Bought an iPhone, actually, the original one developed by Linksys (A Division of Cisco), not Apple’s. Remember they settled a trademark dispute on: “The companies (Linksys and Cisco) said Apple will be allowed to use the name for its sleek new multimedia device in exchange for exploring wide-ranging “interoperability” between the companies’ products in the areas of security, consumer and business communications.” as announced in February 2007.

I badly needed a wireless Voice over IP phone and the WIP330 appeared quite amazing. I’ll get you pictures as soon as I charge up my digital camera. Charging devices will go down in history as a malaise of the technology era. Basically, setting it up was an initial nightmare as it shipped with a “not so current” firmware version which you only find out after reading and reading, googling and googling. Guess what, the device has to be connected to the Internet wirelessly to upgrade…

As I am a Mac guy, I own an Apple Airport Extreme router with 802.11-n, a, b and g compatibilities. The mix mode is probably not “pure” g as the phone never found the network. You’d figure there were enough alphabet in there for them to talk properly to each other. To make a long story short, I ended up connecting an old g-compbatible router, unprotected, wide-open for the upgrade process to the latest firmware version v1.03.10S. Then, satiated with the latest code, the WIP330 found the Apple network.

It is now supposed to support n-networks capable of 300 Mb/s theoretical data transfer speed. The point is not really that you need that speed for voice over wireless, the point is that g devices on your network force your router to downgrade its transmission rate. Perhaps I should run two wireless networks in the house, one for g and one for n devices.

Getting back to the phone, if you want to get it to work with an Apple Extreme router, set the Extreme to Radio Mode = 802.11n (802.11b/g compatible), use channels 3 or 5, and set Wireless Security to WPA/WPA2 Personal. The phone’s current firmware does not support WPA2 (or at least Apple’s version of it, next to heresy for a standard). WPA2 as you know, uses a new AES based algorithm and CCMP, way more secured that dear old crackable WEP. WPA is just PSK (pre shared keys) over wireless with 128 bit encryption using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP).

This phone has a Web browser built-in and will use free Internet access points to search for your SIP (session initiation protocol) account all over the world. Currently, it will not handle multiple accounts through the phone’s interface. So basically, you set portability on a phone number in your local town (or get a SIP account on the Internet) and people can reach you as if you were still in town minding the necessary time zone adjustments. Make free calls from your local San Francisco Internet café or from anywhere else with free WiFi piggybacking.

The phone also has a web interface for admin access on the local network. If you’re not too keen on typing with an alphanumeric keyboard, I suggest you use it. You can set up to 250 contacts, you can change the wallpaper and you can play with the SIP settings. Too bad you cannot import contacts, too bad it does not handle multiple SIPs. It handles multiple Internet profiles though. A user name and password can be entered when they are required for wireless access.

I believe this phone has a great future and that it is influencing it too, mine at least ;).

your ads here (468x60) - after 1st post.

I just bought Periscope, a very innovative software for your iSight. It is by Freeverse, a company I’m starting to like a lot. They make PulpMotion and Comic Life. It allows you to trigger captures of whatever is in front of your computer’s camera with different options for the number of photos taken and the trigger mechanisms. As you see in the picture I have included, you can set zones for motion detection. You can set microphone levels to start snapping pictures. Imagine you leave the room and ask Periscope to detect any noise, then imagine that the pictures taken by iSight are automatically sent to you well, you have yourself a surveillance system. You can also set a timer to trigger the captures. You can even use Apple’s remote. I just wish that in upcoming versions, they actually captured video and that you could set the desired quality. The software makes it easy to share your photos to .Mac, Flickr, Email, FTP, iPhoto or a local folder. You can assemble a series of pictures into a movie quite easily. So who’s Big Brother now?

This is just to let you know that I took my MacBook to the store in Montreal with my three loose screws totaling in size a bit more than the diameter of a pregnant flea. First, to make a long afternoon on the phone short, the vendor is going to replace the logic board (over $ 1,000.00) *because* Apple Canada agreed that six months later, it was still covered by the warranty. I had problems with the vendor, not with Apple. The vendor argued that the MacBook had been opened and that it voided the warranty. Apple said that if there were no evidence of physical damage to the board, it was still covered. Of course, I only had taken the MacBook apart to remove the Superdrive and to eject a stuck CD with brute force, not the network kind. I consider myself lucky, I did not have to buy the same computer twice.