Lots of hubbabaloo is going on right now at Apple’s iPhone 3.0 event in CA.  Here’s what stands out, to me, at least:

1. Support for Cut, Copy, and Paste!
2. Multi-application search via Spotlight.
3. Landscape keyboard in more apps.
4. Peer-to-peer capabilities between iPhones.
5. Tethering baked in, but capabilities to be determined by carrier.
6. MMS
7. Voice Memos
8. Free for all iPhone users, $9.95 for iPod Touch users
9. Coming Summer of 2009

Checkout Engadget for up-to-the-minute info: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/live-from-apples-iphone-os-3-0-preview-event/

Google has updated their Google Sync app to give iPhone and Windows Mobile users the ability to push-sync their Google Calendar and Contacts wirelessly, just like Microsoft’s Exchange OTA push feature.

Check out this article from Ars Technica for details.

Ooma is a new hosted VoIP service that challenges the tradition of monthly phone service costs.  With Ooma, all you have to do is purchase the hardware up front, which as of this writing costs $250 from amazon.com. After your initial purchase, you receive the basic level of service for free, which includes a single number, voicemail, and a nifty web interface for managing your service.

Upgrading to the premier service, which includes multiple lines, send-to-voicemail, and other business-class features will cost you, as will porting your existing telephone number to Ooma.  International calls are charged on a per-minute basis.

Ooma seems practical in a time where many are abandoning traditional phone service for cell phones.  With no monthly fees, Ooma is a great way to keep a cheap landline at your home or office.

You may have come across an issue with using Outlook Web Access (OWA) with Microsoft Vista running Internet Explorer.  When you go to compose a new message, the body of the message comes up as a broken link and you’re unable to type your message.

Microsoft has released a patch for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 that updates the ActiveX control to fix this error.

You can read more about it on Microsoft’s website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911829

Here’s the drill, you come home from work, your cell phone, which claims upto 18 hours of talk time, went dead after a half-hour call during lunch. Do you:

1. Fish the charger out of your briefcase/purse (because you only have one charger and you have to bring it with you everywhere).
2. Say “meh, I’ll charge it later” and never actually do it.
3. Plug it into the extra charger sitting in the nice charger station you bought from Pottery Barn, which all said and done cost you more than the phone itself.
4. Throw your phone down onto a mat that charges it using black magic without wires!

Wait… what?

That’s right, a charging station without wires, exactly what the WildCharger Pad does.  Welcome to the new world of wire-free charging, err… kind of. The pad allows you to charge up to 5 devices on it just by placing them on it’s metal surface - freeing up the precious outlet real estate on your counter.

The technology looks very promising, but I don’t think it’s quite there yet. Here’s why.

To start, you can’t just put your normal old phone on the pad, you’ll have to purchase a skin or new battery cover for your device, complete with little protruding metallic bits that make contact with the pad and transfer power to the battery. These skins cost around $35 and are only available for a <em>very</em> small selection of devices.

It also takes longer to charge your devices than it would if they were plugged in with their power cord, which undermines the ease of come and go charging as the pad advertises.

You can purchase the WildCharger Pad from their website.

HTC Touch Diamond	HTC Touch Pro

Well, HTC is making a run for it on the iPhone.  They have announced the release of two new Windows Mobile phones, the Diamond and the Touch Pro, extending their current Touch and Mogul devices.  We have been using the equivalent of the Mogul (the Sprint PPC-6700) for the past 2 years, and HTC does produce a quality Microsoft Smartphone.  The Touch Pro is due to release thru Sprint in September, 2008, and the Touch Diamond is due at the end of 2008.

Well, here it is.  The new Jawbone!!

The sequel from Aliph for their original Jawbone bluetooth headset.   We have been using the original Jawbone since they came out in January of 2007, and have been very pleased with the backgound noise cancelling system.  When using this headset, it has a sensor that touches your jawbone, which detects the sound of your voice thru the waves coming from that sensor.  It is then able to block out all other noises around you.  You could be walking down the street next to a construction site with a jackhammer going, and the person on the other end of the call will only hear your voice, and nothing else.  It is really cool, and a great addition to your current cell phone.

 The Jawbone 2 sequel is 50% smaller, and includes an improved “NoiseAssassin” technology.  Being smaller, however, means a smaller battery, so it does not include as much talk time as the original, but also takes less time to recharge.

Engadget Article “New Jawbone headset from Aliph now official” dated May 15th, 2008
Jawbone’s website

Well, it looks like the spammers are really upping their sending of email from addresses they do not own.  You know what we are talking about.  All of a sudden your inbox is filled with un-deliverable messages that you did not send, and they keep coming for about 1 or 2 days, and then begin to stop.  This can happen for a lot of reasons, including most likely one of the 2:

1) Spammer taking email addresses from websites, and then sending bulk email to large groups of people using your address as the return address

2) An individual’s computer has been infected with virus, spyware or trojan which in turn makes the computer a zombie spam sending computer, sending out all sorts of spam with a return address from the individuals email address book.

Well, there is something you can do to at least reduce the possibility of this happening.  The fix is to setup SPF DNS records on your email domain name, which in turn tells all email servers (SPF rated of course) of the world which email servers are permitted to send emails with that particular return address.  As long as you define in that SPF record those methods used for that particular domain (i.e. SMTP servers, blackberry email servers, Exchange servers), it really limits what the spammers can do.

Now, if you use a generic email address (i.e. name@aol.com, name@gmail.com, name@yahoo.com), you cannot setup a SPF record for those cases.  To have the control to setup SPF records for yourself, you need your own domain name, with email going there instead.  Then, you need to setup the SPF DNS entries (which requires some technical knowledge, and admin access to the domain’s DNS records).

We can help setup these SPF records as part of our service.  Feel free to contact us at http://computerperson.com/contact.php for assistance.  For more information on SPF records, here are some other sites you can reference:

1) Microsoft’s SPF Technology brief.
2) Microsoft’s Sender ID Framework SPF Record Wizard .
3) OpenSPF Syntax Web Site.

Well, the next phase of wireless networking is playing out.  This is a huge venture, with big players stepping up to improve the speeds of mobile wireless communication.   Sprint, Clearwire, Google, Intel, Time Warner, Comcast are all in on this.  It is a big deal.  You have the best in alot of worlds combining brain power and a bunch of money to working towards creating an immense national (and eventually global) WiMax network.  Very exciting..

MarketWatch article regarding the joint venture

* May 8th: FIX!!: Microsoft has announced a hotfix for the problem described in this post.  Information about how to aquire the hotfix can be found at  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951678/ . 

* April 23rd, Update: Microsoft support has announced that a fix for this will be released within the next 2-3 weeks. 

* Original Post:  Well, Microsoft has done it again.  With Office 2003 Update KB945432, Microsoft has basically blocked the ability to view JPG images created on an Apple OS system with a version of Adobe Photoshop.  You can view using 3rd Party viewers (i.e. InfranView), re-save the file, and everything works fine.  But, otherwise, the images are useless.

The only way to take care of this at the moment is to go into Add/Remove Programs, and under the Microsoft Office 2003 patch list, remove the update for KB945432 for Outlook.  No reboot is necessary.  Just remove, and reopen Outlook, and problem solved.

Will update once a solution is found.

Post from PC Review Regarding the issue
Post from Google Groups regarding the issue