If you have been reading previous posts on this blog you may  be familiar with what a great part headphones in general and lately headsets specifically play in my life. In my line of work you spend a lot of time on the phone, so I need to be able to do so in the most convenient way available.  Not only that, but I’m also constantly listening to music while working, or in the car, or on my bike. And I am doing so from a variety of devices, sometimes from the computer, sometimes from the phone, sometimes from my other phone..

Finally there is a product on the market that allows this to happen. The MW-600 works great for this. Like other products I have reviewed in the past it is multi-homing, that is it can be bound via bluetooth to several devices at once.  This is normally tricky business since Bluetooth seems to be a rather flexible protocol, and some phone brands abuse this (Apple, I’m looking at you) and never lets the other phone in on the action. Other glitches with bluetooth and music I have seen in the past like music occationally dropping out, or being at a wierd, unchangeable volume, seem to finally be fixed.

So with the MW-600, you finally get the feeling that you get a product using bluetooth that is a really polished product. You get a nice friendly display which lets  you pick   1.  where do you want your calls to come from and  2. where do you want your music to come from.   So you can even, without any hassle, be playing music from one bluetooth source while accepting and making calls from another bluetooth device. Wicked!  You also get a built-in FM radio as a music source.

The MW-600 can handle three simultaneous devices. For me that means my work phone, my personal phone and my iPad.  But other choices could include a laptop with bluetooth or even a gaming console.

Now my only gripe is that the display works great with the iPhone, showing the names of music tracks in the display and the names of contacts calling you also. But oddly this does not work on Sony Ericssons own phones, whats up with that?  A very minor gripe on an all-around awesome product. Also the display is OLED, which I thought would mean that it would be really cool, but It’s not.  In any kind of outdoor enviroment the display is impossible to read. It’s not a dealbreaker, but annoying.

Did i mention its going for really cheap?  A solid investment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centres

“Sir, I call you back because your wife told me she is not allowed to use the computer without her husbands permission”

I just got a call from a man with an indian accent following exactly the same call template as you can read about in the link above. My computer was at risk, it had a virus, but he could help!

Puzzled by this friendly stranger i let the call go on, explaning that I was myself working as a sysadmin, this did not deter his resolution in helping me in the slightest. It should be noted that this was the third of fourth time he called me, from a number in the USA. This might seem strange in itself, but I run a lot of internet sites so I have been getting a bit more love from US spammers in the past.

Here is what i was asked to do:

- click the start button
- right click on “my computer”
- click on manage
- click on event viewer
- click on Application logs

… and right there i stopped the call because i knew what was coming next. The pitch is that in the application logs there are quite a lot of Errors and Warnings. This is completely normal for a Windows computer, but look intimidating to the average user. If i had let the call continue I would have been offered a “fix” that would have involved me installing malware on the computer and handing over my credit card information.

So consider yourself warned! These are professional scammers and they sound very gentle and persuasive. I have notified the police and local media.. and my mom. And the quote at the top is genuine, i have the best wife ever.

So to rectify this i installed the most ridiculous captcha system i could find and enabled comments to be visible right away. If you comment with your Facebook account you wont have to bother with the captcha.

So enjoy! And if you are reading this and working on a spam-script. Go to hell!

The iPhones built in pdf viewer made a dogs breakfast of our staffs weekly newsletter. To great comedic effect since the topic of the article is legibility and the importance of clear communication.. at least so I believe.

Clearer communication at SLU

[...] for the reader a formal and simple language. The graphical layout will be  [...]

[...] understands the message.

Technical Museum in Stockholm 1952 - Philips demonstrating television.

Me and L where talking the other day if we ever are going to see a change in our lives as fundamental as internet. Our generation grew up without it while this generation never knew how life was before cellphones and internet. And the next generation, what kind of internet will they get to know?

Changes are pretty big that the freedom and openness that we associate with internet today will be an unknown to them. I heard the other day on the radio a debater making the argument “of COURSE internet suppliers should be responsible for what is going on in their networks”. To that argument I must ask why. Internet connectivity is as commonplace today as any other part of the Swedish infrastructure. You don’t close bars if people get drunk there and then drive home. Nobody would even think about threatening my telephone company if I were to pick up the phone and call in a bomb threat at the Royal Palace. Yet somehow when it comes to internet connectivity, all the basic rules we take for granted don’t apply.

We are already being spied upon on a systematic and state-sponsored degree, Stasi of East Germany could only dream of having the control over its citizens that the Swedish state is enjoying at the moment. The argument that the intelligence gathered in Sweden cannot be used to track individuals is hardly comforting, when it is an established fact that intelligence data always have always been for sale or trade to intelligence agencies of other countries.

And now, around the corner looms ACTA. The article linked to below highlights a connection I was not aware of before: That ACTA operates the same way as the Great Chinese firewall. This in connection with the recent Google/China scandal really makes you wonder. What the hell is going on?

Read this –> The Similarity Between ACTA And Chinese Internet Censorship

The standard for Voip is called SIP, and to use SIP you need a SIP account. I checked around a bit for different providers until i stumbled upon sipgate.co.uk. They allow you to setup your account directly for no charge and get a free real number to boot. Excellent. After some configuration I finally got the lovely message on my phone.  “Account is registered” The sipgate.co.uk webpanel confirmed it. It could see my phone. Rock on! My cellphone was ready to make internet calls.

Or so I thought. The Nokia 5630 even has its own field in the contacts for “internet phone”. But trying to call someone with only an internet phone number didn’t work. It should show up as a third call option. And trying to just hit the call button gives me the error “Internet-telephony service not available.” A flicker of fear awoke inside of me, was it all too good to be true?

And so far.. it was! Here is the response I got from Nokia Support (use babelfish you lazies)

Hej Martin.

Tack för att du kontaktat Nokia Care kundsupport.

Du behöver ett inställnings program som gör internet telefoni möjligt. Det är bara sjävla SIP inställningarna du kan göra på telefonen.
Program som tex Skype, Gizmo. Där finns många olika, kontakta gärna din opperatör och fråga om dem har något.
Det ända som supporteras av nokia är gizmo.

Om det är något annat du undrar över så tveka inte att kontakta oss igen.

Med vänliga hälsningar,
Nokia Service Professional
Swedish Team
Nokia Care

Thanks for that horrifying response Nokia, what I would like to know is if that is true, then what the hell is this page on about?  Nokia 5630 XpressMusic support Check out the movies surprise ending! Thats right, a SIP call being made without any special program.

I have seen phones being sold where some functionality was just broken or not functioning very well. i hope that the support guy just was mistaken, and that someone in the comments will tell me what an idiot I am. But since is such a new phone I can’t help but wonder. Is Nokia promoting the phone by showing a feature that is not even implemented yet?

Update 17/8

Here is how things stand right now:

• I got a third response from Nokia. I told them that my settings were working fine but that the phone could not place the call. The reply I got was simple. “Your settings are wrong, and we don’t support anything but Gizmo”. To sum up my experience with Nokia support the three mails and two phonecalls I have sent them regarding this have been a waste of time.
• The SIP Supplier sipgate.co.uk told me they would send me a config sms with the correct settings, I haven’t got it yet but i’m not hopeful. I think I got it right by myself.
• I did a complete format of the phone yesterday. Curiously this did not revive the camera function that went dead after I installed the Mail for Exchange program. Nokia Support told me I have to send it in for service.

I will make a new attempt after I get my phone back from service.. until then. If any of you reading this got it working, post a comment!

This is the same model cellphone as the first one I owned. I didn't have the flashy headset however.

It’s been a while since i bought a new cell phone. As a matter of fact the only phone I ever bought with my own money was my first phone. An Ericsson, back in 1997 or something like that when it was still quite exotic to have one.

You would think that that technology has progressed since then, but what we see today is a market totally overcrowded with bad products. I’m not joking when I tell you that the SonyEricsson p990, a phone I had the misfortune to meet at my current job, actually choke on the task of dialling a number. Out of memory after two digits! Receiving a call was the same gamble, the phone could run out of memory as it tried to recieve the call.. system restart.

So it was with pretty low expectations that I went shopping last week. What I wanted was so simple.

• A phone that is small, and that I can drop without it going a million pieces. A “vacation” phone if you will.
• Not an iPhone clone.
• As less keys as possible and as minimal design as possible.
• Wi-fi  and ability to stream music from my home network.

Ok so that last point was a bit of a joke, because I never expected to find a phone like that. The iPhone does that kind of, via the tversity web-interface. But it’s pretty slow and only works when it feels like it.

But what do you know, looks like Nokia r&d have been reading my mind.  I went and bought a Nokia 5630. The rest of this post is going to be about how great it is, and how UPnP changed everything.

I bought a budget Nokia for emergencies some months ago, it’s in itself a pretty good device, but as basic as you could possibly get. So the question arises: What else could you possibly need to have in your phone?  Turns out… lots of things!

The Good

There are the normal things you would expect, here are the things that first strike you:

• Its fast
• Its stable. I have managed to crash it a few times, but nothing major.
• Good battery time
• Nice design! Minimal.  Me like.
• Games games games. The Ngage gaming platform is built in. And no, I don’t care about that.
• Good camera.  Video editing is built in.
• It’s Symbian OS, so you can install lots of nice apps. I have seamless syncing with Googles Calendar and Contacs for example. Everything i put into the phones calendar, gets auto-synced.

The Awesome

Nokia 5630

Here is a rundown of the features that for me were totally new: I didn’t know any phone could do this.

• The voice-control is amazing: You can call anyone in your contacts by saying their name and what number to use. ie “Anders, mobile”. You can also say the name of any artist, album or song that you have in your phone, and it starts playing it.
• Total support for UPnP. That means that you can browse up music from your computer to your phone and stream it. So for example listen to anything you like when in bed, your whole collection at your fingertips, from your cellphone. Or why not copy it over so you can listen to it later when you leave home? You can also play music from your phone, on your computer or whatever else you happen to have in your home that supports UPnP. I have an old hacked xbox, works great. Fantastic way to move music between friends etc.
• Support for wi-fi.  Auto-detects hotspots and shows you an icon when there is a hotspot you can connect to.  This is the smallest cellphone I know about that supports wi-fi.
• Support for SIP.   I realize I’m coming late to this party, but it seems that there is built-in support for Voip (voice over internet).  That means that when the phone is without wi-fi range, I should be able to get a SIP account somewhere, and make REALLY cheap calls with my normal cellphone. The tech in itself is not so cool, but boy, that it comes built into my cellphone, that is pretty cool indeed.
• Podcasts,  every morning it grabs the latest episodes of whatever is new. Automatically, over wi-fi. This is how it should be.
• It can read you your new SMS’s and emails. (again to your headset if you like). A bit cheezy perhaps, but I like stuff like that.

The Problems

Here’s what doesn’t work:

• It’s pretty clear that this device was meant to be sold in Finland. The manual was in Finnish.. no big deal I thought I can get the manual from the web in some non-ugric language. But sadly there are functions in the phone that are in finnish only. Still trying to sort this out with Nokia support. Update:  I discovered that you can also download a voice for almost every language on earth for this feature. Very cool.
• This phone is not listed on the Nokia Support pages yet.  Update: Don’t bother with Nokia support. Read forums instead.
• When listening to music over bluetooth, there is no way to adjust volume. I trust this will be fixed. Right now its LOUD.  Very bad for my tinnitus.
• After installing some apps, the camera no longer works.  No big deal since It’s not a feature I use a lot, but still annoying. Update: After a  complete wipe of the phone the camera function is still broken! I guess I have to take it in for service. First time I own a phone where a software installation messes it up for good!

You are out driving in your car. You stop at a store and while you are there you steal some candy. I’ts illegal and not very nice, but you can’t help yourself, the candy looks so delicious. When you are about to leave the store owner appears and he is very mad.  ”For taking my candy without paying, you will lose your car.”  There is nothing you can do, you walk home.

This is more or less the essence of the telecom package, currently under deliberation in the European Parliament. The proposed price for you to pay for piracy is .. your internet connection can get taken away. Without the involvement of any court. (in the original proposal). They want to ban you from the internet for daring to take their precious movies and music. Nevermind that in 2009, the internet is a more given infrastructural item than even the telephone. You won’t be able to pay your bills or use it to declare your taxes. It is clear that the laws are based on outdated ideas. It is also clear that the people of Sweden have representation in Brussels that are pushing hard for an agenda that is utterly removed from the interests of the common people.

Our rights as citizens are getting compromised for the benefit of companies like HBO and Time Warner. It’s the end of the world.

http://www.dn.se/fordjupning/europa2009/telekompaketet-strid-om-rattssakerhet-in-i-det-sista-1.858591

Burns: And to think, Smithers, you laughed when I bought Ticketmaster. [imitating Smithers] Nobody’s going to pay a hundred-percent “service charge.”
Smithers: It’s a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.

Here is what has been bugging me in the debate: The state is jumping on the bandwagon a bit too fast when it comes to limiting your right on the net. With the telecom package around the corner you start asking yourself whose best interest the state has at heart. Do you know a single person who thinks this kind of government control is a good idea?

Then unfortunately on the other side of the debate, at least in Sweden, you find the Pirate-party. A whole political party whose only issue is the right of filesharing and the freedom of information or something like that. They want to get my vote, when filesharing is like the least of the worlds problems at the moment. Its very depressing, guys there is a name for one-issue organizations: lobby group. Allright?

So it was a complete breath of fresh air to read this article on fokus.se. It brings the discussion back to where it should have stayed in the first place: How is it possible that an album that costs a given amount of money in the store, almost costs the same amount as a digital download?

Read this article

Its in swedish, but I encourage you to use the translation engine of your choice if you need to. It’s worth it. Judging by how the way things are going now, we are heading head-first into a very dark place indeed.