General Motors will build electric cars for the Indian market

GM (General Motors) announced to make electric cars for the Indian market on September 24, 2009 manufactured by the Reva Indian car company, specializing in this segment, in order to market them in China.

The executive director of GM's arm in India, Karl Slym, explained that this initiative is taken "in line with the government targets to reduce dependence on fossil fuels". He also said that, "we will work closely with the Indian central government and regional authorities in India to develop infrastructure for electric vehicles and provide financial benefits to the consumers".

President of General Motor's international operations, Nick Reilly described electric cars as "an area of growth in the global auto industry" and hoped that cooperation with General Motors Reva will serve to "accelerate their progress and changing needs in many parts of the world".

For Reilly, these cars represent "the best long term solution to provide sustainable private transport".

Reva Company launched its first electric car model in 2001.

GM's announcement comes just a day after Ford said that in early 2010, we will launch first small utility car to the Indian market, officially named as Ford Figo. Ford also said that our new Figo will target the Indian market.

Both initiatives focus on the segment of small commercial vehicles. Auto companies are in agreement with these initiatives because the Indian car market has a large number of users willing to make a payment for having a car, but the cost should not be very high.

The most notable example of these types of initiatives of vehicles in this segment is the Tata Nano, which also known as the "world's cheapest car" (with low-end model starting from rupees 1 lakh.

The Indian automobile industry has been among the hardest hit by the international financial crisis, especially during the first few months, with a significant decline in auto sales because of the lack of liquidity and lending, so these initiatives by global players like Ford and GM will boost the sales of the Indian car sector.

Bad Things About Voice Over IP (VOIP) - Issues to Be Aware Of

VOIP The Dark Secret, Buyer Beware.

Every time I turn around I see another advertisement for the Voice Over Internet Protocol.

Most of the phones supplied by the Cable companies and also independent’s such as say Vonage are known as VOIP phones.

In a past life I did a lot of IP related work and what bothers me is when they sell these services, and do nto tell you of any potential problems. It's all roses and fireworks for great things that are cheap. I do not see any disclaimers or warnings.

How it works:

If all the VOIP traffic stays within a properly configured network like say a Road Runner network and you call another person on Road Runner network, it’s highly likely that Road Runner has implement something called Quality of Service (QOS). This helps prioritize traffic and help make sure the VOIP packets get to were they are supposed to go.

What can go wrong:

To the best of my knowledge the IP portion of VOIP – does not have a provision or means to provide QOS . The issue lies that any “call” placed to someone over the plain internet therefore gets delivered on a “best effort” type of delivery scheme. So it depends on how busy the net is at that time and how good the quality of the network is that the packets are traveling over. I call it “cross your fingers” delivery. I have used VOIP myself but never for anything critical.

What is Reality:

If you make calls primarily to other users on the same network and that service provider is reliable then VOIP could work for you. If you consider the phone mission critical and a “must work” 100% of the time, I’d seriously question using VOIP.

I refuse to let my own parents or in-laws switch to these services. It’s hard because they see them as cheaper, and that’s pushed on them and it’s an attractive option to them to save costs. Unfortunately costs savings are pushed but no downsides are often mentioned.

There are a few other downsides to VOIP:

Faxing can be tricky and if you have a security system, it may not be happen with a VOIP connection. There exist work arounds for these scenarios but they may not be elegant.

My Conclusion:

My personal experience is the call quality ranges vastly from day to day and call to call. I personally still do not see VOIP as a reliable replacement for the phone companies land line service.

If you want VOIP, choose carefully weigh your options and decide. Well chosen and implemented correctly VOIP can be functional. A poor VOIP provider and ISP combo can be a nightmare.

Educated yourself, choose carefully and be skeptical.

VOIP Links

• VoIP Cons - VoIP Drawbacks and Pitfalls
  VoIP Cons are an issue, although VoIP has great pros. While VoIP's benefits outnumber its disadvantages, you should be aware of the VoIP pitfalls as a user, so that you have a better VoIP experience.

Build Your Own Cheap VOIP Phone Connection

Build Your Own Cheap VOIP Phone Connection.

Some Background:

I have written on another hub that I’m not a big fan of VOIP and that is true. VOIP is however not totally bad, it does have it’s place. One great use I have found for a VOIP setup is that it can offer you a very low cost way to add another phone line to your home or business if you have a existing broadband internet connection.

So what’s the secret to constructing a cheap VOIP phone. First of all, do not link yourself with one of the popular services. I do not use Vonage or AT&T or for that matter any large vendor, I built it all myself.

I was curious as to how far the VOIP world had progressed from days long ago. I had my fingers in VOIP many years ago when just the VOIP boards were thousands of dollars. Back then it was definitely NOT a usable consumer product. I was quite pleased to see that many vendors now offered VOIP ATA’s (Analog Terminal Adapters, the box that turns a analog telephone to digital packets that can traverse the internet and get to whomever you are calling). I was even more surprised to find out that there are several great web sites on the matter and that the ATA’s are quite cheap, a wide selection under 100.00.

VOIP utilize something called SI. SIP’s formal non abbreviated name is the “Session Initiation Protocol”. SIP is what is known as a “signaling protocol” this enables things like instant messaging, SMS, conferencing and finally telephones to communicate on the internet. There are also other things that go along with it like “codec’s” to do most of the work. I’m not going to go into technical details here as the purpose of this hubpage is to make a cheap IP phone setup, not understand voice protocols and analog to digital conversion schemes.

HERE IS HOW I BUILT MINE:

I’ll provide links in the links section at the bottom of the hub rather than in the article to hopefully make it easier to read.

Buy the right Analog Terminal Adapters (ATA):

Since most ATA’s are “locked” to a specific carrier.. much like your AT&T cell phone is locked to the AT&T network and it can’t be used on Verizon’s network. The ATA is the same, if you have one and it’s locked to say “Vonage” then it’s useless unless you have the unlock password or they will give you the password , it’s a useless device for the purposes here.

You can however get a unlocked ATA very easily. Simply go to Voxilla.com , I suggest the Linksys PAP2T it works well for me and has the capability to have 2 phones plugged into it. I very much like my Linksys ATAT but pick your own ATA of choice, the voxilla store and techtoast This is the device you will plug into your router and then you plug your phone into the ATA. Voxilla.com is one option.. I chose to buy my ATA from a place called TECHTOAST. They shipped it quickly and it works great.

Have a reliable and speedy Internet connection:

Dialup will not work, I’d recommend a cable connection or higher speed DSL connection. To have a usable VOIP connection you have to have a broadband internet connect that’s reasonably fast and reliable. The 384 kbps DSL connections may possibly work but it’s going to likely sound like your talking through tin cans and be horrible in quality.


Find a VOIP Vendor:

You need to decide on what I will call for conversations sake a “SIP carrier”. This is the “Vonage” replacement in my home built VOIP system. After much searching and comparison. I chose a place called sipphone.com.
I registered for an account and then also bought a “Callin” number for my area. This allows people to call you and sipphone can route calls to that number. Translated to English, this call-in number makes your new IP phone ring at your house. You can also buy call out credits for I believe $10.00 dollar increments and they expire in 180 days from purchase , the rates are low around 2.0 cents for calls to Australia for example. Better than a calling card I think, no call setup charges and no long strings of numbers to dial, you just call direct. They offer free voicemail and a few other features. It’s pretty simple and works for my needs.

Couple of notes on Sipphone.com
The Sipphone account is free, no monthly cost. The cost is only in the call out number $36.00 per year and callout credits (you choose) plus the cost of the ATA (about $60.00) If it’s not for you Voxilla has a HUGE selection to compare, it took me several weeks to decide on sipphone . I used Voxilla’s comparison tool, the problems I had in picking vendors was that it was very hard to compare apples to apples, most often I found myself comparing apples to oranges that why it took a long time. This is an important choice, but you can change it easily if you make a mistake. The change might cost you some money but switching is possible. I have not switched but I expect I will at some point in the future. I’m reasonably happy with sipphone, but be warned support is via a forum or ticket system and they are not quick. My experience is to not expect a quick turn around, expect days not minutes. I have had a few outages but not many and this line is not mission critical to me. A few new vendors may even appear on ads on this hub, it might be worth checking those out, that’s how I initially found sipphone.

Start the Ball Rolling:

Once you have chosen the SIP vendor and have a account etc. I’d order the ATA from your place of choice as I indicated above. While you wait for your ATA, register on voxilla.com for a account as well as sipphone.com if they are your vendor of choice. Once you get your ATA. Now we need to configure the ATA to work with the SIPHONE vendor. This is were Voxilla comes in very handy, but you need to have an account. They have some pretty slick configuration utilities , they call it the configuration wizard, I’ll provide a link below. Log into your Voxilla account and look the one up for the PAP2t , have your account information all handy from sipphone and start the configuration process. I’m not going to give detailed instructions here, as the permutations of configuration are endless. I also can’t really help if it does not work. Mine worked minus a few glitches right out of the box

There are things that can make this a real challenge . Asymmetric Firewalls can cause a stun server to not function correctly and you may have to statically assign a IP address to the ATA and port forward the required ports to the internet back and forth. I do this all the time. I used to configure Cisco switches for large corporate networks so this is not intimidating to me but to a average user port forwarding can be a nightmare. Maybe that’s the subject of another hub, but it ‘a dry subject to anyone other than a networking techie. I suggest if the option comes up to use a “Stun” server. This will hopefully prevent you from having to play the port forwarding game. Sipphone provides that information for your account.

Try a Call:

Plug your phone into the phone port you configured on the ATA, and try to call yourself from another line, I did and it works like magic. It’s a great line to publish on flyers, ads, business forms, etc. The call-in number lasts for 1 year for 36.00 (there are shorter term agreements) but if you get too much spam on that number ditch it after a year (or your term you agreed to ) and get a new number from Sipphone.

Current Status:

My setup has been pretty stable. I do not use this line for anything critical. I’d by no means use this as my main line unless I had no other choice. I have heard that Sipphone has an unusual purchase out credit scheme. It appears they hand check all first time call out credits to help avoid fraud and this can take some time to approve so plan ahead say a week. Once the first purchase goes through all others after that should have no issues according to the post I have read. I have not tried this as I indicated I have no need to dial out on the phone at this time. Overall I have a cheap phone that runs over my existing internet connection. So if you look at the cost for me.

· ATA purchase (one time ) $60.00
· Sipphone.com call out number $36.00
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total cost $96.00 for year one and that includes the ATA cost.

If I assume all that ATA cost is placed in the first year use next year all I have is a callout renewal at 36.00 That’s $3.00 a month for a valid number, not bad.

The Warning:

Your mileage may vary and this has technical challenges that could be pretty complicated, it’s also not for folks who are not technical in my opinion. But if your at all inclined or curious and do not care if you lose a few dollars on equipment and services if it does not work give it a shot.

Try this at you own risk and I can’t/won’t provide tech support. I simply provided what works for me and I decided to share. Hopefully you can use this information or a permutation to get something running up cheap for yourself. Happy VOIP’ng.

VOIP LINKS

• Welcome to Linksys.com
  Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the global leader in Wireless and Ethernet networking for consumer and SOHO users. Linksys is dedicated to making networking easy and affordable for its customers, offering innovative, awar
• VoIP Device Configuration Wizards
  This FREE service allows you to easily configure analog terminal adapters and IP phones from four different device manufacturers with more than 20 different
• TechToast: Our Specials!
  VoIP, Security, Surveillance, Telephony, Audio/Video, Network Equipment, and much more--just the best names in electronics at the hottest prices.
• SIPphone - Call worldwide over your Internet connection with any phone
  Gizmo Project provides low cost international calling and free calls to users on Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Windows Live users and SIP networks.
• Voxilla

How to Become a Cell Phone Tester Before They’re Released to the Public

Do you love new gadgets? Do you enjoy getting the latest mobile phone that is available and trying out all of the new applications that it can access? This can get to be a pretty expensive hobby since new phones are constantly being released and most of the newest releases aren’t cheap. One great way to enjoy your love of new phone technology without sacrificing your entire budget to new phones is to learn how to become a cell phone tester.

What is a Cell Phone Tester?

A cell phone tester is someone who gets to test out mobile phones, mobile phone applications and new features on mobile phones before these are actually released to the public. A cell phone tester may get paid to do this work. More likely, this person will be volunteering in exchange for the chance to test out phones that aren’t yet available to the general public. In either case, the cell phone tester will have to test out the new product or features in a timely manner and will have to report on the results of the testing in some form or other to the people who have hired the tester. These reports may be written or verbal and may be formal or informal.

How to Become a Cell Phone Tester

It isn’t very easy to become a cell phone tester because of the fact that there are limited positions available for this type of job and there are a lot of people out there who would like to do it. However, it is possible to become a cell phone tester if you know where to look for this type of work.

Some of the things that you might do to become a cell phone tester include:

• Check the websites of the cell phone companies and handset makers that you like most. Each individual company may issues announcements on websites, job board and blogs that let the public know that they are interested in hiring cell phone testers. These posts will provide information on the exact details of applying for the job. The amount of testing work that you get will likely be limited since you’re working with only one company but you’ll get to try out the products that you are likely to like the most.

• Get a job with a cell phone company. A lot of those companies don’t advertise those jobs because they have in-house staff doing the testing. These are people who do other jobs for the company (such as customer service) but who also do some of the company’s cell phone testing. If you’re willing to work for a cell phone company then it’s a good way to get the opportunity to do cell phone testing for that same company.

• Attend mobile phone conventions and do some networking. Many of the people who get work as cell phone testers get that work because they know someone who knows someone. Get in with the right people by networking at mobile phone events and then put the word out there among your network that you’re looking to work as a cell phone tester.

• Check technology job boards. It’s rare but every once in awhile you will see a job come up for the position of cell phone tester. Common job boards (such as Monster and MySpace jobs) are a good place to look if this is something that you’re serious about trying to do. Keep an eye out on the jobs and gigs announcements on sites like Craigslist as well because beta testers are often advertised for on those sites. And check out mobile phone forums for the occasional company post about this.

• Apply to work as a writer / reviewer for mobile phone blogs, websites and magazines. Major mobile phone blogs and websites get access to a lot of the new mobile technology before it’s been officially released to the public. Their reviewers get paid to check out the newest mobile phones and mobile phone features and to write up their opinion about them for the sites. These jobs are hard to get and it’s best if you have experience as a tech writer but this is a great way to get work as a cell phone tester (and even get paid to do it!)

• Start your own mobile phone blog. This takes some time and patience but it’s one way that the average person can start getting a foot in the door to test mobile phones. Basically you’ll start your own mobile phone blog and report on the latest phone news. If you can develop this blog to the point where it is a high-quality blog then you can contact mobile phone companies and ask about the possibility of testing new phones in exchange for writing about them on your blog. People who are interested in unique phones from smaller companies and startups may be able to have some success with this approach.

Becoming a cell phone tester requires a combination of persistence and luck. An avid interest in mobile phones and a general passion for getting truly involved with the industry will assist you in getting closer to the opportunities that are available for testing out phones and phone features before they are released to the general public. Keep on putting the word out there that this is something that you’re interested in and there’s a good chance that some sort of chance to do this will come around.

• Get Free Products To Test, or Money, Just For Taking...
  The first thing I wanted to say to ALL who have stumbled upon this page, is to erase all thoughts from your mind that you have to pay a goddamn fee just to get paid to take surveys online. This is absolute...
• Want to become a Video game tester
  To become a video game tester is not all fun and games but is a very rewarding career. It can be hard and boring work... Hey look on the bright side so is every other job out there in this world. A video...
• Video Game Tester Jobs
  Before going out and looking around for game testing jobs there are a few things you might want to know first. Work as a video game tester is not as easy or as fun as it may sound. However, that is not to...
• Game Tester Jobs
  Game tester jobs are idealized by many. But in truth, not all gaming enthusiasts have the prerequisites to handle a game tester job competently. >> Do You Want To Become A Game Tester And Get Paid? CLICK...

Help Me Land a Blogging Job

There's a new contest in town, and I'm reaching out to all my fans, readers and friends here on HubPages for help!

Nature Made has launched a talent search recently, in search of a Good Mood blogger. (Now why are you laughing? Are you sayin I'm not always in a good mood? What do you mean I'm sarcastic? Hush now. This is serious business).

They are looking for someone with a passion for sharing mood boosting tips and advice, a good attitude and a little inspiration. It's a six month gig, paying $5,000 a month. Yes, seriously!

Hey, now.That's right up my alley. If you have read some of my work here at HubPages, such as Mommy Meltdown, Bounce, A Skype Dream or 5 Ways to Apologize, then you know I have a way of taking things that would bring me (or you) down and seeing the bright side, the light side, the sunny side up side.

So what do I need? I need your vote. The applicants with the most votes will make it to the next level, but I can't do it on my own! I need to show that I am loved. How about showing me a little love?

Pick Me! Pick Me!

So please take a minute to go vote for me at Sam-E and help me get to the next round of this contest! It only takes a minute! The first phase of the contest is based completely on votes, but for the applicants who make it to the next level (only the top 20) they will have to create a video and submit a writing sample. Friends will be able to vote, but a panel of judges will have the final say over the outcome.

Your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

And, if for some reason you decide to get in there and enter yourself because you are a shiny happy person (in need of $5,000 a month), then I wish you much luck! Really, I do! ;)