robjam.es

Like many people that work in front of their PC’s and Macs, I spend a bit of time on different types of calls; mobile, landline, Skype, and Conference Calls. I am my Skype and my iPhone a lot, but never seem to find a happy place for what devices I use to listen to or speak on.

My solution so far has been to use a Logitech headset on my Mac when I am Skype calls or conference calls (where audio is done through the Mac), and I use the iPhone headset that is provided in the box. But I have issues with this; 1) as much as I like the Logitech headset, I don’t find it comfortable for long periods of time and always feel like its falling off my head. The other issue is the wires – they just get in the way & 2) although the iPhone headset is fine, its always falling out of my ears and I keep getting tangled in the wires.

So I have been looking for the holy grails of headset, here is my criteria;

1. No Wires
2. An inner Ear solution
3. But I also want it to hang from behind my ear (inner ear always falls out too for me)
4. stereo, so typical bluetooth headsets are out (I am partially deaf from too much Rock n Roll in a previous life, and audio in both my ears is best)
5. Something that can work with both my Mac and iPhone
6. I want to be able to listen to music on it too

So after some research I came across the 906 Backbeat Headphone from Plantronic and Altec Lansing, and after using it for a week, and although I am still trying to resolve a Mic issue with my Mac, I have been very impressed!!

These Plantronics are essentially inner ear headphones that hang behind the ear. They connect to any Bluetooth enabled device and also have a bluetooth adapter that plugin into any mini jack audio device. They also have a built in mic that seems to work quite effectively (as many people are telling me) when you are using them with the iPhone or Skype.

I paired it up with my iPhone first and that was pretty straight forward. Press the power button and hold it on until the LED alternates between red and blue, and the iPhone picked it up straight away. As soon as I hit play on the headset, my iPod started to play!!! And when I make or take a call, the iPhone sees my Plantronic headset and uses it by default.

Next I paired it up with my Mac. This was just as straight forward. Put the headphones in discoverable mode again, and the Mac pairs with it. As expected, on the Mac I can select it as an audio device and in Skype, I can also select to use the Plantronic as the audio input and output device. Although I have come across an issue at the moment that I am sure I will be able to resolve; the microphone doesn’t seem to want to work. I can get the headset to work fine and hear everything, but when I select the Plantronics as a Mic input, no one can hear anything. I am thinking I will still need to play with this somewhat to get it sorted out.

The Good Stuff

I find the Plantronics super comfortable. They feel very natural on my ears, are not heavy and unlike other wired headphones, when I move my head suddenly or quickly, they just stay in place. They sound awesome! When I first bought them, I charged them up and wore them on a flight back home from a work engagement and I loved them immediately. The don’t sit right in my ears, but have these telescopic buds the seem to transmit the sound neatly, and also unlike many other earphones, they don’t lose bottom end when they slightly pop out (which is their natural sitting positions). They are also very ‘discrete’, meaning that most people don’t even notice that you are wearing them! But the downside is when you get a call, you look like a total fool talking to himself!!!

The Bad Stuff

I can’t say that I have come across much stuff to complain about yet. The only things that seem to be strange is when I first get them working with my iPhone, the volume controls work perfectly, but 10 minutes in that seems to stop working. And turning them off and on again seems to fix that. The other thing that annoyed me is the fact that the only way you could charge the device was via the supplied Power Supply, that charges through a micro USB port. These days, most devices allow you to charge them through the USB port. The last thing I need is to have to look for a power outlet when travelling just for the headset. Quick fix; I jumped onto eBay and bought a USB to Micro-USB cable for $8 delivered! Not so much a gripe with these headphones as it is with Bluetooth, but I would prefer  to have a greater range than 10 metres. I am sometimes on a Skype call and would like to walk out of the environment that I am in to make it more private. But the limitations of Bluetooth don’t able me to go into a room down the hall. Oh well, have to wait for the new Bluetooth standard to be released

Conclusion

When I am at my desk, I have it paired to my MacBook and pretty much always on charge. So when I am on Skype, I can just put these on my head. And if I am working for long periods of time where I want to listen to some music, I’ll use these as well. Then when I hit the road, I shut my laptop and turn on Bluetooth on my iPhone and I am listening to my iPod and can take and make calls whilst driving. Perfect solution for me!!!

If you are looking for comfortable stereo headphones that hand off the back of your ear, I can’t recommend these enough. I love them, but remember its only a week that I have been using them. The bluetooth pairing is great, sound great, they are very comfortable and I can find myself wearing them all day without my ears hurting.

I finally got a UI designer to complete the mockups for my site. And when it was time to get the HTML markup, he suggested I use a “Design to HTML” service. There is lots of them out there. You pretty much give them the Photoshop PSD file, and in return they provide you with XHTML/CSS markup.

So I gave it a try….my verdict? Won’t do it again….

Now this is no criticism of the company that does it, because they are good at what they do and serve a purpose. The only problem is that their purpose is not my purpose Its a good solution if you are not intending to work with the templates they provide, and possibly just use it for a static website.

Problem is that they don’t think of their CSS in a way that is re-usable, they create CSS styles for absolutely everything and don’t think about optimising the CSS for re-use across pages. The end result is that your XHTML is nice and concise, but the CSS is very verbose and long (100′s of lines).

I have ended up using their XHTML and re-creating most of the CSS so that I can re-use it in my application as a template. I am still going through this process and therefore, something that would have taken me a few days to do (create XHTML/CSS from Design), is still taking me a few days to do, but I have the added complexity of working with code that was written by someone else.

Oh well, a lesson learned