Keep the Cell Phone bills to minimum during overseas travel ...

After travelling all over the world and trying many different ways to manage my telephone bills and the data plans, here are my findings to manage the costs.

The best scenario is to have a cell phone working on WI-FI all the time. There are many IP based software APPs ( like Skype, Viber, Vonage etc )on the smart phones ( like iPhone or Android based phones and some other smart phones ) that work great and allow you to make and receive calls from anywhere in the world for all most free. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get connected to WI-FI during the over seas travel. So, while we can use our USA based smart phones while they are connected to WI-FI, we need to find other options to make and receive calls from anywhere during our travel. There are a combination of things that I do contain the costs. Some times, there could be more effective ways to handle these issues depending on which country you are located/travelling. Here are a few tips. These are only my views and my experiences. There could be better options that I am not aware of but like to learn. Please comment and share your experiences.

1) MagicJack and a Telephone: I carry this kit all the time with me during my overseas travel. This works best in a scenario where I am near a computer that is connected to Internet. I usually use this when I am in a Hotel Room and my Laptop is connected to Internet. Magic Jack is a small sized connected that gets connected to the USB drive on your laptop. You can plug-in the telephone on the other end. Voila. You now have a telephone working and all your calls to USA are free from anywhere in the World. Click here to learn more about MagicJack.

2) Use local Phone in the foreign country + Call forwarding thru LocalPhone.com: This arrangement works great to receive calls from USA or other countries into the local phone. Here is how it works.

Visit localphone.com, register and then buy a local phone number in your country. In USA, we pay around .99 USD/month to keep this number. The advantage with this number is that you can forward calls from this number to any international numbers. When I travel overseas, I take a local phone for rent in the air port and then forward my USA cell phone to the USA local number from Localphone.com and then forward the Localphone.com number to the rental cell phone. Make sure that the rental cell phone does not charge you for the incoming calls. Many rental cell phones in many countries do not charge for the in coming calls. So, when some one in USA calls to your USA cell number, that call can be received in the rental phone of any country. What you are paying here is to the Localphone.com for international forwarding. Their rates are quite reasonable for such an international forwarding compared to the roaming charges that we pay to the USA cell phone company. For example, I paid 14 cents / minute when I receive calls from USA to my Japan's cell phone to Localphone.com.

This is lot better compared to the roaming charges that I pay to my USA carrier.

Save a ton using Magicjack (VOIP device) during overseas travel

This devise saved me atleast 1000 USD in my recent Europe trip.



It is a very useful device to carry, when you are travelling outside USA. It is very small. Almost like a bigger USB drive. Its interface is excellent. Connect it to your Laptop USB drive during your business travel. Other side of the device has regular telephone jack interface. While I am in hotel, I dis-connect my hotel telephone from the wall and connect to this Magic jack device. Its is this user interface that makes it so easy to use. Once it is connected, I use the telephone to call any USA number as I call from USA. So, this needs that our laptop is connected to internet. In business travel, our laptops are mostly connected to internet anyway. This device is very convenient to use from hotel rooms or home etc. as it connects to laptop. One of the drawback is that we can not use it while we are on road unless your PC is on and connected to internet. Similarly, receiving the calls is also not very convenient unless we are near the computer. But, it is the best way to call to USA during overseas travel, from hotel rooms from any where in the world. Here is the best part. It costs around < 40 USD / Yr.

6 Best Twitter applications to manage your Twitter followers

There are many applications that help you manage your Twitter followers. Some of them help in mass un following and following. I personally found that these tools are not very effective as you like to be aware whom you are following and not following. ex. if you un follow in bulk, you miss many celebrities and important people ( who may not follow you, but you still like to follow them to get their tweets). After struggling with many applications, I found the following few to be quite useful.

1) Twellow : I found Twellow to be the No 1 application to manage your Twitter followers. I rate it high because, you can ask it to list all the people whom you are following but those that are not following you. While many applications provide this list, Twellow is unique in providing the people's profile as a part of the list. This is very important information for you to decide whom to unfollow selectively.

2) TwitterCounter : This application will show you how many new users one is adding per day. You can add TwitterCounter to your site / blog / social network.

3) Qwitter : It is also good to keep an eye on who is not following you anymore. Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter with a message.

4) Twitterfriends : Find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you. I liked the quick stats that this app provides. You can also see who of your Twitter friends are online this very moment.

5) Mr. Tweet: I found this application to be quite useful in finding new and relevant people to follow. It will analyze your Twitter network, help you discover interesting people, and also recommends you to others.

6) WeFollow : One can find new and relevant followers with keyword search, of interest. It is good to list your profile here and use this site to find new people as well as get found by others.

McKinsey conversations with global leaders: John Chambers of Cisco

Listen to the McKinsey conversations with global leaders: John Chambers of Cisco. John Chambers is always an excellent leader to hear to. A few take aways:

-CISCO always looks at every downturn as an opportunity. John claims that, during everydownturn, CISCO always gained market share and emerged stronger than they went into it, as they don’t look short term and are able to anticipate and invest into market transitions. CISCO is able to do this as they are cash rich. I am sure CISCO can afford to do that with their 34B cash.

-Move fast but not with out process a process behind it that can scale, have flexibility, and be able to be replicated. Moving fast without a process would be equally as bad as not moving fast at all.

- CISCO think we are entering the second phase of the productivity growth and it's all going to be around collaboration and network-enabled technologies called Web 2.0 that enable collaboration. CISCO thinks that they can use this downturn to catch up, move aggressively while competition is cutting costs and lead this wave.

This is a big bet for CISCO but looking at their past, hopefully they pull this off. We want them to.

- John's answers to a question on " What does this mean for your customers?" is quite illustrative and impressive.

Tweetie .. Excellent Iphone Twitter client

Tweetie is the best iPhone Twitter client that I came across. 3 things that I like about Tweettie

- You can manage multiple Twitter accounts easily
- Check the Twitter trends ( best way to check the latest news)
- Retweet very easily

Watch new Videos on You Tube

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Stream live video fast to the world. Right from your phone

Here is a cool tool QIK that allows anyone to stream live video right out of your mobile. Experience the possibilities .. amazing ..

Currently it supports streaming from Nokia phones only .. I wish to see iPhone support ..

CLick here