Fring, Skype, Android, Evo

Today was a milestone. I placed and received my first video call from my HTC Evo smartphone. Amazing. This is Jetsons stuff we're talking about.

Fring released an app for Android phones that allows video calls over Wi-Fi/3G/4G. It also integrates with Skype and allows you to connect to any of your Skype contacts as well. So I connected with a Skype friend who was at his desktop PC running Skype with a desktop USB camera connected. Bing, bang, boom, we were video conferencing! My screen showed his video with my video in the corner, a la picture in picture.

Of course, the HTC Evo has a front facing camera that makes this all very convenient. Other phones without a front facing camera can presumably still use it, but will have to point their screens away from themselves when making a call.

Video quality was ok...a few skips here and there but totally usable. I walked around my office showing it off to coworkers, who were pretty impressed.

I then friended someone else with an Evo from a forum I frequent and we also had a video chat, Evo-to-Evo. He was located in Kansas City, while I was in Redwood City, California. He walked outside and showed me around. Video got choppy at that point since he was on Wi-Fi and was losing his signal. But it worked. And it worked well enough to be a usable product.

Now onto the flying cars that collapse into briefcases...

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Twenty One

Ok, two weeks in a row! Down 2.8 pounds this week! This makes a total of 47 pounds lost so far :-)

Some pics of my HTC Evo :-)

I took some pics of my HTC Evo using my HTC Hero :-)

HTC Evo pics

The Sprint Evo 4G

Found this in a forum post on Android Central and thought it was interesting...a Flash feature overview of The Sprint Evo, the upcoming uberphone from HTC. This thing's a monster. Of course, by the magic of the interwebs, this comment will live forever, even when the Evo is to future geeks what the iPhone is to us now. Oh snap! Did I just diss the iPhone? Ok, I meant the Motorola Razr. It's what the Razr is to us now. ;-)

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Twenty

Yay, down 2.2 pounds this week! Working out helps :-)

The lazy CEO’s 10-step guide to crowdsourcing every business task

Saw this in my Google Reader and thought it was very interesting!

The lazy CEO’s 10-step guide to crowdsourcing every business task: "

Lukas Biewald (pictured left) is cofounder and chief executive of CrowdFlower, a startup that helps businesses crowdsource small tasks. Vaughn Hester (pictured below) is an account manager/analyst at CrowdFlower.

Whether you are starting a new company or are just the laziest CEO ever, there’s great news for you — the explosion in crowdsourcing strategies and solutions means you might be able to get started without any full-time employees! If you have projects or jobs that need to be completed quickly and inexpensively, here are some tips for getting the crowd to do your heavy lifting:

1. You need a name for your business. One iPhone developer put the task of naming his e-reader out to the crowd through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and $27.50 and 500 responses later came up with the name iReadFast. That’s even cheaper than the Silicon Valley tradition of getting a few friends together with a few cases of beer before godaddy.com crushes your dreams.


2. Now your great new name needs an eye-catching logo. 99 Designs helps companies crowdsource graphic design work to a broad network of artists and designers who compete to submit the best idea. You offer a payment price for the best logo, then pick the one you like best from the submissions.


3. Once you cover those basics, you probably need lots of money. Immediately. Crowdsource your funding with Kickstarter, a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers and more. You name the amount of money you need to do something; people in turn pledge amounts in support of this project or business. If you receive enough pledges, your donors’ payments are processesed and you receive the full amount. You can incentivize your crowdfunders in creative ways with items like t-shirts, books, etc.


4. In the digital age, you will probably need code development or programming. TopCoder claims to have been crowdsourcing since 2001, before there was a name for this phenomenon. It runs competitions with prizes that enable participants to compete for the best software, development and employment services solutions. To make an amazing webpage, oDesk can connect you with a web developer (or any other sort of freelancer you may seek). Its tools enable you to view progress on the project as work is completed.


5. No product will be successful without customers – and that means marketing. Go to Trada, a search engine marketing and optimization company that lets the crowd pick the best keywords for your company or campaign.


6. With your website and your AdWords account, you have a solid online presence. Find leads in the industries you are targeting with Jigsaw (recently acquired by Salesforce.com). It lets people upload contact information in exchange for the ability to download other people’s contact information. If you want all the phone numbers of all the execs, there’s a way to make it happen. Jigsaw has what it claims to be the world’s largest database of contact information.


7. Now that you have these leads, it’s time to take a good look in the mirror and decide whether or not you really want to call them all. Chances are you don’t, which is right about when you want to visit LiveOps. The company specializes in call center outsourcing where you can set the script that you want “your” sales people to use. It has thousands of people (many of whom are stay at home mothers) in the United States who make the calls from their own homes.


8. In the inevitable event that your customers get angry, use Get Satisfaction, where they can help each other. Get Satisfaction gives your customers a place to ask questions and voice complaints about your product. Often, your customer is the best person to respond to an issue another customer is having.


9. Now that you have a healthy business you need to make sure that you invest in R&D to stay ahead of the competition. This is the point at which you want to visit InnoCentive, a company that allows you to outsource research and development of any kind. It lets you set bounties for the discovery of new things. This could range from a new compression algorithm to a new drug.


10. By now you are undoubtedly big enough and prosperous enough to have your own corporate social responsibility efforts. Samasource lets you send microtasks to youth, refugees and women in developing countries. Your rich friends who are iPhone/iPad users can support this via GiveWork (iTunes link), an app developed with CrowdFlower that allows users to donate their time to charity by double checking the work done by Samasource workers.

Crowdsourcing isn’t just a buzzword –- it’s an effective way for companies to get started fast and iterate quickly with less overhead. All of these companies offer a service with less upfront commitment than traditional outsourcing -– and that advantage really shines when it comes to early stage companies.

Tags: crowdsourcing, Mechanical Turk

Companies: 99 Designs, Amazon.com, Crowdflower, Get Satisfaction, Innocentive, Jigsaw, Kickstarter, Liveops, oDesk, Samsource, TopCoder, Trada

EVO 4G FAQs | AndroidGuys

This is the REAL Jesus Phone!

4G/3G/WiFi
4.3" Screen
GPS
HDMI Out (720p)
720p Video Recording
1.3MP Front Facing Camera
8MP Back Facing Camera
Create a wireless hotspot (3G or 4G)
Simultaneous voice/data
1GHz Snapdragon Processor
Digital Compass/Proximity & Motion Sensors
FM Tuner
microSD card Slot
Android 2.1

EVO 4G FAQs | AndroidGuys

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Nineteen

Oh well. Up a pound. But still down in general since I lost the last two weeks. So this better be a good week!

Flash Player on a Nexus One

Pretty cool. Seems usable enough.

The results are in...

I recently entered a video in AndroidCentral's "Win Phil's Nexus One" contest, and after a week of voting, my video won! They were actually giving away two Nexus One's, so two of us won. Here is the announcement: http://www.androidcentral.com/and-nexus-one-winners-are

Thanks to everyone who voted for me!

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Eighteen

Down 2.2 pounds this week! I'm actually surprised since I cheated a little, but my daily walks must be helping :-)

Vote for my video!

I have recently entered a contest to win a Nexus One smartphone by creating a video stating why I wanted to win. I decided to make a little music video cover of The Black Crowe's "Hard to Handle" (with altered lyrics).

My video made it into the finals! Now it's up to YOU to vote for my video to win!

To see all 15 finalists and vote for your favorite (me!) visit this page:

http://www.androidcentral.com/time-vote-nexus-one-contest-finalists

Watch my video (labeled "Ed"...it's the one with the guitar), select "Ed" from the choices and click the "Vote" button. I appreciate it! Thanks! Oh and PLEASE send this to any friends who may enjoy it :-)

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Seventeen

Down 0.6 this week. Going the right direction :-)

Win Phil's Nexus One Contest Entry (Hard to Handle)

AndroidCentral.com is holding a contest to win a Google Nexus One phone. All you have to do is create a video stating why you want the phone, and people will vote for their favorite videos after the April 30th deadline.

Well, here's my entry to that contest! I'll post the voting link as soon as that is ready.

Pictures from my dad's Around the World motorcycle trip in the 60's

Between 1964 and 1966, Carlos Caggiani, my father, visited 26 countries on his 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle. His two year adventure is the subject of a book, "Huellas y Horizontes" (Tracks and Horizons). The Spanish version of that book can be found here, and an English translation is in the works for this year.

Below is an album of pictures and newspaper clippings from his voyage.

Huellas y Horizontes

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Sixteen

Down 1.4 pounds this week! So that's a total of 40.4 pounds. I really have to try to break through this 40 pound barrier. Been hovering around here for too long!

Fighting Android Fragmentation: Should HTC Sense become an app?

Google's Android OS has been gaining huge ground lately on almost all cell phone carriers worldwide. Companies such as Motorola, Samsung, and HTC have jumped aboard creating handsets that utilize the open operating system. Google's own Nexus One was designed and manufactured by HTC.

One thing HTC usually adds to most of their offerings (thought not on the Nexus One) is a user interface layer called "HTC Sense". This is basically "skin" of sorts that adds some functionality to HTC phones, including cool widgets and social networking add-ons. It is typically highly regarded in the Android world, though there are those who would prefer a "stock" Android installation.

I personally use the Sprint HTC Hero Android phone (pictured). It runs HTC Sense, though it's currently still running Android 1.5, and not the latest 2.1 that the newer phones are getting. This is an example of what people are calling the "fragmentation" of Android. Fragmentation basically means that there are multiple versions of the Android OS out in the wild, causing some software to only run only on certain versions. Fragmentation is bad any way you look at it. Software developers have to choose which version their apps will support, or need to work harder to support them all.

Add on top of that the modifications that some carriers add to their phones (Sprint adds their own built-in apps, for example) and the different skins that certain manufacturers add (HTC Sense and Motorola's Motoblur, for example) and you get a difficult and complex landscape to manage.

Google has announced that they plan to battle fragmentation starting with the next version of Android, code-named Froyo, by focusing the OS to include just the core fundamentals, and breaking out certain features as downloadable apps instead of being baked into the core. This is a great step forward in fighting fragmentation, and it occurred to me that it is only the first step.

Carriers and handset manufacturers need to follow by making their add-ons an a-la-carte affair. Want HTC Sense on your handset? Download the app! Want Sprint TV? Search the marketplace!

Obviously, there would need to be some logic around this for business purposes. For example, only HTC handsets can download HTC Sense in the marketplace. Or only Sprint customers would be able to download Sprint TV.

Or better yet, make HTC Sense (or Motoblur) available to everyone for a small fee. If you happen to prefer using Sense over stock Android, why not be able to install it? And HTC can make a buck in the process. The idea is for ALL Android phones to be able to run the same stock version and get updates from Google, and all the other features and add-ons would be downloadable. Kind of sounds like a regular desktop OS, doesn't it? Sure would make it easier, faster, and more convenient for all!

Thoughts?

Steve Jobs Reiterates: “Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone”

Steve Jobs basically says that if you want freedom of choice, get an Android phone. Thanks for the tip, Steve!

Steve Jobs Reiterates: “Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone”

Inky & Blinky & Pinky & Clyde T-shirt from Zazzle.com

Saw this on Zazzle and loved it! If you are a Pac Man fan, this is the perfect t-shirt!

Inky & Blinky & Pinky & Clyde by CustomGameShirts
Browse other Games T-Shirts

Jenny Craig: Year 2 - Week Fifteen

Ok, so I worked out to try to make up for the baseball and hockey games I went to, and it seems to have helped a bit. Although I gained 0.2 pounds this week, it would have been way worse had I not worked to take some of it off.

As a matter of fact, the day after my weigh-in at Jenny Craig, I had already dropped the weight.

This week is looking free and clear, and I have high hopes of dropping more weight :-)