17 posts from October 2007

Tried an off the wall experiment and it was "full of win". It also has me to lead that I have found a second flaw by design of my phone... If you have read my review, just check out the bolded portion about my experiment. I didn't know why I didn't think of the idea sooner, because it was absolutely brilliant!

I wish everyone out there a happy Halloween evening and pray that you all stay safe and bundled warm with the cold front rolling in to the area real soon. For those of you thinking of drinking and having a great time, don't drink and drive and most of all, have a great time! Finally for those of you who have pumpkins, beware of pumpkin vandals desecrating your works of art... as a few of my friends have had theirs blown up by "children" with fireworks.

Show us a gadget you can't live without

Please also see my edit about my new experiment with this headset. - Zero

A lot of sites (like C|Net's Review) gave this headset a terrible review complaining of the minor things like the weight of the headset was uncomfortable or the design was not adjustable. I felt those are more of "your mileage may vary" sort of commentary. At the time of this headset's release, not many phones had the A2DP profile, so that may have something to do with some of the unfavorable reviews. I will factor that the initial "buy-in" price ($130) during the headset's release rather expensive being another reason that the reviews came out so unfavorably on this headset. I would like to redeem this headset because I actually picked them up locally from a local retailer for half-off.

I originally wanted to pick up the Motorola HT820 headset, but when I read the poor battery life being the headset's failing with an estimate 3-4 hours of total over all life, I was a bit hesitant. The packaging doesn't even make mention of battery life, just that it's a stylish headset and functional at a price of $90. For me, a useful Bluetooth headset needs to have great battery life as being the first criteria and then design and function are the next criteria that must be fulfilled. The alternative that I was considering but hesitant on dropping the cash was the Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 with the earbuds and pendant style form, but with a poor design with great battery life it was not worth the retail value of $130. Close to the two headsets was the Jabra BT620s headset but with a dramatic price change from $110 to $60. It was a diamond in the rough, but saving $30 was not a bad idea and I figured "why not?" It was a gamble, but I felt it was a worthy gamble as my experience would prove from my experience.

Unpacking the headset proves easy and same for preparations. The headset takes about 3 - 4 hours to completely charge. Also with the AC charger, there is a USB cable that allows you to use the headset as a wired computer headset and charge the headset at a slower pace. I will give Jabra kudos for making a great indicator system. The headphones have two clear rings that have 3 colors that light up according to status. Here's how it breaks down from the manual:

Left side - Solid blue: Pairing mode
Left side - Flashing blue: Linked Phone mode
Right side - Flashing blue: Linked Audio mode
Flashing red (Both sides): Low battery
Solid Red (Both sides): Charging
Solid Green (Both sides): Full charge complete

If you don't like looking like a club light strobe, you can kill the blue flash by simultaneously pressing and holding the call and media buttons together for 5 seconds and it will turn them off until the next recharge. Pairing is simple, hold down the call key until the left status lamp turns solid blue entering "Find Me" mode. Ask the phone to connect to it and enter the passkey to sync to the headset. For musical use, my phone (P990i) immediately recognized all of the functions such as being used as a headset for calls, a music output device, and track control was the real shocker. The power to skip tracks, play/pause/stop playback was mentioned with "limited compatibility" to devices, so it was something to really celebrate about.

As far as sound quality and tonal range... I feel that the device is sufficient for your casual music listener. The tonal range capability is pretty wide and the headset's performance does not favor one genre over another. My phone's equalizer settings show dynamic changes in the headset as well! This excited me a great deal, as a good dynamic range and great sound quality are good things to see from this headset. The only caveat is sometimes the sound transfer has hick-ups and gaps, but this was a problem when the phone was separated about 5 - 6 feet away from the headset. A minor set-back if anything. The surprising part was on tapping the right ear piece, it automatically loaded the media player. Something that I also didn't expect to be supported, much like the track skipping compatibility with my phone.

Tested Songs
"Apologize" Ft. OneRepublic by Timbaland
"Chop Me Up" Ft. Timbaland & Three-6 Mafia by Justin Timberlake
"Papercut/Big Pimpin" mash-up of Linkin' Park and Jay-Z
"Drumhead Pulsation" from the Guilty Gear Isuka Soundtrack
"What Hurts The Most" by Rascal Flatts
"Bloody Tears" from the Castlevania 20th Anniversary CD
"Adelaide" by Anberlin
"Bat Country" by Avenged Sevenfold
"Bodysnatchers" by Radiohead
"Humanity" by ATB

Edit about 24 hours later - I had a crazy experiment to try to listen to the radio while streaming the sound to the Bluetooth, but the only caveat is that my phone requires that you use the wired stereo headset as an antenna for radio signals. I would plug up the headset/antenna to my phone, then transfer the streaming radio broadcast to my headset for the experiment and I would be met with success. The funny part was there was no instances of skipping audio. I was listening to the radio for a straight 2 hours for a intensive test. The signal was crisp and clear with no problems. This leads me to a hypothesis that the Bluetooth chipset is not hindering the on board audio transfer and also that this is not a RAM related problem (aka memory leak)... I now personally believe that the Memory Stick Pro Duo slot is not reading the data fast enough for the data transfer to the Bluetooth stereo headset to properly process the sound. This problem may possibly be phone related and not due to the headset.

For calls... picking up calls and managing calls is rather simple. The calls come in stereo sound to the user resulting in very crisp quality. I would call two folks for test calls to see if I could debunk the poor reviews saying that the sound quality was poor on the receiving end. I would get called by my girlfriend Aurelia and later call my cousin Sol to do a test. Aurelia has a Blackberry Pearl on T-Mobile and Sol has a Sony Ericsson P910i on T-Mobile as well. Both reported that my voice came in very clear and without coming off as sounding tinney or echoing with reverberation. That pleased me a great deal.

The fusion of call and music management, I feel I would have to test multiple phones before I can offer a fair opinion on it... When a call comes in, the music immediately cuts out for my phone and I hear a beep tone letting me know a call is trying to come in. On picking up, the connection happens rather quickly... The only issue arises when the call ends and then the music resumes. Due to the poor amount of RAM that the P990i has on it (the primary culprit for many of its short comings), there's about a 5 second delay and the music then resumes. Not the smoothest transition unfortunately. This portion of the review, I really want to do a fair review on it... but I can't quite do it as I only have one available phone to test it out on. If you have a Bluetooth stereo compatible (A2DP) phone and would not mind me spending about 20 minutes to an hour to compile information on this portion of the review, please contact me, I can compensate for your time with food or something.

My closing thoughts on the Jabra BT620s are in favor of the headset ONLY if you pay about $60 or less for it. It definitely is not worth it if you're paying anymore than that price. The audio quality, simplicity, and design are great with the documented battery performance of 240 hours of standby, 16 hours of calls, and 14 hours of streaming music. The comfort level is debatable as some may feel the headphones are uncomfortable or too snug... This is the only "con" about the design as the "Street Style" (if you want to use Sony's name for the design) headphones are more of a "one size fits all" solution. Personally, I felt the headphones as very comfortable to my ears. With crisp sound quality from the musical part and clear calls on the phone side, the Jabra BT620 is a bargain buy for the gadget geek looking to get a value for cheap!

I offer a challenge to those who may be reading this and feel that my review was not fair: If anyone out there has a Motorola HT820 or a Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 that they want me to do a "shoot-out" review, I am more than willing to take up the challenge and offer a fair "dissection" of the headset to the Jabra BT620s. The only part is, I cannot expense the purchase of the competing headsets. If you are willing to let me borrow yours or if you want to even spiff me one unit of the device for a link exchange or food and drink, I am more than willing to oblige. Contact me and we'll talk.

Let's get some background on Flock and it's relationship with Mozilla Firefox.

Firefox was the original browser that broke the mold from Internet Explorer basically crushing browsers like Netscape Navigator and even the early Opera browser. It was a fresh change of pace from the closed source principle of Internet Explorer as it allowed anyone to view the entire source code of the browser to make plug-ins and modifications to improve the browser. But due to the Mozilla Corporation blowing open a free browser to the market place and including the ability to even giving the world the source code for free... This would make a world where even the online experience could be changed and custom tailored for the end user.

Flock's principle that differentiates itself from a standard Firefox installation in one way... Rather than having to download and install things like specialty blogger, RSS, media, account integration plug-ins and applets, they are all built in to the browser. From the Flock "About Us" Page, they say that how people use the modern day web browser is basically that of a nerve center to the online world and we have regular habits or accounts that we just have to check out.

I am not much of a social person online, but I do like blogging and reading RSS streams quite a bit... So I figured I'd give myself a challenge: Use Flock for one week and then do a comprehensive review. I can say that I am actually a bit shocked at how the week has turned out.

I would pull a pre-compiled version of Flock for Ubuntu Linux from GetDeb.net, as I am not much into trying to compile from source unless I absolutely have to. For users of other operating systems, there are versions for Mac OS X and also Windows folks too. I don't feel secure on my Windows box so I have not installed it there. For the OS X end, I don't have a machine set-up for testing... If you want to review it, I will gladly hot-link your review to mine in exchange for the same.

The install was rather painless. It performs like a regular install of Firefox, but it was able to copy my settings, preferences and bookmarks from Firefox on a click. After the details finalized, the installer asks if I want to lock in Flock as the default... but for all intents and purposes, I would say "No" because Firefox is customized for secure items and questionable websites much better than Flock currently is.

The experience is quite unique... the "Home" page is called "My World", the default "nerve center" for your browsing experience. There's a set of links to do things like post to your blog direct from the browser, upload videos to YouTube or images to Flickr/Photobucket, or check out your bookmarks in del.icio.us, provided you have logged into those services. On the top right are tiny icons to indicate which services have integrated with the browser and another set of services that have not been linked to Flock. On the main page are links to your most recently visited book marks, the top 3 newest RSS feeds from each site you have a RSS session with, and then the latest media from your favorite links in another column. Other than that... the browsing experience is much in the same vein as Firefox as far as stability goes.

The difference with Flock is that if you log into your media services such as YouTube, Photobucket, and Flickr, the button for the "Media bar" will pop up a bar on the top that will contain streams with a thumbnail of an image that link to the respective image or YouTube video. The image uploader is nice as it will do batch uploading to Flickr or Photobucket natively in the browser, rather than having to go through the web based uploaders of the sites which typically limit you to a max upload of 5-6 images a session, unless you subscribe for the premium member services. The blog client works well and there is not much to write about... The blog compatibility is hopefully getting bigger, because I can't quite blog to Vox from it yet, but I can only hope that it will be addressed in the 1.0 Final build.

Security is a big thing that needs more revamping with Flock, in my personal opinion... I mean, it's fine for minor things like social use of social networking sites, but I wouldn't dare to say it could replace my stock Firefox install. With things like more network integration (like Facebook is coming with the 1.0 Final build) and more security issues to be addressed, Flock will be a browser to watch for development.

Overall, if you like being networked to everything and see the use of the web browser much like the folks of the Flock Development Team... you will be very pleased! If you are more of a blogger and news reader, Flock does a great job at what it does for helping you keep track of things. I can recommend this browser to folks who love the connectivity but also want the stability of the Firefox engine.

Well, today I had to check up on the status of number migration and finally got the message that things have finally been migrated over. There was only one thing that remained... Severing the other line that was now unused. I would have to seek AT&T's power to do that and that was what I had to do...

So I would call them up and basically navigate through their TERRIBLE IVR system to finally find the option of "Closing a Line". But in classic fashion, I had to hold for 10 minutes just to get a representative. The T-Mobile call I had before to double check the status of my number translation was short and sweet with only waiting 3 minutes flat for a representative to connect me. For customer service urgency, AT&T never had the same amount of speed in the 2 years I had been with them. This phone call was an interesting one though... Let's dive into the details.

The rep was a upbeat sales person basically asking why I was not continuing with AT&T because I had selected the "Close a Line" service. I basically told him my grievances:

• Wait times for Customer Service take about 10 - 30 minutes on non-peak times
  
• Customer Service reps on technical or billing issues are far from helpful
• I have been told that I don't "deserve" an upgrade even though I have had a loyal 3 year history with AT&T (after understanding that I was marked as an LTV1 customer from a question on upgrades)
  
• Of all the times I was sent "incentive" offers to get "better phones", the deals were the exact same as a new customer signing with AT&T (as noted in one of my earlier posts in August)
• The plan pricing is a plain criminal rip-off compared to the competition

The rep would just try to apologize on behalf of the bad experiences I have had with the company. He then decided to go into more detail on my dissatisfaction on the upgrade incentive I was offered. I told him that I wandered into a few shops and basically my "incentive" was for a selection of free music phones which any other customer could get... But also the matter that I was using a Palm Treo 680 at the time and the incentives on smartphones and PDA phones were a far cry from a good deal and downgrading to a free music phone "upgrade" wasn't my intentions... He then asked about what I got from my T-Mobile dealer. I just told him "I was given a T-Mobile Wing at no cost out of pocket for me". The AT&T rep was taken aback... but he decided to pull out all the stops to try to keep my business. "Zero, I am willing to give you a FREE AT&T Tilt Pocket PC phone (a $500 value) and one month of Pocket PC internet on our blazing fast 3G network just to try to keep your business!" I just flat out told him no, because as tempting as that deal is... I have no doubt that I'd have to sign up for a ridiculously expensive plan to get that sort of a hook-up.

Had they offered me something like that back when I was teetering either way on AT&T and on that Treo 680... I would have been convinced. Sony Ericsson's devices have worked marvelously for me and the tri-band nature of them running 900/1800/1900 make for the perfect harmony on T-Mobile or any other networks should I choose to be the "world traveler" on vacation. My phone does what it does well and I don't think I'll be upgrading at any time soon... Plus the fact that I have a spare phone for times when I'd rather not take my smartphone with me to the gym is nice.

AT&T, I hardly knew ye... Learn to save a sale early before it's too late.

Over a million iPhones have been sold.  Have you: bought one, considered it, or decided it's not for you?

Wow... I am shocked that Vox even posed this as a "Question of the Day"! I'll go over the 90 day "evaluation" of the state of iPhone related affairs as well as answer the "Question of the Day".

With the 90 day time frame basically upon us, there has been lots of hot-button issues with regard to the iPhone. Things like hackers unlocking the iPhone for free, lawsuits over a "defective battery design" or "diminished resale value of the 4GB model being discontinued", to even the latest one on bans of cash sales of the iPhone... The device has stirred up the market and, dare I say, in an impactful way. You have makers who've basically taken apart their ideas of what a user interface should be and then revamped it to much more promising things. Notable manufacturer on this forefront being HTC with their new TouchFLO interface for the Windows Mobile 6 operating system. But at the same right, there are also manufacturers competing on a beautifully crafted shell. Noteworthy names being LG's Prada phone or Motorola's complete revamp of a mainstream sensation, the RAZR2. There were naysayers saying "No one will ever buy up into the gimmicky touch only bit!" But when you have to note that millions of the iPhone have been purchased, the numbers don't lie... If Apple makes it, people will come.

On the technological side of issues... AT&T has their panties in a wad all from the whole unlocking of the iPhone away from their network due to the minuscule profit margin they earn, unlike the one Apple gains from the sale of the device. AT&T pays Apple $18 per iPhone on their network, so to "recoup" their losses. They profit money from the sign-up of contracts and subscribers locked into their plans. But they do have a right to get their selves in a "tizzy" over it, because they can't subsidize the cost of the iPhone unlike like say... a RAZR V3. Here's an example of subsidizing phones:

Phone: Motorola RAZR V3
AT&T Store's List Price: $250
2 Year Contract Price: $100
After Diccounts and Rebates: FREE!
(AT&T's possible invoice price on the phone $5 - $20)
Zero's Note - I don't know the exact number, my figure of AT&T's invoice is an estimate. Take my number with a grain of salt.
Prices from the AT&T Wireless site

The iPhone, because it is made by Apple does not give AT&T this luxury to slash the price of the device as they please because Apple makes the device at a much higher cost than ordinary cell phones or smart phones. I would estimate that the iPhone's "cost" is about $150 - $180, invoice probably at $250 (AT&T's "buy-in price") while retailing at $400. Talk about getting the short end of the stick for AT&T. It's rather a steep deal and I can see why AT&T is mad as hell. The same right though, people saw it coming... Because Apple fans will stop at damn near nothing to get their hot hands on one of their new devices. The fact of the matter that the iPhone had few exclusive technologies specifically to AT&T had almost made it a target of hackers, unlocking chop-shops, and various retailers... If there were tons of things that required AT&T, I could see it being a better cash cow. But with the news that Orange France will be releasing an unlocked model for the European market... It may just serve to enrage AT&T even further when you have unlocked phone shops importing these unlocked models to the American market place.

As far as the iPhone, It's not for me because I need a robust and powerful device. With the iPhone for my friends, my opinion is more in favor of telling ones who have not jumped on board with it... I would recommend that they wait before buying in. Apple submitted their patents for an iPhone "Nano"  to the US Patent Office and some analysts say that it could be about November for a second generation iPhone. Europe's Vodafone has advocated that the iPhone must have 3G or it is useless for their advanced network. So much new possible innovations for the iPhone as a platform, but just time is the factor of all things.

A while ago, I journeyed out to The State Fair of Texas for a juvenile return to my childish youth. I had last gone to the fair back in 2004 and I was wondering if anything changed. I remembered back in 2005, there was the wild rage over "Fried Coke" and supposedly this year... there was more creative fried entries, such as the notable "Fried Latte".

I went with a modest 20 tickets at $10. The only con to the fair is that the currency is tickets. Games, food, attractions all cost tickets. It is a pain but it must tolerated to get into the spirit the event. I had an chili tamale to start my journey... It was rather tasty with savory ground beef and lightly spicy chili. Most of the "amusements" are more in the town carnival respect, something that's more of a "tourist trap" if anything. I would try one of the "famous" Fletcher's corn dogs which is still great even 2 years later.

I'd wander around the automotive show rooms, which still remain "segregated" as always. One for domestic American cars and another for import Japanese cars and some branches of domestic cars. No European cars, oddly. After wandering and gawking at cars... It'd be time for a snack again. The Fried Latte would be the next item to try. That was interesting... a cold ice cream like mixture of ground coffee beans topped on a bed of crispy strips of some sort, then covered in a whipped cream and topped with some more coffee grounds. A tasty treat, but a bit messy though... I would probably advise anyone trying it to have some sort of drink to wash the sugar down.

After some more walking around the fair grounds to explore everything... the next hint of sweet hit. Closest thing in proximity to taste: Fried Cheesecake. A simple treat, just cheesecake filling wrapped around and then deep fried. I opted out of the decadent strawberry topping with just a hit of powered sugar. That was a truly savory treat... It was not over the top like the fried latte and I was very much glad about that. As always, make sure to have a drink... it will help wash down the grease and sugar.

Much of the other "food attractions" were just stuff from some of the restaurants in town just trying to promote business. A lot of things seemed lack luster to be hawking their stuff at the fair... like southern fried chicken, burgers, or even pizza. I would try to wander some more until I could find something really out of the norm to try... My last thing on the journey was the fried cookie dough. The 2006 winner of the most creative fried treat. It's just a simple treat as well... The tasty part of it is just the crackle of the shell for the warm and gooey interior of cookie dough and chocolate chips. This is one item I will say that you NEED water or the sugar content will figuratively choke you with how rich it is.

The fair successfully displays itself as a festival of fried deliciousness, but have a nice expense dedicated to it if you want to be selfishly decadent in the rapture of taste. I went with a dear friend and sharing the expense was much less painful between the both of us. If you can go with a group of close friends, I would highly endorse that option.

What's your cure for the common cold?

Curing the common cold... This takes me back to when I lived the apartment life alone with no health insurance. I opted out of health insurance mainly because I just couldn't afford it. I remember catching the worst cold one year and had to literally fend for myself to get better. I remembered some of the old remedies to attempt to heal up, because it would quickly become a "now or never" issue. My sinus drainage was terrible to the point that basically I got a sore throat from the mucus basically drying out my throat. I had to devise a plan to attack to fight off my viral assailant and slay it quickly! Here was my battle plan:

• Chicken soup or chicken porridge ("Chicken soup cures all!" being the old saying)
  
• Orange juice or a 1,000 mg dose of Vitamin C (Immunity booster)
  
• Supplement a diet of clean grains and carbs to support the "energy drain" from fighting illness
• Removing sugar from my diet (Soda, candy, junk food)
  
• Hot lemon tea with a shot of honey to act as a sore throat and to aid in expectorating the mucus
• LOTS of BED REST (a huge key to victory)

This battle plan would be grueling as depending on how much sleep you get... you can recover in either 2-3 days or as long as a week. It is grueling because if you're suffering from the mucus drainage... you quickly loose the ability to taste anything. So chicken soup, orange juice, or even the lemon tea soon "taste the same". Lay off on the late night TV, movies, porn, internet and even video games and watch your recovery quickly speed up.

So I did the Dist-Upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon today and well things broke. I won't cry about it, but it is a bit annoying until kinks get worked out. I may have to seek a full reinstall because this time around... so many things seemed rushed. I'll see if I get any replies on the forums about my issues, but it'd be a damn shame to have to reconfigure everything again.

I would like to reflect a moment of my life where many people in my life have always asked me...

Why are you so obsessed with mobile phones and even PDA phones?

I can say it goes back to the days as a kid when you had cartoon heroes like Dick Tracy who had the super communicator watch or your gadget masters like Q from the James Bond 007 movie franchise. When laptops finally hit the market in a "fashionable" form, they were still big. Mobile phones just got big for consumers at this era and they were a little bare in features... I knew that mobile phones would get big with time and that maybe they would be a step to the "communicator of the future". It was something big that I was about to witness in my lifetime.

It wouldn't be until the GSM era that I would witness an explosion of improvements. You would quickly have music phones that could carry about a CD or two in the early days and now... you can carry up to 8GB of music on phones like the Nokia N-Series Internet Edition phones. The only thing that was hard to see evolve was the phone operating systems... because face it: early phone operating systems were rather inflexible, especially when lacking Java. Once the processors got faster, the operating systems got more advanced. Now, even your consumer phones have operating systems are very much like miniature computers on some aspects... But I digress.

I have tasted just about a lick of every phone brand you can name out there as far as GSM goes. I have not, however played with a $1,000+ phone or owned one... simply from the price is too prohibitive of an expense for me. The most I have spent is (so far) $300, but since I have learned to play by means such as eBay (not so much anymore) and my local craigslist postings for "newer" phones rather than shelling tons of cash to a hardcore seller trying to make a shot for profit.

For the curious... here's my phone timeline for the curious:

Circa 2002 - Motorola V60 (under parent's contract)
October 2004 - Nokia 3120 (Unlocked by myself)
October 2005 - Motorola RAZR V3 Black (Unlocked by Cingular)
January 2006 - Motorola SLVR L6 (Unlocked and hacked to quadband)
April 2006 - Motorola MPx220 Windows Mobile smartphone (unlocked)
May 2006 - Sony Ericsson T637 (Cingular locked)
June 2006 - Motorola SLVR L7 (Unbranded, unlocked, no iTunes)
October 2006 - T-Mobile MDA (Unlocked and custom hacked with super firmwares by myself)
January 2007 - Nokia E62 (Crippled and locked by Cingular)
July 2007 - Palm Treo 680 (Unlocked by Cingular/AT&T, updated with newest firmware)
October 2007 - Sony Ericsson P990i (unlocked smartphone) and W300i (AT&T locked music flip-phone)

I think I have found my niche with Sony Ericsson as far as phones go... just I hope phones continue to evolve and push the envelope on innovations. I loved just about every phone I have owned... but on some of the phones I had the most issues with were the Motorola phones ironically. Though Sony Ericsson's latest approach of form with function has been pretty slick... Their new phones have great looking shapes and even interesting functionality... The thing I am most in admiration is their team project with Fossil for the Bluetooth watches.

Check out their promotional page for their new watches here: Sony Ericsson presents "TimeMasters 3"