Graves On SOHO VoIP

As opposed to elsewhere, where I do in depth reviews of certain devices, this is a little mini-review that reflects the experience of my first month carrying the new Blackberry 9700, aka the Bold2. If you’re looking for a more general overview of the device I suggest Crackberry.com’s review.

In the weeks just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday my 3 year old Blackberry 8100 was failing. The mechanical trackball from which the models “Pearl” nickname was derived was simply failing. I cleaned it a couple of times but each time it would again become unresponsive after just a few days. It’s time had come.

I wasn’t settled upon another Blackberry as it’s replacement. I had been happy with the handset for a long time, but felt that a full keyboard would better meet my needs moving forward.

Further, while I was interested  in Android powered phones, I wasn’t willing to change carriers based solely on hardware availability. I’m basically happy with T-Mobile. I wasn’t about to move to Verizon Wireless just to get access to a Motorola Droid.

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I’m pretty jazzed about the Etymotic Research cell phone headset that I’ve been using the past few months. Most people probably don’t get too excited about cell phone headsets, especially wired models. Let’s just say that I’m not “most people” and leave it at that. This thing rocks!

I have a long history of using noise canceling headsets for listening to music. This because for the last fifteen years my job has involved a lot of travel, and airplanes are noisy places. I started out using Sony MDR-NC10s, which were amongst the first noise canceling headphones offered. To frame this up in time, I used them with a mini-disc player long before the introduction of the iPod.

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Nicholas Deleon over at CrunchGear has an interesting post from the perspective of someone attending this weekend’s start of the annual SXSW event in Austin. He calls it “Why Do Users Put Up With Terrible Cellphone Service?” and it basically details the fact that AT&T is struggling to service the throngs of iPhone toting hipsters that have flocked into Austin for the event.

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New York Times Gadget Guru David Pogue gives a presentation including VoIP, VoWifi, Skype, T-Mobile, voice mail, cell carriers Apple, the iPhone and Google. He’s funny, too!

Kristian Kielhofner, of Astlinux and Star2Star fame, posted a most interesting and thoughtful opinion on the iPhone today. He’s had a couple for the past week for the express purpose of starting to develop apps for it.

I found it an interesting read. I remain a little contrarian with respect to the iPhone. I think that the reality does not match the hype. I remain committed to not doing business with AT&T, so no iPhone for me.

OTOH, the Nokia N810 is getting cheaper as a new model approaches. I find myself wondering which I’d like more, a N810 or one of the new small PCs like the Asus Eee, or perhaps Dell’s forthcoming small model?

Tom Cross over at TMC has a cute post about his dead iPhone.  This is curious as my boss went down to the local iStore to buy a number of iPhones for his family. He found that while several worked as hoped his personal handset was in fact DOA.

Small Net Builder has put up part two of my article about implementing a GSM gateway. My implementation tried both a hosted PBX and a local Asterisk server. I was able to achieve all but one of my goals so the project has been successful.

This post has been swirling around in my head for many months. This morning my wife and I decided to have breakfast at a nearby French cafe. In the cafe there were all manner of people. Large people*, small people, rich people, not-so-rich-people**, singles and couples. It was a typical River Oaks Houston crowd.

And then there was one guy wearing a Bluetooth headset. Huh?! It’s 9:30am on a Sunday morning and you’re at breakfast with your wife/girlfriend/mistress. What’s with the Lt. Uhura fashion sense?

I mean, how terribly important a person he must be to be that much in demand. To need such immediate access to his cell phone. Sunday. Over breakfast.

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