Hey, I love what HTML5 will be able to do. In the future. Flash is pretty bloated, yes. And while I personally never had any problems with Flash on my Macbook Pro, I believe that others do. But you know what Steve, your iPad is going to sell NOW. So we want to watch Hulu and all the other Flash-based video sites on it NOW. Not in the future. NOW.

See, this is the difference between a mega corporation like Apple and us “little porn guys”. If we pulled this “we don’t like this format so we’re not supporting it” bullshit we’d be out of business. For Apple, not having Flash is a feature.

From a marketing perspective, Apple is God. Making a lack of something a feature and claiming this lack is to provide a better user experience (because choice just isn’t good for people, apparently) is pure gold – mostly because a lot of people actually buy into that nonsense.

As someone who constantly works with horizontally elongated timelines (editing and music production software mainly), NEC CRV43 would be fantastic to have. I was giddy when I got my first wide screen 24 inch monitor five years ago but this…oh my.

Let’s see what NEC’s competition can come up with. Either way, the price will come down. But can I wait that long? Hmmm….

Press release for the NEC CRV43 is here

You don’t have to. Ping.fm has got you covered – Ping.fm allows you to update your Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Wordpress, Blogger, Imeem, LinkedIn, and Delicious accounts (among many others) at once.

You can even update from your iPhone or laptop if you want.

Ping.fm is currently in beta so expect a glitch here and there.

If you don’t have a mobile device but don’t want to shell out the money for an iPhone and overpriced AT&T contracts, Ping.fm will happily give you a deal for a compatible device called Peek. It lets you email and of course “ping” (update) your social media sites on the go. I haven’t tried one of these gadgets, just letting you know it exists.

If you paid attention to the upcoming Palm Pre’s wireless induction charging option you may have gotten curious about this technology. Palm calls it the Touchstone, I call it the future of powering up our stuff.

So here is another  company I think will possibly be a big part of our future: Powermat.

Powermat makes wireless induction technology, I don’t know if they’re the only company to do so but in any event their technology is nothing short of astounding.

Watching Powermat’s demo videos we see how ordinary devices like cell phones, computers, and kitchen appliances can be powered without cables or batteries. The devices need a powermat receiver. The receiver will get its electricity wirelessly (YES OVER THE AIR!!!)  from the …uh…mat.

The mat is a very thin transmitter piece that you’ll put on the surface of your choosing. You can even integrate the mat into your walls or furniture and make it disappear. So you know that this astounding technology is absolutely real check out the demo videos below.

As a person who works with computers, video cameras, still cameras, and other electronics on a daily basis I get excited: imagine being on a shoot and your camera is constantly connected to the power grid, but without wires.

No more batteries! Hell, no more waiting for a device to charge because you can feed electricity straight to it – over the air. My fellow videographers, photographers, and gadget slaves will appreciate the new found freedom.

Check out Powermat’s wireless charging technology here. I’m sure other companies will follow with even more advanced and innovative wireless induction systems soon. Don’t fight it, it’s coming.

Powermat’s technology should be available in Fall 2009. The Palm Pre and its Touchstone wireless induction charger should be available very soon as well.

Powermat’s wireless charging technology demo video 1

Powermat’s Wireless Charging demo video 2

Note: I do not own stock or have any other financial interest in either Powermat or Palm Pre. Yet.

Powermat

Palm Pre

(image to the left stolen from Gizmodo. Hello, Giz. Love ya!)

Go to Engadget or Gizmodo for your fix. Warning: nothing too exciting here, new MacBooks look more like cheap toys and are still overpriced for what they deliver.

New touchpad is gigantic and doesn’t have buttons. Displays are rediculously reflective to get any serious work done with your lights on. Moving on.

BLU-RAY

Of more importance is Mr Jobs’ revelation that Blu-ray’s licensing is causing a lot of headaches and it looks like Apple is going to wait for these things to sort themselves out before they put major support behind it.

Kudos to Apple on that – I shuddered when Blu-ray became the chosen format of choice of movie studios (and therefore killed of any hopes for the HD DVD format to take off) because of one thing: licensing issues.

My fellow editors will undoubtedly have noticed the problem: you could happily release HD DVDs without any major licensing fees but Blu-ray (Sony) won’t allow this: you gotta pay a lot to release your stuff on Blu-ray.

Blu-ray looks just fine, specs are decent and all that. But the fact that it takes major money to pay for licensing fees effectively killed of all hopes of smaller studios to push out high definition DVDs. Bad. Bad. Bad.

I like to try new things, especially when they could mean more efficient and productive work.

A small portable device that lets me make phone calls from any phone from any computer sounded like it would fit the bill.

On my never ending quest to a more mobile and efficient office I decided to purchase and try the Magic Jack, a small USB-powered device that is promised to allow you to make phone calls via your computer and your existing broadband internet connection. Supposedly you plug in the Magic Jack into your USB port, plug in any analog phone and you can make calls.

The price for one entire year of free calls within the United States and Canada is around $20 plus one time shipping of the device.

The first 30 days are supposedly a risk free trial.

So unlimited long distance and local calls for twenty bucks, sounds great.

I ordered one device for testing purposes.

MAGIC JACK – in practical application

The Magic Jack arrived about a week after ordering. It came in a small box which included the Magic Jack plastic box, and a USB extender cable.

The device itself is small and neat looking, the little window lets you look at the circuitry which the nerd in me thinks is pretty cool. But the Magic Jack will be hidden behind the computer so looks don’t matter.

On to testing the Magic Jack’s functionality.

I took the Magic Jack and hooked up the extender (there was no room otherwise among my other stuff I have plugged on the back of the system I used for testing purposes).

Magic Jack – First Time Installation

The first time installing the device didn’t work at all. No dial tone, nothing. I went online, tried to log in to my Magic Jack account with the order information. Didn’t work.

I had to have them send me my password. With that new password and the email address I used during purchase as my login ID I was able to get into my account.

It said my Magic Jack device was disabled. No further explanation about this.

I noticed no phone number had been assigned to me and figured this might be the problem. It was – I selected my new Magic Jack phone number and my account then became enabled.

Nice but an explanation about this would have been even nicer.

—— Okay, now it’s time to use this thing for the first time…—–

After plugging in the device it installed a desktop icon. I clicked that icon and…oh no!…a software dial pad comes up.

Why a dial pad? Why is this thing installing additional software (or in this case a shortcut to the software located on the Magic Jack itself)?

I was expecting the device to work without any other software running.

More software means less system resources, more potential for driver conflicts, and in this case, an ugly ass interface with annoying animated Magic Jack ads.

I don’t want any icons cluttering my desktop or system tray. Since the dial pad software didn’t always load automatically after plugging in the Magic Jack I had to manually start it – just an added hassle I don’t need.

Magic Jacks’ ads don’t tell you that their software dial pad needs to be up for it to work.

I’m thinking maybe my device is defective so I began searching for answers on Magic Jack’s web site. Their FAQs are decent but didn’t address my particular issue, which confirmed my initial thought that I had a defective device.

Since I could not find any reference to this issue on their web site (http://www.magicjack.com) I hit up their 24 hour live support online.

Bad mistake.

I wasted close to one hour (57 minutes as per transcript which you can have emailed to yourself) with three different agents who apparently read off a script or are, for all I know, robots.

Instead of a simple yes-or-no answer to my question if it was normal for Magic Jack to require the dial pad software to be active and loaded on my desktop in order to work, the first agent had me jump through hoops – restart, download updates, reformat, unplug the Magic Jack, plug it back in (and again and again) and even re-configuring the device on their end.

Nothing helped. I still was unable to use the device without the dial pad software loaded.

Since agent #1 couldn’t help me I was transferred to agent #2. That one stopped responding after her introduction so I was auto-transferred to agent #3.

I restated my question: Can Magic Jack work without the dial pad software loaded?

Finally I got the answer: no, Magic Jack needs the software to be loaded.

Grrrr…why couldn’t I get this answer from the first agent?

So in summary, their dial pad software needs to be loaded. You can minimize it to the system tray but it needs to be on regardless.

Sounds like a small deal? Well, it’s not because that makes it about equal to Skype in terms of usability.

I wanted Magic Jack to be just that piece of hardware, without having to launch any software or using any more system resources. I want the phone to work without having to touch my keyboard, mouse or go into any damn menus to launch more software.

That’s how Magic Jack ads presented themselves and unfortunately that’s not true.

To make matters worse, the call quality of Magic Jack is horrendous. Think bad cell phone reception horrendous. I’m getting great broadband speeds from Cox Communications so that certainly wasn’t the issue.

Why Did I Try the Magic Jack?

I’ve had Voice over IP (VoIP) phone service from Lingo since 2005. Been pretty happy with it except for the past few months I keep losing dial tones and I thought instead of trying to get another router and putting up with Lingo’s increasing monthly fees I’d try Magic Jack, which promised to be like the best of worlds of Skype and VoIP phone service, for $20 bucks a year.

It sounded too good to be true and it’s clear now that it is.

Magic Jack – Review Summary

Bad call quality, requires to load software in order to use it, this software is quite buggy (at least on my machines), and the computer needs to be ON to work (this I knew but I could live with that if it weren’t for the other problems).

Overall, the live help agent was of little help and I decided to return the Magic Jack and get a refund. They require you to fill out a RMA form and go through their return steps.

I could have done that but frankly don’t want to invest any more time on this piece of junk so I write off my small “investment” of $30.00.

• Lesson learned – I bought into the good reviews from renown magazines and newspapers about Magic Jack. Bribed authors? Drunk reviewers? Who knows, fact is my experience with Magic Jack was unacceptable.

• I can’t claim Magic Jack is a fraud because it does somewhat/kinda/ work. Sometimes. But sometimes isn’t good enough to make Magic Jack your next phone solution, no matter how cheap.

To the maker of Magic Jack, I hope you guys will improve on this. Your idea is great but as of right now there are some serious problems. Make the Magic Jack work without having to have any software loaded. Improve the call quality. If you want, keep your dial pad but make it optional – and PLEASE turn off those ads. For your customer service, please fire the robots.