AllFreeCalls lives on!

AT&T’s ‘Free Call’ Bill: $2 Million (from The Consumerist) –

Guess who got stuck with a big bill for all those “free” international calls touted by outfits like FuturePhone? None other than AT&T, which has filed a lawsuit in Iowa claiming that “deceitful and unlawful schemes” like FuturePhone’s caused a jump from $2,000 per month to $2 million per month in the fees billed AT&T by an Iowa rural telco.

Boiled down, AT&T’s main argument is that because the calls are not actually “terminated” in Iowa — AT&T says Iowa is just a midpoint in what is really an international call — AT&T shouldn’t have to pay the LECs the termination fees. Telco legal sources we talked to said that while the suit’s merit can certainly be contested, what it does immediately is give AT&T a legal reason to stall payments of such monthly bills, which could effectively strong-arm the startups out of business.

Ouch! $2 million. Better start making those long distance calls through AllFreeCalls.net before they get slaughtered like FuturePhone by AT&T. Initially I had assumed that AllFreeCalls.net will have the same fate as FuturePhone, but it’s apparently not so, leaving AllFreeCalls.net to probably be the only option left to make free long distance calls.

[UPDATE] Pat Phelan (owner of AllFreeCalls.net) left a comment in my previous blog entry. He says:

We are expanding rather than closing
www.allfreecalls.ie launched today bringing the same good deals to the Irish consumer

I’m curious then if Pat and AllFreeCalls was listed in AT&T’s lawsuit. If so, does that mean you guys will be fighting against AT&T to hold their end of the bargain?


Random Crap:

For women, nothing’s like the smell of men’s sweatResearchers at the University of California at Berkeley said women who sniffed a chemical found in male sweat experienced elevated levels of an important hormone, along with higher sexual arousal, faster heart rate and other effects.

Japan subway ad (from Digg) – Here are our top 10 choises of advertisement in Tokyo’s trains or stations. Some interesting ad ideas like product sculptures and escalator hand rail ads, but the one that’s really cool are the tunnel movies: corvette ad inside the tunnel and Japan subway ad

Guy buys a commercial during Veronica Mars to propose to his girlfriend (from Deadlock) – On February 6th, at 9:23PM, Rand – Also known as ‘JP’ of MySuperProposal.com Proposed to his girlfriend, Geraldine, during her favorite show, Veronica Mars… I thought it was rather sweet and the Geraldine’s expression was unfathomable. Though her repeating screams of “What” and saying, “I think I’m going to puke.” did sort of ruined the moment, for me at least.

Man finds fingertip in chocolate bar in GermanyA man in Germany was put off his Italian chocolate treat when he noticed that a bump in the bar was not a nut but part of a human finger. … “I suppose it went unnoticed because there were nuts in the chocolate and it was hard to tell the difference,” the police spokesman said, adding the fingertip was being examined by forensic experts. *shivers*

Gadget toilet made for modern kings and queensOhio-based Roto-Rooter says its “Pimped Out John” is designed to “fulfil all your wildest bathroom dreams”. Special features include an iPod music player and speakers, an Xbox video game console, a refrigerator filled with drinks and snacks and a cycling exercise machine. … Any resident of the United States could win this “gleaming monument to personal convenience” by entering the sweepstake at www.rotorooter.com before April 2.

roto-rooter pimped out john

Sex vs clothes: women come out of the closet.Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel, with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds, according to a new survey of about 1,000 women in 10 U.S. cities. Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.

Zen And The Art Of ToughBooks (from Digg) – If you’re a regular reader of the TrustedReviews notebook section, you will have seen coverage of Panasonic’s ToughBook range. The ToughBooks differ from most other notebooks by being, well, tough. Panasonic has built a reputation for itself by creating notebooks that can function in the most inhospitable environments. Thinkpads are rather tough themselves. I was informed by a intern who worked at Intel over the summer who’s job was to record results from dropping laptops X feet from the ground and see if the CPU survived, and he told me that IBM Thinkpads were better than the ToughBooks. Then again, they were only checking the CPU and not any of the other hardware.

Woman on the wrong bus lost for 25 years (from Digg) – A rather sad story of a woman who boards the wrong bus, followed by another wrong bus and ends up in the middle of somewhere where she neither spoke nor understood the local language. Without money, she ended up begging on the streets for 5. She was was arrested in 1987 for being an illegal immigrant, but sent to work at a hostel when no communication could work. Finally, last month, a group of students that spoke her language came and helped her get home.

Little Gamers – That last room – What’s the last room for? Computer room. Ah, the mastrubatorium.

Dynamite Surfing (from Derek) – This is by far one of the coolest videos I’ve come across in a long time. These guys in Copenhagen surf a wave created by a huge stick of dynamite thrown into the water. Absolutely amazing, that took a lot of nerve to pull off.

Awesome Stop Motion Paper FightThis guy has created an awesome stop motion paper fight movie. I cant imagine how many hours this took but in the end I think it was well worth it.

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