Saturday, June 30, 2007

Apple iPhone

So the Apple iPhone is finally out. It seems so cool, but way too much for me to afford right now. I haven't read any iPhone reviews or anything, so I don't know if it's worth the money, but I really want one.

I probably wouldn't use a lot of the features that are built into the iPhone, but I definitely think I would love the touch screen. I mean, hey, look what the Nintendo DS did for gaming with it's dual screen and touch screen. I play my DS way more than anything else, including my Wii.

Anyway, getting back to the awesome iPhone. If it really does all that I've seen it do in videos, I think I would love it. I do think it might be kind of weird to type on an all touch screen... no tactile feedback or anything since it's an on-screen keyboard. That might be kind of weird at first since you can't feel your way around the keys like you can with anything else that uses real buttons. But, what do I really know? I'm just a person who wishes that I owned an iPhone. I don't actually have one.

If anyone wants to get me an iPhone as a gift, I'd really appreciate it. My birthday is coming up, ya know (or in case you didn't know... my birthday is coming up... hint , hint). ;)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Insomnia

For some reason, I just couldn't stay asleep tonight. I don't know why. But I wouldn't exactly say having just one night of sleep would qualify me as an insomniac. It's just one night, right? Hopefully.

I think I only got about three hours of sleep total. I know I was up past 1 AM and got up at around 4 AM. I've been awake since then, but I think it's because I turned on my laptop and just started visiting a bunch of websites.

Wow, my laptop battery is still charging! Last night, I unplugged the power from my laptop so that I could see how long my battery life was. It didn't last close to three minutes! How can it go from 100% to 0% that fast? I really don't like the thought of having to buy a new laptop battery because they're expensive! I'd rather get a new laptop than spend on a battery. So anyway, I plugged it back in and hours later, it's still only 47% charged. WTF? I wonder if maybe the battery wasn't making contact (with whatever it's supposed to make contact with) somehow and maybe it really was never charged at all.

Uh, anyway, I'm gonna try to get back to sleep now before I'm just as drained as my laptop battery. I'll probably end up waking up in another 2 and a half hours. Hopefully this is just a one time thing and I'll be able to sleep normally tonight.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Quality of recorded audio conference calls

This is related to my post below. A little gripe about the quality of some recorded audio conference calls.

If I ever owned a big company and wanted to start comparing conference calling plans with several different conference calling companies, and I wanted to offer downloadable versions for those who missed the call... I would want to sample the quality of other calls that a certain calling company has previously recorded. They don't even have to be real calls, just demo calls with people connecting to the call from across the globe.

Like I said in my post below, I've never attended a live conference call before, I've only listened to ones that have been pre-recorded. Very often, the calls I've heard have such terrible quality that you can barely even hear the person speaking sometimes. I don't know whether that has to do with the kind of telephone a person is using or if they're using a VOIP connection or what.

But if I was paying conference calling centers to record the calls for me, I would expect them to at least try to enhance the audio quality of the downloadable version. I don't want it to sound like people are buried underground or something. If it's a service I'm paying for, even if the poor audio quality is on my end, I'd want to at least get my money's worth and have a great clarity, enhanced recorded versions of my conference calls.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Audio conference calling

I've always heard pre-recorded conference calls before. I've never actually attended a live audio conference call. One reason is I'm not around during the time of the scheduled conference call. And another reason is because the number you need to listen in on or participate in the call is almost always a long distance phone number for me.

We don't have long distance calling plan at home and I don't want to use up my cell phone minutes just to attend a call. I wish these conference calling services or conference calling centers would offer toll free numbers that you could dial into. If people are already shelling out the bucks to pay a conference calling company to host their calls, they can at least offer an 800 number for people who want to participate. Maybe there are conference calling plans that offer toll-free numbers, but they're probably more expensive to use. I don't really know since I've never had to compare prices for such a service.

Maybe I should look into a VOIP service or something that would allow me to make calls using my computer. It'd really be nice to be able to get in on a live call for once and not have to wait a day or two for the downloadable version of a call to be available because then you're behind everybody else in learning what the big news was.