Alec Saunders SquawkBox

The beta of Radio Handi, billing itself as the Party Line for Planet Earth, went live this evening.  In a nutshell, Radio Handi is an open-line conferencing+BBS+Email notification system+SMS notification system, married to a social network. 

Wrap your head around that for a minute. 

You can do things like:

• quickly relay voice messages about news or events to people in your family, or a club, or the neighborhood
• relay text and email messages to everyone in the group
• conduct live conference calls with up to 20 people calling in from almost anywhere in the world
• broadcast live audio to any phone or MP3 player
• create a party line for your neighborhood
• create message boards and chat lines for any subject
• create a sponsored voice community to promote your business (for example, a scuba shop could create a message board and conference line for local divers)
• create a message board and conference line for your alumni organization
• exchange messages with fellow hobbyists
• broadcast audio and commentary from any live event, such as a high school sporting event
• broadcast classes, lectures and presentations
• broadcast live from any location where you have mobile phone service or a broadband internet connection

Oh, and by the way, they’ve built a phone directory to global radio stations too, so you can listen in.

Radio Handi is accesible in over 30 countries via a local telephone call, or toll free via SIP.  They recommend Gizmo.  Strangely enough, they’ve got numbers for places like Latvia and Luxembourg listed, but not Canada.  It must be a hangover from the bad relationship Jean Chretien’s Liberals built with George Bush…

At this point, the social networking piece of Radio Handi is limited.  The profiles are weak, and there doesn’t seem to be an effective way to search them.  Rather, you can search for a community to join, and find people that way.  There’s room for improvement for sure.

This is a hugely exciting development.  Just recently, a few of us have been musing on why social networks hadn’t been combined with voice, and then along comes this.  You can find out more on the website, or you can go read the Radio Handi blog as well. 

I just discovered OneVillage, a cool Skype store, educational site and blog based in Australia.  Targeting consumers and business, they offer a variety of software and hardware products to work with Skype. 

A grass roots distribution channel is forming around a free piece of software.  Cool!

I don’t know about you, but headsets are something that I spend a pile of time on. Getting a headset that fits well, sounds good, and has basics like a long enough cord, is not always easy. 

I’ve always been a fan of Plantronics sets.  They tend to be a little pricy, but they also tend to be very good quality.  My dog ate my last one a little while ago (she’s a puppy, and chews). Recently I’ve been using the new .Audio 340 Behind-the-Head Multimedia Headset. 

The 340 is sleekly styled, and at $29.95 relatively inexpensive.  With an 8 foot cable, I can wear it while sitting at my desk and still move around easily.  The integrated mute button and volume controls have a convenient clip on the back as well, so they can be easily fixed to my shirt.  And it’s comfortable as can be.

Most importantly, 340 has deep rich sound, and does a very credible job of reproducing bass tones.  You could easily use these headphones for VoIP calls (as I primarily do), or listening to music, or playing games.  They’re that good.

What could be better?  The biggest single addition would be a USB version.  Then I could hear Skype ring through my PC speakers, and use the headphones for the conversation.  It’s a small complaint. 

“Sears Canada is a multi-channel retailer dedicated to providing its customers with quality merchandise & exceptional service, coast to coast.”  Sears Canada Mission Statement

Three years ago our venerable Kenmore dryer finally met it’s maker.  It was 25 years old.  We had purchased it, along with a Kenmore washer, second-hand, in Toronto, just after getting married. They became international travellers, those appliances, as they were moved to Kitchener, then to Washington State, and then back to Ottawa.  We often boasted of how reliable they were, and when the dryer finally died, we replaced them with Sears products again; this time the top of the line Kenmore front loading washer / dryer combination.  At over $2,000, the new appliances were pricey, but our last experience with Sears had been outstanding. Moreover, with 5 children to wash for, it’s important to know you can rely on your appliances.  Laundry piles up fast at the Saunders home!

It’s four months since our extended warranty expired.  Yesterday, the washer started pouring water all over the floor.  This morning we learned that the seal on the door of the washer had torn, and that it would be $160 for the part, plus labour, to replace it.

Janice called the Sears Center in Belleville and spoke with a woman named Tara.  Janice’s point of view was that the washer was nearly new, and therefore the rubber seal must have been defective to begin with.  Tara explained the “reality” of business today.  Sears used to treat their customers well, she told Janice, but they don’t anymore.  Sears used to fix products for customers in order to generate goodwill, she said, but goodwill isn’t profitable. ”If we did that”, Tara said, “I’d be out of a job”. If you bought something at the Brick, or at Leon’s, Tara told Janice, and it was out of warranty, they’d say “tough luck”.  According to Tara, that’s now Sears policy as well.  Tara related an experience she had buying a television at Future Shop, and how she had been disatisfied with their warranty service, and said that Sears now had the same policies.

I don’t know what Leon’s, or the Brick do for warranty service, but I’ve always had a great experience at Future Shop. To me, it seems the height of stupidity to be slagging your competition on the complaints line, and justifying your bad behaviour as “the norm”.  It makes a mockery of the Sears Canada mission of providing “quality merchandise and exceptional service”, doesn’t it?

Anyway, Janice explained to Tara that she hadn’t bought the products at Leon’s, or the Brick, or Corbeil because she wanted Sears products.  We paid a premium for those appliances at Sears, rather than walking next door to Corbeil Discount Appliances (who sell the same products under the Whirlpool name for less money), because we believed that Sears stood behind the products they sold.  Moreover, Sears Canada executives apparently also believe this.  In their latest annual shareholders report, they write:

Sears sells more major appliances than any other retailer in Canada. Although we sell all well-known national brands, Sears private brand, Kenmore, is the best selling brand in the country. We service all major appliances coast to coast to provide continued confidence and peace of mind to our customers before, during and after the sale.

It seems, at least according to Tara, that they’ve lost their way.  Tara suggested that Janice write a letter to Lisa Miracle at Sears Canada in Toronto.  Apparently Ms. Miracle can intervene.  There is no email address online for Ms. Miracle. Tara says to write to the head office at 222 Jarvis Street.  I guess we’ll do that.

In the meantime, while we wait for the Miracle, the laundry continues to pile up.

Yesterday, the ICANN approved the creation of the .TEL top level domain.  Telnic has been championing the creation of this domain since the late 90’s, and will be the administrar. According to the press release: