Thursday, November 22, 2007

Black Friday Deals Online Today

What could be better for those of us who hate to shop at the stores on Black Friday with mobs of crazy people. Well for me online shopping on Thursday with Black Friday deals can't be beat.

Here are a few sites to lead you to the deals at a number of top name retailers -

Black Friday Online Deals

Black Friday 2007

If your looking for coupons check this out -

KeepCash

Monday, November 19, 2007

$20 per year for unlimited calling

Just saw this on cnet Crave, it's a USB device called majicJack from a company called YMax Communications that you plug into your PC and then install the client software (SIP softphone client). After installing the client you then hook up any regular analog phone to the jack on the USB device and you then get unlimited calling in the US and Canada for $20 per year after the first year. The first year is included in the $39.95 purchase price. This product is still in beta according to the majicJack website and was kicked off at Spring 2007 VON Conference from what I can find. If you go over to GigaOM you can read through the various comments to get a flavor for how this product has developed since the Spring 2007 VON launch. Based on the comments is seems most people are very pleased with the Call Quality which is enough to make me give this device a try. I had Vonage for over a year but the Call Quality was poor more times than I care to remember so I finally dropped there service. I have also used Skype at times but overall I have not been impressed with Skype Call Quality either.

The Inventor behind this product is a guy named Dan Borislow who previously ran Tel-Sav,Inc. and has a long history in the phone business. What is interesting is that Dan's new company YMax Communications the underlying CLEC(Phone Company) behind the majicJack has setup 31 SBC(Session Border Control/SIP Gateways) which if done properly should provide great reliability and also should be key in continuing to provide the great Call Quality initial users have experienced.

One question I had and couldn't find on the majicJack website is what area codes are available for local numbers. Well after a quick online chat with one of the very helpful majicJack support people I received this link which lists the currently available area codes and prefixes. Well my area code is covered so I'm going to give this a try, it sure beats Vonage and SkypeOut pricing.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Cosmic Tree of Life

My latest find is a fantastic piece of computer art by Roger Ferragallo called the The Tree of Life. If you happen to live near the University of California, Irvine you might be able to see this work of art on there 23 x 9 foot HIPerWall which has a resolution of 200 megapixels. For the rest of we can explore this work over at Gigapan.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Google phone to be announced Monday

According to these Wall Street Journal and Information Week articles the Gphone is going to be announced Monday.

CNET talks about the underlying software platform which is code named 'Android' and Linux based. This will also be part of the Monday announcement according the CNET.

Well let's see if Google will be able to steal the lime light from Apple and there iPhone. Maybe I made the right decision in holding off on replacing my Sprint PPC6700. But if I have to wait until the middle of next year as the Wall Street Journal article suggests well that could be tough.

Eye-Fi reviews

I'm still thinking about the Eye-Fi card and here are some of the reviews I found to help me decide -

PC World's Review - gives it an 81 out of 100 or very good.

Gizmodo - "works flawlessly" also mentions that it works with 20 services I checked and the Eye-Fi website still just lists 17 so maybe they have information on additional services that are going to be available soon.

Digital Photography Review

CruchGear - most detailed review I've seen so far.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Eye-Fi or Wi-Fi + Photo Sharing for your Camera

Now this is a neat new device I just saw from Photojojo called Eye-Fi or Wi-Fi + Photo Sharing for your Camera. What Eye-Fi is offering is an all in one 2GB SD memory card with built in Wi-Fi. Not sure how Eye-Fi did it but they have squeezed 2GB of memory along with a 802.11b,g and n Wi-Fi radio all into the SD memory card form factor. Even better there is no external antenna. Next comes the really cool feature to this device, the Eye-Fi card automatically uploads your photos to your favorite photo sharing, photo printing, blogging or social networking site. Eye-Fi currently lists flickr, Picasa, facebook, Wal*Mart, SmugMug, photobucket, Kodak Gallery, shutterfly, snapfish, TypePad, FOTKI, webshots, Gallery, VOX, phanfare, dotphoto and Sharpcast as sites that they work with. If you need the CompactFlash type form factor instead of SD Eye-Fi says that will be available soon via an adapter. When you consider that roughly 2 years ago when a 1GB SD memory card alone was running around $109, $99 for the Eye-Fi card seems reasonable. So I guess I'm going to have to decide if I get one of these babies now or wait for Christmas. Hmmm, it's going to be tough to wait that long for something this neat.

Updated: If your looking for a good review of the Eye-Fi card here is one at CruchGear.