Though I was born and raised in the mid coast region of Maine in the fishing village of Owls Head, I’ve traveled North America and Central Europe quite a bit. I've been married to Katalin Vecsey (a Professor at Bates College) since 1991, and in 2002 we had our first child, Kelen, we also have a Mini-Schnauzer named Spaulding.
Having grown up in rural Maine, I enjoy being outdoors, fly fishing, hunting, hiking, kayaking, snowboarding, you name it. Having been an undergraduate in Olympia Washington (just South of Seattle), and lived and worked in both Cologne, Germany and Budapest, Hungary I also have a love the metropolitan life.
Currently I’m a doctoral candidate for the Doctor of Arts degree in leadership studies at Franklin Pierce University, in Concord New Hampshire http://www.franklinpierce.edu/ my dissertation topic is on the Doctor of Arts degree itself, since it is a uniquely American degree with roots in the Great Depression as an alternative to the ubiquitous Ph.D.
My other interests include fine art and video, some of my artistic work in videography can be viewed on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/johnpainter
You can follow along with what I’m up to on iPhone Life or Twitter http://twitter.com/johnlpainter
Truphone slashes prices
Truphone cut the monthly charge for unlimited (actual limit 3,000 mins) from $17 to $13 save a penny or so. Skype's price for the same unlimited service is $7 (actual limit 10,000 mins). The quality of the Truphone customer service is appalling and their billing practices opaque. I was a long time customer until they had one mess-up too many. In a way it has proven to be a blessing, for it made motivated me to find another service. I was shocked at the price differential for the same service. I see that as of this writing their iPhone app has been pulled from the app store (the customer review ratings were crushing) with only the iPad app still available.
Sorry to hear of your
Sorry to hear of your experience, but I've not had that experience. I don't use Skype for anything other than free video conferencing, I've just not found Skype to be that good unless I'm sitting in front of my computer. Though I've been using the prepaid ($100 for 1000 minutes) T-Mobile for a long time in my and my wife's JB/unlocked iPhone and still think this is the lowest price price you can get per minute (in an average year I use only about 1300 minutes and my wife uses less than 800), we can not travel with the iPhones (we go to Hungary a couple times a year) but we can not take our regular SIM's and end up having to purchase ones from Pannon when we get to Budapest. We also don't get data with T-Mobile here in the US, though I know I could probably do it, it's more of a process, so TruPhone at least gives us the ability to roam internationally without swapping SIM's and tap into data here in the US and where it's available in Budapest.
I just took a look at iTunes here in the U.S. (11:58am EST) to see if TruPhone was taken off, and it's still there.
But they could be tinkering with it.