I just got a Motorola H500 Bluetooth Handsfree Headset. Took one minute to set it up. Works great. Less filling. Er, no wires ma!
I LOVE my new phone. I’m going around Microsoft like a giddy kid who just got a new Christmas toy. It even works in the hallway by Jeff’s office (that’s our real-world cell-phone test — if it works there it’ll work almost anywhere).
Anyway, I’m now one of those dorks who wears a headset around everywhere looking like I’m talking to myself. Dorky dorky dorky.
Damn you Chris Pirillo!
He was over last night with the ever lovely Ponzi and the ever cool and hip Liz Lawley and her family.
Anyway, as soon as he walked in he said “look at what I got today.” What?
He handed me a new Audiovox 2125 SmartPhone. Came out from Cingular yesterday.
It’s the new version of my old Audiovox phone.
First thing we did was pull a Web page up on both phones and compare them. Wow, the screen is a QVGA. Is it nice! Way sharper. Way way way way sharper. And more text too!
Oh, and now I can use the new DopplerRadio mobile podcasting software. Gonna go load that right now.
Joshua Allen, Microsoft’s first blogger is in my office (seriously, he was the first one to post a blog here at Microsoft, when I was hired at Microsoft there were already about 100 bloggers here). I just did the “keep up with Pirillo” shtick with him. “The screen is really nice,” he said, after being forced to hold it. Heheh. Another one sold!
Chris, look at what you’ve started! Oh, and if you want one in the Redmond store you better hurry. They got 150 yesterday and they are going fast (I saw five people buy them when I was there).
Update: MSMobiles has a good review on this phone.
First call was to Maryam. It’s a lot clearer. I’ll report more on it as I use it more.
When I was in Brussels I met with Erwin van Hunen, lead technical architect and developer for DopplerRadio. He took me aside and showed me his new podcasting device (DopplerMobile) which just went into beta today. This thing ROCKS! Developed in .NET 2.0 too. Speaking of which, I just got a report from more of the .NET 2.0 launch events. They continue being sold out around the world. A couple of weeks ago there were 5,000 people in India at the launch events there.
I just interviewed developers from SAP who are converting from Visual Studio 2003 to 2005. They were effusive in their praise. It’s not everyday you get your competitors to praise your new technology.
Unfortunately DopplerMobile requires a mobile phone running Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphones and it requires that the phone has the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 installed (which is a separate download for Windows Mobile 5.0 phones). I say unfortunately cause my Audiovox still has the older software on it. This will push me to get a new phone, though. I’m going to the Consumer Electronics Show in January to check out phones. I hear the new Motorola coming out rocks big time.
Last night I was at a dinner with Chris Shipley (yes, that Chris, she runs the Demo conference) and sitting next to me were Trimergent and Sling Media. Brian Jaquet, director of public relations, couldn’t help but show me his new mobile phone running Sling’s new mobile software (not yet in beta, coming soon). Oh, he knows how to make a geek cry in envy!
That so rocks. I can’t tell you what phone he was running cause I’m not supposed to talk about “M.” 😉
I love my SlingBox. I can’t wait to get this running on my phone (although he was using a phone that ran on a more advanced network than the lowly GPRS that mine works on, so I sense a new phone is in my future).
You know it’s a slow news day when the thing at the top of Memeorandum is whether or not Google is copying Yahoo or not. Well, when I was at the Google Zeitgeist opening party I met John Doerr. Don’t know who he is? Check out his Wikipedia page. He (er, his firm) funded Amazon and Google.
When we talked he said something interesting “If you’d like to start a new Microsoft, give me a call.” Note that he didn’t say “give me a call when you have the next Google.” He also didn’t say “give me a call when you have the next Yahoo.” Or the next Amazon. Or the next Apple. Or the next General Motors.
Also, I have to remember not to forget just how many businesses Microsoft is involved in and just how big an impact we’re having all over the place. As an example Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, called me the other day from Mobiletrax, a cell phone industry conference (here’s his report) and he said that Microsoft SmartPhones were all over the place. I just got a look at some of the new phones that are coming out in the next few months. I thought the screen on my current Audiovox is nice, but the new ones are over the top.
Anyway, I’m so far behind on email it isn’t funny. I have 517 unanswered and they are coming in faster than I’m answering them. Sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you if you’ve sent me email. I’m going to slow down my blogging for the next week to try to catch up. The problem is that a lot of the email is about things that people want me to blog about. So, after I catch up with my email I will have a TON of things to blog.
By the way, if you guys think that Google is building a portal you’re smoking good crack. Why are they causing disruptions across the world? Cause they aren’t copying either Microsoft or Yahoo.
One of my favorite cell phone and PocketPC focused sites was renamed to Mobility Today. That makes a lot of sense.
Oh, have I beaten TechCrunch at something? That’s pretty rare lately. David Xue, founder of PixPulse emailed me earlier today to tell me about his new photo service.
He says PixPulse allows people to share “live” in-the-moment photos and videos to send directly to their friends who can instantly view and comment. PixPulse works across all mobile carriers and does not require any downloads (no J2ME or flash) and a key goal of PixPulse is to be clean and simple since mobile carriers have made it very hard to share any media.
I’ll have to try it, but wondered if anyone else has tried it?