Ideas from Mark Stout

I've added a box to the right hand column listing websites for mobile phones. The BGB family is considering new phones as our family Christmas present. Our priorities (after being a phone, of course) are : 1. Turn-by-turn instructions 2. Voice dialing for safety while using when driving 3. Affordability for three people Kind of leaves the iPhone in the dust at the starting line, doesn't it?

I'm a big user of Voice over IP (VOIP) aka telephone over the internet. Here's a site I ran across that measures your internet connection to see how well it will work with Voip. http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/

President-elect Obama has apparently pledged to appoint a National CIO. Considering the impact technology is having on our society, this is a wonderful idea, and overdue. A website has even been created to allow you to vote on what you believe are the most critical technology issues this CIO should address. I happen to agree with, and voted for, the current #1 choice : Ensure the internet is accessible and network neutral. The cable and phone companies have a unique opportunity. They get to engineer their own demise. Both sell broadband to their customers. For my cable company, it means they have doubled the revenue they get from me each month. And DSL customers are providing more money to their phone companies. These companies love this. Each is using the increased broadband coming into your home to try and put the other out of business. Cable companies are selling phones using VoIP , and my phone company is wiring their customers with FIOS (fiber) as fast as they can and then

I suspect a lot of this blog is going to about my adventures, and misadventures with technology. Technology is moving so fast that a persons point of view is skewed by their age. Therefore it is important I think to give readers an idea of where I am coming from technology wise. When I graduated from high school, there was but one telephone company. You couldn't hook up any equipment to the phone lines unless they sold or rented it to you. Video games had just come out. They had plastic overlays that went over the tv screen to make the borders of the game. Video tape recorders existed only in TV stations, not in homes yet. A few years before, a TV series that ran for only a couple years forecast days when we'd have communicators in our pockets, video stored on small silver disks, devices that could stun someone, engines that would propel us faster then the speed-of-light and teleporters. A bright future we figured we'd never see. The first three on that list are her

What's this? Another new blog no one will ever read? Maybe. Hopefully not. Stay tuned. I have diverse interests : gadgets, technology, life hacking, history, reading, and more. Maybe one of mine, is one of yours.