I’m in Bangalore with our mobile developers right now. A design question came up and we need your help. We are working on  a mobile app which will auto dial international numbers stored in your contact/address book. The app will let you select a phone number in your book, then call it through the IndiaLD gateway  without any need to dial the access number, enter a PIN, or enter the destination number.

How do you guys store international/Indian phone numbers in your address book as it relates to the country code?

+91 (then number)

011 91 (then number)

91 (the number)

Or some other way? Post a comment and let us know. It will help us get this out quicker. The Windows version will be coming first in hopefully a couple weeks.

Sorry for the delay in getting the contest results up, but traveling left me without database access for a few days and I couldn’t update accounts.

Anyway onto the results…I ended up giving away minutes to 45 accounts or so. Well over the 20 I promised, but I am sure you all appreciated the generosity.

The most commonly selected number was 3. Everyone who chose 3 gets the booby prize of 50 minutes.

Next most common was the number 2. You all get 100 free minutes.

Number 4 came next. All those choosing number 4 get 150 free minutes.

The big winner was number 1. The first came in first, so 6 of you get 200 free minutes each.

That contest wraps up our May giveaways and should have put us well over our goal of giving away 10000 free minutes last month.

Check your accounts and you should see your balance increased by the appropriate amount. If I somehow missed you, just email me.

We are going to giveaway free minutes to call India to 20 account holders. This week’s giveaway is a bit random though. You need to pick a number from 1 to 4, email it, your account number and the subject Twitter to chris@indiald.com. I will giveaway minutes to the first 20 people that email me.

Here is where it gets interesting, the winners will get between 50 and 200 free minutes depending on which number they pick. The most popular number emailed to me will get 50 minutes, the next most popular will get 100 free minues, the third most popular will get 150 free minutes, and the least popular will get 200 free minutes. In the case of a tie, I will split the minutes.

You got to be one of the first 20 people to email in order to win the free minutes. I get quite a few emails from people looking for free minutes after I have wrapped up a contest. Sorry, but you snooze you lose, so if you want to win be quick about it.

My big trip to Australia and India starts in 6 hours. Most of tomorrow will be spent in LA, so I will try to get those minutes added then. If not, you might have to wait a day or two since I will be on a plane then in meetings.

A couple of us are getting ready to do some serious flying over the next few weeks.

First we are heading down to Australia. In addition to IndiaLD in Australia, we also run AussieCall.com. Aussie Call offers free international long distance calling to 70 countries (including India) using mobile cap minutes. We are just about to expand Aussie Call to include free conference calling. We are also looking to connect with the Indian community in Sydney, and get the word out about IndiaLD.

After Australia, we are heading to India to meet with our customer service team and check in on the development of some mobile apps we are working on. While I have been to the subcontinent before, this will be my first time in India. I am very excited to get over there, see the sites, the sounds, and of course eat the food. Desi cooking holds a great place in my heart, even if my stomach doesn’t always agree.

I’m interested in hearing from the Bangaloreans out there. Let me know what we should see, where we should eat, and all that sort of stuff. I am also interested in meeting up with people as both a buyer and a seller. I think we got a great product that businesses over there could use, and I would like to see if we can find some additional services and content for you guys. Games, ringtones, sports, music, news, stocks, podcasts…if your phone can do it then we want to look into offering it.

After that I am heading back to Australia for a little R&R in the Great Barrier Reef.

If you got recommendations on places to go and eat, post them in the comments. If you got a contact or group in India or Australia that might be worth meeting with, email chris@indiald.com. Looking forward to hearing from you.

IndiaLD is happy to announce that our new Japan and Singapore access numbers are now live.

Japan – Tokyo: (81) 345209522

Singapore – (65) 31031308

Singapore has been a popular calling destination since we opened up additional country calling, and we hope that outbound calling from there goes just as well. Japan is an important economic destination so we felt it was important to add that one in there for our business users.

With the addition of the access numbers, we are opening up purchasing from Japan and Singapore. If you know someone down there that would benefit from IndiaLD, be sure to spread the word. Here is a full list of our access numbers in 12 countries.

To add Singapore/Japanese phone numbers to an existing account:

You can use these numbers the same way that you can use our USA – (530) 645-5555 or Bangalore India – 80 42614700 access numbers. You either need to have added the calling party’s phone number to your pinless dial settings, or they need to enter your account number into the prompt.

To add someone to your Pinless Dial, follow these steps:

Important: By adding someone else’s phone number to your account, you are sharing your minutes with them. When they make a call, it will deduct from your monthly minutes. If you are over your monthly minutes, the call will be charged 3.9 cents per minute which is our normal overage fee.

Our access numbers were not working last night for several hours. We fixed the problem this morning and service has resumed. Sorry for the inconvenience guys. When I know more I will post an update.

UPDATE: A software error hung one of our servers last night. The error was rather obscure and therefore didn’t generate the usual alert page that goes out when a machine freezes up so our techs did not react as quick as they usually do.  Again apologies.

Post the answer in the comments below. First account holder to get it right wins.

I’ll check and approve comments after the Lost finale. Good luck.

Here is the coded message: nozxybtsknajmzsiwjikwjjrnszyjxkwtrnsinfqi

UPDATE: Whoops I should have mentioned that the prize is 500 free minutes.

We gave away over 6100 minutes in our Mother’s Day giveaway. Hope you all enjoyed calling your moms for free.

Since this is now over, I am not going to be processing anymore emails requesting minutes. Look for another giveaway later this week.

Don’t forget that we are down from 1-4 PM PST today in order to move to a bigger rack.

Update: Due To Overwhelming Popularity, The Giveaway Is Extended Through Sunday.

We’ve been running a giveaway on Twitter offering 50 free minutes to any account holder who emails chris@indiald.com with their account number and the subject Call Mom. While response  has been great, I know there are about 12,000 more of you out there that haven’t claimed their free minutes to India yet.

If you have not sent an email already, then do it before midnight EST on Saturday Sunday, and I will add 50 free minutes to your account so you can call your mom on Mother’s Day for free.

We give away free minutes every week using twitter.  Keep an eye out and win.

We are going to be down from 1-4 PM PST on Monday May 11th in order to move our servers into a bigger rack.

IndiaLD has outgrown its current rack and we need to move into a bigger one so that we can expand our services in the near future. We apologize for the inconvenience, but have picked one of the quietest calling times in the week in order to have the least amount of impact on our users.