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The Press
Q. I am in the market for a device that integrates a telephone with a WebTV-like Internet appliance. Does such a beast exist? A. Absolutely! The best of this breed is Big Planet iPhone, which is a combination telephone/Internet terminal that has all the same features as a regular phone, including caller ID, call waiting, three-way calling, and voice mail. But it also sports an unlimited caller directory, unlimited speed dial, plus a built-in Web browser that's HTML 3.2 compatible. With it, the Connected Crustacean has discovered, you can surf the Internet and receive and send e-mail, all thorugh a telephone. It even lets you print to an attached printer. The phone includes an 7.4-inch 640-by-480 grayscale LCD screen and built-in QWERTY keyboard, a 14.4 kbps modem and comes priced to sell at less than $350. You also get silicon storage for 40 bookmarks and full POP3 e-mail features.
Telephone meets touch-screen Internet appliance iPhone® is a desktop telephone married to an Internet browser.
By Mike Hogan, "Big Planet's iPhone® reminds me of that commercial in which a guy eating a chocolate bar collides with a jar of peanut butter. Voila! The Reeses Peanut Butter Cup is born. Yum. "The iPhone® looks as if someone carrying a touchscreen portable PC tripped over the telephone cord and landed on the phone. The result is a fairly large desktop telephone with the usual handset, speaker, and phone keypad. But it also has a good-size (6-by-4-1/2 inches) touchscreen with stylus, Internet scroll keys, and a retractable QWERTY keyboard. "iPhone® is ready to go right out of the box because it includes an integrated plug-and-play HTML 3.2-compatible browser and preprogrammed Internet access through Big Planet's nationwide Internet service provider. "I found the stylus and touchscreen combination to be a more natural way to navigate Web pages than mousing around; this setup will probably have more appeal for non-PC users too. "According to International Data Corporation, smart appliances like iPhone® and handheld PCs will outsell desktop PCs for Internet access from home by 2001 by about 17 percent." iPhone® offers quite a few conveniences, and is definitely to be taken seriously.
InfoGear Enhances iPhone Internet Appliance Ease-of-Use
"We are committed to bringing the Internet - both the World Wide Web and e-mail - into everyone's home or office in a user-friendly and affordable way," said Dennis Tsu, vice president of marketing, InfoGear Technology Corporation. "This is our fourth release of software enhancements for the iPhone. Each of these sets of features has been designed to expand the capabilities of the iPhone user, while preserving its ease-of-use and intuitive interface. Our mission with the iPhone is to transform the telephone into the simplest Internet-connection device in the world." InfoGear's enhancements to the iPhone in the version 1.3 software increase the support for e-mail to four different accounts. Users can now create individual address profiles for different family members or create a variety of personal e-mail accounts, including business and home e-mail. "Now, with the touch of a finger you can check your personal e-mail or your office e-mail, and your spouse or children can check their e-mail, all without having to type in long POP3 server addresses and e-mail account information. Compared to a PC, this makes e-mail quick and easy," said Tsu. In response to customer requests, the new 1.3 software release also features two font size options - standard fonts and enlarged fonts - which make the text in both Web sites and e-mail larger and easier to read. For users who don't have or want PCs and all their complexity, this new feature makes it easier to read e-mail and interact with the net. Further increasing its user-friendly capabilities, the 1.3 software release upgrades the iPhone software from session-based to permanent, or persistent cookies. Cookies are the technical mechanisms that enable a server to "remember" the user by assigning an ID (identification) value that can be instantly used to identify that person's record in the database. Now, when a user logs into sites such as Amazon.com, My Excite or My Yahoo!, the iPhone browser will "remember" that person's information and password each time he or she visits that site, rather than requiring the visitor to re-enter personal information before each visit. Like all persistent cookies, the user's password and information remains on the server until removed by the delete button.
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