LIVEdigitally

As I mentioned at my last Geek Dinner, the battery life on my trusty Habs phone (LG VX6100) was steadily dying, despite a brand new battery.  I should’ve gotten a replacement a few month ago, but couldn’t really find anything I liked.  Here’s the list of what I really care about in a phone:

• good battery life
• good signal/reception
• clear voice use (in other words, people can hear me, and I can hear them)
• as small a form factor as I can find
• SMS features
• some kind of camera (really I’d love 2MP, but it’s about the first thing I’d cut from my list)

That’s it, nothing too fancy.  A friend of mine mentioned to me some new “dual-hinge” phone from Samsung, and I sought it out at the local Verizon store this past weekend.  I bought one today, and so far, I’m really pleased with it.  Actually, as I write this I’m listening to MP3s I loaded onto my 1GB MicroSD card which it’s playing via the speakerphone.

My initial positive reactions:

• it’s SMALL
• good speakerphone
• love the qwerty keyboard
• screen is woefully small, but very bright
• has a “alarm-only” ringer mode, which I’ve wanted for a long time

The negatives:

• still learning the keyboard (it’s small and I’m really used to T9 at this point)
• no way to enable/disable/change ringer volume while phone is closed (unbelievable, considering there are 4 buttons available)
• hinge might be flimsy, still not sure how it’ll hold up in a year (I expect no less than 2 years of use from a phone)
• it’s CHAMPAGNE colored!  what the heck?  I think it actually comes with a 1978 Cadillac.  I’m gonna have to skin-it this thing.

I read a few thoughts and reviews online so far (specifically at Engadget Mobile, CNET), and I’ll share my own after a few more days’ worth of use.  I have 14 days to return it, so if anyone’s had a particularly bad experience with this phone, please let me know!

More pictures here.

The answering machine is more than 35 years old, and voicemail’s been around over 25 years.  Before I even dig in to the topic I’m writing about, I still get a kick out of messages that start with “Hi, I’m unable to get to the phone, but if you wait for the tone…” Are there really people out there on the other end thinking, “Wow, when did Bob get this magical system that answers the phone when he’s not around? That’s NEAT!“  So maybe we can all “jump into the 80s” and tighten up our greetings a tad?

As many people know, most voicemail systems allow the caller to skip over the greeting and jump straight into leaving a message.  If you know this, you probably also know that between the 4 major US carriers, there are three completely different voicemail systems.  Furthermore, you probably don’t remember which of your friends are on which carrier (unless you only have 2 friends).  So even if you do remember than the * key skips for Verizon customers, you get a little hesitant to push it since it goes into “enter PIN” mode for Cingular (er, AT&T?) and you aren’t quite sure if Jimbo is still IN your network or not.

So I’ve got my handy-dandy little system that actually works all the time, and it works like this:

• Step One: Get a box.  Push 1. If your friend is on Sprint (or possibly Verizon, but not always), this skips the greeting and you are done, skip to End.  IF you hear a message that says “One is not a valid option” skip to Step Three below, otherwise continue to Step Two.
• Step Two: Push *.  If your friend is on Verizon, you’ll hear the beep, and can leave your message. Skip ahead to the end now.
• Step Three: Push #.  This works for both Cingular and T-Mobile subscribers, and you’re all set to go.
• End: Go ahead and leave that message (which, ideally speaking, really only says something like “Hi, it’s Freddy, I’ll be available for that meeting after 2pm, call me back” and not something like “Hello there Gregory, it’s Marjorie Simpson calling you back from the voicemail you left me earlier today.  Regarding the meeting, I will be able to join at 2pm, but only for about 45 minutes and then I have to jump onto the call with the guy from Amazon, and that’s gonna go another hour or two, but then I’m freed up again.  Also, I did want to let you know that I got your email regarding the shipping confusion, and let me explain to you in detail what I meant…“). 

Hope this helps!

ps - By the way, one other little voicemail etiquette thought while I’m at it:  if you are leaving your phone number for someone, leave it s-l-o-w-l-y!  Assume that while you say the area code they are just fetching a pen.  And these damn wrong number dialers.  What the hell do we do about them?

Anyone who’s ever been in a car with me driving knows I’m always having two conversations: one with my passenger(s), and the other with other drivers as they cut me off, pass too close, tailgate, or drive a “no sale blue” (a phrase that appears surprisingly absent on the Internet, only good reference here) Oldsmobuick.  Unfortunately, it seems that for the most part, these other drivers can’t quite seem to hear me. 

I heard today that Roadmaster USA is launching two products that allow scrolling messages to display, either in your rear window or on your license plate.  Not only that, it’s a customizable message.  Sounds like a product made it heaven!

The products come priced at $69, and come with a mounting kit and a remote control.  From reading the manual, it seems that the programming process might be a little clunky (obviously, I’d have it work with USB and a simple PC app), but since the pre-programmed messages are things like “Everybody is entitled to my opinion” and “Holiday Opening Hours”, I think I’d need to spice it up a bit.  There’s the obvious “LIVEdigitally” but really, how much fun is that?  I think my vocabulary would probably include:

• Either “Stop picking your nose.” or “, , was that you?”
• “No Vacancy” (I don’t know why, I just think it’d be fun)
• “Days since last accident… 002″
• “In the time it took you to read this message, shouldn’t you have been watching the road?”

From their Web site, it seems like the units go on sale immediately.  Since my wife’s current mode of ‘convergence’ is really about getting rid of extra gadgets, I don’t think I’ll be picking one up myself, but if anyone grabs one, come back and share your thoughts!

I’m also looking forward to a second generation version, in which I’d love to see the company add SMS capabilities so I can update the message in real-time.  I’m sure that’d be safe, right?

They’ve tried before, they’re trying again.  Rumors circulate today that XM and Sirius are planning a merger (Updated to include Mark Evans and Ars Technica.  Updated again: it’s official).  The two companies together would represent about 13 million subscribers (6 million from Sirius, 7.6 million from XM), with a ~$8B market cap ($615/subscriber today), about $2B in debt, and roughly $600M in cash on hand (source: financial stats for SIRI and XMSR).  Interesting, as Echostar has roughly the same subscriber base, more profitability (and more room for profitability), yet only twice the market cap.

Another interesting thought is on room for growth. 13 million subscribers represents roughly 6% of the ~240M cars in use around the US, or 10% of households, depending on which model you think is more successful (I vote car).  So I ponder how much of a real growth opportunity lays ahead?

Apparently Howard Stern believes 30-40M households in the next couple of years. Bridge Ratings predicts 50 million subscribers by 2020.  That’s 1 in 5 drivers paying for satellite service.  This sounds high to me, from industry, professional, and personal experience.  I don’t see enough factors driving consumers into “dissatisfaction” with standard radio, especially when compared to the option of consumer more of their own content via iPods and other players.

Some predict podcasting and integrated car-iPod adapters may kill satellite radio.  That doesn’t really sound right either.  Talk to the average XM or Sirius subcriber, they seem quite satisfied with their service.  I think satellite radio has a “TiVo effect” where the product is quite good, and once in, you are hooked, but until you get there, you scratch your head a lot about paying extra money for something you seem to already have in your life. 

Unfortunately, unlike a DVR, which makes the entire TV experience leaps and bounds better, satellite radio doesn’t have as broad an appeal.  If you don’t commute for long hours, you’re hard to hook.  If you work long hours at a desk and want more variety in radio, odds are good that Internet services have even more appeal (not to mention the fact that if you aren’t near a window, you aren’t getting a satellite signal).

We’re about 5 years into the satellite radio business.  I believe there’s still a little growth ahead, but it’s going to be slow, and may cap out very soon.  I believe the companies benefit from a merger, as it leaves less FUD for a prospective consumer.  I believe it’s an industry doomed once pervasive Internet services become available and consumers get anywhere-access to services such as Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.FM, and their own personal media collections.

According to this article, for only $350 you can buy a pair of shoes with GPS built-in.  Sounds like a steal, except there’s also a $19.95 monthly fee. 

For shoes.

With GPS.

Hmmm.

So, part of the reason to do this?  Find someone you think is lost, say an elderly relative or a child.  Only catch is, the only way to activate the “find them” feature is by the wearer pushing a button on the shoe.  That’s just not going to work very well is it?

There’s a lot of attention toward GPS these days.  I love the technology, and I love my GPS unit, but I totally believe it’s a dying device category.  A lot of next-generation mobile phones have GPS chips embedded, and that’s really the most logical place for it to exist, especially when you consider the incredibly poor in-dash receivers built-into the higher end cars.  Funny how you can pay an extra $3000 for a badly built ‘option’ or save a lot of your money and buy a standalone unit.

If you really want some GPS in your life (and I don’t blame you), for about $450, you can buy my favorite GPS unit, the Nuvi 350 (amazon link), and give it to your kids.  Probably more useful this way anyway. 

I love my Nuvi.

I don’t want a Nuvi Shoe, but I definitely want a Nuvi phone (long before I want my Zune phone).

When Apple announced the iPhone last week, it was very literally the talk of the town.  There were a couple of naysayers here and there, but for the most part, everyone gushed about it (myself included, but I was at CES and didn’t get any blog posts in - but I did mention it on my video).  Now the news keeps rolling in, including iSuppli’s cost analysis (and minor rebuttal - Paul makes a good point, but they will definitely make at least a 30% margin on the phone), Om’s discussion of “the fluid UI”, and my favorite posts, David Pogues iPhone FAQ (now in 2 parts).

It’s been just over a week, and while I am still impressed with Apple’s innovations (and their ability to keep a secret), I’m a lot lessed Wow’ed than I was then (BTW - can I still use the word Wow or is that now a Microsoft trademark?).  Interestingly, with each person I speak with on it, I hear the same themes echoing back to me.  Here are my biggest gripes:

1. No streaming video.  So you have this beautiful device with amazing capabilities and a gorgeous screen and it can’t stream video.  I get that they want to make more money by selling video (such as episodes of The Office) via iTunes, but there are literally over a dozen phones on the market today that can play 30fps video.
2. Sub-par Internet access.  Cingular EDGE instead of UMTS or Sprint/Verizon EVDO?  Huh?  So it can render Web pages really well, but they take an hour to load!
3. No 10-key.  I don’t care if it’s considered outdated, when I am in the car, I need the ability to dial without looking.  Not up for debate.  Either make an amazing force-feedback system, or give me a dialpad.
4. No Outlook/Exchange sync.  We’re supposed to buy the most expensive phone out there, which are primarily purchased by business people, and it doesn’t synchronize with our email and calendar automatically?  Third-party applications are not an acceptable solution on “the best” phone.
5. Locked-down OS.  If they want to spoon-feed us content, I understand.  But to restrict the applications on the thing?  Ridiculous. 

I can actually go on and on.  At the end of the day, the GUI innovations and nice form factor (okay, amazing form factor) simply aren’t enough to get this to the masses.  The whole two-finger interaction model is cool, but I don’t see it pushing consumers over the edge.  Furthermore, the argument that people ready to buy a $400 iPod will spend an extra $200 to get the phone just doesn’t hold water. 

Also, the “experience” effect here is in no way the same as that of the iPod.  The iPod drove to massive success specifically because of iTunes and the experience of delivering purchased music to the player.  The “experience” is more than the user interface, and more than the sleek packaging - it’s the ability to buy the phone and have everything simply work, and work well.  And for the reasons above (and so many more), I am not really all that impressed with what I know about the iPhone experince.

This booth was made just for me. I turned off WiFi in the house when my wife was pregnant with our son, and have been known to give rants about how cell phones are the cigarettes of our day. This booth is dedicated to gadgets that tell you whether your cell phone gives off too much radiation, your house is too close to an electro-magnetic field (EMF), and even rating the UV if you’re outside. I also love the fact that this booth’s signage is made on hand-written 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper. Check out how well my relic of a phone (Treo 600) does against Jeremy’s skinit’ed LG VX6100.

For those of you who get a little inspired to learn more about cell phone radiation: CNet has a chart on cell phone radiation levels, the US FDA has a report, TechDirt finds that 20 minutes of a cell phone equals one year of Wifi exposure, and there is a cell phone safety blog you can read.

Opening disclosure: I am working on a consulting project with Netgear, but that work is unrelated to my blogging about them.  I was invited to their press conference and chose to attend and got to see three new products that I was previously unaware of.  This blog post is because I am genuinely amazed with a product of theirs.

Now, onto the story.  Netgear had a press conference this morning and unveiled three new products which I will list and describe in ascending order of excitement and interestingness.  Before the demos, Debbie Williams (Netgear’s Chief Marketing Officer) gave a brief “state of the union” for the company.  Basically: 10 years old, market cap of $883M, products sold in >16K retailers, and they introduced 50 new products in 2006 (methinks about 42 of them were routers, but I guess it counts anyway, right?).  She then went on to discuss how 2006 was the year of building the home network for the digital lifestyle (love that term, but I think I may have heard it before), and 2007 is the year of delivering the experience. She then introduced Vivek Pathela, Netgear’s VP of Product Marketing to do the demos (again, listed here in my order, not theirs):

1. Storage Central Turbo.  This updates 2005’s Storage Central device by adding the capacity to expand to multiple terabytes of data as well as gigabit Ethernet.  If you aren’t paying attention to the bits and bytes, it means it can store and stream HD movies around your house.  This is a fairly evolutionary/logical enhancement to the product line.  The MSRP is $249 (with no included hard drives, which makes sense since it’s so much cheaper for you to buy your own anyway) and the product should ship “early” this year.  More pics:
   
2. Dual-Mode Cordless Phone with Skype. Now we’re seeing some interesting convergence happen.  Quite a few companies introduced Skype or VoIP phones in 2006, some worked well, some didn’t.  Netgear seems to have added a clever twist by incorporating a standard telephone in the same handset (aka Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS).  This is a very smart combination, as it lets a consumer have just a single home phone that can work with both Skype and POTS systems.  Also, you can get multiple handsets all working with the same base station (although an audience member asked a great question: can more than one handset make a simultaneous POTS call? which stumped the Netgear team - I sure hope it’s a yes).  The demo went great as Vivek called Patrick Lo, Netgear’s CEO, and had a quick live call with near-excellent audio quality.  MSRP $199, available now (on Amazon)!
   
3. EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD.  Oh my is this one interesting.  It’s a, well, “box” that hooks up to your TV and your home network connection.  It then streams your music, photos, and videos from any PC or networked storage device (NAS) to your TV.  It also streams from YouTube (they demoed a classic Diet Coke/Mentos video, which about 90% of the audience reacted as if they’d never seen it before - wow).  It also works in high definition (up to 1080p resolution), including full upscaling/downscaling of video.  It supports almost every video codec, including MPEG-4 HD, WMV HD, DivX, MPEG-2, H.264, etc etc.  It also streams iTunes (including protected content if from a Windows PC, sorry Mac folks).  It also has USB to locally connect a flash drive or an iPod.  It also supports multiple units so you can start a video in one room, then finish it in another.  It also has full PVR (TiVo-like) capabilities.  And from the demo, it looks like it works very well!  As a guy who has spent about 8 years designing award-winning devices just like these, I am quite impressed.  Quite!  MSRP $349, available early 2007.
   

I’ve seen a bit of other coverage already of the conference.  MacUser compares it against iTV and calls the UI “uninspired” which is a fair point, but I think making comparisons against a product that’s not really been “announced” yet isn’t quite appropriate.  Also, I disagree that Apple will beat the $349 price point, as I think they’d rather rip into their loyal customer base who are more willing to overpay for the Apple brand.  More coverage from Ed Kohler, Eric Savitz at Barron’s, Gadgetell, and SciFi.com, but for very extensive details, here’s the Engadget transcript.  I also bumped into Dave Zatz (with Sakshi Goel of Netgear), Netgear’s resident CES blogger.

So there’s my front-runner for most interesting new product of CES: the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD.  We’ll see how the rest of the show pans out!  More Netgear conference pics below and the whole CES collection is here.

The talk of the town today (recommended reading: IP Democracy, PhoneScoop, TechCrunch) is the announcement that Verizon and YouTube are doing a deal.  Quick summary: you have to be a VCast subscriber and from the NY Times:

YouTube said its editors would select short videos from its library for the Verizon Wireless service. Verizon Wireless said it would vet the videos to make sure they met the company’s editorial and taste guidelines.

“We’ll select content that has the broadest appeal and the highest entertainment value,” Ms. Liang said.

 The funniest read on it so far comes from fellow Canadian Mathew Ingram:

I know that Forrest Gump said “Stupid is as stupid does,” but there’s really no other word for what Verizon is doing with its much-heralded launch of YouTube video on cellphones. I mean, really. How much stupider could this get? The answer, to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, is none — none stupider. Fred Wilson sums it up in a single word: Lame. In fact, this deal is right off the lame-o-meter. How do I lame-ify thee? Let me count the ways.

Now I agree with this as lame, but not for the same reasons as others.  Fred wrote “This deal violates the entire ethos of YouTube, not free, not open, exclusive, no community, limited, censorship, etc, etc.” and over on LostRemote I read “I don’t see this as being an especially tempting offering - it goes against the free spirit attitude of YouTube.”  These are fair points, but not what I perceive as the most important flaw in the plan.

People don’t surf to YouTube because it’s free or open, nor because of the site’s free spirit.  Actually, people don’t really surf to YouTube much at all.  Whoa, slow down - I know they serve a kajillion videos a day (or is that bajillion?).  What’s key about all this is how people use YouTube. 

They share.  They link.  They blog.  They email.  They don’t surf.

When YouTube serves 200,000 streams of a video, it’s not because 200,000 people come over to YouTube.com, and go find videos to watch.  It’s because people were sent there by friends, colleagues, and blogs.  YouTube is viral, not programmed.  And that’s the key flaw in the Verizon/YouTube relationship.

They should scrap the budget on the ‘editors’ and instead invest on building a simple technology that allows people to SMS the clips they watch to each other.  Not only will this increase usage of the service, it’ll also increase SMS traffic (something the carriers like a lot) and will also help incent new users to pay for VCast.

When it comes to mobile technology, it seems that major carriers and phone manufacturers around the world have a common mantra: “they do it in Japan and Korea, therefore …”  The statement applies when trying to convince other industry players that a given service/feature will have huge adoption rates in the US or other countries.  The phrases sound like this: “The Japanese play 3 hours of video games a day on their handsets, and spend $1023 per month for social networking services and content, so we need to bring this to the US as soon as possible!”  For the most part, it’s a lot of malarky (is that really a word?). Why?  Well, if let’s say you have one country/culture in which 2-4 hours per day of train-based travel is the norm. And you have another one in which the average commute is done by car and is under an hour.  Sounds like you don’t have much of a match, doesn’t it?  So a few years back when the discussions of mobile TV first started blossoming in the US, I was personally a bit of a skeptic.  And then I helped design and build SlingPlayer Mobile, and I saw the light.

I’ve used SPM (as we were known to call it) to kill time on the tarmac.  I’ve programmed my DVR from the long lines at Starbucks.  I even watched some of the NHL Playoffs last year on my commutes home (yes, my wife drove, I’m not that bad).  Funny thing is, I was once quoted as saying “Nobody’s going to watch the entire Super Bowl on a cell phone.“  And while I stand by that statement, for this year’s game I did have my PPC6700 showing the game live in the bathroom so nobody would have to miss a minute’s action (go Stillers!).

As was announced today, Europeans (starting in the UK, spreading outwards in 2006) can soon have the same joy.  Instead of Heroes they’ll be watching Eastenders.  Instead of the Superbowl, they’ll do the World Cup (in a few years).  Instead of The Office, they’ll do.. oh. well… The Office.  Hmm.

In an interesting twist, Sling Media launched SlingPlayer Mobile in Europe with a mobile operator, 3.  Now 3 is going for some kind of quintuple or octuple-play by bundling a few other options and services with their new X-Series offering (live Webcast tomorrow), and you can read more details about it over at the SlingCommunity site (or Unwired or Gadgetell) .  Seems like an interesting play, but I’ve gotten spoiled I guess, since I’m a Windows Mobile user, and the extra services are all available to me on the 6700 I use. 

The other interesting element here is this is the first time the Slingbox is viewable from a non-Windows Mobile device.  The handsets for the launch are the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W950i.  I think it’ll be interesting to see the performance comparisons as more and more users adopt the service.

Good thing the Internet rumor mill didn’t go too far after Blake mentioned something about a mobile carrier at last week’s Web 2.0 show.  Check out speculation at Unwired, MocoNews, and Engadget.  It doesn’t take too many hops in the blogosphere to go from “idle comment” to “solid fact” these days.  Either way, congrats to Sling and 3 for putting together a great relationship that brings smart value-added services to their customer bases.

Well, time for me to get back to playing 3D interactive multiplayer video games on my mobile phone with built-in GPS, DVR, MP3, and waffle-making capabilities.  I’ve got a long way to go to get to Akihabara.

My trusty LG VX6100 (aka the HabsPhone) is dying.  Well, the battery is dying, and the phone might be on its way out as well - tbd.  I decided rather than buy a new phone, I’d just grab a new battery.  Went to the Verizon store - $49.99 no joke!  I googled “VX6100 battery” and intentionally clicked on one of the sponsored ads.  Did a couple of price comparisons, and ended up getting two batteries with overnight shipping for $45 all-in.I then googled “cellphoneshop.net review” and most of the reviews were again positive (for the most part).  I figured “what the heck” and bought it.  I immediately sent off an email to their sales email address asking them to confirm it would arrive by today (I’m hopping on a plane tomorrow, and can’t deal with 20 minutes of talk time anymore).

The email bounced.  Uh oh.

But then I noticed it was a typo, and sent off another one.  This one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp got through.  To my huge surprise, I received a polite email which informed me the batteries would arrive not just on time, but a day early, and then 30 minutes later an email arrived with a tracking number.  Wonderful.

Funny enough, I actually didn’t want the package to arrive early, since I knew I wouldn’t be around to receive it yesterday.  That afternoon, I received another email from cellphoneshop with the fedex info and alerting me to the fact that the shipment wasn’t delivered properly.  This is A+ customer service in my book.

The icing was on the cake today when I plugged the batteries in and they worked just fine.  Good job cellphoneshop.net, thanks for your service.  You might want to consider a new domain name, but that’s just me musing…

By the time you’re reading this, all the top tech/mobility blogs have already mentioned the fact that Motorola announced today they are buying Good Technology.  If not, find a source you like and read about it: TechDirt, Engadget Mobile, BBhub, Experience Mobility, PDAstreet, CrunchGear, TreoCentral.  Ok, now you are up to speed, right?  Good.  Or is it?

When I think about the future of mobile phones, convergence, and business functionality, I see the world playing out in two camps:  serving the needs of individuals/small businesses or serving large companies’ interests.  Email on mobile phones isn’t really important for the non-business community, as SMS really serves their needs just fine.  Furthermore the average teenager or college kid can’t really afford a powerful smartphone (or its requisite data plan) and thats a hard sell even for their rich parents.  So let’s make it a bit of a given that acquiring Good is specifically to bolster Motorola’s offerings to the business community.

So for a small business, let’s say an individual like myself (or doctor, attorney, etc) or a small startup, what kind of mobile email needs do they have?  They probably do not have a dedicated Exchange server, so they have hosted POP3 accounts.  Furthermore, odds are pretty good they want to save costs on infrastructure buildout, so ideally they can purchase the phone(s) they need without buying huge servers or other back-end technology.  Also, they really need a solution with minimal IT requirements as they are probably handling this themselves, or have a friend or cheap consultant.  Either way, my hunch is they need solutions that work out of the box with as little maintenance as possible.  While I was a huge Palm fan back in the 90s, the OS has lost its way in the broadband era.  This leaves RIM and Microsoft as the other players in the space.  Motorola ships the Q phone, which runs Windows Mobile 5, which is an ideal solution for the above scenario.  While they’ve bundled the Good application with it, it seems like one of those things that doesn’t get used very much.  In my opinion, Good doesn’t seem to add value in this equation.

Next up, big businesses.  Big companies have IT departments.  IT departments generally prefer hassle-free solutions that are reliable and don’t break down on them, because they don’t like getting phone calls at 2am from their executives who are overseas and can’t check their email while bored in Heathrow.  Again, we come down to RIM and Microsoft as two very viable solutions.  With the inclusion of push-email from Windows Mobile 5, and its excellent integration with Exchange, I again fail to see a compelling value-add from Good. 

Maybe I’m missing something here, but I just don’t get the reasoning for this one.  It seems like an unnecessary buy by Moto.  Maybe they plan to ditch WM5 as an operating system?  Maybe there are some key patents?  Maybe they want to prevent the technology from going elsewhere?  Hopefully this won’t be one of those acquisitions that gets looked back upon as simply being Bad.