I got the first one available in the store. Love it so far and it is a much needed upgrade from the old 8700 and 7100 series I have been using. It includes a nice 2MP camera and it has a flash. The media player portion is sweet! I can pretty much use it to listen to music, once I get my MicroSD card from Newegg.com. It even has a new headset connector, which is 3.5mm. This is the same as your standard headphone connector for a walkman or PC. That means I can use quality headphones! The speakerphone is extremely loud, and the rings are very crisp and clear.

I am still getting used to the rollerball, but I am starting to like it. I am not fond of the themes, as I was using a Vodafone theme on a 8700 recently and loved that. Hopefully a few months will bring some nicer themes from the community. I am happy with my purchase, and hope Cingular’s service is reliable enough. I moved from T-Mobile, after being there for the last 6 years, because my co-workers and family are on Cingular and that enables free mobile-to-mobile. I waited to switch for the last 2 months because of this device. I would have waited for T-Mobile’s if I hadn’t had that factor.

I was featured in a Press Release for Avaya’s new version of IP Office 3.2. I really enjoy working with the IP Office and think it is a great solution for SMB customers. It offers the flexibility to use Digital phones, IP based phones, or a combination of them. It also has great features like the new Mobile Twinning and the conferencing system. The free sofware updates top it off, although some new features are license-based, but that means you don’t pay for features you don’t use.

Here is a quote from the release: Small and Medium Businesses Worldwide Improve Operations with Intelligent Communications from Avaya

Companies Use IP Office to Improve Operations and Customer Service

For Cascadia Capital, Avaya IP Office is an important tool for keeping the company’s highly skilled investment bankers connected to clients, colleagues and critical company information.

“The new mobile twinning feature of IP Office 3.2 is extremely important to us,” said Christopher Bettin, director of information technology for Cascadia Capital. “That means we can give our clients one number to reach our investment bankers; whether they are in the office or visiting a client. The new management capabilities also allow us to deploy new policies and features to groups of users.”

By integrating IP Office with the company’s Microsoft Exchange email application, investment bankers at Cascadia are able to use their Blackberry handheld wireless devices to access Avaya voicemail from a single, integrated email and voicemail inbox.

Bettin said the built-in conferencing features of Avaya IP Office are also heavily utilized by the Cascadia team.

“Meeting with clients is a huge part of our business,” he said. “IP Office makes it simple for them to quickly establish a meeting and collaborate. In addition, we’ve saved enough money by eliminating outside conferencing services to pay for the Avaya system within 18 months.”

Sling Media Launches WM5 Smartphone SlingPlayer App Gallery (MobileBurn)

While the quality of this video is amature in nature, I think this shows the power of the mobile networks that are being deployed.  Also, I think it is a good representation of how all of our entertainment lives are going to eventually converge into an on-demand model.  Slingbox is showing the world how powerful having on-demand access to your entire entertainment library is for a consumer.  Now, with devices like the Motorola Q, the Slingbox mobile application and Verizon’s CDMA 1xEV-DO network, you can get your content anywhere.  Check out the demo below!

Everyone was wondering what the Origami device was, why it is special, and if Microsoft was going into the hardware business.  Personally I think it is clear that features and devices they showed in March at CeBIT didn’t live up to the hype.  These Ultra Mobile Portable Computing (UPMC) devices are supposed to fall between Tablet and PDA.

Samsung has the Q1, which is basically a small 7-inch tablet pc with an 900MHz Intel Celeron and 512MB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive.  The only differences between tablet pcs and this thing are extra controls/buttons, instant-on multimedia player (no XP load to play). Why in the world do I need this thing? It costs close to the same as some tablet PCs at around $1100.  It isn’t going to have a longer battery life, which will be 3 hours to start.

I personally predict this thing will flop.  People have not been flocking to tablet PCs like they have to PDAs and ultra small media players.  I think this market won’t pan out until the battery life is there and the device is thinner and lighter.  The idea is great, but I think there is a disconnect between the current offerings and what would be successful in capturing the consumer market. I could be wrong since pre-orders at Best Buy sold out within 24 hours. Sure that grabs some media attention, but I don’t think the marketing for UMPC was done properly. Next I’ll post on why and how I think Microsoft should change marketing techniques.

I think most computer industry people have heard about the Trusted Computing Group, formerly known as Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA).  But a lot of non-tech people would never care to learn about it.  The major goal was the development of a semiconductor intellectual property core or integrated circuit that is to be included with computers to enable trusted computing features.  These features include the ability to a check, authenticate, and secure  BIOS, hardware, OS update, security patches, and anti-virus software from a hardware level, instead of relying on software.  Sounds great to an IT security engineer.  Except, the major players have the ability to keep Open Source software or smaller organizations out of the “circle of trust” ala Meet the Fockers.  That is where Against TCPA comes into play.  They want to educate people on the pitfalls of TCPA/TCG and get people to rethink the trusted computing inititives.  LAFKON Publishing created a great video for the Against TCPA campaign.  I highly suggest you check it out, even just for the sheer cool design of the video.  It raises the question of “How can a computer decide what you trust if you’re not in the Circle of Trust?”

As previously mentioned, I had figure out what kind of welcome gift I wanted from Amazon.com.  Well I went ahead an used Amazon.com’s ’send to a friend’ link and requested this Xbox 360 premium bundle.  I never heard from the ‘giver’ about the item, so I assumed that the email got lost, or they decided that it wasn’t a ‘productivity tool’ and I would never see the Xbox 360.  The next day, they were out of stock.  Now I was totally bummed since they didn’t respond and they were out of stock again.  Meaning they would have had to order it the day I requested, or I was out of luck again.  I have been scouring Amazon.com for an item and have yet to find one.  I gave up hope last week and decided to wait for the next generation of ‘video iPod’ to come out.  I have a 40GB iRiver MP3 player which is great, so I didn’t need a new one now.

My luck changed this morning!  I got an email from my ‘giver’ and she said it would ship on 4/17!  That’s Monday, which means it should be here by next weekend.  As soon as I get it hooked up, your all invited to come over and play.  I’ll need to grab a few extra controllers via my Amazon.com gift cards maybe, and a few extra multiplayer games.  My brother is coming to visit on just the right weekend.

Woot! is a company that sells junk to ‘computer geeks’.  From home appliances to computer equipment to kitchenware to electronic gear.  That’s no different than Best Buy or Fry’s, right?  Wrong.  Their sales are entirely web based, so they are like Amazon.com, right?  Wrong.  The key difference is they sell only 1 item at a time, and look for a target market.  That’s right, they typically hock 1 item on the website every 24 hours.  If it sells out in 30 minutes, great!  If not, then the left over stock sits in the wearhouse waiting for another chance.  Sales start at midnight central time (they are based in Texas), and they tend to sell out quickly.  They are selling ‘cool stuff’ that typically is end-of-life or is being replaced by another item.  They don’t provide support and recommend you contact the manufacturer for all issues.  The idea is to lower their costs, and push all issues back to the engineers that make the stuff.

So Woot! has a ‘Woot!-off’, which is like a massive sale of items.  Read the rest of the article to check out the revenue for the 24hr period of the current Woot!-off that is going on now.
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iLounge is reporting that Numark, who makes various DJ equipment like mixers and turntables, will debut the updated iDJ2 iPod mixer.  The original iDJ had several major flaws which have been fixed.  It has pitch control which would allow you to beat match perfectly.  I don’t know if they fixed the issue with cued listening, so your cued channel is in the headphones while the other channel is pumping up the crowd.  Now with only one iPods required you can play two tracks simultaneously, record the mix back to the iPod, and use external hard drives that can attach via USB.  Hopefully they keep the price around $300, since the original iDJ was $250, which would bring the casual home party DJ market right to Numark’s doorstep with cash in hand.  I look forward to stopping at Guitar Center to play with one of these in the coming month.

Source: Engadget, iLounge

Back in February I posted about the struggles that we face with current user interfaces. Well just recently I came upon a video on YouTube that shows a multi-touch user interface. The applications of this are almost endless as shown by the video. This screen records the input of multiple touches on its screen; whereas current touch surfaces (screens or trackpads on your laptop) can only record one touch at a time. If you try to touch it in two places at a time you get sporadic, unpredictable response. Check out the below video and keep your fingers crossed that this becomes mainstream quickly! (I know it’s long, but you get to see MANY possible applications of this technology).

Are gadgets getting too complex for the average person? My parents don’t even use all the features of their standard Verizon Wireless phones. And I pray that they don’t decide to get a Windows Smartphone because I know I’d be writing a personal FAQ for each of them.

A Netherlands researcher noted that “Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices.” This was reported in a recent Reuters article. It also noted that the average consumer in the United States will “struggle for 20 minutes with a device before giving up,” and even a group of employees from the consumer electronics company Philips couldn’t figure out how to get some new products to work.

What are the reasons someone has to struggle for 20 minutes to get something working the way he or she wants? Is it poor user interface design? Poor documentation? Operator error? I am a big fan of simplicity when it comes to a user interface. Two phrases from former college professors come to mind when I think about this. One: K.I.S.S., which stands for keep it simple stupid! Overly complex hardware or software products are not only confusing for consumers to figure out, but also mask bugs and other problems increasing the chance of a buggy product being shipped. The second phrase that I think of is from a computer science professor. He said to design your code to do one thing and do it well. This is better than doing 14 things half-assed like much software and hardware I see these days.