Verizon Wireless and Skype just announced that Verizon is going to carry skype calls over its network starting in March.   It may require a data plan, but those international calls may have gotten a lot cheaper.

Seriously?  This seems such an about-face from the wireless carrier that was known to lock everything down and make you pay for any small incremental benefit (I’m looking at you, ringtones from the V-shop).  I’m skeptically optimistic at this point.  And I hope it continues.

Here’s the initial phones with Skype support:

• DROID by Motorola
• DROID ERIS by HTC
• Motorola DEVOUR
• BlackBerry Storm 9530
• Storm2 9550
• Curve 8330
• Curve 8530
• 8830 World Edition
• Tour 9630

–Ben

Sources:  Skype, Verizon Wireless, PCWorld

Google Buzz was hit hard by a lot of complaints, including one woman who complained that Google automatically followed her abusive ex-husband.  Google responded and seems to be correcting course and moving from an auto-follow to an auto-suggest model.

This should be a lesson to all programmers.  Instead of an automatic do-it-ourself model, we should give the user the options to check all, uncheck all, or select for themselves.  Otherwise, we could make the New York Times in not such a good way.

Personally, I opted into Google Buzz the first day.  Right after I saw who it followed, I dropped it like a hot rock and quit.  Maybe I’ll give it another go around.

–Ben

Sources:  Gmail Blog, Techcrunch, CNet, Business Insider, New York Times

Motorola has put up a page giving expected roll-out dates for their android phones to upgrade to Android version 2.1.  Here’s the summary

• Droid – soon
• Milestone (Europe) – Q1 2010
• Milestone (Latin America) – No Date
• Milestone (Asia-Pacific) – No Date
• Cliq (USA) – Q2 2010
• Dext (Europe) – No Date
• Dext (Latin America) – Q3 2010
• Dext (Asia-Pacific) – Q3 2010

They also claim to be working closely with Google and carriers to bring “the most optimized” experience on each of the phones.  Let’s hope that “the most optimized” doesn’t mean “missing features” in marketing spin.

–Ben

Sources:  Motorola Support, Phandroid, InfoSync

Apparently Motorola released the Droid 2.1 details too early according to their forum.  Bummer.  I was hoping the update would coming this week.  I guess a few days more won’t hurt.

Maybe something good will come of this.  Motorola has been getting some flak for releasing a “gimped Andriod 2.1″ compared with the Nexus One.

–Ben

Sources:  Motorola Forum, PCMagazine

I’ve been working on updating the skin to this site, and I wanted to comment on a couple of tools that I think are useful:

• Port 80 Software Analysis Tools – Compression Check, Bandwidth Savings Calculator, Cache Check, Header Check, Error Check
• Is My Blog Working – Basic Blog Idiot Test, Speed Details and Feature Test
• GID Network compression test – Is my blog compressed?

Fascinating Stuff.  I’ll write about the plug-ins I’ve installed in another post, which is the reason I was using these sites.

-Ben

Sources:  As stated above

Motorola had a informational page about what was contained in the 2.1 update.  But they pulled it shortly thereafter.  From the looks of it, nobody’s answering the question of why.  However, Phandroid has a screenshot of the missing page.

The page showed the new features as:

• Text to speech for any text box
• Better virtual keyboard
• 3D Gallery – photos, videos and other image sources are shown in 3D stacks that move when the phone is tilted
• PINCH TO ZOOM – in web, gallery and maps (finally)
• News and Weather App/Widget
• Maps – syncs with desktop, personal suggestions, night mode
• Music App gets tabs to switch screens
• Google Goggles – including “reading” business cards and adding them to you contacts (Cool!)
• Fix on the Pattern Lock Bypass bug (I think)
• Yahoo email setup optimizations
• Better Battery Optimizations

For those of you who don’t know, you can manually check to see if you’re authorized for the update right now by going to Settings -> About Phone -> System Updates.  If you’re not authorized yet, try back again later.  Reclicking is not likely to do any good.  Remember that this is a gradual roll-out like the last update.

–Ben

Sources:  Motorola, Phandroid, Phandroid, Engadget