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!
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