Bells are ringing, and it's great!

Going back a few months, when I was in heavy negotiations with a few different companies for corporately support for my new blog, I was flown out to the U.S. by a major company and wooed. They set me up in a classy hotel, the Motel 6, and we had some very interesting talks. In the end I had to turn them down for their interest due to the fact I found their company to be very archaic in their use of technology and their communication system was definitely lacking (they didn't even use ICQ!). Well I was happier to run this site as an independent site in the end, free me from corporate ties.

Well the most amazing thing, an incredibly awesome product discovery, happened while I was staying in the luxurious confines of the Motel 6. As I was staying in the room, reciting one of my favorite songs - Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie a suddenly loud shocking bell sound rang out. The sound resonated around the room and I found myself barely able to breathe much less start hunting around for the sound's source. After sounding about 10 ten times in a row at what seemed like regular intervals, it just stopped. After about 10 minutes of my heart still racing and struggling to escape from my mouth, I managed to steady myself and start looking about.

I finally deduced that the source must have been from a strange looking beige box with a series of numbers imprinted on buttons. On the buttons are numbered from 1-9 then on the bottom is a couple of strange symbols (*, #) and a 0 in the middle. On top of each number is a series of letters which seem to correspond to the alphabet, though some of the letters are missing. My first impulse was that this was a spy machine- like something out of a Hardy Boys book or Ian Fleming's super spy James Bond novels. Through that night the strange box offered up it's odd bell a few more times and I in the end found it to be quite musical and hummed along with it's odd tune.

The next morning I had a brilliant idea and turned the phone over and found the company that made it, they were called AT&T. Well, I wrote this information down and when I returned home and fired up my trusty computer and ran a search. I e-mailed the company and actually convinced them to send me out a sample of this product. About a week later (isn't the post office fantastic?) a little package arrived of one of these 'telephones', as they are called, arrived. I had some difficulty with setting it up so that it would work, but after a Google search I found instructions. Apparently the funny looking plug wasn't European as I first though, it was actually what they call a Jack and it fit into the socket in my living room that I had oddly never noticed before.

With this baby fired up it was time to finally review this breathtaking new product. According to the website I had seen, all I needed to do was dial a series of numbers and it would function properly. Well, I tried a bunch of numbers from 0-129 to no avail and was about to send it back and return a glaring review but something special happened. The 'phone' issued a new bell sound, this one a little more computer sounding. I wasn't sure what to do, but decided to pick up the handle part and see if it had instructions on it. I could hear a faint sound - "Hello, hello?". Amazing- I lifted it to my mouth and tried to respond to it "hello" but the sounds continued -"um.. he-ll-ll-ll-o-o-o-o-o!.

I turned the handle around and tried again. Remarkably I found one nub was level with my ear and the other was level with my mouth. This time the other person could hear my clearly! Someone had found a way to transfer our voices into a digital signal and send the sound through wires far away, probably something like 50 kms away! Amazing! The nice person on the phone was really thoughtful, they were offering me a special outside work program he cutely called a Billy's Boot camp workout. I really look forward to receiving this new amazing experience and will fill you in on it in the future.

But this telephone gadget was just awe-inspiring. Why, someday we will be able to send our voice across the ocean and talk to people in Costa Rico for instance! It will even be more amazing when they find a system for calling specific people, you won't have to go out of your house and walk 5 kms to chat with your buddy across town!

I will definitely keep my eyes on this gadget and report back!

Fantastic New Technology- The Pencil

When I received the test unit for my first product test I was quite sceptical about the usability of such a small product. My opinion didn't recover too much when I finally unwrapped this nifty little device. It appears to be a yellow wooden stick standing at about 15 cms length. Visible on one end is what appears to be a bit of pink gum, though the taste was quite awful and the other end you can see a black core- this must be the processor for this simple device.

I took this pencil in my hand and decided that you must need to hold it like a chopstick to make it work so I rubbed the pencil on the nearest surface I could find, my computer screen, and could not get it to move the mouse or make pictures at all. This was my next big beef with this product, it didn't come with any sort of instruction manual whatsoever! After a considerable time searching on Google, I finally tracked down the instructions on how to use this device. Apparently you need a second product (clearly upselling from the beginning) called a sharpener that helps you expose the lead core chip. After it is exposed you can rub the core on paper (I never would have imagined that!) and it will leave an imprint.

I spent a couple of days testing out this technique and the pencil delivered on it's promise. I found I could alter the strength of the imprint by altering my pressure on the pencil and I could write on a lot of surfaces, including my wall, desk, and floors. The pencil also has a cheap price tag, usually ranging from $0.10 to $1.00 for the luxury models.

In the end when they learn to ship these units with instructions, the pencil may take off as the next big thing since the iPod and I am glad that I took the time to learn how to use it! I give this product a rating of 4 out of 5!