One of the things that you get with a T-1 line is a guaranteed bandwidth and (usually) sub-4 hour recovery from any outages in connectivity to the internet. As many households become more dependent on the internet (particularly with VOIP) downtime can be almost as crippling as it would be to a business, however T-1s usually carry with them a cost between $300 and $700 per month for such security. Until now. The advent of new, inexpensive Dual-WAN (also called multi-homing) routers, there is another way consumers can achieve redundancy by using two inexpensive ISP connections.
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Back when I traveled a lot I tried out this new service called SimulScribe because it represented a much better way to triage and return voicemail after landing at the airport, where it is difficult to write down voicemails you have received in-flight and return the calls as you catch a cab. Now called PhoneTag (sorry guys, your new brand just doesn’t resonate with me so I’m going to refer to it as SimulScribe hereforward) the service takes voicemail and transcribes it as text which is sent to you as an email, along with the original attachment should you need to hear it yourself. It is very accurate and as much a “life changer” as TiVo is for TV viewing.
I was so enthusiastic that I got my wife an account of her own for her birthday and we are now happy users. We wanted to apply the same functionality to our home phone to deal with the endless stream of soccer practice updates, voicemails from the kids’ school, playdate proposals from BFFs (best-friends-forever), etc. but without paying for a third account. We found a way to do so by capitalizing on one of SimulScribe’s most useful features. Read on…
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BlueAnt Supertooth IIIHere in California as the much publicized cellphone laws have gone into effect I’ve had to start wearing my earbud. All the time. Now while my earbud - a Plantronics 910 - is a great earbud, when I used it in the car previously it was more for when I had a big call to do. Short “yes I’m on my way home” calls didn’t warrant the earbud in my mind.
For the past few weeks I’ve been wearing it religiously and it’s kind of a pain to do that: I don’t like having to carry an earbud and then either be faced with the job of keeping track of the darn thing - they’re small - or wearing it all the time and looking like “one of the earbud people.” Some people still aren’t sure if it’s good to have a transmitter on the side of your head either. So, we bought a portable battery powered bluetooth speakerphone for our two non-speakerphone commuter cars. Our first was a Parrot Minikit, and the other was the BlueAnt Supertooth III.
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Last year I read a book called The Four Hour Workweek which contains not only a thought-provoking philosophy but also little tips and tricks the author has learned along the way. One of those tips was using a Solio charger to simplify the task of packing all the chargers for your electronic gadgets.
I bought one of the original Solio devices and was impressed. Recently they’ve improved upon it however with the Solio Magnesium Edition.
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I have never used any of the Airport Express’ multimedia features and I don’t intend to. On overnight trips I carry an Apple Airport Express with me because it is simple, small, travel-friendly way to share an internet connection. The other night, I found out a new reason to carry one with me.
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I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been super-busy with a startup that I’m working on and with travel. The title of this post has nothing to do with that however — rather I am breathlessly waiting for my Macbook Air to arrive and Apple is driving me crazy by shipping every single little accessory I ordered before shipping me what I really want: The Air.
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One of the reasons people buy SUVs is because they like to take road trips. They may not need the size or cargo hauling capacity on a day-to-day basis but for packing up the kids and going somewhere - particularly if you need 4WD - SUVs are great. We have owned an SUV and recently concluded a two-year stint of renting them for road trips. Our conclusion: If you’re particular about your ride - or about getting an SUV period - for your road trip, either rent a day or two in advance of your trip or have a backup plan. Or both.
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The past year or so since getting a Macbook Pro I’ve been a fairly vocal Apple fan, but a couple incidents recently leave me wondering if they are running the risk of alienating their best customers - the early adopters who will pay premium amounts to have the latest gear that looks good and works well.
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Usually I’m the kind of guy that tracks and buys the latest gadget. This has been true for celphones for a number of years, but recently I’ve become jaded. The iPhone came and went and I didn’t bat an eye. Two weeks ago I found myself replacing my celphone after my trusty T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl suffered from acute gravity-induced shock syndrome, also known as a hard drop onto the sidewalk. What I found when I went to the T-Mobile store was truly cool.
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