I Love WiFi Calling

I spent last week in Japan and once again came to appreciate the power of being able to use my mobile phone's WiFi calling feature. It allowed me to call home at will without having to pay extra fees usually associated with using my mobile phone outside of North America. Of course, your mileage may vary depending upon which carrier you use.

I have my mobile service through T-Mobile. When I landed in Japan, I got a nice message on my phone saying that I could text and use data without any additional fees. Should I wish to make calls, it would only be $0.25/minute. It is always nice to get a reminder from your carrier letting you know the limitations on what you can do while outside of your regular service area.

I got to my hotel and immediately connected my phone to the Marriott WiFi service. Then I put my phone in airplane mode being sure to keep the WiFi still on. Then I called my wife and everything worked. I know I didn't have any long-distance charges as the phone didn't have the ability to connect to Japan's mobile phone carriers. I could talk to my heart's content without racking up a phone bill.

My wife would head to bed during my lunch time in Japan. While I could have connected to my office's WiFi, I actually opted to spend 50 cents and called her for just a couple of minutes. It worked well and I didn't mind spending a little as I had been asked not to connect my personal phone to the corporate network. The Japanese pride themselves in following rules and so I try to as well when I am there.

Yes WiFi calling is a great way to call home when you are traveling internationally. If you are not sure if your phone will use WiFi or the mobile carrier, just put it in airplane mode and that will force it to use WiFi. Then you don't have to worry about incurring any additional costs on your trip.

My Latest YouTube Video

It has been a little over 2 years since I have started publishing YouTube videos in earnest. During that time I have learned a lot. Sometimes you post a video that you think will be popular only to get a handful of views. Then you publish something and it surprises you with the number of people watching it. I suppose after a bit of experience you can guess at what people want to view and may even be right.

I just published my latest YouTube video and I knew it would be popular, which is why I made it. My most popular video is of the Top 5 Steepest Ski Areas in North America. I actually threw in a ski area that deserved to be on the list but one that I expected to remove when I skied someplace with steeper terrain. Unfortunately I didn't find such a place until this year. I quickly put together a new video and published it on Tuesday. Since then I have watched the video's popularity grow and am pleased with the response. I hope that the new content receives as many views as the original which has been played over 100,000 times.

Now the real question is how to drive more traffic to my channel without constantly putting out new versions of the same video? I can go back through and look at my short films in order of popularity and work on a revision of the second most popular one, which is something I am doing. Ideally I need to come up with new content that is equally as compelling to watch as my most popular video. That is tough to do. If it was easy, we would have a lot more original content out of Hollywood and not nearly as many sequels. Fortunately I have found that controversial topics generate a lot more views than safe ones. Let's see if I can come up with such a topic.

Access to All Knowledge

A couple of nights ago I enjoyed a chat with my oldest daughter. The topic of Ivy-League schools came up and we tried to remember which schools belong to it. Then my daughter mentioned that I told her the name came from the Roman numeral 4 (IV) and represented the original number of schools. I didn't remember saying anything about that, but I could have. Naturally I pulled out my phone and looked up the information. Thanks to Wikipedia we discovered that the Ivy League started with 8 schools, not 4 and that it is an often quoted rumor. In the end we both felt enlightened knowing which schools are part of the Ivy League and that the name really does refer to the plant growing on and around the buildings on campus.

My dad works in advertising and often says not to ruin a good story by sticking too close to the truth. Unfortunately with everyone having access to the world's combined knowledge in a pocket device, it is more important not to stray too far from the truth. For instance, I remember hearing that my last name is the 6th most common in the United States. I made the comment, someone looked it up, and informed me it is the 60th most common last name. Okay, I knew there was a 6 in it but I was off by a factor of 10.

This evening my wife needed to know if her ski pass would work at a neighboring ski area. She looked it up and after a bit of searching confirmed what I told her. It does work and she doesn't need to do anything other than let the RFID scanner in the lift line scan her pass. Now she knows she doesn't have to do anything special to ski there tomorrow when she goes up with a neighbor friend. Why she didn't trust me and felt the need to look up the information, I don't know. I'm hardly ever wrong (see the previous paragraph for an exception).