Phones

My email is blocked (another vote for moving entirely to Gmail), IRC is blocked, IM is blocked, Skype IM is blocked… I can't even send smoke signals via FTP. On top of that, my SMS is totally backed up and I haven't been getting texts for days.

Earlier in the week, a story came out of Singapore about a hospital that was allowing its staff to carry mobile phones after tests showed they had no impact on medical equipment. Many hospitals have held to their bans on phones in fear they’ll interfere with equipment, but another new study says there’s actually a big benefit in letting people use them (via Textually). Researchers at Yale have found that the use of cell phones in hospitals reduces their error rates since it allows for more timely communications — and the incidence of interference is lower than the incidence of error caused by delayed communication. Looks like that long-held ban might be hurting things more than it helps.

Looks like AOL has finally figured out there is no future in dial up services if you really want to be a relevant ISP in the 21st century.

The post points to the fact that the proprietary technologies of Skype and Vonage and other VOIP providers could pose a security risk. Read the post. He makes some very good points and points to more genuinely interesting observations by a group that watches such things.

It is careful to point out that tracking and monitoring are two completely different things. Your cell phone calls are being tracked (again, not monitored). Your home phone calls are being tracked. Each month you get a list of who you called and, at least with Vonage, who called you. Just like a cell phone bill. When you buy something using your credit card, that is being tracked. Wait until that data starts to get sold around to people. When you make an online payment, it is tracked. When you log into any site using a User ID and a password, you guessed it, it is being tracked. If you work for a company with more then 5 people in it, odds are pretty good that everything that you do online can not only be tracked, but it can be monitored.

SBC makes me hyperventilate and go crazy. I just spent an hour and a half trying to sort out my mom’s phone/dsl bill, which she overpaid. I talked to seven people. For the love of god, SEVEN people, and the first six were completely incompetent. Here’s the conversation, which I can recite by heart because I had to say it seven times today:

For those of you that haven’t heard about this, what they’ve done (besides make a number of bloggers very happy) is provide top end Nokia phones (right now the N90 and N70 phones are being circulated) to bloggers of some notoriety. They’ve asked us to use the phones the way that only hard core mobile phone addicts will use phones and then to blog about our experiences; be they good, bad, indifferent, or extraordinary. While those of us participating are making those comments on our own blogs, Andy has established a site in conjunction with Nokia - The N90 Bloggercom site, which is also collecting those posts and putting up the headlines and links back to the bloggers original posts wherever they may be.

This WashPo story says businesses will eventually be offered a different class of Internet service – and explains how that’ll affect the rest of us:

Think about it. You can call anyone anywhere in the world via computer using Skype and other free voice over IP technologies. Then there is Vonage, Road Runner and others that have free or next to free VoIP technologies. What about cell phones? Most plans allow you to make long distance calls for free. Other plans charge maybe $5/mo to allow you to call anywhere you want.

This morning I signed up for Vonage to be the primary phone provider for our house. I’d be interested in hearing - via comments - other people’s experiences with Vonage or other voip providers.

The phone certainly is a bit bulky. Given Motorola's spate of success with RAZR, you would think they will continue to use the slim mantra again, but the i870 is nowhere near that. It has Bluetooth capabilities as well. The highlight of the phone, of course, is Nextel supported Push-to-Talk.'

Click on the IM icon next to your contacts name and you can instantly text message other Gizmo Project users.

Be the hit of the party with Drinknation, a new mobile application which brings the breadth and depth of a Bartender�s Bible to the palm of your hand. Whether you�re in a bar or planning a house party, mixology 101 is only a flip (phone) away.

We’ll be shipping my configuration to a small office over seas. They’ll be connected back to us over the Internet through a VPN tunnel. This tunnel will connect into our new Cisco 2801 VPN box. Both providing Voice QOS back to the Call manager.

As I wrote in a previous post, I’ve been going through the process of renewing with Sprint PCS and getting new phones. What I didn’t post, however, was my experience with the Sprint PCS rep ’stealing’ from their own store and taking cash from me. I haven waited to write about it until I was 100% sure that was what happened - and now I know for sure.

After looking at prices and testing service for what seems like months, I finally pulled the trigger today and ordered BellSouth phone and DSL. The phone cost versus Vonage, my current provider, is pretty much a wash…Bell may be a couple dollars more expensive. I first considered dumping Vonage a few months ago when I had some tech support issues using their service with my Clearwire service. Those issues never got resolved. Clearwire insists on locking down their network (not to mention they’re a-holes when you call) and Vonage took a strictly “hands-off, it’s not our problem” approach. At one point they actually gave me a bogus set of instructions to allow their terminal adapter to “bypass” the blocking system put in place by Clearwire just to get me off the phone (I knew they were bogus because I work in the tech industry…I wasn’t born yesterday).

I got approval to go ahead and work on connecting our existing PBX at work with an asterisk server. So…I ordered up another T1/E1 card for the PBX and a T1/E1 PCI card for my asterisk server. The two systems will be cross-connected by an E1 [1] crossover cable, essentially giving me the ability to have 29 simultaneous conversations routing between the two systems. It should be quite a fun project, and in the end should save the company a healthy chunk of money. Our hope is to use the additional VoIP extentions for our employees out in the Vancouver office, as well as travelling users.

Apple’s business today is a unique synthesis of fashion and function. That is a powerful combination so long as both parts can be sustained. It is astonishingly easy and enjoyable to use the Mac and Apple’s other hardware and software products, all of which are tightly integrated. And that is exactly what potentially threatens not only Google and Microsoft, but Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, and even Comcast, Verizon Wireless and Tivo — any company that aims to build electronic entertainment or productivity-related services for consumers.

Sony is displaying 4GB and 8GB models of the Memory Stick Pro Duo cards in the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. These cards will work with most Sony products, including the PlayStation Portable (PSP), which will enable the unit to truly become a portable media player. They are expected to be released later this year, but no specific date is set yet. When this is released the the PSP will be able to hold just as much content as the iPod Nano. The only disadvantage with this is the price. The 1GB card currently costs around $75 and 2GB card cost about $150-200. The 4GB card is expected to cost around $400 when it is first released and to drop later on. And finaly the 8GB card might cost $800! Also the PSP is not the only type of device that can utilize this. Many Sony HI-RES cameras (Sony DSC-R1 10.3 Megapixels) support this so that there will be plently of storage space, since such large photos may take up over 10MB per shot. Sony Ericsson Phones that play Mp3s will also support these cards making them more powerfull than any iTunes Moto ROKR phones.

Although I love the way my friend's standard Motorola RAZRs work, I would not recommend Verizon's version because of what they have done to the software.

Just for fun, Moderati compared the top download lists for the East vs. West Coast, using area code as a proxy for region. Although far from scientific in an age of number portability, some interesting trends emerged. Dr. Dre's 2000 release, Still Dre, remained on the top of the West Coast charts, ending 2005 as the #4 most downloaded tone, compared with an East Coast ranking of #19. Those back East seem to prefer the mob-drenched theme of the Godfather, bringing it in at #3, compared with a #14 ranking from Angelenos.

DON'T go with SBC DSL! I would highly recommend going with Charter's Pipeline service. Though Charter is more expensive there is no contract, and from my experience dealing with Charter's support is a lot less painful than dealing with SBC. Also, their service works better and has better uptime!

We hit a snag with this plan at the store, though. This year, Orange have changed the way they do upgrades for TalkShare customers. Each handset is now graded separately, so Sam’s handset doesn’t get the same free upgrade options that mine does. The cheapest way of doing what we wanted to do worked out as getting the M1500 for £50 on my line, but the RAZR on Sam’s line would be £150. Too expensive by a long way.

Sony Japan has introduced a new unique mouse design which integrates Internet phone functionality into the everyday computer accessory. The VN-CX1 connects to your PC via the USB port and acts like a regular connected mouse. However, flip out the mouse and you can use it to make and receive Skype based phone cools. Pretty nifty!

First of all, plugging in to Internet phones requires gear that not every household has. You must have an always-on broadband connection, either DSL or cable, and you need a spare Ethernet port on your hub or router to plug the Internet phone gateway into.

Last night, I saw the Nokia 6682 showed up on Cingular online store. However, Cingular doesn’t offer any discount for new or current subscribers and the 2-yr contract.

Meanwhile, Internet phone calls will become more common now that major Web companies Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are making it easier to call from your desktop computer.