I have served on the Board of Directors for the United Fund for several years, and this year I was asked to step up and be Campaign Finance Chairperson. Our fundraising goal this year is to raise $315,000 to be given away in the form of grants to local non-proffit groups. Every penny of that $3150,000 stays in Cumberland County, and the United Fund is an excellent way for donations to have a large impact on many lives in our community.

This is a video from the Chamber of Commerce series “Crossville Profiles”. It has been airing on the local community access station.

While I were never asked by law enforcement or the District Attorneys office to abstain from discussing the issue, I choose to make no public statements on the matter so as not to hinder the DA office or hinder the defendant’s case, as he was rightly entitled to be presumed innocent until found guilty. With the concussion of the trial, I feel that I can now share the story of my involvement.

My core business has always been, and will continue to be, outsourced IT management for small and medium sized organizations. However, I try to help all people in need, so when a person not connected with my core business comes to me, I am happy to give them the same level of quality service that I provide to all of my clients.

On July 8th 2008, a system was brought into my office that needed some data to be restored from backup after the owner had preformed a factory “system restore”. Because there is no single way that all computer manufactures handle system restores, it was necessary for us to dig into the system looking for clues at how the “system restore” had backup up data prior to restoring the system to a factory like state.

Within the first few moments I discovered several very large caches of images. Because Windows XP automatically sets directories full of images to Thumbnail or Filmstrip view, I could see at once without evening having to open the files that the images were people engaged in sex acts.

Now, me finding pornography on computer systems is nothing new. But in this case, I could see that the girls in these pictures were clearly not adults. As I said in court, I have a 30 year old wife and a 10 year old daughter; I know the difference, and I don’t confuse one for the other.

I will admit finding these images placed me in an awkward position professionally. IT people are a bit like Doctors, Lawyers, and Clergy, we have access to most of your life’s secrets because we have access to your data. While most people don’t necessarily realize this when they hand their computer over to an IT professional, I have ALWAYS understood that protecting my clients secrets is sacrosanct.

It is not my place to question the “legality” of software or media files on a clients system. Likewise my clients web histories, downloaded files, and other documents contain their private thoughts and feelings. While I may need to have access to such things to perform my work, it would be evil of me to share such knowledge. It is a right of all people to have secrets, a right I protect and foster for my clients in my business.

The abuse of children is something apart from the protection of privacy. I am not someone who feels that we should abandon privacy protections in the name of saving children. In fact, I see a great danger in overusing the justification of “child protection” to erode our civil liberties. I would be extremely opposed to any attempt by government to actively censor the Internet based on the premise that is was to “protect the children”.

Fortunately, the law as it is now offers a good balance. It does not actively censor the Internet, but gives law enforcement the tools to aggressively prosecute those that choose to break the law.

Setting aside the theoretical and political, on July 8th 2008 I was confronted with reality. That reality said that the law and my own moral foundation compels me to act when I feel that a child is in danger. To that end, I contacted my friend Officer Scott Davis with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, and turned the mater over to them.

As a one time law student, I found the trial itself to be fascinating. Of course with the Rule in place, I could not be present in the court room until after my testimony. When I took the stand I found myself is be rather nervous, which is something I am not accustomed to. After a few moments, though, I settled in and felt calmer. Part of what I had to testify to was technical in nature and one of things I have always strived for in my business is to explain technical things in such a way as to be understood by the layperson. In this case I had to explain technical issues to 12 jurors whom I had never met, and if I botched my explanation, I could damage the District Attorney’s case and forever be a pariah in the local law enforcement community. So I was under some stress.

As I went on with my explanations, I noticed that the court stenographer seated in front of me kept nodding her head. I wasn’t sure if the gesture was automatic, or even related to what I was saying. But seeing that small gesture made me feel as if I was making sense, and that gave me a profound sense of comfort.

After my testimony, I was free to watch the rest of the proceedings from the gallery. With the passing of my nervousness, I could view the rest of the trial with a more detached and clinical eye. The TBI computer forensic expert was good, though the defense attorney really hammered her. The defense attorney kept wanting the TBI expert to admit the possibility that virus and/or hackers could have downloaded all the child porn images. She stood her ground quite well.

Part of the TBI’s testimony was the showing of the actual images to the jury. The Judge turned the viewing screens towards the jury box and moved the gallery spectators to one side of the court room so as to shield them from the images. As the DA counted off all 100+ images, many of the jury began to visibly loss their composure. Towards the end, even the DA’s voice started to crack a bit.

This, I think, sealed the verdict in the jury’s mind. From my detached view in the gallery, I could have nitpicked the presentations, and there where a few places that I felt the defense missed opportunities to asked good technical questions (even in my own testimony). But in the end, no amount of technical rebuttal could offset those images in the mind of a jury.

The defendant opted to testify in his own defense. Because I was out of the office on the morning of July 8th 2008, I had never actually seen him in person until I took the stand to testify. What stuck me, and everyone else, was how emotionally detached he seemed. The DA went after him pretty hard, but he never broke. There was some testimony that he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome. While there was no medical evidence introduced, his demeanor did seem to be consistent with others that I know who suffer from this disorder.

In the end, the jury took only 20 minutes to convect him.

I had never been through anything like this. My technical background has prepared me for many things, however “how to deal with finding images of sexually exploited children” was never on any syllabus. The professionalism shown by the DAs, The Judge, Law Enforcement, and even the Defense Attorney was in itself something incredible to see. It has served to reenforce my respect and admiration for the law, our courts, and the people that run them.

I’m glad that I was able to help and be a small part of these events.

I am working with the TCG Legal Team (yes, we have lawyers) to draft an updated privacy policy that clearly reflects the things I have learned from this event. That document will be released in the coming days. We want to clearly spell out to our clients that we will do everything in our power to protect your privacy, but there are some things which we cannot, nor should not, protect.

For example, our word for “love” encompasses an enormous swath of emotional contexts, most of which are overlapping and can be insulting or embarrassing if taken in the wrong context. Saying, “I ‘love’ this cookie” is completely different seam saying “I ‘love’ my child”, which is also a wildly different context than, “I ‘loved’ my wife last night”

Having many friends for whom learning English was an ongoing process, it was often interesting to have be a part of group discussions. Often a native english speaker would say something, and while all the individual words from that dialog where understood, the English learner would still be confused. Mix in sarcasm, irony, and hyperbole, and you have a phrase that can be instantly understood by an American, but is completely mystifying to the rest of the world.

I have discovered a moment that aims to help bridge this communication gap. In English, we are limited to only a few punctuation marks. Basically a sentence can be punctuated to have 3 general contexts, a question (?), an exclamation (!), and everything else (.). This ideal is to incorporate additional punctuation marks to expand the general sentence contexts.

For example:

The percontation point ( ⸮ ) or mirrored question make is used to set the context of a rectorial question.

The Temherte slaqî  ( ¡ ) or inverted exclamation point is used to denote sarcasm and unreal phrases

More can be read at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation

http://opensarcasm.org/

Lets face it, Apple has had a bad couple of months. Their new flagship product has a major and obvious flaw, and the news media is on it like sharks. Steve Jobs makes some flippant comments. Apple holds a big press event to give away cases. Now the “White” iPhone 4 has been pushed back even further.

One thing I hate about Apple is having to “read the tea leaves” about everything they say or do. But because they are a hyper secretive company, customers have no choice.

So here is my prediction. Don’t buy an iPhone 4 now, because there will be a significant re-release of the product in September. This re-release will be to address the antenna issue.

So why do I think there will be a re-release?

1. The Antenna issue is a Hardware Problem. That means the only “fix” for it will be new redesigned hardware.

2. Apple has hired several new antenna engineers who apparently have been working around the clock. Why would engineers work around the clock to fix something that is already in customers hands? Apple has a million or more current design iPhone 4 in the pipeline from Foxconn in China. It makes more sense that engineers would work around the clock to redesign something. It’s unlikely that Apple would continue to sell a product (with a bumper case fix) if they planed to later recall that product and replace every customers current design iPhone 4 with one that does not have the same antenna issues.

3. In the Antenna-Gate Press conference Jobs said that free bumper cases would be provided through the end of September. This implies that after September bumper case will no longer be needed.

4. The White iPhone 4 has been pushed back till “later this year”. While there may very will have been manufacturing difficulties in with the white iPhone 4 line in the very beginning, Apple still claiming that white is harder to make than black is disingenuous. However, if Apple is trying to keep the over all supply of iPhone 4s at a bear minimum, then holding back the white iPhone 4 until the redesign makes sense.

Putting all this together seems to indicate that sometime in September there will be a quiet re-release of the iPhone 4, most likely to coincide with the release of the white iPhone 4 and the expiration of the free bumper case offer.

I think it will be a quiet re-release because any fanfare will trigger a flood of current iPhone 4 users demanding replacement units weather they are having antenna trouble or not.

Of course announcing this plan will not only trigger demands for exchange, but also will bring current iPhone 4 sales to a standstill, something Apple wants to avoid.

The problem with this plan is that keeping such things “quiet” is no longer possible. The internet allows the almost instant dissemination of information. Even an article such as this, made up of nothing but speculation and semi-logical deduction, if read by enough people itself can become the catalyst for the very problem Apple is trying to avoid. The only way to survive in the modern world is to be open, transparent and honest.

I will most likely get an iPhone 4, but I’ll wait until October or later because I’m still holding out hopes for a Verizon CDMA-LTE iPhone.

Settings –> General –> Reset –> Reset Network Settings

–Click the Red Button–

–wait–

After the Reboot, the first thing I noticed was full signal strength. WOW! That’s not something I’v seen sense upgrading to iOS 4. However when I picked the phone up I lost 3 bars almost instantly. Placing the phone down, 2 bars came back quickly, but the fifth bar took a while to return.

I can repeat the 3 bar loss trick pretty consistently. Ironically when I “cup” the phone in the manner which has been demonstrated online to block signal, i actually gain a bar of signal back.

I need to do some field testing tomorrow. (Something Apple seems to have failed to do). But at least in the near term, I feel better about signal.

There have been questions raised as to how Apple missed such an obvious flaw in product testing.

From my perspective, I can see how Apple would have missed this issue. Apple has a culture of secrecy surrounding their new products. I have never quite understood the reasoning for this, but I can say that it may be an advantage when it comes to boosting the stock price, or saving them from embarrassment should this miss production dead lines. Even within Apple, we have the impression that those employees who work on new products do so under strict contractual instructions not to talk about these projects with other Apple employees.

When the iPhone 4 prototype turned up in a bar, presumably “lost” by an Apple engineer, one of the published media reports said that the phone was in a case that gave the impression that the unit was an iPhone 3GS. Given the iPhone 4′s radical exterior visual changes, it would make sense that engineers doing field and internal testing would cloak their phone. There in lies why Apple missed the antenna issue.

Given the level of secrecy both outside and inside Apple HQ, it’s unlikely that engineers would have removed the testing iPhones 4 from the cases. Even inside Apple HQ, walking down the halls or in the common areas, a metal banded iPhone 4 would have stood out.

It’s unlikely that there would have been a lot of testing of the iPhone 4 naked. Add to this that Apple almost certainly has their own internal GSM base-station radios to test with, even if some small amount of case-less testing had happened in a lab, there was probably perfect signal strength to make up for the bad antenna design. If case-less testing was done outside of Apple HQ, it’s also unlikely that it was “real-world” testing.

I would not be surprised if there were contractual obligations that required Apple engineers to keep the iPhone 4 in a case.

“Triangle Land” are places on the map where a Sprint phone is “roaming” on another CDMA network. The name is derived from the small triangle icon above the single bars.

Yesterday I made a false report. I claimed that I was getting 3G speeds when roaming. That was incorrect. I “assumed” I was getting 3G speeds because the 3G icon was still on the phone. However after extensive testing I have discovered that the icon was wrong. While on a native Sprint tower I was getting 1Mbps+, on a triangle tower I could never get above 100Kbps. This was with full single strength on the roaming tower.

The annoying part about this is that once you enter into triangle land, it’s often hard to exit it. This is just due to the nature of cell towers. Phones like to stay connected to a single tower for as long as possible. So as you move beyond of a Sprint tower’s range, your phone will cut over to a roaming tower when it can no longer maintain signal. As you move back into Sprint range, your phone will behave the same way but in reverse, you will stay connected to the roaming tower long after you have entered back into where you think you should have Sprint coverage.

This would not have been a problem except… no 3G when roaming. Once I hit the triangle tower, my phone stayed locked to it. So I spent a good part of my without 3G coverage even though I knew I was in places where Sprint 3G was yesterday. To fix the problem I put my phone into airplane mode for a minute, then turned back on the cell radio, once it was up, I was back on Sprint 3G.

I can see where this might be an issue down the road.

Video Calling. I MADE A VIDEO CALL!! There is an app called Fring. Way back several years ago on a Nokia 6600 I opened a Fring account to have a multi-network IM client. I used it a few times, then moved on to another software package. Fring however continued to evolve without me. Seeing that I could possibly make video calls I downloaded the Android version on Fring. Sure enough all my Skype buddies came right up, and I started a video call with someone I knew to have a webcam. (Fortunately, it was also someone who is easy on the eyes). After a feew seconds of syntonization, it worked on the first try. How about that, a video call on the HTC Evo.

Now here’s the kicker, when I completed the call, I looked down and noticed that I had forgot to turn on the wifi. I did a two way video call, with the EVO, with Fring, to Skype, OVER 3G (!!), on the first try.

Now, if a third party app can do this, why is Skype not all over this phone? I have used Skype for years for both voice and video communications. There are people I have cultivated close friendships with that I have never seen from from the waist down. Skype has made noise that they will have a mobile video client out by the end of the year. If I were a Skype programer, I would have that out TOMORROW. Because every day without it is money-, mind-, and market- share lost for Skype. The savvily reader will note that Skype calls to other skip users are free, so how is it money lost? Because Skype charges for calls to real phone numbers, and if I could call real numbers, Skype people, and international call all from the same app, I would gladly ditch using my cell phone provider for minutes of communication in favor of Skype over 3g.

The down side of Skype and voice over 3G is the reality of IP traffic. TCP/IP is not designed for low latency sequential traffic (like voice). However with high enough bandwidth, low latency sequential traffic becomes possible. 3G is right on the edge of that threshold.

The MAJOR wow factor today was SIPDriod. Setting aside any issues with the lack of Skype, I did prove today that YES I can use a Sip client with Ring Central to handle voice traffic over 3G. It’s no longer theoretical, I can do it. SIPDriod is using one of my “Digital Lines” from Ring Central, and when you call the TCG 800 number and pick my extension. It does indeed ring my phone via SIPDriod. HELL YES!!!!!!!

As a bonus all my outbound calls are also relayed via SIPDriod, so when I use voice dialing on the phone, it just uses the SIP line. Simple, works, done.

The call quality is marginal. I’ve played with the Codecs to a point where I think I can even get it to work with a slower roaming data connection. I’m looked forward to trying it with 4G when I go to Nashville in the next few days. Also, because of the nature of the software, I can’t use it with my bluetooth headset… yet.

Finally, I knew it would happen at some point, my phone’s battery died today at an inopportune time. I took it off power at 8:00am this morning, but it only lasted until 3. That’s a fully hour less than yesterday. I guess my usage was up.

I’ve had two posts on AT&T Data speeds. Here and Here

Now for the harsh truth, AT&T in Cumberland County stinks.

To recap, here are the numbers for AT&T Data Speeds:

and here are the numbers for Sprint 3G:

and just for the record, Sprint data is less expensive.

While this wasn’t a function of Android, it did highlight something I had not thought about. I have gotten used to doing things the “Apple way”. Success in this test means that Android can functionally replace my iPhone. But I have to keep in mind that there are many things not iPhone per-say, but they are build on the iPhone.

Case-in-point, my car has an iPhone doc with integration to the head-unit. That’s not going to work with my EVO. I have a bed side charger for my iPhone, again, not going to work with my EVO. I can see where these things might be replaceable, but it’s still infrastructure adjustments I have to take into consideration.

Battery. I unplugged my EVO at 7:30am this morning. After a day of moderate use, the phone’s battery died at 4:00pm. I did listen to about an hours worth of Podcasts during the day via the speaker. If I had a car dock that played podcasts via the head-unit while it charged the phone, it might have lasted the day. I was on the phone 33 minutes total. from 7:30am till 4:00pm.

The biggest frustration of the day came from RingCentral. We use RingCentral as our VoIP PBX. I could not check my voice mail either by the RC website or by the emailed attachments (they are WAV files). I had to “call” my voice mail and check it. How very antique. RingCentral claims they are working on an Android App, but I wont hold my breath.

This does pose a problem for me durning the test. I need my voicemail while on the go, but I don’t want to keep having to dial in to have to check it. Google voice with their speech-to-text is awesome beyond words. I can simply “read” a voicemail message. While it’s not 100% accurate, it is close enough for me to get the ideal of what the call is about. In the event the text to complete gibberish, I can still listen to the message. Compared to Google Voice, Ringcentral is lacking.

However, RC does offer me an 800 number (which is on all my published business material), and the phone tree features of RC are nice. Google really should consider something like this for their Google Apps project.

For some time we have been considering moving our ipPBX from a hosted solution to one we control with Asterisk. It’s quite a step, but it gives us more control over our communications infrastructure. This has been under consideration of some time, but we’ve not made any firm migration plans. The advantage of Asterisk with Android is that voicemail can be emailed in a Android friendly format and there are some transcription systems that integrate with Asterisk to get voicemails to the user as text. Also, and this one is big, there are several SIP VoIP clients in the Android Market. If a SIP VoIP Client could be made to work over 3G, then cell minutes be damned! Of course there are a thousand things to test on a pure wireless IP based voice link, and I have my doubts as to the real world feasibility with 3G, but it’s something I would love to try.

Now, back to RC, they do offer “digital lines” which are SIP Voice Connection, it might be worth it to try that with an Android SIP client. As you will see below, Cell “minutes” are a big deal because in my line of work I am on the phone a lot.

I’m trying to understand Sprint’s billing systems. I have a plan that gives me “any mobile” call free. Which means I can call any mobile phone and it not count towards my minutes. As of 5:00pm July 1 the Call Log on sprint says I’ve talked 53 minutes, which seems about right. The three categories are “Anytime”, “Any Mobile”, and “Nights and Weekends”. The number from those three add match with the total from the call log. 24, 23, and 6 respectively. If I’m reading the numbers right, Sprint correctly identified a ported land line number as a cell phone, kudos for Sprint.

I’m wondering how Google Voice will effect my “free Any Mobile” calls with Sprint. On my bill, the number called is just “NEWORLEANS,LA” which nicely hides my calls from Sprint, but I know that some of those calls where made to cell phones. hmmm. I’m wondering if I can get Sprint to classify the GV number as a mobile. Also my local GV number is by designation a Sprint number, perhaps if I turn off Caller ID forwarding in GV, Sprint will think those inbound calls are Mobile ones. I’ll do some testing.

I will say this, unless I get a VOIP over 3G solution in play quick, or get Sprint to accept GV calls as mobile numbers, I’ll burn through my 450 minutes quick. Realistically that’s only about 10 days with of voice for me.

The biggest thing I did today was work with the phone on a technical level. I have complete filesystem access, and have removed much of the Sprint bradding from the OS. There are development copies of the newer 2.2 Froyo Andriod build, but the best of them still do not have 100% working hardware on the EVO. I think I’ll wait. I suspect when HTC/Sprint release 2.2 officially, there will be a scramble to Root that, and it will be available soon after the official release.

The big reason for moving to 2.2 will be the system level wifi hot spot capabilities. Of course sprint offers that now for an additional $30 a month, but with the Android level access, I don;t think the carrier can discern Phone data traffic from connected computer data traffic, especially if all that traffic is run from a VPN connection at the phone level (something Android can do). I think that when the official HTC/Sprint 2.2 is relived they will have taken great pains to remove this feature, which of course the rooting and modding community will restore in short order.

I did get PDAnet working on the EVO. I had to use the USB rather then the Bluetooth DUN, but I think the problem was in my Macbooks Bluetooth stack rather than a failure on the part of anything on the phone.

I also played around with VPN. Privacy is very important to me and I like to encrypt as much of my data traffic as posable. PPTP VPN on Android works over Wifi, but for some reason I can’t it get to work over Sprints 3G. The VPN client will establish a connections but I can’t get data to route over it. I think this may have something to do with the way Sprint is doing its some of their internal network management. I’ll try other type of VPN tomorrow.

Coverage. Today was my first chance to get out and see what coverage was really going to be like in the area. Out in the Homesteads I got a curious icon in my single strength indicator. It was a small triangle over the bars. I’m 99% sure that was the roaming icon, but I can’t find any direct documentation.

I lost single completely in the State Park Lodge Basement during Rotary today. I had a single bar of single that would come and go, but I could never get data lock on.

If the triangle icon was indeed roaming, I can confirm that I was getting 3G data from a Verizon tower on my Sprint EVO. The Sprint sales rep has assured me that data roaming is included in the unlimited data package. I also inspected the the contacts I signed, there was absolutely no mention of any extra charges for data roaming, so we’ll see. I’m going to keep a close eye on my account.

So far my biggest problem is that I have to stop thinking in iPhone. Things operate just a little different with Android. I remember when I made the switch from PC to Mac three years ago. There was a bit of transition in learning everything, but after a few weeks I was fine. I’m hoping Android will be the same way.

I’ve been an iPhone user for a couple of years, before that Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 even before.

I have to admit, I love my iPhone. When I say “love” I mean it’s an irrational emotional feeling towards a device and a platform. So switching off iPhone feels a bit like a divorce. I remember all the good times, but the few bad things are so bad and so unforgivable that it taints the entirety of the relationship.

So want has iPhone done? Well here’s the list of things I want out of life that iPhone just can’t give me right now. (For the purposes of discussion, when I say “iPhone”, I mean the device, software, applications, AT&T, and Apple)

1. AT&T Cell Service is awful. In the places where I live and work, AT&T’s coverage is abysmal, and there is no 3G, only EDGE.

2. iTunes App Store. Yes there are 250,000+ apps in the App Store, but the approval process is frightfully arbitrary. The restrictions I feel stifle innovation. It’s hard to trust the judgment of a company who thinks fart jokes are ok but political jokes are forbidden.

3. Apple has taken a position on Intellectual Property that I feel is contrary to innovation. Steve Jobs has publicly attacked open-source codecs for video claiming that ALL codecs infringe on MPEG-LA, and Apple has sued HTC. Apple should innovate rather than litigate. The culture of secrecy at Apple is disturbing. I do not want to support a company I do not agree with.

4. AT&T has jerked customers around with a bait and switch over unlimited Data on the iPhone and iPad. The have also raised early termination fees, and thread  to sue a customer for contacting the CEA. They also charge mirco-cell users for their own data. Again, these are business practices I do not agree with, and I do not what to support companies that do things like this.

5. iOS 4 and iPhone 4 honestly do not strike me as genuine innovations. Facetime is an attempt to reinvent the skype wheel, poorly. The external issues with skin contact shows poor testing and bad design (most likely from being too secretive). The multitasking functions in iOS 4 are a joke. Yes there are some background abilities, but the software must be re-written to do it, without the ability to control them or for those apps to pass notifications back to the user in a useful way.

6. The inability for Apps on the iPhone to work from a single shared file storage area is a difficult thing to understand.

7. Media. I have 1TB+ of music and movies on a Mac server shared via iTunes. The ability to move those files to and from my iPhone is nice, but the INABILITY to stream those files from the server (like my Apple TV does) is maddening.

So these are my thoughts on my first Afternoon with the HTC EVO

Sprints 3G. WOW! I don’t know how it compares to 3G speeds with the other Cell Carries, but after years of EDGE, getting 2,000Kbps+ is just awesome. It remains to be seen in Sprint has coverage everywhere I go, but I did have seamless coverage from Cookeville to Crossville on i40 and coverage both and Work and Home.

The coolest feature I’ve encountered so far is the voice recognition of Android. Everywhere I can type, I can speak, and it’s very accurate. There is an app in the Android Market called “translate” (it’s free), with this app I can “speak” a phrase into the phone, and then the translation can be spoken via the text-to-speech engine. So I now have a babble fish, or a universal translator, depending on your sci-fi preference.

The HTC “Sense UI” is kinda kludgy. I much prefer to use the stock Android UI. I took time to disable as much of it as I could.

All the “Sprint” apps on the phone reminds me of all the crapware that comes on retail windows PCs. I’ve not used any of it yet, and I doubt I will.

Battery. I’ve not had enough time to evaluate battery life. The new phone had about 50% battery, and that lasted the rest of the afternoon plus some. I charge my phones at night, so when I got to that point today I put the EVO on to charge. We’ll se how it does tomorrow.

Google Voice. My phone has a number, but I didn’t bother learning it. I have a google voice number, and the Google Voice integration is incredible. All of my SMS and voice traffic is coming in and going out over Google voice in a completely seamlessly. I now know why Apple has rejected the Google Voice app from the iTunes store. It puts Apples and AT&Ts voice mail system to shame.

Tomorrow I will check out the Android Market tomorrow to see if I can find programs to replace the ones I have on my iPhone.

I plan on carrying both phones for the duration of the test. I also have an iPad, which ironically has enabled me to break away from iPhone. I know there will be some things which are iOS only, and that’s what my iPad will be used for. So far the only thing that I needed my iPad for that normally would be used by my iPhone is the iTunes remote.

I did have a strange emotional response today to the absence of my iPhone. My pocket space is somewhat limited, so I had to leave my iPhone on a window ledge while on site with a client today. After an hour or so, the iPhone vibrated to let me know I had an email message. I looked over at the window and saw my iPhone laying there, and I felt “sorry” for it, like it was lonely for me.