Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecomsTelecoms news, gadgets reviews and the Irish web.

One company I will absolutely never deal with again is Dell
Its actually practically impossible to contain myself whilst writing this post. Their customer service is beyond a joke, their helplines will run you from pillar to post and here I am yet again listening to Kate Bush for an hour.
What’s my sin?
I gave Dell my money
One of the guys here needed a new laptop and picked out a Dell which we ordered over 20 days ago, initially I got no confirmation of the order and had to go through an hour of Tears for Fears, Woman in Chains for that and was told that 100% laptop would be delivered on the 20th.
No sign of it yesterday and I am now on my 6th person at Dell customer service today and I am being told it was shipped on the 14th but they cant confirm the address it was shipped to.
Hey Dell, wake the fuck up
we have spent over €10,000 with you guys over past three years
Try to figure out where order 572647277 is gone, someone here needs it and by the way guys, love your waiting music

I can’t believe we are back here again in a discussion regarding Apple blocking voice over 3G.
Voice over 3G is an appalling standard, it just doesn’t work without massive compression.
If any iPhone user runs a standard ping test I would be shocked to see ping times of under 100ms, in fact I have just run one now and am getting 146ms on Vodafone Ireland.
This speed is just not good enough for voice and Skype know it, Apple know it, in fact most bloggers/trade experts know it too.
It makes a great headline though and that’s the reason we keep hearing about it.
Its old news, it doesn’t work, lets leave it at that
Seriously, who needs a standard where you have to stand still to make a call
Not me

During interview with All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher at CES Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said three of the most incredible things I have ever heard, not only in telephony but in business in general.
Q:How does Palm (PALM) view Apple (AAPL)?

“We don’t pay that much attention to Apple….I know it sounds really strange,”

says Rubinstein.

“Really?” Kara replies. “You don’t worry about the iPhone?”

“No, I really don’t,”

Rubinstein answers.

“I don’t believe you,” says Kara, telegraphing a sentiment I imagine is widely held among the audience. Rubinstein is sometimes referred to as “the father of the iPod.” Hard to imagine he doesn’t have at least a passing interest in the evolution of the device he helped create.

Rubinstein:

“I don’t have an iPhone. I’ve never even used one.”

Obviously The whole word has reacted pretty outraged at this, after all Rubinstein is credited as being the father of the iPod.
I think it also a degree of ignorance, for a CEO of an Apple competitor not to have even examined their device shows a complete contempt and guess what, it kind of shows.
Time for Palm to starting giving away more than flights.

As I said in my last post 2010 involves some big changes for me.
I have this urge to get fit and not to die young, its that serious.
One of the really cool devices which I have purchased is Withings a wifi enabled scales which pushes your weight to where you decide.
I have decided its going to be on Twitter so I will weigh myself everyday for the next year and for the first time announce to the world tomorrow how out of shape I really am.
Anyone who knows me is aware that whilst being the greatest gadget freak on the planet I hate complexity, if it doesn’t work out of the box I am not interested.
Withings was simple although UPS left us down on delivery time but I had left enough of a window to get ready.
Its a beautiful device, has a real cool online portal ,connects to my wifi with no issue and also has an iPhone app
I love the device I wont like the posting to Twitter and Facebook though but I can get over that.
The gym starts on Monday evening but the bike is all serviced for tomorrow and the patches are good to go.
If you have any New Year resolutions I wish you all the best with them.
Have a fantastic 2010

To celebrate the arrival in Cork of Jackie Danicki I am organizing a soiree
We are going to meet in The Coal Quay Bar @ 7.30pm tonight and move on for there for a snack somewhere
I really hope you can make it.

My faith always seems to be stronger around Christmas, I was christened and raised as a catholic
Its probably out of habit but we always go to midnight mass as a family and I really enjoy the carol’s.
Today is the first Christmas Eve in a long time where my sons 16 and 22 refused to go to confession with me.
I went any-ways but more out of habit than any deep understanding.
I am just back from the city having met Damien Mulley, John Peavoy and Liam Casey for a Christmas Eve coffee and mentioned to my boys about Mass tonight.
A resounding no was what I received.
I am sad but that’s their decision.
Those pervert priests have a lot to be sorry for including a dad who wont be taking his boys to church tonight.
A sad sad night.

This is a tough one for me to write but hopefully it will help.
In July 2004 I was 164 pounds and had a 32 inch waist, trained in a gym 6 days a week at 6am and didn’t smoke.
Today I really don’t know what I weigh (I am actually afraid to weigh myself), smoke like a trooper,am tired a lot and am sick and tired of not being able to buy the clothes I love.
This is the life of a tech start-up founder I think, I see lots of people out of shape in this industry and its doesn’t bode well for my future as I am now hitting an age (45) where its harder to hit the gym.
So for Christmas from friends and family this year I gave a list for the first time ever, I am going to quit smoking and get fit using the latest in technology which hopefully will turn up under my tree.
I know the diet so that part is easy and I know the gym routines having trained for many years so on the 1st of January I am going to sort this out for once and for all.
So what’s out there?
A gym five minutes from my Dublin apartment
Nike Plus from my boys as a Christmas present.
Withings will be here before Christmas (a present from one of my friends) so when I start Withings will auto post to Twitter, I know, too much information but if I really believe in Twitter/blogging this crowdsourcing should really help, I need all the help I can get in this.
Smoking will be patches, they worked before so hopefully they will do the trick again.
Last piece in the jigsaw is Philips DirectLife, this is unavailable in Europe but I have reached out to Lukas Kreutzer of Philip’s PR to get my hands on a demo model, David Pogue writes pretty positively on it so if David says it well it must be true.
So that’s it
A new year and a new beginning, I got sober through AA and hopefully I will get fit though technology, crowdsourcing and willingness to change.
I am willing to try, hope you guys are willing to help/support?.
By the way if I was a start up I would be closely watching the get fit using technology space there are some incredible companies out there

Some interesting news floating around regarding Apple and its interest in purchasing iCall a USA VOIP provider.
iCall allows iPhone users when in a hotspot to divert calls off of the GSM network and onto the WiFi network. I have been testing it for a few week now and quality appears to be as good as cellular and at the prices being bandied about it seems like Apple are buying it for the domain as much as for the business.
Obviously Apple are in the next 12 month going to end exclusive carriers deals for the iphone and this may be a play for Apple to become your defacto carrier of choice when in a wifi zone.
Devicescape recently conducted a survey and found that 82% of those surveyed wanted their service provider to offer special 3G/Wi-Fi packages.
It looks like Apple could become that service provider and if you could pay for that airtime through your iTunes account even better in Apple’s view as it practically elimanate the fraud issue which plagues voip providers.
The real interesting part of the puzzle in the iCall offering is that it detects incoming calls and routes them to Voip if its available saving your minutes usage if you are in a country like the USA where you pay for inbound and outbound calls.
This is a worrying time for companies who have bet the house on being the wifi/voice provider on the iPhone/iPod Touch

Ashton Kutcher is the cover story on this weeks Fast Company magazine.
Ashton and his cohorts in Katalyst media (yes the url does resolve to a Facebook page), Sarah Ross and Jason Goldberg are really the worst part of social media, get your numbers and then use a megaphone to shout at your followers.
“If we in this industry don’t figure something out, we’re going to go the way of the music industry and be cannibalized by the Web,” says Kutcher. “It’s really a war to make money.”
(whatever happened to Blah Girls?)

Interesting factoid though, below are my friends Jackie Danicki and Bhaskar Roy teaching Ashton and Sarah how to tweet just over a year ago, so who are the real geniuses
You wonder why I hate social media consultants so much?

The last 12 months have been pretty manic.
Lots of stuff I couldnt make including Techcrunch 50 and now looks like Le Web is going to go the way of Techcrunch 50.
This year has been short on events, I made it to Simply Zesty winter camp for two hours, great bunch of people and an excellent presentation by Don O Leary of Google, made it to Ecomm and mobile 2.0 Barcelona.
I think its my longest away from San Francisco in four years, 8 months and who is counting (me) and now I live in Dublin Monday to Friday.
I was feeling a bit cranky this weekend until I saw Hugh’s post “Had I known”