Disruptive Telephony

Today I received my new Blackberry "8830 World Edition" and I thought I'd record some initial reactions.  As past readers know, I live in Vermont where we don't really have decent GSM coverage (and can't get the iPhone) and are, in fact, likely to have even less GSM coverage now that Verizon will be purchasing GSM provider Unicel and, per Engadget and others, will be converting all GSM users over to CDMA.

This is obviously not a good thing for those of us who need to travel outside of North America. 

My previous CDMA-only Blackberry 7290 became essentially an extremely expensive paperweight the moment I left these shores.  Because I do travel, I have had a "backup phone" that is a Cingular GSM phone (with a New York number) that I used when outside of NA.  However, it's rather a pain because: 1) it's a different phone interface than I'm used to; 2) it's a different number than people know and I have to get into forwarding; 3) it doesn't always seem to work abroad; 4) Mitel has been paying two separate monthly fees for me;  and perhaps most importantly to me 5) I don't get my email on the phone!

A few weeks ago I saw that Verizon would be offering this new "8830" Blackberry that claimed to work anywhere in the world and so I dropped a note to our Corporate IT group to see if this would solve my two phone issue and let me get my email wherever I travel. They were looking into it and, in light of my recent brilliant move, decided to go ahead with it.  It arrived today and after the brief activation process with both Verizon and Mitel's Blackberry Enterprise Server, I was up and running again.

Some initial thoughts (note that I am comparing the 8830 to an older 7290 - if you have a newer Blackberry, you may already have some of these changes):

• The 8830 is a nice, sleek, sharp-looking unit. Smaller and thinner than the 7290 but seems to have a higher screen resolution and brighter screen.
• The thumbwheel on the side is gone and instead there's a trackball in the center.  This will undoubtedly take some getting used to after so much use of the thumbwheel.  You push in the trackball just as you did the thumbwheel to execute a command or make a choice.  As a bonus, the trackball lights up, too.
• The keys are closer together, but yet they have ridges/indentations on them that seem, so far, to make it as easy to "thumb-type" on them as the previous keys.  (Hmmm... in fact, because the keys are closer together will there be less thumb fatigue?)
• Two more keys were added in the keypad.  The "0" key is now on its own key to the left of the spacebar and there is a separate Shift key.  On the right-side of the spacebar there is a "Sym" key that brings up various symbols.
• Next to the trackball, on the outside, Rim added the green and red "call" and "end" buttons that are common on most all cell phones these days. This is different from the 7290 where this was all done with the thumbwheel.
• Immediately adjacent to the trackball are two keys: "Menu" on the left and "Esc" on the right.  The Esc keys does what the button on the side of the 7290 below the thumbwheel did, which is that it cancels whatever you are doing and takes you "back" to a previous screen.  The "Menu" button pops up whatever menu is appropriate in the context. 
• An interesting aspect of this change is that you have more granularity of control than you did with the 7290 where the thumbwheel and button were overloaded with multiple functions.  For instance, when you are in an app, the "Esc" button will now bring you back to the previous screen but leave you still with the app open (previously it would usually exit the app).  Exiting the app is done through either the red "end" button or through the Menu button and choosing Close.
• On the left side of the 8830 there is a "Convenience Button" that you can set to launch some app.  By default it is set to the "Voice Dial" app but, for instance, I changed mine to "Messages" so that all I have to do is push that button to get to my email.  Easy to configure and change in the "Options" application
• The leather holster with the magnetic closure is a much nicer way to hold it than the plastic bracket from which the 7290 often slipped out.
• The "other apps" that I had on my previous BB like Gmail, Google Maps and iSkoot all installed without any hitches.
• Installing the GSM SIM card that was labeled "Verizon" and "Vodafone" was a painless and simple exercise - but let's hope you never need to get it back out!  Just to see the card again I tried to remove it and found it basically impossible to do.  I'm not sure that I'd really ever want to do so, but if I did, I think I'd need needle-nose pliers to do so!
• The phone will work on CDMA or on GSM on either 900 or 1800 Mhz.  The default setting is for the phone to automagically detect whether CDMA or GSM is stronger and switch if necessary.  I'll be interested to monitor this when I next drive up to Ottawa and go through areas of Ontario with extremely limited CDMA coverage.  You can also force the phone to stick with either CDMA or GSM.
• Underneath the back cover, there is also a slot for a "mini-SD" card so that apparently you can store music or videos on that extra memory (At first I thought it was for the SIM card but it was too small.)
• Audio quality was fine in the few calls I've made with it so far.
• It has a speakerphone!

Those are some initial thoughts - I'm sure as I use it more I'll have some different opinions.  It will be interesting to see how I rapidly I adjust to the nuanced changes in button functions.  I've noticed myself pushing the wrong buttons some times already.

Now... I just need a trip into GSM-land to try out the transition...  (stay tuned)

Note to self: Blackberries don't like water!

Last Friday, I took most of the day off as vacation so that we could leave early to go camping for the weekend.  I did work for an hour or two in the morning and so I had my old Blackberry 7290 clipped to my belt when we drove off to Little River State Park in Waterbury, VT.  We set up our camp site and then drove down to the boat launch to put our tandem kayak in the water.  We got the boat all ready, moved the car up to the parking area some distance away and were basically ready to go.

It was then that I noticed the Blackberry was still on my belt.  Eager to get on the water and not really wanting to walk all the way up to the parking area to put the BB in the car, I said "Okay, no problem, I'll just put the BB in the small waterproof 'dry bag' fanny pack where I keep my wallet and digital camera."  I've been using this particular dry bag for years and never had any problems with it.  It's been a great way to bring a camera along and take pictures while out on the water.  So I thought absolutely nothing of adding my BB into the bag.  I've put previous phones into it and never had a problem with things getting wet.

Well, before we even left the shore (and I was not even all the way in the boat) we had to deal with the large wake of a power boat that came by very close to the shore.  Suffice it to say we had to pull the boat out of the water and empty water out of it (but not all got out, of course).  We got underway, were out for about 3 hours or so, had a wonderful time out on the water, saw a family of 4 blue herons who were amazing to watch fly - and just generally had a fantastic start to our weekend.  We got back to the boat launch all in a great, relaxed mood.

As we unloaded the kayak, I picked up the dry bag and noticed that the bottom of it felt... well... "squishy"!  I opened up the bag, turned it sideways... and poured out a good bit of water!

Oops!

Yes, indeed, the Blackberry was dead.  So was my favorite Canon digital camera that I've come to absolutely enjoy. My wallet was soaked... printed pictures were ruined.  All in all, a complete mess!  I took everything apart, tried to dry it out, but 48 hours later back at home both the BB and the camera were still bricks.  I don't know what happened to the dry bag, but it would definitely seem that I need to look at getting a new one.

The only good news, I guess, was that I was in the process of getting this Blackberry replaced but didn't yet have the new one.  So this particular BB was already on its way out.... I just would have preferred if it could have stayed around until the new one arrived. (Especially since I was flying off to this conference I'm at on Sunday afternoon!)

Needless to say, after using a Blackberry daily for something like two years now, and using it especially during travel, it's been very strange to be so "disconnected".  I'm unhooked.  Offline.  Unable to simply send/receive email.   Little things, like connecting with colleagues at a conference - or finding out which session they are in - become so much harder when you can't simply send email (since we all use Blackberries).  It's been quite an interesting experience to see how much the BB has really become part of my daily work flow.

In theory, the new one will arrive here at the hotel sometime today and I'll be able to return to my crackberry addiction.

Needless to say, I assured our corporate IT department that I will keep this new one far away from water!  (In fact, it will probably stay at home as there's really no need to have it while camping!) 

The camera, well, that's another case.... it looks like I'll have to be buying a new one when I get home...

Here's a great side benefit of having an IP phone in teleworker mode hanging off of a system somewhere out there on the Internet - you have a close-to-instant warning system about Internet connectivity issues. 

Take this morning... I walk into my home office and see that one of my phones has come out of its sleep status and the backlight is on and showing "CONNECTION PENDING..." with these black square boxes next to it.  I glance at another IP phone:  "PLEASE WAIT"

Oh, %#$#?!.  It's going to be that kind of Monday morning!

Yes, indeed, as I woke up the PCs, I did indeed have no connectivity.  Couldn't get to any websites and all the IM clients were cycling waiting to get connected.  After doing the usual power-cycling of the cable modem and verifying that I could get an address but couldn't ping beyond the next hop router, a relatively-quick call to Comcast brought the word that there was a "partial outage" in my area and that connectivity might be going up and down for the next two hours.

Great.  Wonderful way for a home office worker to start a Monday.

But it did remind me of one great benefit of having these IP teleworker phones[1] - they are a great way to know almost instantly whether my connection is up.  If I'm in the middle of doing something on my PC and it seems like connectivity is down, I just turn my head to look at the phones and can see very quickly if they are up.  Likewise, if I'm downstairs using my wife's PC and it seems like Internet access is down, I just go up the stairs and pop my head in the office... first glance is to see if the phones are up. 

It's a great side benefit of having the phones, although admittedly it wasn't anything on my mind when we were rolling out the Mitel Teleworker solution back in January 2003.  (Full disclosure: I was the product manager for the product when it was released.)

Now, this works in my case because the phones are using Mitel's own MiNET protocol and always have an encrypted MiNET connection established back to the Teleworker server sitting on the edge of the corporate network.  If the connection is broken, the phone flags that by displaying the aforementioned warning messages.  It's not *instant*, but typically within 30-60 seconds of the connection being down the messages appear.  If the phones were, say, in SIP mode connected to a SIP server out there, I wouldn't get the same fast notice because in SIP mode they are essentially stand-alone endpoints - think of them as mini-computers with a phone handset.  The first time I'd really notice was when I went to make a connection (or if the phone went to make some regularly scheduled connection and couldn't and put up an error message). 

This "side benefit" is, of course, not at all unique to Mitel implementations.  Basically any other IP phones that have "always-on" connections back to a central server will have the potential to do the same thing.

It works the other way, too, in letting you know when the connection is back online... while I was on the phone talking to the pleasant customer service rep at Comcast, how did I know that my Internet service was restored  (at least for the moment) without looking at my PC?  Simple...

... all my IP phones were back in operation.

[1] And yes, I have several teleworker phones- three to be exact, but hey, I'm working on emerging technology stuff so I have to be able to experiment and work with these phones.  They are also on different switches and trial systems.

Okay, I'm sorry, but I just find this way too funny.  Do I refer to this as "DisruptED Telephony"?

Tip of the hat to Chris Brogan for tweeting it and Doug Haslam for posting it.

Kudos also to Blendtec, maker of mixers, for coming up with this "Will It Blend?" series of videos.  I admit that I did watch some of the others in the "Don't Try This At Home" category. Fans of a certain recent movie release might enjoy what happens to a Transformer... suffice it to say that it... um.. transforms, rather permanently.

Obviously this particular video is probably also doing well for Blendtec... so far since it was posted yesterday there have been almost 241,000 views of the video at the time I am writing this.

Interesting post yesterday at ZDNet, "Apple seems to have forgotten the phone in the iPhone", where blogger Matthew Miller writes about his disappointment after 10 days of iPhone usage. Since I can't get an iPhone because of where I live, I've only very peripherally been following iPhone news (figuring that when I can eventually get one it will be improved by then).  Of course, you could not have missed the predictably huge initial reactions about the device being "magic", but now we are starting to see real and more honest appraisals as people actually get to work with the devices.  In Matthew Miller's case, here is his list of what the iPhone is missing related to telephony:

• Low volume speakerphone (basically useless at max volume through mono speaker)
• Mid volume speaker
• Tough to speed dial (at least 5 presses/slides to call one of your )
• No smart dial (filtering of contacts as you enter letters or numbers)
• Reception issues (full signal to no signal in same area)
• No instant messaging application
• Non-removable battery that cost $86 to replace from Apple
• Weak Bluetooth radio (profiles and reception with headset)
• No DUN (Bluetooth or cabled)
• No custom ringtones
• No MMS functionality
• EDGE only data even though AT&T has a national 3G network

He goes on to talk about how he does like it for some things (he had previously blogged about the iPhone at length here and here), but ultimately will be returning it to AT&T before his 14-day trial period expires.

It will be interesting to see what others think as they continue to use them - it would also be intriguing to see if you could get any stats on how many get returned by day 14 (not likely).  To me, if Apple did nothing else with the iPhone, it has made people think about how different a user interface could be, and for that I applaud them.   A common refrain I've seen from people reviewing their iPhones is that the iPhone is "fun".

In my book, anything that brings "fun" to the world of telephony is a good thing! :-)

 One of the many cool things I've been hoping to find the cycles to write about coming out of Mitel Forum last week is the collaboration occurring between Mitel and Sun Microsystems.  First announced June 19th, there are really two components to the collaboration: 1) the Multi-Instance Call Server (MICS) that can have up to 200 instances of our 3300 ICP call control software running on a Sun server; and 2) a very cool integration of a SunRay thin client computer into the base of one of our phones.  With the phones, a user can simply insert their "Java card" into the base of the phone and the user is automagically signed onto the computer and to the phone.  Pull the card out, the user is logged out.  Insert another user's card and the computer and the phone are logged in as that user.  It takes the "hot desking" we've had for years and extends that to now also include the PC.  As I said, it's very cool!

The good news is that I can actually share a bit of the experience with you courtesy of Sun blogger Craig Bender, a.k.a. the "Thin Guy", who writes the Sun Ray Blog.  I didn't realize he was at our show, which is a bummer because it would have been great to meet, but he posted this video to YouTube:

You can see my colleague Stephen Beamish demonstrating the capabilities at the Sun booth at Mitel Forum.  Craig did a nice job editing the video and it's great to see it up on YouTube.

In the end, it all comes down to *#$%#$?@ batteries!  I was greatly amused to read today David Berlind's ZDNet Blog post, "iPhone redux: Is it time for the battery life equivalent of a 'nutrition label' (see example)".

His statements are entirely true.  We as an industry do need some kind of "truth in labeling" decree about battery life.  I loved his diagram that he came up with (shown on right). 

This point was vividly driven home to me a few years back when for about a year or so I was the product manager for Mitel's wireless portfolio and was involved with the rollout of Mitel's IP-DECT solution in Europe.  Never in my life did I expect that so much of my time in the product launch would be consumed in dealing with issues around batteries! Being a "software guy", I really had very little understanding of the nuances of power consumption and their impact on battery life. It was definitely a great learning experience! As David Berlind says:

Not only was plenty written about the iPhone’s potential battery life issues, the truth of the matter is that there’s only so much you can ask a battery to do.

Batteries can only do so much - and the real challenge with a mobile device is to find every way possible to reduce power consumption so that the battery will go that much longer.  But, as he points out, we want our devices to do so much more....

(Me? I just want to be able to turn on Bluetooth on my Blackberry without having it require daily recharges!)

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past six months, you would know that today is the day that the Apple iPhone becomes available.  Actually, it is not until 6pm local time today, which seems a bit odd but it does provide a way to hype things all day as there will undoubtedly be endless news reports about the people standing in line to get an iPhone.  The hype is almost endless, it would seem.  Quite frankly, I don't see how the iPhone will even remotely live up to all the expectations that have been placed on it.  It slices. It dices.  It solves world hunger and cures cancer!  Well, okay, maybe not... but the hype would almost bring it to that level.  I have to expect that over the next few days the blog posts will naturally turn to peoples' reviews of the product and the inevitable let-downs.

I, of course, won't have a chance to experience an iPhone anytime soon.  As I wrote previously, those of us who live in states without AT&T coverage are just out-of-luck. (Also noted by a local Apple retailer.)  I guess the good news is that by the time we finally do get the coverage, whatever year that is, we should have a good idea about how well the iPhone does or does not work! :-)

In the meantime, for all of you out there who get one today and are standing in line now... well... have fun!

(Thus endeth my obligatory iPhone posting!)

Over on his blog, Jeff Pulver asks "Do you prefer softphones or IP phones?", which is a great question to ask.  What do you think?

I left a comment there and then started writing a longer blog entry - but I just don't have the time to complete that particular entry, so I'll have to stick it in the queue for a future article.  In the meantime... do head on over to Jeff's site and leave any comments you have.  It's definitely an interesting question. 

Through a link from Phil Wolff, I learned that Bruce Stewart has posted at the Emerging Telephony blog about someone turning an antique phone into a Skype phone (which actually points to a post on the MAKE Blog).  Okay, so as best I can tell, it's really a glorified USB headset, but I admit that the geek side of me finds it rather a fun idea.  Bruce links to a page on the Instructables site that has more pictures and instructions. 

(I'd note that while the articles say that it is an "antique Skype phone", it really looks to me like it's a USB headset, so it could really work with any VoIP program.)

Fun stuff...