One of the issues with almost all applications is how they seem to hinder your work as much as it seems to help. This is also applicable to IM, lot of people says that IM has helped them greatly in keeping touch with friends, co-workers and clients, especially providing the instantaneous communication not available via email but a lot more controllable than phone. Still many have found that in some ways most of the time they spend on chat is really not needed, they just get drawn in to chatting for long periods on some unimportant topic. Considering the type of environment on which we live today it is essential that we utilize our time correctly.

Personally I have been well aware of this wastage that occur with most of the communication and community development applications out there. Although my view for long time had been to totally keep away from such activity, I can console with those who need to use these in a daily basis. Recently it has dawn on me that both these sides are not correct. The best way to use IM is not to indulge in time wasting activities blaming the application for it or totally ignore theses applications. As with everything in life it is how you use it that decide is it for your betterment or for your downfall.

Here are a few tips that allows you to use instant messaging effectively in your lives.

1) It is very important to use the status messages effectively. One very common trend with people is they leave an “Available” status all day. This is obviously not good as no one has anyway of knowing you are busy. So if you are one of them at least use “Away” status when you are busy. This way people who have some respect for these issues will not disturb you. We can go one step further in using Away status, that is show different status depending on what you are doing, The away status messages can be like “very busy”,” lunch”, “meeting”,” project work”. This not only gives your buddy a feeling that you are indulged in the same sort of activity as he is and he will probably realize how he hates it when people disturb him at those times. Many people who have used status messages effectively declare that lot of people respect them, especially “very busy” status.

2) I know how important IM might be for some of you still it does not mean you have to IM all the time. Seriously you shouldn’t. One of the best tips is to set some definite time for IM. The time period you keep can vary from one hour to maybe four hours (anything more may not be good). What’s important is that you have a consistent time at when you are available. This can be like 9 am in morning till 10 am, or maybe two session’s one in morning and one at evening. Choose what ever you are comfortable with and let your buddies know about it. Notice how this actually work with first tip, if you let everyone IM you then sticking to a schedule will be almost impossible.

3) A habit that most people who have lot of interaction in their jobs do is allow anyone to IM them, and adding anyone they have slightest contact to the buddy list. This creates two problems, one is your spend IM most of the time with people who you really don’t need to be constant touch with, secondly anyone may IM you at anytime ,especially if you have contacts all around the world(like bloggers). The first step would be to limit the buddy list to friends and very close associates with whom you need daily conversation. Remove everyone else from the list. If anyone wants to contact you they always have email.

4) Even after you have build a buddy list with only your friends monitor your char sessions and see whom you really have a productive chat. From experience I know many people who just keep on chatting about everything under the sun. This is great if you have nothing else to do, but if all you chats with him turn out like this just remove him. You may feel guilty but sometimes we need to make tough decisions. You can always leave him a message saying you are doing this to concentrate more on your work.

5) Earlier post I discussed about different non compatible chat clients. It is a major reason for hassle of using chat. As different people use different IM and you have no compatibility, the person who needs to keep up with all this mat work on all different chat services, which is very stressful and trouble, not to mention the desktop clutter and confusion. There are two solutions to this. One is the use of multi protocol clients, at least this way you can keep up with everyone on one interface. Other is two use just one client. I know you might miss some friends, but overall it probably improve your productivity a lot.

6) How many of you use IM when actually it is either not the right media, or your conversation has outgrown IM. The first thing to realize is IM is not the only media around. We have email, telephone, video conferencing etc. and there are times when one is better that the other. IM is especially good where instantaneous interaction is needed, if otherwise use email. Even if you start your conversation in IM if you feel it has outgrown then move to some other media. For example, if chat you started with buddy now involves the whole office, move to group chat. If chat turns into a discussion that would be better if you could give it some thought, tell the person you’d like to think about it and send them an email latter. Finally don’t be afraid to shift things to phone to settle them more quickly.

7) You must have a purpose and clear idea of what you are going to chat about. Having a purpose assures that you only try chat when necessary and not all the time on trivial matters. Having a clear idea allows you to avoid small talk and focus on the specific action that needs to be satisfied.

Get to the point. This is extremely important for you to save time and also to represent yourself as someone with whom everyone is willing to chat. Although it may seem more polite to talk about the health of the other person or how weather is in their area, the best approach is to cut out the crap and get straight to the main point., say hi, but then get straight to the point … ask a question, state a proposal, ask a favor, etc. When someone else initiates the chat start with something along the line “What can I do for you today?” this prompts them to get to the point.

9) When you have had a chat with clear purpose, and achieved your objective by getting to the point you have almost completed a perfect chat. Still you can go off the track here by not ending the chat quickly. Most people find it relaxing to keep chatting even after accomplishing the objective. Don’t be like that and end it quickly by thanking the other person.

10) A problem of sticking to the above three methods is that others may view you as a person who only wants some need satisfied and not really a friend. You need to avoid that sort of beliefs if you want to have a long term productive relationship. Therefore always be friendly. Never forget greetings and politeness. Also use chat to thank a friend or congratulate him on his achievement (keep it short). These are simple gestures that assure others you are just busy not unfriendly.

11) Lot of people use chat for keeping in touch, a more productive use is to use it as quick idea generation tool or feedback tool. When you need an idea or some feedback on one of your ideas just bounce it of others by Iming them. This is a truly great way to get instantaneous ideas and feedback from lot of diverse people.

One thing I have noticed is that these have not really taken off. I have seen very few sites use them. Actually almost all such sites have been tech blogs that use these for testing as I will also do (read on). Seems that opponents of these services where right, they just didn’t fit in. A good example is the much hyped about 3bubbles which launched in early 2006. After I read about it I tried to go to there web site to test it out on my site, surprise surprise! The site was not accessible and it is not accessible to this day. Another trend is whatever place where such applications are running they have very few people online.

I have to confess that after all this I am going ahead with testing them out. First because I want to see for myself what will happen. Secondly maybe just maybe they were not utilized correctly by other webmasters, so I’ll give it my effort. Thirdly I feel that even if just two people got together at a site and discussed there ideas it will be worthwhile experience to the user. After all we also chat with one buddy at a time.

So what are the types of such service providers and what are there core features, similarities, differences and potential.

I won’t go into every other company that popped up and disappeared or disappearing.

Meebo who we talked about earlier as a multi-protocol web based client is providing there own website embedded chat room. Well they have been offering it for some time. I really haven’t used it but heard it needs some technical knowledge as you have to play with some code. But just last week Meebo improved it in a manner that any webmaster can easily embed it like a widget. I think that certainly drops the barrier to adaptation(at least as a test)

Then there is Geesee witch I first used at techcrunch and found the interface pleasing but sadly not many people around to chat with at techcrunch. This offers ability to chat at other chat rooms across the web from whatever site you are in. I tried that and although there are some active chats they were mostly nonsense. There site says 20,000+ chat rooms and 50000+ subscribers, that’s just above 2 users per chat room(or my fears are realized)

Let’s look at some of the most popular web based clients. The most popular is meebo, which support AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, GoogleTalk and meebo’s own client. There are few more of those

1. RadiusIM
2. KoolIM
3. Imhaha
4. ebuddy
5. ILoveIM

Of these ebuddy and ILoveIm does not allow login to multiple clients at once but others do.

These are very easy to use and needs no explanation.

Another point that is very important regarding Instant messaging is the location based chatting. The normal chat allows you to have a buddy list and you are allowed communication only between your buddies. But location based chat will connect people around a same location depending on the information you provide. You can decide with what area you want to belong to. An example of this is the already mentioned RadiusIm and Meetro. While RadiusIm is web based, Meetro is a downloadable application.

What is Jabber?

Jabber is a set of protocols and the technologies build using those protocols for communicating between two points on a network. Jabber has three main features. First it is an open standard. Second it is 100% XML and finally it has a special feature called a gateway.

Let’s look a little bit more closely at Jabber. Essentially Jabber is very akin to email, because it uses same type of client server model. You have a client, log into a server and send your message. The server relays that message using other servers that run Jabber. The server on the receiver’s side sends it to receiver’s client.

The major difference is that servers keep track of when users are online (called presence) which is essential for real time messaging. Now what set jabber apart is the open standard.

Why?

Because anyone can implement a jabber server, buy running jabber server software. Anyone having a domain name, internet connection and computer, which is almost everyone these days. So with so many servers running Jabber it creates a distributed service which differs from the centralized service given by legacy IM clients like MSN,Yahoo.

So what?

A distributed system can handle scalability much better, the best example is the extremely reliable email service.

The most important feature regards to interoperability is a gateway. It is software that can run on any Jabber server and provides proxy like service. Which means it shows a jabber compatible interface to jabber users but a proprietary interface to other services.(Eg: if connecting to Yahoo messenger it will show a Yahoo messenger compatible interface to the network using Yahoo messenger)This means we can easily communicate with friends using other messaging services. Therefore the task of handling multi-protocols fall on server, thus making the client very simple. The simplicity of developing a Jabber client had led to many implementations.

For a full list check here

The other type of interoperability is provided by clients that run multiple protocols. They just use each protocol depending on what service the user is using. This makes the client much more complex and needs professionals to develop it. There are quite a few such clients out there including Pidgin, Trillian, Adium and Miranda.

There has been some other advances in interoperability, which are agreements between major service providers to allow there systems to interact. A good example is the agreements between Yahoo and Microsoft, Google and AOL. These two agreements led to users having one of these accounts to message the other party without having to have another account or client.

Personally I feel much more can be done and much more should be done.

So as my first area of investigation I am looking at chat. The first thing I found confusing was the difference between chat, instant messaging, Instant relay chat, chat rooms ect…

Well basically chat can be though of as any form of communication between users in a network in real time. Real time is the key fact that differentiates chat from email. Email does not need both users to be online at same time. Some chart applications allow users to send messages to friends that are offline, in which case the boundary between email and chat get fuzzy. Notice that I mentioned “network” not “internet”. Although most of the chat applications run on internet (which is also a network) there are others that can run on LAN’s or point to point. If you look at history the first chat application was between users of a multi-user O/S.

Instant messaging is probably the most famous type of chat and initially involved sending messages between users in a network, although now it can mean a lot more than text messages. They are probably the most famous type of chat application around.

Chat rooms are sometimes identified as chat by some authors, but it is essentially a place were more than one user is connected and everyone can see the others messages. You can select to send message to one person or many. It is form of community communication and was very popular in early 1990, but less popular now.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is another method of messaging; it differs at the technological level and needs its own clients with unique commands to message a group (called a channel in IRC jargon) or send private messages to friends.

Lot of people associate chat with internet ad some even with the web, but the interesting fact I unearthed was chat predates internet and was first seen in 1960s were it was used in multi use systems such as CTSS and Multics.

Then came something more network based with Online-messages by Quantum Link. This was a messaging service that allowed exchange of messages within connected commodore 64 computers.

Only much later in 1996 that the first true internet client was born and that was ICQ (I seek you) client closely followed by AOL instant messaging (AIM). These were followed by a multitude of companies releasing there own client and service. Eg: MSN, YAhoo, Excite.

One fundamental mistake I believe they did at the start due to everybody been so anxious to put out there own chat was that they never cared on standardization of a protocol. This meant every one was using there own proprietary protocols that where not interoperable. This means either everybody adapts one service (never happened or happens) or we need different applications to chat with others using some other application. As chat grew this became a very cumbersome method to keep in touch. Obviously the users have there preferences, especially loyalty to certain company. So the companies need to come together and decide on some common grounds.

One of the early attempts at this consolidation was jabber protocol which is an open standard meaning anyone with domain name and internet connection can implement it in there own server. Then they can communicate with other users in other servers. This is akin to email where anyone can put up a mail server. the crucial feature of jabber was the ability to allow access to other networks running different protocols through gateways. This other protocols included other IM protocol and even SMS and email. The core difference between Jabber and other multi-protocol client is Jabber handles multiple protocols at server level, thus putting no additional restraints on clients, except they have to adhere well to Jabber protocol.

Other attempts at interoperability will be covered in another post.

Chat has obviously evolved from its humble start and we can identify six key areas of growth (according to this techcrunch post ). These are interoperability, contextual chat, location based chat, In-browser chat, Flexible identities, and Rich media chat. I will touch all these in the next few days and much much more, so stay tuned.

PS: You can join my RSS feed if you want to keep up with all the goodies that I post without any hassle.

I was just going through a very interesting post on ReadWriteWeb on whether Facebook apps had peaked in popularity or not. I must say I agree with most of what is said and thought of writing my experience on those issues.

One point that came up was how Facebook users were getting tried of all the applications. I for one had always viewed most of the applications as worthless from the start and made it a point to stay clear of them.

From the first day I joined I got invited to become a vampire, zombie, or werewolf. I accepted those apps as my friends sent the invitation, but soon found out there was nothing exciting about them. The same goes for most of the game like apps. The method of playing these games is you click a button and then it tells if you won or not. I have no active part in the actual action itself. I couldn’t believe that anyone can find it interesting to do this sort of silly activity. I mean true games are at least more fun and some even improve hand eye coordination.

Another fact is the shear amount of invitations you get to add a new app. It takes a lot of my time to accept or reject each request. So now I have just let the invitations grow and just ignore them for most of the time. My procedure is go through new invitations quickly and only add something if it looks like worthwhile. The result is I have hundred of invitations in my request page and growing.

A very important point that was in the original post is how some applications forced the user to send invitation to others if he wants to use it. Another even more disgusting practice is how some allow the user to use the app and then ask for invitations to revel the result. This happened to me in a quiz I took. Although I found the quiz interesting I couldn’t believe that they ask me to invite friends to see the score. I got around it, because when I invited it asks for confirmation which shows my result. So I just canceled the invitation after viewing my score. Anyway I have personally decided that I will not add any application if they ask for invitations first. This is very undemocratic method to popularize once app and should be stopped. Luckily it seems I am not the only one with this frustration as there now is a group on Facebook called No, I will NOT invite 20 friends just to add your application! dedicated for this. The first thing I did after reading that post was sign up to that group.

According to RWW the number of users of the most popular applications are becoming less. I myself haven’t experienced that personally; probably because I am still testing them out, but I can guess the sort of fatigue that must be setting up in frequent users. Even though the apps are popular they create lot of clutter. For example if we take supperwall or funwall I noticed that some days the messages posted are too much, and people tend to put up whatever they like. This is in some ways good as it increase social sharing, but I feel that there is a fundamental difference between sharing in normal life and in social media. That is in life we only share the most vivid and exciting things (not everything), but in the web we can so easily share something we find mildly interesting at that very moment. it is exactly this that leads to the feeling of noise. This is something we need to look in a larger context of all new social interaction taking place on the web. The question hear is “When do we draw the limit?”

In a sense most of the application developers and users of Facebook have not realized what an important social platform Facebook is. After all I feel it as a great concept of building social community between diverse individuals in all corners of the planet. Still most users tend to use Facebook just for fun and not at the true potential of interaction. Developers has so far created a multitude of useless apps and only a few that enhance the social accept of Facebook.

RWW raises the question of whether this is a good thing and answer in the affirmative. I tend to agree with them. It is time the users took control of what essentially is there community. It is time to stop developers running amok with whatever they want. It is time that Facebook administrators impose more strict rules on apps especially stricter invite rules. The more the spread of an app depends on satisfaction of the users the more demand on developers to build better apps. Better hear means a increase in our productivity.

So friends it is time to take action. If you have been disgruntled and wishing things were different it is time to send a message across to everyone that you want a better Facebook tomorrow. If you are one of those who think everything is cool then time to think how much better Facebook can be and how you can contribute to making it better.

Never fear to take up a stand, after all Facebook belongs to all of us.

Today I am going to look at a little web application I stumbled across while surfing. It is called vozMe and it is a text to voice converter.

I have been for a long time looking for good text to voice converters as reading e-books etc… for long time is difficult for my eyes and I get frequent headaches. I have used a few downloadable software and they have worked at varying degree, but none has satisfied me entirely. One of the main things that disturb me most with this type of software is the lack of naturalness in the voice. Listening to a mechanical voice for long periods is not something pleasurable. The most natural voice I have heard is in the web demo of. But it has a limitation in the amount of words that can be used at one time (300 words).

So how does vozMe differ from all others?

It is a web based application, so it is another service that seems to be moving from desktop to web.

Does it have limitations?

As far as I can see there is no restrictions in length of document, and nothing related to that is stated in there website. I did try it out with a document larger than 1000 words, and it worked fine.

How natural is the voice?

Well, let me tell you that you are not going to be tricked into thinking t is natural by listening to it, but the voice is clear and better than certain software out there. It felt like a tad fast than needed. Overall it’s okay for a web app.

How long did it take?

I tested out initially with small sentence and it took about a minute. Then I tested with a 1000 word document and the speed of conversion is about same, one minute. I can’t guarantee this speed will hold for large documents like books, but still it’s very good.

What options are available for playback?

vozMe will automatically play back the voice using a flash player. Also it allows downloading the voice as a mp3 file.

What languages does it support?

Well it says in its home page that language support for English, Spanish and Italian. I was not sure if this means the web interface id in these languages or the converter can handle all three of these. It was logical that probably it should convert in these three. So I used a Spanish-English dictionary and put some Spanish text and listen to it. I must confess I am no expert in Spanish, but it sounds all right to me. Also above the text box,” enter text in English” was replaced by something that read like “enter text in Spanish”(also in Spanish). So my conclusion is it allows conversion of all three languages.

Any other features?

Yes, it had a two other option for iGoogle Gadgets and webmasters. I decided to check what is in store for webmasters and it was a plugin for wordpress that allowed for users to hear the post aloud as voice. Thinking this was something you all would want to try I went ahead and installed the plugin. It gives the icon of a loudspeaker at the bottom of every post. I want be able to keep all plugins and widgets I put up to test there features (check yesterdays post on RSS Mixer), as it clutter my blog. So friends, stop reading this post and go and listen to it and tell me what you think of vozMe.

PS: I may keep the widgets and plugins you recommend as this is your blog as much as it is mine.

I have been looking around the web and have seen the announcement of the launch of a new music Free and legal p2p music download service called Qtrax was going live on Sunday midnight eastern. That’s about 8 hours from now. What really caught my eye was that this service is totally legal, and they have signed on all four major record labels (EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group).

So what’s great about this, it’s that at last the music record companies have realized the futile pursuit of trying to stop people from getting free songs. I mean we have been able to get what we want always with whatever restriction was put up. That need of the fans was the reason for the huge success of sites like napster and why music search engines and Bittorrent site have thrived. S with this release the industry has aligned itself with the need of the fan, which is always good for all parties.

(more…)

Enough rambling and back to web stuff. One thing I have been really concerned for some time is the amount of time wasted on the web. I mean we do some mundane stuff multiple times without really using that time for better utilization of web 2.0 features. One of these is the good old e-mail that has been there from the beginning of Internet.

Without further ado let me outline my problem.

I have multiple web based (and free) accounts for different purposes and lately managing them all seems to take more time than I care to spend. One problem is that I have to authorize each account, this is common to all services and probably going to be solved by OpenID (I’ll blog on this some later date). But not only that but just checking mail at different places or adding rules on filters etc… at several places is difficult. So I googled around for any documents that specify how to handle multiple accounts. I came across an articles witch described how to use Gmail as the central e-mail system and manage other accounts. I was pretty happy with this as I also has considered using Gmail as main manager due to its rich features.

What they have said was pretty simple

1. Forward your mails from whatever address to gmail address. This will direct all the mail from other mail services to send the mail they receive to Gmail, thus allowing to read all mail from one place.

2. Add other mail address to send list, this will effectively give you the option to send from any of the addresses in the list not from gmail address. This is important as you want to reply from the address the mail was send to as it commands authority and hides your gmail address.

I was pretty happy with all this until I read the comments. It seems things were not working as it should and users were facing several problems, mainly

1. Some web based mail services does not allow mail forwarding.

2. Some clients (especially outlook showed name@domain.com via name@gmail.com which effectively nullified the option of sending from one client.

Another suggestion was Gmail has an option to import mail from other mail services. But a complain against this was it does not do this that frequently.

So it was time for me to go out and try this for myself, and try to solve the issues. Below are the detailed steps I took and there results.

1. My multiple accounts are as follows

a.Gmail account for important notifications.
b.Yahoo account for official work
c.Hotmail account for subscribing for free offers etc…
d.Lycos account for an ongoing project.
e.University mail
f) ISP mail
g. domain mail which I didn’t use for this test.

Now at hotmail I found that mail forwarding is allowed but they warned that I need to check in within 120 days to keep my account.

I bumped into the first brick wall at Lycos, were there was no option for forwarding. The story was same at yahoo. This was bad because it is these two that I mostly want to be handled by Gmail. The hotmail account is something I’ll like to keep separate as it gets bombarded by offers that is a pain to check every day.

Still I thought “obviously my university mail and ISP mail must work:” But both did not have the forwarding option (what the heck is going on!!!)this is when I remembered the other method to use Gmail to bring mail from other web mail.

Therefore I logged into Gmail clicked on settings and it had a option telling send mail address. I entered that and a popup asked for my other mail and its password. I gave them for yahoo and……..Error. I gave them for Lycos and………….Error. It said I am not allowed in to the server. Now this is getting very frustrating, so I googled again and came up with the answer.

To access a webmail from a desktop client or some other service like Gmail you need POP (post office protocol) support and free accounts of both Yahoo and Lycos does not support this. Now I was no way going to upgrade to paid account, so I need another way. Now I thought my university mail must support POP so I entered that address and this time its security certificate has expired and no access again.

So here I am after al that effort back to square one. Instead of managing all accounts from one place I still can’t get any mail (except hotmail) to forward to one account.

Well is it a disaster? No not really, for one experiments are not all success stories. On the contrary they fail most of the time. But that failure is a lesson from which we can learn. I hope you learned your lesson from my failure that all webmail is not forwardable and if they have no POP then getting them to one place is darn difficult(difficult, not impossible). So if you have a service that support forwarding or POP go and send your multiple accounts to one client and tell me the results. Anybody with premium accounts can do this easily.

What about the rest of us, are we going to accept the bitter truth and reserve ourselves to multiple account nightmare. No NO NO we will fight back.

PS: I did some experimentation and there is methods to bypass POP restriction. See you should always have faith in experiments. I’ll let you know as soon as I get everything sorted out.

My father told me to setup the fax service in the old computer so he can do
some official work. This computer had windows 98 but had worked pretty well for
a long time until recently when the hard disk failed and I had to replace it.
After reinstalling Windows 98 I had forgotten to setup the fax programme I used
earlier: The Symantec’s winfax pro. So considering it a routine installation I
inserted the CD and went along with the wizard until it said that printer files
were missing and I need to enter the windows 98 CD. That is when I hit the
wall. (Earlier I installed Windows 98 using a CD borrowed from the guy at local
computer repair shop).

Thinking I’ll fix it later by borrowing a CD again or some other means and
needing some help I sat down at my desk, when it hit me maybe there are simpler
means of sending and receiving faxes. After all I am the proponent of moving
from PC applications to all web based applications. So to answer my
question” Is there a method to use online services to send/receive
fax?” I googled around and lo and behold there was some hits. Here I will
jot down what I learned for your use. (You may never know when you need to send
a good old fax)

If you are reluctant to use fax machines there are several ways to overcome
that.

1. Try to install fax software in your machine and use it as I tried to. This
cost you telephone charges, but saves on fax machine and paper.

2. Send fax through VOIP. I am not clear on this yet.

3. Send/receive fax from emails. This is the one that is most popular and very
exciting as you have a hassle free service.

The whole idea behind the third method is to the sender to send an email that
has as its address the number of the recipients fax. The service provider
converts it into fax and sends it to recipient. When some one sends a fax to
your number it is received as a fax and then sends to you as an email.

 Sending is pretty clear as you provide the number.

Question: What is my receiver number? Is it my telephone number?

Answer: Well, no they (service provider) provide you with a fax number. This
            can be a local number or a toll free number. Everybody who sends you fax should send to that.

Question: Can I know if fax was received and when fax was not delivered?

Answer: Yes, they send all receive fax to your email and all failed attempts
            will be notified via email. So it’s simply checking mail.

Question: Do they support all countries?

Answer: That’s the catch! It works pretty well if you are in US, because most
            of these companies are based on US not only can this be done but also            freely.
            But non US countries are either not supported or they can’t get a local                      number.  Although some services supported lot of countries I found that I can’t             get a Sri Lankan local number.

Question: How much does it cost?

Answer: This is possibly my top question as I believe not only in web based but
            also free stuff. Any way again in US it can be done for free. Other            countries
it’s either not possible or complicated. Still the cost of initial setup and
            monthly fee is affordable even for third world country. And most come            with 30
day free trial. The problem I found with these services is the cost to send            a fax to Sri Lanka (they consider local fax as long distance as the number                     provided to me is not local) cost way too much. In some instances it was like             $2.WoW! For one fax.

Things are not all bad as there is a great service run by volunteers called
TPC.int which did allow sending fax to Sri Lanka and their total service
is free. There are some good folks out there still!!

So this is pretty exciting and it turning into another experiment to find the
simplest (my parents shouldn’t need to know any complicated stuff except using
email) and most reliable (don’t wont the fax not to be delivered) way to
send/receive fax at low cost or no cost.

I guess the easiest method will be to buy one of those packages offered by top
providers like eFax and RapidFax, for my task the free trial period will be
enough so no initial cost, but the sending rates are not acceptable. This
suggests in signing up for one of these services and just receive fax and use
TPC to send fax. But maybe there are other solutions; I will talk on them later.

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