calls

A favorite of RadioShacks nationwide, now this household name offers its very own app. Sadly, FREE Calls with magicJack on your smartphone doesn't work nearly as well as replacing your home phone. Call quality is spotty and some calls aren't delivered at all. It could save you if you're really short on minutes, but it's not terribly reliable.

The app gives you a nice, big keypad to dial on, which makes sense considering the service is especially popular with an older crowd. You can also choose to pull numbers from your phone's contact list. If … Read more

Bobsled Calling - Unlimited Free Calling is one of many "unlimited free calling" apps that have sprung up, and like so many others that we've tested, it failed to work as promised.

Bobsled first requires access to your Contacts, which is typical for this type of social app. You'll have to create an account to sign in, or you can use your Facebook information. We opted to create an account by entering our e-mail address and a password. We were then told that a confirmation e-mail would be sent to the e-mail address we provided, and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--French telecommunications company Orange is showing off Libon at CES 2013, a communications app that lets you make free calls and texts with other iPhone users, but does more than most apps in the category. I got a demo from the company at CES, and the app seems like it could be a winner.

Like popular chat app Whatsapp Messenger, Libon lets you chat with other friends that have the app, but you also have the ability to make calls to other Libon users with HD-quality sound.

Upon launch, you'll see the app's home screen with icons … Read more

People who use Gmail to make free phone calls in North America will be able to keep doing so for another year.

Google said in a blog post today that it was extending free domestic calling through 2013. It also touted its cheap rates for international calls.

Launched in the summer of 2010 as an alternative to Skype, Google's calling plugin lets people make calls to any mobile phone or landline via the Chat section in Gmail. The service is available for a slew of countries (there's a list here, under "show all rates").

For a … Read more

Whether you love them or hate them, memes -- culturally relevant multimedia often enhanced with a witty caption -- are here to stay.

In an attempt to crown the king of all that is viral, the meme maniacs at the site Know Your Meme analyzed internal page views, search interest on Google Trends, covers, and even parodies to suss out the top memes of 2012. … Read more

A new Apple technology could make it easier for you to manage incoming phone calls.

Approved today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the patent dubbed "Dynamic Context-Based Auto-Response Generation," describes a method to intelligently manage an incoming call, whether you're on the line with someone else or simply unavailable.

In one scenario, the system can be totally automated. So if you can't answer the call, the caller receives a specific pre-recorded message based on the caller ID and other attributes. In that case, the caller would be prompted to leave a voice mail. … Read more

Video games are the subject of so many studies, not to mention findings. Some suggest cognitive benefits, others behavioral issues that may or may not persist over time.

Many of these studies are small enough to require further investigation, and the journalists reporting on them often confuse correlation (when results happen in tandem) with causation (when one action is shown to result from another).

A new study out of Ohio State University suffers from a small sample size (70 participants), but its findings -- that people who play violent video games for three consecutive days show increases in aggression and hostility … Read more

Vtok is a messaging and audio- and video-calling app for the iPhone and iPad, available free from iTunes. Using a browser plug-in you can also use Vtok on a Mac or PC. You can use a Google ID to identify yourself to Vtok, although Vtok is not a Google-provided service.

From the Vtok's clean interface you can select the person you want to chat or talk with from a list of contacts, or dial that person's number using the keypad, and then the connection is made. A small bar of icons at the bottom of the screen lets … Read more

Web-based communication apps offering free voice and video calls over Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G as well as text messaging are some of the must-have apps for any Android device. Tango Voice & Video Calls lets you easily connect to friends while making your communication free and fun.

The primary menu of this app takes users to the standard line-up-at-the-top arrangement of most interfaces in mobile OS platforms, with options like calls, messages, and settings organized at the upper part of the screen. This makes the presentation of basic options easy and intuitive, since you've most likely already encountered such … Read more