Month: August 2012

Link to POSSIBLE method of porting a landline phone number to Google Voice for free (well, except for the $20 that Google Voice charges)

 

Important
This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared on a blog called The Michigan Telephone Blog, which was written by a friend before he decided to stop blogging. It is reposted with his permission. Comments dated before the year 2013 were originally posted to his blog.

Google Voice will only allow you to port cell phone numbers to their service (don’t ask ME why — seems stupid, but that’s their rule) so if you want to port a landline number, you first have to temporarily port it to a cell phone provider, then from there port it to Google Voice. Most of the published methods that I have seen for doing this involve paying out some small sum (usually around $20) to get a “disposable” cell phone (so after adding the $20 that Google Voice changes to do the port you are out almost $40), however I just stumbled across a thread that suggests it may be possible to do it for free, IF you have (or can borrow) an old Verizon or Page Plus cell phone that’s not currently being used.  Note this may not work in all areas (there are still areas of the country where Google Voice can’t port numbers) and I don’t guarantee it in any case because I haven’t personally tried it, but if you’ve been thinking of porting your landline number to Google Voice, this MIGHT save you a few bucks:

Post on DansDeals.com Forums

Again, although it’s not clear from this thread, Google Voice will still charge you $20 to do the port, but if you can get this to work it could save you some money.  Note that if you are served by some Podunk (independent) telephone company there’s a good chance it won’t work, so keep that in mind if losing your number would be a major catastrophe for you.

Logitech C910 Webcam (Logitech Webcam Software) crashing on Mac OS X 10.7

 

Important
This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared on a blog called The Michigan Telephone Blog, which was written by a friend before he decided to stop blogging. It is reposted with his permission. Comments dated before the year 2013 were originally posted to his blog.

This falls into the category of “notes I am posting for myself so I don’t lose them”.  A Logitech C910 Webcam works under Mac OS X (more or less — some users have had more success than others), but the Logitech Webcam Software is buggy and Logitech seems to be in no big hurry to fix it, as can be attested to by the many posts in their Webcams forum complaining about problems using the device with a Mac.  I followed all the instructions in this thread (which was actually for OS X 10.6 but I was grasping at straws) but nothing helped – after I uninstalled and reinstalled the Webcam software, it would run fine ONCE and then after that, every time I’d try to run it again, it would crash immediately after opening.  This was not always the case, but perhaps something was broken during an upgrade.

I figured out that if I go into /Users/username/Library/Preferences/ and remove the files com.logishrd.LWS.plist and com.logishrd.LWS.plist.lockfile it would then not crash on the next run attempt.  So, Logitech’s software is buggy because the mere presence of these files should not cause the software to crash.  Note this is with the lws220.dmg software so if they ever release a newer version it just might fix the problem.

I suppose you could write an AppleScript to delete the two offending files and then launch the Logitech Webcam Software, but I have not got around to that yet (I An Not A Programmer).  My question is, why doesn’t Logitech fix their damn software instead of leaving OS X users hanging, waiting for a solution? People have been complaining about these issues for at least a year and a half now!