“Daddy, can you give me a real phone that can phone in real life. Then you will have to teach me how to use the buttons and do phoning.” - My older daughter, aged 5 years 4 months, today pops the question.

And to think I thought I had another two years to come up with a reason why she can’t have one…

The next installation of the superb and distinctly unmissable eComm conference is on its way. Super early bird registrations are available until 22 December, and if you use the code ‘Telepocalypse’ you’ll get 20% off, taking the price down to 952 buckaroos. (“Hurry, while the US dollar lasts…”) Buddy and organiser Lee Dryburgh assures me this is the lowest price it’ll ever be offered at, so time to whip out the credit card and run up some credit.

See you in San Francisco on 3-5 March!

Two thoughts to highlight how far we still have to go with developing the voice and messaging offering of telcos.

First, I’m reading a bedtime story to my kids. Maybe I’d like to share that experience with other members of my circle of nearest and dearest. I could easily plonk my mobile in front of me and call them on speakerphone. But I don’t for fear of using up these valuable ‘minute’ things on a Sunday evening. Rationed scarcity, not abundance, driven by termination fees.

Second, instead of ‘Push to talk’, why not ‘Push to listen’. Let’s say that I’m happy to allow selected people to listen in (for up to 30 seconds, perhaps) on what’s going on in my house before calling. Then they can judge whether it’s in the middle of a behavioural meltdown among my offspring (“It’s MINE; no SHE TOOK IT OFF ME!”); or maybe it’s so quiet the younger one just must be asleep. Each such instance of listening in is notified to me, and furthermore the audio is recorded and sent to me so I know exactly what was heard. It’s presence, Jim, but not as we know it.

Haha, 'push to listen' - interesting concept, it's like an audio presence, like a reverse twitter, or more like a reverse spinvox... maybe I should develop an android client that responds to sms: you could tweet or sms "ptl" to me and get audio back, or a transcript of the audio.

with push-to-talk, though, you first have to accept the 'talk'. But first accepting the 'listen' at push-to-listen kind of defies the concept....

You would pre-approve access to selected people.

Brilliant, as always.
Thanks again for the joke too, Martin.
(The diggers looking and finding nothing so they discovered the past tribes had wireless, as oppossed to those diggers who found copper)
Dan

'Push to Listen' ... funny. I can just picture it. The moment we do this people start dropping in just to see what is going on... with absolutely no intention of calling you. I can see my mother doing it a few times a day. Are we feeding her grandchild? ... and then the call: "Why aren't you feeding him?" "Why can't he have one more jelly bean? Just one more."

The next eComm conference is scheduled for March 3-5, 2009 in San Francisco. If you represent or know of an innovative company or idea in the personal communications space, then this is the event to be at, and you can find details of the call for speakers here.

Have finally persuaded someone at a 3UK store to sell me a prepaid SIM card, topped up, and set up the self-care account. Speaking of which, why do you need to provision yourself a password via SMS, rather than just printing one on the SIM holder with your number? The whole process naturally involves putting the card into your phone, and taking it out because you didn’t realise they need the last 6 digits from the back of the SIM, and then putting it back in a phone, so you can take it out and put it into your modem. Then it’s just a small job to convert your talk’n’text balance into a 30 day data pack, and you’re in business. Easy!

So I’m now up and running with my splendid USB modem whizzing along on my train at speeds in excess of, well, half a French train’s speed, and eliminating the few remaining cells in my inner ear with some Aphex Twin.

But here’s the rub.

How come these modems have a splendid button to press on the screen labelled “Connect”, but never one that says “Connect and bloody well stay connected, as even my dial-up model could automatically reconnect when it lost contact with the cyberworld”?

HSDPA = Has Some Dropped Packet Annoyances

Still, it’s better than the National Express Wi-Fi that insists on randomly replacing the content of your browser tabs with the same annoying splash screen every 20 minutes (which is about how long it takes to load a page anyway).

Hey, if you use wvdial to control it under linux this doesn't have to be a problem.

I’m using the superb Jungledisk to back up my laptop (hat tip: