Matt Silverman

Ooma

[View Ooma Reviews on Amazon]

Update 10/27/09: Get a free iPod Shuffle with purchase of an Ooma! (Expires 10/31/09)
Update 5/06/09: I have posted a 5-month update on my experience with Ooma.
Update 8/29/09: Check out my new Post on how Ooma + iPhone = Amazing Voicemail

Overview:
With a lack of anytime minutes on the cell phone, and poor reception in our new apartment, I was forced to look at our VOIP options.  Long story short, I ended up purchasing an Ooma VOIP kit from Amazon, and so far, it’s amazing.  The difference between Ooma and other VOIP options?  No recurring fee.  Once you buy the Ooma device, the savings can theoretically continue growing forever.

Price:
When I decided we were going to get VOIP, my first thought was to get Vonage.  I felt that $24.99 per month for Vonage was a little steep, however.

With Vonage:
$25×12 + $80 VOIP kit = $380 for Year 1, $300 per year thereafter.

With Ooma:
$220 for VOIP kit, no required monthly fees ever again.

Ooma effectively would pay for itself over Vonage in 6 months.  It sounds too good to be true, and I was very skeptical at first.  After reading the glowing Amazon reviews, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try.

Installation:
I had no experience with VOIP prior to this, and I found the set-up to be a breeze overall, no thanks to the included quick-start guide and manual, however.

The included manual tries to explain three different installation scenarios at the same time, making it difficult to understand.  I eventually just decided to plug in what makes sense, and it worked great.

If you have the following common network set-up, getting your Ooma working is abreeze:

• Cable modem (DSL works too, but might require different set-up than below)
• Wireless or Wired router

Get your Ooma working in less than 10 minutes, with these 4 easy steps:

1. Activate your Ooma at www.ooma.com/activate
2. Plug in the power to the Ooma hub (the larger of the two Ooma devices is the Hub, the smaller is the Scout).
3. Plug one end of a network cord into a spare port on your router, usually labeled with a number between 1 and 4.  Plug the other end of the network cable into the port labeled “Modem” on your Ooma hub.
4. Plug one end of a phone cord into the Ooma hub where it is labeled “phone,” and plug the other end into your regular landline phone (I use a cordless phone).

That’s it!  Assuming your internet is working, your new phone line should now be active.  The Ooma manual seemed rather daunting for me at first, but hopefully these 4 steps make it a little easier to follow.

Post any questions in the comments section, and check out the Ooma page on Amazon to get one for yourself.

Update 5/06/09: I have posted a 5-month update on my experience with Ooma.
Update 8/29/09: Check out my new Post on how Ooma + iPhone = Amazing Voicemail
Update 10/27/09: Get a free iPod Shuffle with purchase of an Ooma! (Expires 10/31/09)

[View Ooma Reviews on Amazon]

When Twitter first started getting popular, it was primarily used by people wanting to update their friends on one of the following:

• what they are doing: “watching Lost 2night”
• where they are going “going 2 the gym”
• what they are eating “going to pinkberry.. mmmmz!”
• what they are thinking. “i need to get out more”

Sound interesting?  Probably not.  Many people are not interested in this kind of information sharing, and who can blame them?  It’s hard enough to manage what’s going on in your own head sometimes, let alone thinking about why someone is “tweeting” at 4am about how Americone Dream is the best Ben & Jerry’s flavor.

Twitter has recently grown into something much bigger.  No longer is it just for 20-somethings talking about their favorite chai teas.  Twitter now has CEOs of major corporations, feeds from websites like Amazon, and plenty of celebrities using it as a promotional tool to build their brand.

What are a few simple reasons to be “tweeting?”:

• Free promotional tool for your business
• Ability to send relevant updates about yourself to many people at one time
• Express yourself, or your business

What re a few simple reasons to read “tweets?”:

• Instant updates about people you are interested in
• Important information about web sites you visit
• Interesting tidbits and deals from companies that you are interested in

So what’s the quickest way to get your feet wet with Twitter?  Simple:

• Create a Twitter Account
• Install the TwitterFox add-on to Firefox

Next, start “following” a few interesting people or websites on Twitter.  To follow someone, log into your twitter account and visit any of the links below.  Click the “Follow” button at the top left of their twitter page.  Here are some of my favorite twitterers:

• @zappos – CEO of Zappos.com
• @kevinrose – Founder of Digg
• @starbucks – Starbucks coffee, over 17k followers!
• @guykawasaki – Famous entrepreneur, author, former evangelist for Apple Inc.
• @woot – Get an update every time a deal is posted on Woot.com
• @amazondeals – Amazon.com’s goldbox deals
• @mattsilv – Shameless plug for myself.
• @justsalad – The company I work for.

Quick Intro to using Twitter

To use Twitter, you only need to know what the three types of “updates” are.

• Regular updates: In TwitterFox, or on your Twitter page, any text you type and submit will be broadcast as a “tweet” or update, to all of your followers.  Example: Hey followers!
• @replies: You can send a public reply to anyone on Twitter.  This reply will show up as an update on your Twitter profile.  These are generally used to send friendly questions and comments to people whom you follow.  To send an @reply, simply start your twitter message with an @ symbol followed by their username.  For example, to @reply to me, you would type: @mattsilv Hey, this is fun!
• Direct message: Otherwise known as a “private” message, direct messages (DMs) are only viewable by yourself, and the recipient.  DMs are a way of messaging your friends without broadcasting the message on your profile.  Simply type the letter d, then a space, then the username of the recipient.  To send me a direct message, you would type in: d mattsilv Hey, this is a secret!

In these tough economic times, even Craigslist scammers are not as creative as they once were.  Every time I post something on Craigslist, I get at least 1-2 scam replies offering to pay with a [fake] money order.  When trying to sell my bike, this most recent scammer sent me a pre-fabricated scam e-mail, and did not even bother to distiguish his craigslist scam from his eBay scam.

Come on!  You think I am going to send you a bicycle in the mail, trusting your paypal echeck or money order, when you cannot even confirm if this is an auction or a craigslist ad?  I’m not going to give up my “firm prize” that easily.

Today marks our official launch of DrudgeFeed.com, a very simple, yet accurate, Drudge Report RSS Feed.  DrudgeFeed crawls DrudgeReport.com every 3 minutes, scrapes the links and link text, and throws it into a database.  It only picks up new links, and we are able to assign a timestamp to each link in order to throw it into the feed.  We then generate an XML feed from the DB.  I have not publicized it too much, but in the last few days since launching, it already has around 50 subscribers.

I sent Matt Drudge to get feedback on DrudgeFeed, but no response as of yet.  There are a few other sites that claim to have a Drudge RSS feed, but so far, I have not seen one more accurate than DrudgeFeed.

If you have any ideas on how to improve it, let me know.  If you are new to RSS feeds, check out Google Reader.

Ping.fm is down.

Ping.fm, my favorite aggregation service for facebook/twitter/status updates, seems to be having domain name problems with GoDaddy.  Just helping to relay the message. Hopefully they get it up soon.  I would think that Godaddy could at least remove that hideous ad page from resolving on Ping.fm in the mean time.

Official Message from Ping.fm staff:

“Just to set everyone at ease, we are simply waiting on GoDaddy to update their end so that this mess becomes history. I’ve been in direct contact with them. Actually, the office of the President of GoDaddy called me personally ensuring that they are working on this with a high priority.

Everyone can do us a favor by just spreading the word that everything in power is being done to correct this. And be known that we aren’t going anywhere. This isn’t us leaving, nor shutting down. This is a problem that has come between service provider and client. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.

This should all go away any time now.

Thanks for your continued support through some wrenches in the system. Keep on pingin! (Bots still work.)”