Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

I have been with Rogers for quite some time and I am a bit of a phone junkie. I can’t afford to change it all that often but when my renewal comes up I like to hop on and check out what’s available. With the release of the Nexus I was very curious to know how much it would cost so that I could remain on my current 3 year contract and not renew it due to a phone upgrade. That would give me a better choice when in a couple of years because I wouldn’t be penalized for switching. Blah blah blah right?

So off I head to the Google page and it’s quite a nice looking device. I had an HTC in the past but it sucked because it ran Windows mobile on it and it was an older version. But I liked the hardware itself so I think the fact that HTC made the hardware is a good thing. The Nexus is running Google Android and if you have seen the Motorola Droid then you have seen what it can do. The price tag for this thing is $530 USD with no contract. That’s playing fair if you ask me. Sometimes phones of this caliber come out at $600, $700 or more! It’s nice to see it in the $500 range.

Now that we agree (right?) that this is a nice looking device – WAIT! If you are an iPhone user in the US looking to switch to something else but stick with AT&T, this isn’t the phone for you. If you are a Rogers customer and looking for something else, this isn’t the phone for you. Google has gone with 3G frequencies that are not supported by either carrier… boooo! They had to make a choice so I don’t fault them for it – it’s just as much my fault for being a Rogers subscriber :)

An excerpt from their “Does this phone work with my SIM?” page clearly points out the two carriers:

The Nexus One’s antenna supports four GSM radio frequencies (850/900/1800/1900) and three 3G/UMTS Bands – 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900). These cover most major GSM mobile providers worldwide; however, the 3G band used by AT&T and Rogers is not supported. For questions about the bands supported by your mobile service provider, please contact your provider directly. You may also consult a list of GSM coverage worldwide that is maintained by the mobile trade organization GSM World.

So a cool phone that I can’t have. Incidentally I can’t have the iPhone either due to my corporate contract – another boo! I have decided for now to keep my doors open. I will check my Rogers site every once in a while and see what upgrades they offer. So far no Android 2.x so I am holding out.

Geek on!

It is very common today for companies to create a 1-800 sales or support phone number that includes their name or a catchy phrase. For instance the major satelite provider here in Canada (Bell ExpressVu) has 1-800-SKY-DISH as their sales/support line.

Recently I wanted to dial a number like this from my Blackberry and low and behold there are no phone letters on the Blackberry keyboard. This isn’t something that you have to do everyday but it is something that will frusstrate you when you need it. If you have enough patience and you remember that A starts on the number 2 then you might be able to figure out the corresponding numbers. Put that into a real world situation and most of us are going to be cheesed off that we need to bother with this and just won’t bother.

After some searching I have found the solution! It is so simple that it is almost embarrasing how easy it is. When you dial your number and want to enter letters simply hold down the ALT key. The phone number must start with a digit so 1-800-LETTERS would work but CALL-897 would not.

Great feature, too bad it was a hard one to locate! Happy Crackberry people!

I have been looking for a good plugin for people who access the blog from a mobile device for quite some time. It is almost mandatory today to make sure that people’s experience on their mobile device is just as good as if they were sitting at their computer.

Today I downloaded PDA Plugin For WordPress from http://imthi.com/wp-pda. The author has done a good job of updating the experience based on what mobile device you have. After the installation I immediately tested this on multiple phone types. I am lucky enough to have enough friends around me with different phone types to make this possible.

Based on my tests I like what I see so far. On a Blackberry it was nice and clean; having most of the heavy graphics removed and the site reformatted to fit the screen size. Having a Blackberry Bold myself this was good to see and it’s something that I would definitely use to view a site such as mine. Next I took a loot at the site on a Windows Mobile phone and was surprised at how well it did at making it look like the Blackberry. I have seen the Windows Mobile browser screw up so many websites that were not designed for mobile browsers, but with this plugin the site was nicely displayed. The last test for me was on an iPhone and I must say that they did a great job. Typical to a lot of sites who are making their pages specifically for the iPhone the PDA Plugin For WordPress automatically formatted it the same way. I love how the menus no longer even look like HTML, they are iPhone-esque which is what iPhone users want.

I am very happy with this plugin and hope that it brings more people over to the site. You can now take a look at a clean site from a bus, train, car (passenger of course) or where ever you might be while waiting for something.

Happy surfing!

Okay, many people have been asking for this for quite some time and there seemed to have been a push when the US released their version of the list but ours seems to suck. Apparently there are a ton of exceptions. According to an article on the CBC website any number of groups can still call you.

“Charities, political parties, polling firms, newspapers and companies that have done business with an individual over the past 18 months can continue to make unsolicited phone calls. Canadians who do not wish to receive such calls can ask at the time of a call to be removed from the organization’s list, or contact them ahead of time and request the same.”

I suggest you give the article a read if you are a fellow Canadian. Then forget about using the service because the investment of your time in adding yourself will possibly out weight the time lost on hanging up on the telemarketer.

I must say that I prefer to get the one call, tell them I am not interested, ask them to remove my name from their list and then I log into my Primus account and perminantely block their number :)

Oh, and don’t forget that you will have to call them back ever 3 years to keep your phone number, cell phone number or fax number off that list.

Hey… maybe we can waste a couple of billion dollars on this like we did with gun registry that is a more of a bureaucracy registry than anything!

I have been a cordless phone user for the majority of my life. Given that I am in my early 30′s it stands to reason that most people my age have been as well. There will always be that one story of a friend in a group that still has a single rotary phone in the house… makes me smile.

My parents went through a number of brands and so have my wife and I since being together. Our latest model is more than a year old but still in very good shape. It was a really popular model at the time made by Panasonic, came with 3 handsets, 3 chargers and the handsets would also act as intercom units to each other. The set that my wife and I had before that was also a Panasonic but it was a 2 unit model with similar features. We actually still have the other set but their batteries are finished and that was the main reason for the upgrade.

The big question and the reason for which I am writing this article is “How come my old 900mhz phones are so much better that my new 5.4 Ghz phones?”. Well I did some google searching and some investigating and from what they say in this article it seems that there is a few more variables than just the frequency.

“There are 3 main factors that affect the quality and strength of a cordless phone’s signal: traffic, how the frequency handles obstructions, and output wattage.” says Jim Hanks, the author of the article. That means that even though most of the marketing surrounding a phone upgrade or their performance is concentrated on the frequency, there is a real possibility that you don’t see an improvement or perhaps even worse; you notice deterioration.

This is what we have seen with our newest of the phone sets. Both Panasonic, both very good phones, but we notice that the audio quality and signal distance at which is operates is much better with our old 900mhz units.

The reason I brought this up is because we all talked about the frequency questions 5-10 years ago but if you are looking for a phone now, I recommend buying from a reputable store that will accept a return if you are not satisfied.

Happy calling, don’t let the phone bills get out of hand!