Upon logging into Google Reader tonight, I immediately noticed that the team had added stylized buttons to some of the command links. Nothing major, but nice to see the Google Reader team at least giving some attention to UI. I've recorded a screen cast, which can be seen here or by clicking on the badge below. Again, nothing earth shattering; I just needed a good reason to test Vista and Camtasia Studio.

Looks like someone has finally been able to get Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook to play nice with each other, and by play nice I mean two way syncing. Spanning Sync has been doing this for iCal on the Mac, albeit in beta, for a while now. It's just a shame that somebody hasn't given us a one stop shop for multi-platform PIM syncing. Yes, I'm talking about you Plaxo.

Digg - gSyncit for Microsoft Outlook

Update: Just saw this over at macosxhints.com. It looks like a Java daemon that runs on a user's local machine that allows them to sync iCal and Google Calendar. According to the hint, it also allows the user to use GMail as an LDAP server in Address Book.

Perusing through the Skype Garage this morning, I noticed that a new beta of Skype 3.1 has been released today. Hot on the heels of Skype Find, Skype Prime is the beginning of the long overdue Skype-eBay-PayPal integrations so many have been waiting for since eBay purchased the two companies. Skype Prime allows Skype users to charge for services offered through voice and video calls on Skype.

This idea isn't new, however, as Ether has been providing essentially the same service since last year. The big difference here, of course, is the integration with PayPal. Users' service fees are collected in their PayPal accounts where they can be transfered, spent or saved. The next logical step is for eBay to provide sellers with dedicated virtual stores from which services and/or goods can be provided. This seems to be the most logical implementation of the "power of three" integration. The question is, will people use this and will the average user be as apt to buy a conversation online as they are a good or product. I hate to toot my own horn, but I predicted this some time ago. It's nice to be right sometimes.

Digg - It's kind of official: Apple iPhone & JAJAH VoIP

Looks like someone is trying to ride the coattails of the iPhone's popularity. Even though this was announced on January 9th on the company's blog, there seems to be a bit of buzz today about JAJAH announcing official support for the iPhone. They even included an artist's rendition of
what the JAJAH application icon might look like on the iPhone Home UI.

Unless they have struck some sort of secret deal with Apple and/or Cingular, or whatever their name is now, this is a weak PR stunt which just oozes of desperation. Technically, JAJAH calls can be initiated from the iPhone through Safari and JAJAH's web-based dialer. Technically, the iPhone will support any website in which you can fill in two form fields and click a submit button to initiate an action. I fail to see why JAJAH had to announce this support. I guess it's time for me to announce that Not Quite Right will officially support the iPhone from day one. Look for a press release soon.

Update: It seems as though a number of people have picked up this "story" and run with it. It seems to get even more unbelievable by the post. The latest I post I read claimed that all calls will truly be free because "...most providers don't charge for incoming calls..." Is this some kind of coordinated joke? First, which providers in this country don't charge for incoming calls? I have T-Mobile and they sure as heck do. Of course, it only really matters if Cingular gives away incoming minutes since they'll be the provider all iPhoners are using, at least initially. However, I can't find anything in any of Cingular's documentation that makes any mention of free incoming calls. Can anyone show me where I'm wrong or might be missing something?

By now we've all heard about Apple and Cisco agreeing to "share" the iPhone trademark. I'm not at all surprised that a deal was reached, even if it did take much longer than expected. What I'm wondering is this: has there ever been another case of a company (Cisco) agreeing to let another company (Apple) use its trademark to identify a product so similar to its own? I'm an unabashed Apple lover and Steve Jobs fan, but I'm shocked that he has this much clout or could pull this off. I mean, he basically got Chambers et al. to pseudo-abandon the trademark, which Cisco clearly owned. Anyone know of any similar cases where this sort of agreement has been reached?

The webosphere was abuzz today, with the news of WalMart releasing a video download service. According to the write up over at TechCrunch, it looks like someone forgot to test the CSS on Firefox. Simply amazing! Then again, does it really matter anyway? Didn't they learn their lesson with the music downloads? It doesn't matter if you can sell a movie for $0.02 less than your competitor (using the term very loosely here), if you can't match or beat Apple's ecosystem then you might as well throw in the towel. When are these people going to get it?

I have been happily using Google Reader as my primary feed reader since its rebirth last year. I've been impressed with the responsiveness of the app, and while it hasn't always performed like a desktop counterpart, it's been pretty good. During the last several days, however, Reader has been cutting through my feeds like a hot knife through butter. It seems much more responsive now that it ever has at any point. I have not made any modifications to my MacMini, OS X or Firefox 2.01, which I use to browse my feeds. Does anyone know if the Reader team snuck in an update and hasn't told anyone?

With the recent purchase of our first home, my wife and I decided that it was time to take the next big step in telephony and get a home phone. For the first 3+ years of our marriage, we have used only cell phones and the Skype VoIP application to audibly communicate with others not in our immediate vicinity. This sufficed, but it was not an optimal solution, especially at our church, where they would only allow one phone number per household on the official roster. This meant that one of us had to endure call after call on our cell phone from someone looking for the other. Unfortunately, I drew the short stick and have been fielding those calls for the last several years, most of them at the most inopportune and/or inconvenient times.

There were two options available to us as I saw it: regular old PSTN land line service through SBC-or-whatever-their-name-is-today or a Skype handset. (At our previous residence, we would have had a third option-Digital Phone service from Time Warner-but our new provider, SuddenLink, does not yet have a digital phone service, or at least that's what they told me when I signed up for service a few weeks ago.)

Being the technologist that I am, or at least consider myself to be, I went out and purchased the only Skype handset that I could find in stock after the Christmas rush: the Linksys CIT200, or iPhone. Sure enough, this is the same model of handset that Linksys has been shipping for some time, although not under the iPhone moniker. I won't attempt to share my thoughts about the Apple iPhone or the Cisco and Apple trademark dispute here. More on those issues later. Rather I'll offer an honest assessment of the combination of Skype and CIT200 during our time with it.

The first thing I did was buy a local phone number from Skype. The process was painless and simple. It took about 2 minutes and 6 mouse clicks before I had my very own local number. (As an aside, I should like to invite any executive of any large telco to explain to me why I can't get a number from them as easily as I can from Skype. The last time I called and ordered service from a telco, I was on the phone for almost an hour. Truly pathetic. Granted, this was several years ago, but I can't imagine their archaic processes have changed much, if at all.) The next step was to procure a handset, which I did with relative ease. Setup of the CIT200 was very simple. I plugged in the USB "dock", or whatever it is they call the device which transmits data from the PC to the handset, and let the install CD do its thing. A few short minutes later, I was up and running.

The call quality of the phone has been great. Walls and other obstacles between the PC and the handset have not caused any perceptible degradations in call quality. Battery life seems to be up to snuff. Using the Unlimited SkypeOut plan, which I also purchased, we can easily make and receive unlimited calls in the US and Canada. My wife has not yet complained about its usability, which means it must be easy to use. All of those things are to be expected of any phone. The clincher is price.

I payed roughly $50 for one year of SkypeIn and SkypeOut. That means I'm paying approximately $4 and some change each month for phone service. Any other service would have cost me on the order of between 5 and 10 times more per month. Not even Vonage, the alleged "Leader of the Itnernet Phone Revolution", can come close to offering that kind of price/value combination. Skype truly is a game changer, in my opinion. Would you ever abandon your local telco for Skype or another VoIP service? Have you already done so? Leave a comment.

Unfortunately, my HP notebook's life is drawing to an end. Fortunately, it picked a great time to give up the ghost as the year is winding down and things aren't so hectic at the office. I started evaluating new machines several days ago and had narrowed my decision down to another HP or a Dell Inspiron. I was on dell.com configuring a notebook, when I stumbled upon something that really struck me. One of the many support options available for the machine had the following accompanying visual in its description:

Is it just me, or is Dell now admitting what we (including everyone at Dell) always knew all along: overseas tech support is an oxymoron of the highest order? My supposition is that that answer to that question in an undoubted yes. Assuming that is the case, what I really want to know is how they can get away with this.

First, let's spell out what's happening here. Dell, and all other major PC manufacturers, provide support on their customers' purchases for a finite amount of time. If the customer would like to receive support beyond that time frame, they can purchase the service for another pre-determined period of time. From much experience, I can say the term support is used very loosely. Having someone read aloud to you the same service manual or other support documentation that shipped with your PC hardly fits most people's definition of support. Typically, however, after much effort and patience, most users' problems can be sorted out one way or another. Sadly, during the outsourcing bandwagon party which started early this decade, Dell and several other major PC manufacturers, sent this work to India. The only thing worse than having an American regurgitate your service manual to you is to have an Indian, who can't very well speak English and tries to call himself "Frank" or "Joe", regurgitate your service manual to you. This had made for some very frustrated customers over the past several years. I know people who have sworn off Dell because of their decision to outsource support, and who can blame them?

So, in essence, Dell has taken a requisite service, degraded its quality severely over a period of time and started charging a premium for the original bare minimum level of service. Can you get away with this? I know my customers wouldn't be too receptive to the idea. How would my clients feel if I stopped answering emails or phone calls in any decently timely manner for the next year, and then offered to resume my timely responses in 2008, but only if they pay a premium? I have a feeling my they wouldn't be customers for very long.

I've been thinking a lot about social networks recently. I can't say why, other than that it is motivated by business purposes. At any rate, I was engaged in a conversation with a co-worker the other day, in which LinkedIn came up. The conversation could be paraphrased thusly:

Me: "You on LinkedIn?"
Him: "Yeah, isn't everyone?"
Me: "Yeah. How many people are in your network?"
Him: "People that I know: 15. Extended network: the entire planet."
Me: "Yeah. There are 5 people in a remote village in Swahili that aren't in my network...yet."

So, that got me thinking. Am I really any better off or more connected that I was before I joined LinkedIn? If everyone is connected, doesn't that mean that no one is connected? Can I leverage a relationship that everyone else shares? If the value of a relationships is based on its exclusivity, aren't social networks like LinkedIn eroding that value? Now, to be fair, most, if not all, social networks that employ the "friend-of-a-friend" paradigm suffer from the same problem. LinkedIn is the particular network that I happened to be thinking about recently, but it be any number of them.

To be sure, I think that LinkedIn is a winner. However, I think they've got to somehow segregate large groups of users and reduce the "degrees of separation" to limit the size of users' networks and put exclusivity, and therefore value, back into the relationship.

Users of LinkedIn, or other similar social networks, let me know what you think. Can being too connected erode the value in your connections? I'm interested in thoughts on the subject, for purely selfish reasons, of course.