The Firehouse

Had to buy a new DECT cordless phone today, as the kids finally managed to bust the only remaining good unit in the house – so I went shopping for a Siemens, as they have proven to be the most trustworthy and abuse-taking phones. This is the one I got, thinking how nice it would be to use the built-in Bluetooth to sync my agenda and use a headset for long calls:

Or so claimed the blurb, soon to be proven wrong. First attempt, sync my Mac’s address book, should be easy enough. The phone supports exchange of files in vCard format, but it failed to actually receive any, it just sat for ages with a ‘Transferring data’ message on the screen, until it bombed with not even an error message. Sending from the phone to the Mac failed equally well.

I then tried to pair my Jawbone headset with the phone, which was mostly uneventful (although it took two tries to get the headset into the preferred devices list). Dial a number. Press the call button on the headset so that it takes over. Watch nothing happen. Attempt to pick up an incoming call by pressing the headset button – fail again.

So off I went to the Bluetooth SIG to check the PICS on this piece of crap, and lo and behold, there it was – the SL560 supports Bluetooth 1.2, which in itself should not be a problem, if the right profiles are supported (and correctly implemented of course!). This is where things turn south, on the audio side, the phone only supports the Audio Gateway (AG) role, which is confusing to many headsets out there, which expect either a handsfree or headset profile to be available. Headset (HS) is specifically NOT supported on the SL560. Thus, expect many headsets to fail talking to this phone.

On the data front it doesn’t fare much better, with object push client and server supported, but only the basic requisites are implemented, being information on supported content, authentication and PIN exchange, object push, and vCard 2.1 format. Nothing else like business card exchange, or calendaring formats are supported. I have to try sending a contact from a Windows PC, as it wouldn’t be the first time Apple implements something in funny ways (maybe OS X supports vCard 0.1 Beta, who knows!).

Conclusion? This phone is going back to the shop tomorrow, and I’ll be getting a less fancy, more standard Siemens. Bluetooth SIG, it’s about time you start policing manufacturers with some degree of accountability, not merely watching the compliance reports come in. I can certify my Bluetooth device with just one test rig, and not test it with any real-world device, and still claim it is Bluetooth compliant, and I know from experience that such a device is bound to fail.

So I tried to add funds to an online music store today. Their payments are handled by Chronopay, which provide the most confusing, user-unfriendly payment system known to man.  You are asked for your name and surname, address, and card details (OK all normal up to here), but then…the issuing bank of your card? My bank has variations on the company name, which means I cannot be sure I’m typing the right thing here. After this step, I’m shown my bank’s ‘Verified by VISA’ additional check page, which asks me to enter a PIN that has been SMS’d to my mobile phone (whaaaa?). Entered the PIN which is accepted, and a few seconds later…transaction refused. All in a page using Times New Roman as the font – how ugly can you get? No word on why was the transaction declined, from the myriad of possible fields where data could have been input wrong. Call their service hotline (uhm, their 24/7/365 chat is “offline”, I guess this is a leap year or something), wait for 10 minutes, nobody bothers to take the call. Either they are very busy, or they leave some temp to take the calls at a very slow pace.  In all – it SUCKS! I tried this thing seven times, with various combination of inputs, and they all failed. Just to see if I was going senile, I purchased something else online, and it went through just fine.

While inside the conference you have to pay for WiFi, you could surf for free thanks to the Whisher ‘Red Bird’, which carried a mobile hotspot with a 3.8Mbps 3G connection.

The signal was encrypted, and we provided the password on flyers handed out by the bird. After three days, we had a total of 87 people connected through this hotspot, which we think is a pretty good number! There was certainly always people waiting around outside, without much else to do than check email or surf the web for a while.

Some news from the Mobile World Congress – apparently, in a week, Movistar Spain (owner of UK’s O2 network) will announce that they will get a 3G iPhone exclusively in Spain. At this stage, it’s only a rumor, overheard at the O2 stand.

Being based in Barcelona means I get to visit the Mobile World Congress without having to manage a logistics nightmare. Some visitors are staying at hotels over 100 miles away, and commuting every day to the event and back, it is really that busy. Everyone who means anything in the mobile world will be here, so if you’re in town and want to get together for a coffee or a beer (well, a beer and a diet coke, I don’t drink) and talk about wireless technology and how nice the weather is over here, drop me a line in the comments. Oh, and look for something weird around the entrance…there will be a little surprise from Whisher!

There is something in the air…OK, cheap attempt at being cool, I know…

…but this is more or less what the Whisher colo looks like right now. Well not that bad, but close. We are doing some major restructuring at Whisher, both conceptual and technical. Some features are being taken away, and new ones added which I think you will enjoy. Soonr just did something like this, taking away the Talk feature (Skype callback from your PC), which I guess was not being used much and wasted too many resources. It is a normal process in a startup trying to look for the right model. We have gone through several iterations which have seen two versions so far, and now the third is coming up – the definitive one.

I cannot really give much away on what is coming, only say that one of the changes affects the previous release of Whisher, and you will find that it has now stopped working (you may see a Jabber login error). For this I apologize, but it is a necessary step to get to the new Whisher. Feel free to vent on the comments. The Whisher website will be down while the new one is finalized, but both the blog and the forums will keep working (although with not-so-nice looks!).

It was a matter of time. After stunts like the death threat post, he is back. Gerhard Mosbach, not affiliated to Fon as far as I’m told but a huge fan of them, started posting anonymous comments on the Whisher blog, while also cheering another startup, surprisingly not Fon.

The internet is a big place but also a small place at times, and a quick blog search revealed this post (screenshot here, as Gerhard has a habit of removing content when it doesn’t suit his arguments), which translated at Babelfish reveals much of the content in the anonymous comments.

Some of the highlights of his post, and my comments – excuse the English translation, send your flames to Babelfish.

The last entry in Whisher blog originates from November 2007

True – but we have been way too busy to even blog, doing actual work, not traveling around conferences and attending parties.

The programming of Whisher.com themselves effected by the way via cheap Romanian programmers, which unites, with AustinTX in the English FON:board since beginning together most violent Internetbashing operate.

I take it as a personal offense that Gerhard attacks our coders, more so for being in Romania, as if that had to do anything with the quality of their coding – they are actually much harder-working that many Germans I have met! (Sebastian & Feli, you will probably read this, it does not apply to you ) For reference, Skype was written by developers in Estonia, meaning you can find a competent team in almost any country. As for AustinTX on the Fon boards, he is free to write what he wants, right? Was it not you writing something about ‘censorship’? And I believe there are still many upset people on the boards other than him.

The anonymous lubrication finch and Berufshetzer “AustinTX”, then one may subordinate also right, is with moved, thousands of Posts obviously pay, an order poster thus, whose statements are always and always negatively dyed [SIC]

A colleague who speaks German tells me that the correct translation is that we are actually paying AustinTX to write negative posts in the Fon forums. Not only is this completely false, but I believe that unless proof can be provided, it falls under libel and can have legal consequences. For one, AustinTX will not be pleased by this.

It is by the way also moderator in (dead) the Whisher board. No miracle thus! [Ed: refers also to AustinTX]

Oh, and this is a problem how? AustinTX is very involved and balanced (unlike Gerhard), and is a great forum moderator (unlike ModerFon), so I see nothing wrong in him moderating the Whisher forums. Has Fon even paid him a little bit of attention when he was a huge proponent of Fon, at the beginning? Well, we pay attention to him, and everyone else who choses to participate in a constructive way, even if that means telling us what we do wrong.

Gerhard: you fail at failing, so please, give up the internet. Really. Take up gardening or something. At the very least if you try to talk about censorship, allow comments on your own blog, as now they are disabled.