You Can Cut The Cord

The proliferation of mobile phones is nothing short of mind boggling. I don’t consider myself old, but I can remember growing up in a house with one phone line and one phone. That phone was a “party line.” For those who may not know what a “party line” was, ask someone over 55. The phone was black and the phone company’s rules prevented anyone tampering with or adding a non-Bell extension phone under pain of Federal prosecution. Have things changed!

Today, that regular telephone and phone line are disappearing as many of us have decided that we only need our mobile phone. I bet you know of several people who use only a mobile phone and have dropped their Cincinnati Bell land line. For sure with many mobile plans offering features such as call waiting, three way calling, free long distance and integrated voice mail as part of the standard package, why pay for each of these features twice with both a land line and mobile line?

There are downsides of using a mobile phone as your only line when you are at home. Many of us drop the phone on the kitchen counter when we come home. We have our charger there, and if we remember, we charge it occasionally so our conversations will continue uninterrupted the next day. When the mobile phone rings we have to run to the kitchen. Déjà View from the 1960s. Also, long conversations using the small mobile phone are often uncomfortable and who wants to walk around the house all the time with a Bluetooth thing-a-ma-jig stuck in your ear?

There are devices available that makes using a mobile phone at home as your sole connection to the outside world much more convenient. The devices allow you to use all the existing telephones in your home as you do now. The difference is they connect to your mobile phone instead of your land line. The “brains” of the device is a docking station to which you connect your mobile phone. The docking station connects to the existing telephone wires in your home making all the telephones “extensions” to the mobile phone. You no longer need the land line. All the features that you have on your mobile phone are now available on the extensions. The docking station also serves as a charger for your mobile phone.

You can find these devices at some electronics stores, Amazon.com and other online retailers. The XLink ITC-BTTN is available from intellitouch. Another company, PhoneLabs, offers the Dock-N-Talk. Both cost about $150. You will find other models from RCA and Motorola on line.
Most connect with your phone either with a cable (sold separately) or via Bluetooth. Once connected it is hard to tell the difference between a regular line and a the mobile line. One thing to remember though, is that the docking station requires AC power, so when the power is out you can only use the mobile phone without any of the extensions.

If you are considering dumping your home phone land line, you should take a look at adding one of these docking stations.

Broadband Access Critical

A recent development in Europe caught my attention this week. The government of Finland is requiring all telecommunications companies serving that country to offer a minimum of 1 megabit per second (mb/s) Internet access to all citizens no matter if they live in cities or in isolated rural locations. By 2015 the government plans for this minimum to be expanded to 100 mb/s. For perspective, the 1 mb/s is about what you get from a standard Cincinnati Bell DSL line - if that service is available to you, and in rural areas it is not.

Finland is not alone in adopting these “broadband as a right” mandates. The United Nations is promoting this concept heavily as it sees the new communications available via broadband to be as important to countries as good roads, electricity and clean water.

Over the past two years I have mentioned several times in this column that the US continues to fall behind many countries of the world in the availability of new telecommunications technologies for ALL its citizens. I have also opined about the high cost of the services we do have.

Among the countries of the world, the United States is the only industrialized nation without a national policy to promote high speed broadband. This may be one of the reasons that the US is 23rd in the world with 60% of us having high speed service. South Korea still leads the world with 95% penetration.
There seems to be some movement to address this situation. In February, the Federal Communications Commission is slated to submit a national plan to Congress. It will not be inexpensive. The FCC reports that expanding the service will require subsidies and investments of as much as $350 billion. With so many critical initiatives facing the nation, such as health care reform and education improvement, it is unlikely that such an investment will get much traction in Congress. I, for one, hope that it does get the attention it deserves.
Daily, each of us experiences more and more uses of a robust broadband connected economy. The ATM where you get your cash and the gas pump where you fill your car rely on this network. Increasingly, the news you read and the instruction your kids get in school will require greater and greater capacities of our broadband networks. For these networks not to be available to all citizens no matter their geographic location sets up a “have” vs “have not” society. Such a situation will not serve the US well as we compete in a worldwide interconnected economy.
In the past our government has developed policies to expand the electric power grid to unserved rural areas, phone service to isolated communities and a network of interstate highways to connect communities large and small. The expansion of the broadband network needs to follow these same Federal initiatives.

Thin TV Requires a Thick Wallet

Last week I discussed the use of LED (light emitting diodes) in home lighting and how these energy efficient replacements for Mr. Edison’s bright idea were beginning to become available and affordable. I thought that this week we could look at another application of LED technology that is receiving a lot of buzz in the consumer electronics arena of late.

Joining the LCD, Liquid Plasma, and DLP TV screen options is LED based display technology. These TVs have only recently been showing up in any great numbers in retail stores but as prices fall they very well might become the standard for TVs.

Most LED TVs on the market do not use LEDs to actually render the picture. Rather, they use LEDs to backlight the traditional LCD screen. Older LCD models used fluorescent lights or other older technology light sources for this task. LEDs, because of their very low energy consumption and very long life, are a better fit. Also they can be more precisely controlled to turn on and off, allowing deeper “blacks” and more vivid colors.

So is the picture really that much better? It depends on the eye of the beholder and whether the TV set has been set up correctly when fist installed. My opinion is that there really is not much of a difference in the actual picture quality between a traditional LCD set and an LED set.

For sure there will be a significant reduction in power consumption and the LEDs should remain bright much longer than the fluorescent LCD models. Even with this better efficiency it is unlikely that most consumers will be able to save enough on their Duke bill to pay the difference in price of the LED set over the standard LCD or Plasma models.

One of the “Wow” features of LED TVs is the thin profile. A large 50” screen can look like a picture frame with a depth of less than one inch. While that is great for your “know- it-all,” “have-it-all” neighbor to regale you with at the next Super Bowl party, in reality, who cares. Remember that “thin” profile comes with the need for a “thick” wallet. LED TVs are very expensive right now.

With manufacturing capacity increasing, look for LED sets to drop in price as to be competitive with other models. Right now, unless you are one of those “gotta have the newest and greatest” kind of people, wait to buy.

LED Home Lighting Not Far Off

Energy conservation, carbon footprints and all things green have taken on a higher priority recently. Many of us are aware of the need to change our behavior to assure future generations a sustainable environment, but the rapid changes in technologies often leave us confused and uncertain how to respond. One of the areas that has been getting a lot of attention is lighting. Lighting for homes, offices and businesses accounts for a substantial amount of our electrical generating capacity and thus our use of natural resources and, in many cases, increased carbon emissions.

With all the attention being given to this problem, it is no surprise that there has been a steep rise in the acceptance of compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) over Edison’s incandescent bulb. Perhaps you received some discount coupons in the mail from Duke Energy offering steep discounts for CFLs. They have been around for several years and do save energy. Some down sides are the light output seems harsh to many and they take a minute or two to reach full brightness when first switched on. Perhaps more disturbing is that each bulb has a tiny amount of mercury. This makes the disposal of CFLs problematic. Don’t just put them out for the Rumpke guy to take away.

There is a whole new generation of lighting now becoming available based on LED technology. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. LEDs were first developed in the 1920s, but their use as a lighting source only became popular in the 1960s when they began to be used as indicator lights on stereos and other electronic devices. Beginning in the 1990s we saw applications such as automobile tail lights and even Christmas tree lights. They were slow to be developed into practical and affordable products for home and office lighting. That is changing quickly.

There are several companies who have introduced replacement lamps for home use in lamps, ceiling fixtures and other applications based on LED technology. The benefits are outstanding. LEDs use a fraction of energy than used by even the best CFL, they have no mercury and they will last years. The bad news is that they are still very expensive with a LED equivalent of a 60 watt incandescent bulb priced at about $40.

When CFLs first hit the market, they were pricey but as consumer acceptance increased the price dropped. Expect the same to happen with LEDs. It may well not be practical for many of us to run out and replace all our home lighting with LEDs right now, but I think it is a safe bet to expect that within five years LEDs will be an affordable and environmentally prudent choice.

A Whole New Type of Radio

Many radio stations, both commercial and non-commercial, stream their broadcasts on the Internet. Thousands of stations “broadcasting” from Cincinnati to Katmandu, can be received anywhere a high speed Internet connection can be established. Most people listen to these stations using their computer. You can walk through many offices and hear most any type of music or entertainment running on the same computers that are being used for word processing or data entry. Much of this listening is discouraged by employers, since if enough people are streaming audio programming it can bog down the company’s network. But that’s another column.

There are options to using a standard computer to listen. There is a whole new breed of “radios” now available that can receive any Internet radio station without using a computer. They are called “Internet” or “WiFi” radios. These devices in reality are special purpose computers designed to look and feel like any AM or FM radio. The big difference is they use the Internet to receive the programming.

Instead of the tedious array of steps needed to listen to an Internet station using a regular computer …turn it on, let it boot up, run your browser, find your station etc., the Internet radio has an on/off switch and a selector that can quickly go to any “station” you have preset. It looks, feels and operates like the radios you now have. It also uses less energy than the standard computer.

The current selection of radios is still limited and those that are available are a bit pricey as is usually the case with new electronic gizmos. I found a few models at Best Buy for between $130 and $250. Several Internet sites like Amazon.com also have a selection. If they do take hold however, they can significantly change the radio landscape since geographic coverage and audience for any station is no longer predicated on the power of the traditional transmitter. In essence, a radio station operating from your basement can have the same potential coverage as a behemoth like WLW.

When high speed WiFi service is a standard feature in cars, we may see an explosion in this technology as it could quickly make the satellite radio services obsolete. Already the selection of programming is almost overwhelming. A quick Google search found not only the traditional WGUC and WLW stations but very targeted services like “ All Sherlock Holmes, All The Time.”

If you, like many of us, are tiring of the bombastic commercial radio airwaves and you can’t find what you are looking for on non-commercial radio, Internet radio might fill the bill.

Not Magic But It Works

It may not be “magic” since you do need to use the phone ”jack.” Nevertheless for some the “magicJack” could be something that can save you money on your monthly phone service and long distance calling. Perhaps you have seen the advertisements about this product which has been around for about three years. It is a small device that plugs into your home computer and allows you to make virtually free phone calls to and from anywhere in the US and Canada.

magicJack is one of several products that use VOIP technology. (Voice Over Internet Protocol) The first year will cost you about $40 and each year thereafter about $20. So it can be a great deal. There are a few things that you need to understand however.

First of all the low cost is somewhat overstated since you do need to have high speed Internet access in your home. So to really compare your savings over a traditional telephone line from Cincinnati Bell you need to factor in the monthly charge you are paying for Road Runner or Cincinnati Bell’s DSL service.

Another potential downside, especially in our area that has way more than our share of power outages, is that if you loose power, your phone will not work. In the dark ages before mobile phones, this could have been a real issue. Now, since many of us have one or more cell phones, losing the landline is much less of an issue.

While they promise that you will be able to use your current telephone number with magicJack service, it is still not possible so you will get an new 10 digit number. Anyone calling you will need to use this new number; some friends may be confused as it looks like a long distance number even though they are next door. I don’t see this as a big issue since we seem to be getting used to the fact that the area code, once an indicator of your geographic location, is no longer a telltale place marker with the proliferation of mobile phones.

Like many VOIP services, you will need to register your address and phone number with the 911 service. This is very important and the user’s guide will take you through this process.

The package comes with free directory assistance, free call waiting and free voice mail. While I have not installed the software myself, others indicate that it was mostly painless. You can plug in multiple phones as well as the base station for your cordless phones.

One major downside I see is that you must have your computer on 24/7. This seems to fly in the face of our need to conserve energy.

Who Wouldathunk?

A week or so ago, Frank Batten, a media icon died.. You may not have seen the obituary but for sure you have seen his progeny. The network he launched is seen in most every home in the nation and has become a staple of our everyday lives. No, it isn’t one of the “big four” broadcast networks. Not PBS nor any of the all news channels. HBO or Showtime it is not. Mr. Batten launched The Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel, now taken for granted as a respected and vital source of information, was the source of ridicule and jokes in the early 1980s when it signed on from modest digs in Atlanta. Late night commedians joked that his next channel would be the “Time” channel.
The early years of the operation proved less than profitable and there were several times that cash flow almost made the service go dark. The problem was that the cable systems needed to provide carriage of this and other niche services were just getting off the ground so viewers and sponsors were as scarce as a Typhoon on the Ohio river.

Today The Weather Channel is seen by millions every day and is the second most viewed cable service right behind TBS. In fact, before his death Batten sold the company for more than $1 billion and most recently the channel changed hands again for the tidy sum of $3.5 billion paid by General Electric, owner of NBC. Now you know why they want you to “Wake up with Al.”
Many of us start our day looking at the channel on TV or online. Should I start the grill or is that yellow blip on the radar going to wash out our party? I bet I can get nine holes in, the rain is still near Indianapolis. Either of these sound familiar?

The growth of the Weather Channel is indicative of the sweeping changes in television and other electronic media. It gave rise to a plethora of other targeted services like DIY, The Food Channel, HGTV and any of a dozen “history” channels. It led the way for TV channels to move from targeting general audiences to offering content to an audience with a specific need and interest.

So perhaps Bob Dylan was wrong when he sang, “You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.”