The best thing about magic jack is it’s $20 a year for phone service. We’re currently paying $60 a month! A buddy of mine has magic jack so I’ve used the service before which is pretty slick. The program that pops up when you plugin the magic jack is nice. You can dial phone calls from it,then pick up the phone connected to the jack or use your computer’s microphone and speakers to make the call just like Skype. You are also able pick up the phone and dial like normal phone service. The application has call history and contact list functions. The only bad thing about the app is there’s Magic Jack ads on the left hand side all the time. It’s not really a problem just slightly annoying.

At first I plugged the Magic Jack into my Mac Mini to get a phone number and complete registration. The app worked but the registration button didn’t work so I plugged it into my Windows computer and registration went off without a hitch. During the whole registration process there are constant upsells, $10 for a vanity number, buy another year of service for $20, buy 5 years of service for $70 which isn’t bad at all and I can forgive them for trying to upsell me as the service is so cheap. It took me less then 5 minutes to register my 911 address and get a phone number; no complaints.

Here’s a screen shot of the app in action, click for full size:

For now I have it hooked up to an old corded phone just to test it out. It works great I called the house phone from the Magic Jack and talked to mom for a few minutes call quality was clear as a bell, no delays or anything as I’ve experienced with Skype in the past. The only minor  pitfall is you have to dial 1 and the area code before any number even local numbers. It’s not a big deal but it will take a bit of getting used to for mom.

I plan on setting up the contact list with all our friends and family so that mom can just double click and pick up the phone to call someone which would save her from looking through her disorganized phone book.

Of course with VOIP there’s some downfalls: If the power goes out you have no phone service because you computer is off and if the internet goes down there’s no phone service either but we have cell phones in the house in case of emergency and truth be told we use the phone probably less then 3 hours per week.

My first impressions of the Magic Jack are that it’s awesome. I am considering buying a second one for my business line and dropping my Skype Subscription which is basically the same thing but costs $60 per year. We’ll see how the Magic Jack fairs in real world usages for a month or so before we cancel our phone service with the phone company.

Mom choose the Proctor Silex 12 Cup Maker with Silver Accents. She liked the color and the price was right. Overall it’s a nice pot that brews fast, has a reusable filter, keeps the coffee hot, and has automatic shut off after two hours. It came with a clock and brew timer which we really don’t need or use but I guess it’s nice to have.

The first issue with this pot is the clock. It’s not back lit which means you have to bend down and get up real close to see the clock. We have other clocks in our kitchen so it’s not a big deal. The couple of times I’ve had to set the time it was annoying though.

The second issue is an annoyance every time we use the pot. The fill reservoir is very narrow. I’m talking maybe 3 inches at it’s widest area which makes filling the pot hard especially since the carafe leaks if you pour fast (as most carafes do). To add insult to injury our coffee pot is right next to the sink and our sink has a pull out faucet head. With the old coffee pot I just stuck the faucet head in the reservoir and let it fill. It was easy and less messy with the leaky carafe. This pots reservoir is too narrow for the faucet head; even if I hold the faucet and switch it to pour water still goes all over the place.

Here some pictures I took with my phone to show you what  I’m talking about:

You can see the problem unless I pour the coffee very slow I get water all over the place. So, I ask again, How hard is it to engineer  a coffee pot?

I’m very impressed with the iPod Touch or as I like to call it iTouch but that sounds a little funny. My biggest reason for not buying one sooner was the price. I felt for the storage capacity, lack of expansion options (SD cards, etc), and perceived features that it was a rip off. What really pushed me to buy one is a buddy of mine bought one which means I got my mitts on his to play with for a few hours and I was impressed. Before him getting one I really only got to play with the iPhone or iTouch briefly and didn’t really get to experience the device.

Funny for it being an iPod I hardly use it to play music actually that’s because I’m afraid to take the thing out on my walks for fear that if I drop it $300 is down the drain. I use my cheaper MP3 players for walks though. Who can walk without music?

First off the overall interface is very slick, response to touch input is instantaneous, fluid, and the gestures are natural.  The iTouch is really like having a mini-computer in your pocket. Safari, the built in web browser does everything I can do on my computer albeit on a much smaller screen which has some drawbacks but overall with panning and zooming the mobile browsing experience is a heck of a lot better than I’ve seen on any other mobile platform.

One of the really cool things to me is Google has sync services so that I can sync my mail, contacts, and calender with the iPod’s built in apps. I love that, open an email in Mail, the it’s marked as read on the Gmail site, reply show’s up in Gmail’s sent folder. Update a contact’s email address on Google and it shows up on the iPod. That’s just to cool but then again I’m easily amused.

The best thing about the iPod Touch in my opinion is all the applications available for it. The availability of apps is mostly due to the iPhone’s dominance in the cell phone arena but us Touch users benefit from that as a vast majority of iPhone apps work on the iTouch. There are a lot of great free apps. I was expecting to be stuck paying for anything useful but was pleasantly surprised at the amount of useful fully functional free apps. So far I’ve spent about $70 on apps and I’m done unless something great comes along. Most of my app money went to games. I just couldn’t pass up Bookworm, I’ve spent hours playing it online and I love it just as much on the iTouch. Other games I bought include Bejeweled, Chuzzle, Yahtzee, Tetris, Wheel Of Fortune, Pac Man, Uno, Jeopardy, and Monopoly. Bookworm, Uno, and Tetris are getting the most play right now. All hovered around the $5 mark, not to bad at all for a fully functional game with a great interface. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy aren’t done very well (big surprise their PC games suck too) and I wouldn’t buy them again.

On the productivity side I bought the CNN, BeejiveIM, Tapatalk, Hippo Remote, Appbox Pro, and iKeepass apps. The CNN app is definitely worth the $1.99. BeeJiveIM is an instant messenger client which is good but I’m not sure it’s worth the $5.99 as Meebo does the same thing but it’s free. Tapa-A-Talk is really awesome it’s $2.99 and allows you to browse an enabled forum with a really slick interface. Tap A Talk  is free for webmasters to install. Appbox Pro is one of those $0.99 apps that too many features to list here but it’s infinitely useful. iKeepass is a neat app that allows you to view and copy your user names and passwords on your iTouch if you use Keepass for password storage on your computers, which I do. It’s a little difficult to setup but that’s not the application’s fault it’s because you apps cannot directly access files from other apps on the iTouch. Hippo Remote is an app which connects to your desktop computer over VNC and runs scripted actions, like media center and iTunes control. It really is quite cool. If you have no clue what any of that means just stick with the free iTunes remote.

The free apps: I’ve installed many free apps, lots of them were useless and got deleted after a few minutes of fiddling with them. The free apps that have made the cut, at least for now are:

• Google App: By far this is the most used app on my phone. Since I’m a heavy user of Google services it’s really helpful. Basically the app is just shortcuts to the mobile version of Google sites with integrated search and the ability to search by voice. It’s pretty neat, the only thing lacking is a link to Google Voice but I suspect that has more to do with Apple than an oversight on Google’s side.
• Facebook: Phenomenal app it’s like a whole new Facebook.
• What’s On: TV listings. I mainly use to peek and see if I need to turn on my TV and schedule any recordings. I’m surprised at the quality for a free app.
• AOL Radio: Free radio station streaming.
• New York Times: Decent app, not really much to see here.
• Tweet Deck: To update Twitter and Facebook statues. I’m not a huge Twitter fan so I don’t use it much.
• Skype: I renewed my Skype subscription and can now make and receiving regular phone calls on my iPod.. Cool eh? It does Skype to Skype voice and text chats too.
• Bank Of America: Really good app for keeping up with your BOA accounts and using the bill pay services.
• WordPress: Nice app for managing your blogs, comments, posts, etc.
• Dropbox: This is another great app for those of you who use Dropbox. Although it’s a bit limited by the lack of a built in text editor IMHO.
• PayPal: Nothing really to see here, check your PayPal balance and send money if need be. Unremarkable when compared to BOA app.
• Accuweather: Provides a lot more information than the iTouch’s built in weather app. Advertising is prevalent but worth the eye sore IMHO.
• GoDaddy: Who doesn’t get idea for websites in the middle of the night? Great app to look and see if domains are available and buy them if you want.
• MySpace: Meh not much to see here, error prone just using MySpace on a computer is.
• Shoutcast: Another radio streaming app, I listen to these stations at my desk so it’s nice to be able to walk around the house with them.
• WCBS TV: Local TV’s stations app with local going ons, pretty neat.
• Yahoo Messenger: This app is done very well but I use BeejiveIM to access Yahoo a majority of the time making this app redundant.
• Meebo: Is just like the online Meebo service one sign on to connect to all your instant messenger accounts. It’s a great app online and a great app on the iPod. It kind of makes BeeJiveIM a waste of money other than BeeJiveIM storing your credentials locally where as Meebo stores them online which can be a security concern for some.
• Remote: This is a free app by Apple that allows you to use your iPod as a remove control for iTunes. It’s a pretty neat app. I’m only disappointed in the fact that it offers no control over the radio feature of iTunes which I use quite a bit.

Wow that was an exhaustive list. I didn’t expect to list a majority of my apps but I started typing and they all just came out. As you can see I’ve been playing around with my iPod a lot. All apps are listed by name if you want to check any of them out hit the app store and search for them.

Even with all these positives any electronic device has it’s drawbacks here’s the drawbacks from my point of view:

Accessory Pricing: It seems that anything marketed to work with iPod or with a dock connector carries an absorbent price tag even on none Apple hardware. I guess they figure if you can afford an iPod they can rip you off on the accessories. Cases really surprised me, the cheaper ones hover around $20 with $30 seeming to be the median price on cases. These are just plastic cases that probably cost more to ship then actual raw material costs. Can you spell R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S?

iTunes lock in: I knew this going in so I really cannot complain about it. If you want your iPod to work and sync properly you have to use the iTunes egosystem. Jailbreaking seems to be a crap shoot. In and of it itself the iTunes lock really not a bad thing, other than your restricted only to what apps Apple approves and iTunes is pretty bloated on both the Mac and Windows side. Changing my iPod to sync with my Mac was not an easy feat either.

Battery Life: Admittedly I haven’t played much music on my iPod BUT battery life just surfing the net and playing games isn’t good at all. I get about 3-4 hours of browsing with a full charge and depending on the game 1.5-2 hours of game play. It doesn’t seem that bad but when you consider taking this on a trip even to go wait in a doctors office the lack battery life is going to come into play.

Fingerprints: This is more of a gripe then complaint but this thing is a major headache to keep clean, not just the screen but the back too. My case helps some but not with the screen.

So That’s my review. I do really like the device. I still wouldn’t say it’s worth every penny but it’s pretty darn close. I was miffed to find out after I ordered that if I had went Wal-Mart and spent $50 more I could have gotten the 64 GB version which is $100 more from Apple. I bought the 32 GB version from Apple figuring it would be cheapest from the source but I guess not. Ah well, I still have close to 20GB free space even with my apps and most of my music on it for now I’m happy.

-Edited March 16, 2010:

• Fixed formatting and grammar.
• Removed blurb about the price of Apple’s earbuds as I was mistaken.

Boy On Phone

I’m writing this just review after talking with a friend for about a half hour over Skype he was using his cell phone and I was on the Skype phone. Aside from it being a great phone call, I’d been promising to chat with him for two years the mechanics of the call was pretty good though not 100%. The problems could have been on his end as it was a cell phone I’m not sure I’m going to try calling a landline next time.

The initial delay when picking up which I mentioned in my first Skype phone review was still noticeable. For the first couple of seconds our call seemed to ‘stumble’ or loose sync. From then on in the call was fine except a couple of times it seemed to loose sync briefly but that could have been his cell dropping out.

Over all, I’m more than satisifed with my purchase of the Belkin Skype Phone .

Belkin Skype Phone

Last week I got on a kick with Skype; I’ve had an account for a while but never really used it a thread on my DJ forum about Magic Jack got me thinking about voice communication. Ordinarily I don’t talk on the phone much because of my stuttering problem, it’s stupid but it annoys the grab out of me. Anyway a few people have been asking me for quite a while for my phone number and stuff like that. My only issue with giving my phone number out online is people calling my house at random hours. I still live at home with mom and with time zone differences I cannot have people calling here at all hours of the night.

Long story short I bit the bullet and ordered the Skype unlimited US & Canada plan along with an SkypeIN number so that people can call me from a regular phone. For $60 I have a phone number and unlimited calls to US & Canada for an entire year you just cannot beat the price. After ordering the plan I got to thinking of not wanting to be tied down to a computer to use Skype as I like to walk around when I’m one the phone. I thought about other options before the Skype Wifi phone. It’s $130 direct from Skype with shipping it came out to just under $140. I really had a hard time justifying the cost of the phone for something I wasn’t even sure I would be using or the quality; I wound up ordering the Belkin Skype phone any how.

When FedEx dropped off the package yesterday. I eagerly opened the package included is a quick start guide, wall charger, USB Cable, CD-ROM with user manuals, the phone itself, and it’s battery. I popped in the battery, plugged in the charger and turned the phone on. It automatically joined a wireless network (not mine) and asked me to log in to Skype.  I went into the menu and figured out how to connect to my network which is secured and logged into Skype. My contacts automatically downloaded, it’s really integrated well.

My initial impressions are that the phone is cheaply made, the buttons seem chinsy and the phone itself just doesn’t feel refined like I expected for $130. It takes a noticeable amount of time to start up too but that’s not that big of a deal. The software is very well made it took me a few seconds to get the hang of it but anyone used to a cell phone should get it with no problems. Other than that my biggest beef is that the charger port cover is a little rubber cover that I cannot get to close, it looks like it needs some finesse.

Call quality is crystal clear so far I’ve only called my house phone to test but it works great. I noticed when calling a landline phone when the person on the other end picks up you don’t get the first second of the conversation that’s not the phone’s fault though probably just a Skype to landline thing.

Over all I really like the phone and plan to test it with a real call very soon. My biggest beef with it is you cannot send text messages to Skype contacts; I realize the point of the phone is to voice chat but regular text messages would be great for quick messages that don’t require a talk. For $130 it should do text too. Secondly if you send a text message to a cell phone, the cell phone user cannot reply to you wheather you use Skype on the computer or this phone. I would think this would be as simple as Skype assigning an email address to your account for text replies again the point of the phone is to voice chat but texting does fill a nice void and it would be great if the Belkin Skype phone could do texts.

Read Part 2, my first call with the Skype phone here: Skype Belkin Phone Review