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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."

43 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Drinkdrink by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    The makers of Jajah are hoping that it is as popular as Drinkdrink. Drinkdrink worked where you simply signed up using your friend's credit card number, then logged in and ordered booze. Your friend would receive the bill and then they would hear a brief 'Your friend is drinking your alcohol.' They would usually be calling you and rushing to find you. As an added bonus you could quite probably receive a specialized form of your friend's affection (at least in Irish cities), which you may or may not wish to experience.

    Irish police are still investigating any correlation between the popularity of Drinkdrink and a sudden spike in Irish homicides where in most cases the victim new their assailant prior to the fatal encounter. Similar incidents are on the rise--possibly due to Jajah.

    Seriously, if I tried this on one of my friends, not even a surgeon would be able to locate my cell phone.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Drinkdrink by uchian · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The story is eroneous, the call charges are incurred to the jahjah account, neither phone get's charged, so unless you can get access to your friends jahjah account (on par with getting their email password and using it to spam their friend's inboxes) it's not going to cost them anything.

      In fact, all that the story is talking about is a rather weird way of calling your friends. If you want to jump through so many hoops in order to say hi to people, you probably deserve to be lonely, just call them ffs!!!

  2. Hey, this is Slashdot by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

    Instead of "How To Make Your Friends Call You More", we need "How To Make Friends".

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    1. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by c_forq · · Score: 3, Funny

      When I first read this I thought it was a joke, but maybe this is what you are looking for:
      http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Friends

      --
      Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
    2. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by RonnyJ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I love how this is currently modded overall as 'Insightful', rather than 'Funny'.

    3. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Trust me, it was meant to be "Funny", but "EmbeddedJanitor"'s response was much funnier.

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    4. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by Iron+Condor · · Score: 3, Funny

      What are those "friends" you speak of?

      --
      We're all born with nothing.
      If you die in debt, you're ahead.
    5. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by The+One+and+Only · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh, that's easy. In your class declaration you just put:

      friend foo (bar)

      where "foo" is a function that's outside of the class in question. Of course, the friend can't call you, because it's a friend of the class, not any of its methods.

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      In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
    6. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by MorePower · · Score: 2, Funny
      What great advice:
      Step 1: Decide what kind of friends you want and make a plan to make these types of friends....

      So to make friends, my first step is to figure out a plan for how to make friend. Gee thanks, if I knew how to do that I would already be able to make friends on my own.

      Next WikiHow: How to get rich
      Step 1: Decide how much money you want to have and make a plan for how to get it....

    7. Re:Hey, this is Slashdot by Control+Group · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is only rated 2?

      Come on, people - someone give this guy points. It was the perfect response!

      --

      Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
  3. I can prevent this happening to me by Nasajin · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'll just get rid of all my friends.

  4. Hyper-reaction! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Obviously the Irish voicemail system you refer too is poorly designed in these days of confrence calls...

    This service however does not cause your friends phone to call you, thats rediculous. The service calls you localy, and calls them localy, and then links your calls with VOIP, saving any long distance calls. Thats about it.

  5. I would use it for International Calling by stroustrup · · Score: 2, Informative

    The rates they are offering are much lower than any other service I know of. The only concern I have is privacy. They say privacy is guarenteed, but how I can know for sure?

    --


    If you lost your job today, don't despair. You may die tomorrow anyway.
  6. WRONG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hey Jackass have you ever used Jahjah? The call is _free_ for both sides. Are you a shill for some competitor? How does this shit get on slashdot unverified?

    1. Re:WRONG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is Slashdot. Nobody RTFA.

      - Dave

    2. Re:WRONG! by slughead · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey Jackass have you ever used Jahjah? The call is _free_ for both sides. Are you a shill for some competitor? How does this shit get on slashdot unverified?

      By raffle.

    3. Re:WRONG! by Frogbert · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think it has to do with how US Mobiles are priced. For some stupid reason in the US the one receiving the call is the one who has to pay. The rest of the world goes the more sane route where the person making the call pays.

    4. Re:WRONG! by x1n933k · · Score: 2, Informative
      JaJah is not free. It is not free for local calls, it is not free for long distance calls. Although, it is quite cheap. They give you 60 cents or so and then charge you every time you use it and then a few cents per minute. I know this because I have been using it for the last few months.

      Didn't think of adding friends numbers though. The problem I see if after they rack up a bill they link it to your IP. That and of course, your friends would notice,"One moment please. Jajah is connecting your call" automated voice that talks when the 'caller' calls the 'called party'.

      [J]

  7. Woosh! by bcat24 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Joke: -===>
    You:  O
          >-<
           |
          / \

    1. Re:Woosh! by SocialEngineer · · Score: 4, Funny

      /. Comment System: -===>
      You:                 O
                          >-<
                           |
                          / \

      --
      "Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
    2. Re:Woosh! by uncle_riley · · Score: 3, Funny

      Does that stickman have four arms or just claws instead of hands?

  8. Is that a Firefox plugin? by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've searched Google already.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  9. Make anyone you want call anyone you want! by Facegarden · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

    --
    Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
  10. Re:Wow, what a ridiculously bad idea. by Khakionion · · Score: 2, Funny

    "How about texting them?"
    Shit yeah, I be textin' my ass off. Bitches love textin'. Matter of fact, I also be textin' my weed man, too, cause, you know, he don't like to be on the phone, so I text 'im!

    --
    OMG! Wau!
  11. I know... by NetCow · · Score: 4, Funny

    Assuming this is true - well, I've always felt I should become friends with Darl McBride...

  12. Re:Stupidity must be contagious ... by majoritywhip · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can't remember who said it: If you took the 10 smartest people in the world, put them in a room and asked them to invent the dumbest thing in the world, they would never invent anything as dumb as astrology" (or something like that). But they might come up with something this dumb

  13. JaJah is GREAT! by yfarjoun · · Score: 5, Informative
    I don't know what the poster is high on. Jajah is simply a way to call long-distance for cheap. I use it all the time for calling international and long distance (I hate talking on the cell-phone for a long time).

    The way that they work is that they call both you and your party and connect the call via VOIP. However, you foot the bill with a credit card. I tried many other calling-card companies, Skype, and whatnot. So far, Jajah is pretty good, and darn cheap.

    Sure, you could sign up and put your friends number, but it will not charge any money to them. My only complaint is that you can only change your phone numbers 3 times so if you move often (as I have over the last few months) you might have to open a new account.

    They even give you a few $$$ to spend BEFORE they ask for your credit card number! so you can try them out for "free".

    yfarjoun.

  14. submitter confused by BarneyRubble · · Score: 2, Informative

    Jajah call works by making 2 two local calls to to the participants and then
    connecting these two local calls over the internet (voip). The advantage for
    international calling should be obvious.

    In normal use jajah requires you to credit your account (visa,mastercard etc) and then charges
    for calls. And although you could use it for prank calls by registering someone else
    phone number then connecting them to someone else (the queen or whoever) you would have to
    pay.

    There is a free trail where you could set up a prank call for free but your friends wouldn't pay,
    it would be jajah that would pick up the bill.

      Unless in the US or somewhere you have to pay to *receive* calls but even
    then it wouldnt cost your friend anymore than if you phoned him/her normally.

  15. Re:Stupidity must be contagious ... by stunt_penguin · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA and try and grasp the concept better than the idiot who posted this article; the only service that gets charged here is your own JaJa account - the site phones your landline and your friend's landline using VoIP credit in YOUR account (a lot like skypeout), and your landlines get connected together.

    This is a good service, and not worthy of an amateurish slashdot post like this.

    --
    When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
  16. Re:Stupidity must be contagious ... by nuzak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do you know what slashdot is? It's a feed of nouns. Stories are posted, and when one looks like it could be about something interesting, you plug the nouns into google, and get something much more like the truth. The adjectives and verbs are extra, and occasionally related.

    It's doesn't quite have quite the volume of a noun-feed like digg, though it does have a few more top-level categories.

    --
    Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
  17. Exes by Joebert · · Score: 3, Funny

    This has Ex-Girlfriends written all over it.

    --
    Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
  18. Best way to get you friends to call you More by brusk · · Score: 2, Funny

    Be descended from this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More.

    --
    .sig withheld by request
  19. Re:For Americans by afaik_ianal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So use a call forwarding service. With most providers in Australia, you can hit a button on your land-line and it will divert all calls to your mobile. You pay for the redirection as if you're calling from your land-line. The caller just pays for the local call.

    In reality though, it's really common for small businesses to use mobiles (especially tradespeople). AFAIK, no one really worries too much about the cost of a mobile call - it's really not that much money in the scheme of things.

  20. Not quite by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Informative

    So the way it works on the American system is cell phone users are always responsible for airtime charges. This means that any time you are on a call on your cellphone, it is counted against your minutes, or billed per minute if you've exceeded your monthly allotment. However any other charges are the responsibility of the caller. So if it is long distance between the two parties, the initiator of the call pays those charges, if applicable, regardless of the type of phone on either endpoint.

    There are plenty of plans that make airtime charges more complicated, such as no airtime charges nights and weekends, no charges to people on the same network and so on but the basis is that the owner of the phone pays for the time it's actually on the air. However they don't pay for other charges on received calls. You can call from Germany and you'll pick up the long distance tab, I'll just be responsible for airtime. However if I call Germany I am responsible for both the airtime and the LD.

  21. Re:Stupidity must be contagious ... by LordNightwalker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --
    Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
  22. EXPLANATION by Crazyswedishguy · · Score: 2, Informative

    So to make things clear, before others keep posting about how stupid this thing is:
    Jajah is basically similar to Skype, except that instead of using your laptop to talk, you use your phone. The end result is the same, that is you are connecting over IP to the other person.
    So, you go ahead and schedule a call, your phone rings, you pick up, and you're connected to your friend. In Europe, you don't pay for incoming calls, so this makes phone calls free.
    Now you're thinking, so what's the point of using this in the U.S.?
    Suppose I want to call my family in Sweden, but I'm in New Hampshire. I don't want to pay a fortune for that call. I could use Skype, but I want to take a walk without dragging my laptop around (and I don't have a PocketPC). With Jajah, I pay to receive a local call, they connect me over IP (for free, or else a very low charge, like 2 cents/minute). I've used this a few times, and though it's not completely reliable, and doesn't work every time, on average it works very well. And I expect it to get better.

    --
    This space up for sale.
  23. I'm thinking claws by BeeBeard · · Score: 4, Funny

    I for one welcome our tiny, non-joke-getting lobster stick men overlords!

    1. Re:I'm thinking claws by SeaFox · · Score: 2, Funny

      You know, in Soviet Russia, the joke gets you.

  24. U.S. system also has its advantages. by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  25. The Answer by Quantam · · Score: 5, Funny

    is in basic C++: A friend is somebody that has access to your private parts

    --
    You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
  26. No more telemarketers? Nope, bummer. by ancientt · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

    --
    B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
  27. Let that be a lesson in structured design by Moraelin · · Score: 2, Funny

    If someone forced a collect call on me with no more warning than "someone is connecting your call", I _might_ call free() or delete() on their private parts.

    And this, kids, is why you should use getters and (if needed) setters instead of making an Orkut-inspired design where everyone is "friends" with everyone they ever heard of. If anyone needs your private parts, they can ask nicely and you can give it to them in a civilized manner.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  28. Criminal by B0bReader · · Score: 2, Funny
    I never paid for any kind of voip credits, yet so far today I have:

    1. Made most of my former friends call me twice.

    2. Listened to the rest of my former friends' personal voice-mails (because their phones were turned off when they "called me" so this is only fair, right?).

    3. Gotten my parents talking to each other after so many years (although my Father wasn't best pleased that he had to pay for the call).