Technology

Can I Find The Right Phone? Part 1

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Since October I have had a minor problem left unresolved. I have been unsuccessfully searching for a wireless phone I could use every day. I have written previously about how my Treo 680 had been causing me too many problems so I was on the outs as my day to day mobile. The issue is I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement. As much as I jump from phone to phone (I do about 1 a year and maybe toy with an alternative one during that time but never switch over to it) over the years, I have been sticking to Palm based Treo’s relatively consistently. I did go from a Treo 270 on T-Mobile to a Treo 600, then to a Treo 650. From there I went to the Treo 700 on Verizon. When I left my last company I switched my number to a Treo 680 on AT&T. It has been several years using the Palm OS on Treo phones. As I have said in the past it has been a love / hate relationship.

So even though it sounds kind of silly I am stuck on what phone to use day to day. I guess it is such a big deal because I use it for allot more than making calls. In fact I use it for other stuff more than I use it as a phone. I check my mail on it. Read the news on the way to work. I keep track of my expenses on it. I use it as a calendar, and more importantly I track all the tasks I need to accomplish on it. I use it to track notes, and I take notes with it more than I use pen and paper. If I am in a meeting playing with my phone, it is because I am actually taking notes or updating tasks related to what we are talking about on it. There is tons more things I use it for, but that is enough for you to get the point. Because of all my requirements I am a bit picky.

The Palm OS on my Treo 680 did everything I needed it to. It just would freeze up for no reason I could identify (maybe due to loss of cell signal but if it was that it is a retarded problem) and would crash or reboot at least once a day. Recently I also had huge issues syncing my Treo to my Macbook. The Missing Sync is a great product, and I have used it for years but since they updated the Palm version it has been buggy. I have had to reset the data on the phone dozens of times due to corrupt data or the software simply crashing on syncing some conduits, especially my task lists. So I can have everything I want, but deal with problems all the time. It kind of feels like WIndows, but I solved that problem by getting a Mac.

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To Skype or Not to Skype

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As I said in a post a about a week or so ago, I have made a decision not to renew my .mac subscription and instead I went back to my traditional hosting provider, even if I don’t use it that much. I do use it enough to warrant a traditional provider that gives me flexibility. Another technological decision has also been on my mind as of late. This one involves VOIP phone providers.

I currently have a Broadvoice VOIP account. I have had one since I moved into my apartment in Manhattan in 2003. I have my number setup on a Cisco 7940 IP Phone. I think the service and the phone are fantastic. I haven’t had many reasons to complain, but I just don’t use the service that much. On the other hand I also have a Skype In number, and until recently I had Skype Unlimited. Now I am paying month to month for Skype Pro. The problem is I don’t use both services enough to justify the expense of one, let alone both. I have a mobile phone that is my primary number, and I don’t even go over my monthly minutes on that. It is smart to have a VOIP phone since it is really cheap. I want one just in case I have issues with the mobile, but like I said I don’t use either of them that much.

To cut costs I have been thinking about dropping either Broadvoice or Skype. The problem is both services have their pro’s and con’s. Skype is actually cheaper per year and if I started using it more the cost is also fixed since I get unlimited inbound and outbound calls on the plans I have. Broadvoice has a few nifty features Skype does not but I don’t use it enough to make it worth my while. What Broadvoice does have in its advantage is that I can use my Cisco 7940 phone with it. That phone is great. It has a good speakerphone, and I have a really good headset for it. The Skype cordless phone I have has a good speaker, but no headset. I can use a headset with Skype if I use my computer, but there is no way to change from headset, to handset, to speaker on the same call if I use the computer. As weird as that sounds, it happens more than you would think.

My final option is to do what I have done for years in the past before VOIP. That is drop all other phones and just use my mobile. All the major wireless carriers announced unlimited phone plans this week, so that is a very viable option right now. What to do…

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Unobtrusive Technology

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While waiting for the train the other day I got to thinking about some of the technology I use everyday that you don’t think about. Stuff that is just there and works so it is unobtrusive. That type of technology is the best kind, but like I said I don’t really think about it.

The first thing that came to my mind is my Tivo. I have always loved my Tivo or any other DVR I have had, but now a days Tivo is just like a cable box to me since I don’t have a cable box. Tivo just works. It is part of the TV experience for me. It almost never needs to tinkered with. It just blends into the experience, until I go somewhere that doesn’t have Tivo and then I wonder what I used to do before 2001 when I didn’t have a DVR.

My sonic tooth brush is next in my mind. Yes, it is just a tooth brush, but it is a mechanical device. It works so well I don’t know what I did before I had one. I don’t like to travel since I don’t carry it with me when I do. As with the Tivo it just blends into my world that you don’t realize it is there until it isn’t.

The same affect my Tivo has on TV seems to be happening with my new Kindle. It is just like a book with unlimited pages that I leave in my bag and can take out to read whenever I want. It is no longer a piece of technology, but a tool to read that to me is becoming no different than a paper book. That is the difference between a device like the Kindle and lets say my mobile phone. I use my mobile all the time, but it hasn’t turned into a Kindle or Tivo just yet. The new Nokia I have is close, but not yet. Phones, and computers I have or had are great but they require work to keep going. For example I haven’t had to reboot my Kindle because of a problem, but I do that to my smart phones, or even my Mac. As much as both have changed how I live my life, neither a computer, phone or other device has the same effect as the three devices I just mentioned above. There are others, but I think my point is made.

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Flickr Spree

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Over the past two months I have been tasking myself with a digital clean up so to speak. I have been spending some of my free time going through my photo album in iPhoto. I have been uploading everything of value onto Flickr. The uploading isn’t too hard, but I am trying to take the time to tag and organize everything. Back in September when I shut down my hosting account I wanted to put my photo’s somewhere, so I upgraded my Flickr account to Pro. Since I didn’t have a Gallery site anymore I wanted my photos on Flickr.

I now have my recent history in photo’s up online. I think I have most photos back to about 2000 uploaded. There are still allot since 2000 that are not up, but they are the less important photos. Next task is to get to some of my older photos I have taken at camp, either as a councilor in the 90’s or on my teen tour’s as a camper in the late 80’s. After that it will probably be the photo’s I got from my parents of the family. That might take a while, because there is a lot of them. I don’t think of this as a waste of time, because it is like organizing my life in pictures. It is kind of fun. This is going to be a work in progress for some time. The big question is always what photo’s can be made visible to all, and what if any of them should be left more private for friends and family? So far I have been pretty open about what I put up there, but with a young niece and nephew you have to be worried about crazies getting too much information off of some post or picture.

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Web Hosting

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Ok, I made a mistake by canceling my web hosting account. I miss the flexibility of having a hosting account even if I don’t really need one all the time. I went back to Site5. They were good, and the only reason I canceled the account was because I didn’t want a provider at all. I am in the middle of configuring the site now.

I am trying to keep my Internet spending down this year so to offset the hosting costs for the year I am getting rid of .Mac. I don’t really use it, so I am going to let the account lapse when it is up for renewal at the end of February.

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The Kindle

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Since I traveled full time back in 2000 I have loved the idea of e-books. The idea was great but in practice it had a lot to be desired. I have read a handful of books in the ebook format. Most notibly when I was on the road on using my HP Jornada Pocket PC. It had a big screen but for reading books it wasn’t ideal. At the time it was the only game in town, and since there were times I didn’t want to carry a book with me having a book on my PDA was nice. Ever since I have been on the hunt for the perfect device to read books off of. Eventually I figured e-books would become more common, but so far they haven’t taken off so much.

When Sony came out with there reader I was fascinated by the technology. The size was right, it looked easy to read off of. I was all set to buy one until i read that you could only buy books from Sony for the reader. That on top of the fact that Sony’s selection wasn’t too hot I opted to hold off on my purchase.

That leads us to late November when Amazon announced the Kindle. It was very similar to the Sony reader, and it was backed by the book store at Amazon. I was still a bit hesitant to order one due to the DRM in the Amazon file format, but they offered over four times the books Sony did and they expected to continually add more books. After going back and forth on my decision I ended up placing an order for one in early December.

I was concerned about my choice because I read a few mixed reviews. I felt a bit better when I read Howard Morgan’s review late last month on his blog. I cannot remember a bad technology decision that he has made since I have known him. Well, I don’t count the fact that he wont switch to a Mac!

I found out late last week that my order finally shipped and I should expect to get my reader tomorrow. I already ordered 2 books for it that i was planning on reading. They should auto download to the reader when i turn it on. Hopefully this device lives up to my expectations since I have been waiting 8 years for it.

Google Apps

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I remember when Howard & Gus were talking up Gmail when it came out. A gig of storage for life free they said. It was a closed beta so you had to have friends who had an in get you an invite. In a short period of time (shorter than I expected) I had an invite. I was like why do I need this? I want and use my own domain’s personal email. Why would I want @gmail.com in my address? I mean the idea was very interesting but I didn’t think it was for me.

Not too much time went by and people were still talking about Gmail. I figured I need to use my invite so I can at least secure the username that I like to use, so I did. As predicted I haven’t used Gmail that much. I do route mail to it that I don’t want in my regular mailbox’s, but I could go weeks without logging into the account. That was until a month or so ago.

Recently Google offered Google Apps for free. Google Apps is a collection of web applications that you can use with your own domain. They have cool features like Google Talk, Calendar, etc. What got me interested was Gmail. Now they offer a Gmail front end that you can use for your own mail domain. Better yet it is free for personal use. I get 100 accounts with as of this writing 5.8 gigs of space. Now this information on its own would be interesting but nothing more. In fact when I first read about Google Apps I setup a mail domain pointing to the system and played around with it, but nothing more. I like to get my mail via IMAP, and Google didn’t offer that. The final clincher for me was when they announced that Google Apps would support IMAP, also for free. For the past week I have been routing some mail to my domain I had them hosting mail for, and so far I haven’t had any hiccups (fingers crossed). Because of that I am beginning the task of routing all my mail to Google Apps.

I can be a cynic. I know that, but I am very impressed by how this tool has evolved. I am even eying the Premier version of the service to get some of the more advanced features. I am not sure if I need them so the free service is fine for now. It is just too bad that I wasted some money moving to a new email hosting provider in September. They are great, but they can’t compete with 5gigs free IMAP storage.

10.5 Compatible Applications Follow Up

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When I first installed Leapord (OS 10.5) I wrote about the compatibility issues I had with some programs that I use. Well it has been almost two months and allot of those issues are resolved with one or two still lingering.

I found out that the ecto beta for 3.0 is a free upgrade for me since I owned 2.x. So far 3.0 is working fine in beta and thankfully isn’t crashing so I can write this blog entry without aggravation.

Mark/Space has published a beta of the Missing Sync for the Palm that works with 10.5. I had issues with it like I did with the original version of 6.x. It stops syncing tasks and calendar items from my Treo. Thankfully since I wrote the first post and now I have switched phones to a Symbian based Nokia E61i so I don’t need to rely on this software.

PGP Desktop may be the de facto standard in security products but it is not cheap ($70 or so for 1 year). Add the fact that they didn’t have a working product (even in beta) when 10.5 came out I began looking for other products. I have looked into Knox several times before I went with PGP Desktop, but now I took another look at the product that is basically an add on to Apple’s DMG file format. Knox gives me all the functionality I want, plus added features that a simple encrypted DMG file does not. I gave the trial a go and already bought myself a license (only $34.95 for a license not a one year subscription). I have let my PGP subscription expire and so far I am happy with my choice. Converting the encrypted stores I had took some time but I think I am finally done.

Mactheripper is a totally different story that I wont go into now. I don’t want to write that much.

Marketcircle has had several beta’s of Daylite 3.6 out. Their latest still has sync problems with Apple Sync services. They have been very responsive so I am patient for now. I can use the program but I can’t use alarms, or I can’t sync it with my phone. This is probably the most frustrating issue i have right now.

Other than that I have not had many issues with Leopard. I am not using all the new features that I thought I would, but overall it is a great OS.

Custom VOIP

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I don’t know why I take on projects that suck up my free time that I probably don’t need to be involved in, but I do. This weekend I began tinkering with a Cisco 7940 phone I have trying to get a Gizmo Project SIP account to work on it. I spent a few hours on Saturday working on it.

First I had to remember how to upgrade the firmware on the 7940. It has been a while since I tinkered with these phones. I realized that when the downloaded firmware I had was 6.03 or something and the latest availible is 8.8. I had to break out the old TFTP server and remember all the files I needed to get the upgrade to work. Cisco has documentation on the process but it is not so easy to follow. After getting the firmware flashed I had to sift through google search results trying to find someone who has posted a working config for a Gizmo Project account working on the Cisco 7940 IP Phone. I found one config and a few references to settings but not much else. The config I found isn’t working correctly. I have tweaked it significantly and I still can’t get a call to complete. I can get dial tone, but that just means some sort of signaling is working. I am so close, but for some reason I can’t get calls to connect!

I am about to give up on getting Gizmo working directly on the 7940, and instead try to get Tribox or some other Asterisk setup working. Unfortunately the Tribox VM i downloaded last year is a year old and I am having problems getting the latest one up and running. I may be putting this on hold for a while. I am going to also ask for some help from one of the network guys at work who used to work for a VOIP provider.

Crazy Tech Buying & Selling Spree

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I don’t know what it is about the past few weeks but I have been on a crazy buying and selling spree. I have finally gotten rid of my old 60gig iPod. I have had my new 160gig silver one for a while but after a few problems with eBay I never actually sold the old one. I finally put it up on Craigslist and sold it. Even with my new Nokia 6120 Classic, I have been going back and forth with that phone and my Treo 680. The 6120 is great but I realized I need a phone with a keyboard. I think a phone is not a smartphone without one!

Going back to the Treo wasn’t going to work for the long term so after a false start I ended up picking up a new Nokia E61i off of Craigslist. It is big, but so far is doing everything i need it to. And it has Wifi to boot. I am still getting used to the Symbian OS, and the different applications I need to get to work. I already don’t like the PIM (Address book, Calendar, & Tasks) functions, but that is a trade off for not crashing and a phone that generally does what it is supposed to do. Stability has become important to me more so in recent days. More discussions on the E61i as I continue to play with it.

I am going to keep the N810 tablet because it is just interesting if anything. I don’t need it for any real reason but I am enjoying tinkering with it.

I am also in the process of cleaning out my closet and finally selling the extra DVD player I have (it is new in the box) and my old Tivo. I probably have a bunch of other stuff lying around so I have will be busy for a while.

I guess this is a good time to be doing all of this anyway with the holidays coming up and all.