Rakesh Agrawal’s Blog

For a very long time now (maybe 5 or 6 years), I’ve used the Plantronics CT10 as my primary telephone at work. I like the fact that I can walk around with this thing within my office or around the office, answer phone calls from it (it’s a regular POTS telephone and most of the handsets on our office PBX have a POTS connector on them), and dial out from it. But in the past couple of months the voice quality has been marred by a periodic clicking sound so last week, with some downtime because of the holidays, I set out in search of a replacement.

I came across the Plantronics CT11 and it looked like just what I wanted — an upgraded version of the CT10, 2.4Ghz instead of 900 Mhz, basically, a newer model of my old favorite. It came in yesterday (courtesy of Amazon Prime) and I love the new device except it has one fatal flaw: With my old Plantronics CT10, I could use the phone while it was on its base charging but with the newer CT11 you have to remove the cordless unit from the base in order to use the telephone. A small thing (and not something that really could have been captured in a bulleted list of features) but it kills the Plantronics CT12 for me. I’d say that 70% of the time, I use this thing sitting at my desk and if I have to perform the extra task of removing the thing from the base and then replacing it everytime I make and finish a phone call, that’s a big step backwards from what I had before. Bummer!

Back to my old phone until I find something else.

Am I the only one that finds it ironic that, on the one hand, Salesforce.com’s marketing rallies against installed software (examples: their toll-free number is 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE, the banner on their frontpage has a big “NO SOFTWARE” image in it) but on the other hand, the only way to realistically use the Salesforce.com service on a mobile device is through a piece of… installed software?

Hey Salesforce, Marc Benioff — where’s the skinny/thin client? Everyone else has one.

Dear Photojojo,

I love your newsletter and, in particular, I loved your recent 2007 photography gift guide. I got that prime lense that I’ve been meaning to buy at a great price ($70 for a 50mm f1.8!) plus I picked up one of the accordion albums you guys wrote about too. I’m wishing I had bought the prime lense sooner and my 3 year old daughter had a blast putting together the album (with some assistance) and filling it with photographs for her Dadi’s birthday. Thanks Photojojo! Keep up the good work. Some photographs of gratitude (taken with my new prime lense) below.

Sincerely,
Rakesh

My daughter and her dadi (and some freshly baked mini blueberry muffins):

The accordion photo album:

(P.S. The accordion photo album was great. My only wish is that they include the necessary glue with the kit. It was kind of a hassle to find the right kind of glue and it was the only ingredient not included.)

I’m someone who spends a fair amount of time on my cell phone. And for those times when I have a battery of calls to make, I’ve often wished I had a way to build a simple phone call “to do” list on my phone and then go through them one by one. Maybe Google’s Android or the new iPhone SDK will help with this, but in the meanwhile I’ve started using this nifty hack:

1. Compose an e-mail with a list of the names and numbers I want to call:

2. Send the e-mail to my cell phone as an SMS (if you don’t know how to do this, find the e-mail to sms gateway for your carrier).

3. Now, on my phone (which happens to be an iPhone) I have all the numbers I need to call — I just tap on the number and it dials! And when I’m done with a phone call, it takes me back to my call list.

Whether this works for you or not might depend on whether your phone converts phone numbers in an SMS into something that can be clicked and dialed. My recollection is that Windows Mobile does this and that Palm does this as well.

I’ve decided to cut loose from Yahoo Hosting for this blog — it’s just too slow! When I’d go to make a posting on my Yahoo Hosted Wordpress blog, loading the wordpress admin interface would typically take 30 seconds and sometimes even more! So let’s see if my blogging behavior changes any with the switchover. I’m thinking of making wordpress.com my new home. I’ve met Matt and like him plus I figure they probably know a thing or two about hosting wordpress.

I can see how someone would be pissed if this automatically showed up in their facebook feed without the request for permission that I got. With the request for permission and without thinking about it *too* much, I don’t really have a problem with this.