Free Phone Calls to USA

This is not about Viber, Skype, Line or the FB messenger.  The trouble with the apps is that they require both the parties to have an active data connection to make a call.  Also both the parties must have the same application installed and running on their phones or tabs.  Some apps allow you to call a phone number directly but then you have to pay for it.

Now we have an app which can call a telephone number, mobile or landline, in USA (and some other countries too) directly and for free!  Of course, you need to have the app on your phone and also an active data connection.  But these requirements do not apply to the receiver in USA.

If you have not already discovered the app, it is Hangouts Dialer, an added component to Google Hangouts.  Do try it.  Now you can have long and leisurely talks with your family and friends in USA for free.

Good that Google does not subscribe to the conventional wisdom cherished by governments that says that freebies are not good for your constituents! ;)

A Letter to Sri Kapil Sibal

Dear Mr. Sibal,

Like many of my fellow countrymen, I had known little about you till you surfaced on the political scene as a minister.  Most of us had an initial impression of you as a learned man with a cheerful disposition and felt happy that people like you could make it to politics.  I searched out your bio-data on the internet using Google and the bio-data, as provided by you or whoever, seemed to confirm the initial impression.  However this image gets a severe blow as one scrolls down to the end and reads the angry comments by visitors on your recent move to censor social media on the internet.

It seems that what is exercising the collective public consciousness and hogging the eyeballs today is not your impressive bio-data.  Instead it is the collection of vakeel-like tricks that you have been trying out, albeit unsuccessfully, to confound the 2G case, then to browbeat Baba Ramdev, subsequently to infiltrate the Anna Movement and tarnish it jointly with another outspoken colleague from your profession.  I have deliberately used the hindi word vakeel as like neta it is used in a not-so-flattering sense and no longer commands the respect that it may have initially done.

It is sad indeed that you remain undeterred by your failures and are now trying the same dirty tricks to force censorship on the social media on the internet.  You cannot be fool enough to believe that you will succeed in this matter that is so close to the hearts of public at large.  And you must also know that you are making yourself look like the villain of the piece.  And if you still persist in the matter, it must be on account of a conviction that the electorate is powerless against you and your class.  Perhaps this is why you and other of your ilk keep on challenging Anna and other crusaders to contest the elections.  And this is why the politicians are even more afraid of demands for changes in the electoral system than the fight against corruption.

Well this state of affairs will not last forever and your own actions will provoke the public to force changes down the collective neta throat that keeps gulping nation’s resources shamelessly.  But till it happens, enjoy your antics.

Yours musingly

JANATA