My friend Andy Abramson just yesterday posted “Staying Connected- Beating The High Cost of Roaming http://ow.ly/18lHO6“.  I wanted to bring any attention I could to his article because it highlights one of my favorite companies, Truphone.  I’ve been an advocate of theirs for many years now have enjoyed their service for as long as it’s been around.  If you are into saving serious money when traveling abroad whether it’s in the US or outside the US I suggest reading Andy’s article and giving Truphone a try.

Just to be clear

Ok, I have the absolute greatest wife ever, she got me a white Nokia E72 as a fathers day gift.  I am the luckiest guy ever.  Well here’s my review, I love it for the most part.

The Nokia E72 has a great number of benefits like the

• 3.5mm headphone jack
• The flashlight
• The newer version of Symbian
• A VERY quite keyboard when typing on it
• Many many other benefits.

But it also has some drawbacks

• I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t auto capitalize the letter “I” when typing messages.  It is my biggest annoyance with the device
• It doesn’t have enough RAM
• The build quality isn’t as good as the E71
• The battery life isn’t as long as I would like
• The center of the D pad should be white on the white version of the handset that I have
• My biggest problem with the E72 is that mine is defective.  I wasn’t sure I was going to mention this but I figure I should.  The left soft key on my handset has to be depressed extra hard to make it work properly.

I am madly in love with the idea of this device but I’m not sure it’s a big enough step up from my previous phone the Nokia E71.  If you don’t have an E71 then I think this is a perfect phone but if you have then you may be disappointed.

That being said, I’ll probably get another one anyways.  I do love my Nokias!!!  And I’m proud of it @Ew4n.

This last week has been hellish for some people.  Some people actually do do video chat on their mobile phones.  My sister does because her husband is on the other side of the world working and getting their new house set up.  Her son misses his Dad and so they Skype on her Nokia N78 to my nephew’s Dad as often as possible.  Well this was all possbile until this week when Skype and Fring got into “it” and now their love affair is on hold or over.

I have been a heavy user of phone minutes on and off for many years now.  At my peak I believe once I hit 5,000 minutes in one month.  That may not be a lot for some but boy was it a lot for me.  Anyways I have always been very cautious about giving out my personal mobile number let alone my home phone number, but in the beginning I didn’t have a choice, I traveled a lot and didn’t want to pay the $50 or so a month for a business line.  Then over the years I’ve tried different services but none of them fit me perfectly.  None of them radiated the feeling of a full blown company, it always came across like I was a one man operation and that was not the way it was or what I wanted.

I came across Phone.com late last year when I met their CEO Ari Rabban (he usually twitters on the company twitter account) at a wine dinner Andy Abramson hosted.  Ari told me about their virtual phone service and I was instantly interested.  Was this the treasure in my search for telephone gold?  So I went home that night and took a look at Phone.com.  It was great, for the price of 1 lunch I was able to get business class phone service for a month.  Problem was, I travel and rely solely on my mobile phone.  I mentioned this to Ari and he said “just hang on for a couple months” so I did.  Then about 2 months ago I was invited into a beta group to test Phone.com’s new Android app and walla, my problems were solved.  I finally had a business class phone system in my pocket and everywhere I went.  I had an automated system with customizable greetings, extensions and the ability to set office hours, so my phone won’t ring in the middle of the night (some people just don’t understand time zones).  The best part was, I can have all of it on my Android phone.

Well the day is here and I’m finally able to talk about it publicly (I was under embargo until today). The new Android app is everything I have been wanting.  It gives me the ability to make calls from my cell phone which is nothing new, but it shows my work number in the caller ID not my mobile phones’ number.  This is one of the biggest selling points for me.  I like having ubiquity and not multiple numbers.  Along with that same point, I now have a work number that I can receive SMS (text messages) on, I have been testing it and it is flat out fast.  What’s nice is I can send SMS from the Phone.com website (as well as my phone of course), keeping me from having to type out messages on my phone.

Some additional points to note about the Phone.com Android app:

• Extremely simple set up
• Shares address book with phones built in address book
• Ability to send SMS from the phone showing your Phone.com number
• Very competitive international calling rates (some countries are even free)
• Cheaper minute plans then the mobile phone providers offer
• Unified inbox for voicemail, sms, and fax where you can read/respond to all of them
• Listen to and read (they convert VM to text) voicemail on the phone
• Office number is always with me
• Doesn’t seem to drain my battery
• Set up and initiate conference calls from your phone (this is amazing)

Keep in mind there is a Phone.com iPhone app as well that runs over VOIP, I will try to get my hands on an iPhone to review it.

In closing, I have been using this service for a few months now and really enjoy it.  I would personally recommend the Android  app from Phone.com to anybody looking to save money on their phone service.  From small to medium businesses to someone who may just want a second number but not another phone, this is your answer.  I give it my stamp of approval.

Follow Phone.com
Twitter: @PhoneDotCom
Facebook: PhoneDotCom

Our good friends at WOMWorld/Nokia (part of 1000 Heads) recently completed a campaign to promote their new Nokia CarKit CK-200. It entailed 5 very high power sports cars driving all around England doing all kinds of tasks.  Then 5 bicyclists’ finding their way to a park and meeting up with the cars and drivers.  This all culminated with a very enjoyable party from what I saw.

This was one of the most entertaining advertising campaigns for me the viewer and I’m positive the drivers.  I felt like I was fully involved and really created a great deal of interest for me.  I’m now watching a bunch of WOMWorld videos and loving all of them.  I’m supposed to be in one of them (James).

Back to the video I’m here writing about.  I was so impressed I wanted to share it with you and give WOMWorld/Nokia big props for one of the best thought out and executed campaigns I’ve ever seen.  I hope they bring their expertise here and hire me to help them put on a great event or campaign in the US.  My side of the Atlantic needs some action, how about a Cannonball Run Style race from NY to LA???  I’ll be Bert Reynolds.

Anyways, enjoy the video they put together when it was all over.

A few months ago I got a Jabra Cruiser to review and boy have I been reviewing the heck out of it and I’m loving it.  I have been using it instead of a bluetooth headset since the moment I got it and it’s so much better.  I have always wanted to have a bluetooth speaker system built into my car but my car isn’t new enough.  So now I have the next best thing.

This Jabra Cruiser has been fantastic, it’s made it so I don’t have to wear one of those ugly bluetooth headset any longer (though I still use one in the home/office sometimes) in the car and I haven’t had to charge it even once.  I’ve been using it for over 2 months and haven’t charged it once.  This is HUGE, I mean really huge.  I don’t talk a lot in the car but that’s still a really long time.  By the way, it charges via microUSB charger that came with it.

Most importantly the sound quality is great.  I can clearly hear the person on the other end of the call and surprisingly enough they can hear me and they have all said it’s more then just adequate, it’s pretty good.  I’m always leery about bluetooth speakerphones because they have never been loud enough for me, but this one is.

It’s also pretty good looking and more importantly it’s light.  So clipping it to the sun visor won’t weigh it down.  One of the nice things about it is that it will broadcast you conversation over the in car speaker system via the FM radio.  I live in Los Angeles with has a very full radio spectrum so there isn’t much space for me to transmit to, so I haven’t used this much.

Lastly the Cruiser will actually act as a conduit to play the music on your phone via BT to the cruiser so you can listen to it over it’s speaker or you can play it then over the FM airwaves and listen to it over your car stereo.  There are  play/pause, forward and back buttons as well to control the music.

I suggest the Jabra Cruiser HFS001 to anybody who’s looking for an in car bluetooth speaker phone.  It’s the best I’ve ever used.  It runs from about $50-$100 on Amazon which I think is a really good deal.