How To Make Your Friends Call You More

B0bReader writes, "Simply sign up to something called jajah (a VOIP service that connects real telephones) using your friend's number (mobiles included), then log in and dial your own number. Your friend's phone will ring and after they hear a brief 'Jajah is connecting your call' they will be calling you and incur all charges. As an added bonus you will quite probably receive your friend's latest voice-mail message as your own (at least on Irish networks), which you may or may not wish to hear. There is even a Jajah Firefox extension — which at the time of writing is the Firefox featured add-on — so you can do it right from your browser. This is about the best example of a bad idea, with terrible implementation, that I have seen all day. And with the wonderful publicity the Firefox page offers it should reach a wide audience in no time."

Comments

For Americans

[MightyYar]

If this seems pointless to Americans, it's because it is. In the US, the holder of a cell phone is always responsible for the charges, no matter who places the call. In Europe, if you make a call to a cell phone YOU pick up the charges. They have special exchanges just for cell phones, so most Europeans rarely get hit with charges accidentally. Neither system is as bad as it seems from the other side :)

Make anyone you want call anyone you want!

[Facegarden]

Hey, lets make some people we don't like call 911 (emergency in the states)! Or... anything we want! you just put two numbers in the form and it just makes the first person call the second one, even if they're not you!
lovely implementation....
-Taylor

Re:Stupidity must be contagious ...

[LordNightwalker]

Mod parent up; the moron who submitted the article totally failed to grasp the so-called "article" he links to. Submitter should have done his homework before he posted this crap on slashdot; this ain't even a subtle mistake anymore, and I'd hardly call the concept difficult to understand. It might help if he actually read the stuff he links to instead of trying to be the first to post it...

U.S. system also has its advantages.

[Kadin2048]

There are big advantages to the U.S. system as well. With number portability, you can take your landline number, with its same exchange, and move it to a mobile phone, and use it as your primary number without making everyone who wants to call you pay extra.

The area code of where you transfer the number from (the original geographic exchange) will determine which people pay for it as a "long distance" call, but that's far less expensive for most people than European mobile airtime is, I think.

I wouldn't be willing to keep a mobile phone as my only phone number, if doing so required everyone who wanted to call me pay extra. That just seems rude. I'm quite content to pay for people's incoming calls to me, since I'm the one deciding to attach the number to a mobile, rather than fixed phone.

From the caller's perspective, the U.S. system puts land and mobile numbers on equal footing, which seems more logical to me.

No more telemarketers? Nope, bummer.

[ancientt]

No, I didn't read TFA. I'm bummed though. I was thinking this would be great for telemarketers, I'd try to figure out ways to get them to call each other. If I could do it in large numbers with a mechanize perl program, I'd get geek points and do the world a service. Imagine telemarketers going broke from huge phone bills from unprofitable calls to each other.

Dang.

Disclaimer: If you figure out how, please don't tell me or mention my name during the interrogation.