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Steve Currey’s Expedition Company – Voyage to Our Hollow Earth – This sounds like it’ll be one helluva trip. I mean, just look at the itinerary: Day 1 – Depart your Hometown to Moscow.

Day 2 – Arrive in Moscow. Transfer to Hotel Russia. Sightseeing Moscow. Overnight in Hotel Russia front of St. Basil’s.

Day 3 – Sightseeing Moscow in morning. Afternoon flight to Murmansk. Board Yamal Icebreaker. Overnight aboard Yamal.

Days 4-7 Enroute to North Pole

Day 8 – Spend day at the North Pole

Days 9-11 Enroute to Inner Continent

Days 12-14 Travel up Hiddekel River to City of Jehu.

Days 15-16 Monorail trip to City of Eden to visit Palace of the King of the Inner World

Days 17-18 Monorail trip back to City of Jehu

Days 19-23 Enroute from City of Jehu back to Murmansk.

Day 24 Flight Murmansk to Moscow. Connecting flight back to your hometown.

Seems like Nokia still has the most phones that have an actual infrared port. Given the cheapness of the hardware I don’t understand why all phones don’t have one. Anyways. I’m seriously leaning towards getting either a 7210, 7190, or 8390. The 7210 and 8390 are still current models, while the 7190 is older and kind of the granddaddy of the former two. Also the 7190 is the phone they used in The Matrix. The Sony Ericsson T310 is looking pretty darn spiffy too, but sold by Fido (although given my current situation, I’d be buying an unlocked phone anyways.)

This is IBM’s view of the future or mail clients. It kicks ass! I want it now! Of course, only IBM is stupid enough to publish their research like this instead of putting a bullet in the head of Lotus Notes and releasing this instead.

CBC Toronto – Man killed in theatre collapse – It’s weird to find out about things that just happened in Toronto via the BBC.

Okay. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve chosen some poor phones in my life. Like our Uniden cordless phone which I just bought another rechargable battery for – the third one it’s had in over two years. At this point I’m thinking of building one myself. Or the Motorola V101 – when Sandy and I signed up for the Rogers Family Plan some 16 months ago now, we both got one of these. I thought it would be really useful to be able to easily write SMSes on the keyboard and use ICQ Mobile – and I was right, and I used ICQ Mobile a lot. But I soon learned that the 101 is horrible, absolutely horrible as a voice phone. Also, the interface is just crap. I don’t think Motorola learned how to make a decent cell phone menu until very recently. Sandy ditched hers in favour of a Motorola C332, but found it to be very quiet, and the battery seemingly held very little charge (might be defective). You might remember that I had to unlock that phone. She just switched again and bought a Sony Ericsson T226, which she loves. I think this one is a keeper for her.

Anyways, this story is about me, and I still have the V101. I barely use the SMS anymore because I’m no longer behind the evil firewall of doom at work, so I can use ICQ and MSN from my PC. The usefulness of having a QWERTY keyboard is almost gone. It’s pretty big for a phone, and the phone volume is bad, but better with the handsfree. I’m thinking of replacing the V101 with something else, but I’m not sure what. Spending money on a new one (which I would have to buy outright) wouldn’t seem to be worth it for the amount of time I use my phone. I could switch over to Sandy’s old C332 but there’s the lingering battery issue.

Ideally I’d like to have a phone that has IrDA or serial data cable capability – so it can communicate with either my PC or my Newton. The C332 only has a USB data cable, so that wouldn’t be useful for my USB-less Newton. Bluetooth would be future-proofing but those phones are still expensive. Right now I’m jonesing for the old days of my Nokia 5160 and data cable. Can anyone suggest to me a decent GSM phone with IrDA? It doesn’t have to be available new. IrOBEX and IrCOMM would be required though. Also, price is an issue.

I wish there was a huge matrix/table somewhere comparing all phones and their features…