When Adesso’s PR firm asked me if I wanted to review their new Optical Trackball, I jumped on it. Yes, it has been some time since I’ve owned a trackball. 15 years or so. Not quite sure why I never picked one up in the years since. Mostly inertia, I guess, as I never found one I liked quite as much as my old one.

The trackball I was back in the late 1980s, well before mice and trackballs went digital. They had analog rollers that needed cleaning often. The trackball was also pretty big, meaning it took up a lot of room.

By comparison, Adesso’s Optical Trackball is smaller and lighter in many respects. It’s also digital, which means very tiny rollers that don’t require constant cleaning. The ball itself is much smaller than my old Expert Mouse, and it’s really light and easy to move around. It’s also much more accurate–800dpi to be exact. Never quite sure what impact that actually has on my day to day use, but I did have to lower the mouse tracking speed settings on my MacBook Pro or it’d be too easy to overshoot things.

The challenge with any new trackball is learning where the optimal spot is for your hand. The left and right mouse buttons are a little higher up than I would have liked, at least at first. It didn’t take long for my hand to find the sweet spot where those buttons are easily reachable. The scroll wheel is in a good location for my thumb, allowing me to scroll pages up and down easily.

I am finding this trackball delightful to use. At $30 from Adesso (or less if you shop around), it’s also a pretty fair price! Certainly cheaper than my old Expert Mouse. Compatible with pretty much anything that supports a USB mouse (i.e. Mac, Windows and likely Linux). No drivers to install, either. It just works.

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Paying for Incoming Calls

One of the reasons we pay for incoming calls to our mobile phones in the US is because of how our landline service evolved in the US. In most other countries, local calls are metered (i.e. charged per minute). The rate is relatively low, but it’s there. In the US, most everyone has flat rate local service. This means they can call anyone within approximately 12-15 miles as part of their line rental charge.

Because of this, when mobile phones came out in the US, the operators implemented a “mobile party pays” system. This means the person who was the mobile phone would pay to receive the call. For better or worse, this system has persisted ever since, though the FCC did investigate implementing a calling party pays system in the US at least for mobile phones, but ultimately decided against it for a variety of reasons.

Due to that reality, the US mobile operators added more minutes to their pricing plans, and even included some “free” minutes, such as night/weekend minutes and mobile-to-mobile. The end result? Yes, it costs money to receive a call on your mobile in the US, but people generally don’t worry about it.

Mobile Phones and Service Providers

Tomi and Steve are comparing apples to oranges when it comes to the number of handsets available. Tomi lists the number of phones actually in operator stores–43. I know from talking with people at CTIA that their “over 630 handsets” number includes handsets you can purchase outside of the operator channel. They are both right, in a sense, but what matters to consumers is what they can purchase in stores–not what they can order online.

Again, we have a different dynamic in the US. Whereas in most other places, there is the one true GSM standard with a common set of frequencies, we have at least 3 standards (GSM, CDMA, and iDEN) with “unique” frequencies not in use elsewhere in the world. Only one manufacturer makes iDEN phones (Motorola) and the CDMA carriers are generally not open to allowing non-operator devices on their network.

GSM operates more or less like it does elsewhere in the world, but it’s a much smaller market (the last number I heard when I was at Nokia was 45% of the US market), and you have the difficulty of both T-Mobile and AT&T using different frequencies for 3G. Until the chipsets used by mobile phones can support both sets of US 3G frequencies, even if you can unlock a phone, you can’t fully use it on the other network, so what’s the point?

Long term, all the major US operators are moving to LTE–and yes, I believe Sprint will ultimately change their WiMax stuff over to LTE. The chipset manufacturers should be able to support all the different US frequencies (including the 700mhz spectrum not being used yet). Whether or not we’ll see unlocked handsets being openly sold like in other countries remains an open question, of course.

In short: the market appears to be–on it’s own–evolving towards a point where we can buy our handsets separate from service and actually be able to move between service plans without a mandatory handset upgrade as is the case today. That’s my prediction and, quite honestly, it can’t happen soon enough.

Roaming

Sorry, Tomi, I’m not sure where you got your info, but most Americans don’t pay roaming inside the US. I haven’t since I had my AT&T Digital One Rate plan back in 1999 (and yes, back then it was a revolutionary plan). You have to work pretty hard these days to find a plan where you are charged for roaming inside the US. Outside the US, of course, it’s a different story.

Text Messaging

This is one area where I agree wholeheartedly with Tomi on. There is absolutely no reason anyone should have to pay to receive an inbound SMS message. EVER. At least with a phone call, I can see who is calling and I can make the choice not to answer. With a text message, I have absolutely no control over who can send me a text message–and affect my bill.

Granted, US operators have provided buckets of text messages, and even provide unlimited text messaging as an option. However, the usurious per-message rates of $0.20–which I’ll point out once one operator decided to do, they all did–simply encourage customers to buy a bundle they may not want. It definitely drives up the bottom line of the operators.

And yes, given the obscene revenues on SMS, I should never EVER have an SMS outage.

Universal Coverage

While Steve did say that 92% of customers are satisfied with their wireless service, most everyone can name a deadspot (or two) in their daily travels–that one spot where no matter what time of day it is, you drop a call. I certainly had my share of those on Interstate 5 when I was driving to and from Northern California to see my dad.

The challenge with fixing that problem is not so simple. I don’t know what the regulations are in other countries, but in the US, every tower that goes up requires (almost) an act of congress to get put up. Local communities can and often do get in the way of bettering the wireless networks because they don’t want to look at ugly towers. Applications for new towers with city or county governments would often take months or even years to get approved.

The FCC, to their credit. finally put in a “shot clock” on these applications at the end of 2009. Even with the shot clock, we’re look at either 90 or 150 days to get a ruling on whether or not an operator is allowed to put a tower up. That doesn’t include actually getting the tower up and online. And no, that’s not the operators “incompetence,” Tomi, that’s just the government bureaucracy for you.

Phone Subsidies

Steve doesn’t even attempt to address this issue in his response to Tomi’s posting, which is that people who take a free/cheaper phone in exchange for a two year service agreement pay the same monthly rate as those who don’t. This is ridiculous.

T-Mobile actually gives you a discount for not taking a phone subsidy: up to $20/mo depending on the plan! They also allow you to finance your phone purchase separately over the course of 4 or 20 months. This way, you know exactly what you’re paying for your phone and you stop paying extra once your phone is paid off in full.

Largest Mobile Data Market

Steve mentions in his posting that “the U.S. also has the largest mobile data market and according to Nielsen Mobile, we have more mobile Internet users than any other country.” We certainly have a lot of users, but the reason for that is the prevalence of Unlimited Data plans–something AT&T has discontinued. Given their history with SMS, I expect the other operators will fall in lockstep within 6 months. Unlimited data will be a thing of the past and consumers will simply be paying more for less, or opting not to use it because now they need to watch and see how much data they use.

Conclusions

Things are not quite as bad at Tomi makes them out, but they certainly aren’t as rosy as the CTIA points out either. There is plenty of room for improvement. More towers, more quickly, and better prepaid data plans. That’s what I want to see different in the US mobile operator market. What about you?

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• Steve Gillmor Fires Jason Calacanis

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Truph0ne News: Having made use of Truphone Local Anywhere on my last trip abroad, I’m certainly interested in seeing it expand to other markets. They recently announced planned expansions of their “local markets” to The Netherlands and Spain (i.e. markets where you can get “local” numbers and pay “local” rates). Unfortunately, it’s not immediately, it’s “months.” On a more positive note, their iPhone app now supports iPhone OS 4.0 multitasking, so you can receive Truphone calls on your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 while running other apps.

iOS4 (or rather iPhone OS 4): I’ve actually been playing with iPhone OS 4.0 for the past few months. I had the “golden master” release on my phone for nearly two weeks now and I’ve been fairly happy with it. Unfortunately, to take advantage of the multitasking feature, your apps need to be updated to support it. Why Skype did not launch their updated app the day iOS 4 became generally available, I’ll never know. My prediction: we won’t see it until after my kids get back into school in September.

Tomi Ahonen Takes on the US Wireless Industry: I am reminded of what my tour guide in Jerusalem told us: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen gets a couple of facts wrong in this epic rant about the state of the US mobile phone industry, but most of what he has to say is spot on.

Unlimited Mobile Data in 25 Countries: I’ve gotten a couple of press releases from XCom Global about their offering where they will rent you either a wireless USB modem or a MiFi like device on a per-day basis. The pricing is pretty good, given what I paid for WiFi in Europe. Unfortunately, it only works if you’re traveling to one country. Wonder how they’d handle that situation?

MAXroam Goes Global: I had a press release in my inbox about MAXroam’s special plan for people going to the World Cup. I figured it might be a bit dated by now, so I went to see if it was still being offered. To my surprise, their website had changed and they have launched their “Global SIM” cards. This was the “Holy Grail” SIM card I used on my last International trip . You can buy reasonably-priced bundles of minutes and/or megabytes of data to use in 41 European countries. These SIMs “just work” without the usual trickery involved with global SIMs.

Positioning Without GPS or WLAN: I like the idea of not having to fire up the GPS or WLAN to get location. The mobile phone is already talking to multiple cell phone towers and it is possible to use the information from those towers to triangulate your location. It may not get as pinpoint as a GPS can, but it can certainly get close enough (does 7-12 meters work–indoors no less?) where a regular GPS can’t easily. I really hope GloPos and the technology they are building around this gets some traction because it sounds like the right idea for a lot of reasons.

Comments

• 24 June 2010, Jake writes: MAXroam Global SIM the Holy Grail? You must be kidding. The price per minute is 3 to 4 times higher and there are fewer roaming partners than before. I may be trying to get one of their old classic SIMs, but this new service is completely useless for me.

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For the purposes of full disclosure, I was supplied the SIM by the company gratis with some amount of credit. The free credit on my MAXRoam SIM expired (as they sent me the SIM a while ago), so I paid 25 EUR to put some credit on it.

This post will compare the following features: Making and Receiving Calls, Text Messaging, Data, and Voicemail.

Receiving Calls

With all the global SIM cards out there, receiving calls works more or less as you expect. MAXroam provides a Belgium inbound DID, but also provides inbound numbers in other countries for a nominal monthly fee. Roam Mobility provides both a US and a UK DID number. Truphone will provide a either a US or UK number, but you can have both at extra cost. Truphone and MAXroam charge a per-minute fee for inbound calls with MaxRoam having the better rate in the EU and Israel.

Roam Mobility is unique in that it provides inbound calls for free in 65 countries (including Israel, but not Belgium for some reason). However, it requires an annual free of $25 a year to maintain your number. In countries where they do not offer free inbound calls, their inbound call rates are higher than either MAXroam or Truphone. If callers call your US number, the inbound call rate increases by $0.25/min, even in the “Free” countries.

Making Calls

Truphone offers the most natural of calling experiences, allowing you (in many countries) to dial as normal (provided your normal dialing patterns includes full international dialing, starting with + country code). In some countries, they have an “economy callback” rate which allows you to place a call and have it call you back instead, making the call somewhat cheaper. If this is an option, you will get an SMS when you land in that country letting you know.

Roam Mobility always requires a unique dialing method (starting the number with a * and ending with a #). You then receive a callback from the system. This makes Roam Mobility the least user-friendly of the services I tried.

MAXroam has the best compromise: you dial normally (again full international number with + sign). The system does not complete the call, but you immediately get a call back.

The rates for making calls vary by provider, but in all cases, it is somewhere between roaming rates on AT&T and a local SIM. Not the cheapest call you can make for sure, but if you absolutely have to make a call, it won’t completely break the bank.

Text Messaging

Thankfully, all of these providers offer SMS that functions the normal way (i.e. you text normally). Where these services differ are rates. Thankfully, in the EU and Israel, all the services offer free inbound SMS. The difference is in outbound rates. Roam Mobility charges a $0.75 a message, which is even more usurious than AT&T’s roaming rate of $0.50. In the EU, Truphone’s rate of $0.16 wins hands down, though their rate jumps to $0.56 a message in Israel. MAXroam charges 0.32 EUR per message in both the EU and Israel, which is still better than AT&T’s roaming rates.

One advantage that MAXroam has over the others is they offer the ability to send texts for 0.05 EUR over their website. The texts originate from your MAXroam SMS number and is handy in places where you have WiFi access to the Internet. This is an extremely handy feature! I only wish that feature had a more mobile-friendly web interface!

Data Service

Roam Mobility currently does not provide data service (even though they told me months ago it was coming). Truphone and MAXroam both provide data service, though the service needs to be manually configured into the device. Both services charge in 100k increments, with Truphone appearing to have an edge pricing-wise.

Both services data offerings are generally much cheaper than roaming service provided by AT&T. I tested the service in a Nokia N95-1 and got 3G service on both Truphone and MAXroam (depending on area). I used the mobile Twitter website to send out a brief tweet, as well as some more extended usage on Gravity and the built-in web browser. It worked exactly as expected.

Local Service

One unique feature that Truphone has that the others do not is “local” rates for the US and UK markets (they are adding other markets soon). This means, while you are in the US or UK (depending on the SIM type you chose) you get similar rates to what you’d get if you had a prepaid GSM plan with a local provider (in my case, AT&T or T-Mobile). The idea is that this could be your only SIM card you use everywhere. At least in the US market, The rates are “in the same ballpark” but I can get cheaper per-minute (and per-text) rates with either provider. You do get less usurious per-MB data costs, though.

Voicemail

All of the services provide voicemail, but you are required to dial from your phone in order to retrieve the voicemail, which can be expensive. Roam Mobility does not offer personalized voicemail (which is a huge fail, IMHO), but both Truphone and MAXroam offer the ability to customize your voicemail greeting.

Conclusions

Honestly, there is no clear winner here. All of the services do what they say on the tin, but none of them have the right mix of usability, features, and pricing for my needs. I ended up using both Truphone and MAXroam for different functions. Look at the services carefully to ensure you understand the pricing for your particular situation and usage patterns.

Meanwhile, the Holy Grail is coming. While I was in Europe, I used a different roaming SIM card that provided a completely natural usage experience (normal dialing, no callbacks) with SMS and full 3G support. The product is still undergoing testing and pricing is not available yet, but I have no doubt that it will be as good or better than current offerings out there.

Comments

• 23 June 2010, Ben writes: I would have to agree with your conclusions. You sum it up best saying there is no good mixture of usability, pricing, and features. I would like to try out that Holy Grail SIM card you used in Europe. When I recently was in China I had to only resort to Skype video catting, which was free and simple yet not everyone using it. Good post. Keep us updated on your future experiences.

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The non-stick surface is a kind of rubbery pad that your mobile device can rest on. It seems to support my iPhone with case quite nicely as well as a number of Nokia phones I tried. The pad does occasionally lose it’s “stickiness” but it can easily be restored with a towel dampened with water to clean off any dirt or debris.

The most confusing this about the device is the instructions, which were clearly written by someone whose first language was not English. The device plugs into your computer with a USB cable. There is also a port on the back of the device where you plug in a different cable that has an end where you can plug in a number of different ends (which are included). The upshot of this is that you can charge a number of different devices.

For phones like the iPhone where you might also want to sync your phone to your machine while charging, you should use your regular USB cable instead of the supplied charging cable. The upshot of this arrangement is that I can also use this device to charge my Nokia E71. Unfortunately, the Nokia 2mm tip included in my set did not reliably charge my Nokia E71. Unfortunately, this is a rather common issue I have ran into with chargers not made by Nokia. Fortunately for me, I had a similar tip provided with a different charger that seemed to work ok.

All in all, a worthwhile item to purchase as it combines a number of different items in a small space. With the current USD to GBP exchange rates, it’s not a bad deal, though it might take a while to arrive.

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Customers can now purchase integrated solutions from Check Point, complete with maintenance and support delivered by Check Point’s award-winning global service organization. Check Point will provide support for both its software products and Crossbeam’s X-Series platform. This simplifies the ordering process and promotes closer product, sales and technical collaboration between Crossbeam and Check Point to support customer needs.

The kind of customers that will buy Crossbeam X-Series platforms are the kinds of customers who want what we used to call “first call, final resolution” back at Nokia. This is exactly what this provides: a single point of contact for purchasing and support of Check Point software on Crossbeam hardware. What’s not to like?

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Facts are funny because, while facts are facts (or as Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, A is A), how those facts are portrayed are debatable. And while I don’t have any unique facts to contribute to this discussion, I can certainly look at the facts differently:

Heavy Users Pay Less In The US: With the adoption of unlimited voice minute plans by all the major carriers as well as unlimited texting plans, I think it’s safe to say this segment of user is much better served by US carrier plans.

Total Cost of “Ownership”: The various reports that look at what everyone pays for wireless service do not take into account one very important fact: what the phone needed to use that service costs. Unlike a lot of other places, the US operators subsidize phones. A two year contract is part of the deal. What are the upfront costs for establishing service? What are the ongoing costs, and how much does the subsidy factor into those costs?

Cost Of Changing Providers: Related to the above: what happens when you’re unhappy with your current provider? What will it cost you to change? In other countries, the cost is effectively zero. They all use the same technology and getting your existing handset unlocked is generally a trivial exercise. In the US, even if you can unlock your phone, because of the different wireless frequencies and standards, changing providers often means buying a new phone–and agreeing to a new contract.

Voice-Only Customers Well Served: If all you care about is making voice calls, the current providers and plans do a reasonable job, whether you want to go prepaid or on a monthly plan. I’d like to see some monthly plans lower than $40 (which seems to be the floor for these plans), but I spend roughly $100 a year for my wife’s mobile phone usage thanks to prepaid T-Mobile. She is not a heavy talker.

Data-Only Customers Not Well Served: If you are a talker and on a monthly plan, you can typically add a $30 (or less) a month data plan to your service. One could argue with those prices, but at least it’s fairly consistent industry-wide. Data-only is a different story. On a monthly plan, at least $50/mo (if not more). Prepaid? Depending on the operator, it either doesn’t exist or is just as expensive as a monthly plan, and it’s tied to a specific device (e.g. a USB broadband device). In Europe? Prepaid data for short periods of time is easy to get and isn’t terribly expensive.

Texting: Like with voice, higher volume users are better served by US plans, which provide a relatively low cost per-text or are flat-rate unlimited. Low-volume text users in the US are charged an ever-increasing amount per message–sent or received. I remember when it used to be $0.10 to send a text and free to receive. Now its $0.20 a message–sent or received. Picture messages are much more. Europeans have much better pay-per-text rates than Americans do (and don’t have to pay to receive texts to boot).

Conclusion: Voice customers are better served by US operators. However, that is by no means the entire picture. Texting and data prices, as well as device acquisition costs also play a role in the overall total cost of our wireless service. These are facts the CTIA conveniently leaves out of their analysis.

Comments

• 29 April 2010, Ophir Kra-Oz writes: Highly accurate description. BTW, the Verizon MiFI is a cute little device 3G->WifI gadget which offers data services to any phone with WiFI. You can actually use it with 4 devices at the same time. If you put some pressure on Verizon employees, you can even get a prepaid plan ("Wow, we didn't that was allowed, but if you say so"). In Israel it is quite the opposite. 5GB data per month is $20, no string attached. Voice is much more expensive and there are no unlimited plans.
• 29 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: See, I'd be happy with 5GB of data for $20/mo. That's very reasonable. Can you get a prepaid SIM with that rate? Maybe I'll look into that when I visit Israel next.
• 30 April 2010, Marc writes: Along the lines of the MiFI, is Sprint's Overdrive 3G/4G device. Price: $100 (with $60/month 2-year unlimited 4G data plan) Hopefully, to remain competitive with the AT&T's $30.00/month iPad unlimited 3G plan, we'll see Sprint lower their Overdrive monthly 'unlimited' rate...of course, I'd expect Sprint to have the customer pay more for the Overdrive unit upfront in order to offer this. http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_sprint_overdrive
• 30 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: $30/mo is still "too much" IMHO, it should be more like $20. Just saying.

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While I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing the fact that a pre-production unit fell into the hands of Eldar from Mobile-Review.com who posted a review of the Nokia N8 had something to do with the fact they officially announced it today. But it does bring to mind something that I believe is worth pointing out.

It’s actually not all that uncommon for Nokia to lose a prototype device. Regular readers of the mobile phone gadget blogs will attest to that. When I worked at Nokia, we got fairly regular reminders about letting information out about our pre-release handsets. They often came out shortly after a “flagship” device got prematurely exposed to the outside world.

When an Apple engineer accidentally left an unreleased iPhone device in a Redwood City bar, that was all anyone could talk about for days. Hell, it’s still in the news. Meanwhile, Nokia won’t get a whole lot of press out it. Sure, they’ll get some from a few hardcore Nokia bloggers and it might get a perfunctory mention on the gadget blogs and podcasts, but that’s it. It will cease to be a story in 24 hours.

I realize Nokia sells more phones in a week than Apple sells in a year. I realize Nokia is bigger outside the North American markets. I know many more ways that Nokia is better than Apple. But it goes to show you how the technology press cares more about anything coming out of that secretive little company in Cupertino, CA than they do for the things that come from that company in Finland. Just saying.

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• Nokia warns on profits as it delays much-needed ‘iPhone killer’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Nokia N8 To Be Announced at MWC with Symbian^3 (techie-buzz.com)

Comments

• 28 April 2010, Tom Raftery writes: Nokia used to make half-decent phones - for all I know they probably still do but as long as they continue with Symbian, they are on a long slow decline which is painful to watch. Apple aren't the only ones on the ascendancy. HTC, which has aligned itself with Android, have also become the darlings of the press and seem to have no problems attracting publicity. The common thread - both HTC and Apple have highly functional, extremely desirable, consumer friendly devices. Back in Sept 2007 I told Nokia in a prod dev meeting that what they needed to do was license the iPhone OS. The writing was on the wall even then.
• 28 April 2010, Auch Nokia "verliert" einen N8 Prototypen writes: [...] [...]
• 28 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: We all know Apple will never license the iPhone OS to anyone :) But clearly Nokia needs a fresh start on the OS. They also need a fresh approach to how they put out phones. They have far too many handsets and far too many variants of those handsets. They need fewer, more clearly differentiated handsets and better software on those handsets that is easier to update.
• 29 April 2010, Vic | Brochures Printing Online writes: I agree, Nokia has a huge army of cellphones models, which is not surprising since they are a mobile phone company to begin with. However, I think this can also be their weakness. They have segmented their users too much that they ended up developing too many models.

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This is a cross between an “inbox liquidation” and a “random thoughts that have been bugging me” post.

Pixy Me: I was given a redemption code so I could have a look at this application that lets you “personalize” stock photography with your name or some sort of message. The effects is really well done. There are limits to the personalization (number of characters) and the app could do a better job of noting the limitations. You can also personalize your own photos, but it’s more like an “add a border” personalization and not nearly as cool as the stock photography personalizations. A worthwhile purchase at $1.99.

Starbucks: Anyone who reads my Twitter stream knows I visit Starbucks on a regular basis. It is one place I relocate my home office to in the afternoons. I go there because of their rewards program (which I know some people aren’t fond of) and because the experience is generally predictable and consistant no matter which Starbucks I go to. And yes, I have Starbucks at home because I buy their “Custom Roasts” from Costco. And more recently, because Klout hooked me up with some free coffee (specifically Pikes Place Roast and Verona). Pikes Place is not one of my favorites (though in Decaf, I have no choice). Verona is much better, but my favorite so far on the Starbucks Tasting Tour is the Yukon Blend. I also remember Gold Coast Blend being good too (which is the coffee this week).

Boingo Offers Unlimited UK WiFi: Like the unlimited North America plan, Boingo now offers a similar plan for UK residents for £14.95 per month, with usage outside the UK being billed at £0.09 or £0.13 per minute. The version of their plan for mobile phones is £3.95 per month and is “worldwide” (though it is a subnet of the 125,000+ locations where Boingo is accepted). I have been considering getting Boingo again for my US travels as it is insanely useful to not have to worry about whether or not I’ll be able to use the WiFi.

Some Thoughts on CenturyLink buying Qwest: The landline business is going nowhere but down. Neither Qwest or CenturyLink has a wireless play of any sort (sorry, partnering with Verizon for mobile phones or AT&T for WiFi is not a wireless play). DSL (at least as these two companies currently deploy it) is not broadband, or won’t be considered broadband much longer. Size might matter for updating their infrastructure, but it won’t solve the lack of wireless problem? Maybe they buy Cricket and MetroPCS next?

LUNAR designs the outer case of Check Point Abra: According to their press release, “LUNAR’s challenge was to complete the expression of the Abra USB drive’s security features with an innovative design that evokes impenetrability and inspires confidence. The resulting solution approaches this goal from both a visual and tactile perspective, creating an object that is pure, iconic, and monolithic.” I haven’t seen the production Abra units up-close and personal, but if you’re interested, I’m sure your local Check Point SE would be happy to show one to you

FREETALK Everyman HD Webcam Coming: The team at Comunicano sent me an email today telling me the FREETALK® Everyman HD webcam (TALK-7140) will be generally available tomorrow (April 27) anywhere in the world via the Skype Shop. The TALK-7140 is an affordable new high-definition webcam that empowers Skype users with true 720p HD video and was unveiled at CES in January. Given the high quality of their previous products, I have no doubt this will be a fantastic camera. All the same, I have a review unit coming that I’ll take a look at once I get it.

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Like the WKB-4000UB that I reviewed previously, it has a reasonable-sized dongle that snaps underneath the keyboard when not in use. It uses that crowded 2.4 Ghz spectrum for sending and receiving, but it doesn’t appear to cause any issues with my WiFi or Bluetooth.

The keyboard itself is also very similar to the WKB-4000UB in terms of size of the keys and the keyboard layout, which I find relatively easy to use and type on. The main differences are the size of the keyboard itself, the location of the trackpad, and these special media buttons.

I had difficult getting used to the touchpad mouse on this device. Perhaps because I am now completely won over to how Apple does their touchpad with multitouch, but I also found that, even after adjusting the tracking, I couldn’t make the mouse cursor move with enough precision and speed.

The dealbreaker for me was that unlike most keyboards where the “media keys” more or less work properly on a Mac, on this keyboard, they either don’t work entirely or map completely differently to how they are pictured on the keys. I could not figure out/remember the mapping between the key and what it actually did.

The retail on this keyboard is $119, but a quick Google search shows you can get it for around $84.

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There is some benefit to this “leak” in that it cranks up the hype machine to 12. However, this allows a lot of potentially mis-information to be propagated–unchecked by Apple. In general, though, mobile phone manufacturers do not like their products leaked before they are ready for one simple reason: it gives the competition a head start in responding. At least that was the corporate line given to us at Nokia when I worked there

The one piece of information that nobody is mentioning in their coverage  is, I think, the most scary. According to the Gizmodo piece, Apple was reportedly able to kill the leaked prototype device remotely. While I can see why such a feature would be beneficial (and maybe Nokia will take the opportunity to copy that feature “with pride”), it raises all sorts of questions: Can Apple remotely kill any iDevice it chooses, not just prototypes? Is the data on the phone recoverable? How “hackable” is this mechanism (i.e. can someone discover this mechanism and hack it for their own purposes)?

As usual, enquiring minds want to know.

Update #1: Numerous people have pointed out both that Apple can remotely disable applications as well as the Remote Wipe functionality that can be activated when a device synchronizes through a Microsoft Exchange server. What I’m talking about is the possibility that Apple can, without a connection to an Exchange server, issue a remote wipe to a device. It’s possible that with this prototype device, this did happen through ActiveSync. The thought that Apple could reach into my device and either disable applications or Remote Wipe the device without my knowledge or consent does not sit well with me.

Update #2: And yes, MobileMe does this remote wipe thing as well. So clearly Apple has the capability to do this. It still makes me nervous that a device I’ve purchased could be wiped at the touch of a button by the company who sold me the product.

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Comments

• 19 April 2010, Juergen writes: Mind you, for a phone that may be used for commercial email (and a phone in this league would be the usual gizmo of management-level execs...), the fact that a remote kill-switch has been MISSING for such a long time is the real story. Blackberry has had this for ages, IIRC Microsoft is working their way towards it - if you want to sell a smartphone to corporate customers, you MUST have a remote kill feature.
• 19 April 2010, Michael Graves writes: I'm told from some folks (developers) who should know that Apple can kill any given app on your handset remotely. If that's true then it makes perfect sense that they can also remotely cripple the handset.
• 19 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: Actually remote wipe has been there for a while (if you use Exchange). That's different than "brick the phone," which makes it completely unusable.
• 20 April 2010, Vic | Brochures Printing Online writes: You made a good point and yes I agree, having this issue in mind, Apple should answer these concerns (like how hackable a unit can be?. Definitely this will be concern of its future and present owners. Apple should release a press release regarding this topic and end this asap.
• 23 April 2010, tom writes: perhaps they could remotely remove a jailbreak without having to update through itunes. if apple were to start doing this i would certainly be a deal breaker for me. i would not be able to live with my iphone if it were not jailbroken.
• 27 April 2010, Bob writes: I am not sure I understand the issue you are raising. This iPhone was an Apple owned device and Apple was the the subscriber. It wasn't a personal phone. I don't think anyone knows if Apple did it directly or called AT&T to do it. It's a feature that a company can disable a corporate phone that was lost. I don't see a problem here.
• 28 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: My concern, Bob, is that Apple could potentially do this for any device they make. Perhaps this device wasn't on Apple's Exchange server and Apple used some "secret" method for remote wiping the device--a secret method that they could use on production iPhones or some 1337 h4x0r could come across by mistake and start randomly wiping people's iPhones.

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Meanwhile, I decided to take the opportunity to do a fresh install (i.e. not restore from my backup) and install a small subset of apps. I still find that MobileRSS Pro and Colloquy still crash on this version, but I am finding the battery life a bit better and it’s generally pretty stable. I even discovered the ability to turn off Simple Passcode! Actually, it was there before, but for whatever reason, it did not work properly. Now it does.

In any case, unless you can live with the possibility that you can’t reliably undo the iPhone 4.0 beta 1 upgrade, I would not recommend upgrading. I’d wait for the final release this summer.

Update: I was able to get the iPhone back to it’s previous 3.1.3 glory by following this tutorial from funkyspacemonkey.com on how to downgrade. The process was not too difficult to follow, but the restore process took a while–long enough that I had to pull out the SIM card and put it in a different phone so I could leave with a phone!

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That year seems so long ago. The weeks and months leading up to the eventual close of the deal were some of the more difficult times I’ve been through personally and professionally. The number of unknowns were simply staggering.

One year later, it’s a much different picture. Based on my past experience with Nokia acquisitions of other companies that were integrated into our business unit, I’d say that Check Point did an excellent job. The fact that so many of my former Nokia colleagues are still at Check Point speaks to that.

Personally, it’s been fantastic. The stuff I’m getting to work on now is stuff that I wanted to work on at Nokia, but could not for various reasons. I can’t talk about all of it, of course, but it’s a good balance of customer/internal projects and social media-type activities. Yes, this means I’m posting on CPUG a fair bit as well as continuing to build our Twitter and Facebook presences and working with various parts of the company on how we can better utilize these communication mechanisms. I’m definitely not bored and there’s plenty for me to do

Speaking of which, back to work…

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Comments

• 15 April 2010, Ronen K writes: Very happy to read!

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Getting your iPhone to 4.0 is a less than pleasant process. The My iPhone Activation folks document the steps you’ll take but the process: namely the restore process, is slow. In fact, I had to restart it a few times. It was also taking so long to install apps and copy content that I left it overnight to finish. It did crash during one application install, too.

Now my iPhone is running the 4.0 beta 1 code. What benefits do you really get from this? Is the pain of upgrading worth it?

Multitasking

One of the biggest features in the iPhone 4.0 is a feature that I’ve had on my Nokia smartphones forever: the ability to run multiple third party applications simultaneously. Even in this release, Apple still doesn’t allow full-on multitasking, but they do provide ways for applications to do certain tasks in the background–namely play music, handle VoIP calls, or use the GPS. They also support a task switcher (double-click on the home button), allowing you to switch between recently launched applications.

Along with a sort of “suspend and restore” for applications (when you switch out of an application, it “suspends” and then when you switch back it “restores” to the previous state), you get a lot of the benefits of multitasking without a lot of the overhead associated with it. I give Apple points for extreme cleverness, but–and herein lies the rub–the applications needs to be specifically written to support this.

Today, the only apps that properly support the multitasking and “suspend and restore” type functionality are the built-in native apps. No third party apps support this. This means you really don’t get any benefit from this feature. Even without multitasking, the task switcher is still nice because it provides a convenient way to relaunch recently launched applications.

Bluetooth Keyboard

There are times when I want to do some heavy-duty text input but don’t want to drag around a full computer to do it. A bluetooth keyboard would be a nice compromise for those situations. Unfortunately, Apple did not previously permit Bluetooth Keyboards to be used with the iPhone.

Until now. This was a feature mentioned for the iPad, so it makes sense that iPhone 4.0 has this as well. Once I figured out how to get my Think Outside Keyboard into pairing mode, I was able to use it with the iPhone. When you’re paired with the Bluetooth Keyboard, the onscreen keyboard does not come up when you touch on the screen in a text area.

This feature alone almost makes it worth the trouble. Almost.

Other Miscellaneous Things

Some other things I’ve noticed include:

• App Folders: Haven’t used this yet, but I can see how I would use this to reduce the visual clutter in my home screens.
• Disable Cellular Data ( In Settings > General > Network): Nice feature if you’re not on an unlimited plan
• Wallpapers: You can actually set a wallpaper for your home screen and not just your lock screen. They can be the same image or different images.
• Backups: For whatever reason, backups are disabled when you try and sync your iPhone. Just be aware of that.
• Stability: I haven’t noticed any serious stability issues, but I’ve had audio stutter a little on playback of MP3s.
• Battery Life: I’ve had an inordinate number of phone calls over the past 24 hours, so getting a general sense of battery life has been difficult. My general sense is the battery life is worse, but I’ll have to confirm that over the weekend.
• Can create playlists in the iPod App: Nuff said.
• New Mail app: I only have one mailbox, and it’s GMail over IMAP. I haven’t seen any difference in the app so far, though it was one of the major things they supposedly updated in this release.

Conclusion

Since the ecosystem necessary to support all the new features isn’t there yet (i.e. the apps), the only thing you get by upgrading is some minor usability enhancements and a slightly less refined user experience in some areas (i.e. other areas where they have made some minor changes but haven’t tied down the user experience). I would argue that for most people, you’re better off waiting until iPhone 4.0 is released rather than going through the pain of upgrading. What do you think?

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Comments

• 11 April 2010, tom writes: looking through the features i now have a very clear image of my dream mobile device from apple. here goes: an ipod touch(or could be called an iPad nano) with the same built in 3G data option that will be offered on the iPad. i want pay $30/month preapid no commitment for mobile data on a device that fits neatly in my pocket. i could than either chose to use skype or another voip app or just carry a seperate very simple cell phone for voice/texting. of course it would also be sweet if we could see some pocket sized devices on other mobile platforms(android, webos, etc.) sold with built in wifi and as needed prepaid 3G data but no voice/text service.
• 11 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: The $30/mo prepaid data-only option has been something I've wanted for a long time. Having that option on an iPhone-like device would be awesome!
• 14 April 2010, Jeff writes: What exactly did you have to do to pair your keyboard with your iPhone? Is there a special driver necessary or does it just work? I'm SO pumped to finally be able to do this.
• 14 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: No special drivers needed, it just recognized the keyboard as discoverable device. Getting the device paired was a challenge, but not because of the iPhone OS ;)
• 14 April 2010, iPhone 4.0 beta 1 is a One Way Ticket « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] warned that if you try and do the iPhone 4.0 beta 1 update I did a couple days ago, you may find your iPhone cannot be downgraded to 3.1.3 again. This is because the new beta [...]

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While this 3G travel router from Aluratek (sent to me for review) does not have everything I’d want to see in a router–I’ll get into the shortcomings later–it has enough features and is stable enough that I’m recommending it. It’s a cross between your typical travel router and a MiFi–actually more like a Cradlepoint device. You have to provide the 3G or 4G dongle. The good news is you can use it with any provider you can get a USB dongle for, assuming the modem is on the compatibility list. A large list of modems is supported, so it’s pretty likely yours is.

Like the MiFi, it’s battery powered. Unlike the MiFi and similar routers, it charges with a wall wort. I asked the PR firm that sent me this router for review about charging over USB, this is not supported. It does allow you to use the device plugged in, though, which is handy.

The router comes with a setup disk for Windows, which being a Mac user I ignored. Of course, the router works with a Mac just fine (it speaks IP, after all), there were no instructions provided in the box for how to configure the router for a Mac. I was able to figure it out pretty easily, being someone quite familiar with networking.

As I stated before, the router supports 3G/4G dongles from the major vendors. Unfortunately, unless you know the dial string and username/password from your 3G/4G provider, you will have a difficult time getting this working. Having done this numerous times on AT&T for various devices, I remembered the magic incantations needed (namely the APN to use, dial string, account and password). It would be nice if they provided the information for the most common providers or, better yet, let you choose from a menu in the firmware of known provider configurations.

The router itself can be used for making your 3G/4G dongle accessible from multiple computers (of course), but the device also has a LAN port. This LAN port can either be used to provide a wired host access to your 3G OR you can use it as a WAN port, allowing you to make a wired hotel connection wireless.

The router also has a removable battery, which means it can be used like a MiFi. The battery gets roughly 4 hours of battery life. I did not test that claim, but I did keep it in my bag for several weeks and didn’t bother to charge it. I used it periodically and did not run out of power during that time.

To field test this router, I took an AT&T 3G card I had, took out my SIM card from my iPhone and put it in. I used it in a few unusual places to test how well the device works. This includes: a Starbucks, a Virgin Mobile airplane (on the ground of course), a hotel room in the middle of Silicon Valley, and of course here at home. All of these places had their own WiFi that was suboptimal. (Starbucks usually has ok WiFi, but the day I tested this, it was particularly problematic)

I’m not sure if the router is to blame for this or not, but sometimes when I power on the router with the 3G dongle attached, it does not connect to the Internet properly. I find if I power cycle the router again and restart, the 3G connection comes up in roughly a minute. Once connected, I have relatively fast Internet through AT&T’s 3G network.

The router itself has fairly typical configuration options: DHCP Server (can set static DHCP reservations and/or disable), Port Forwarding (for allowing connections inbound on specific services to specific hosts), outbound packet, domain, and URL Filtering (manual), MAC-level filtering, Dynamic DNS support, routing (including support for RIPv1 and RIPv2), SNMP and even “scheduled rules” (rules enabled at specific times). The web interface is not terribly cluttered, provides context sensitive help, and is easy to use.

The router along with a short Ethernet cable is provided in a travel bag. It would be nice if the wall wort also fit into this bag. Either the wall wort needs to be a little smaller or the bag needs to be a little bigger. Bonus points if it can also fit a typical 3G dongle as well.

All in all, there’s a lot to like about this router. It provides an above-average set of functionality out-of-the-box. The documentation needs to be better for non-Windows users and they need to provide information on how to configure the router to work with different 3G networks. If you can get past those hurdles, it’s a good deal at ~$80 on amazon.com.

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