Phones

Though not as well-known as Skype or Vonage, FWD, now 12 years old, is the longest-surviving VoIP company in the world. From the beginning, FWD distinguished itself through advocacy efforts (e.g. FCC Pulver Order) and enabling tools (e.g. free SIP device registration), which helped the company attract some 700,000 registrations.

SkypeFind is a feature in Skype. It lets you put listings of businesses in Skype with your review and rating, and review and search what others have put there.

I’m walking along Carlton Street, iPhone in hand, looking for free WiFi (oooo! Days Inn has a big access point!), when someone approaches me.

I upgraded my DSL service to BellSouth’s DSL Xtreme 6.0, which is double the speed of my old DSL Xtreme and costs $2/month less. My DSL service went down about 11:30 last night and was down most of today. When it finally came back around 7PM it was running at twice the speed.

When the Justice Dept won its antitrust case against AT&T, the company was split into multiple local operating companies. AT&T focused on the long distance market. Now, those companies have recombined to the point where only three remain: Verizon, AT&T, and Qwest. Essentially, the old AT&T has been reformed in three geographic regions. Why is this? Because of the Regulatory Inefficiency Theorem.

Vonage Communications and PR VP Karen Cleeve is probably kicking in-house flack Charlie Sahner under the table right now. In yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, Sahner was soundbited in the following gem:

My family and I went shopping at the mall yesterday and after a few hours of going from clothing store to clothing store I escaped momentarily into a nearby Radio Shack. The manager was really friendly and happened to be talking about the iPhone with another customer. They ware talking about the neat features and how they didn’t have to wait in line to get one. It surprised me because the phone came out yesterday and the news had said there were going to be lines of people outside the AT&T stores waiting to get one.

Having used my iPhone now for a decent amount of time I wanted to share some of the apparent short comings and many of its amazing features as it relates to real use in the field.

LG KE850 Prada Phone is a small and light device. Its dimensions are 3.9″ x 2.1″ x .5″, it weighs a mere 3 ounces, so I think that we can compare the device with the Apple iPhone, wich weighs over 50% more. But, the Prada phone has a number of real off-screen buttons and controls. The call control and the back keys are placed on the front of the phone, on the right edge you can find a lock key and a multi-function camera/music key, and on the left edge is the ring profiles key, volume control, and the charger/headset port.

Well my friends, 48 hours after starting this journey, I’m thrilled to report that at 9:02 PM (while I was on hold with AT&T business services no less) I received an e-mail from the iTunes store informing me that my iPhone activation was now complete. Wooo Hooo!!!