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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 39 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: The End of Alone Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones So Many iPhone Apps, So Little Time MagicJack Re: 911 service not prepared for new generation of pranksters ====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 23:39:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: The End of Alone Message-ID: <p0624082cc5b2c050ed3f@[10.0.1.6]> The End of Alone At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap away. It's so cool. And yet it's not. What we lose with our constant connectedness. By Neil Swidey February 8, 2009 Don't get me wrong. I love technology. It's magical how it makes the world closer, and more immediate. Take, for instance, the real-time way we learned about the plane that skidded off a Denver runway and burst into flames in December. One of the passengers on Continental Flight 1404 used Twitter to share everything from his initial profanity- and typo-laced reaction to making it out of the fiery jet ("Holy [bleeping bleep] I wasbjust in a plane crash!") to his lament that the airline wasn't providing drinks to the survivors who'd been penned into the airport lounge ("You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic.") Technology also makes life infinitely more manageable. It's what allows me to begin writing this essay from a packed coffee shop on a snowy winter afternoon while still being connected with my editors and finish writing it from my kitchen in the middle of the night, when all the interruptions of the day have faded away (unless I want to check Facebook to see how many of my friends are also nuts enough to be staring at a computer screen at 3 a.m.). And technology simply makes things more fun, like the way my wife will hold her iPhone up to a restaurant ceiling speaker and instantly be told that the vaguely familiar tune of funky '70s cheese she hears is "Sky High," by the one-hit-wonder band Jigsaw, rather than letting that little mystery make her cerebrum ache for the rest of the day. So please don't confuse what I have to say for that tired Luddite screed about how technology is ruining us. It isn't. Except it just might. Because of technology, we never have to be alone anymore. And that's the problem. ... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/02/08/the_end_of_alone/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 00:31:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones Message-ID: <p06240834c5b2cd18ec40@[10.0.1.6]> Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones By MIGUEL HELFT February 6, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO - More electronic books are coming to mobile phones. In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1. Also Thursday, Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/technology/internet/06google.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 00:34:00 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: So Many iPhone Apps, So Little Time Message-ID: <p06240835c5b2cd77029a@[10.0.1.6]> FROM THE DESK OF DAVID POGUE So Many iPhone Apps, So Little Time By DAVID POGUE February 5, 2009 Who was it who wrote, in March 2008, just after Apple announced its intention to create an online app store for the iPhone, "You're witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform: Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone"? Oh, right--that was me. Anyway, there are now 15,000 programs available on the App Store, and so many more are flooding in that Apple's army of screeners can't even keep up. I keep meaning to write a thoughtful, thorough roundup of the very best of these amazing programs, but every day that I don't do it, the job becomes more daunting. (But don't worry. I'll get around to it.) For the moment, let's use a single program as a case study. It's one of the most magical programs I've ever seen for the iPhone, and probably for any computer. It's Ocarina, named after the ancient clay wind instrument. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue-email.html http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/so-many-iphone-apps-so-little-time/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 22:07:32 -0800 (PST) From: annabaum100@yahoo.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: MagicJack Message-ID: <ec68acc2-902c-4059-a400-182848ddf005@b16g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> I am not a techie, so I apologize in advance. I see the MagicJack ads on TV a lot: my question is - "Do all the calls come thru a PC/Laptop device"? If this is so, then this is a problem: that means if my laptop is not on, I will miss calls. Currently I have Comcast cable Internet and telephone service. I have a wireless router for laptop use. Pls let me know as I am ignorant [of] how MagicJack works. Your help will be highly appreciated. Thanks, anna ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:04:59 -0600 From: gordonb.i8dam@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: 911 service not prepared for new generation of pranksters Message-ID: <sYKdnZYovspG1hPUnZ2dnUVZ_qfinZ2d@posted.internetamerica> >It should be trivial, and should be mandatory... that any call >coming into a PSAP from a "questionable", for want of a better >term, source, get a Big Note on the screen saying something >like "this caller is from a questionable source. Make sure >you triple check any and all info". 911 operators are not necessarily all that careful about getting the location straight when the caller SAYS he's at a different location than the emergency and makes it very clear that there's a difference. Example: once during a lunch break some fellow employees were looking out over downtown Dallas from a high floor of a downtown office building. One of them spots a large burst of flame and lots of smoke, along with hearing a loud bang, coming from a building on the edge of downtown and he calls 911. He describes it as best he can: something like "about 200 yards north of the blah blah exit of 35E, on the east side. A sign on the top of the building says FooBar Corp.". Guess where the fire trucks show up? At the downtown office building, even though the fire is at least 30 blocks away. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (5 messages) ******************************