Laptop.

Video Calls : Enjoy real time Free video calling with remarkable video quality.

Watch Free Videos: Watch the latest and hottest News, Sports & infotainment videos on Globe7 for free.

Create Your Own Channel:Create your own channel and share videos with your friends. Invite your friends to watch your channel and earn credits while they watch.

(Above features have been taken from Globe 7's website).

As might be obvious from above, Globe 7 provides a completely integrated solution to all your communication needs. And the best part is that all this comes at completely no cost to you. You basically enjoy yourself by watching free videos, and then you get paid for it too. It definitely can't get better.

How to Improve Your Credit History

Somehow, your credit score happens to be most important number linked to you. And somehow, most of the persons fail to realize its importance. Its really important that you have good credit history, and in turn, good credit score. Simply put, if you have a good credit history, you are the king.

However, sometimes your credit history might not be good, or your score may be less. This would make you a less favorable borrower, and would ensure that you would have to pay high interest rates on your loans.

There are some really simple ways to improve your credit score, which would clearly help you in saving some money.

Keep Balances Lower than the Available Credit Limit on Credit Cards: This is a simple and effective technique to follow. Always keep track of your debt-to-credit ratio. Simply put, this ratio represents the amount of money you owe as against the amount of credit available to you. In case this ratio is too high, it would reduce your credit score. This is because it would show that you are reaching your limit, and might get into trouble repaying your debt.

Increase your Average Account Age: People generally have a notion that having lots of credit cards would improve your credit score. A part of this statement is true, having credit cards does improves your credit score. However, having lots of them might actually reduce it. When your credit score is calculated, it also takes into account your average account age. In case you have been getting lots of new credit cards, then your average account age would reduce drastically. Another point to take care is that do not close the account which is old. In case you have to close some account, close the relatively newer ones. But please keep in mind that a closed account does not goes away from your credit history, and is still reflected in your score.

Make Payments on Time: This is another simple to follow rule. Always make your payments on time. This includes all sorts of payments, such as bills, credit card payments, and loan repayments. In case you default on payments often, this is reflected very badly in your credit score. No one wants to lend money to a person who has prior history of defaulting.

Review Your Credit Report: You are entitled to take free credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies once a year. Make sure you review your credit report often. Check that all the items are correctly put. It might be possible that there is a wrong transaction in your credit report, and it is messing up your credit history. You can contact credit agency for this, and ask them to remove this transaction. Best way is to take report from one credit bureau once every four months. So, you can keep track of your credit history on a continuous basis. Free credit report can be obtained from www.annualcreditreport.com

Keep A Good Credit Mix: It is always better to have a good mix of different kinds of credits available, like credit cards, installment loans, etc. This would ensure that your credit history covers all the aspects of different credits.

Do Your Rate Shopping for a given loan within a focused period of time: In case there are too many inquiries on your credit history, it might decrease your credit score. This is because it would show as if you are trying desperately to increase your credit lines. However, sometimes you might be shopping for loans, and contacting multiple financial institutions for that. Each one of them would check your credit history. However, if you complete this rate shopping within a specific period (generally 2 weeks), your score will not be effected by multiple inquiries. This is because it will be understood that you are shopping for one loan.

The above techniques and rules are directly recommended by the credit rating agencies. And are actually very simple ways to improve your credit score. It just needs a conscious effort on your part to ensure that you follow all these tips.

What is Credit Score?

Whenever we start shopping around for a loan, the first thing that we are asked about is credit score. Whenever we apply for a credit card, first of all our credit score is checked. Even small things such as car loan is impacted by our credit score. Credit score seems to be a godly number that can somehow impact all our financial dealings. Still, many of us are actually not aware what the hell credit score is. Lets find that out.

Whenever you apply for credit - whether in form of a credit card, or car loan, or mortgage - lenders want to know the risk associated with you. They want to find out what kind of risk they would be taking if they loan the money to you. So, to determine the risk, lenders use credit score.

A credit score is a complex mathematical model that evaluates many types of information in a credit file. Credit score is also commonly referred to as FICO score. This is because Fair Isaac and Company made this model to calculate the credit score (FICO is acronym for Fair Isaac and Company). This is a very complicated model, and takes into account a whole lot of factors.

Each person has three credit scores, one for each of the credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Each of the score is based on the information that each individual credit bureau maintains on their credit history file for you. FICO scores keep changing as the information associated with you changes.

As I already mentioned, FICO scores take a whole lot of factors into account to determine your score. These factors can basically be grouped into 5 categories:

Payments History: This generally carries 35% importance in your FICO score. This category covers factors such as (i)payment information on various types of accounts, such as credit cards, loans etc. (ii) adverse public records, such as bankruptcy, judgments, etc.) (iii) Delinquency information, etc.

Amounts Owed: This generally carries 30% importance in your FICO score. This category covers factors such as amount owing on accounts, number of accounts with balances, proportion of credit lines used, proportion of installment loan amounts still owing, etc.

Length Of Credit History: This generally carries 15% importance in your FICO score. This category covers factors such as time since accounts opened, time since account activity, etc.

New Credit: This generally carries 10% importance in your FICO score. This category covers factors such as number of recently opened accounts, number of credit inquiries, time since recent account opening, time since recent credit inquiry, etc.

Types Of Credit Used: This generally carries 10% importance in your FICO score. This category covers factors such as number of various types of accounts.

FICO score takes all the above factors into consideration while arriving at the score. The percentage of each factor given above are just indicative. They might vary for persons based on the type of credit information available.

As might be obvious from above, FICO scores do not leave any stone unturned while calculating your score. So, these scores fairly represent your financial standing. Lenders use these scores to determine the amount of money they can loan to you, and duration of such loans. Interest rates for such loans can also vary based on credit score. Generally, a person with good credit score gets much lesser interest rate than a person with bad credit score.

I hope this small article helps you understand what a credit score is, and what different factors play a role in calculation of credit score. This information would help you to consciously work towards improving your credit score. A good credit score can save you tons of money, when you start to shop around for loans.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Oracle XE: The Free Database From Oracle

The title of this article must have surprised most of you. Oracle has been long known for providing robust industry standard databases. But its huge licensing cost has always been a deterrent for its use for small users such as shopkeepers or small firms. So, how come I have titled this article as free database from Oracle?

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base that's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer.

Read on to find out more...

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Oracle Help

There are a lot of resources on the web that claim to provide help regarding Oracle. However, only a few of them have exhaustive information about Oracle. Here, I have tried to point you to the most comprehensive websites to get help regarding Oracle. There are two websites that I like in particular:

1. Tahiti.Oracle.com : This is the complete online documentation of Oracle. It covers upto version 10 of Oracle. All the documentation is available in form of webpages as well as pdf. Also, there are a lot of books available freely.

2. Asktom.oracle.com : This website is maintained by the most knowledgeable person of Oracle, Tom Kyte. This website is more like a forum where users post their questions and Tom answers them. As there is just one person answering the questions, so it might take quite a long time before your question is answered. However, in most of the cases the problem is already faced by someone and you can use the readily available solution to that.

3. OTN (otn.oracle.com): Oracle Technology Network, or OTN is a central repository for lots of articles and white papers related to Oracle. I had missed out this site in my original list of sites, but Justin pointed this out to me. There are lots of resources for developers, including lots of downloadable tools and stuff. This place also helps you keep yourself abreast of all the new features coming up in ORACLE.

As all these websites are maintained by Oracle, so they are definitely most authoritative and complete help available for Oracle around.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Free File Sharing Websites

File sharing sites provide an easy and convinient way to share large files that cannot be sent through emails.

There are hundreds of file sharing websites available on the web. These websites allow you to upload your files of huge files. You can send a link of these files to your friends and they can download it from there. Best part is that most of these websites are free, do not require any login account, and allow files as large as 500 MB to be shared!!! A few of the popular ones include Rapidshare, Uploading, Megaupload, Megashare, Turboupload

Read More...

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

What The Hell are Mutual Funds

Hmmm.. Lately, you have been hearing a lot about Mutual Funds, everyone seems to be talking about it. And every financial institute, ranging from banks to PMCs seem to be offering these. But, what the hell are these.
Click below to find out more
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/49465/what_the_hell_are_mutual_funds.html

Blu Ray Disc

Blue-Ray Disc: This seems to be the new flashy word in optical media technology. Some time back we had just CDs with around 700 MB of storage, and that seem quite phenomenal at that time. Then arrives DVD which increased the storage limit 6 times to 4.7 GB, and it simply made the traditional CD look obsolete. We were still savoring the huge benefits offered by this increased storage capacity and here we start hearing about a newer technology, Blu-Ray.
Click Below to Read More ..
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/53054/bluray_disc.html

What is a SLR Camera

Everyone today has heard about SLR camera, but most of the people do not seem to know exactly what this is. Here in this short article I try to explain what everyone should know about SLR camera.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/52826/what_is_an_slr_camera.html

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

.Net

Hmmm... I have been trying to make sense out of this nonsense technology for quite some time. My efforts have been completely in vain. But there are a few really cool sites out there to help you sail through this. Beginners should start with www.asp.net . www.microsoft.com , www.msdn.com and www.4guysfromrolla.com also offer good articles on this stupid technology.