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Looks like Cingular, following in Verizon's footsteps, will also disable the Bluetooth DUN profile on the Treo 650. (DUN stands for 'Dial Up Networking' and is the part of the bluetooth stack that lets a bluetooth equipped computer use a bluetooth cellphone as a modem.) Jerks. Why not just charge by the bit and let us do what we want?

Again, I don't mind paying! But at least offer me what I want to pay for. Do they not like profits? We are talking about telecoms, so judging by their recent performance the answer might actually be yes.
- jim 1-26-2005 10:18 pm [link] [1 ref] [add a comment]

The Motorola E815 looks really nice. Due 2nd quarter 2005. Presumably on Verizon since it's EV-DO. But will they (Verizon) let the bluetooth do file transfer? And what about (even less likely,) acting as a modem? With EV-DO speeds this would be very reasonable. So far Verizon wants you to buy the PC Card version if you want to use EV-DO for your computer's data connection. This is silly. Look, I don't mind paying more, so why not give me the option of using my phone for both? I don't want to pay $x/month for my EV-DO phone plus $100/month for my EV-DO data access, especially when I don't need voice and data at the same time (I barely need voice at all.) Why not offer a single package in the form of a cellphone/modem?

Still, until Cingular rolls out UMTS, Verizon is the only way to go for high speed cellular in the U.S. So I guess they can be jerks if they want.

Jerks.
- jim 1-26-2005 7:29 pm [link] [add a comment]

John Perry Barlow's The Intimate Planet is a funny blog about meeting random people through Skype.

The bottom line is this: they reached at random out into the Datacloud and found a real friend. And I feel like I have been graced with a real friend in both of them. Given the fact that I've been getting interesting messages from distant strangers since 1985, why do I think the big deal? Why is this different? Because these strangers have voices. There's a lot more emotional bandwidth in the human voice. I'm always surprised by the Meatspace version of someone I've only encountered in ASCII. I'm rarely surprised by someone I've only met on the phone. But one doesn't get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.

The potential of establishing a real emotional connection is exponentially advantaged.....

....Anyway, I feel as if the Global Village became real to me that night, and, indeed, it has become the Global Dinner Party. All at once. The small world has become the intimate world.

I'm beginning to think this Internet thing may turn out to be emotionally important after all.
His use of the word "intimate" reminds me of Joi Ito's formulation: "full time intimate community". This is the big picture version of why I am interested in all this technology.
- jim 1-26-2005 6:56 pm [link] [add a comment]

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