I love Bluetooth devices. The technology is wonderful to have around, especially while driving. It frees both of your hands up to actually steer and/or shift gears, saves your neck from getting sore due to holding your phone to your head. Yet it has taken a while to catch on, which is a shame. Granted, in the state of Washington, Bluetooth is about to catch on REAL quick (see recent post on the ban on handheld devices in cars).

I figure now is as good a time as any to provide a tutorial on how bluetooth works, how to hook it up to your phone, and how to choose the right headset for you. This is a good starter for you. Once you find a bluetooth that works well for you, you'll be hooked.

The bluetooth technology can do other stuff as well, which I will cover in a later post.

One of the first "iPhone killers" is on the loose. The HTC Touch was announced just before the release of the iPhone to give it a bit of competition. This PDA is a pocket PC number and is similar to the iPhone in that you can use different types of gestures on the screen.

This review on PhoneArena will give you all sorts of pictures and goes over each aspect of this interesting new phone. Check it out!

Today's flavor takes on the iPod section of your iPhone. This can be helpful if you're new to the iPhone game.

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If you are a Sprint customer and know your good Sprint customer service reps on a first-name basis, this certainly applies to you; most likely because you have received a letter from Sprint telling you that they are tired of taking care of you and they want you to become some other carrier's problem child.

This article says it all. Customers who have called Sprint 40-50 times a month are being let out of their contract. The customers apparently have no say, no warning, no nothing. Granted, I can't even imagine calling the same customer service dept. 2-3 times a day on average, but I don't believe that most of these 1,000+ customers are calling for a friendly chat.

I believe most customers are calling the service reps because there are some major issues to be resolved, or existing concerns that cannot be met on a timely basis. Do you think that these customers don't have something else better to do than to call up customer service this many times? I highly doubt that.

There's only one reason I could ever think of that justifies what Sprint is doing; getting rid of the costly problem customers will free up some additional revenue. This revenue could be highly needed smack dab in the middle of a huge merger. Or perhaps Sprint, now feeling like a new company, wants to start anew and build themselves up again; and this is the first in a major series of cleansing yet to occur.

But the truth is, these customers are not the ones costing Sprint their desperately needed revenue. The customer service reps are. Sprint is losing $200 (per ETF) for each customer they let go for calling too much, and who knows- maybe a credit for a similar amount was all the customer needed. They could've come up with alternate solutions within the FIRST 5 CALLS that 1. would've saved time and money and 2. retained a (could have been) happy customer who would spread news of their good experiences to their friends.

Instead, each customer that has been let go now has an even MORE sour taste in their mouth. Think about how sour they already were about having to call customer service that many times! Now add on the fact that Sprint is proving they don't really care about those customers and would rather be rid of them than resolve their concerns, and voila - there is now a very very angry ex-customer. That move alone can hurt the reputation of Sprint a lot more than the cost of keeping them as a customer.

I could understand if Sprint at least investigated each individual customer in this situation first! Have a superviser or someone with some real power to go the extra mile for that customer, see what the concerns are, and take care of them. If they cannot take care of them, then and ONLY then offer to buy them out of their contract if they would like to go elsewhere. Most customers would at least appreciate that gesture, I would think.

One other thing I can't help but think. Contracts are agreements that are held between two parties; when we sign a contract with our wireless carrier, things should go both ways. Why no warning? Why no extra communication from Sprint to the customer? No "please stop calling us or else we may have to drop you" letter or anything.

Indeed, this move seriously jeopardized Sprint's reputation - ESPECIALLY in the area of customer service. If customers have to call 40-50 times a month to get their problems fixed, why would we want to sign up for their service?

A Cnet Weekend Project that discusses how to completely sync your phone up with your computer, and the benefits of doing so.

Here is the new VX8550, aka the Chocolate 2, which came out at Verizon July 9.Will it receive the same buzz as its predecessor? Not sure, but here are some reviews on it. What's so different about this one? Not much, it seems. A tiny bit slimmer and lighter, a new 2.5 mm headphone jack, and other minor adjustments. Most of the changes were in style.

PhoneArena
Cnet Crave

So many choices. So many carriers. These days, choosing your wireless provider is a HUGE deal, especially when making the wrong decision would cost you at least $175-200 to cancel your contract with them.

This cnet article gives a brief explanation of each major carrier's strengths and weaknesses. It definitely helps to do a little research before you make the big plunge.