Gadgets and VoIP

NUU MiniKey - Qwerty Bluetooth Keyboard for the iPhone 4

One of the neatest new gadgets for the Apple iPhone 4 is the NUU MiniKey - Qwerty Bluetooth Keyboard. To be sure, other companies have earlier created add-on-keyboards for the iPhone but the NUU MiniKey is the slickest implementation I have seen to date.

The physical sliding QWERTY Bluetooth keypad attaches to an iPhone 4. It provides tactile feedback to your typing. It is much easier to type on this keyboard than on the iPhone's built-in "glass keyboard." The keys are also backlit.

(Click on the image to the right to see a larger picture.)

A Modest Proposal: A Cell Phone "Tower" on Every Telephone Pole

Here is a proposal that makes sense to me. In fact, it seems so obvious and so simple that I am sure the telephone company executives will never understand it: Install a mini cell phone base station on every telephone pole or perhaps on every third telephone pole up and down every street in the country. Then tear down those ugly towers that ruin the appearance of neighborhoods.

The result will be better coverage for all cell phone users, lower costs for the cell phone companies with the savings passed on to customers (that will never happen!), and fewer ugly towers in our neighborhoods. Better coverage? Lower costs? Improved appearances? No, the telephone companies will never do this!

Sprint Offers Free Femtocells

Sprint has begun offering femtocells for its customers that have reception problems in their homes. They aren't the first to offer such a device, but appear to be the first to offer it for free to qualified users, which is how it should be.

Femtocells are like your very own cellular tower in your house. If you have reception problems in your house, your cell phones will connect to the femtocell rather than struggle to connect to towers. The femtocell is then connected to your home network and your voice and data signals are routed through your internet provider and ultimately to Sprint's network. Sprint had an earlier model released in 2008, but this one supports EV-DO.

To Catch a Cell Phone Thief - Quickly

You have to love technology! A man accused of swiping an Apple iPhone out of a woman's hand in San Francisco was arrested and charged with theft when police found him only nine minutes later. It turns out the phone had been tracking his every move.

The iPhone was being used to test a new, real-time GPS tracking application, and the woman holding it was an intern for the software's maker, Mountain View-based Covia Labs. Covia CEO David Kahn had sent the intern into the street to demonstrate the software. Police say Horatio Toure snatched it and sped away on a bicycle.

Massachusetts Police Using iPhones to ID Perps

Could identifying criminals be as easy as holding up an iPhone, snapping a quick pic, and waiting for results? It sounds like a cross between a science-fiction fantasy and a silly joke, but the concept is no laughing matter for officers in the gang unit over in Brockton, Massachusetts.

The city's officers are currently testing a new biometric scanning program--really, an iPhone app--that allows them to use Apple's handheld devices to snap a quick picture of a person's face. The photo is then sent over to a secure network for processing and, if the facial characteristics of a subject give him or her away, the person's identity, photo, and background information are sent back to the officer's iPhone.

The New iPhone 4

Apple today introduced an updated version of its very popular iPhone cell phone/handheld computer. At first, I didn't see anything revolutionary in the announcement, but several nice features could be called "evolutionary." Upon closer examination, however, I did find one feature mentioned that could turn out to be a real sleeper and cost the cell phone and telephone companies billions of dollars in lost revenue.

First, the announcement says that the new iPhone 4 that will be available on June 24 will be 24% thinner (I can't get too excited about that.), will have much longer battery life (That's nice, but not revolutionary.) and will have better cameras. That's cameras with an "s" as the new device will have two cameras: one on the front and one on the back.

All of that is nice, of course, but the one item that I think is really exciting was barely mentioned in the announcement: two-way video chatting.

4G Wireless: Fact or Hype?

Cell phone companies are about to barrage consumers with advertising for the next advance in wireless network technology: "4G" access. The companies are promising faster speeds and the thrill of being the first on the block to use a new acronym.

But there's less to 4G than meets the eye, and there's little reason for people to scramble for it, at least for the next few years.

RedLaser for the iPhone

Do you own an Apple iPhone? If so, get RedLaser. It costs $1.99 and it more than paid for itself the first time I used it. I have now saved perhaps $100 in the past few weeks because of this program.

RedLaser converts your iPhone into an indispensable shopping companion. Have you ever seen a store employee in a grocery store or major chain store scanning product bar codes? Now you can do the same thing: you use the iPhone's built-in camera to scan the bar code on almost any product available for sale.

Now, here is the best part: unlike the store employee who is using a handheld scanner, your iPhone will immediately connect to RedLaser's servers on the Internet and look for a better price, either online, mailorder, or in any local store that has its catalog online.  To find local store prices, RedLaser uses the iPhone's internal GPS to determine your longitude and latitude and then looks for stores within a few miles of your present location.

The program uses the Internet to pull down a list of prices so you can see if you’re getting a good deal. You can scan a bar code and RedLaser will then display a list of stores with better prices within two or three seconds.

Carry a Scanner in Your Pocket

You may not know it, but you may already have a decent scanner in your pocket.

Technically, the typical desktop scanner is really a camera. A somewhat specialized camera, to be sure, but a camera nonetheless. In fact, many people don't use scanners at all. They simply use a good-quality digital camera. Now, thanks to some software, you can use your Apple iPhone camera as a scanner.

Scanner Pro 1.2 is the latest version of a popular iPhone application which transforms the device into portable scanner. You can snap a picture of a document or of an old picture, and Scanner Pro then converts the image to a PDF file in the same manner as a scanner.

The product becomes a bit more interesting when it is used in conjunction with two other products produced by other companies: Dropbox and Print n Share from EuroSmartz.

Install Your Own Cellular Network Cell at Home

Product not yet tested by editor. The following description is from the manufacturer.

Do you have poor cell phone coverage at home or at the office? Do you use Sprint as your cell phone provider? Do you have a broadband internet connection?

If you answered "yes" to all three questions, there is a new solution for you. Sprint is now selling femto cell equipment.

The Sprint unit is called an AIRAVE. It provides cell phone coverage in areas that do not receive strong signals from a nearby cell tower. This unit is not a repeater or a signal booster. It does not connect to a cell tower at all. While you use your cell phone in the normal manner, the telephone calls (or "backhaul") are carried over any broadband cable modem, DSL, or fiber optic Internet connection. (Satellite Internet coverage is not recommended.)