Being a Filipino, with many friends and relatives in the Philippines, I sometimes need to call someone in the Philippines to their landline of mobile phone. And in some cases, the person I need to contact may not be near a computer or may not even know how to use the computer well like my mother. So I am going to exclude talking about Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, MSN/Live/Windows Messenger and others.

Now based in San Diego, California, Every now and then, I receive a random call from a telemarketer promoting some service to call the Philippines saying they have an extremely low rate to call the Philippines. Cheapest than most overseas long distance calls.

Not being rude and also being open-minded to listen to the various options I may have to call the Philippines, I often entertain these people and I just always ask the bottomline. How much? And not a single time has any one of these telemarketers matched the prices of what I was currently paying to call the Philippines

And to share what I have been using and why, I am sharing my review in comparing several companies that you can use to call the Philippines.

• Directoph
• Skype
• PinOnSale
• Vonage
• Packet8

See who wins the review! Download the comparison table document here.

If you find this helpful and you know people that need to call the Philippines, or if you are in the Philippines and have relatives abroad that need to call you, feel free to pass this blog post to them so we all get to save some money and use the money to save for more important things like sending money to the Philippines.

For people who manage multiple accounts at the same time (yes I mean you - the one with a separate account for your workstuff, family stuff and naughty stuff), the time has come for you to use ALL your accounts at the same time!

What do I mean?

• You don’t have to keep logging on and off anymore
• You don’t have to use a Yahoo Messenger substitute like GAIM* that doesn’t let you use your avatars, audibles, backgrounds,  nor the buzz functionality
• You don’t have to stoop down to oh-so-slow java programs online as YM alternates - like meebo*

Simple - no plugins to install (some of those could come with viruses), no hard to install equipment, hardware or software! And did I mention that there is a step-by-step video you can reference below?

Behold the simplest method that you can use to enable you to log-in simultaneously with your multiple yahoo accounts! See the video I have attached or follow the simple hack that needs less than 10 steps.

1. Click on Start Menu
2. Click Run
3. Type “regedit” without the quotes, press Enter
4. Navigate to and expand the following in the said order: HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Yahoo, pager, Test
5. Right-click on Test and create a new DWORD value (32 bit).
6. Rename that value as “Plural” without the quotes.
7. Set the value of “Plural” to 1.

Of course, there is a downside to all of this:

• Meebo still covers your tracks better than YM (that plus meebo is easier to get away with for you unlucky grunts who are not allowed to install YMs in the office)
• GAIM will still have the better interface because of its tabbed nature.
• We never know if Yahoo will support this hack come version 9 for YM.

But if you are a home user, you have 2-3 accounts, you have the real estate on your desktop (a.k.a. 21 inch monitors and above), and/or feel like getting those nutty audibles, avatars, smileys, emoticons, emvironments, webcam, voice chat, conference and all - then stick to whatever floats your boat.*

Source: Great Yahoo Trick - HackingVideo

* All copyrights and brand names are the ownership of their respective companies. Comparison between Yahoo Messenger, GAIM and meebo have not been subject to scientific testing. All opinions and comparisons written here are the personal opinions of the writer of this post and is not the opinion of YDS Web Solution, Inc., its staff, its management nor of this blog.

Just 2 days ago, as reported on the the Vonage Forum, Vonage lauched it’s service is West Virginia as their service now offers West Virginia local phone area code using West Virginia’s favored popular 304 area code.

And just yesterday, Vonage announced that they have expanded services in Florida. Subscribers now have the option to use local phone area codes in Gainesville, Bonita Springs and Milton using local phone area codes: 352, 239, 850.

In the Internet age where majority of computers are still basically connected pretty much in the same way, using the same cables from the same companies, they are on a larger bandwidth, where fast streaming of data can be done. So if this can be done, this is where VOIP was born, simply passing voice over the Internet. And more and more applications are jumping into the technology from your common instant messaging software to PC to phone and phone to PC applications such as Skype and Vonage as a few of the popular ones.

I guess what makes other VOIP companies more popular than others depends on how much they put in their advertising campaign. And once you dominate the market, even independent support groups come out such as the Vonage Forum.

For IM users, I seem to find Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger very promising. Who knows maybe one of them will buy someone one day. Skype or Vonage or others.

I know Internet Relay Chat IRC would be the best and just enter the #boxing channel, but I have no IRC software installed and decided to use the chatrooms in instant messaging (IM) softwares. I chose Yahoo! Messenger (YM) since this is where I see more people active in my circle of friends. Yahoo took out their user-defined chatrooms already so all chatrooms are pre-defined by Yahoo. I went into the Sports and Recreation category and went into the room In The Ring Room 5. There were a bunch of Filipinos and a few people who were in favor of Mexican Boxer Eric Morales.

A guy with YM ID glennmatienzo was kind enough to use his PC microphone and placed it by the TV speakers as the chatters who most did not have TVs were happy hearing the fight as all chatters with TVs were explaining what was going on. One of the active chatters was empiresports2004 who was giving details of the fight by chatting and was highlighting all of Eric Morales’ shots more than Manny Paquaio’s points since this chatter was also from Latin America as he has mentioned.

One of my favorite Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) websites, Sherdog, had an online forum with some dude named boooya777 was updating the forum after every round placing a summary of what was happening. And I was also simutaneously checking the ESPN round-by-round update on their own webpage that was also updated after every round.

While reading everything and listening, I felt like Manny Paquiao will lose since the first few rounds, the unofficial score cards on ESPN were in favor of Eric Morales. Then in the rounds from 6 and above, ESPN scores them in favor of Manny Pacquiao. But I still felt Manny Pacquiao can still loose since the points were just 1 point ahead for every round and the first five rounds were like Eric Morales ahead by 1 point every round. And it was common to see a post in the chatroom saying that the fight was close, but Eric Morales would do a few 1-2 punch combinations but would hit Manny Pacquiao, while Manny Pacquiao was doing flurries but not landing them all. Some chat and forum postings said they were useless.

But once it reached round 10, the YM chatroom was filled of people with microphones doing voice chats screaming, saying Manny Pacquiao won by TKO. I asked how it was in the Philippines, and it was still at round 1 and after every round was a bunch of TV commericals.

I enjoyed how it was going, but nothing beats TV if I just rely on reading and hearing, but I can wait for the videos to be posted on Manny Pacquiao’s website after a month maybe.