This weekend, during a trip to BestBuy, I found a solution. It’s called the D-Link DPH-50U Skype USB Phone Adapter.

With this little gadget, you can use your landline phone to make Skype calls. It’s really simple to connect. Just connect it to your computer via the USB cable provided with the adapter. Then connect your landline phone to the adapter. Finally, connect the adapter to your telephone wall socket. Before you do all that, of couse, you’ll need to install the driver that comes with the adapter.

Once you’ve completed all that, you can use Skype to call anywhere you want. And of course, all Skype calls are free in the US and Canada until the end of the year. After that, just use your regular Skypeout account.

You can also use your landline phone to call regular Skype contacts. All you do is assign a speed dial number to each of your contacts (in your Skype control panel), and when you pick up your landline phone, dial ##, then the speed dial number, then the * key. To make regular long distance calls via Skype, just dial ## 001 + area code + 7 digit phone number. If you were calling another country, instead of 001, you’d have to use the code for that country.

It’s that easy. The key, of course, is you must have your computer powered on and be logged into your Skype account.

Anti-Spam Software Stinks

I had tried a few different spam filters, like Vanquish, but none of them really eliminated the spam problem. Yes, they “controlled” the problem, but they also gave me an additional task of checking the emails they filtered out to make sure none of them were messages I really wanted, which happened more often than I liked. I was still a victim to spam. Plus, there was the annual subscription fee. Not much, mind you - Vanquish is about 25.00 per year - but in a small business, why spend money when you don’t have to?

But Gmail Isn’t as Professional Looking as a Me@MyDomain.com Emaill Address

I know what some of you are thinking. “I can’t use Gmail. I have my own domain name, and it wouldn’t look professional using a me@gmail.com email address.” I know this because I just had that conversation with my best friend, a small business owner with her own website and corresponding email address (she’s now a happy Gmail user).

Never fear, you can still use Gmail and it’s super spam filtering mojo. All you have to do is forward your mydomain.com email to Gmail. I have 5 different email addresses, and they all dump into my Gmail account. Gmail filters out the spam, and I get my real, spam-free messages downloaded into Outlook Express.

You can also set up Gmail to reply to messages using another email address. In other words, if someone sends an email to michael@solostream.com, it goes into my Gmail account. When I reply to the message Gmail will automatically use michael@solostream as the reply address, rather than my savvysolo@gmail.com address.

What Else Can Gmail Do?

If the spam filtering feature isn’t enough to convince you, there are some other cool features I love about Gmail. Like the ability to search past email messages. See, you can set Gmail to keep an archive copy of all messages you receive, and if you ever need to track down a certain message, you just use Gmail’s search function to find it. It’s just like doing a Google search but only on your email inbox.

Also, the archive and search features allow me to have two copies of all email messages. One on Gmail (accessible from any computer with an Internet connection) and another copy on my own hard-drive at the home office.

And storage space isn’t a problem, because Gmail gives you more than 2 gigabytes of storage. I’m currently using about 10% of the storage space Gmail has given me. With all that space, you can also use Gmail as a temporary file storage server. Again, let’s say you’re away from your main computer, and you find a file you want to keep. Just do a draft Gmail message, attach the file and save it in your draft folder. When you get back to your main machine, go ahead and download the file to your hard drive.

I could go on and on about Gmail, but I won’t. Do yourself a favor, and get a Gmail account. If you need an invitation (you can’t open an account without one), email me, and I’ll send you one.

For more Gmail tips, check out Jim’s Gmail Tips, as well as the tons of great Gmail tips, tricks and hacks from Lifehacker.com.

Update 07/27/06: This timely article just appeared on BBC News: More than 95% of e-mail is ‘junk’ .

“Listed below are 46 different freeware categories with my selection of the best products in each category. The list is ordered by program function rather than merit so you’ll get the most out of it by browsing it at leisure. The pathologically impatient can consult the index.”

We will, however, forgive him in advance for choosing Internet Explorer over Firefox.

“This handsome, hardcover book captures your online wit and wisdom for posterity – not to mention friends and family with painfully slow dial-up connections. BookSmart’s Automagical archive feature flows your blog directly into elegant, pre-formatted pages, and you can pick and choose your words from there.”

Unfortunately, it’s currently available by invitation only. Anybody tried it yet?

Ever wonder if you could have a large conference call on Skype™?

Now you can…

with up to 500 people.

High Speed Conferencing works with Skype™ and regular phones to provide conference calling for everyone.

Sounds interesting enough. And it’s only 3 euro cents/minute for the basic service. Choose the upgraded package at 5 euro cents/min and you have the ability to record the teleconference, as well as a few other features.

Alterenatively, if you don’t need room for 500 people, you can get a free conference line at MrConference and use Gizmo to record it.

What to do now? I’ve got these weird m4a files or something that I can only listen to through iTunes or QuickTime. After I got over my initial little tantrum, I managed to figure out how to convert these odd, little iTunes, m4a-or-something-type files over to mp3.

All I did was burn the files to a CD (you can do that through iTunes). Then I ripped the files back onto my PC via Windows Media Player, and viola, I ended up with fresh mp3 files all ready to load onto my Creative Zen Micro. The only problem is the new files don’t retain the ID3 tags, so no titles for the music in my Zen.

Update: 05/23/06: I figured out how to do it in a way that retains ID3 tags …

Step 1 is to rip the files to a CD.

Step 2 is to select all those file, then convert to mp3 from the iTunes “Advanced” menu.

When that’s all done, go into your iTunes library where you will now have two copies of the song/product. Select the mp3 versions, right-click and copy them, then paste onto your hard drive, then to your non-iPod mp3.

“That gave me the idea, I don’t really need a blog, I just need an RSS feed. Del.icio.us does that. Which is even better, cause I don’t have to deal with the files. When I find an interesting video I can just tag the video url with del.icio.us and I’m done. Feedster looks at del.icio.us’ RSS feed, finds the video, puts it in the proper enclosure so it shows up in iTunes. No posting, no uploading, no cost.

To use your own video you just need to add a place to store the video file into that mix. Ourmedia.org is one of many sites that will host your content for free. Just upload your video then tag the file’s url with del.icio.us.”

“Yahoo is expanding its reach in the fast-growing Internet calling market, offering a service that will allow people to make and receive low-cost computer calls to and from regular phones.

“The long-expected move could make the Sunnyvale company one of the biggest players in the Internet phone-calling market, along with eBay-owned Skype Technologies, Vonage and others.”

Messenger users have been able to make voice calls to other Messenger users for several years, but Yahoo’s latest move positions them to compete with the very popular VoIP service, Skype. Not only that, Yahoo seems to be aiming to underprice Skype with calls priced at $0.01 per minute for calls to the U.S. and 0.02 per minute for calls outside the U.S.

This is a very smart move on Yahoo’s part. They must have hundreds of thousands of people already using Messenger, so it only makes sense to hang onto them by offering this added service. My only question is the connection quality. Has anyone had experience using Yahoo Messenger voice?

“Yahoo is expanding its reach in the fast-growing Internet calling market, offering a service that will allow people to make and receive low-cost computer calls to and from regular phones.

“The long-expected move could make the Sunnyvale company one of the biggest players in the Internet phone-calling market, along with eBay-owned Skype Technologies, Vonage and others.”

Messenger users have been able to make voice calls to other Messenger users for several years, but Yahoo’s latest move positions them to compete with the very popular VoIP service, Skype. Not only that, Yahoo seems to be aiming to underprice Skype with calls priced at $0.01 per minute for calls to the U.S. and 0.02 per minute for calls outside the U.S.

This is a very smart move on Yahoo’s part. They must have hundreds of thousands of people already using Messenger, so it only makes sense to hang onto them by offering this added service. My only question is the connection quality. Has anyone had experience using Yahoo Messenger voice?