Spokn is the most comprehensive and reliable Internet telephone service available to date with a host of breakthrough features that has made international calls really affordable to all.

Spokn logo

Spokn even outsmarts Skype for the fact that it provides many services for free which are charged on Skype. Also the charges for paid services on Spokn are much less when compared to its competitors.

According to Spokn

Skype is nice and easy to use Internet application while Spokn is a reliable telephone service

Here is how Spokn's features compare to that of Skype's:

Features	Spokn	Skype
Customer Support	Free	Paid
SIP support	Available	Not available
Incoming call from phones	Free	Paid (starting at 6 dollars / month)
Voicemail	Free	Paid ($3 / month)
Direct Numbers	1 dollar / month
Connection fee (for each call)	None	Starts at 4.5 cents
Access Lines (for non subscribers to call subscribers)	Yes	No
Free VMS	Yes	No
Callback Service	Starting at 2 cents per minute	None
Access Lines (to make calls)	Free	Paid, connection fee of 4.5 cents/minute
Calling USA	1 c/min	3 cents/min + 4.5 cents at the start of call
Calling India	2 c/min See rates for all countries	10.6 c/min + 4.5 cents at the start of call

Here are some of the "must know" features on Spokn in little detail:

Free incoming calls on Spokn from regular phones

Spokn provides free incoming calls to your Spokn ID over the internet from any regular phone for the cost of a local call and this services is available in over 40 countries worldwide.

With this feature you can get the call for free on Spokn over the internet, wherever in the world you are.

It works as follow:

• Your friends and family first make a call to a special number called 'Access Line' which is local to them, provided by Spokn. These 'Access Lines' are unique numbers that are available in over 40 countries as of now.(Here is the list of Spokn 'Access Line' numbers)


• Then on prompt, all they have to do is to just dial in your unique Spokn ID (which you have to share with them) and the call will be redirected to your Spokn online account.


• In case if you are offline, they can leave you a free 20sec Voice message.

As said earlier, you don't have to pay anything at all to receive these incoming calls to your Spokn online account which is identified with a unique 7 digit Spokn ID.

On the other side, you friends phone company charges him similar to a local call.

Buy Direct Numbers for just $1/month

By purchasing a direct number in the region where you want to communicate you can reduce the burden of your callers following the two step process of dialing the Access Line first and then your Spokn ID to reach you.

This is a paid service which means you will have to purchase a Direct number and it costs you just $1 a month. Spokn's Direct numbers are available in eight countries - USA, UK, Canada, Denmark, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland.
Buy your Direct Phone Number from any of these 8 countries and all the calls to your number will come straight to your dialer online with no incoming charges.

How it works:

• First you buy the Direct Number


• Your friend calls your Direct number and it rings you directly on the internet where ever in the world you are. The dialer can send you a free VMS (a 20 second audio clip) if the call is unanswered.


• And whenever you call your friend from Spokn online, he can see the incoming call coming from your direct number in that region.

As it's just a local number(direct number you have purchased) your friend is dealing with, all the calls he makes to your direct number will charge him similar to local calls in that region.

Call Forwarding on Spokn

Spokn also provides another very useful feature wherein you can enable call forwarding so that when anyone rings your direct number, the calls get forwarded from your Spokn online account to your regular phone numbers!

To enable Call Forwarding feature on your Spokn online account,

1. Go to Settings page and enter your regular phone number and click Save.

   Spokn settings page

2. Enable call forwarding from the home page.

   Spokn home page

That's it!! Now all the calls that you can't attend online on Spokn gets forwarded to your regular phone and thus you don't have to miss calls anymore even when you are offline.

This call forwarding feature costs you just as much as it costs to make a call on Spokn to your phone number. You can check out the call forwarding rates using 'Call forwarding rate calculator' Here


Spokn can be used on your:

Computer ( Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OS )

Smart Phone ( BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Nokia N & E Series and iPhone )

All SIP compliant phones and software

Any landline or mobile phone


To use Spokn with a SIP phone or software, first you have to configure your
settings as below-

Username : [Your 7-digit Spokn ID]
Password : [your-Spokn-password]
SIP server / registrar : spokn.com
STUN server : stun.spokn.com

And to use Spokn on your computer and phones, Download the Desktop version of Spokn software and Install it.

Before you start using Spokn, make sure to check out the Spokn's Video Tour page for easy to understand step-by-step illustration videos of all its valuable features.

Hope this helps...

Try it yourself and post in your valuable comments.

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The so called social media marketing & viral marketing scientist, @Dan Zarrella from HubSpot is hosting a Free live webinar on the topic 'Science of Social Media Marketing' on Wednesday December 9, 2009, 2pm EST.(Check the time & date in your region)

Dan Zarrella loves speaking about social media and viral marketing and he's also the author of The Social Media Marketing Book, the excerpt of which you can taste as a bonus after you register for this webinar. In the book he has mainly focused on the eight most popular social media forms which include blogs, microblogs (twitter), social networks (facebook, linkedIn, Myspace), media sharing sites (Youtube, Filkr), social bookmarking and voting sites (Digg, Reddit), review sites, forums and world's most popular 3D virtual world (Second Life). The takeways tips and best practices mentioned for each form which can be implemented directly in your online marketing efforts are quite useful and it's worth buying the book for these alone.

Coming to the live free webinar, Dan Zarrella is motivated to introduce to you:

• The history of word of mouth marketing, from pre-web to online


• Lessons from social psychology, memetics, and statistics to understand what motivates people to share information


• Scientifically proven best practices for getting people to talk about your business online

Reserve Your Spot for this free live Webinar here

Hope this Helps...

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As you know, Google Adwords is the worlds most popular Internet based pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program where webmasters and advertisers can create their own ad and choose where they want their ad to appear on Google and advertising networks such as Adsense etc., based on the keywords chosen and locations set.

Advertise using Google Adwords

As an advertiser you can extract the following four benefits out of Google AdWords:

1. You only pay for results: Your ads appear for free, and you only pay when interested users click on your ads and go to your website.


2. You can Control your advertising costs: There's no minimum spending requirement, and you can change your daily budget at any time.


3. You can Adapt your advertising to changing business needs: Change ads for new products and promotions, and start or stop your campaigns anytime.


4. You can view powerful reports: Analytics is fully integrated with AdWords, and when you link your accounts, you'll have easy access to detailed reports that show the effectiveness of your campaigns down to the keyword level.

To attract more webmasters to use their all famous Google Adwords, recently Google has started offering the Google Analytics Users a Rs.2500($54)worth Free advertising coupons

To Redeem your AdWords coupon all you have to do is:

1. Go to Google Adwords and click "Sign up now" to create your account if you don't have one.

2. Log into your AdWords account, and you can easily create you first ad to promote with the step by step help provides by Google Adwords.

3. In your AdWords account, fill out your “Billing Preferences”.

4. In the 'Promotional Code' field, enter the coupon code you have received.
(I received my coupon code today and if you want me to share my code with you, drop a comment with your email id)

5. Now, Click “Save and Activate.” and you are ready to go live and start acquiring new customers for Free!!

Note: my coupon code is gonna expires on December 31, 2009! So, if you have any interest to take advantage of this free coupon, do comment with your email id.

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Besides providing useful information such as Traffic Trend, Reach Meter and Traffic Rank about the sites you visit in your Statusbar,the all new Alexa Internet's free Firefox plugin - Sparky 1.4.7 can enable custom searches right inside your address bar powered by Bing, and also helps you out when your browser encounters a network error.

To enable these settings go to Alexa Sparky Options from Tools --> Add-ons --> Options

Alexa Sparky Options

and check the boxes that says "Enable error handling" & "Enable custom address bar search."

With the custom address bar search feature enabled, you can search right from your address bar with the search results powered by Microsoft Bing. And with the new Error handling feature enabled, you can easily navigate past dead end error pages as it provides you relevant alternate links whenever your browser encounters network error.

Also, Sparky 1.4.7 comes with another interesting feature that provides you Related link for each page you visit making your web surfing more efficient and flexible. You can find this Related Links option added to your menubar once you install Sparky 1.4.7

Alexa Sparky's Related Links for each page feature

To install this latest version of Alexa Sparky, simply visit Alexa.com and click on the "Toolbar" link (http://alexa.com/toolbar) at the top and then click on Install as Statusbar button.

Alexa Sparky Install as Statusbar

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If your desktop is starting to resemble a trash heap and you feel its more or less like an icon wasteland, then 'Jeff Bargmann' of Stardock Corporation has created an elegant solution for you - The Fences 1.0

Stardock Fences Desktop customization Tool

Fences is a FREE desktop customization tool that helps you to organize the icons on your desktop into various shaded icon groupings called Fences' based on their category, making them not only easily accessible but also clutter free.

Desktop Organized with Fences

Creating a Fence on your desktop is as easy as it gets, all you have to do is 'Right-click your mouse on the desktop and drag to shape a Fence and then click on the text button that says "Create new Fence here" and name your Fence.After naming your Fence, just drag and drop your desired icons into that and rearrange the contents by dragging and dropping them around. Also with this simple drag & drop method you can change the location of a Fence on your Desktop, move an icon from one Fence to another, remove icons from a Fence etc.,

If you have created too many Fences or any Fence is having too many icons, you can always re-size to condense the Fence window saving the space on your desktop and when it comes to accessing the icons, you can easily find them just by scrolling within it.

scrolling within Fences

After creating your Fences you can configure them by trying different layouts and color combinations provided or use your own customized layout.

Configure Stardock Fences

Besides basic features, Fences also has some hidden trick like:

1. "Double Clicking on the Desktop Screen" enables QUICK-HIDE for all the icons and Fences and you will end up seeing a empty desktop. Double click again to revert to the original position.
   
   There is also a facility to disable 'QUICK-HIDE' for any particular icon or Fences' by right clicking on it and selecting the item in the shortcut menu that says "Exclude this icon from Fences' quick-hide".

   Exclude from Fences' quick-hide

   With this you can keep them pinned to the screen even after you Double-click on the desktop to make the rest of the icons disappear.


2. To easily switch between the 'Desktop' and the 'Windows you are working with' press the Key combination: WINDOWS KEY + D


3. Ability to take a snapshot of your screen, and if you decide to restore it, Fences' will bring back the previous layout.

All-in-all, Fences is a great addition to any Windows PC from XP, Vista to the latest Windows 7. So, do try this Wonderful Desktop Customization tool today and change how you use your desktop forever!

You can download Fences v1.0 for FREE @ Stardock Fences Product Download

Enjoy!!

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