July 2005

Motorola today announced specs on their BlackBerry Killer, the Moto Q.  The Moto Q, code named the Franklin, but affectionately called the RAZRberry,  is touted as the smallest QWERTY keyboard PDA phone on the market. 

Features include:

• Windows Mobile 5.0
• Support for Exchange 2003 SP2
• 1.3 Megapixel camera
• RAZR design, .45” thick

The Moto Q is rumored to be released in Q1 2006.

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The boys and girls over at Microsoft decided to officially name the next version of their Operating system Windows Vista.  I think that this name is going to have to grow on me a bit.  I should start to use the word Vista now so that it won’t seem so odd when it actually comes out.

“Have you upgraded to Vista yet?”  “Are you guys on Vista or still on 2000 or 20003?”  “ We have no plans on moving to Vista, we still have NT4 servers in production.”

Well, at least the name is more original than Windows 2006.

I write this post in response to Unified IM! The Holy Grail! over on Paul O’Flaherty’s blog.

Although unified instant messaging, The Holy Grail as Paul calls it, would be a beautiful thing, the only way it would truly be the killer app were if it allowed cross network functionality.  If I have an MSN account and could talk to someone on AOL or Yahoo without having to use a different account, that would really be something.  They only problem here is that this would require the networks to play nice and there really is no reason for them to as they are offering these chat clients for free and are directly competing with each other.

The In Case of Emergency (I.C.E) campaign is an excellent idea.  Heaven forbid that you get into an accident and are unconscious or incapacitated and cannot tell emergency workers who to call.  If you do however, and use the In Case of Emergency acronym ICE on your mobile phone as an address book entry, contact information for a loved one that you would like to be contacted is right at the fingertips of emergency workers. 

One of the most popular reasons that people say that they carry a mobile phone is for in case of  an emergency.  If you use I.C.E., your loved ones can still be contacted even if you are unable to.

Update

No sooner than I got my post up, as expected, IceRocket was back online.  Maybe it is just me.

Probably not by the time you read this but I cannot get to their site as I write this blog post.  I really am trying to like this search engine but it seems like every time that I try to use it there is some type of technical problem going on.  I wonder what the problem will be today.

The developers over at Skype are at it again as they have developed a Skype Toolbar for Outlook.  The toolbar, which is currently in beta, works on W2K or XP with Outlook 2000 or higher. 

Some of the features supported in this release include

• Easily match individual outlook contacts to Skype contacts.
• See Presence, start calls and chats for all known message senders direct from the toolbar.
• See presence, call and chat to all outlook contacts known to Skype.
• Create Outlook contacts direct from incoming email.
• Use Skype to Call all Telephone numbers for Outlook contacts.
• Use Skype to call and chat with all other known contacts in the Cc and To message headers
• Record journal entries for all incoming Skype calls
• Use Skype to call telephone numbers and even Skype names in the body of Email messages
• Start group chats from email messages where topics are automatically set the to the email subject
• Automatically add Skype callto signatures to outgoing email messages.
• Import contacts to Skype direct from Outlook.
• Open Outlook contact automatically for incoming calls.

So your questions probably are, “What is a Slingbox” and “Why don’t you get a Tivo”?  Let me answer the second question first.  I have a Tivo.  Actually, I have two, but with work, the kids, and blogging, I often don’t have time to watch my recorded programs.  Now lets answer the first question. 

What is a Slingbox?  Well it is a nifty little device that lets you view recored content on your network from anywhere in the world.  Let’s say that I am on a business trip that prevents me from watching 24.  No problem, I just set the Tivo to record it.  When I get to my hotel room, I log into my Slingbox from my laptop and watch Jack save the world. 

I am so getting one of these…

Traffic Tricks by Blogs Of The Day has post a trick that I actually unknowingly implemented a few weeks ago.  I blogged about the Tom Cruise prank microphone incident and that one post now receives more search engine traffic than all the rest of my site combined.