Long ago I described how I want my cell phone to let me command it to play a recording to a caller noting that I have answered but need some time before I can talk, and also how I want the phone to stop ringing once I start fumbling for it. I learned that a few phones do have the former feature in a simple form, and it is something that is within the range of an app in some OSs but not others.

Let me expand those ideas to a more complete list of what a phone and voicemail system could and should do when a call is coming in. My friends Rohit Kare and Salim Ismail recently released a cool product they called Caller ID 2.0, which shows you more advanced screen pops on the incoming caller, such as their recent tweets and facebook status, which is quite cute if a bit spooky. But I refer instead to the choices I might make after seeing their number and other such information.

First of all, as before, I should be offered the ability to answer the call and play a couple of different recordings until I start speaking into the phone. As described, these recordings would be along the lines of, “I’m going to take your call but I am briefly busy, driving or in an audience. Please hold on while I get somewhere that we can talk.” Since the phone should even know (based on rate of change of cell towers or GPS) that I am driving it should be able to figure out which of the two conditions I should report. While there are some minor privacy issues, it is worthwhile to let the other person know you are driving, as you really should have a different sort of conversation. This is so useful it would even be useful to let people know in the ringback that you are driving, but there are privacy issues on doing that, particularly with strangers, but even with spouses.

If the network will cooperate, it also makes sense to have choices that will, like the current “ignore” button, send the call to voice mail. These buttons however would control what sort of greeting is played, and perhaps other actions.

For example, you might send the call to a voice mail saying “Hi, I was too busy to take the call but I am with my phone, and I plan to get back to you within a few minutes. No need to leave a message.” (Though if there was no caller ID, you might indicate that they should enter their phone number for the callback.) You could also have 2 buttons, to describe a longer wait time or different procedures, such as “I will call you back when I get to the office.” As before, one button might make the greeting reveal things to the caller that you want to reveal, such as “Tell my location and speed.” After all, quite often with a trusted caller, the main purpose of the call will be to ask where you are and when you are going to get where you’re going.

Of course, as I proposed in 2005, if they do start leaving voice mail for you, and are on the same carrier, then an attempt to call them back should break into the voicemail session rather than giving you their voice mail.

On every system we use today (except the iPhone) a lot of programs want to be daemons — background tasks that sit around to wait for events or perform certain regular operations. On Windows it seems things are the worst, which is why I wrote before about how Windows needs a master daemon. A master daemon is a single background process that uses a scripting language to perform most of the daemon functions that other programs are asking for. A master daemon will wait for events and fire off more full-fledged processes when they happen. Scripts would allow detection of connection on ports, updated software versions becoming available, input from the user and anything else that becomes popular.

(Unix always had a simple master daemon for internet port connections, called inetd, but today Linux systems tend to be full of always-running deamons.)

Background tasks make a system slow to start up, and take memory. This is becoming most noticed on our new, lower powered devices like smartphones. So much so that Apple made the dramatic decision to not allow applications to run in the background. No multitasking is allowed. This seriously restricts what the iPhone can do, but Apple feels the increase in performance is worth it. It is certainly true that on Windows Mobile (which actually made it hard to terminate a program once you started it running) very quickly bloats down and becomes unusable.

Background tasks are also sucking battery life on phones. On my phone it’s easy to leave Google maps running in the background by mistake, and then it will sit there constantly sucking down maps, using the network and quickly draining the battery. I have not tried all phones, but Windows Mobile on my HTC is a complete idiot about battery management. Once you start up the network connection you seem to have to manually take it down, and if you don’t you can forget about your battery life. Often is the time you’ll pull the phone out to find it warm and draining. I don’t know if the other multitasking phones, like the Android, Pre and others have this trouble.

The iPhone’s answer is too draconian. I think the answer lies in a good master daemon, where programs can provide scripts in a special language to get the program invoked on various events. Whatever is popular should be quickly added to the daemon if it’s not too large. (The daemon itself can be modular so it only keeps in ram what it really needs.)

In particular, the scripts should say how important quick response time is, and whether the woken code will want to use the network. Consider an e-mail program that wants to check for new e-mail every 10 minutes. (Ideally it should have IMAP push but that’s another story.)

The master daemon scheduler should realize the mail program doesn’t have to connect exactly every 10 minutes, though that is what a background task would do. It doesn’t mind if it’s off by even a few minutes. So if there are multiple programs that want to wake up and do something every so often, they can be scheduled to only be loaded one or two at a time, to conserve memory and CPU. So the e-mail program might wait a few minutes for something else to complete. In addition, since the e-Mail program wants to use the network, groups of programs that want to use the network could be executed in order (or even, if appropriate, at the same time) so that the phone ends up setting up a network connection (on session based networks) and doing all the network daemons, and then closing it down.

The master daemon could also centralize event notifications coming from the outside. Programs that want to be woken up for such events (such as incoming emails or IMs) could register to be woken up on various events on ports. If the wireless network doesn’t support that it might allow notifications to come in via SMS that a new task awaits. When this special SMS comes in, the network connection would be brought up, and the signalled task would run, along with other tasks that want to do a quick check of the network. As much of this logic should be in the daemon script, so that the full program is only woken up if that is truly needed.

The daemon would of course handle all local events (key presses, screen touches) and also events from other sensors, like the GPS (wake me up if we get near hear, or more than 100 meters from there, etc.) It would also detect gestures with the accelerometer. If the user shakes the phone or flips it in a certain way, a program might want to be woken up.

And of course, it should be tied to the existing daemon that handles incoming calls and SMSs. Apps should be able to (if given permission) take control of incoming communications, to improve what the regular phone does.

This system could give the illusion of a full multitasking phone without the weight of it. Yes, loading in an app upon an event might be slightly slower than having it sitting there in ram. But if there is spare ram, it would of course be cached there anyway. An ideal app would let itself be woken up in stages, with a small piece of code loading quickly to give instant UI response, and the real meat loading more slowly if need be.

While our devices are going to get faster, this is not a problem which will entirely go away. The limiting factors in a portable device are mostly based on power, including the power to keep the network radios on. And applications will keep getting bigger the faster our CPUs get and the bigger our memories get. So this approach may have more lifetime than you think.

Years ago I asked that they let me buy a SIM card in the airport arrivals area and now they often do. I also started a forum here on the best company to buy a prepaid SIM from in each country which has a fair bit of traffic.

And indeed, I have been doing that, because often roaming rates remain obscene. I dropped my Canadian SIM when Sprint offered a plan with 20 cent/minute roaming in Canada that I can turn on for $3/month — this was comparable to the prepaid price I was getting, and prepaid had the “overhang balance” problem I will discuss below. But I’ve gotten or been loaned local SIMs in several countries to good use — especially when both I and my travel companion have one so we can use our cell phones as radios.

But a few problems exist with getting a local SIM. First, you have to get one. The cheapest place to do this is usually the local cell phone shops that can be found in most urban shopping areas. If you plan ahead, you can get one mailed to your hotel, though the companies that do this which aim at tourists always overcharge — perhaps enough to wipe out your savings if your call volume is modest or your stay short. The ideal SIM is near-free, and can be found where you enter the country.

Next, you must fill the account. Almost everywhere, you must use prepaid cards bought for cash from the shops, as they will not let you fill, or refill, with an out-of-country credit card, for supposed security reasons. This is annoying because you don’t want to have a large balance remaining (overhang) on your prepaid account when you leave the country, unless you will be back before it expires. (Sometimes you can use it up in other countries with obscene roaming rates, but often not even then.) But you also don’t want to have to risk running out of minutes in the middle of a call.

The answer: Let me put a fat balance on my prepaid account, and let me refund all or most of it when I am done — ideally back to my credit card when I leave.

The cell company loses that wasted balance, sure, but instead, I am prone to use the phone more if I have a large enough balance and a good enough rate that I don’t have to worry. I will use it like a local. This would be a good competitive edge that would make the difference if I were buying a SIM. You could offer this only to people from out of the country but I see no reason not to offer it to local users too.

Yes, processing the refund has a small cost. If you insist, don’t refund the last few bucks to cover your costs. Or alternately, let me do “minutes transfer” to other prepaid users. Then I could meet somebody (or go into a shop) and transfer the minutes and get cash for them.

Of course, it would also be nice if you would let me just buy a monthly plan deal for just one month, with no contract. Cell companies seem loathe to do this, but T-Mobile in the USA has just started doing exactly that with their flex-pay. In that system you pre-pay for one month of any monthly plan, and if you think you will use more than the minutes on that plan, you can put money into an overage account. But you can’t get it back, so that’s one modification to add. But frankly I would probably never go over the monthly plan I bought in a typical trip.

The remaining big headache is data. Getting a prepaid plan with data at a decent price (or any data at all) can be hard. Those from the USA are used to unlimited data, which they resist selling in many countries. Those from the USA who bring their phones overseas and forget to turn off roaming data often find nightmare bills of many thousands of dollars. The world has to figure this out. Still, those who are used to fancy network PDA phones often find themselves literally lost without their Google Maps Mobile or their e-Mail. We need a way to roam data selectively, letting some apps use limited data budgets but preventing others if we can’t get a decent data price plan. E-mail apps can go into low-data move (never download attachments or long messages automatically, just imap headers) and less frequent checking. If one is careful, one can get something decent at the $2/megabyte (or $10/megabyte) crazy prices for mobile data roaming.

Oh yeah, and think about doing 2-SIM offers to tourists, who often arrive in pairs. Especially if they include cheap mobile-to-mobile calling in the pair.

We’ve all experienced it. A cell phone starts ringing or vibrating. To be clever, it slowly starts getting louder in case the owner didn’t hear or feel the initial signal. You see somebody going through their bag looking for the phone that keeps getting louder and louder. Finally they answer and it shuts up.

Yet today’s new phones are all featuring accelerometers. This gives them to chance to know we are fumbling for them. Yes, if you’re out jogging it won’t be able to spot the new level of activity in fetching out the phone, but if you’re sitting in a quiet room, and the phone’s been still and it starts moving about shortly after starting ringing, the phone can know you’re aware of the ring, and start getting quieter. (It might switch back to vibrating or flashing to help you find it.) A ringing phone could also be listening to its microphone, and waiting for you to say commands to it, such as “getting it” to “voicemail” to “speaker” rather than have you hunt for the button. How often has a call gone to voicemail before you could find that button? When you are getting it, the phone could answer (to avoid going to voicemail) and then play a message to the caller about how you are still getting the phone and will be with them shortly. If you can hear the phone, it can hear you.

In fact, phones need to understand more when they are sitting on tables or on our persons. Movement is one way to know this. Temperature is another. Capacitance is a third. Hearing “master’s voice” in the microphone reveals something else, like the fact you’re in a meeting. Is the conversation half-duplex? You may be on a landline. Many phones know when they are being charged and change their ring behaviour. They can do more.

And here’s a second feature for cell phones ringing in the home or office. Let the customer, at that moment, call a special magic number from a prearranged land-line. This number would be put in the speed dial of the land-line, and the land-line would send caller-ID. A call to that number would grab the call going into the cell phone and transfer it to the land line. Ideally the cell phone company would bill these minutes at a lower rate, though I doubt it, since they don’t do that for call forwarding set up in advance. This is call grabbing, the way many PBXs can do.

For security there would be a bank of 100 numbers arranged for the purpose. A stranger could not grab your calls unless they knew which of the 100 numbers is the one for you on that landline. Many false attempts would disable the feature, which would be a form of DOS attack but not a very exciting one, as you can just grab the cell phone in that case.

For the user, the UI is simple. You hear your cell phone ringing in the charging station. You pick up a land line, hit a speed dial, and it answers and you are connected.

Of course, the real answer is that phones should never ring at all in most situations.

Last week, I wrote about issues in providing videoconferencing to the aged. Later, I refined a new interface plan discussed in the comments. I think this would be a very good way for tools like Skype to work, so I am making an independent posting, and will encourage Skype, Google video chat (and others) to follow this approach.

First, it should be possible to reliably attach a PSTN phone number with an online identity. This can be done by the person who owns them (with a security trick) or by the person who wants to call them.

If a user goes to their tool — quite possibly through a USB handset with a dial pad, or through a dedicated IP phone — the system should check if this number belongs to a user, and if that user is online. If the user is online, then just make the call through the VoIP system.

If the user is not online, make the call through the PSTN, ie. SkypeOut. If/when the called party answers, the caller can say, “I’m calling you with Skype, are you near your computer?”

The called party can then go to their computer and one of two things can happen.

1. The moment they sign on to Skype, it can notice that they have this SkypeOut call underway, because it gets a message from the buddy who called via SkypeOut. Immediately it pops up a dialog box asking to OK transfer of the call. If they approve, the audio will switch to pure Skype, and when that is good, the phone will be hung up.
2. Failing that, if the user logs on and attempts a Skype call to the contact who is on the PSTN call with them, Skype should notice that at the other end, and answer the new call by connecting it to the PSTN call.

When connecting the calls together, there should be a brief bridge when both the PSTN phone and computer are connected, and then later (or upon hangup) the PSTN leg would be terminated. However, for those who don’t have a cordless phone or phone by the computer, it would be nice if they could just hang up their PSTN call, go to the computer, and join the conversation. To facilitate that, the presence of a call 30 seconds in the past should still enable this quick re-setup.

The experience for the user who places the call (possibly a senior) is very simple. Place a call. Mention it is on the computer. At some point, without having to do anything, the audio switches and is now higher quality, and video can be started — automatically if the two buddies are set up for automatic video.

For the receiving user, the interface is pretty simple. Go the the computer, log on, possibly click on a buddy or approval box. Then hang up the regular phone (or possibly have already hung it up not too long ago.)

To encourage this, Skype could sell a SkypeOut plan that allows an unlimited number of very short PSTN calls that are followed by a transfer to VoIP for a low monthly fee, like $1/month.

This would allow a very simple UI in the senior home. An ordinary telephone handset sits next to the computer. You pick it up, dial a number, your grandchild answers, and at some point into the communication the video call begins on the screen. This is as close to the familiar interface as we can get.

Now, as for associating numbers and buddies. If this is done by the caller, there is no security aspect. However, it’s much better if it can be done (just once) by the target. To do that, you would declare a phone number and the system would call you. The voice on the end would ask you to enter the touch tones you see on your screen. This would confirm ownership of that number.

The “hang up first” interface question is a bit more complex. I do like the idea of having it be very automated. You sign in (or return to your computer that is already signed in) and bang — you are in the call. However, if you hung up the phone a while ago you might have gone to your computer for other purposes than to continue the call. The caller might have a dialog saying, “The called party hung up. Are you waiting for them to go to their computer?” And if you click yes, then do an automatic start. Otherwise make it manual.

While videoconferencing may not make sense for everyday use, I think it has special value for contact with distant relatives, particularly older ones who don’t travel very much. They may not get to see the grandchildren, great-grandchildren or even children very often, and their lives are often marked by a particular loneliness, particular at senior homes.

But today’s videoconferencing tools are getting quite good and will get even better. Skype now offers a 640x480 video call if you have enough bandwidth and CPU, which is not far off broadcast quality if not for the mpeg artifacts they have trying to save bandwidth. It’s also pretty easy, as is Google’s GMail video chat and several other tools. We’re just a couple of years from HDTV level consumer video calling.

Many seniors, however are unfamiliar with or even afraid of many new technologies, and often in places where it’s hard to get them. And this in turn means they can’t readily set up computers, cameras or software. There is also still not internet access in many of the locations you might want ot reach, such as hospital deathbeds and senior homes. (Had they had the access in my stepfather’s hospital room, I could have had a video conversation at the end; he died as I was heading to the plane.)

Video calls also offer extra human bandwidth, which is a big plus with people who are getting infirm, less strong of mind and hard of hearing. Reading lips can help improve how well you are understood, and physical cues can mean a lot.

And so I think it’s crazy that senior homes, hospitals and hospices don’t come standard with a video call station. This is not anything fancy. It’s a computer, a webcam, and a megabit of internet. Ideally wireless to move into rooms for the truly infirm. Yet when I have asked for this I have found myself to be the first person to ask, or found that there are policies against internet use by any but the staff.

I’m going to describe two paths to getting this. The first uses off-the-shelf hardware and freeware, but does require that the staff of these facilities learn how to use the system and be able to set their residents up in front of it when it is time for a call. This is not particularly difficult, and no different then the staff being trained in any of the other things they do for residents and patients. Then I will discuss how you would design a product aimed for the sector, which could be used without staff help.  read more »

Today I was pointed to this advertisement asking you to buy prepaid phone cards for the troops.

AT&T has set up special phone stations near all major deployments in the Mid-East. Phone access for our troops is easy, but calls home remain expensive.

So you can pay AT&T $18 to give a phone card to a soldier to call home with at 22.5 cents/minute, or 57 cents/minute from their mobile. Here are the rates.

Except there is one problem. Phone calls aren’t expensive any more. Not to the USA. Not for a company like AT&T. They are by and large free, well under half a cent per minute from any IP phone or phone company phone, plus the bandwidth out of the location. (I’ll get to that.)

Now in some countries there are monopoly rules that would stop a company from installing a phone on their own network and letting people call out from it cheap. But are these going to apply on a U.S. military base in Iraq or Afghanistan? I doubt it, but let me know if somehow they do. It would be odd, the bases do not seem to be subject to any other local laws.

So what it seems is that AT&T is taking something that costs them about 30 cents to provide, and telling you to pay them $18 to give it to a solider.

As some of you will know, I put up a phone booth at Burning Man and let the whole city call home, anywhere in the world. The calls cost me peanuts, less than what you have in your wallet. The satellite bandwidth for the first year was donated by John Gilmore, but his monthly cost on that megabit satellite service was less than it cost AT&T to do graphic design on their calling cards. Later we used shared internet bandwidth done over a series of microwave towers.

So that’s the unanswered question. Is there something making data bandwidth so expensive to these bases that phone calls (which use as little as 20 kilobits) can use enough to be noticed and cost money? I know infrastructure in these countries is poor and expensive, but are there no data pipes into the bases? Why doesn’t the military allocate a tiny fraction of that data stream and let soldiers call home free? Stories say soldiers have the bandwidth and are using Skype and other VoIP calls to call home for free (often with video!) so what’s going on? At the most remote bases, where connections only come by satellite, I can see a few more limitations, but you can do cheap, if high-latency voice calls just fine from geostationary satellites.

From my own phone here I can call Baghdad for 3 cents per minute, and cell phones from 7 to 11 cents/minute. Afghanistan (regular or cellular) is indeed 22 cents/minute, presumably due to standard monopoly phone tariffs that military bases should be exempt from.

This is shameful.

A brunch was planned for my mother’s house on Sunday, but being 2,500 miles distant, I decided to try to attend by videoconference. Recently Skype has started supporting what it calls a “high quality” videoconference, which is 640x480 at 24 to 30 frames per second. At its base, that’s a very good resolution, slightly better than broadcast TV.

This requires fairly modern hardware, which my mother doesn’t have. It needs a dual-core processor to be able to compress the video in real time, and a decently fast processor to decompress it. It wants 384K of upstream bandwidth, but ideally even more, which in theory she has but not always. It demands Windows XP. And artificially it demands one of three of Logitech’s newest and most expensive webcams, the Orbit AF or the Quickcam Pro for Notebooks or Pro 9000 for desktops. These are the same camera in 3 packages — I took the Orbit AF which also includes a pan/tilt motor.

Skype’s decision to only work with these 3 cameras presumably came from a large kickback from Logitech. Admittedly these are very nice webcams. They are true-HD webcams that can native capture at 1600x1200. They are sharp and better in low light than most webcams, and they come with a decent built in microphone that appears as a USB audio device — also good. But they aren’t the only cameras capable of a good 640x480 image, including many of Logitech’s older high-end webcams. They retail for $100 or more, but via eBay sellers I got the Orbit AF for about $75 shipped and the Pro for Notebooks shipped quickly within Canada for $63. Some versions of Skype allow you to hack its config file to tell it to do 640x480 with other quality cameras. That is easy enough for me, but I felt it was not something to push on the relatives quite yet. On the Mac it’s your only choice.

Testing on my own LAN, the image is indeed impressive when bandwidth is no object. It is indeed comparable to broadcast TV. That’s 4 times the pixels and twice the framerate of former high-end video calls, and 16 times the pixels of what most people are used to. And the framerate is important for making the call look much more natural than older 10fps level calls.  read more »

Ok, this would be a cool application for iPhones, Pocket PC and the like — a dialer which presents an old style rotary phone dial, and you have to put your finger in it and spin it around the center, and then it slowly twists back and plays the sound of a dial returning. A bit like how you control an iPod, but slower.

Completely useless, other than for having fun and explaining to kids why we call it “dialing” a phone.

Perhaps with the iPhone accelerometer you could actually spin the physical iPhone to move the dial. No way to generate the classic sore index finger and physical resistance though.

(Some people made jokes about rotary dial on the iPhone before it was launched but I don’t know of anybody who actually did this.)

Today I am at eComm, a reborn conference. Tim O’Reilly, who does the eTech conference (which just took place last week) used to run an emerging telecom conference called eTel. They decided not to run it again, so some of the participants who wanted a little more edgy telecom conference pushed to start a different one. I had hoped it would be an ad-hoc conference in the barcamp/unconference style, but instead it’s become a more traditional $1K conference like eTel was.

However, the result seems to be a success. Very good list of speakers (though some are just doing sales pitches as their talks) and a decent sized crowd. And even a few people who were also just at SXSW (as I was.) Some are calling the chain of conferences — eTech, SXSW, eComm, VON and many others as “March Madness.” It does seem possible to spend the month of March, if not your whole life, at conferences.

We’ll see what interesting develops here. Thom Howe spoke to try to convince carriers to become commodity providers, using the example of corn to say that it can be lucrative. He’s right that they need to become commodities but wrong that they can be convinced to want it.

(And corn turns out to be a terrible example. Corn is everywhere because of abuse of the law and corruption in government, in combination with sugar quota.)

When you call to get your voice mail, even from your cell phone, it typically asks for a PIN. There's a reason for that -- there is no authentication on Caller ID, and anybody can forge it. So if you don't require a PIN, and the voice mail let you in directly, anybody could listen to your voice mail or hack it in other ways. (The phone companies could of course authenticate Caller ID within their own networks, but this must be harder than it sounds because they don't.) Some services don't bother with a PIN if they identify the caller ID because the odds of somebody trying to hack it are low. In some cases that's because the hacking party would need to know what services a person uses.

Setting caller ID is actually pretty useful. I have coded into my PBX to call my cell phone voice mail using the caller ID of my cell phone, so I have a speed dial on my desk phone that calls my Sprint voice mail. I do still have to enter the PIN.

So here's the idea. Get a bank of phone number, 10,000 of them, for voice mail dial-in. This can be a bank in some rural area code that still has entire exchanges free. Getting an entire exchange is not trivial but turns out to be not that expensive if you can justify it. Then let a user with a PIN put that PIN into the last 4 digits of the phone number. They would call that special number, and only that number, to pick up their voice mail (or use whatever service.) If somebody called other numbers in the block using their caller-ID, this would be a sign of an attack, and too many attempts would turn on a switch so that any call to any number in the block now requires some identification. (This is a minor DOS attack but not too bad of one if you can still remember a different ID code.)

This done you can put your magic, PIN-embedded number into your speed dial and just use that for instant access to voice mail or other services.

Of course the rural number will look like long distance, but that's no issue to your own phone company. Indeed, if you only want this for use by phone companies for internal calls, we could devote an entire virtual area code -- but you could not call these numbers from another phone. All companies could share the area code because it would not actually exist. (Of course, authenticating their own caller-ID is easier, this is just a kludge to do it with existing tools.)

A block in the 866/877/888 band of toll-free numbers would be nice too but these are harder to come by.

I only post a modest number of EFF news items here, because I know that if you want to see them all, you should be reading some of the EFF blogs such as deeplinks or or action alerts or EFFector or others.

However, something remarkable is happening. As you may know, we filed suit against AT&T because we have evidence they allowed the government to engage in a massive spying program within the US without warrants or other proper legal authority. Special secret rooms were installed in San Francisco and other locations, rooms under the control of the NSA, and massive data pipes with all internet traffic and more were forked and fed into these NSA rooms. We want to get to the bottom of this, and punish the phone companies if they violated the very explicit laws which were set up after watergate to stop the President from doing this exact sort of thing. Congress told the phone companies that Nixon showed us we can’t trust the President all the time, and so they have a duty to protect their customers as well, even if the President tells them not to.

But as our lawsuit has progressed, forces are pushing Congress to not just enable this spying, but to grant a retroactive amnesty on the phone companies that violated the law. In one sense I am glad our lawsuit has scared them so much — you know you are on to something when they try to get congress to pass retroactive laws to stop your lawsuits — but the enormity of such action boggles my mind.

The phone companies and White House are pushing for a “get out of jail free” card for their past activity. Whatever you think about the need for such massive surveillance, retroactive immunities are something else entirely. Allowing such immunities will let the President tell people, “Don’t worry whether this is illegal or not. As you can see, I can make it legal.” Congress might give him the proof he needs to back up such claims. It doesn’t matter that he won’t be able to “make it legal” every time he promises it. The fact that he did it this time is still going to get more people to feel at less risk in joining illegal conspiracies. It undermines the rule of law.

The American people need to convince their Senators and House members not to do this. If your rep has already decided they like the surveillance program — even if you have decided you like it — they must realize this get out of jail free card is a horrible idea.

You can use our action alert system to find your rep and their phone numbers, and give them a call. Calls matter the most. See if your reps are on the right committees and talk to them about it.

The house was ready to pass a bill without immunity and pro-immunity forces scuttled it and are pushing to get it added. Call House Members

The Senate Intelligence community passed a bill with Telco immunity in it. The Judiciary committe is now looking at it. Call Senate Members

More and more people are walking around Borg-ified with bluetooth earpieces. It's convenient, and a good idea when driving, but otherwise looks goofy and also wears on the ear. I've been a big seeker of headset devices that are wireless, but meant to be only put on while talking, and thus very easy to put on and remove. Self-contained bluetooth devices, with the battery in them, tend to be hard to put on. Nothing I have seen is as easy to put on (or as bulky) as a typical headphone headband.

I thought of something you could quickly clip onto your glasses but the weight will tilt them. It should be possible to build bluetooth eyeglass frames with thick over-ear sections with the battery, slightly thick arms (ideally not too dorky) for the electronics and a microphone hidden in the bridge (though it might pick up breathing a bit too much.)

Another idea is a microphone in a necklace, but just the microphone. It's a good place to get sound and it's far from the speakers which is good. One could imagine a permanently worn necklace/pendant and them another piece which is put on the ear or head for calls. Some vendors are selling "bluetooth pendant" headphones which have earbuds which plug into a pendant worn on the neck today.

My necklace could work with a 2nd wireless part (meaning two batteries) that comes from the pocket or snaps onto the pendant itself. Or a combination eyeglass frames with speaker and pendant with microphone. Of course, no phone is able to understand talking to two devices for the mic and speakers as yet, and while that could be fixed in the future, this system would need one of the devices to talk to the other and combine the signals for the phone, which is wasteful but doable.

Another way around that would be a retractable earbud or other earpiece that pulls out of the pendant and retracts back into it. Or this could be something that hangs on glasses.

Of course the pendant could also vibrate for calls, and show you the caller-ID. These pendants could be designed by fashion designers as jewelry, and not look so borgish. Some models might be super thing and be designed to be worn unobtrusively under the shirt (but still in range of good sound) for people who don't want it to be so obvious. They could be pulled out of the shirt for calls if need be for superior voice.

And please, no bright blinking LED just to tell me you're alive!

We all hate waiting on hold, and we shouldn’t have to. But companies don’t do a lot to make it easier, do they?

Most people, I presume, when at their desks, put the hold music on speakerphone, and turn it low. The worst hold musics are ones where a human voice breaks in every 30 seconds or so to remind us that “all agents are busy” or tries to convince us to go to the web site or buy something else. These are the worst because we have to perk up and listen to the human voice to make sure it’s not the agent finally getting to us.

Some places offer silence, which is OK, though it makes us suspicious after a while that we might not actually be on hold any more. A good solution there would be to respond to any touch tones the user types with a “Yes, we’re still holding. Press 1 for music or we’ll continue with silence.” Some insert a beep every so often, but that also distracts.

The best ones put a distinctive sound (ideally loud) when you’re about to be connected to the agent, so you can listen for just that.

One thing I’ve not seen is the use of natural sounds instead of music. By that I mean those tapes people use to relax — waves rolling in, babbling brooks, woodland sounds. These are good because we seem to have a natural ability to hear them without noticing them. If we focus on them, we know they are there, but otherwise we edit them out. And no royalties for the musicans, either.

My hold music is Jazz recordings my mother made during her singing career. She loves it when I put her on hold!

Of course, long hold periods simply should not be. Some systems let you enter your number to be called back when the agent is ready, but people are afraid of those because if they happen to be on the phone or busy, they will lose their coveted place in line. Some day this will no longer be the case.

This idea came to me via Al Chang. I’m shopping for a new smartphone, and I have been dismayed at how hard it is to get just what I want and not pay a huge fee for it. Right now I’m leaning towards the new HTC Mogul, in part because the Sprint SERO offer is just too good to pass up.

However, in the GSM world, one thing that’s frustrating is that carriers only provide a limited number of phones, and in some cases, such as the Nokia E62, they actually rip useful features out of the phones before offering them. (The E61 has Wifi, the E62 removes it!) But the subsidy, which can be $200 to $300 is also too rich to pass up if you’re signing up for new service. If they are going to force you into a 2 year contract — which they do for anything, even just a change of plan — you are foolish not to take this subsidy.

So here’s Al’s plan. Go out and buy the phone you want, unlocked (or locked to the carrier you plan to use) from whatever source you like, including cell dealers, Amazon, Dell or eBay.

Next go to your carrier’s web site and find the most subsidized phone they sell which works with the plan you intend to use. Find the most subsidized phone by looking at the subsidy price, and comparing it to the typical “completed auction” price on eBay for a no-contract (locked or unlocked) phone. It is often the case, by the way, that there are eBay sellers who will sell you phones that cost $200 after subsidy in the carrier’s store for $1 because they kick back to you the kickback they get from the carrier for selling you a fancy phone on a fancy plan. (I have not tried these sellers but they generally have top reputations and lots of happy comments from phone buyers so I presume it works. It does not, however, work with SERO.)  read more »

Steve Jobs of Apple Computer warned today that a rumoured cheap Chinese iPhone knockoff making its way toward America is an inferior product which lacks many of the important features of the iPhone. “It may look a bit like an iPhone, but when consumers discover all the great iPhone features that are missing from it, we think they’ll still line up at Apple Stores for the genuine article,” said Jobs in a released statement. Designed by software nerds, the knockoff, dubbed the “myPhone” by fans, has not yet been confirmed.

Apple released a list of features reported to be missing from the “myPhone.”

• The iPhone has special software that assures you will always use the trusted AT&T cellular network. Lacking this software, the myPhone accepts any SIM card from any random network. Users may find themselves connected to a network that doesn’t have the reputation for service, trust and protecting the privacy of customers that AT&T has. Or its data speed which is almost double what we’re used to with dialup.
• With the myPhone, users may be stuck without 2 years of guaranteed AT&T service and won’t get their price locked in for 2 years. AT&T’s EDGE network is so good “you won’t find yourself able to quit.”
• The iPhone is configured to assure you the latest iTunes experience. The myPhone might function before you have installed the latest iTunes and registered your phone with it. Indeed, the myPhone lacks the protections that block it from being used without registering it with or reporting back to anybody, depriving the user of customer service and upsell opportunities.
• The iPhone has special software that assures all applications run on the iPhone have been approved by Apple, which protects the user from viruses and tools that may make the user violate their licence agreements. The myPhone will run any application, from any developer, opening up the user to all sorts of risks.
• The iPhone protects users from dangerous Flash and Java applications which may compromise their device and confuse the user experience.
• myPhones don’t forbid VoIP software that may cause the user to accidentally make calls over wireless internet connections instead of the AT&T network. Quality on the internet is unpredictable, as is the price, which can range down to zero, causing great pricing uncertainty. With the iPhone, you always know what calls cost when in the USA.
• The iPhone saves the user from receiving distracting instant messages over popular IM services, adding calm to your day.
• Music and videos in the iPhone are protected by Apple FairPlay brand DRM. On the myPhone, which lacks the important DRM functionality, music can be freely copied to other devices the user owns, putting the user at risk of infringing copyrights.
• The iPhone assures users will only play media files in approved formats, and not risky open source formats.
• The iPhone protects the user from setting a song in their device as a ringtone, saving those around him from annoyance and protecting the user from violating music copyrights and performance rights.
• The iPhone bluetooth functions have careful security management. Users are protected from using bluetooth to exchange files with other users (such files are risky) or accidentally printing or communicating with your computer. Bluetooth is only used for headsets and headphones as was intended. The myPhone lacks these important protections.
• The iPhone only uses its internal flash drive. The user is protected against hard drives, which have moving parts and can put data at risk.
• The myPhone battery has a removable door over it, which can get lost, or allow the battery to fall out or be stolen. The iPhone’s battery is solidly protected. Users are also assured they will use only Apple certified batteries and not subject to the risk of aftermarket batteries, which may explode, killing the user.
• The iPhone is for sale only in the USA and primarily for use there. This encourages users to stay home in America which is good for the economy and their own peace of mind.
• The iPhone, unlike the myPhone and all other cell phones, sells at a very solid markup for Apple, assuring Apple executives and stockholders will be happy, and the company will be around to support the iPhone for years to come. The myPhone, it is rumoured, will be purchasable in a wide variety of stores, confusing the buyer with too much choice, price wars and depriving them of the special experience of an Apple or AT&T store.
• As a result, the myPhone lacks the Apple brand “coolness” which is built into the iPhone and every other Apple product. “Nobody’s going to have to spend days in line for a myPhone,” said Jobs. “You won’t have people thrusting them in your face all week to show you how cool they are.” Many iPhone users report their experience waiting in line was great fun, and that they met all sorts of new people.

MyPhones are predicted to sell for $350 without contract, $150 with a 2 year contract to the provider of your choice.  read more »

In a chat I had recently with another communications geek, we talked about the well known problem of videoconferencing systems. You look at a person on the screen, and the camera is not where you are looking, so eye contact is not possible.

There have been a few solutions tried for this. You can have a display with a beam-splitting mirror that allows a camera to see a well lit subject, at some cost of quality of the image. You still need to keep the camera on the eyes. There has been some experimentation with software that would have cameras at the left and right of the screen and combine the two images to make one from a virtual camera at the eye point, or sometimes more simply to rewrite the image of the eye to move the pupil to the right place. That turns out to be hard to do because we are very discerning about eyes looking “natural” though it may become possible.

Another approach has been semi-transparent displays a camera can look through, but we like our displays to be crisp and bright. A decade ago I saw guys claiming they could build a display that could focus light without a lens, so each cell could have a sensor, but I have not seen anything come of this. In the end, most people try to place the camera near the top of the screen, and the image right under it.

Having the image under the camera makes the person look like they are looking down. This causes some women to perceive this as something else they frequently see — men staring at their chests when they talk to them. Yes, we’re pretty much all guilty of this.

So I came up with an amusing, not entirely serious answer, namely to put the camera below the image and then, for men at least, stare at her chest, or an imaginary one below the edge of the screen. Then you would be looking at the camera and thus at the other person.

Amusingly, when videophones are shown on TV, we almost always see the people staring right into them, because they are TV actors who know how to find their camera.

Videophones are still an early adopter thing, but I was imagining an interesting application for them — reunions. Recently a theatre company I was in had a reunion far away, and I couldn’t come, but I wanted somebody to bring in a laptop so we could run a SIP or Skype videophone there. It would not have given me a true sense of participation, but individuals I wanted to catch up on could have come to the video phone and chatted.

Most conferencing applications assume there is going to be one big meeting with everybody talking together. That’s useful, but I can see a use for something that facilitates a lot of parallel one-on-one or small group conversations, for something like a reunion. In fact, one might be able to do a decent reunion entirely on the internet, or mostly on it.  read more »

Apparently freeconference.com is now sending notes to its customers (one of whom forwarded an example to me) because Sprint, Cingular, Qwest and some others finally got around to blocking calls to their numbers. They pitch it as the big companies trying to block their free service so the giants can sell expensive services, and are trying to whip up support by suggesting this is akin to a network neutrality violation.

In fact, it’s an example of the big guys actually doing something right, and fixing a loophole caused by bizarre legacy telco regulation. The number you called for freeconference, and many other services, were served by telcos in rural areas such as Iowa. The phone regulations are set up so that when you make a long distance call on the PSTN, the long distance company pays the remote local phone company to complete the call. Usually that fee is about half a cent per minute in cities, and even free for cell phones. (Frankly, it should always be zero, and this should be paid for as part of my local phone fee, but that’s another story.) In Iowa, however, in order to, in theory, help pay the costs of being a phone company that has to send the call out to a lonely Iowa farmhouse, the rural telcos get to charge as much as 6 cents or more per minute to complete the call.  read more »

It’s nice to have a headset on your desk telephone, for handsfree conversations. A number of phones have a headset jack, either of the submini plug used by cell phones, or using a phone handset jack. Many companies buy headset units that plug into the handset line to provide a headset, some of them are even wireless.

But bluetooth headsets today are cheap, standardized and have a competitive market. And they are of course wireless. Many people already have them for their cell phone. I have seen a very small number of desk phones support having a bluetooth headset, and that shouldn’t be al that expensive, but it’s rare and only on high-end phones.

Here’s the idea: Put bluetooth headset support into the PBX. Bluetooth headsets can’t dial, they can effectively only go on-hook and off-hook with a single button. You would associate (in the PBX) your bluetooth headset with your desk phone. A bluetooth master would be not too far from your desk, and tied into the PBX, or into a PC that talks to the PBX. When your BT headset was in range of this master, it would be tied to ith with Bluetooth. (You would have to do an actual bluetooth pairing in advance. In addition, many people have bluetooth headsets normally linked to their cell phone, and call attempts from the headset go to the cell phone. The system would have to switch that over to the PBX.)  read more »