Jeff Pulver, voice-over-IP impressario, has announced free computer-to-telephone calling to numbers in the US and Canada (and, it appears, also to Israel and the U.K.) for the holidays. To take advantage of this, you need to sign up for sign up for FreeWorld Dialup (free) and install an IP telephony application like X-Lite (also free).

I’ve gotten this to the point where I can dial out, but using the Mac version of X-Lite, my voice sounds “robotic” to the person I’m calling (however their voice sounds fine to me). Brother Johnny called me from the Windows version of X-Lite and things worked well (although because he was using a simple microphone and PC speakers, there was an annoying echo).

If you want to dip your toes in the water of VOIP, this is a good way to start.

If you’ve been going along thinking that Revenue Canada’s deadline of the 15th of the month for the previous month’s payroll is just a “guideline,” witness the $133 penalty we were assessed for a payment that was 5 days late.

Somehow the Google ‘Related’ search had escaped my attention until now. To use it, simply search Google for the word related, following by a colon, followed by the address of a website. For example, if you search for related:www.reinvented.net, you will get a list of websites related to this one. Google describes this as:

The query [related:] will list web pages that are “similar” to a specified web page. For instance, [related:www.google.com] will list web pages that are similar to the Google homepage.

Also from Robert: the first reported case ever of someone “missing a regular dose of Nils Ling.”

Read about the adventures of Robert and his 13 family members, all packed together for two weeks of Christmas fun.

One of the items that we tried to drive home at our meeting with Aliant Mobility a couple of weeks ago was the model we are used to, and the model we are comfortable with, for bandwidth, be it wired or wireless is “we rent the pipe and do with it what we will.”

It’s quite clear that the business model for Aliant Mobility (which is, of course, not alone in the industry here) is pushing is “we rent you the pipe, and then charge you in various ways for using it.”

Witness their new picture messaging service. If you add together the big print and the fine print, here’s what you get:

• 50 cents per picture, plus the applicable Mobile Browser charges based on the photo size.
• Average photo size is 32 KB.
• In addition to the price of the upload, Mobile Browser usage will be charged for the time spent accessing the service and for the uploading process. Mobile Browser usage is billed at $0.05/KB or according to your Mobile Browser bundle.

So I take a picture. They charge me 50 cents for the “service,” and then some non-defined charge for “time spent accessing the service,” and then 5 cents per KB, or $1.60 to “upload” the picture. Total cost, then, is somewhere north of $2.10. Per picture!.

That, to my mind, is insane. Am I missing something here?

I find this website of random photo pairs (explained here) by be quite addictive.

You may recall that I’m partial to expedition tales. I’ve just finished reading Offbeat in Asia: A Journey Along the Russian Frontier, by Michael Alexander, and I’m part way into First Overland by Tim Slessor. Both are tales of expeditions out from London towards the east in the mid-1950s.

Curiously, both books go on at some length about the Istanbul Hilton which appears to have been something of a hotel wonder. Alexander’s book has an entire chapter devoted to the hotel, and Slessor’s several paragraphs.

I believe this may be a message to me that I should proceed at once overland to Turkey.

Tangents: 1. I purchased Offbeat in Asia on a rainy day in May at The Travel Bookshop during this visit. It was featured in this movie. It really is a delightful bookstore. 2. First Overland was purloined from the Burka family library by the helpful Daniel. 3. For a time, the guest book on Allan Rankin’s website was overtaken by spam advertising in hotels in Turkey.

Following a pointer from Daniel Von Fange, I’ve installed refer, a simple and easy-to-install referrer log reporting tool from textism. You can see the results here (or by following the Statistics link in the sidebar later on).