Through the kind people from Palm (and their PR agency Edelman) I received a nice Treo 680 to play with for a while to see how I like it (and then I have to send it back). This all started at Blogher Business, where they had a stall set up with devices and info. Up until now, I’ve been managing on my feature-less Pay as You Go phone but was planning on upgrading and was not sure what to get. This gives me a chance to try something out and see how it suits me. The phone I had in the UK was OK, but I didn’t use nearly half the stuff it was capable of, partly because I wanted it to do online things and I was always aware of the cost involved. Now, I’ve upgraded to a all you can eat data plan and the incentive is different – I’m paying for it already so I better use it 😉

The only requirement is that I use the Treo and I blog about it. So whether it’s good or bad, you’ll here about it. I’ll also be using the camera (still and video) to take records. It means I’ll be able to take more shots than if I had to lug around the SLR all the time; some will go on Flickr and some here.

Opening up the box, i found plug attachments (one for every style as far as I can see). the charger is a good design, you can just slip the plug prongs on and off to change it for the country you are in. There was also a headset and a USB connector (through which you can also charge the device). the headset is fine, but I tend to work my way through them quickly; also why don’t device manufacturers allow you to plug in a standard jack when they give you a music player. The only thing missing from the box was the software CD; it also did not come with an instruction manual, but the online documents and the ondevice tutorial were fine. The lack of software was solved through downloading straight from the site.

All of done today is set up the email client, synched with Gmail through POP and installed Goosync, to allow me to match up my calendar. Although I can use gmail mobile, I quite like the client version, makes it slightly easier to manage. The only issue I had is I needed to restart the pop connection on gmail; it wanted to download everything since November, which led to it freezing up on me. Not the best idea, so restarting it from today seemed a far better idea.

If you had gone to NYC Mobile Monday or just like developing things for mobile phones, you may be interested in the launch of Vodafone’s Betavine Developer network.

I guess Apple never got round to signing those licensing agreements with Cisco for use of their trademark term iPhone. And now they are suing.

“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” said Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco. “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.

Update 18/1: Google likes this site for Iphone lawsuit and as I don’t actually have a lot of content here’s some links that look good:

• the orginal Cisco Blog post is linked above.
• Apple Insider has statements from both parties
• Pretty similar news articles can be found at iPodObserver, ItWire, the Wireless Weblog, TMCNet, etc, etc – there’s a fair few posts about Apple callignthe suit silly.
• ignore the sites with iplawsuit in the domain – they look and feel (at least today) like spam sites that are just reprinting content with a lot of ads attached.
• I go to the BBC for mainstream news. But there’s not too much new in that over the other online news sites.

But, after poring through a few of these, after you have read a few of the news articles, they are all pretty much saying the same. I guess we have to wait for news.

To be honest, I’m not really into phones. I have a pretty good one for the UK, all 3g and live tv and browsing etc but the data plan sucked and it’s no use where I am. And my US phone is just about manages to phone and text, there nothing else really to it. So looking at the iPhone coverage I can drool over the design but as for the functionality, if I bought it it’s just end up being a big phone and ipod I can’t put in my pocket, so would sit in the bottom of my bag getting scratched.

And once you get past the design, what is really new about the phone. As Robert says, there’s always a reality distortion field when it comes to Apple announcements. The range of functionality is not too hot as far I can read; Tom has a good piece looking at what it can do compared to his current phone. So again, design good, features not so good. There’s back and forth on a mobile marketing mailing list about design vs functionality, especially about what appears to be the closed nature of the system, without the ability to add functions, tools and widgets. Then again, lack of functionality never stopped the iPod. Would I buy it – probably not. Cool gadget, too expensive for what I would actually use it for.

If you are determined to get one and you want to find out how long you have to wait – iphonecountdown.com has the numbers for you. From Mike via Dan.

One of the posts I did find in trawling the new Technorati was Devanshu’s 95 Theses of Geek Activism. A great list og things that you should be concerned about, tying in well with many of the talks I attended over the weekend.

Jello Biafra gave a a superb 2 hour keynote, focusing on the theme fromthe day before of Provacy is Dead and covering his former bandmembers, his feelings towards the FBI, US foreign and home policy, Oprah, the Media Marketing Accountability Act, the COPE act and net neutrality. This, combined with the talk previously from Robert Steele makes me think (despite not knowing many of the political and national references) that I’m not paranoid enough.

My domain is being used in a spam email, so I’m currently sitting on about 3000 returned/out of office mails. Not the best problem to have. Now I have to go through and delete everything 🙁

I see that Warner Brothers are going to be providing downloads of movies and TV for about the same price as the DVDs at about the same time. They plan to use BitTorrent as vehicle.

No need to manufacture a disk and packaging, no need to distribute, no need to provide the retailer with a cut, maybe no extras, can only play on one computer so no backup when it goes wrong. And they are charging the SAME PRICE!!!! This is called taking the piss.

On Tuesday, I went off to the Swedish Beers night, a mobile networking event. Douglas from Sponge ws talking about mobile groups and marketing. The group Jane’s Addiction were given mobiles on a tour; fans were encouraged to sign up for a text group and the band sent updates tot he group whilst on the tour. As well as general updates, they also used it for a form of flash-mobbing. After playing at Brixton Academy, the band announced a back of the theartre, post-gig acoustic set, and also announced a Covent Garden busking concert, which lasted til the police moved them on. This is a geat example of engagement with fans.

On Monday, I went along to a London 2.0 meeting. As usual with many of these meetups, the first time go along you’re never quite sure who you are looking for. But this time it was slightly easier. The venue chosen was near to the law courts so was full of suits; the meetup group, being primarily in the technical area, weren’t, making them slightly ewasier to spor than usual.

I spent some time with Ben discussing reevoo, a UK consumer product review site. It has both formal reviews and customer reviews, collected via feedback emails/interviews and from blogs. The customers of the company are the retailers, who pay for feedback, but the reviews are not sanitised.

There were a number of demos presented. The photo below shows everyone watching the demo from Python Hosting from Remi, who demo’d a very cool install control panel with one-click installations of web app frameworks. From the ooohh, arhhs and offers to pay moeny there and then, it was a popular demo. The other demo was from Phil, who showed off Protest, a test application that streamlines the process.

The BBC ia running an article about the spread of wifi in the wild, with hotspots extending to form zones and more and more people getting wifi in their homes. What it doesn’t mention is the conflict between paid services and free wifi. Companies ever increasing their coverage is one thing, but without a single type of sign-on, having to run multiple accounts toget wifi can be a problem. There are small efforts to go down a municipal route, but these are not yet widespread. One move i see is similar to the way we use telephone wires. Almost all users are connected to the same physical network, but they can choose who provides the actual service and takes their money. I don’t see wifi becoming free and ubiquitous anytime soon in the UK, but the service model may be a way forward – I pay for my connection and I get the service whether from home or whist roaming.

Last night I attended a networking event run by Women In Technology, with the topic of Flexibility in the workplace. There were 2 very different keynote speakers, a panel debate and then a chance to eat and drink and chat.

Eileen Brown was up first, talking about how technology helps her be flexibile in the workplace. With a 130 mile each way commute, she relies on being always connected – the phone is her friend. She’s helped by a culture at Microsoft that has set up all the tech required to be able to work anywhere. She did more in a 15 minute speach to explain the benefits of the anytime/anyplace MS office than any of the poor dinosaur ads. Some great numbers in explaining the reach of devices – MS apparently have just over 5 PCs for each employee.

Second speach was from Ray Testa of Lehman brothers. A lot, lot drier, looking at the policies and procedures the company has. Not too much that I could take from that. The following panel answered pre-submitted questions from the audience (no interaction, no chance to reflect and challenge the speakers in the public forum). The general theme was about strategies to convince the companies to do flexible working, about the change management required to adopt to a culture where there is less command and control and more trust.

One very annoying thing, picked up in later conversations was a few of the assumptions of the panel. On being asked about balancing career and child care, the answers were along the lines of get a nanny or get your partner to stay at home. One of the women from Accenture mentioned a survey of successful female Partners in the firm – the one thing they all had in common was a stay at home husband. But very few people have the salary to support a family on one income or to employ a nanny, or have a partner that would be prepared to stay at home.

This event was a completely different event from the Girl Geek Dinners. Both women-focused, both opportunities to network. But the WiT is the corporate, seminar style, controlled panel, looking at bigger business, looking at supporting in a formal way; organised through a paid team Girl Geek Dinner is your small web start up, flexible, changing organisers, locations, M.O’s. There’s very little cross over between the 2 events in terms of attendees. I definitely prefer the later way.