Thursday, August 02, 2007

Easy Conference Calling

A few times each year I need to arrange a conference call with people from other parts of the country. Very occasionally I need to arrange a conference call with people from all around the world. ConferenceUK is the easiest and cheapest solution I have found to date.

Once you have established a free account you login and schedule the start time for your conference. You can either pay for the total cost of the conference yourself (callers are allocated a freephone number to ring) or callers pay for their own call (approximately 5p per minute). Each conference can be scheduled to have a maximum of 100 participants and to last for a maximum of 3 hours.

Once the conference is scheduled the system allocates members a number to ring and a security code. What I found particularly impressive about the system is its ease of use and its flexibility. For example, if you have the email addresses of the participants in your account address book, you just select them and the system will email all participants with the start time, number to call, and security code. I have found ConferenceUK to be simple, hassle-free, reasonably cheap, and effective.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Publish Your Photos: Ipernity

Some time ago I posted an entry about Flickr (see below). I am still a Flickr fan and use the site on a daily basis. However, I have recently been introduced to ipernity. I initially looked at it reluctantly thinking, "Oh no, not yet another photo sharing site!" However, once I had signed up, I was glad I did.

Although it lacks something that Flickr has (and I will come to that in a minute), at present it surpasses it in so many ways. Not only can you publish and comment on photographs, but you can also upload videos and music, keep blog entries, have a guestbook, and have live online chat with other members. In other words, there is more scope, more variety, and more ways of interacting with other members. At the time of writing, it doesn't have the Groups facility that Flickr has, but I understand that this is currently being coded and will be available soon.

The thing that ipernity lacks at the moment is the massive sense of online community. I don't know how many members it has, but clearly not the millions that Flickr has gathered over the years. However, I personally know several Flickrites who have migrated, and suspect it won't be long before it is a serious rival to the Yahoo Thoroughbred.

You can see my ipernity site HERE.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Cheap UK Utilities

I know it is fashionable (and even healthy and wise) to be skeptical about many of the claims made by utility companies - but I have switched my telephone, gas, electricity, and mobile account to Utility Warehouse, and am already saving money. I am so pleased with them that I will soon be switching my landline and internet to them too. It is really interesting getting an one itemized bill each month detailing all my spending on each of the services, so that I can see instantly what the most expensive items and calls are. Now that I have also managed to persuade my sister-in-law and mother-in-law to sign up as well, I am getting free calls to them and am happy to let my wife talk for hours. The change has been so worth it.