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Ooma Day 1

Ooma

So far so good with the Ooma today… Call quality seems clear and no one has commented that we sound any different which has happened on occasion with previous home VOIP services.

Only one glitch which was when I accidentally disconnected my sister-in-law by placing the call on hold. When my wife went to pick up with a second extension the call was not there and I thought a simple flash would flip over to the active line. My understanding of how Ooma works is that you get the second line on a second extension if the line is active elsewhere.

Otherwise the phone is working as we would expect. I like being able to get a visual cue that the phone is in use (#1 Button is active and Red). Still getting used to seeing a blue blink every few minutes out of the corner of my eye…

My wife seems pleased (outside of the call disconnect) and was really very happy to learn we could SEE we had a voicemail AND that you could access things without even having to dial!

I’ve also received an email from Ooma this morning telling me that over the next few days more features (outbound Caller-ID needs to activate for starters) will become available and my current carrier (Verizon) will be notified of the changes we are making which is standard stuff, but good to see that Ooma is on top of the initial welcome and customer communications.

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Ooma Arrives

ooma: logo

I received the Ooma today which I initially discussed on my podcast, the GearTech Update.

In the box were both the Hub and Scout which was a nice surprise as the Scout is sold separately or so I thought when I first read about this. I am not sure whether the initial seeds (1500 White Rabbits) are getting both pieces or if everyone does which somewhat offsets the future price of $400. Though the scout is around $40 as I recall – so not that much! You can certainly choose to add a Scout anywhere you want more hardware.

The hardware is both elegant and simple. There are lights to let you know which “line” is active and lets you choose whether you want to join a call or start on a virtual line. I used quotes only because the Ooma provides access to a second virtual line which is usually not available unless you take a call with call waiting. With the box and actually now with the flash on your phone you can switch and start a new call on a separate line. I’ll have to play with this more as I’ve only made a test call to my cell so far (it’s after midnight). You can also conference the two lines together with the box by pressing both line buttons together which is a nice bonus feature. The other buttons enable voicemail access, playback and delete. There’s another button which lets you push any call into voicemail like on your mobile – again a nice bonus feature though I would think this could be even more useful with an LCD display to show Caller-ID. The way cordless phones walk around our home, it’s quite possible to have the phone ring and have no idea where the actual handset is hiding …

I have the main Hub unit on my desk where it can directly connect into our network with my cable modem and router. It’s suggested that you place the Hub between your Cable Modem and Router so that voice can be prioritized over your data. In my past experience with VOIP services (Vonage and CallVantage) this made a noticeable difference and I’ve gone with the suggested configuration. I do however, have the main phone line running through my HP PhotoSmart 3310 Printer so the fax works. The Scout is directly connected to our phone line in the Kitchen with the cordless base station. The phone on my desk is a wireless extension as are the rest of the phones in the house.

When everything is connected and plugged in, Ooma auto-connects and configures itself. The lights blink and after a few seconds you are ready to set up your greeting and voicemail. This is the usual stuff – nothing really to report on this other than I had no issues. When Ooma is active on your phones you get a new dial-tone to let you know it’s on. You also get a visual reminder on both the Hub and Scout with the blue status light. If you lose power or have a network problem, the light turns red and you are back on copper. My plan once I really give this a test is to drastically reduce my Verizon monthly service (currently ~$100/mo) as we’ll only really need basic dial-tone and local calling for emergencies. Ooma also provides web access for call logs and remote voicemail access. I’m not sure that you can get mp3 voicemail attachments as I’ve had with other services and it looks like a flash player, so no listening via mobile phone just yet.

So far Ooma seems like a nice addition to our home telephone set-up, though I’ll be very interested to hear what my wife has to say when she sees and uses it for the first time. It does seem like a very friendly consumer design and other than the fact that we now have another small box on the kitchen desk (her desk!) I like how the boxes let you see you have a voicemail… perhaps now we’ll be better about actually listening to home voicemail messages! In many ways the boxes themselves are a new spin on the older answering machines and Ooma has even called this a Broadband Answering Machine. There’s clearly more under the hood as it’s a VOIP router with Quality of Service (QoS) and P2P inside. I”m guessing that the Scout runs on some home phone-line networking I also am not sure how the P2P really works yet or what the mystery USB port is on the Hub… I’ll post more once we really test this whole set-up. For now, here’s an unboxing… and yes I think I probably do look that tired most of the time.

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Nokia N95 with US 3G Support – Coming Soon!!

Om Teases us today with a taste from a recent meeting with Blake Krikorian, CEO of Sling Media and his proto Nokia N95 with US 3G! I’ve heard this was coming and actually thought it might be here this month, but this is the first proof it’s out there and getting ready for this market. An 8GB US 3G N95 is a VERY compelling product and one that even with the more complex S60 UI can take it to the iPhone.

I would have a hard time wanting to use my iPhone over the N95 on 3G. Let’s hope it also comes with more RAM to push this into a no contest launch!

“The conversation was lively, but what was most interesting was that Blake walked in with a Nokia N95 and started showing off the streams off his cable box. I was surprised because my N95 can barely stream audio on the herky-jerky EDGE. And here I was watching smooth video with perfect audio.

It was an early trial unit with the ability to support the U.S. flavor of 3G (HSPDA-High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), according to Blake. A few calls to well-placed sources after the taping confirmed that Nokia (NOK) has plans to release the U.S.-optimized N95 this September. That would be a good catalyst for U.S. sales for N95, because this is a device that shines on 3G networks. I took it along on a trip recently and found it quite useful.” [GigaOM ]

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And we thought Yahoo was moving in a new direction…

Though somehow I doubt this is where we thought they’d be heading …

“In an increasingly rare collaboration with Hollywood, Yahoo has signed a production deal with the company behind reality shows such as Temptation Island and Joe Millionaire.

The Web behemoth’s nonexclusive first-look pact with Rocket Science Laboratories will likely focus on short-form video that offers a degree of interactivity. The companies also are examining the possibility of migrating whatever content the deal yields back to the television platform. Neither would disclose any current projects being developed.” [CNET News.com]

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Remember when Palm was Cool?

Remember when Palm was cool

It’s been a while since Palm did anything that got my attention in a positive way, but seeing the alleged pictures of the pending Treo 800 just has me scratching my head. Did someone get distracted along the way here or what? This is one ugly design… Are we sure the function buttons are large enough? Could they possibly take up more space? It’s also hard to believe that they are still working with a square screen in this day of portable media when a rotate to landscape view would accommodate video so much more appropriately – though holding that beast might be a tad awkward.

I owned the original Palm and most of the units released following through the Treo 650. Between the revolutionary Foleo and this new Treo, I’m certainly glad my needs have evolved.

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Friday Fun – Intel Rocks Hard

My former agency and colleages at McCann and MRM have produced a few funny videos for Intel on Hardware Security. Christopher Guest directed and Dan Finnerty of the Dan Band (seen in “Old School” and “Starsky & Hutch”) sings.

There’s some good I.T. Manager humor woven into the lyrics! While the videos are clearly fun, hardware security is serious business. There’s a companion site to the videos below which manages to keep things at a higher product level until you decide to deep dive into the greater Intel.com site.

With permission, I’ve reposted the videos on Viddler. Feel free to add your comments and tags!

You can rely on soft solutions…or you can rock with something a whole lot harder.

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Nokia Multimedia Transfer 1.1

Nokia Media Transfer, now Nokia Multimedia Transfer has been updated… I’ve yet to install, but the list of changes looks good. No Aperture support yet unfortunately.

  • “Name changed from ‘Nokia Media Transfer’ to ‘Nokia Multimedia Transfer’
  • Added support for Nokia Eseries devices
  • Features related to camera disabled if device has no camera
  • Improved support for iTunes Plus
  • Metadata preserved in mp4 transcode
  • Plus various bug fixes”

[Nokia Europe – Nokia Multimedia Transfer]

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Disney buys Club Penguin for $350 Million!

My kids are still way to young to explore on Club Penguin, but I checked it a few months ago after a parent at school mentioned their older child enjoyed some time online there. The site is pretty simple, and involves some guided chat and interactions (read safe) options as well as quite a few options for parents to spend more money. There are no ads and it’s a reasonably priced subscription service at $6/mo.

“The company also announced on Wednesday it had purchased kids’ virtual world Club Penguin for $350 million in cash plus up to $350 million more depending on the Web site’s earnings in 2008 and 2009.

Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger said he expects the acquisition to immediately begin contributing to the company’s bottom line.” [CNET News.com]

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Better iPhone Gmail POP Mail

Just a quick update… not sure what was going on yesterday, but I am getting sent mail in my inbox. Damn you GMail!

I really don’t like POP email, but the last thing I want to do is create a new email account just to gain IMAP access to forwarded Gmail. I currently forward my Fastmail.fm (atmasphere.net) mail into Gmail and have gotten very comfortable with the tags, search and ubiquitous access from my various devices. Until the iPhone I was using either webmail on the N800 or the J2ME mobile Gmail application on my various Nokia mobiles. Of course there are no applications or java on the iPhone and we already know Gmail does not offer IMAP access.

Because Gmail is unique in what it does, things don’t work as you expect or don’t work at all when you leave the Gmail world. Tags are not something understood by any other mail application and there did not seem to be any way to stop Gmail’s sent mail from showing up in my in-box until today. There is also no way to get Gmail Mobile / POP to respect my preference for identity (atmasphere.net vs @gmail.com) since the settings are a bit rudimentary for each account with no advanced options available… As a result of this limitation, I’ve been keeping BOTH my Fastmail account and Gmail account on the iPhone to make sure I can send as atmasphere.net when I want, not Gmail. As a result I get multiple notices for each mail since one forwards to the other… yes this makes me nutty!

This tip is actually so obvious I can’t believe I did not think about it – though given the setup “wizard” in the iPhone’s Mail client it’s perhaps not so obvious to think out of the box a bit. To start just set up a new account – don’t pick a preset, instead choose Other. As you will see when you select POP (or IMAP or Exchange) you can set up your email address to be different from your login credentials on both incoming and outgoing servers. I used my atmasphere.net email address as my address, and my gmail stuff on the server end. Incoming should be set to pop.gmail.com and outgoing to smtp.gmail.com. The iPhone will default to use SSL on both ends… slide down to advanced to confirm it’s set, but it should be by default. One final piece you might want is to force Gmail incoming mail to default to recent mode which will make sure you are always getting the latest stuff — even if you POP from another machine. To do this just set your username on the incoming server to be recent:you@gmail.com and that’s it.

This method works great! While I can’t fix the things that don’t work outside of Gmail (tags) or add true features (IMAP) I can at least make Gmail less silly by not including my sent mail in my inbox. I can also keep a single account on the iPhone instead of multiples to make sure I can send with the right identity. I hope Apple and Google make it easier for iPhone users to have more advanced access to Gmail with a pending update.

Hat Tip to my buddy Eddy who suggested this today on IM and has brought some sanity to the situation.

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F.C.C. enabling 700Mhz

While this does not fill all of Google’s requirements for participation, it does make the future look good on this pending bandwidth.

“The F.C.C. did not approve a provision that would have required the winner of the auction to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis to other companies. Google favored the rule as a way to hasten competition and innovation in the cellphone industry, a market it is considering.

While the language of the ruling has not been made public, it appears that any company that buys the new spectrum will have to leave it open to devices it does not approve or control. If, for instance, Verizon were to buy spectrum, consumers would have to pay Verizon for access to its network but they could use devices of their own choosing on it.

At present, the carriers decide what devices are used on their networks and therefore control many of the services and software available to consumers. The carriers contend this lets them control the quality of the customer’s experience.” [New York Times]

Whether Google bids or not in the end, the network will be available for the consumer which is excellent. Google wanted the option to bid and lose which would let them win either way with access to the network at a reduced price (not 4 Billion) and offer their services even if there was a toll to get there.

The way things are leaning now, you the consumer will be able to buy any compatible device and use it as you like which is quite different from today. Subsidized devices are going to have to get more interesting or go away with this new model. If I can get more on an open system than I can with a subsidized and (usually) limited device I’ll choose the more open system any day.

This is great news for Nokia who sells unlocked higher end devices and should open the door to greater opportunities for marketing. Whether they walk through that door of course is an entirely different question.

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SiRF and Intel joint development agreement

Embedded GPS makes Jack a very happy boy…

“SiRF Technology Inc. (makers of the SiRFstar chip line, amongst others) and Intel (makers of everything else) have just signed a license and joint development agreement to collaborate on products which the companies hope will ‘help location and wireless connectivity become more mainstream in next generation mobile devices.’ As part of the agreement, SiRF will license some of its technologies to Intel, but the company will also co-develop new products which will be destined for Intel-powered gear like mobile phones and ‘mobile internet devices.'” [SiRF and Intel sign license and development agreement – Engadget]

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Sprint, Google in pact for WiMax mobile Web

An interest bit of news from Sprint and Google…We already know that Sprint and Nokia are working on a device for the WiMax network and now a Google Powered mobile portal is in the mix as well.

: “Sprint Nextel said on Thursday it would develop with Google a new mobile Internet portal using WiMax wireless technology to offer Web search and social networking.

Sprint’s WiMax for high-speed wireless and its services for detecting location will be combined with Google tools including e-mail, chat and other applications.”

[News.com]

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Why did Nokia acquire Twango?

I read another piece this am on the Twango acquisition and it’s got me wondering what the hell Nokia is really thinking here. Between Mosh and Twango, they will now own two separate social sites. Actually, if you count the Loudeye acquisition and Music Recommenders, there are three – though MR is not really that social.

According to the Mashable post:

The plan is to provide a seamless integration of Twango on both the Internet and on your cell phone. This will make room for a new way for people to share content and stay connected. With the ability to share photos, videos, Twango’s availability in an integrated, cross-platform existence will offer access to friends and their content, as well as a way to organize and manage your own content. [Mashable]

If you think about this for a moment, there are already a few building blocks in place. Nokia has a web upload capability that can send content to Flickr and Vox, though not yet to Twango. They have Lifeblog which captures everything you do (pictures, video, sms and mms) and can sync with both your desktop (on Windows) or send to TypePad.

For $90 Million – hell let’s say $20 Million – you’d think Nokia would want to develop a service or symbian application to send amd sync content from your device to ANY service you might want to use. It’s easier to maintain contact and activity on a social network than it is to move — especially when you’ve got content and a conversation with an audience. As of this moment, there is little to no incentive to use Twango over Flickr for images, YouTube/Viddler/Blip for video and I did not see how it would make for a good place to blog.

If Nokia’s tag line is Connecting People, why are they going out of their way to develop new stand-alone services, rather than working with what’s already present and being used by communities globally. They could really just focus enabling the experience from Mobile to web and back. From a user perspective, I would much rather have an application or service that could talk with everything else I use to make it simple for content to go back and forth. This would make it easy for me and easy for my friends to stay in touch. We already know Facebook is working on the connection with the desktop and Jaiku, Facebook and even Plaxo offer ways to have content from other syndicate-able sources appear in your profile, but no one has come up with way to link with your mobile.

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Wired Confirms Second Life is More of a Time and Budget Suck Than Marketing Channel

Second Life Logo

I’ve never gotten Second Life…. It has little appeal and is frankly boring to me. That said it seems enormously popular and I’ve had clients who’ve expressed interest in being there so I’ve spent some time checking it out.

Wired published a great piece today on the experience and experiments… Some highlights:

Then there’s the question of what people do when they get there. Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn’t much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden’s in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex. On a random day in June, the most popular location was Money Island (where Linden dollars, the official currency, are given away gratis), with a score of 136,000. Sexy Beach, one of several regions that offer virtual sex shops, dancing, and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000. The Sears store on IBM’s Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281; Coke’s Virtual Thirst pavilion, a mere 27. And even when corporate destinations actually draw people, the PR can be less than ideal. Last winter, CNET’s in-world correspondent was conducting a live interview with Anshe Chung, an avatar said to have earned more than $1 million on virtual real estate deals, when Chung was assaulted by flying penises in a griefer attack.

Sounds like a place I want my brand to be interacting with the people…

Joseph Jaffe, the marketing consultant who advised Coke on its in-world presence, dismisses the notion that such efforts might not be worthwhile. “The learning is now,” Jaffe says. “You are a pioneer, and with that comes first-mover advantage” — that chestnut from the Web 1.0 boom. And the paltry numbers? “This is not about reach anymore. This is about connecting. It’s about establishing meaningful, impactful conversations. So when people ask, ‘Why Second Life?’ I ask ‘Why not?'”

Jaffe logs on to show off Coke’s Virtual Thirst pavilion, which was created by Millions of Us, a Bay Area company that does in-world builds. He’s a close match for his avatar, Divo Dapto, a trim little figure clad in roll-up jeans and a red-on-white Virtual Thirst T-shirt. “You never know who you’re going to meet,” Jaffe says as Dapto soars toward the Virtual Thirst pavilion.

The Coke build is expansive, elaborate, and of course empty. But Coca-Cola has a plan. It’s sponsoring a contest to create a Virtual Thirst vending machine that it hopes will become ubiquitous in Second Life, just as Coke machines are everywhere in real life. Jaffe professes to be overwhelmed by the number of entries, which he characterizes as “well north of 100.”

Suddenly, another avatar materializes. “Ah, there you go,” Jaffe exclaims. “Someone’s just arrived! I think she’s from Japan.” As he speaks, Dapto starts air-typing in the weird way that Second Life avatars do, trying to chat up the new Japanese girl. She looks around, then teleports someplace else.

You might wonder what Coke is doing in such a place. “It had a lot to do with hype,” admits Michael Donnelly.

Well north of a 100 entries? I can only imagine what the budget was and the cost per entry…. How’s the ROI on that spend?

“Companies say, ‘It’s an experiment’ — but what are they learning?” Tobaccowala asks. “Basically, they’re learning how to create an avatar and walk around in Second Life.” Which is fine if that’s what you want to do. Just don’t expect to sell a lot of Coke.

Exactly. People catch on quickly and don’t repeatedly seek out experiences to involve themselves with ads. Might I be bold enough to suggest that companies take the time to get it right in real life before moving on to virtual worlds…

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iPhone vs…

Seems today’s meme is iPhone vs. Blackberry.

Dave Winer looks at ease of use for things we all consider on a daily basis – advantage BlackBerry.

For example, I brought only the iPhone with me to a meeting in Palo Alto last week. As I was driving to the meeting I could see that I would be a few minutes late, so I wanted to call the person I was meeting and alert them. With the Blackberry I would have been able to do this while stopped at a red light. Just search for the person’s name in my inbox, open the first message, highlight the phone number, click the scroll wheel twice (once to dial the number, the second time to confirm that I want to do it).

In comparison, the iPhone only keeps the most recent 25 messages in memory, and this person’s email was not in that group. No search command. And it doesn’t have a scroll wheel or a clipboard. The light turned green long before I found the email that contained the phone number. [Dave Winer]

Mark Hendrickson at Techcrunch compares mainly email – and it’s only due to Exchange sync that the Blackberry wins. With better email / PIM sync the iPhone would have come out on top.

Despite all of these criticisms of the iPhone, our venture capitalist admits that he would switch over to the iPhone if only it supported push email, calendar and contacts synchronization, and GPS. For him, the prospect of ridding his pockets of a separate device for music (an iPod nano), as well as enjoying all of the iPhone’s slick features (such as full-featured web browsing, stocks and weather apps, and its YouTube program), makes the iPhone very tempting. However, until Apple resolves these shortcomings (and perhaps Google makes its applications, especially Gmail, work as seamlessly with the iPhone as Microsoft makes Exchange work with the BlackBerry), others are going to have to pry his BlackBerry from his cold, dead hands (his words, mind you, not ours). [Techcrunch]

In my own usage, I am finding the email experience to be more than a bit anemic. The Gmail integration (or lack thereof) is horrendous. Gmail uses it’s own system which completely messes up the way you’d normally do POP mail – something I really don’t like to begin with… While the 15 min sync interval is fine for most people, in my experience it seems the iPhone is constantly in a state of connection – trying but not downloading messages. When viewing my FastMail IMAP account or Yahoo IMAP account things are more efficient and seem to connect properly and as expected.

I’ve been working with Gmail for quite a while now and while I was accustomed to some limitations on Nokia devices (not respecting my preferred email identity and no sending of attachments) things are amplified on the iPhone. As Dave mentioned, there’s no search, but there’s also no ability to view by tag / folder. Another critical ommision is there’s only one setting for checking mail on all accounts. I’ve been leaving three accounts active, but essentially live in Gmail. As a result I get multiple notifications for all my mail – first in FastMail which then forwards to Gmail. I need Fastmail on the iPhone for when I don’t want to send as Gmail, but Gmail is my main inbox where I want to get quite a bit of other stuff.

As much as I enjoy using the iPhone for all that it does – particularly the web and iPod functions, email is seriously annoying me. We need a dedicated app to manage Gmail – not POP and that will certainly require some changes (an actual application) on the iPhone. I don’t in anyway miss using a blackberry, but thinking about how nice the J2ME Gmail is on my Nokia N-Series devices does give me some pause over which device has my long term usage in its future. Why make compromises when there a choices of devices that can do it all?

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Nokia acquires Twango… a few quick thoughts

Twango Logo

Nokia has announced they’ve acquired Twango for around $90 millon! Twango is a social media site that lets you share photos and video from your mobile or computer. I just signed up and have a few observations.

  • I’ve got no idea how long this was in the works, but where’s the Web Upload configuration for N-Series devices??? Email works from every device, but is a more a pain than anything as it tends to hog the device when you send massive files. I like how you can download vcards for each of the folders you set-up. That’s a nice touch and something most sites that use email as the method do not use. I had them emailed opened and synced to my iPhone in a few minutes.
  • Contacts, the key to all social networks… Where’s the upload my address book feature to search against existing registrants and to enable me to invite my friends who’ve yet to sign up?
  • Limits on uploads suck. Sorry it just does. I previously mentioned how much I enjoyed Vimeo, but found the limits, well limiting for my needs and moved on without looking back. Twango allows the same 250MB per week… If you’ve used the later model N-Series devices, you know it’s easy to get 70-90MB files with a quick video. Do that a few times a few along with your photos and you’ve reached your limit. Choose to share other media from your desktop, and you are over.
  • The site looks good and is certainly easy to use, though a way to play videos on their existing page would be nice. It’s a fresh start here unless you’ve got some way to do a bulk upload (without bumping into the file allowance) and could be a slow transition.

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Elgato’s HD Homerun … still in the park

Elgato HD HomeRun

Elgato announced the $199 HD Homerun this morning which is a very cool, though limited product.

I love the idea! A centrally located two tuner, HD DVR accessible from any networked computer and ready to share content with my AppleTV, iPod or iPhone. Unfortunately due to one substantial limitation, this box will not be sitting in my equipment rack anytime soon…

The Good – Record two separate HD inputs across your home network. The HD HomeRun sits wherever you’ve got a 100/1000base-T Ethernet connection and a cable box, which is a great option for people like me who have a wired home and a central place for all my gear.

The main negative with this box is that it only works with ATSC and ClearQAM signals meaning you will not be controlling your cable box, but rather working with the unencrypted and freely available signal. This negative is a deal breaker. I have no intention of starting to work with antenna based HD at this point.

Today, I can access our DVRs from any TV thanks to a rather complex installation and networked video. I’d love to export shows from the DVR for use on the AppleTV (more permanent) or to the iPhone, but I can actually do that now with the EyeTV 200 I have currently collecting some dust. Of course I would have to have a computer sitting next to both the cable box (or at least a wired coax connection) and the EyeTV. The HD Home run solves that connection issue by being able to be sit away from my computer, but adds a new wrinkle by only working with Coax connections so there’s no easy way to export from my cable DVR rig. So close…