This Week: Pittsburgh, Mifi vs Wifi, Radio Shack, Make Magazine & Halloween
<RAMBLE> This week was just chock full of unexpected stuff. Whereas I had thought I was going to be at home learning about virtualisation in support of an upcoming project I got word that some kind of software sorcery was required at the site of troubled project in Pittsburgh. By the end of the day Wednesday, and with very little notice, I was ensconced in the Omni William Penn hotel in down town Steel Town.
The William Penn is Pittsburgh’s oldest hotel. It’s beautiful inside the lobby and common areas. It’s an Omni so the rooms are well appointed with great beds & flat screen TVs. Being older the rooms aren’t all that large, but they are nice.
Internet access is by way of wifi which costs $9.95/day. Normally I wouldn’t care about such matters as I’d have my trusty Sprint Mifi along in my bag. Part of the argument in getting my employer to pay for the Mifi every month is that I don’t pay for broadband by the night in hotels anymore.
Since November of last year I’ve been carrying a T-Mobile issued Blackberry 9700, aka “Bold2.” It’s a very good phone. I have no issues with the device, nor the carrier for that matter. Good hardware. Good service. On the other hand, this past weekend is an interesting indictment of the phones manufacturer, Research In Motion.
It’s just over a year ago that I took the plunge and ordered a Sprint 3G Mifi. It was move inspired by a tweet from 
This past week I worked a few days with our west coast salesman who is the proud owner of a brand new iPhone 4. A long time user of the iPhone 3 GS, he’s thus far very happy with iPhone 4. Both he and his wife carry new iPhones.
Today saw the official launch of Counterpath’s newest soft phone offering; 
Earlier this week AT&T has its quarterly earnings call. Normally I would not give it any notice at all. It’d just be another bunch of noise in my Google Reader in-box. This week they did something that simply jumped out at me;