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I tried the method described in this post but whenever I press the headset button, no matter what the phone is doing at the time, the Z600 waits for a voice command to be given rather than recorded. In other words it aborts the recording and goes into voice dialling instead. In fact if I press the headset button at the time described in the post, when I cancel the voice command the phone locks up until I power cycle it!

Not looking good so far

TDK Systems have a new version (4.0) of the TDK Mobile software they bundle with their PC Bluetooth hardware. Unfortunately, it seems to only be available with their new Fone Styla product at present.

I’ll be watching out for a downloadable upgrade for existing customers…

After all these months of waiting, finally there’s some more information from TDK Systems regarding the release of their WIDCOMM 1.4.x drivers:

In response to your questions about ‘why isn’t the TDK version of the 1.4 stack out yet?’

Firstly we have had to do a lot of work to check that the 1.4 release will replace or co-exist with the Microsoft stack that you may already be using with HID devices.

Earlier this year we started a Beta programme for 1.4. We have released several betas to the testers in the past 4 months with feedback. This feedback has been crucial to the rollout plans of the software. One gating issue which prevented a user from making an SPP connection to a Bluetooth printer. Another issue was that during install of the latest 1.4 stack, you were not able to upgrade any of the existing settings from 1.3.2.19 to 1.4.2.18 and the consequently the stack would not work on reboot. We considered this unacceptable for our existing customers and held up our software release. We could just throw out 1.4 releases like other adaptor vendors but it is these kinds of quality issues that generate a lot of support calls and wasted customer time which prevent us from doing so.

The good news is that 1.4 is nearly ready to ship on CD with all new Bluetooth products from TDK, as from January 2004. Then we can go ahead and release it on the web for existing customers for Q1 next year. Sorry for the delays. Thank you for your interest in Bluetooth products from TDK Systems.

Sinclair

TDK Systems Europe

So Q1 2004, apparently. Maybe I’m just being cynical after such a long wait, but I’ll believe it when I see it…

I’m sure every piece of technology has its shortcomings, and given any new gadget it’s only a matter of time before you run into them.

I bought a Sony Ericsson HBH-65 Bluetooth headset at the weekend, and although it’s not cheap it’s very comfortable to wear and the sound quality is excellent. As a new user, I’m still somewhat confused by the meaning of the various beeps it makes to pass information to me. Would it be too hard to have a human voice say meaningful words rather than low-beep, high-beep, beep, beep etc? My answerphone’s been doing it for years!

Anyway, that’s probably only a matter of getting used to using it (which will happen all by itself given time), but there’s a much more serious problem and it appears to be with the phone; my new Z600. Understanably, the headset manual suggests that in order to get the best voice recognition you should record all your voice commands using the headset itself. That way, when the phone is comparing the words you say to your prerecorded voice commands they’ll be a closer match because they’ll both have been recorded with the same microphone.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be possible to record voice commands with a headset on the Z600. I’ve read various usenet postings on the subject and some say it works and others say it doesn’t, but I’ve tried and my attempts thus far have been unsuccessful. I hope there’s a way to do this because voice dialling just isn’t working at the moment. I’ve asked Sony Ericsson technical support and I’m waiting to hear back from them…

When my T68i packed up last month I started looking for a phone to upgrade to. My requirements were as follows:

• Bluetooth
• Camera
• Flip cover (I kept dialling out from my T68i when it was in my pocket - too easy to unlock!)

In the end I plumped for a Sony Ericsson Z600. It wasn’t easy to get hold of one (because it’s quite a new model) and I wasn’t able to upgrade with my existing contract (they had no stock and it would have cost me at least £130) but I eventually ordered it online from The Link.

It’s an impressive phone, quite similar in many ways to the T68i but much, much better. It’s quite amazing to see how the technology has moved on since I got my T68i in January. Aside from the obvious addition of the camera, the screen is much higher resolution and the phone is far more responsive overall. It also supports more Bluetooth profiles (more on that later) and, most importantly, it looks really, really cool

Yabedo: Creepy Queen Vic punter Graham Foster rapes the new barmaid and then claims she willingly had sex with him on the floor of the Albert Square pub… ‘In reality Graham Foster is an evil sexual predator, who has insinuated himself into the pub as a nice guy for the express purpose of choosing a victim.’

No.

However, apparently that’s not as obvious as you might think. I was browsing through my web server logs and found that someone visited my site having searched for the following:

• bluetooth is a detergent
• are bluetooth is a detergent
• is bluetooth a detergent?
• BLUETOOTH is a detergent or not

Whoever it was, they certainly take some convincing.

CNET: The new Service Pack will upgrade Windows XP to support a later version of the short-range Bluetooth wireless technology, Microsoft said.

Never mind text generation – spend hours enjoying the lyrics to all your old favourite kids’ programmes!

The Ultimate Insult: Quit using Lorem Ipsum as dummy text. Use this text generator for some more creative paragraphs. You might spot the lyrics to the BJ and the Bear them if you look long enough….