Joy of Gadgets

It’s that time again:

FreeConferencing.com Launches: Until they do something to equalize inter-carrier compensation between most civilized parts of the United States and rural locations, services like FreeConferenceCall.com and now FreeConferencing.com will continue to exist and be profitable. By hosting these services in, say, rural Iowa, they actually make a small amount of money per minute on incoming calls. Anyway, FreeConferencing.com is a way to do a one-to-many call, complete with a web-based console to manage the call.

Vonage Trying To Act Like Mobile Phone Carriers: Vonage, the VoIP landline replacement service provider that refuses to die, is now offering a deal where you can sign up and not pay for equipment, shipping, or activation. The catch? You have to sign a two year agreement complete with early termination fees that are, according to my calculations, worse than a mobile phone contract.

iPopperz Fashion Earphones: Personally not my thing, but these are relatively inexpensive, in-ear haedphones with a number of styles, colors, and whatnot. I would consider buying the black, green, and black pair. One cool thing: they sell replacement earpads. Granted, there is a huge amount of markup there, but it’s the first time I’ve seen them available.

Bad Experience on DeFi Mobile: I briefly wrote about DeFi Mobile in October. Wasn’t sure how well the service was going to be when it went live, but someone forwarded me some correspondence to and from the company related to their experience. In short: it was bad voice quality and improper CallerID. Anyone have a good experience with DeFi Mobile?

Qwest Offering Free WiFi Nationwide: If you happen to live in an area where Qwest is your local exchange carrier and you get high speed Internet from them, now you can take it with you–sort of. Qwest has signed a deal with AT&T to provide Qwest customers free WiFi at 17,000 AT&T operated WiFi hotspots. Personally, I think it’s worth $9.95 a month for Boingo, which offers WiFi at AT&T locations and a whole bunch more!

I’m almost to Inbox Zero on Google Reader. Here are a few things that caught my interest this weekend:

• You Might Be A Web Worker:  It’s not about your “lifestyle.” Well, maybe it is. But it’s definitely not about whether you work for a large company like I do or you work for yourself. It’s about how you view and use the web to get things done. I would go so far as to say it’s not even about being a “Web Worker” but rather having the web being an integral part of your work and play, which it certainly is for me.
• Full versus Partial RSS Feeds: I am not into partial RSS feeds. In fact, with a couple of exceptions, I basically do not subscribe to sites with partial feeds. I like full RSS feeds. Ads in the RSS feed, so long as they aren’t obnoxious, are fine with me. I just wish I could figure out how to get MHonArc to output a full RSS feed for FW1-Gurus.
• Twitter is Better than Digg: I have to agree with Jeff Pulver: Twitter is better. It’s more immediate. It forces people to be concise. I am also more likely to see recommendations from like-minded people, thus a greater chance I might actually like what is being recommended.
• Digital Media Archival a Challenge: With all the new data formats and the ever-increasing progress of technology, I have to wonder at what point all those pictures we took will simply not be readable. Maybe I’ll go through the CDs my wife burned and reburn them to DVD. And then I’ll have to reburn them to something else. I also have to wonder if the conversion process the studios are going through will introduce “lossiness” into the process. Did they store the data in an uncompressed format? If not, expect some extra “artifacts” to be introduced in the conversion process.
• DD-WRT Going Down the Sveasoft Path?: This guy clearly has it out for the folks at DD-WRT, who make alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54GS and other routers. The guy at the linked article claims that DD-WRT is starting to do some of the stuff that Sveasoft did with their “open-source” firmware, namely do some questionable stuff with other people’s code. I admit to not having verified all of this on my own, however it did give me a reason to try a new firmware I had been hearing about: Tomato. I loaded it on my WRT54GS. The interface is a lot nicer, or at least a lot less “bloated.”

I am not even going to attempt to read what’s currently marked as “new” in the RSS reader. At least not right now. I am, however, going to go through what I’ve been meaning to get to for a while and highlight a few older things here:

• GAIM wen Pidgin, yah?: As a result of an ongoing, secretive trademark dispute with AOL, GAIM has now been renamed to Pidgin. Seems like a fitting name for an IM client, if you have any clue what pidgin is. Having lived in Hawaii for a few years, I am all too familiar with Hawaiian Pidgin.
• Why Cell Phones Aren’t Allowed On Planes: Two people: Big-Time Bob, and First-Time Betty. Listeners to KenRadio know who I’m talking about.
• Keep Internet Radio Free: The folks at Pandora remind us that new royalty rates are about to go into effect. This link will allow you to craft a letter to your Congress critters that will be faxed to them free of charge.
• Pink Floyd TV: Ok, it’s just links to stuff on YouTube, but hey. It’s Pink Floyd!
• Skype For Mac 2.6 Improved: The “typing” indicator caught me off guard the other day. That addresses one of my Skype complaints, and it even worked with someone using a PC version that didn’t have this feature. Skype’s PR folks get an F, though. They didn’t tell me about this version even after I expressed an interest to them.
• What Kind of Computer?: For me, it’s more than just one or more computers. It’s mobile devices such as my Nokia handsets and now the Internet tablet.
• Why the Nokia N95 is Better than the iPhone: Most importantly, you can get it today.

That’s the stuff older than a week. I’ll have to come back and do the others later.

As I mentioned earlier, I am still trying to get through the backlog in the RSS reader. Here’s a few older items worth writing about. I’ll come back and pick up the others later on.

• Tim Wu’s Paper on the Wirless Industry: This paper is a must read. It explains, in exquisite detail, why the US wireless market sucks and how we should fix it.
• Are US Consumers Not Smart Enough for Smartphones?: Darla Mack asks the question. A lot of it boils down to the reasons presented in the Tim Wu paper. However, as I’ve said before, Nokia needs to make a better go at it in the US market by offering more opportunities for direct selling (either thru flagship stores or other retail outlets).
• VoIP Hardware fails to deliver on the promise of VoIP: This is Aswath’s response to my rant on how, by and large, VoIP hardware sucks. He’s right. I’d even go so far as to say VoIP software also sucks to a certain degree. The one thing Skype does right that the other guys don’t do is firewall traversal, which even works through a web proxy environment.
• Covad Embraces Blogger Relations: Ken got to talk to Covad a while back. I am also in this program, but due to schedule conflicts, I was unable to meet with them until yesterday. I had talked with Simon McIver for over an hour yesterday and I got the sense that Covad really wants to understand their customers, their business, and their needs. Having a fantastic blogger relations program is one way to do that. I am looking forward to further conversations with them and getting an opportunity to get a “soup to nuts” experience with their products.
• Which Nokia is right for you?: That’s a good question. Right now I carry the Nokia E61. On the weekends, I am adding the Nokia N73 to the mix as well. If I had a Nokia E61i or a Nokia E90, I’d think I’d be doing good. Or maybe an N95. Decisions, decisions…

For about the past week and a half or so, I have been purposefully not trying to keep up with what is in my RSS reader. Mostly because I haven’t either haven’t had time or haven’t had the desire. That isn’t to say that I haven’t been keeping up with what’s going on, what little I have been reading and what trickles into my inbox has kept me well enough informed.

Meanwhile, I am now making an effort, so here’s a few things that caught my eye, though it seems most of it is Nokia-related at the moment. Maybe it’s because that’s where I am in the stack. Anyway…

• Qualcomm Announces HSPA+: More speed is good. Of course, I have my doubts as to whether Nokia will obtain this technology, given they’re still bickering with Qualcomm over CDMA technology.
• Some Cool Pics of the Nokia E65: It was mentioned on a call I was on today that the Nokia E65 was flying off the shelves. These pictures give you a good idea why this phone is flying off the shelves. I saw a prototype of this phone in Finland in October, and it was truly as sexy as it looks.
• Detailed Review of Nokia E90: The Communicator is back! And unlike in previous versions, it’s got just about everything you could want today. Well, except for American UMTS/HSDPA bands…
• Why no S60 Love in the US?: I got to ask a upper-level executive this question point-blank in a meeting today. While I understood his answer within the context of Enterprise Solutions, it doesn’t explain the overall company’s approach to the US market. I wrote about this on my internal Nokia blog. Perhaps I will share what I wrote externally.
• An idea for future Nokia Communicators: I had this idea a couple of years ago, though Stefan did a much better job describing it than I did.

As you may have noticed, I’ve slowed down a bit on blogging. Writing hasn’t exactly been flowing freely from my fingertips the past week or so. Not that there isn’t anything going on out there, just nothing I find terribly interesting. I’m also somewhat behind on the RSS feeds. Well, at least my two email inbox are at zero.

There are, however, a few interesting things going on:

• Ted Wallingford is getting his gall bladder removed. Sounds icky.  Like Ken Camp, I’m keeping Ted in my thoughts for an uneventual surgery. I also agree with Ken that Ted needs to live out here in Western Washington. Then the three of us might get to hang out once in a while.
• Racism is alive and well. I hadn’t even gotten to this in my RSS reader, but I found it while looking through Ken Camp’s site for a link. Read this post. Open your mind. Break down the barriers.
• Know how to watch Internet TV? Make a video, win money. That’s the proposal Jeff Pulver has. Of course, it’s also a way for him to get some ads made for his new project called Network2.
• Alec Saunders asks the question we’re all wondering: Where does a Porn Star carry his Blackberry? I’m not going there.
• Space Invaders on Google Maps. Way cool!
• There’s currently a Woot Off! going on. Not that I’ve ever bought anything on Woot. I’d like to pick up a bag of crap, personally. Never know what you’re going to get. Might be fun.
• I’m seeings lots of unveilings of the Nokia N95. Darla Mack posted a detailed box content listing, Steve Garfield videoed the unboxing, and I’m sure there are others I can’t remember.

More later as I sift through the RSS reader some more.

My RSS reader overflowed with interesting stuff to read while I was off the grid. Time to get back in the swing of things:

• FCC Won’t Release Mobile Phone Service Reliability Data: While I see both sides of this, I disagree with the fact that this data somehow endangers national security. My tax dollars paid for this data, let me see it, damn it!
• Working Anywhere: This is one of Andy Abramson’s blogs about, well, working anywhere. I do have to wonder if or how he will differentiate it from Om Malik’s Web Worker Daily, which I have done a couple of guest posts on so far.
• Jajah Adds Advertising: My question: how obtrusive will the ads be? And will the ad revenue offset the cost of terminating calls?
• Henry Gomez: Skype President and Niklas Z’s bitch?: I have to admit, I just love the title of this blog post by Alec Saunders.
• Video Calls Are A Preplanned Thing: This will probably remain the case until SightSpeed improves their IM functionality to be on-par with everyone else out there. (Hint, Hint!) Also, read Andy Abramson’s take on this.
• New And Improved Voxilla Store: Both in terms of look and number of products offered. (Disclosure: I own stock in Voxilla)
• Mobile Wallets in NYC: This isn’t the first time my employer has been involved in an NFC trial in the states.
• PhoneGnome + IPKall: Two great tastes that taste great together. Used them both in this way for a while. Nice to see the PhoneGnome folks write it up all nice and easy like.
• NBC Goes to Web With Uncensored SNL Skit: NSFW, but funny. Well at least I think so.
• Digg Diggs Video and Podcasting: It’s now easier to see videos without leaving the Digg site. Will have to see how this works in the RSS feeds since I almost never visit the site directly.
• Amanda Gate Part II: Why can’t these people STFU? If you don’t know what that means, look it up.
• Sync Nokia N73 with iSync: Hm… may have to try that. Thanks, Ted!
• Gizmo CallIn Goes International: CallIn numbers for your Gizmo Project account are now available in 28 countries. VoIP Girl notes that availability in Canada is somewhat limited, though.
• FCC Drops Morse Code Requirements for Amateur Radio: Bound to happen sooner or later, though morse code does have its place.
• Costco Return Policies: Yes, they are extremely liberal. That alone is the reason I buy electronics there–if they have what I want. That and I get 2% back at the end of my membership year. Considering I give several thousand of my hard-earned dollars to Costco every year for things I use every day, that executive membership more than pays for itself.

More to come…