My DigitalZone

How can I send and receive a fax on the internet? That was the question I needed to answer when I ditched my landline phone. I don’t use faxes too often but I have a small personal fax machine, which has become a big paper weight.

Nowadays most things can be done email or sending a scanned document by email. Still, there are some people/companies that prefer faxed documents. So, I went searching for some info.

Can I Send a Fax via My Cell Phone?
It looks like it’s difficult. Even though I remember my old old Sprint cell phone, my very first cell phone, had some documentation about connecting the cell phone to a fax machine, at this time and at least in the U.S., it’s not an option unless you are using a wireless carrier that supports GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and have a GSM cell phone. AT&T and T-Mobile use the GSM system while Sprint and Verizon use CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). I am a satisfied Verizon Wireless customer because of their network quality, so I’m not going to drop Verizon just to be able to send a few faxes a year.

howstuffworks.com has an interesting article about using a cell phone camera to take a pic of a document but it just sounds too tedious.

Internet Fax via Email
There are many internet fax services on the internet now. Basically, what you do is to send an email with an attachment to the fax service provider and they will convert the attachment so that they can send the document to a regular fax machine. You can also receive a fax through the internet fax site. Here are some major internet fax services.

• eFax
  eFax Plus costs $16.95 (USD) per month, with a one-time $10.00 (USD) fee to activate your number. You get 130 pages of incoming faxes free each month. Outgoing faxes cost $0.10 (USD) a page to numbers in the U.S. Incoming faxes cost $0.15 (USD) a page.
• myfax.com
  $10/month or 30 day trial.
• faxzero.com
  Offers free fax. Max 3 pages per document and max 2 faxes per day for free. Their premium service costs $1.99 per fax, max 15 pages.
• MetroFax
  Monthly Fee — $12.95 per line
  Activation — $9.95
  Toll Free — $2 extra per month per line
  Included Pages — 1000 inbound/outbound (combined)
  Per-Page –3¢ after 1000 pages
• FaxAway
  * There are no set-up fees for a Faxaway account.
  * You may allow as many as 250 email users access to your Faxaway account at no additional charge.
  * There is a small account maintenance charge of $1 monthly.
  * Those enrolling with a credit card are charged a fixed deposit of US $10.00 upon activation.
  * Sign-up using a check or money order for a minimum of $100.00.

Today was a big day at Amazon.com. As I posted a couple of days ago, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, held a press event today, announcing the new version of Kindle, Kindle DX. It has a 9.7” 1200×824 pixel screen, which is about twice as large as the standard Kindle. There are some improvements over the standard one but few are technical. It now has a built-in PDF reader so the user can carry some personal and professional documents. It can store 3,500 books compared with 1,500 in the standard version.

The two notable aspects of today’s press release are Kindle’s partnerships with educational institutions and the traditional print media. Students of five universities will have an option to have textbooks in Kindle. It’s a novel idea but I’m not sure how practical it can be for students and teachers.

Its another partnership is with the print media. During its trial period, users can get electric delivery of three major newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. That’s interesting.

See, I like to try new things, so I subscribed to an audiobook/magazine service for a while at Audible.com. So, naturally I’m starting to like what Kindle offers. Even though the price of Kindle DX is rather steep ($489), Kindle book prices are much lower than paper book prices. For example, a new Kindle book price is $9.99 while the price of hard copy versions ranges between $24 and $26. What’s more, the delivery of a book is instantaneous. They already have a good selection of newspapers and weekly magazines for Kindle at very affordable prices.

If you travel a lot and like to read, Kindle DX is very convenient. If you read about 3 books in a month, you can recoup the cost of your initial investment within a year because of cheaper Kindle book prices.

One of my coworkers just recently bought Kindle 2 and she was not happy today. She thinks Amazon.com should offer her a discount toward a purchase of Kindle DX. But she can sell her (almost new) Kindle 2 at eBay. So, I took a look at what eBay has at the moment.

Here’s eBay’s offerings.

US $285.00 (15 Bids) End Date: Sunday Sep-12-2010 13:21:15 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $255.00 (26 Bids) End Date: Saturday Sep-04-2010 15:00:02 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $295.00 (5 Bids) End Date: Tuesday Sep-07-2010 19:00:56 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $222.50 (5 Bids) End Date: Sunday Sep-05-2010 16:30:55 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $315.00 (3 Bids) End Date: Sunday Sep-05-2010 11:38:51 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $360.92 (27 Bids) End Date: Sunday Sep-05-2010 19:00:43 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $249.60 (7 Bids) End Date: Saturday Sep-04-2010 13:45:07 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

Kindle 2: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

The New York Times is reporting today that amazon.com is working on a Kindle with a larger screen. The current version is version 2 and it’s slim and compact. According to the New York Times article, amazon may release the new version of Kindle as early as this week.

As we all know by now, most of the print media have been struggling financially because of diminishing readership and advertisement revenue, due mostly to the rise of internet media. The New York Times reports that the new device from amazon may save by offering a convenient method for the traditional newspaper and magazine publishers.

It is an interesting development. For me, Kindle, with its price tag of $359, is a bit too pricey even though its convenience of purchasing a book (at a very low price) on the spot is very tempting. I have a friend who bought Kindle and she loves it.

Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo from your digital camera before you had a chance to download it to your PC? I have. I looked for a recycle bin on my camera to see if I could recover from a recycle bin but there was no recycle bin on the SD card. Don’t despair! There are ways to recover deleted photos from a memory card. But most of them are not free. You need to shell out at least $20 to use the service/software. There is a free one, though. So, the option I recommend is to use PC Inspector Smart Recovery. I tried it and It worked fine. So, here are the steps you need to follow.

• Download PC Inspector Smart Recovery and install it.
• If your computer has a memory card slot, insert the memory card in it. If your PC doesn’t have the slot, connect the digital camera to the PC with a cable.
• Start the PC Inspector Smart Recovery.
• Select the drive to recover the photo(s). This is usually E: or F:.
• Select the folder on your computer where you want to store the recovered photo(s).
• Click “start,” then the program starts to scan the memory card. The result window will show all the pictures you ever deleted. You can pick the ones you want to recover.

Since the program scans the card sector by sector, it may take a long time to finish scanning. I did it for a 2 GB card, and it took about 2 hours to complete the scan. But it’s worth the wait.

All Right. I restored the factory default from the restore CD that came with my laptop. I had time to back up all my personal files, most of which are music and video files, to an external HD, so there was no loss of data. The restoration process was tedious but not difficult. After the restore, my laptop has been behaving well, and I am determined not to clutter the lap top with lots of evaluation software. (Not sure how long it will last, though.)

I reinstalled most of the programs that I use frequently. I’ve got a few more to go, but I can wait until the weekend.