Line 2 for iPhone vs the competition

Posted on September 30, 2010 by bryanknower

iPhone VoIP App Comparison The First Dual-Mode, Professional-Grade Calling App for the iPhone
Features	Line2	Skype	Vonage	iCall	TruPhone	Fring
Separate Number (Two Numbers on One Phone)	Yes	Yes	No`	Yes	No	No
Receive Inbound Calls	Yes – WiFi or Cellular	Only Via Cell Forwarding	No	Wi-Fi Only	No	Only Through Cell Forwarding or SIP Integration
Place Outbound Calls	Yes – WiFi or Cellular	WiFi and 3G Only	Yes – WiFi or Cellular	Wi-Fi Only	Yes – WiFi or Cellular	Only Through Cell Forwarding or SIP Integration
Support iOS4 Backgrounding	Yes	Yes – Limited	No	No	No	No
Business PBX Features (auto-attendant, multi-line support, unified billing, etc)	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
PC/Mac Calling Via Integrated Softphone	Yes	Yes	Not Integrated with Mobile App	No	No	No
Call Screening / Call Announce / Caller ID Based Routing	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Visual Voicemail w/ Voicemail by Email	Yes	Yes – Limited	No	No	Only for Calls from Other TruPhone Users. No Email	No
Texting with any SMS-Capable Phone	Not Currently	Limited – Outbound Only, Pay Per Message $.11/text	No	No	Limited – Outbound Only, Pay Per Message $.20/text	No – SMS Limited to Fring to Fring Texts
Others Can Text You First	Not Currently	Limited – Sent Through iPhone Carrier Number Not Skype	No	No	No – Only Truphone to Truphone Texts	No
Receive SMS Replies	Not Currently	No	No	No	No – Only Truphone to Truphone Texts	No
Price for Phone Number, Voicemail, Unlimited US/Canada Calling, and Other Features	$9.95/month	$6.95/month	$24.95/month. Some International Destinations. Excludes Inbound Calls	$9.95/month	$17/month. Some International Destinations. Excludes Inbound Calls	Free with Ads
Advanced Call Control Features for VoIP calls	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Call Waiting	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Call Hold	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Call Swap	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Call Transfer	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Conferencing	Yes – 20 people	Cannot Initiate	No	No	No	No
SpeakerPhone	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No

Super Harvest Moon

Posted on September 24, 2010 by bryanknower

Super Harvest Moon/Jupiter Conjunction

Tuesday marked a relatively rare phenomenon known as the Super Harvest Moon. What this means is that the full moon falls on or close to the autumn equinox. Well, Tuesday was the autumn equinox as well as the full moon. I was watching it as I drove home from an exhausting visit to a rehabilitation home where an elderly friend of ours is convalescing. It didn’t look any different from other full moons, although I see from various pictures on the internet that I must live on a different planet, because the pictures they posted and what I saw are two completely different things. Same big orb. Maybe a little brighter, but where did all that orange hue come from? I bet it was created by a camera filter!

So what makes this kind of full moon super? The fact that it appears on a day where there are equal amounts of daylight and darkness doesn’t make any difference to the appearance of the moon, although the “authorities” beg to differ. The only people who would probably care about this sort of thing must be witches and warlocks and other assorted occult oriented persons, for whom a Super Harvest Moon (or the Harvestest Moon as it is sometimes called), on one of the major event days in the Wiccan calendar has to mean a big boost with the ceremonies and rituals and such. Unless of course, it’s overcast:)

According to NASA, there’s a special twilight glow produced by the sun setting while the moon is rising, meaning that both are in the sky at the same time. Possibly, this may produce the vision inducing kind of twilight they speak of, but it must occur for only a few fleeting minutes, and I missed it. When I saw the moon, there was no sun. What’s more interesting is that Jupiter is also in the night sky, forming a conjunction with the full moon that promises to be spectacular. Unfortunately for me I couldn’t spot this either. Jupiter is making its closest approach to Earth in years, in fact it will not get this close again for another twenty two years, but it rises in the East, along with the Harvest moon, and while there might be a point at which the two are separated enough to provide a visual spectacle, it probably occurs around midnight, when both Jupiter and the moon are overhead in the Eastern sky. At midnight I was deep in dreamless (or not), sleep. Another strike out in the moon watching department. I wonder whether the Super Harvest Moon makes people crazier than usual. I mean, its common knowledge that some people are affected by the full moon so maybe the super duper one has a super duper effect on them. Must be a field day for werewolves. I have big plans to investigate all this related phenomena at the next Super lunar event but I guess I’ll have to wait another twenty two years for that. Most probably I’ll be in the nursing home I was returning from when I first caught a glimpse of the Super Harvest Moon.

A dog’s life

Posted on September 10, 2010 by bryanknower

On Wednesday I take Tyler to the vet. He’s a fourteen years old, a mixed black lab with arthritic legs and a slowing metabolism. Recently he’s developed Cushing’s Syndrome, a hormonal imbalance of the adrenal glands that makes dogs obese and weak. I thought of him as fat and lazy earlier, but now he has exceeded my imagination. Sad really, because it’s a part of the illness and nothing to do with his greed, which remains unabated. I wonder what he thinks as I bring the car around to take him to the clinic. He loves to ride in the car. What dog doesn’t? He scrambles to get in, not even waiting for the door to open, slobbering on the windows and down the back of my neck until we reach our destination. Now he balks, The floor of the car is too high for him to clamber into and Michael has to lift him in, literally. Usually he walks to the vet. It’s just three blocks total, and every lamp post, tuft of grass and postage size patch of turf needs to be investigated and irrigated. A slow laborious process. Sometimes twenty minutes or more pass before we reach our destination. Those days are long gone now. He’s too weak to walk that far. Even half way around our block is a major effort.

He’s become familiar with the sliding glass doors of the clinic. in spite of limping up to them he wants to turn back but there’s no choice, either for him or for me. The blood tests are necessary to determine if he’s taking the right amount of medication. I shudder to think it might be increased. The pills make him sleep a lot. It’s a production to make him swallow them. With other stuff we break open capsules or crush tablets and mix it in his food, but this drug is toxic to humans (maybe) so he has to be tricked into swallowing them. For a while mixing them in tuna worked, but he learned to sniff out the capsule and leave it on a side while eating the fish. Our latest ruse is to make tiny slits in cocktail franks and push the capsules into them. He loves sausages of all kinds. I’m sure he knows there’s something else inside but hey, he’s a dog, and dogs will eat any kind of sausage. It seems to be working for now.

At the clinic, he looks at me with sad eyes. I feel so guilty I can’t meet his stare. I know I’ll have to leave him there until the evening, and hate it. I wonder what goes on in his head as he lies there on the cold white tiled floor, waiting for me to leave. I’ve heard that dogs have no idea of time. That a day is like a week or month to them. So any separation must feel like abandonment. Maybe this is how older people who live in homes feel when they first go in there, or later still, as people come in to visit, always leaving after a short while. Do these people wonder if that person will ever come back, and when? People have a sense of their own mortality, so at some point it must feel like it is a final goodbye when a friend or relative walks out the door. Do dogs sense their own mortality too. Anecdotal evidence seems to say they do. Maybe Tyler looks at me as I walk away towards the glass doors and wonders if I’m coming back. I try not to turn back, but can’t help myself. I have to look. Every time could be the last time.

Hello WordPress world

Posted on September 3, 2010 by bryanknower

So I have this new WordPress blog, and already anxiety about posting. I haven’t figured out yet whether I’ll write about writing, music or some other completely unrelated topic, but we’ll see. If this can push me to write a little more and write a little more frequently, then well and good. Motivation is the hardest thing for me. Sometimes I’ll write for a stretch, almost every day, other times my own personal lazy gremlin takes over and then it’s hard to get back in. I know I’m not the only one with this problem, but it’s something you can easily share. At least not verbally. This blog is like my own private therapist 🙂 (That’s what I call my ipod).

On a related (or unrelated) note, I managed to get a short story in to Glimmer Train Press for their August 31 deadline. The category was open to unpublished writers, or those whose work had appeared in a magazine with a circulation of 5000 or less. That certainly includes me; in the first category really, and I had to write like hell for three days to come up with a 6000+ word story based on my recent trip to Mexico. I visited a quaint little village named Salyuta there, and that was the name of my story. I hope people who know Salyuta won’t mind. I made it it out into a dark and dangerous place because I needed some excitement, but in reality, its a tourist oriented new-age hangout. Very proud of that effort. It was intense, including proof reading and editing at the last moment.

Mexico was great, but hot!!! So hot that I started blistering on my forehead and forearms by the end of the 7 days. My fault entirely for not using the fancy SPF70 sunblock that I bought at CVS the day before we left. But then, who thinks of applying sunblock on their head? I played golf (!!!) for the first time in Nuevo Vallarta, and I think the sun on the links was totally instrumental in making my head peel off. That was the least of my worries anyway. The unaccustomed exercise left me sore in my shoulders and forearms for days afterward. Never realized that the game was so physical. Lost quarts of sweat on the green and seemingly pounds of weight when on the scale back in the hotel but it was all just water under the bridge (or out of my body).

Also found a contest (sort of) on Writing.com that i thought was quirky and interesting. Not so much pressure there and definitely more low key. It’s a genre fiction thing, and I love dabbling in science fiction and noir fantasy. I’m sorely tempted to just dig in and write in the SF genre, just for the heck of it, but most literary rags look down on such stuff. Pity, because I enjoy reading it so much. At some point, I should explore all the online magazines, ezines and such that specialize in SF and see if I should make a switch.

All this of course just to keep me and my pen (or rather my fingers, keyboard and computer) occupied. The craziest part is I seem to be able to write more at work than at home, although it should be vice versa. too much distraction at home. In the office, once I’ve taken care of business I can always put in an hour or two of solid scribbling, and that seems to be the way I’m mostly operating nowadays. I have the same problem with music too. Luckily I practice with a band every Monday, otherwise I’ll not play at all. Just as an example, I got myself a new delay pedal from T.C.Electronics last Friday and I still haven’t taken it out of the box. The same old whinge applies here too. Too lazy so no time. I like sitting out on the porch with a drink and a book during the summer time when I get home, and it’s so damn hot anyways that I can’t do much else. So it’s like being caught between two devils. They’re standing on either shoulder, whispering in my ear, and I’m so distracted by both of them that I end up not paying any attention to either. Ce la vie