Game over. Game over man! You thought we would know it was "the future" when people were issued jetpacks didn’t you? Nope. The future snuck up on us, and it snuck up on the phone companies too. It is over for regular phone companies. See, first of all EVERY phone service is about to have their ass kicked by VoIP, and even VoIP companies like Vonage, Sunrocket, Packet8 and Lingo (examples of internet based phone services I recently wrote about ) are about to have their asses kicked by Magicjack. Magicjack mixed with the , recently acquired by Google, service Grand Central is the ultimate mix. I wont go into extensive details about Grand Central, but it’s basically a FREE service that takes all your phone numbers and puts them in a funnel to give you one central number. And it gives you a web based interface to manage the whole thing; you can forward, redirect, block calls-basically the works-at NO cost. If you remember Dialpad, those are the folks that started that up. But Magicjack does have a cost, but wait ‘till I tell you how much (or rather little).

I heard about it from my “Navy Daddy.” See I’ve got a Navy Daddy and “Bank Daddy.” Both of these guys are men at least 20 years older than me, whom I met when I was in each of those environments. They took an interest in my career and made lots of efforts for me to go further-and then ultimately we’ve had great relations since our time in those environments. The great piece of irony is that despite the fact that I’m YOUNGER than those 2 guys they’ve been crucial to my technological growth. Bank Daddy convinced me years ago to “get on the internet.” See I had a laptop, and I had used the internet at this job I had and at Columbia University in the early 90’s and was NOT impressed. But around ’94 he convinced me to give it another try-and the rest is history. And Navy Daddy’s turned me onto all manor of tech, included Magicjack.

OK, so what does it DO exactly. Well it’s a VoIP, or internet based telephone service, that uses a high speed internet connection like DSL or cable. The crucial difference is that you connect this dongle right up to the computer’s USB port and then plug your traditional phone line right into that. That’s it. You buy the thing for about 40 dollars, and it includes your first year’s phone service. Your second year you pay 20 dollars. Did you catch that? You get the hardware and service for 40 bucks and then it’s 20 a year. For FULL PHONE SERVICE, including long distance. Who can beat that? Tell me, I wanna know. Is it perfect? Nearly. I read about a few bugs over at this forum and this other forum , but its only things like caller ID not showing the name, but just the number. And these forum guys have been testing the service since July of last year, so they’ve discovered all kinds of tricks and modifications. And they’re getting more area codes all the time. Look into it. What’s the worst that could happen?

And do yourself a favor and get the cheapest broadband deal out there. Get DSL ONLY withOUT the phone line from ATT. Folks the price right now is CRAZY, all you need to get MagicJack working a a fast connection.

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