With the older Ooma unit and one Scout I’m able to have two phone lines. With two DECT 6.0 base stations and three DECT 6.0 headsets, we’ve been able to get a nice amount of functionality at a very low cost.

The Ooma service works well and I’ve had very few issues with the sound quality even though I’m on a 3.0/512 connection. Since the Ooma sites between the cable modem and the rest of my network, it can prioritize the traffic to keep a good quality sound.

Google Voice Screen Shot

Some of the new features:

• Transcribed voicemail – it appears to be done by a computer so it isn’t as accurate as services like Skydeck, but it should still be useful.
• SMS Messages – you can send and receive SMS messages from your Grand Central number.  This is a big advantage if you use Skype because you can set Skype to use your Grand Central number as you outgoing caller ID.  When someone calls you can answer on Skype or on your cell phone or whatever other phone you have it setup to ring.
• Free US Calls – you can type in a number you want to call and Google will call your number and then connect you with the number you want to talk to.  Pretty good deal if you have unlimited incoming calls on your cell phone.  International calls are charged a fee and it looks like they give you $1.00 to start out with.
• Routing based on contact group - It looks like you can set your group of friends to ring your phone, your wife’s to ring her phone and family to ring both.
• Call me widget – You can add some code to you website that people can click, type in their number and then start up a phone call with you.
• Mobile access - There is a website optimized for use from a cell phone at www.google.com/voice/m.
• Custom greetings – You can give different callers different greetings.  So you can do things like tell family you are away on vacation, but just ask other callers to leave a message.

If we could combine Skydeck, Google Voice and Skype, it would be the killer communication package.

While new technological developments in the computer world can be very fascinating, it is interesting to take a look at the other options available to consumers. In the article, “Why You Should Buy a Refurbished Laptop“, the author talks about the many benefits of purchasing one of these refurbished machines.

First of all, many of the computers that are returned are simply sent back because of cosmetic defects. If you do not particularly care about a scratch on the cover of the computer but simply want a functional machine, Dell and Apple both offer refurbished machines for a lesser cost than their newest computers. These machines have perfectly intact screens and other hardware, which makes them just as usable as the next laptop. Most companies have some kind of a service to provide refurbished computers to their clients. With some of them, the computers may not even have been used.  Usually the company has different types of refurbishments that they handle, some of which may be machines that have been repaired and tested, as well as those that have only cosmetic damage.

The main advantage of buying a refurbished laptop over turning to an outside seller is that there still may be a warranty available for the machine if it is purchased from the company. Sometimes eBay or Craig’s List sellers will have a computer for sale that still has its factory warranty, but this is not always the case. Also, when buying a computer from a third party seller, the buyer has no way of knowing if that seller is honest. Though many of them are, there is always a risk in the purchase.

For those that need a laptop that is still up to date without being brand new, buying a refurbished computer could be a very wise choice.

The Sprint AirRave has rather complicated pricing.  You have to pay $99 for the device itself, plus $5 per month.  Then to get unlimited calling, your account will require paying $10 per month for each phone you want to add unlimited calling to.  If you have multiple lines on the same plan, it costs $20 for all of your lines to be covered.

Part of the reason for this complexity is the fact that you can use other’s Airave stations.  So even if you don’t have a station yourself, you can add the $10 per month option to your phone and then use their Airave to make unlimited calls for free.  If you don’t want people using your Airave you can restrict it to only work with certain phones.

The Airave has been in testing for about a year and will be available in stores August 18th.

The bottom half of the Mylo slides down to give you access to a small but adequate keyboard. It is bigger than the keyboard on a Blackberry or Treo, b

ut it uses embedded keys which don’t feel quite as natural as the Blackberry.

Connectivity is provided by 802.11b wifi, so you can get online pretty easily. By using Wifi you don’t have to pay a monthly connection fee.

The Mylo comes with 1GB of memory and it can handle a memory stick for another 4GB. The battery is supposed to last 3 to 8 hours depending on how the device is being used. Wifi seems to be the biggest battery drain at this point.

The PC only software that comes with the device can be used to transfer videos, music and pictures to the Mylo. It might be possible to do some types of transfers from a Mac using OS X once you know the proper formats and settings for the media.

The Mylo can play MPEG4 video, MP3, ATRAC3 and WMA audio. Overall it seems like a very useful device. The price is right around $350.

The biggest difference between this eBook reader and others that have been on the market is the “electronic paper”. Sony has created a device that doesn’t use power to display text on the screen. It only uses power when it changes the text. The screen “remembers” what was written on it.

This results in a longer battery life because it is tied to the number of screens displayed, not the amount of time the device is left on. Sony says the battery will last for about 7,500 page turns.

Another major difference is the fact that the screen isn’t lit like most PDAs. It relies on light bouncing off of the screen for display. This make reading much more natural and similar to the way you would read traditional printed media.

The screen has a slight grey tint to it with the printing in black letter–similar to the coloring on a newspaper. One side effect of the digital ink technology is slight residual images when you turn the page. It isn’t much worse than the bleed through you might get on a book printed on thin paper, but it is noticeable. The refresh rate is also noticeable. Some of the menus allow you to select items. When you move to a different menu option, the entire screen refreshes. It only takes a fraction of a second, but it is much slower than what you’d see on a computer.
When I first heard about the device I figured it would be locked into Sony only formats. However it looks like it is setup to read several different formats including, Adobe PDFs, TXT, RTF, and Microsoft Word Documents. Some of these formats require conversion using the included software. For DRM books, it uses a formate called BBeB Book also known as Marlin. It can display JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats and will also play MP3 and AAC7 audio files.

The PRS comes with 64MB of internal memory and this can be expanded using a Sony memory stick with an additional 4 GB of memory. The included software appears to provide a way to subscribe to RSS feeds that can be synched.

When you pickup the device the first think you’ll notice is how thin it seems.  This is very convenient for carrying around in your computer bag.  I’m never able to take the books I want with me because they are all 2 to 3 inches thick.  With a 4GB card, I could fit a whole lot of books in the small form factor of the PRS-500

Of course the real downside is the fact that not every book you want is going to be available on the device.  With the ability to import PDFs and plain text this is less of an issue.  However many of the books I’d like to use on it are part of my O’Reilly Safari subscription.  I can download a chapter at a time as a PDF, but this isn’t really practical for a long book.

Project Gutenberg offers most of the classics as .TXT documents.  Reading classics that are already out of copyright is probably where this devices is the most useful because it helps give you a traditional reading experience with electronic media.

The device works with books from http://ebooks.connect.com.  They seem to have a decent selection of modern books although the prices seem comparable to what you’d pay for a paperback version.

If you are looking at an international email plan, you will probably want to go with a Blackberry instead of some of the other types of smartphones.  Other smartphones will allow you to work internationally, but I haven’t seen a plan that gives you unlimited usage.  Instead they charge you by the KB which works out to about $15 to $20 per MB downloaded.  If you are busy with email, it doesn’t take long to get 20 or even 50 MB of data transfered.  At $20 per MB you’ll pay over $1000 for 50 MB.  That is a pretty steep charge for a month of usage.

Blackberry on the other hand seems to have international usage at a flat fee from most carriers.  I know that TMobile and Cingular both offer unlimited international roaming plans and I think there is something available from Verizon as well.

Keep in mind that the roaming plans may be fairly specific.  For example, the Tmobile plan only allows you to check your email internationally.  They will charge you by the DB for any web browsing. However they have a fairly reasonable rate at $49 per month.  Cingular offers an international plan that allows you to use unlimited data on the device regardless of whether it is for email or web browsing.  Their fee is $69 per month.  The unlimited data does not include hooking your Blackberry into your laptop and using it for internet access.  I’m not sure how the measure that usage, but I was told you would pay by the KB for that.

Another consideration is the cost of using the device as a phone.  TMobile offers a plan where you can pay as you go for $0.20 per minute in the U.S. and $1.49 in Mexico (probably similar for other countries).  Cingular charges $0.40 per minute for pay as you go usage and I’m not clear how much pay as you go would cost in Mexico.  However with a basic voice plan, Cingular allows you to add a $6 per month option that gives you calls from down in Mexico for $0.59 per minute.  If you make a lot of calls this is significantly better than the $1.49 rate.

The best phone rate internationally is going to be getting a local phone.  Most of the time, you can just get a SIM card and put it in your existing phone.  However in many other countries data services are still more expensive than purchasing an international plan from the U.S.  In many cases you’ll be better off carrying a U.S. based Blackberry with a data only plan and a local cell phone with a pay as you go plan.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the internet. Where I’m at in Durango Mexico I was able to get a low speed cable modem connection for about $31USD per month.  The connection is only 512k, but it works great for all of our communication.  We use Vonage for our phone.  They provided us with a small device that plugs into our router and our standard cordless phone plugs into the phone jack on it.  Our number is the same as what we had in the US, so many people who call us don’t even know we are in Mexico.

I’m just waiting for Direct TV to call and try to sell me their satellite system.  I’ll say yes to everything they offer and then when they ask for my address, give them the address here in Mexico just to see what they do.  (They don’t offer service in Mexico.)  I know, I’m mean, but it will be nice vindication for the number of times they have called me while I was in the States.

Anyway back to the VoIP phones.  We paid for the unlimited service with Vonage which only costs $25 per month.  That was up from our previous cost of $15 per month for 500 minutes.  In the U.S. the lower number of minutes worked out just fine because we used our cell phones a lot.  Right now we aren’t using cell phones down here (at $1.50 per minute we don’t really want to), so most of our calls to the US are on the Vonage line.

I’ve heard of some companies offering Vonage like service, but with unlimited calling to the US and Mexico for less than $40 per month.  We may look at doing that once we become better at speaking the language, but right now Vonage is working very well for what we need.  We can call Mexican numbers for about $0.09 per minute.  It isn’t particularly cheap, but with the low number of calls we make, it is a lot cheaper than trying to get a TelMex (the Mexican telephone company) phone line.

• Use Headphones – I have seen many people do this. It is not a safe way to listen to your iPod in your car. If you do this, you should make sure you always leave one ear free to listen to traffic. The other methods described here are much safer to use.
• Cassette Adapter – For $10 to $15 you can find a cassette adapter that plugs into your car stereo tape player. While these work fairly well, the sound quality is not very good. These adapters tend to wear out quickly and I’ve personally gone through several of them.  After about 20 hours they tend to start seizing up and the gears stop turning correctly causing the cassette deck to stop.
• Radio Transmitter – There are devices that plug into your iPod and transmit to your car stereo. The quality isn’t particularly great, but it is a simple way to play your iPod through your car stereo without dealing with wires or complicated setup. Certian vehicles have their antennas mounted in a way that prevents them from receiving the signal properly.  Also some of the radio transmitters give out a very weak signal.  Sometimes you can compensate for this by repositioning the transmitter.  Certian transmitters get around this problem by permanently attaching between the car’s regular antenna and the stereo.
• Auxiliary Input – Many car stereo’s have an input jack that you can plug the iPod’s headphone connector into. This gives good sound, but still requires you to use the iPod controls to change songs. This is a good solution that gives very good sound especially if you tend to turn on the iPod and leave it.  Unfortunatley this type of solution requires manually starting and stopping the iPod when you get in and out of the car, so it isn’t as convenient as listening to a CD or cassette. Also this type of solution doesn’t charge the iPod, so you’ll need to keep the batteries full, or use an auto power adapter.
• Stereo Integration – The stereos in some cars can talk directly to your iPod. With this type of integration, you can control the iPod just like the radio. This is the idea type of solution because it makes the iPod act like it is part of the stereo.  The iPod itself can be left in the glove compartment, center console or even the trunk.  This keeps it out of the sun and fully charged so it is ready to go if you ever want to go mobile.
• Stereo Integration Add-on Box – Some stereos are compatible with third-party add-on boxes that connect between the iPod and your stereo. Usually these boxes plug into the CD changer input and allow you to treat your iPod as if it were a CD changer.  If the vehicle already has a space for a CD changer, this gives you space to install the box and iPod without needint to remove the stereo or do anything else special to your vehicle. This is the idea solution for people who have a car with a stereo that supports a CD changer, but not direct iPod integration.  Devices like this usually run from $100 to $300, so if you were thinking of upgrading your stereo anyway, you might look at getting a newer stereo with direct iPod integration instead.

It is wise to make sure you have a backup before trying something like this just in case something goes wrong or you execute the command in the wrong directory. As far as I’m aware there isn’t anyway to lose data using this, but backups are always a good thing.

The tool we are going to use to merge directories is called rsync and it comes with OS X. There are versions available for Windows as well, but this tutorial is going to focus on OS X. Rsync is a tool that allows you to take a source and destination directory and make the destination directory contain all of the most recent changes from both directories merged together. In doing the merge the most recent file wins.

Rsync can work over network connections so you can synchronize multiple computers without manually copy files to one machine. However, to keep things simple for this tutorial we are going to assume that all of the iTunes directories you want to sync are on the same machine and that they are called iTunes and iTunes2. We want to make iTunes contain a copy of all of the files in iTunes and iTunes2 without duplicates.

Open up a terminal window and execute the following command:

rsync /Users/me/Music/iTunes2/ /Users/me/Music/iTunes

This will take everything from the first directory (iTunes2) and combine it with all the files in the second directory (iTunes). Notice the trailing slash after the first directory (iTunes2/). This trailing slash is very important. Without it rsync will create a new directory called iTunes2 inside of iTunes which isn’t what we want.

In this example iTunes and iTunes2 are directories that have the artist directories in them. For most users the actual directories will look something like this:

rsync /Users/me/Music/iTunes2/iTunes\ Music/ /Users/me/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music

Notice the backslash before the space in iTunes Music. It tells the command line to treat “iTunes Music” as one directory and not two separate arguments to rsync. If you want to run rsync without touching any of your original directories, you can run the command using a new empty directory as the second argument and run the command several times with every directory you want to combine. It would look something like this:

rsync /directory1/ /new_directory
rsync /directory2/ /new_directory
rsync /directory3/ /new_directory

This would combine everything from directory1, directory2 and directory3 into the directory called new_directory. It would only put the most recent copy of each file with no duplicates, so if directory1 and directory2 had some of the same files, only the most recent one would end up in new_directory.