Moreover, any attempts to develop apps that accomplish video recording and storage or media messaging using MMS have been blocked by Apple’s Appstore Nazis.  Why?

Does Apple have something so incredibly cool up their sleeve that they’re forcing would-be competitors to the sidelines while we all waiting in Lemming-like anticipation?  I doubt it.   If Apple had something that slick and revolutionary–having to do with mms–they wouldn’t need to worry about competitors or imitators in the app store, would they?

Seriously, it’s ridicululous that I can download a multimedia Fart catalog from the app store but I still can’t take video or mms on the iPhone.

Just yesterday my business partner had the absolute WORST customer service experience EVER from a guy named Jeremy at Sonicwall support. Jeremy hung up on my business partner after steamrolling him the whole time, despite Sonicwall’s mistake in issuing our client an incompatibile upgrade key for one of their devices.

So here’s to you Jeremy.  You suck.

Oh, and by the way, Sonicwall, you might want to have your marketing department double check those marketing emails that go out. This one had a 2006 copyright date on the footer. (Newsflash, it’s now 2008.)

So when I answered the call, the guy said some crap I couldn’t understand and managed to stay with me on the call for all of about 8 seconds before hanging up.  When I’m in a meeting and I get 12 calls in a row, I look like a dweeb. I have to do something to silence my ringtone, so I dump the incoming private calls to voicemail. The other option would be to turn off my phone, but I just can’t afford to do that.  What’s worse, when these morons go into my voicemail, they’re paging me and leaving me voice messages. The SMS page notifications I receive as a result incur SMS usage, which equals $$$ out of my pocket, sucks my phone memory, and creates a REAL nuisance. We’re talking 20 – 30 voicemails and 20 – 30 text messages every day.
Now here’s the real crap of it: AT&T says they “cannot block private calls”, period, end of story. How idiotic is that? Privacy management out to be the hallmark feature of a usage-based system like AT&T’s cell phone service. This is why companies like Iotum, GrandCentral, and TalkPlus are getting so much attention. They allow you to manage *more* of your own privacy than the cell phone companies do.

Problem is, I already use one of these services and I’m still getting Private No. calls, because the spamming caller isn’t dialing my GrandCentral number–they’re dialing my direct cell phone number. I cannot change my cell number because many of my clients use it to get a hold of me. My number is already on the national Do Not Call list (I registered it even though I shouldn’t have to since it’s a cell). Automatic callback to the private number doesn’t work.
It dawned on me that I should be able to turn my private call ringtone to silent with no vibrate, but as it turns out, this phone won’t let me do that either. So I started investigating call-blocking add-ons for the Symbian OS that runs on my phone. Haven’t been able to find anything yet.  Any Symbian lovers out there know of a good solution?

Yup, Lodgenet is a series of tubes–tubes that are too narrow and which do a lot of sucking.

I recently sent a request to myspace asking how to take “last login” off my profile, this is the response i recieved:

MySpace Contact1 wrote:
Hello,

Please verify that you are logging in with the correct password and username. We also recommend clearing your browser’s cookies and temporary internet files and then try logging in again.

Often, changing internet browsers can do the trick. For example, try Internet Explorer if you are using AOL. Note: Mac users should use Safari or Firefox for the best browsing results.

Also, try lowering the your browsers security settings. If you are using a firewall, try lowering those settings, if possible.

If you have already tried the methods above, check to make sure your profile still exists by finding your profile on the site. Also, look for comments you posted on your friends’ profiles. If you cannot find your profile, it may have been deleted. MySpace may delete profiles if they violate the site’s Terms and conditions. You cannot retrieve a deleted account.

If problems persist, please reply to this e-mail and provide a brief explanation of the problem that you are having, the e-mail address and password with which you are trying to log in.

If this does not address your issue completely, please press “Reply” and provide any additional information you feel is relevant.

Thank you,
MySpace.com

Then I responded with:

To Whom it may Concern,

Thank you for your response to my question, however this is not at all what I was asking about. I would like to get rid of the “last login” line displayed on my profile that shows the last time I loged into myspace. I do not want people to know when I was on, even my friends. Yes I’m odd, thats just how I role.

Thank you again

Peter

To which they replied:

Hello,
Thank you for contacting Customer Service at MySpace.com.
To help us further assist you in logging in, please send the following:
Email/log on address:
Password (If you are uncomfortable sending your password, you may send a salute – a current photo of yourself holding a hand written sign containing your account ID for verification purposes):
A link to your site would also be very helpful as there may be an error with your email/log on address.
Thank you
MySpace.com

Which necessitated this from me:

Ok your completely wasting my time and clearly not even reading my emails. So first off, kiss my white butt. Secondly, I want to take off of my profile where it displays:

LAST LOGIN

if you cannot understand this they you clearly are a bunch of fools who have no business working with mentally challenged hamsters, let alone computers.

So if my profile suddenly gets deleted, you all know why.

- There is good information for shoppers on blogs. (The date was right, and the retail store suggested was right–Best Buy.)

- There is innacurate information for shoppers on blogs. (The quantity was dead wrong. A supposedly leaked internal memo from Best Buy “guaranteed” 40 Wiis per store. The store I went to only had 18, and I was 22nd in line.)

- There is  some dead-wrong information on blogs. (The supply of Wiis was supposed to outpace the supply of PS3s by a factor of 4-to-1. In some areas, this has been exactly the opposite.)

- There is some dead-wrong information coming from the people standing in line for Wiis. (Some guy told me Super K had PS3s from floor to ceiling, but later when I checked it out, the store clerk told me they were raffling the chance to buy one, count em, one PS3 at the store PER WEEK. I figured hey, I can grab a PS3 or two, hawk it on eBay, and by as many Wiis as I want with the profit. No such luck.)

So concludes my “show up at Best Buy at 5 AM so my kids won’t be disappointed when the twenty-one people in front of me are all gangly teenage boys without kids and have been sleeping on concrete since 8 the previous night” experience.

This is a lesson to me, and should be, somehow, a lesson to my kids.  In other words, I’ll never do it again.

Here you have what I would consider to be a response to the demand–”just get me a phone that places calls on Yahoo”–and not much else. Here’s the deal on the $99 Yahoo phone.

It’s cordless, but you’ll need to leave the base connected to your Windows PC in order to place calls to your Yahoo buddies. Your Yahoo buddies must also be using the Windows version of Messenger.  On the rear of the base is a RJ11 receptable so you can plug in a phone line. This makes the phone a standard cordelss phone, too. It uses the DECT standard for digitally transmitting voice between the handset and the base, and Yahoo has gone ahead and taken the liberty of calling it a “dual mode” phone (though as far as the phone is concerned, it’s really just a DECT phone).  The use of the word dual stems from the fact that you can call Yahoo buddies and regular landline numbers.

What I like about this phone–
The wireless range is reasonable, and the talktime is fine (10 hours, they claim). The form factor and industrial design of the phone is acceptably consistent with other cordless phones you might see in a residence, though the keypad buttons were obviously designed for people with micro-thumbs. It is very easy to misdial because of this. But generally speaking, your girlfriend won’t think you’re a total dork if you have this thing in your apartment. The base is also very sleek-looking. Navigating the buddy list is a snap. 

What I don’t like about this phone–

Where to begin. This product screams peanut butter memo. This phone is basically the same as the Keyspan Skype phone, only with the nuisance of having to connect a phone line (a 911 lawsuit avoidance technique if ever there was one).  Then there’s Yahoo’s obtuse, big-headed insistence on developing everything for Windows first and by side-stepping open standards. This phone’s Windows-centricity comes courtesy of a crap licensing deal Bill Gates signed with the makers of the Truespeec codec ten or twelve years ago, and because Yahoo is either too cheap to license G.729 or too scared of losing their oh-so-profitable Yahoo Chat regime, we Mac users are stuck with a sub-par Yahoo Messenger, and an incompatible phone. Come on Yahoo, times have changed. Get with the program.
Then again, if you are a Windows user, looking at the Yahoo Messenger with Voice solution on this phone versus Skype, I would be half-tempted to say use Skype. The calls are cheaper, the user-base is larger, and Skype isn’t afraid of the big bad 911 litigation wolf.  Plus, if you ever switch between platforms, your Skype hardware, including the Keyspan I mentioned above, will switch with you.

Sorry Yahoo, your phone kind of blows.  Why not do something NEW instead producing a product which meets the bare-bones requirements of some stuffy boardroom guy who A) is never going to use it B) hasn’t been innovative since 1994 and C) sees the other guys doing it and yells, “just get me a phone that works on our system!”……

]]> http://macvoip.com/stn/2006/11/21/my-take-on-the-yahoolinksys-phone/feed/ 63 http://macvoip.com/stn/2006/10/28/brown-minutes-my-motor-city-kitties/ http://macvoip.com/stn/2006/10/28/brown-minutes-my-motor-city-kitties/#comments Sat, 28 Oct 2006 17:57:19 +0000 Ted Wallingford http://macvoip.com/stn/?p=229 Yeah, the Tigers lost to the Cards in game 5. PUH-thetic.  I propose a toast to Jeff Pulver in honor of his team (and mine) getting stuffed in the championship race.

• Comcast support obsolete operating systems like OS X.
• She needs a new IP address and she has to call Apple Support to get it.

PEOPLE,  this is the  biggest piece of bullcrap I’ve ever heard YET from Comcast. I mean, seriously, how do you fight this crap? The only other service in her area is Windstream DSL and that’s just more of the same. *sigh*

Introducing Brown Minutes at Signal to Noise. Some might call me a contrarian, yet I’ve decided to extrapolate Jeff Pulver’s Purple Minutes concepts by juxtaposing it. Purple minutes are minutes of enhanced telecom traffic. Whereas, Brown Minutes are minutes of frustration and the frailties of the global network.
Please enjoy Brown Minute No 1.: eBay screws Bruce Epstein. This one is a tad old, so also be sure to check out Brown Minute No. 2: Why are people still using Perl 3? Or, better still, a bonus Brown Minute: Macbooks should be recalled, and here’s why.

More Brown Minutes are on the way. I am starting to feel like a cranky geek with all this cynicism.