Alec Saunders SquawkBox

People sometimes send me phones to write about, but never a white truffle dinner… enjoy!

I’ve been searching for the perfect mobile headset for many months now.  My criteria: it has to be audible to me and the people I’m calling in noisy environments, small, able to work with both my PC and my mobile, and comfortable to wear.  To date, I’ve owned the original Motorola HS-810 (four of them actually, because they kept breaking), and the Nokia HS-26W. After four broken Motorola’s I gave up on them.  The Nokia seemed quite good until friends complained of an echo on the call.  A little diagnosis revealed that the Nokia headset was the culprit.

It was time for a new headset, and time to do a little research.

Very quickly I zeroed in on Cardo Wireless, an innovative manufacturer of bluetooth devices from Pennsylvania.  Although best known for the Cardo Scala Rider, a headset for motorcyclists, their Scala 500 and Scala 700 were also winning rave reviews. 

A quick trip to EBay, and I grabbed one of these babies for US$36.99 + shipping.  Yesterday it arrived. 

The package consists of the headset itself, a moldable wire earloop, charger + USB cable for charging from a PC, and a curious little neoprene carry case.  You can see a photo of the headset on the right.

First impression?  It’s tiny.  At 0.4 oz, and 1.5 inches long, it’s by far the smallest headset I’ve ever owned.  By comparison, the Nokia and Motorola headsets are enormous.

How does it perform, you ask? 

Audibility of the Scala 700 is great. When compared to my old Nokia or Motorola headsets, it’s a hands down champ.  There are two reasons for this.  One, of course, is the moldable ear loop.  You can simply bend the earloop to fit your ear, holding the headset snugly against your head.  It’s possible to lean your head from side to side with the Cardo, without the headset moving. That means you will always hear the person you’re speaking with.  The Nokia and Motorola headsets with their soft soft rubber earloops, by comparision, fall out every time.  Best of all, because the Cardo is so light and snug, you often don’t even notice you’re wearing it.

The other reason for the great sound quality is the speaker itself. In the photo below, note the small size of the speaker used in the Nokia and Motorola units, plus the tiny holes that the sound must travel through.  Compare that to the large, earbud-style speaker on the Scala 700.  It’s no wonder that the sound quality is so good.  In fact, yesterday I used the Scala 700 in a crowded tradeshow floor environment, and was able to hear and converse without any trouble.

 

The Scala also excels at pairing with multiple devices.  For instance, it’s currently paired with my desktop PC, and my Blackberry.  Making Skype calls with the headset is easy — just make them the way you normally would.  If you decide to make a call with your handset, instead, a quick double press of the volume wheel causes the headset to switch to another configured Bluetooth device.  You can have up to 8.

The Scala 700 is a winner.  Not only does it have great features, great sound, and great comfort, but at under $50 it’s a price leader is well.  Take a pass on the expensive accessories offered by your cellphone retailer (check out the inflated prices Rogers charges for a headset), head to EBay and grab one of these before they’re sold out.  You won’t regret it.

This evening a minor controversy exploded in the Asterisk community as first Marcelo Rodriguez took Fonality to task over the security of its hosted model, and then Fonality CEO Chris Lyman responded via a guest posting on Garrett Smith’s blog.  Ken Camp weighed in with a “Tut tut, children” post, while ringmaster Andy Abramson waved his baton from the sidelines. 

There are really just two issues here.  First, can Fonality make their solution secure.  Second, given that they are collecting information, how will they protect what they collect?

I don’t know the mechanism that Fonality uses to keep the link between servers and clients open.  Earlier this week, in a conversation with Chris Lyman, I asked if it was a VPN (as Marcelo asserted) and was told that it is another mechanism.  I am going to posit that Fonality has the technical chops to make the link itself secure, and will vigilently monitor that technology to ensure it hasn’t been compromised. For a hosted services provider, that’s the cost of doing business.

The second issue is a policy and ethics issue, rather than anything technical.  Chris asserts that his employees “pride themselves on their ethics”.  Moreover, Fonality’s privacy policy makes the following statement:

Fonality provides a service where our customers upload and store their data on Fonality servers and equipment. Fonality does not review, edit, disseminate, or use this data in any way, except as may be required by law, or as outlined in our Terms of Use. Customer data or records may be viewed from time to time to handle a technical support request that is initiated by the client, or to resolve any other problem or technical issue. Additionally, individual records may be viewed if required so by law, or if there is a suspected Terms of Use violation.

This is a pretty clear indication of the commitment that Fonality is making to their customers.  Could it be stronger?  Sure, the policy could assert that customers own their own data, and that they have rights associated with that data.  By and large, though, it’s clear that Fonality is committed to keeping private customer data private.  Again, that’s the cost of doing business in a hosted model. 

With all due respect to my friend Marcelo, the security issues he has raised are a throwback to big enterprise IT.  They are expressions of the ongoing struggle between hosted and premises based services.  All hosted services have to deal with the issues raised by Marcelo (indeed, we at iotum deal with these regularly), while providing superior usability, upgradeability, and maintainability.  Most premises based services don’t have all the benefits hosted models offer, and may be less cost effective, but deliver greater control of customer data. 

It’s a tradeoff every customer is faced with. Personally, I am an unabashed fan of hosted models.