Walt Mossberg's iPhone video review

So this looks pretty promising - and he doesn't look like a Jobs clone.

iPhone FAQ shows at least some hype.

So it looks like the iPhone is falling plenty short, as predicted (by me).  It's still going to sell like crazy on this weeks black Friday. I'm going to wear my Windows 95 tshirt and go troll the local Apple stores.  Good times.

Buh-bye Caller ID Spoofing

So there's a bill in the Senate that wants to outlaw Caller-ID spoofing.  Great.  Good thing I’m still getting 200+ pieces of SPAM a day. They sure are tackling the right problems in Washington these days, eh? :sigh:

New, Super iPhone

So I watched the iPhone Activation & Sync video today on Apple's site.  They are right, the iPhone is the best, most amazing thing ever.  Move over sliced bread and pacemakers - what have you done for my life?

Anyway, watch the video here.  Note that when they are showing the end of the iTunes sync process it shows his "sample" iPhone as having 80 some  gigabytes of storage.  I want that Super iPhone - screw the 4 and 8 GB versions.

I know I'm not the only one concerned that even now, 4 days before launch we seem to be seeing mocked up, rendered vaporware videos.  I gotta believe this thing is legit, but come on - do they value production quality and some Steve Jobs t-shirt clone more than a functional demo? :sigh:

I shall buy one on Friday, even if I have to crowdsurf my way to the front of the line at the Apple store.

As an aside, if Larry says calamari one more time, I'll kill him.

VM Pranksters.

I know you don't read my blog.  I know you didn't read my insightful posts about Callwave or GrandCentral.  It's ok, I'll get over it. :sigh:

But ponder this:  it would be pretty easy for someone to make a simple voicemail app with a computer and a cheap VM card (like an old Dialogic for instance).  You could then set it up to mimic a voicemail system.  Taking what we learned during the Callwave setup, you could easily forward their VM to this new system.  The system could take the message for the call, encode it, and email it.  It could also play back the message through an interface when the cell phone holder calls in (detectable via CallerID - again just as CallWave does).  Ok, great - who cares.  You just created a voicemail system.

Well, tweak a couple settings: make versions of the thing sound like Cingular and T-Mobile; put voice messaging so the first time someone calls in to check their VM it "walks" them through the VM setup process again, etc.  Now you have an awesome stealth VM system.  Thanks to CallWave (and TechGSM) we can easily point an unsuspecting owner's phone to this VM system in less than 1 minute.  They would never be the wiser.

Want to know if your husband is cheating on you?  Want the inside scoop on your competitors doings?  Simply pay a hot blonde to walk up to your mark in a bar, make small talk and ask to borrow said mark's phone to call her hot, lesbian friends.  No one would ever be the wiser.  I don't know about you, but I lend my phone to just about anyone.  Perhaps I should stop doing that.

Perhaps you should stop pissing me off and start reading my blog.  Otherwise I'll be in yur ph0ne, hearin' your v0ic3ma1ls.

More Phone Innovation?! VM -> TXT!?

If you read my blog (which you don't) then you know that recently I posted about GrandCentral here. But wait, there's more innovation for our beloved antiquated medium the phone!

CallWave, based in Santa Barbara, has rolled out their very cool beta app Vtxt.  Sadly, they have stricken it with a seemingly v1 tag: "Think Outside the Phone".  :yawn:

The pitch here is that you point your phone's VM to them and they will convert it to text, then email and/or text it to you.  You can keep the text's indefinitely, search them, even text or call them back from their web interface.  Very cool stuff.

It is easy to activate, took about 5 minutes: I had to enter a code from a verification TXT they sent me, and bang in some unsightly looking GSM codes (starting **004*) to reassign the "call diversions" phone number. (Thanks to TechGSM for shedding some insight into which code this was...)

I'll post back and let you all know what I think of this service - but to be honest, as long as Cingular AT&T doesn't charge me a convenience fee for forwarding my calls to a different VM number (which I'm sure they will), I gotta believe it'll be at least as good as the incumbent.  I don't believe it will play nice with GrandCentral, but hopefully the bitheads at Google will roll this functionality into GC post-acquisition.

Callwave Vtxt signup here.

One Life, One Phone Number

There's a new service on the block, and it looks like it is going to be gobbled up by our good friends at Google. 

GrandCentral wants you to tie all your phones into one.  A great idea, and believe it or not one I wanted to do about 10 years ago - so it is very close to my heart.  My vision was one number that would "find" me no matter where I was.  Access to me via voice would be dependent on: where I was, who was calling, what time it was, and what the caller has to say.  GrandCentral, while not nailing all the ideas I wanted to roll into this device, seems to have most of them down pat:

• Check your messages by phone, email, or online
• Keep all your messages online for eternity
• Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail)
• Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
• Click-to-dial from your address book
• Surprise your callers with a custom voicemail greeting
• Turn your Mp3s into the ring tones your callers hear
• Forward, download, and add notes to your messages

I'm giving it a limited go - as it is hard for me to distribute a new number, especially when I have one of the best cell phone numbers, ever (well, right behind Woz that is).

Check out GrandCentral here, and their blog here.