Verizon One Phone - First Impressions

If you are like me, or any other broadband user, you have the 'desk'. This desk probably has 3 or 4 devices on it - A telephone, a wired or wireless router, a cable/dsl modem and/or your computer. It is probably also a mess of cables and clutter as well. The there is the power issue too - All of those devices and their huge power bricks probably make it difficult for you to find space to plug them all in. The premise of the new Verizon One phone from Verizon is to consolidate all of that.

The Verizon One phone is not only a cordless land line phone, (with a base station speakerphone, I might add) but also combines a DSL modem, and Wired and Wireless router all into one unit. This of course might have started to Pique your interest, but as the infomercial salesman says - 'But wait, there's more!'

The Verizon One has a nice 7-inch touch-screen LCD screen that helps it serve as an internet connected appliance. Not only does it show caller IDs, the time and weather, but it can also serve up web snippets, the local weather, your calendar, and hand-scrawled notes for others in your family. Some might say that it's trying to replace not only the mass of cables and boxes on your desk, but the notes and calendars magneted to the fridge.

'But that's not all!'

You can also upload pictures to it and use them as the screensaver, so in essence, the phone becomes a digital picture frame as well.

I've been using a version of the phone (thanks Yussie!) for the past few days and so far the basic setup was relatively straightforward. However, I have still yet to access the advanced features - i.e. the online calendar integration and screensaver. I hope to get them working and update my review soon.

So far the only bad thing that I have to say about the device is that from the on-screen menu the only wireless setting that I can configure in the SSID. While the Verizon One does support WEP, WPA and some other standard wireless settings that most routers support, I had to access them by logging into the Verizon One's web admin tool, something that might not be so simple to do for the average wireless user. To be fair though, my phone might have an earlier version of the software, and the production versions might have improved upon this.

More to come.

Photo Printing Experience - Kodak Easyshare Gallery

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was debating the array of choices when it came to printing digital photos.

I recently printed 250 photos, and after adding up all of the pros and cons about each of the individual photo sites, I decided to choose Kodak's EasyShare Gallery. Simply put, the price was the same to either ship photos or pick them up at my local CVS. Even thought Snapfish offers 12-cent prints on their site, the shipping costs make Kodak cheaper for this volume of prints, and if you want local pick-up, it will cost you $0.19. Kodak, on the other hand, charges $1.50 per order - far less than actual shipping would be. As promised, the photos were ready for pickup at my local CVS store within 36 hours.

As long as I am looking for value in photo printing, this seems to be the way to go.

Two Cameras I would love to try....

When I say camera, say the first three things that come to mind? 10 years ago, before the advent of digital, one of those three would have definitely been Kodak. Today, because of the advent of digital cameras, that list is less likely to include Kodak as it is to include some of the digital-only players that have come on the scene in the last few years - Sony for one, or companies like Shutterfly, SanDisk and HP that all provide products and services for the digital camera world. Kodak was dead - or so they thought.

After some of their recent innovations, they are coming back as a player to be reckoned with in the Digital marketplace. Firstly, they bought Ofoto and turned it into the KodakGallery - bolstering their foothold in the digital photo printing arena. But more importantly, they are also trying to innovate on the digital camera front as well.

Hence the title of this article. The two cameras in Question are the EasyShare one (left, above) and the V570 (right). The former is among the first cameras to include Wi-Fi for uploading pictures (while it might seem stupid, imagine that you are on vacation and upload pictures to share with family at a hotspot?). The latter has two lenses, one focused on closeups, while the other allows you more of a view in Panaromic and Wide-angle photos. Using two lenses instead of one enabled them to build a feature-rich camera with a more compact design.

When it comes to photography, I am nothing more than a nerd snapshooter, but I would love to get my hands on these for a review. Kodak, if you're reading, let's talk :)

Site updates... please be patient

Just FYI, I recently migrated from Linux hosting to Microsoft so that I can compliment my blogs with some ASP.NET programming. However, I am still in the conversion process, so bear with us as we get our house in order.

Playing with *@H

A friend of mine commented over lunch the other day that he has fully embraced VOIP. He even said that he had setup an Asterisk PBX for use in his home. In the ensuing conversation, I mentioned that I tried playing with it once, but that my lack of linux skills and 'hacker time' prevented me from getting it going. Then he pointed me to Aterisk@Home, which was essentially someone's cool idea of packaging Asterisk into a single ISO for installation.

I downloaded and installed it at work, with the intent of setting up a means for people to dial into our IT helpdesk, and have a voicemail message routed immediately into our ticketing system.

But I have some other plans for personal use too, and as time, money (read: my wife and kids) and passion allow, here are some of the things that I would like to accomplish:

- Set it up as PBX in my home so that all phones in the house will be able to pick up either my pots or voip lines, and that I have one unified answering system for both.

- Build an outward dial script and then offer it to local community groups for a phone tree system. (i.e. say, offer it to my kids school for snow closings, etc).

- Set it up so that I can dial-out and/or answer all of my phones from the road - i.e. log into my home phone as a SIP client from any internet connection.

Of course, I have said things like this in the past, but we'll see where this one goes.