Gadgetry, and a New Web Concept
Having decided that driving a stick shift makes talking on a cell phone a bit unwieldy, I decided to get a Bluetooth headset. I had one before, but… well, I lost it within about a week of getting it. This time I went for the BlueAnt Z9. It’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but it received some good reviews, and seemed to have good noise cancellation technology — something that might come in handy in convention season.
So far, it’s worked beautifully. The people (well, person) I’ve talked to said that my voice was actually clearer with the BlueAnt than it was using the phone itself. Hooking up to my phone, the Samsung Sync, was painless. They even release semi-regular firmware updates, that fix issues and make other improvements. It’s pretty easy to operate, light, and comfortable. I’m not the sort of person to wear it all day long (I just wear it when I’m in the car), but if I were, I don’t think it would get uncomfortable to do so. I haven’t tried the ultra-noise-cancellation mode, but I have high hopes — the website has a demonstration of the technology, that seems to put it on the level of the Jawbone.
In other news, those of you who use several online services, such as Facebook, Yahoo profiles, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn, YouTube, WordPress, Delicious, Microsoft Network (MSN), etc. will be interested in the DataPortability workgroup. Below is a video that explains it, but the basic idea is you have your data, and when you want to make a profile on X site, you say, “Here’s my stuff — profile info, media, friends, et cetera.” And the site keeps sync’d with that central repository of data. Make a blog post? It’s posted to all your sites that support that. Upload a picture? Ditto. The names/sites mentioned above have all gotten in (Microsoft just recently), so there’s a pretty big push in this direction.
DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.