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The Downside Of Living In A Digital World 
Australia, NZ And South Africa To Share Square Kilometre Array 
Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action According to a report by the Centre for Disease Control (no, this has nothing to do with swine flu), one out of every five families has ditched landlines entirely for mobile phones. I find that number a bit low, but what do I know? I’m deranged from swine flu because the CDC decided to tell me about telephone lines instead of top secret inoculation bunkers. [CDC via ars via MobileCrunch]
An interesting side effect of the anxiety about the decline of the hardline has been these beautiful widget-y desktop phones that do amazing things you always wanted phones to do, like the Verizon Hub here.
Why would anyone put legs on a landline phone? Furthermore, why would anyone sell a landline phone with legs? These are both good questions to ask the folks at Sundayland. [Sundayland via Design Crisis]
In case registering on the national Do Not Call list didn’t really do anything, two ex-telemarketers in the U.K. have invented a blocking device that acts like a receptionist for your landline. The TrueCall intercepts all your calls before they reach you, letting them through if the number is recognised as a family member or friend, and replying with an automated message if the number belongs to a telemarketer.
The beer phone isn’t the most full-featured phone available, what with its lack of a screen making everything from texting to emailing to web surfing impossible, but it is shaped like a beer bottle. And that’s more than you can say for your precious Blackberry or iPhone. Also, it’s only $US12 because it’s actually just a landline phone. So if you’ve still got a landline for some reason and also like to have normal household objects remind you of your dependence on alcohol, you really can’t go wrong. [SourcingMap via ShinyShiny]
AT&T Home Manager is, essentially, a Samsung 7″ (800×480) touchscreen device that brings goodies like visual voicemail, email, Yellow Pages, weather reports and a phone-syncable address book to those who prefer not to rely on their smartphone at home. It also doubles as a digital picture frame when not in use by loading pictures from SD or USB. Operating 2 hours per charge, the system (which includes a cordless phone) runs $US299 from AT&T in limited markets. Maybe it’s not the most mind-blowing device out there, but it could be a handy, reasonably-priced piece of tech for those still clinging to their landlines. The only catch? “Customers must agree to a two-year AT&T High Speed Internet term commitment or sign up for AT&T U-verse TV, High Speed Internet and Voice services.” Read on for full details.
Slotting an Atom into a home phone just sounds plain ridiculous, but the Home Media Phone is more than just a VoIP handset and base station. The base station (which doubles as a speaker phone) has its own software platform, developed in flash and furnished with a full API, and serves many purposes of a PC in a picture frame-sized package. The current set of apps is adequate, but after using it for a few minutes it became very clear that the Home Media Phone could actually be a fantastic net appliance. galleryPost('homemediaphone', 6, '');
The team at OpenPeak is hoping to spice up the outdated landline phone by “borrowing” the entire iPhone concept and repackaging it as a feature-rich communication hub for the home. Initially, the “OpenFrame” will include core touchscreen apps like calendar, news, weather, etc., and it doubles as a digital photo frame and an internet radio. Beyond that, the idea is to get developers interested in creating third party apps–just like the iPhone. The device is expected to be sold through telcos like Verizon and AT&T for between US$200 and US$300 sometime in early 2009, but I say just pick up an iPhone and stop wasting money on landlines altogether. [OpenPeak via Wired Gadget Lab]
With all the advances in technology we’ve had over the last couple of decades, you’d think that something as simple as changing your land line number into a cellular one would take hours at most. At least Congress does, and its now urging the FCC to put rules in place that will speed up local number portability processing.
Today doesn’t seem to be a good day to be an Optus customer, with a broken fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast leaving their landline, mobile and internet services borked throughout Queensland and parts of NSW.
The cable was broken at about 8am, although how is still not known. And although Optus believe services should be back to normal soon, it hasn’t stopped delays from hitting Brisbane airport and countless other businesses.
Anybody out there experiencing problems?
[via News.com.au]
