Imagine if you will a mobile handset that is truly only a phone. Really just a phone – no camera, it cannot play movies or MP3s, and the ringtones are horrid. Motorola has targeted low-end market with their Motofone F3. Our carriers select their phone roster based on what will entice underinformed buyers to jump carriers. If phone users actually had to shell out the up front cash for a phone rather than relying on carrier subsidies I bet we’d have a wide range of phones that do exactly what people want. That said, this Motorola phone is what I want. With a focus on emerging markets like Brazil and India Motorola has created a phone with no bloat. Its battery lasts a couple weeks on standby, the reception is great, has very good call quality, and the kicker is that mine weighed in at $42 after shipping – unlocked and without any contract of course. The screen uses eInk technology rather than a traditional LCD. This means it is easy to read in the direct sunlight and uses no power unless it is changing. There will be no splashing dolphin screen saver for this phone, just a 1983 calculator feel. I just got this bad boy this weekend, but after seeing how much better the reception is at my parents house I am already impressed. The only place to get this phone is the Internet, as Motorola does not distribute it in the US or Canada. If you are afflicted with bouts of rage from a Windows Mobile “SmartPhone”, I’d recommend picking up an a phone that is a phone like the F3.

So here I am, empty phone, vcard, and a computer freshly booted up into Windows XP. I open up the address book application and import my vcard with all my contacts. This just about freezes my computer, but after an hour of clicking to confirm each card I had my contacts loaded. I then fire up ActiveSync. I check the check box that I would like to sync my address book – and the icon has a little icon just like the built-in address book application. It syncs – yet I have no contacts. It turns out that you need to use Outlook to sync. ActiveSync never really said that. Ok, so I try to export the contacts from Address Book over to Outlook because I had just cleaned them up. They have a little tool to do the export. Unfortunately since my account is set up for exchange, the transfer fails. I then tried to export my newly cleaned up Address Book as a vcard. Sorry – you can only create a vcard out of one contact at a time. So then I export to the other format – WAP, which I assume is Windows Address Book. Yeah, but unfortunately Outlook can’t read those. Ok, so then I try to just go back to the original vcard and import that into Outlook. Even though the Windows Address book can read the vcard and import them (albeit very slowly), Outlook ONLY reads the first contact out of the vcard.

The point is that even when you try to do everything the Microsoft way, you are screwed. This is why they suck. Not because they are evil. Not because Bill Gates is a weenie. They will fail because they are often times a poor technology company that lacks any insight into what people want to do with their computers.

Cingular
Because Cingular chooses to promote their phones with the post-rebate prices I would like to call them out on this process and hopefully share some tips along the way.

The Story
On December 31st I was finally swayed away from T-Mobile over to Cingular because of a great price they had on the Motorolla Razr V3 – $99 after mail-in rebate. Of course I purchased the phone on the last day of the promotion and managed to walk out of the store without the rebate form. About a week later when I went to fill out the forms I realized that I didn’t have them. Of course the rebate form is not available from the Cingular web page – this was confirmed by a call to the support center. They informed me that I would need to go to the store where I purchased the phone and get a new form. A trip to the store left me formless because they get rid of the old forms once the promotion is over.

I called back through the maze of transfers that is Cingular customer service and finally reach the rebate center. Their direct number is 866-852-8617. It turns out that the “Cingular Rebate Center” is really a company out of Young America, MN that is actually run by Motorola (according to Cingular cancellation department). I talked to a nice stoner gentleman named duane3571. Duane informed me that it would take 10 business days to send me the form, but that he could get it for me. Since I called him on the 24th of January I asked him when I would need to have the form sent in. He told me that I’d need to have it sent by January 31st, and after realizing the problem with the situation he gave me a “special” address where I could send rebates to after the acceptable date. That address is:

Dept 5010-1398
Cingular Rebate Center
P.O. Box 8670
Young America, MN 55551-8670

I asked Duane if there were a way I could fax the rebate. He said that I could not get the fax number unless I had already sent in my rebate and waited for 12 weeks.

Exploited Exploiting the Exploiter
I hung up with Duane and started thinking – clearly this process is designed to cost you more than $50 in time and effort ($50 is the rebate amount). How could I get my $50, which was the advertized and promoted rebate without jumping through these hoops?

In my conversation with Duane I realized that this company in Young America was clearly separate from Cingular. They didn’t even have ties into the Cingular customer database to look up my customer information. This let me know that they would not be able to check up on little details like when I actually signed up. Today I called back in to the rebate center. I told the rep that I had sent in my form 12 weeks prior and that I had not received my check. She asked for some information and saw that a new rebate form was going to be sent out to me. I told her that Duane said that I’d have to fill out a new one – but asked her how long it would take after I fill out the new form. She told me it would take between 4 and 12 weeks. I asked her if since I had already waited for such a long time if there was a way I could fax in my rebate. To my delightment she shared the heavily guarded number. The fax number for the Cingular Rebate Center in Young America is 866.238.3144.

Not wanting to wait for 10 business days, I called back to the store where I bought the phone. I had been told that there was a guy, Duy Nguyen who was particularly talented in the ways of finding old forms. Duy did not disappoint. He was able to fax me over a copy of the form. I filled out all this information and faxed it over to the rebate center along with the receipt, contract, and the upc/imei code from the box.

Since I am within the 30-day cancellation period I called back to Cingular customer service where I found the cancellation department rather easily. I started out my conversation with the rep by stating “I’m a new Cingular customer within my first 30-days and I’d like to cancel my service”. It’s amazing how willing he was to work with me. I quickly shared a few details of my sob story and he agreed to credit my account $50 immediately. This is where he shared the information with me that the company in Young America is actually Motorola.

I think I am going to fax in my rebate again in a few days and also mail a copy over to the super-secret department as well. I’ll share details of my success or lack thereof in a future post.

Ohh yeah RAZR. After being worn down by horrible coverage from T-Mobile and the draw of sexy phones like the black Motorola Razr V3, I made the switch to Cingular.

One thing that was driving me nuts about this Razr was the Cingular logo on the external LCD whenever you make a call. It reminds me of the obnoxious dealer license plate frames or CARMAX stickers. After a couple hours figuring it out, I got that hacked now and it’s got a purty picture of Stacey.

Although the blogosphere is bursting with dissenting opinions about just about everything, there seems to be a particular hatred for mobile phone providers. Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint all have their advantages and quirks, but for the most part the decision comes down to who do you hate the least.

I have a particularly strong bond with my hard-earned dollars and don’t separate myself from them easily. Combine this with an affinity for shiny new fancypants phones, dislike of talking on the phone, and disdain for long contracts and it’s not too hard to figure out why I’m on T-Mobile.

The problem of course with T-Mobile is that I’d probably get better coverage with a couple tin cans and a really long string. Since I have no contract at this point, on and off for the past year I’ve been searching for a new provider that could allow me to make and receive calls. Painfully I decided that with a $150 rebate from Amazon, Cingular would be the way to go. I’d get a new Motorola Razr V3 to play with and I’d only be paying around $10 more each month for a network that actually works (or so I hear).

Unfortunately when my phone arrived and I read the documentation on number portability I found that porting a number to Cingular would make me ineligible for the mail-in rebate from Amazon, meaning I’d have to pay $150 and sign up for a 2-year contract at $10 more each month just to be able to have a wireless network that functions. It was tough to do, but after fruitlessly pleading with the Cingular sales folks to give me a deal in order to keep my business, I decided that the phone would go back.

Damnit T-Mobile – you suck major ass, but you suck ass less for me than others. Sure, you have no network time sync… and sure I get notified about voicemail about 4 days after I get one… but you save me money at least and I have no contract.

I have always had a bit of envy for those artistic people that are able to produce amazing designs. I have a short attention span, which is not always a bad thing, but it often turns large projects into non-starters. For me, artistic excitement has consistently come back to a dorky topic, SVG. The program most frequently used for this by design artists is Adobe Illustrator. Visio, Fireworks and Flash all lay out vector graphics – but the way of the future is the W3C standard. The same folks that bring you “html” and “xml” now bring you “svg” – this will be a component of the next version of Windows (Longhorn) and could potentially overtake Flash as the dominant SVG web delivery mechanism in the long run. Inkscape is a great tool for designing SVG. I bottled my apple wine this weekend and I am just finishing up my labels in Inkscape – I highly recommend you give it a shot.

Asterisk development is still going strong. After much trial and error I now have both Voicepulse and Broadvoice working with IAX and SIP respectively. The Asterisk related quest I have been on lately though has been to obtain a vintage red ITT or Western Electric touch-tone red phone. It’s all about the missle launch feeling when I pick up the handset. Once my number portability is completed my Asterisk implementation will begin to stabilize.

On American Idol all of the contestants want to be role models for the youth of America. Kelly, Ruben, and Fantasia have not made it onto my rold model list yet, but I have recently appended my idol list. Nat Friedman, co-founder of Ximian (now Novell), now sits on my list next to John Stossel and Bill Reichel (my mortgage lender). Who are your idols?

Flickr. Learn it, use it, become one with it. I was searching for a solution to manage all of my 3500 digital photos. After playing with Gallery and realizing its limitations I began searching for a tool that would better suit my needs. I discovered an iPhoto export tool for Flickr, an open API with perl bindings, and yes – a Wordpress gallery plugin. Now I can store all of my full-res images on someone elses server. Go flickr. By the way, check out the company that runs flickr, ludicorp.