Every couple months I get a tip about how to get unlimited calling for minimal money. They usually involve some less than elegant forwarding, but I figured I’d post one and hopefully be done with this topic. Here is [van12]’s version posted on Howard forums. First you need a cellphone plan that has free inbound/outbound calling to your home number. You use a home number from a VOIP provider that lets you forward inbound calls to your cellphone. By calling home you can use the VOIP providers cheap unlimited plan to make calls.
[UPDATE: HoFo seems to be blocking us with a registration page now]
Ok seriously. I hate when people complain about how lame the hacks are getting…. but seriously:
T h i s . i s . n o t . a . h a c k . !
The what do you define as “a hack”
i always fely that a hack was any way of doing “some action” with “some thing” that wasn’t the intended use of the “some thing”
this seems like a hack to me
To those who complain on this site: I would like to see you run a site where you had to come up with fresh content every day for a group of people that has a small percent chance of even conceiving something like this little lone doing it your self
…and keep the tip line at a maximum.
…and keep the tip line at a maximum.
thanks jared…that’s needed saying for a while
both hackaday and inventgeek: keep up the great work!
decent hack, too
with the old phones(nokia candy bars) you could change the emergency number from 911 to whatever and call it for free
I submitted a fresh hack just before posting that, so don’t even start. I too hate to see people complain about the posts, but when you only get to read one “hack” a day and you open had expecting to see some cool hardware hack and instead find a post that basicly says you can get cheap calls by call forwarding a cheeper servcice to your regular service, its hard not to feel disapointed. Maybe its just because I already knew this was possible so it was not that intresting to me personaly. I realise that running a site is hard work, and don’t get me wrong I love had, it is the 1st page I open when I get to work in the morning and I love getting to read a fresh post every day. I wasn’t trying to dis on this site at all, I just think that holding a site like this to a higher standard can only improve it in the long run.
And besides even ep said in the post he gets sent hacks like this one all the time and he just wanted to post it and move on. Do you guys think that starting your own busisness and then paying all your bills with your busisness account and then writing it off at tax time is a hack? Or just tax evasion?
many of us have plenty of free time and skill to come up with new hacks; often we either
a. either lack projects to work on/have lots of unfinished projects (like my netier thin client -> wireless music streamer)
or
b. come up with a hack that we don’t think is newsworthy (like how I ported my USB 802.11 adaptor to an altoid gum tin and added an antenna extention to it)
As a weekend hacker, I would love it if there was a top 100 list of quick hacks people were looking for. For instance, a person could make a suggestion like “make a quick and cheap fm transmitter from common/easily accessable parts”, “turning a disposable camera into a DIY stun gun” or “hacking up a cheap wireless controller for your projects”. That way, if I got bored from my long projects I could switch gears for a moment AND make something that others would find useful. What more could a hacker ask for?
There’s a thing called team hack a day, click my name, there’s a forum, we help fight cancer (seriously).
You want to start a hack or two? we’ll help you out.
i tried the site and after registering i was unable to read the post
can someone post the content of the message in the comments or something
Since we’re all complaining now: does anyone else think the whole automatic removal of capitalization is a bit juvenile? This site is home to some pretty remarkable people doing pretty remarkable things, and I personally think that it is a damn shame to have this whole immature “WE”RE 1337 h4x0rs t00 c00l for capitalization!!!” mentality. While capitalization is not nearly as important as writing clear and logical arguments or using correct punctuation, it allows us to more acurately articulate our thoughts and ideas, even if only by a small amount. Now, I don’t claim to be some kind of master of Good and Proper language skills, nor do I wish to tell anyone else how to speak, but in my opinion modifying users’ posts to achieve some cool “hacker” look is down right inane. After all, if you are too stupid to grasp some of the simplest rules of language you probably wouldn’t be reading this site in the first place.
Ranting aside, I love this site and at no point in time have I ever had a problem with the posted hacks. Slow news days, slow hack days; get over it. I am continually impressed that the hacks keep coming, and I’m sure it’s no eask task to keep this site fresh. Good work!
Is there a way to access this hack (or whatever you call it :P ) without registering for the forum?
I think the removal of capitalization is to prevent the little kiddies posting how ‘leet haxxxerzz’ they are.
d o: I acknowledge the need for spam filters to prevent annoying instances of all caps posts and other forms of trolling; I think Slashdot has a system in place to prevent such things. Removing all capitalization is overkill for this purpose and would be a sign of some seriously half-assed coding. I’m fairly certain that it is done for stylistic purposes only.
Sorry Elliot, normally i am against all of the haterz that complain about the hacks, but posting a link to a registration page on a forum to see a way to forward calls around to save money on your phone bill… Now we are starting to get into the scum that sell how to get an ipod for cheap on ebay level…
i mean, couldn’t we at least see the hack of the day?
i think that the lack of caps is cool.. caps are so passe these days ne ways..
also.. bad punctuation an grammar are winningful
I too have submitted a hack on an eye tracker (with both software and hardware how-tos)and feel like a let down to see this one showing up on my radar screen.
did you ever think that the eye tracking was already posted because i remember seeing an eye tracker or 2
eliot drop Team hacka day a line were slacking in the numbers :(
alright you guys, you can quit your whining now:
here’s a greasemonkey script to restore the capitalisation on hackaday.com
http://www.hotplate.co.nz/projects/hackaday.user.js
paste the URL in to your firefox URL bar, hit enter then press “install”. requires firefox 1.5+ and greasemonkey installed. I know you can do this same thing with user styles, but this way is more fun.
or, it would seem, just right-click the link and choose “Install User Script…”
:)
opera can run some greasemonkey scripts to some extent
i don’t give a hoot about caps, so i won’t even bother trying the script mentioned
but anyone using opera(like me), you’re not out of luck yet – read up on userJS and try it
I don’t care about the lameness of the hack, but it is just sad that hackaday links to a forum that requires registration. Thats not cool man.
I’m with #11 ejonesss. I went through the trouble of registering, and it says I don’t have permission. What gives?
You didn’t have to register when I first posted the link.
I read this site at least 3-4 times a week via an rss reader. You want to see some weak “hacks?” Take your ass over to instructables.
Otherwise, shut your cliched, whiny hacker forum guy yap. way to devolve a post about mobile phones into one decrying capitalization in the comments fields. Clowns.
great site.
Hmm…
Seems all well and good but id have to get voip stuff set up…
I <3 my free nights and weekends and no roaming plan :)
Woo hoo! Thanks, ex-parrot, that’s even better than today’s hack, which HoFo seems to be denying even to me, and I’m a registered user!
dax and orphaze stfu (i hope you can understand that since its not capitalized). you make me sick.
thanks eliot, real fans of this site appreciate the hard work you put into this site everyday to keep it going.
ex-parrot: Very cool, thanks! I’ll have to play around with this greasemonkey extension, it looks cool.
jj: I’m sorry to make you ill by voicing a simple opinion about a stylistic issue of this site. Thanks for reinforcing my “1337 h4x0r” stereotype though. (I hope that you could understand that since it used a few words outside of your average ten-year-old’s vernacular.)
Are you guys ok? Ever hear of web pages cached somehwere? Google pulled nothing up. Next Yahoo… http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howardforums.com%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D940990&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&u=www.howardforums.com/showthread.php%3Ft%3D940990&d=Y4SE4DmtNAQM&icp=1&.intl=us
:P
Yes…this would be more helpful if somebody posted a new link…soon. As for the hackiness of this, it is low, it is like popular science “DIY put music on your phone and games on your ipod”…
Also, since there are no ranting forums here, wTF happened to the wonderful weekend thingies with like 20 links to cool projects? each one of those was more interesting than this stupid phone .BLANK.(not gonna call it a hack)
ok…theres a link now…missed that part…
thanks wiggles
Two words: coral cache. Use it.
It’s not accessible at all anymore. I’ve been a long time member of ho-fo for a LONG time (read: 4+ years) and even I can’t view the post.
Howard forums is not blocking with a register page. the page it is showing means the thread has been deleted or moved. I get that all the time, I’ve been a hofo member for years :)
I thought of another way of making calls on the cheap. Sign up for one of those unlimited internet plans using a pcmcia card and put it in a pda with such a slot. Then connect to the internet and place your call. Receiving calls would be rather difficult with this technology though.
anyone have a copy of the page that was removed from the forums? The yahoo link doesnt work and google doesnt have it cached
Check out the following. I think that this may be similar to the page that is no longer available.
http://nerdvittles.com/index.php?p=124
Please find another link to read the article because i cant read it, i cant get in the forum
bad punctuation doesn
can anyone tell me how to nget free time on a cell phone i know somebodt that does it but don’t know how they do it they want tell me any info would be great
i need to know is there a way to hack a t-mobile phone to get it turned back on and keep it on??
also i have a net 10 prepaid phone is there a way to increase the minutes by hacking it some how??
If you live in Canada, you can get unlimited cell calling for cheap by using a service like http://www.telsair.com
Doesn’t need internet connection like voip.
is there a way to become a content writer for the site?