Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Ring back tones, that music you can opt to hear instead of a ring phone when you place a call is getting more intelligent.  Ring Plus, a US company, has been offering free calls (even international) to its subscribers in exchange for listening to an advertisement while waiting for your callee to pick up.  Could it be just that easy?

Ring Plus thinks so.  They’ve just completed a six month beta test of the service and were impressed with the results.  They believe they are going to revolutionize the telecom industry.  Keep reading to find out more.

MORE »

We all knew that is was just a matter of time before Facebook would finally catch up with MySpace, well at least in the total number of worldwide unique visitors. The latest numbers from comScore show that both MySpace and Facebook registered around 115 million unique visitors coming from all over the world this past April. So, with that we can officially declare that Facebook is no longer the second largest social network. Likewise MySpace is no longer the largest social network. So whoever is the largest social network today would depend on which of the two you like better.

MORE »

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites

Didn’t we just reported that eBay has given Skype until the end of this year to prove its worth and viability before they decide to sell it off or keep it? Looks like Skype is starting to shape up as it just announced that it will begin offering an unlimited international calling for $9.95 a month.

The new Skype plan will give users unlimited calling features to 34 countries worldwide including most European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia. The new plan also includes Skype to landline and cell phone calls in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

MORE »

The International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate a complaint of patent infringement made against Sharp Corp. Samsung claims that Sharp has infringed on 4 different patents for LCDs. Samsung is attempting to block imports of products using Sharp LCDs. These products include HDTV’s and the Motorola RAZR2. The companies are suing each other in various federal courts and in Seoul, South Korea. A decision is not expected to come for about 15 months.

Read [Bloomberg]

• Verizon lowers Samsung Omnia pricing, now at $199.99
• Sprint’s Cyber Monday deals: free Centro and 5 others
• Cyber Monday deals on tech from 6ave.com

If you are a broadband-connected TiVo subscriber and like your American independent and international films, then you are going to be pretty excited about the fact that Jaman and TiVo have teamed up to add content from Jaman’s premier library, featuring films such as,  Oscar-nominated “Paheli,“ “Loverboy” (Sundance) with Kyra Sedgwick, “All About Lily Chou-Chou” (Berlin International Film Festival) and Dardennes Brothers’ “La Promesse” (Cannes/Toronto).

Not your usual TiVo offering, so this is either looking at a niche market or attempting to broaden the viewing preferences of the current subscribers. Described as “high definition, edgy and award-winning films” the deal extends Jaman’s broad cross-platform leadership with support for set-top boxes, PCs, Macs, SanDisk’s TakeTV and DivX.

“We’re delighted to introduce the availability of Jaman to our TiVo subscribers and we think it’ll prove to be an exceptionally popular addition to our already robust broadband offerings,“ said Tara Maitra, Vice President and GM of Content Services at TiVo Inc.  “This joint alliance significantly increases the selection of international and award-winning movies made available to TiVo subscribers, giving them more choices and easy access to premium content not available elsewhere.“

The films will be available for rent or purchase (starting at $1.99) with some free downloads on offer for a number of short and full length films.

Via [Jaman]

• TiVo offering big deals at Best Buy for holidays
• TiVo launches TiVo Mobile
• Pizza gets TiVo’d