Virtual Numbers Blog

SoundWin: VoIP Hardware Not To Buy

2010-12-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

There are many VoIP hardware vendors around. Some are better, some are worse. But there is one which I urge you not to buy. Ever. Under any circumstance. That is a chinese-made piece of buggy hardware called SoundWin, managed by some argentinean guy called Arie Pompas.

My advice: get anything else.

Boingo: Worst Service in the World

2010-07-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

You may be tempted to sign up to Boingo, a wireless service provider. Please read before you do so.

First the good part: Boingo works in most airports in the US, as well as Starbucks and some other locations.

Now for the bad part: Cancelling the service is virtually impossible. You are better off trying a chargeback with the bank. There is no cancel button at the user panel. Also, you cannot cancel via email. They claim that it is for security reasons. I wonder where were those security reasons when I signed up. So, you have no choice but call customer service if you want to cancel, and that is where the fun starts. You will have to wait forever before you get to talk to an agent. I gave up way before that, and I ended up calling the bank instead.

Speaking about customer service, I had an awful experience in Europe. They claim that they have coverage in Spain's Barajas airport. You keep getting messages from the Boingo App saying "Login to Boingo here", only it does not connect (it says Whoops, We're unable to process your request. Contact Customer Service). I tried sending an email to customer support, and I got a canned reply... one week later! Maybe they thought I was the main character in the movie "The Terminal"

Then I moved to Paris, couldn't use it there either. London: same thing.

Bottom line: stay away.

Google Public Policy Blog: A broadband catapult for America

2010-03-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

Google Public Policy Blog: A broadband catapult for America

Google said it: It is time to revamp the broadband infrastructure.

Launching Ring2Skype, a free replacement for SkypeIn

2009-06-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

We have exciting news! We have just launched a new free service: Ring2Skype.com.

Ring2Skype allows people without a Skype account to call you on your Skype. Once you sign up (in just 1 simple step), you are assigned a phone number and a private extension. All calls to that extension ring at your Skype. Numbers are available in 31 countries (!!!) and over 100 different regions.

Why may you want to have a regular phone number ringing at your Skype? Well, you may want your internet-impaired grandmother (are there any left?) to call you without having a computer. Or, if you are an immigrant, you may want to have a phone number in your home country for your friends to call. You may also want people on the road to call you from their cellphones.

The service is 100% free and community-driven. The community will have the opportunity to define the service, record the voice prompts, and decide the countries to add numbers.

One way or another, the service launched this week, and it already has over 2000 users, so it definitely fills a need.

HostMyAgents - Call Center on Demand

2009-03-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Call centers are complex stuff. You need software, hardware, trunks, DIDs, operators, etc.

A new service called HostMyAgents provides you with an end-to-end solution for your call center needs, with no upfront investment. Just pay for what you use. Is is well worth it.

JetNumbers for Skype - Now Free! Tokens available

2008-06-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

We are glad to announce that we just launched a free JetNumbers for Skype program. With this service you can receive incoming PSTN calls from 32 countries! The caller pays a local call, you pay nothing, zero, nada, zilch.

When you sign up you will be assigned a phone number and an extension. Calls to that extension will ring in you Skype. It is that simple.

Since we are overwhelmed by requests and we do not want the system to crash, we are offering the service only to holders of tokens. Below you will find a few, for our loyal blog readers. To sign up, go to our web page, www.jetnumbers.com and click on Free Skype. You will be asked for your skype id and a token.

Please mark the tokens that you used up. And if the tokens run out, don't despair, you can sign up and we'll assign new tokens as we build capacity.

If you have a popular blog and want to offer tokens to your readers, contact us. We are assigning tokens at this stage only to blogs with highest traffic.

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0305994569801723
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7814628091956268

JetNumbers for Skype - Much more stable

2008-03-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

We have been working hard to make JetNumbers for Skype more stable. We had been having issues with accounts redirected to voicemails, which caused the channels to hang. This has now been solved, and users are experiencing much higher connection rates (ASR).

Voice quality continues to be amazingly good.

Expect some shocking news soon, as soon as we feel confident that the platform can add tens of thousands of new users.

All you need to know about Broadband Telephone Services.

2008-02-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

When all of your friends/realives reside out of state, do you often get that cold shiver on your back when you recieve your telephone bill? The solution you are looking for are broadband telephone services. These services allow the costumer to make long distance phone calls by using their high speed Internet connection. Among the many advantages this brings, the most considerable one would be that, comparing prices with a regular long distance call you save a great amount of money. This happens beacuse you do not get charged with taxes, fees and surcharges, or worse- be charged with distance calls you never made, a common issue telephone companies have to deal with.

Along with cheaper long distance rates, these phones are equipped with the best technology available. Here´s a quick insight into how these services work: whenever you make a long distance call your voice is turned into a digital signal instead of an analog one. That signal, of course, gets transformed back indo an analog signal so that you can have a “normal” conversation.

To make proper use of broadband telephone technology, it is recommended that you have a high speed connection to the Internet. DSL or Digital Susctiber Line or a cable connection would be ideal. Unfortunately, the service is not available for tose who use a dial-up connection. Neither is it for users with satellite or wireless broadband connections, as these are very unstable.
Regarding those helpful features you enjoy when using your landline phone, some of them are included as well. For example, Call Waiting, Caller ID, Voice Mail, 3-Way Calling, Call Forwarding and so on. A drawback to this service is that you cannot place a 911 call. Another disadvantage is that, in case of a power failure, a computer crash or any problem in your Internet connection you will not be able place calls. Nevertheless, if you hire a jetnumbers virtual phone number you wont need to have any internet connection at all, just your old fashion phone.

Voip features and advantages

2008-02-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

Today, VOIP phones are commonly used to make calls online. Making use of these phones and this system at a variety of offices is quite convenient. Besides being convenient, it offers incredible features such as call identification, call divert, and the contact books. All sort of types of communication methods and protocols are combined into these phones to make calls by using the Internet. VOIP transforms the usual talking in the audio signals and then gets changed into digital data.

By using VOIP phones you can contact anybody in any part of the World. And it is quite cheap as well. The VOIP providers are constantly communicating with the users to solve every problem (if any). They ensure a safe connection while talking and a great sound quality. The data and the tone are sent simultaneously with the VOIP phones. Free calls are also available.

Thanks to the advancement there is such a large number of VOIP phones that making a phone call is very easy. Another advantage is that they include some of the newest technology, clear audio when talking, and the possibility of extending a call for hours and not face any inconvenients. There are a lot of well-known firms for example, Philips and BT. There is a rough competition among service providers, and they are mainly used by corporate houses.

These phones have memory to save a great ammount of contacts. They give you the chance to identifiy each incoming call and to deicide whether you want to attend the call or not. You can transfer the call to another number if you are not at home, by using the "call divert" feature. By using “call waiting” you can make sure you will not miss any important calls while you are talking on the phone. Students also are benefited, as the “teleconferencing” feature allows them to contact univiersities/colleges around the World to, for example, disuss about different educational curriculums.

We are not wrong at all if we state that the VOIP uses the best technology available for distance communication. Internet is used to transmit the voice signals all over the World. Some of the features incluided have created a true revolution in the communication industry. Buisness companies are benefited with this techonolgy, their incomes and their power are growing. Individuals also see advantages in this system, as they pay much less for making calls from anywhere in the World.

The VOIP communication services only depend on the speed of the Internet. If we compare installation costs with standard phones, its cheaper as well. When purchasing a VOIP phone you should always look for those which provide voice mail, live chats and email. However if you are looking for a more economical VOIP communication system make sure to look around before acquiring one, as there are many copies that are being given away to attract clients. They offer many services such as three way calling or call conferences at competitive prices.

It is safe to asume that the VOIP solution have translated into important savings for big companies. Nevertheless, you must notice that prior to the acquisition of a VOIP system you should compare the prices available in the market.

The IT Directory

2008-02-05T05:36:00.000-08:00

This is our reciprocal link!

TheITDirectory.net - IT Directory

Find out how voip could help you and your family

2008-02-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

Nowadays VoIP doesnt sound weird for the people. In fact people around the world are looking towards this option of comunication. VOIP is the short form of Voice over Internet Protocol, which allows people to communicate on phone through internet. Phone bills are dramatically reduced thanks to this new technology, isn't weird that business all over the world are moving to voip and time is not farther when it will become first choice of the people. Gradually everybody is going to chose voip instead of old fashion telephone system.

World of communication has been totally changed beacause of VoIP technology. Large business wich need several long distance calls takes really good advantage of this technology but you and your family should know that voip isnt only large business deal also it has much benefit for those who want to use it personally and for family. If you dont have enough information about what to do here it is in brief, what and how VoIP provides:

* With VoIP you will be always close to your family. Just by paying your monthly internet fees you should be able to enjoy chats as longs as you want, VoIP is an internet services.

* If your children or friends are abroad because of study or busniess you can stay in touch with them, there's no need to be out of date with their routine. And if they don't have a computer but an old fashion telephone, there are several websites that sells virtual phone numbers and software-based voip solutions that delivers calls to normal phones.

* Distance learning. Voip features includes letting you talk with many people together. Conferences, meetings or any other situation wich needs a meeting.

* What people usually expect to have with analogic phone service at additional charges, are given as common with VoIP.

What you should think in order to enjoy VoIP and save money, check the points below.

* In order to get a high quality service you need to have a high speed internet conection. Normal connections will fail to achieve good quality communication.

* Second expense, you have to make to purchase a gateway or, if you want to use your current phone, adaptor; which makes link between internet and your phone.

* Last and common step, you know very well, is only to shop around. This will give you best VOIP service at reasonable price.

VOIP is a very modern telecommunication tool, which is brought the people very close to each other. You can talk to the person face to face (through video phones), who is thousands of miles far from you. So, it’s not bad idea to buy VOIP for using personally

Podcasting to your phone

2008-01-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

We love podcasts. From TWIT to the Economist, we just can't have enough. While jogging, on the car, or just waiting for the doctor, podcasts turn these brain "idle cycles" into learning or entertainment. The only thing is that we never seem to have the right podcast on the ipod.

So, we developed a cute new way to listen to podcasts: from the phone. Just call a phone number, and you'll hear a menu of available podcasts. Choose the one you want, and that's it. Want to skip forward 30 seconds? Press "3". Want to skip back? Press "1". 6 and 4 will skip forward or backwards 2 minutes, and pressing 9 and 7 will skip 8 minutes.

We are offering podcasters free direct numbers. Please contact us if you want one for you.

JetNumbers for Skype now available

2008-01-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Great news!!!! We now have virtual numbers available for Skype, in beta!

Need a "skypein" number in Spain? Or maybe in Argentina, Russia, Israel or any other of the 40+ countries covered by JetNumbers?

Only 1000 numbers will be activated for this beta. Hurry up and sign up!

Arfe you a top blogger or reviewer? Drop us a note and we'll give you a complimentary subscription for you to try.

Seasons Greetings!!

2007-12-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

As a way to thank all of our clients and friends, we have launched a new Seasons Greetings Plan!

Take a look at it in our website, and start benefiting from this promotion! This plan will be available until January, 13th.

JetNumbers wishes all of its customers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

See you at www.jetnumbers.com !

Get a free jetnumber

2007-11-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,
as you may have seen we have a limited time offer where we give away free jetnumbers.
In casu you have not seen it: http://www.jetnumbers.com/get-free-jetnumber&from=header

Anyway, the idea is to have this space to shre information on this promotion and have everyone ask whatever question you may have on this issue.

We want to share our service with everyone that wants to write about us.

Looking forward to hearing you comments.

Best
Andres

Las discograficas vs Internet

2007-10-13T04:55:00.000-07:00

Las discograficas vienen luchando duramente contra la pirateria, en lo que parece una lucha perdida. El argumento (por demas razonable) de las empresas es que protegen los derechos de autor. El tema es que los autores e interpretes no parecen estar de acuerdo. Yo varias veces escuche autores invitando a la audiencia a bajar sus canciones en MP3. Creo que el primero en impulsar esto fue Eminem, pero como es un rebelde de nacimiento nunca le dieron mucha bola. Esta semana dos autores decidieron que no necesitan discograficas. El primero fue Nine Inch Nails, el segundo Madonna. Todo parece indicar que el castillo se derrumba.

Las discograficas cumplen un rol importante, sin duda. El tema es que la distribución (legal) de un disco es muy cara.

Pero algo mas de fondo tiene que ver con los propios derechos de autor. La sociedad decidió darles a los autores un derecho exclusivo sobre su obra, como manera de incentivar la creación. Me permito dudar que sea el incentivo económico el que genera la creación de música. Tendriamos menos (o peor) musica si no hubieran derechos de autor? Yo creo que no. Obviamente nadie me va a dar mucha bolilla con esto. Mientras tanto, el P2P sigue avanzando.

The objective: Five Nines

2007-10-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

I have been in telecom for quite some years now. Five nines is the holy grail: 99.999% availability. It is much easier to achieve for a phone company than on the net. Proof of it: Las month, Google had 99.999% in only one country: Brazil. The rest were all 99.990%-99.998%.

The meaning of five nines is three minutes of downtime a month. Difficult? Yes, but still a goal we should all aim for.

Szigg.net

2007-09-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here is our reciprocal linking information for this interesting Web directory:

URL: http://www.szigg.net/
Description: Szigg.net - Web Directory

A $260 notebook available now

2007-09-18T05:41:00.000-07:00

There has been a great fuss about the OLPC project by Negroponte et al: a $100 notebook computer. The computer turned out to cost $160 and only for governments. But now Asus, a board manufacturer came up with a $260 notebook. Preorders are available now. Looks cool!

Google will be showcasing JetNumbers

2007-09-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

We are proud that Google has interviewed us for a showcase profile. Google has been especially interested in the way we are tracking "conversions" in our campaigns.

As I have said more than once, search advertising is different from traditional advertising. You need to take a very analytical view, otherwise your money goes down the drain. An the most important metric is cost-per-conversion, in other words, how much is it costing you to acquire each client.

So far, so good. The tough question is how to do it in the site. Conversions happen deeply inside the site (after visiting 4-5 pages usually), and it is not that trivial to tie the two. We have devoted a large effort to this, and it has given us a great tool.

If you want some help with this, go ahead and contact us, we'll be glad to help.

Internet Marketing Presentation (in Spanish)

2007-08-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the honor of being invited to present at ORT University. The subject of the presentation was Internet Marketing. Here are the slides of the presentation, for anyone who is interested.

Blending an iPhone

2007-07-25T06:27:00.000-07:00

People buy iPhones for all kinds of reasons: as a cool gadget, to synchronize with a Mac, to navigate the web. But the guys at www.willitblend.com bought one for another reason: to find out whether it will blend in one of their blenders. It did. Awful thing to see, but nice marketing...

Check out this site

2007-07-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Apple TV Wiki is an online community for Apple TV owners, users, and buyers. Apple TV Wiki community members share tips, information, reviews, AppleTV hacks, and more.

We have added our link in their site and now, we are linking to them!

Enjoy!

Apple and the Art of Innovation

2007-06-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

The Economist has a very interesting article about the lessons from Apple. It claims that there are 4 lessons from Apple for innovative business:

Avoid the NIH (not-invented-here) syndrome. Bring ideas from outside, embrace them.
Pay more attention to user's needs than technology
Dare to challenge the conventional wisdom. No analyst predicted the huge success of the iPod, or for that matter, the Nintendo Wii, or even Google
Learn from your failures

Worth reading

My First Post!!!

2007-06-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

HI!!!!

My name is Susa and it´s been two weeks since I became part of JetNumbers.

Just posting to say hello!

VoIP DIRECTORY

2007-06-19T08:19:00.001-07:00

Hi all!

We have visited this directory and is ok!
We have subscribed to it... Take a look!

VoIP Directory

2007-06-11T13:41:00.000-07:00

Google vs Salesforce - I don't buy it

2007-06-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

The news of the day is Google's alliance with Salesforce.com: Salesforce will resell Google's tools to small business.

Come on!

This is just a smoke curtain. The real deal will be that Google offers Salesforce's apps, not the other way round. Our prediction: wait for the other shoe to fall.

Hope you read it, Nate!

2007-05-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Well, i think this may be my second post at our blog...I'm sorry!!! Nathan has asked me a thousand times to do it, and finally he decided not to ask me anymore...knowing I will never do it...But today I felt like posting something.

Last Friday was Nathan's last day here at the office :( he is an entrepreuner and is strating his own business. So this is to say that here we are all missing Nate!!! and also to wish him good luck!! we know he will do GREAT!

2007-05-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's night I watched Independence day (starring Will Smith,etc) for the first time. Great movie.
An unusal parlament called my attention, it content mentioned that attacking aliens travelled planet by planet exhausting resources to keep existing. This made me wonder if this kind of behaviour would be human's in a few centuries.

pd: cheers to Nate, great mate.

TelecomLinker - Pay or Link?

2007-05-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a cute idea: TelecomLinker offers a directory service. You choose one of two: either you pay for inclusion, or you link to them and get included for free. Cool idea. Here is our link to them:

UGA internet guides

UGA media is the European publisher of internet guides, business portals,
travel guides and reference cd-roms.

About Business Ideas

2007-05-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

"No idea is so good that a Harvard MBA cannot analyze it until showing that it is not even worth trying."

Claude Rameau
Founder, INSEAD

Office 2007 - The worst upgrade ever?

2007-05-18T10:38:00.001-07:00

I just upgraded to Office 2007. Word is OK. Excel adds a few nice features, mainly the 1 million rows limit. But Outlook is just impossible. It is excruciatingly slow. I have a powerful machine, and still, it takes ages to download mail. Even opening an email is a pain. Not only it is slow, it slows down the whole machine.

I googled the problem up, and I found that many users are experiencing the same issues. There are a couple of recommendations available, but none worked for me.

My recommendation: do not upgrade until the issue is solved.

Cool Tools

2007-05-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of cool sites.

Flickrvision allows you to see new Flickr photos as they are uploaded, and shown on a Google map. Super-cool.

This other one is less cool but more useful: Clicky. It shows you the visitors to your site on real-time.

Choosing A Name for Your Dot Com

2007-05-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

Since the 22 of January of this year, I have had a project in my mind, a type of web 2.0 site combined with sports. Like all great minds, I read what the potential user wanted and began creating the project with other friends of mine ;). Today's post is two fold, I wanted to tell you that I have a project in the works, but I also wanted to talk about how hard it has been for us to find a name for the site.
It is well known that all 3, 4 and 5 letter combinations are all taken...bummer. So what we did was take nearly an entire afternoon, have a pow-wow with beer and some brainstorming; my point is that after nearly 4 hours (x number of beers) of bouncing names off of each other as well as servers, the only thing that we managed to do was waste a lot of ink and time. We were unable to come up with a name either from combined words or inventing something new like Skype or Twitter. A few days later we came up with a name that was not taken but had a double letter combining both words...a no-no.
So its back to the drawing board!

I just wanted to say that this is incredibly frustrating, it would be great if there were regulations preventing people from buying/parking names just to make money. There should be a type regulation like the one placed on .mobi domains; supposedly if there is nothing on the website within 60 days, the domain is taken away from you.

I also came across the following post at marketingshift.com that might help YOU out with your name.
Anyone have a name for a sports web site!?!?! Anything please!!!

New guy

2007-05-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Hi bloggers, my name is Rony and I'm the new crew member at Jetnumbers Inc.
just passing by to say Hi!

BusinessWeek on Virtual Phone Numbers

2007-05-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

In a recent BusinessWeek article, Harprit Singh suggests giving the salesforce virtual phone numbers instead of mobile numbers. In this way, companies can switch operators, and even if a sales person leaves, the phone numbers stays with the company.

More Joost Tokens

2007-05-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

I just sent out 11 tokens. I still have more available. I only ask my invitees one little thing: that they please link to our blog, or write a small posting about JetNumbers.

Dumb and rich...

2007-04-30T16:58:00.000-07:00

Following up on Nathan's post, I remember that my statistics teacher at INSEAD (a business school) gathered data on student's grades and their salaries 5 years after graduation. He then ran a correlation test, and he found that there is a statistically significant correlation... negative! In other words, on average, the higher the grades, the lower the salaries after 5 years.

Possible explanations? I'll give mine: students with higher grades tend to be more risk-averse, and risk brings big rewards (for instance, self employment, etc).

Joost Tokens available

2007-04-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

We have a few tokens available for Joost, the video service launched by Skype's founders. Contact us if you want some.

If You're So Dumb, Why Aren't You Rich?

2007-04-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

I just found the following entry while reading my RSS feed of my favorite blogs; this is from Paul Kedrosky's personal business blog:

Crazy-fun new study in press at the journal Intelligence. It attempts to puzzle out the connection between IQ and wealth, only to come up with the entertaining -- if unsurprising -- result: There isn't one. Bad news for brainy geeks everywhere.

While it doesn't stand up to statistical scrutiny, an eyeball check of the above figure does make it look like there is a soft inverse relationship. In other words, maybe we should be accusing random foolish sorts among us of being smarter than they're acting: Hey, if you're so dumb, how come you're not rich?!

These type of studies get us all thinking, or not...

Fring - Skype from your mobile

2007-04-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

Here is a world - changing application: Fring. Fring allows you to access your skype account from your mobile phone. You can chat and even talk with other skype users. And with skypeout (and soon fringout) you can call anyone in the world at skype's rates instead of mobile rates.

We invite you to try it at www.fring.com.

25 years of the Sinclair Spectrum

2007-04-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

I just read that the Sinclair Spectrum turned 25 today. Most of you probably don't know what it was. It was a tiny computer, which connected to a TV for output, had a Zilog ZX-80 microprocessor, 48k of RAM (yes that is a K, as in kilobytes), no hard disk, and loaded (and saved) programs from a cassette tape connected through an audio cable. You could actually hear the programs, they sounded like a modem. The keyboard was made of rubber, and each key represented 3 different things: a letter, a symbol (or number), and a BASIC instruction.

As you can guess, it was my first computer. I bought it in London for about 300 USD.
I read the complete manual on my flight back home (it included a BASIC tutorial, as well as the famous PEEK and POKE instructions, which let you write directly into the memory).

Back home I went on to learn about microprocessors, programming, etc., and since then I simply never stopped.

How old is old?

2007-04-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

I heard a very interesting podcast this week. It was part of the "Motley Fool Profiles" series (unfortunately the series is no longer being aired). On this podcast, Dave Gardner intervewed Ken Dychtwald, author of the book The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life.

Some very interesting facts:

Two thirds of all the people over 65 that ever lived are alive today. Put it another way: for every person in the history of mankind that died after the age of 65, there are two people over 65 alive today.
Life expectancy at birth increases by 2.5 years every decade. This means that chances are that my younger son will live 8 years longer than me.
Pensions were introduced in 1899 by Bismarck, and they benefited "old people", i.e. those older than 65. At that time, life expectancy at birth was 47 years. Today it is 77.8.
Today, if you live to the age of 65, you still have, on average, 18.7 years to live (US figures).
At the time of Bismarck's reform, a very small percentage of people received pensions. To maintain the same percentage today, retirement age should be 95!
The vast majority of over-65 people say that they do not want to retire. They want to keep active, although probably part-time.

What does all this mean? There are many consequences that we can foresee, and many more that will only become clear much later. Some of mine:

An obvious one: Pensions need to be reformed. If we now need to save (contribute to a pension scheme) for 30 years, and enjoy the fruits for 18.7 years, then, at the current rates, numbers do not add up. If, in 30 years time, the life expectancy at the age of 65 becomes 26.2, then the trouble is greater still.
Nobody should count too much on state pensions. We all should be saving ourselves.
Doctors can make us live longer, but we need prepare ourselves for living those 10 or 15 extra years. In what shape will our bodies be? What do we need to do to have our minds ready for 15 more years? By the way, I read once that people that play chess or bridge have two thirds less probability of developing Alzheimer's disease.
Our economies need to find ways to employ older people, even if it is part time.
There is a huge and exploiting market selling to people over 65. Expect them to be active, have some labor income and substantial investment income.

I gave some thought to the 2.5 extra years every decade. After doing some research, I found that it is not entirely true: life expectancy increased in 20 years in the first half of the 20th century, and in roughly 1.8 years every decade thereafter. Adding those first 20 years was fairly easy. All you had to do is improve nutrition, improve hygiene, reduce child mortality, invent antibiotics and develop vaccines. I don't mean that those changes and inventions were easy, only that they were few "heavy rocks" that had to be removed. Going from 67 to 77 was way much more difficult. To add those 10 years we had to develop cures and therapies for a very large variety of diseases (ulcer, many types of heart disease, many forms of cancer, many now-disappeared diseases, etc), and to remove some other non-medical heavy rocks (traffic accidents, wars).

Adding an extra 10 years will be much more difficult, probably an order of magnitude more. Surely there must be a point where it is just physically impossible to improve life expectancy. The human body is incredibly complex, and there comes an age where everything starts to fail: the bones, the muscles, the digestive system, the nervous system. And there must be some physical limit to how long people can live.

This reminds me of Moore's law in semiconductors. Moore's law says that the power of microprocessors doubles every 18 months. Moore's law has applied for decades, and for decades people have predicting its demise: there must be a point where the laws of physics do not allow to improve the processor power. And the complexity of doubling the speed is ever greater, mainly because there are so many things to improve, so many rocks to remove to go from one level to the next. As it turned out, our ingenuity has so far been able to match the ever-increasing number and complexity of these problems.

In medicine as in semiconductors, the task of fighting disease is ever more complex. I bet on our ingenuity to keeping up to the challenge. I propose an analog to Moore's law, that says that life expectancy will keep increasing by 1.8 years every decade, for centuries to come.

The Usefulness of Wikipedia

2007-02-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia, as many of you probably know is one of the most "hit" sites online as well as one of the most important sites for reference purposes. This site and its sister sites (for other languages other than english) are an online, open encyclopedia where everyone can input information and articles. The site also permits you to edit other entries of others that maybe inaccurate. Although a wonderful site to look up anything from the origin of the name of The Simpsons' caracters to a biography of George Washington, this site has always been the bossum of criticism given its openess to editing on behalf of any user. This action that defines Wikipedia, sets off a cause and effect situation: user creates/alters article innacurately--> student uses article as reference for a term paper--> bad term paper. Since Wikipedia is a reference site, it is a given that it will be used by students. This is where much of the controversy comes from, teachers and professors are tired of students using an inaccurate site and have gone to the extent of banning the site as one for reference.
Given this situation one of the co founders, Larry Sanger, created the Citizendium project. "Citizendium has as its goal nothing less than the creation of a comprehensive and dependable encyclopedia", which will have editing by experts in each area.
I personally love Wikipedia, it is all about power to the user, however in accurate articles do exist and I can only assume that they will continue to grow as the popularity of the site snowballs, I think Sanger's idea is a top notch decision but my question is: won't this be just any other reference site?

Are you an entrepreneur?

2007-02-12T09:46:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was appointed Business Development Manager at JN, I have grown more in contact with the internet and everything that the web can provide you with...more specifically blogs. I have been reading a ton of blogs lately so that I can stay, literally, up to date (read: up to day) about new online marketing tactics as well as tech news or even football. A blog that I have been following lately is Start up Spark, a blogs that bases it's article entries around start-ups. Read the following post, you might learn or confirm something about yourself.

Yesterday's entry is wonderful: Top 10 Ways to Know You're An Entrepreneur. Are you an entrepreneur?

You might be. Inside you there just might be an entrepreneur waiting to tear out.

Here are the top 10 ways to know if you’re an entrepreneur. (And for those of you that are already entrepreneurs, you can nod your head as we go along…Or disagree with me! Or add your own points!)

1. You’re passionate. Passion counts for a whole lot when it comes to being an entrepreneur. Without it, you’re dead before you even start.
2. You’re always looking for opportunities. Entrepreneurs are opportunity-seekers. Everything is an opportunity. Failures are even an opportunity.
3. You always think to yourself, “I can do that better.” You might know nothing about the retail business, but every time you walk into a big box store you have a thousand ideas on how to make it a better experience. Combined with your eye for opportunity, you can’t help but believe there’s a better way of doing things.
4. You want to live your work. Work isn’t a means to an end. It isn’t a way of collecting a paycheck and going home. You’re dreaming of something more than that, where you can live and breathe work. Not because you want to work more, you want to work smarter. You want your work to mean something. You want to experience something more than shuffling to the office at 8am, leaving at 5pm and forgetting what happened for that day.
5. You’re dreaming miles ahead while focused on what you’re doing right now. You’re a dreamer, but not a daydreamer. You’re dreaming a plan ahead while working constantly at achieving success on the details today. You’re a big-thinker but you don’t lack the ability to focus on details. Accomplish the little tasks is moving the ball forward for you…towards the big dream.
6. You’re an ego-maniac. You look at your boss and shrug. You know things could be better, and you believe strongly in your own abilities. You’ve got a big, healthy ego. It’s not unwarranted, but it’s not proven just yet either. Still, ego is important - because it’ll help you take risks, power forward and succeed.
7. You’re prepared to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.” Your ego doesn’t preclude you from admitting that you don’t know something. Too many people fake their way through life, or duck their head when they don’t know the answer. Your response is to jump into it, learn what you can, move quickly and get some damn answers.
8. You’re a strategist. You’re not just thinking about tomorrow. You’re thinking much further ahead than that. This is a trait you share with a lot of people - career ladder-climbers and “cover your ass” employees. The difference is that you’re also a dreamer, and strategy + dreaming is very powerful indeed.
9. You’re a builder. You like to create things. You don’t care about recognition, praise from your boss, awards and money as much as you care about building something remarkable, and having others enjoy it and benefit from it.
10. You want control. You watch the world spin, shake and bumble around you and want to harness that more. You watch your boss and co-workers shuffle around each and every day and you want to rattle some chains. You want control. Seth Godin calls them torchbearers. You want to bear the torch.

So, are you an entrepreneur?

JN 2.0

2007-02-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

This past month has been a whirlwind affair, from starting a new year to launching a revised website to a change in hierarchy in JetNumbers and guess what...I am going to tell you about it!
Back in December we got working on a new and better website for JN as well as developing a new user system. You can call this new phase, JN 2.0! The site, as I assume you have noticed, has a few changes on it front page as well as inside the user interface. We were looking for a more flowing and easy to use site for you and us, we feel that the changes we made to the interface assist the user in make better decisions for their accounts...and behind the scenes it makes it a lot easier for us to manage your account and wishes. We attempted to make the UI more automated to reduce human error, which all boils down to a better service. Everyone here at JN had to pull together to launch the site, but after many endless days we feel that we have gotten a better product out to you.
As for a change in hierarchy, about two weeks ago, our CEO and co-owner of JN, Mr. Andres B. jumped on the opportunity to head the efforts in Latin America for the world's largest online casino (888.com)and so naturally it would have been extremely difficult for him to lead two companies without blurring his own vision, so he has ceded power to Kari. Does this means that we will be facing new changes...NO. Don't worry the service will continue to be what it is and we will undoubtedly continue to grow and evolve in to a better service under Kari's guidance.
Hopefully she will be posting her visions and ideas for JN 2.0.
Saludos to everyone!

Our first link exchange!

2007-02-01T07:13:00.000-08:00

Yuppi, our blog is growing! Congrats to Sergio for hooking us up with Pablo B. As most of you probably don't know, Pablo Brenner is a well known entrepreneur here in Uruguay and is a reference for young business people like myself. Hopefully this connection won't stop here and we will be able to share great business ideas or just funny jokes.

Create like a god, command like a king, work as a slave

2007-01-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

In his blog, Pablo Brenner lists Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki as one of his favorite books. The book' s subtitle is "Create like a god, command like a king, work as a slave".

I guess you can characterise the successful entrepreneur as someone that creates like a god, commands like a king and works as a slave. As someone who studied psychology for many years, Pablo should know that you can diagnose this kind of person as something else: a schyzofrenic. Wikipedia tells us that one of the main characterizations of schyzofrenia is significant social or occupational dysfuntion.

Let's be realistic: if you can command like a king and create like a god, you have to be out of your mind to work as a slave. Not that there aren't many of these, I see them every day. The worst part of it is that many entrepreneurs that I know, enjoy most the slave part.

So here is a niche market: a psychological clinic for entrepreneurs. Convince them to drop one of the three. Or maybe two. They could start by enjoying a bit of Second Life. But they could do much better: get a First Life.

Here is a challenge for you Pablo: how would you characterize the Venture Capitalist?

Effort Estimates for a Cup of Coffee

2007-01-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

I always have the same problem with my IT manager. Every time I ask for an estimate, he comes up with a huge number. On the other side, my marketing people always come up with a very optimistic figure. So I decided to make a little test. I asked my marketing manager how long it would take to make a cup of coffee. "Less than thirty seconds" she replied.

I then asked my IT manager the same question. He divided the task into small subtasks, and estimated each one of them:

Open the cupboard - 2 sec
Take a mug and place it on the table - 2 secs
Close the cupboard - 1 sec
Pick the jar - 1 sec
Take out the jar lid - 1 sec
Place the lid on the table - 1 sec
Place the jar under the tap - 1 sec
Open the tap - 1 sec
Wait for the jar to fill up - 15 secs
Place the lid back on the jar - 1 sec
Place the jar on the table - 1 sec
Press the ON button - 1 sec
Wait for the water to boil - 30 secs
Open the cupboard - 1 sec
Take the coffee jar - 1 sec
Place the coffee jar on the table - 1 sec
Close the cupboard - 1 sec
Open the drawer - 1 sec
Take a spoon - 1 sec
Close the drawer - 1 sec
Open the coffee jar - 2 secs
Fill the spoon with coffee - 1 sec
Place the coffee inside the mug - 2 secs
Close the coffee jar - 2 secs
Place the coffee jar back in the cupboard - 5 secs (includes opening, etc)
Take the water jar - 1 sec
Fill the mug - 5 secs
Place the water jar back in its place - 2 secs
... (the list goes on: add sugar, add milk, stir, wash the teaspoon, wash the mug, which itself consist of over ten taskst, etc)

When the list was complete, it added up to over 10 minutes. "Wait," said the IT guy. "We still have to compute the proportional part of the effort taken by the purchase of coffee, cleaning up, etc. And of course, we should not forget that preparing this estimate took some 10 minutes, over how many cups should we divide that? And should we take this conversation into account? On second thoughts, I may have been too optimistic in some of the tasks. Taking everything into account, I would price it based on 30 minutes. If we add another resource we could bring the time down, but the cost would go up"

"No wonder we are losing business" I said while I was sipping my third cup of coffee that morning.

The lesson: if you divide the task into small enough tasks, any estimate will look too optimistic.

Are 90% of your potential customers unserved?

2007-01-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

The US is the largest economy in the world, representing some 5% of the world's population, and around 25% of the world's GDP. This means that if you are a US-based online retailer selling only to US customers, you are ignoring 95% of your potential customers. "Most are dirt-poor" you may say. Well, that is probably true. But even if 90% of them are dirt-poor, that still leaves a market twice as big as the US.

Not convinced? See these figures. There are 400.000 millionaires in Russia alone, while the UK is home to over half a million of them. According to Morgan Stanley, there are 100 million potential buyers for luxury goods in China today. One hundred million people, wanting to buy luxury goods just in China! And guess what? Luxury goods in China are much more expensive than in the US. If you sell luxury goods, you should certainly not be ignoring overseas markets.

What should you be doing? To start with, take orders from abroad. Most retailers only accept orders from the US. That is a big mistake. Take the necessary measures to prevent fraud, but why reject the orders? Just requiring a scanned copy of the credit card and passport will greately reduce fraud. You would be surprised to find out how many foreign customers are even ready to pay extra money just to buy from you, a US-based retailer. You need to take into account that shipping will be a bit more expensive (shop around for prices). It is important to state clearly that customs clearance is the customer's responsibility.

Of course, you should not stop there, you should actively reach out to your customers. Here are some ideas:

Translate your pages into as many languages as possible. It is much simpler and cheaper than you may think. Try posting a translation project in www.guru.com, you'll see how cheap it is.
Have a virtual phone number in your main markets. It will make your customers much more comfortable. Again, it is really cheap, you can get a virtual number from jetnumbers.com for just $20 a month. For just $200 a month you will look like a multinational, with phone numbers in London, Paris, Hong Kong, Mexico City and a few others. You can become the world's smalles multi-national!!
You can also hire a company to answer the phone for you, and even take orders. Prices are in the $0.20 per minute range.

In summary, the world is a large place. Any retailer selling only in the US is constraining itself to a small portion of the world's market.

My pics

2007-01-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

Great post, Nate!
I love white chocolate, just in case!...
OK, so the first pic, is here in Montevideo, Uruguay, just having fun with my friends on a spring day this past year.
The second one is me when I
was a little girl with who is
still my best friend. I am the blond one...

Now, I wanna see yours!
Kari-

Blogging ideas

2007-01-11T07:22:00.000-08:00

Ppl! Today I found myself scratching my head, wondering about what our next post should be...so I said to myself, why not post a post about what should we post. So here I am, asking for cooperation from you, the client, co-worker, bored Internet surfer or whoever. One idea that came to mind was to post pics of everyone here in the Admin. depart, when we were all younger; I wonder what Sergio (our CTO) looked like when he was in high school...
Who ever posts the best pic will receive any chocolate bar of their choice; in case you were wondering I will be the judge of who wins; and if you think that i can be bought well... I love soccer and need some new boots (my size is 91/2 USA).
Please remember we are always trying to keep this blog fun and unique. To accomplish our goal of having a great company blog we NEED feed back!!!

The Schorr family

2007-01-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

This is my family: Jessica (sister), Bruno (Dad) , Ghilda (Mom) and I (Nathan) at a weeding a few weeks back.

Share Pictures of your Family with us

2007-01-09T12:18:00.000-08:00

Hi evryone,
This is Andres Bzurovski, the owner of JetNumbers.
I am inaugurating a new section in this blog, the photo album; we want every customer and friend to share their pics with us.
For me JetNumbers is a big family, therefore we want to know everyone and share our experiences altogether.

I will kick off by posting a pic of my lovely daughter Lara.
She is 4 months old.
Comments are more than welcomed, thanks.

The iPhone is finally here!

2007-01-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

Although we have nothing to do with Apple, the subject is still telephony related; most of us here at the office have been waiting months for this announcement and Stevie J. finally gave it a green light today at MacWorld. It seems that it will be the holy grail of smartphones.

A little 'bout the JN team

2007-01-09T08:40:00.000-08:00

I have so many things that I want to write about here on the company blog...I honestly don't know were to start! So i guess i will try to tell you a little bit more about myself and JetNumbers Inc.
I was born on January 16 back in 1984 (yes my b-day is a few days away) in Buffalo, NY; I am the second child of Bruno and Ghilda both of whom are Uruguayan and were college students at the time. Over the next few years my family moved around the world, from Buffalo to Kansas City to Riyadh, SA to Montevideo, Uruguay. Besides the moving, I had a wonderful childhood...a childhood that greatly shaped who I am today. I am currently attending Universidad ORT Uruguay and am majoring in business and administration; I have about a year left to finish up with my studies.

About two months ago, I was approached by Karina Szmulewicz a friend/classmate to join a communications start-up company called JetNumbers Inc. So when Kari told me about the company and its objectives, I was immediately attracted to the idea of taking up my first full-time job, about a week later on the 17 of November I became a member of the JetNumbers team here in Uruguay. So that is my history in a nutshell. Now I've got to tell you a little about JetNumbers Inc. and it's management team.

Company History:

JetNumbers Inc. is a pioneer in the area of virtual numbers, offering numbers in over 30 countries. It was created by Andrés Bzurovski and Sergio Fogel in December 2005, with its launching a few months later on the 10 of July of 2006 JetNumbers’ goal is to provide a simple and cost effective form of communication for users around the world. JetNumbers Inc. is currently made up of 11 techies and the management team.

JetNumbers Inc. is based in East Bushwick, New Jersey. Our management team and costumer support division is located in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The JetNumbers administration is made-up of four teamates: Andrés (CEO), Sergio (CTO), Karina Szmulewicz (Account Executive) and myself.

Andrés has studied technology at the University of Northampton in the United Kingdom as well as a degree in marketing from the University ORT Uruguay. Andrés is the founder of Before, a software company, leader in Uruguay.

Sergio Fogel posses a BA and a Master’s of Computer Science from Technion in Haifa, Israel and an MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau). He has worked as a Laboratory Investigator at IBM in Haifa, Israel. Sergio was also the commercial manager for Oracle in Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. He also founded elAgora.com and Uniotel S.A.

Karina Szmulewicz is currently finishing up her studies at the Universidad ORT Uruguay and is majoring in business and administration.

Uniotel, the parent company of JetNumbers was started in 2001. Uniotel is the leader of private international telephoning in Uruguay; the company has developed a high quality fibre optics network which permits us to lend a quality telephone service which meets international standards. Uniotel owns operating licenses in Uruguay and USA, as well as agreements with more than 20 carriers’ world wide. The company has and will continue to export technology to countries in North and South America as well as Africa.

Technological aspect:

A virtual phone number is a telephone number is used to route calls to the user's actual phone number or numbers. Virtual phone numbers are often used to enable long distance service without incurring long distance charges in IP telephony and for call forwarding services, such as find-me/follow-me.

A virtual phone number makes it possible for someone within a specified area code call anyone in another area code as if it were a local call. Here's how it works: A customer asks their service provider to assign them a virtual phone number within a desired area code. When someone in that area code dials the virtual phone number, the call registers as if it were local, but seamlessly maps to the customer's actual telephone number.

In find me / follow me, a user may be assigned a virtual phone number. When that number is dialled, the call may be routed among a number of phone numbers at various locations.

Our technology does not require any type of installation for the user. We assign the user a phone number in the desired country or region. The user has a web page where they can decide where the calls should ring. For instance, the user can choose to have a phone number in New York, and take the calls in their mobile phone in Barcelona. That way, their friends and family back home can call locally. If the client later go for a trip to France, they can buy a SIM card in France, and change the number so that it rings there. The user can also set the number to take voice mails, and send these via email.

Blogging:

Just like I stated in my last (first) entry, JetNumbers got mixed up in a discussion between social net workers, Jason Calacanis (ex-CEO of Netscape.com) and Kevin Rose the founder of Digg.com. Everyone here at JetNumbers felt that we were unfairly portrayed by Calacanis and were unable to defend ourselves against the trashing brought on by Calacanis´ poor investigating. Although the accusations were horrendous and off the wall...we got what we set out to do...our name all over the net. We went from 700 sites that mentioned us, to nearly 11,000 from one day to another! Any publicity helps at this stage in time. The investigation translated into nearly 120 new accounts for JetNumbers, so our betting on ruffling feathers paided off! As a consequence of our inability to defend ourselves, we decided to start the blog! The blog will not only provide a window into our offices but will also keep everyone up-to-date with news about tech developments at the office as well as a place to get customer feed-back and questions.

Here are some links to people that wrote about the Digg incident:

http://digg.com/tech_deals/JetNumbers_New_Approach_to_Virtual_Telephone_Numbers (this is the actual article posted on Digg)
http://news.com.com/Digg+continues+to+battle+phony+stories/2100-1025_3-6144652.html (this is the article that blew the hinges off the door...I was interviewed for the article)
http://themulife.com/?p=412 (this is the most detailed investigation about the incident)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/technology/23online.html?ex=1324530000&en=3bcd94e359a90222&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss (this is the NY Times article)

Please feel free to comment about this subject...actually please comment about my marketing tactic; I want to know what you think about it!

I will try to post about twice a week.
Salutations to everyone and remember...GET LOCAL!

First post!

2007-01-08T09:47:00.000-08:00

Hello world! My name is Nathan Schorr, I am the Business Development Manager at JetNumbers Inc. I have been designated to the project of launching our company blog, however this blog will not only be about our service but also everything that can be related with virtual numbers and the communications industry.
The idea of starting a blog came to mind a few weeks back when JetNumbers was involved in an ethical discussion between social network users and myself (I will be posting more about this later). During the entire ordeal, JetNumbers was dishonestly brandished and we were unable to defend ourselves, hence the reason for starting this blog.
What do we, as a company, want to get out of this blog? Well, we want to establish a transparent form of communication between our clients, our team here at JetNumbers and anyone that is interested in new forms of communication. Basically, we want to hear more from you.
So, hello world, here comes JetNumbers!