The folks at Vonage have stepped to challenge the folks at Skype and Tango with a new Vonage Mobile app for iOS and Android that promises free app-to-app calls, free text messaging, and 30-percent cheaper VoIP than Skype. Also using the Vonage Mobile app you will save 70-percent less than “major mobile carriers” the company claims, with in-app payments via the Android Market and iTunes account.

Users can add calling credits in top-up increments of $4.99 and $9.99 and if your friends and family use Vonage VoIP accounts for their home or business line then you might not need to bother spending a dime. Calls to those numbers are also free and you don’t need to be a Vonage subscriber to use the new mobile app.Vonage users can view their existing credit and look up international rates in the app before making a call which this eliminates the need for credit cards, PIN entries and the need to leave the app when the user wants to make a call. Another cool feature is that your existing mobile number shows on Caller ID, so there is no need to create and share a new username, and friends and family can know who is calling.

Vonage Mobile doesn't limit calls to people with the app, or even to people who have a smartphone. You can call direct from Vonage Mobile to virtually any phone number on the planet. You can dial internationally without needing to activate special services with your mobile carrier. And most importantly, you can do this with the address book on your phone and your existing mobile number.

For more information on Vonage Mobile app, which works on the iPhone and Android smartphones along with the iPad and iPod touch and Android tablets, head here.

Note: for a limited time calls toany phone in the United States, Canada or Puerto Rico** from anywhere in the world will be FREE!!!

The folks at Astraware have announced the release of two fun new games for Windows phone and Windows Mobile devices called OddBlob and Police Range.

OddBlob is a fun puzzle arcade game created entirely from modeling clay. Help OddBlob bound across the squishy maze to grab bonuses, chomp fruit, and win points as quickly as he can as the chasing tiles disappear behind. Bounce and double bounce tiles can help you reach your goal or throw you through the gaps to impending peril below, and cake slices earn you a try at the Cake Or Doom mini-puzzle!

Police Range is Astraware's take on the classic shooting range game. Put your skill and accuracy to the test as you train on the shooting range to become a crack police marksman. Choose from 2 ranges to train on: Target Practice, and Crime Alley, which between them test your accuracy, reaction speeds, eye and nerve!

Both OddBlob and Police Range include Astraware's new online high score table, which enables players to submit their best scores using wifi or data connection to see how they compare with other players worldwide. Players with non-connected devices can post their scores on the local high score table. Both games also include a range of fun awards and achievements.

OddBlob  and Police Range  are both available for devices with touchscreens running Windows Mobile or Windows phone 5 and later. Both games are priced $4.99 each, and a special discount will be available to Astraware Newsletter subscribers. To subscribe, visit: http://www.astraware.com/my/subscribe.php.

I have received a few emails of people having problems with third party plug-ins and wanted to know if there was a way to uninstall the latest SP2 for Office 2007. Well you are in luck, Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) does allow for a clean uninstall where in the past you had to uninstall the entire Office suite and then reinstall. The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) is the first service pack to support uninstalling the updates for the 2007 Office desktop products.

I haven't had any problems with it so far only speed and stability performance increase, but if you do at least there is a way to roll back the clock.

The Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite is a command line tool which will assist with uninstalling client patches installed by the 2007 Office Suite SP2. To download this utility click here.

The 2007 Office SP Uninstall Tool is contained in a package called Office2007SPUninstall.exe which is a self-extracting executable file. The tool itself is a single file called OARPMan.exe. There is no installation for the tool. OARPMan.exe, the Microsoft Software License Terms (previously known as End User Licensing Agreement or EULA), and the Readme.txt files will be extracted to the location you specify.
Note that you must use a subfolder such as C:\subdir to expand the tool. You cannot expand the tool into the root directory of the hard drive (for example, C:\).

Well if you checked your Windows Update this morning you may have noticed that there was a nice surprise in there The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)- yeah another short name. The service pack brings back some very noticeable performance gains and stability to the whole office suite, especially for me in Outlook, where I spend most of my time and recently it was crashing more than a car at a demolition derby. The patch for Outlook alone is worth the 290MB download. It loads and closes much faster and is almost on par with Outlook Web Access in performance. Search still is very slow and I still rely on LookOut, (which needs two dll’s patched to work with 2007, but it works even with Exchange Archive Servers!)

Here are some of the details of what was updated:

• Service Pack 2 adds the ability to open, edit and save documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These applications now let users save, open, and edit files as OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp).

• The 2007 Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 is the first service pack to support uninstall of client updates through the Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite as well as via Windows Installer command line. The Service Pack Uninstall Tool will be available as a separate download.

• The Microsoft Save As PDF or XPS add-in has been built into Office applications in SP2. Users no longer have to download and install the add-in separately.

• When many graphic objects are present performance has been improved.

• In many scenarios, expect increased print fidelity of graphical objects.

• Improved interoperability using standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic. 

• Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication support in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SPD.

• Outlook

  • Performance in startup, shutdown, view rendering, and folder switch has been improved.
  • Calendar updates, search, and RSS are more reliable.
  • The object model has been improved.

The 2007 Office Suite SP2 has been tested and is supported for Internet Explorer 8. Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 7 and Windows Server R2 will all be supported upon their release.

Download Office 2007 SP2 directly from here

Also check out this Excel spreadsheet which shows all of the changes in this update: 2007 Office Service Pack 2 Changes.xlsx.