VoiP help
 

The landline will run me about $18 a month, after taxes, 911 surcharges, FCC fees and all that crap.

As for the rest of this, I am afraid of any suggestion that starts "just splice". Let me know if you're ever in south Florida and you can do the splicing for me.

Ipod Batteries
 

Apple settles suit over iPod battery life.

Music players bought before 2004 covered under tentative pact.

SAN FRANCISCO - Customers whose older iPods had poor battery life will get $50 coupons and extended service warranties under a tentative settlement in a class-action lawsuit.

In 2003, eight customers sued Apple, claiming the iPod failed to live up to advertised claims that the rechargeable battery would last the product’s lifetime and play music continuously for up to 10 hours.

Thousands complained that the battery — which cost $99 to replace — lasted 18 months or less and that they could play music for only four hours or less before having to recharge it.

Tivo to go
 

NEW YORK - TiVo Inc. on Wednesday said it extended its TiVoToGo portable video service to pocket computers and mobile phones running Microsoft software, as the television recording company beefed up its offerings in an effort to differentiate from its rivals.

The move improves on TiVo's TiVoToGo initiative, announced earlier this year, that allows users to shift recorded TV programs to a personal computer in the same home.

The new feature lets them travel with those shows, and watch them on devices made by companies such as iRiver, Samsung Electronics, Hewlett-Packard Co., and Dell Inc.

"(We are) trying to create a continual upgrading of the (users) experience," he said. "Our business model is pretty sound, but our challenge is how to raise the bar of what that $12.95-a-month delivers to people.

"In-Stat (a research firm) said that video-on-mobile-phones will become a $5.4 billion market by 2009," said John Pollard, of Microsoft's Windows Mobile Applications and Services Marketing group. "This is fantastic piece to build momentum."

Tivo to go
 

Could those fuckers please get teh service for macs? Good lord, who's going to watch desparate housewives on their cell phone?

Tivo to go
 

I don't work for Tivo, Microsoft, or any of the above-named PDA manufacturers, but I don't think there's enough money (currently) to migrate Tivo to Mac. Especially now with all the hubbub with the chips and all.

That said, it's hard enough just to get the baseball scores on the cell phone, much less try to watch anything on that little screen.

Ipod Batteries
 

I got a claim check in the mail, and I think that I can turn this into a new iPod, since I doubt they are going to want to refurb or put a new battery (is it even possible?) in an early 3G. We'll see...

Ipod Batteries
 

Pretty sure they introduced the battery replacement program before the 4Gs came out. Perforce, a 3G can have its battery replaced (in fact, I recall seeing a DIY kit). So they probably will give you a new battery or a refurb 3G.

Of course, all this assumes you have battery failure as defined . . .

Ipod Batteries
 

According to the form, I just have to have had experiences of battery life below 5 hours and have taken reasonable steps to try to address it, or something like that. Shouldn't be too difficult. I think that I deserve a new battery for paying $500 for this thing with a bunch of accessories, even if I do use it every day.

Motorola Pebl v6
 

Now this is an an unusual review of a cell phone.

Two years ago, I thought to myself, "Self, the guy who figures out how to get a cell phone to automatically connect to your land line when you're at home so you can make free local calls and use low-priced long distance services, making a cell phone merely a highly portable extension of a home's cordless phone system, will have found himself a killer app."

And I would have acted on it, too, if I'd had the benefit of being a phone monopoly.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/06/15/t...rid/index.html

You don't have to go the the UK.

http://www.uniden.com/ELBT/index.html

But if you were a US telephone monopoly that had an interest in a cell phone company, you might not have been so interested in acting on it.

Huh. Anyone have it? Does it mean you can answer your land line on your cellie (yo) if you're at home (within BT range) when it rings? And that you can answer your cellie (yo) on the Uniden when you're at home? Or (and I'm full of questions here) if you're wearing a BT headset and one of the two phones in your house starts to ring, it will pick up whichever one is ringing?

Cuz if so, that's kinda cool, yo.

And does it mean you can maintain your entire phone book in your BT enabled notebook, and said phone book will become available to all phones in the house, cellular or Uniden?

Cuz if so, that's way cool, yo.

Fair point. I think there was an early Thomas Nast cartoon depicting Cingular, Verizon, Sprint PCS and T Mobile feasting on the bones of Ma Bell.

ETA: Found it!

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/PUCK/prey.jpg

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch

Does it mean you can answer your land line on your cellie (yo) if you're at home (within BT range) when it rings?

Yo. No.

And that you can answer your cellie (yo) on the Uniden when you're at home?

Yo. Yes.

Or (and I'm full of questions here) if you're wearing a BT headset and one of the two phones in your house starts to ring, it will pick up whichever one is ringing?

Yo. I don't think so.

Cuz if so, that's kinda cool, yo.

And does it mean you can maintain your entire phone book in your BT enabled notebook, and said phone book will become available to all phones in the house, cellular or Uniden?

Yo. No. Phone book info is private, yo.

Cuz if so, that's way cool, yo.

Holla?

Hmmm. I don't have a BT phone so I don't get why this is so. If I use a PIM on my laptop, can I only sync it via BT with one device at a time? My friends with BT phones are always going on about how they can sync at home and at work, but I guess that's one device and two (computer-based) address books, as opposed to one address book and two devices.

Why isn't there something by which you can maintain a single master list of all your contacts, and all of your devices (cell, PDA, Uniden) can sync data from it?

You know, Eskimos have over 400 emoticons for snow.

Yo--most devices you can sync and transfer contacts and phone books and shiznitt. It just so happens that with the Uniden BT system, you can't, because they didn't want to enable that function yo.

Word.

(This is not my best material.)

There is on my Mac. It's called iSync (or Mail, Address Book, and Calendar). I sync to my ipod and to my cell phone. (BTW, if you use entourage, get e2sync, which will transfer all info to those programs from entourage)

I actually would worry about syncing from two sources, because they tend to overwrite each other.

Anyway, the monkey has a better idea on the uniden, but my sense was that it simply used bluetooth to use your cell phone as a second line. Basically the phone pretends to be a handsfree/headset, and can communicate with your cell phone that way, either to dial or answer. Further integration has not yet been supplied. The uniden claims to be able to sync with your PC (but not mac) through its own software, so it can get your contacts that way. I would think you might be able to transfer directly, too, but probably manually.

iPod irritations
 

Question from an iPod late adopter:

iTunes is giving me problems when I try to load music from existing CDs. Each time I try to do so, two things happen:

* Speed starts out pretty high (10.something x) but quickly drops down to 3x or 2x or so.

* It loads the first few songs fine, but any larger task (loading an album, or 10-20 songs, etc.), the entire computer crashes, and I've got to reboot.

It's entirely possible that the problem is unrelated to iTunes itself, as the computer is probably in need of a good cleansing, but I thought I'd ask in case this particular problem was recognizable to anyone else.

Thoughts?

how long has iSync been around?

iPod irritations
 

Sounds like your computer is fucked up, but have you tried reloading the iTunes software?

iPod irritations
 

Yeah. Downloaded the new version of iTunes the other night. Downloading music from the website works fine, it's just when I try to load CDs that it fucks up.

A call to the Geek Squad is probably in order.

iPod irritations
 

My ipod has decided not to charge anymore when I plug it in. Pain in the ass. It looks like it is charging when it's plugged in, but then when I unplug it (after several hours), it tells me that the battery is low and it has no power. What do you mean by Geek Squad? customer service?

iPod irritations
 

I mean these guys.

http://www.geeksquad.com/_assets/images/logo.gif

Not for the iTunes in particular, but for some general, overpriced help to clean the crud that's otherwise accumulated in my computer and is probably the cause of the problem. I don't have the requisite level of trust in bribing someone from my IT department to help me, and clearly I lack the technical ability to diagnose the problem myself.

Gattigap

iPod irritations
 

I think there has been a few lawsuits on this and you can get a rebate/replacement.

iPod irritations
 

1) See lawsuit issue.

2) Does it actually have no juice? When I take mine off the charger, it says, say 1/4 full. But it's full, and within about 1 hour the meter/gauge is back up to full (or close to). and it lasts a few hours.

Quite some time. At least a couple of years, if not longer. It's built in. (Also, it's gotten a lot better in the most recent iterations.)

iPod irritations
 

thanks (to you and club and gatti).

It actually has no juice. will not run.

iPod irritations
 

"Loading" music from "existing" CDs is called ripping.

It's ordinary for CDs to rip at widely varied speeds, for a number of reasons, including the fact that the transfer rate increases with the data radius --- the disc is spinning "faster" in relation to the read-head at the outer edge and "slower" at the spindle when the disc is spinning at a constant RPM. Different songs on the same disc will therefore rip at substantially different speeds, assuming a constant angular velocity.

Ripping to AAC or MP3 is a down-conversion, which is a fairly processor-intensive thing to ask the computer to do. You may be asking too much of your CD drivers and processor. Are you running a Mac or a PC? How old? Are you trying to run other programs in the background?

iPod irritations
 

I know. Coming so late to the party with an iTunes question, though, I thought I should be more humble and not try to affect any infringer cred.

Makes sense, though I've tried as a workaround having the tracks ripped (hmm, seems safe, now) to .wma files and having them converted to AAC. The dynamic above still applies, which shouldn't occur were the CD the problem.

Running a PC. It's only two year old Dell Latitude, so I wouldn't imgaine this to be a problem, but you never know. I've tried this both with, and without, programs in the background.

Not so rosy palm
 

I have used my Palm Zire 71 mainly as a vehicle for synchronizing my work calendar (PC Based Outlook) and my powerbook (Ical).

It really sucks. 1/2 the time it doesn't sync everything. The other 1/2 the time it syncs too much stuff and you have double apointments. 1 in 100 syncs it just deletes everything.

Does anyone have any other suggestions other than palm for keeping the two schedules linked? Ipod won't work because I don't think you can go ipod---> outlook.

Not so rosy palm
 

Look into The Missing Sync

I haven't used it personally, but it's supposed to be pretty good. I think it does what you're looking for.

Depending on how good/bad your firm's security is, it may be possible to sync your home iCal directly with the company's exchange server. Or you can use entourage to do the same, with built in exchange support.

Digital Camcorder
 

I am thinking of getting one. Canon has the Elura which is 1.3 megapixel video and which seems to be good and the Optura which is more expensive but 2.2 megapixel.

Any thoughts or xperiences?

Digital Camcorder
 

I have teh panasonic GS-120 (I think that's the number, 3 ccd version, now the GS-250 or so). It's great. Works great with iMovie too. Low light's not the best, though.

When I did the research, I recall that a number of people had issues with Canon, but I don't recall exactly what. Seemed to think Sony was a better way to go.

Digital Camcorder
 

Does that one have a firewire port? I liked that camera but seem to recall it being limited to USB.


I think there have been reliability issues according to consumer reports.

Digital Camcorder
 

Yes, at least mine does. It's the usual 4-pin port, but you just get a 4pin to 6pin cable (I don't think any cameras come with the FW cable). Much joy.

(I think FW ports are fairly standard on videocams, not USB2; if it's not, I wouldn't get it)

ETA: The GS-150 (which is about equivalent to what I have) has FW and USB

[advertising deleted]
 

[See Terms of Service--Burger]

Really stupid IPod Question
 

Okay, I am aware that to turn off my IPod, I am supposed to push the little pause button until the IPod turns itself off. But this only works maybe half of the time. Is there some secret to this?

Really stupid IPod Question
 

Nope. But the touch buttons seem to have curious sensitivities at times.