Etymotic Research makes some nice headphones. The HF2′s are my favorites for iPhone use – they are high quality earbuds with excellent sound isolation and a built-in microphone and button. They are the first set of earbuds I’ve had that reliably stay in my ear. However, reliability is not their strong suit.

I’m on my third set since buying this a little over a year ago, and once again they are exhibiting the same problem as they did previously. One earbud stops working. At first the problem is intermittent, then it becomes permanent. Fortunately, Etymotic has a 2 year warranty, and has once again agreed to replace them. After I pay to ship them back to the company.

It’s nice that they honor their warranty, but it would be better if they didn’t have the problem at all. They say they are working on a new cable design, but it’s not ready yet. They are offering to include some accessories for free.

I’m not really interested in free accessories – I just want these rather expensive headphones to keep working. A better solution would be to do what Apple once used to do: take my credit card info and ship me a new pair in a pre-paid return package. As long as I return the old headphones within 30 days, don’t charge me.

As someone who uses multiple computers, I’m often faced with the task of accessing my files in several different places. Some accomplish this by storing their files on a network-acessible drive, emailing files to themselves, or storing all their files on a USB stick. None of these are ideal solutions.

For a while, I tried using the iDisk feature that’s part of the MobileMe package. This is okay for simply storing a copy of the files, but it’s not really practical to store files on the iDisk and edit them in place. If you access the iDisk directly, the connection is too slow and frequent saves become painful. If you choose the option to sync your iDisk, you’ll often end up with conflicts that you have to resolve.

The best solution I’ve found has is Dropbox. I use this on my Macs, but there are versions for Windows and Linux as well, and you can share files over multiple platforms. The software installs a “Dropbox” folder on your computer, which I basically use as a documents folder. Anything put inside there automatically gets synchronized to the central Dropbox server without you having to do anything – the icon even changes to reflect when I file has been successfully synchronized. You can work on files in your Dropbox directly. Each time you save, the software automatically updates the central server in the background, without slowing down your machine. If a sync gets interrupted, it will resume the next time you’re online. You can access your files from any computer with the software installed and also via the web. I’m told an iPhone app is in the works.

Every revision you make is also saved, so you can restore older versions of files if you need to.

What’s great is that it really works: you just install it and can forget it’s there. It’s light on resources, so it won’t slow your computer to a crawl while it’s updating.

Check it out. You get a 2 GB account for free.

Back when I was…um…watching people line up for the original iPhone on the release day, I saw an elderly lady walk by the line and exclaim, “All this for a phone?”

To this day, I see similar comments, even among the tech literate.

The point, of course, is that it’s not just a phone. The iPhone and similar devices have become real personal computers. They’re not “just a phone”…or maybe our expectation of what a phone is needs to be updated.

I found this interesting read by Google’s (now ex-) lead visual designer, and it struck a chord. I use Google search and make some use of GMail. I know some people love Google products, but I’ve always found something a bit clumsy about sites like Gmail. Google packs some very slick functionality into a less-than-appealing wrapper. Some don’t care. Or they tolerate the lack of beauty because the product is so functional.

Apple succeeds when it combines great function with great form. With products like Gmail, the form appears to be an afterthought, because it probably is.

You know, I’m not a violent person. But there’s something about Bluetooth headsets which brings out my inner bully. Every time I see someone wearing one of these (particularly while NOT talking on the phone), I want to teach them a lesson. Make them an offer they can’t refuse. You get the idea. Anyway, just when I thought that was bad enough, some genius at Nikon decides to create this abomination:

Now tell me you don’t want to go all Chris Brown on him.

Please do not wear this.

There’s no way I’m going to replace it with something that looks like this:

Delivery Status is a dashboard widget with a very simple purpose: to help you track packages. You can set up multiple widgets to track multiple packages. It covers just about every shipping service and you can even track orders from companies like Amazon and Apple. Nice, but it gets better.

With version 4.5, the genius(es?) at June Cloud added a sync service. Your package info can be synchronized with their server. Why? Naturally so all your packages can also be tracked on your iPhone or iPod Touch. No manual sync required. It just works. And its awesome.

Did I mention that this is all free?

Why? Who cares. Just get it.

Speech recognition always seems to be on the verge of having a big impact, only to recede into the shadows after each breakthrough. The latest arrival is the latest update to the Google app for the iPhone which adds voice search capabilities. The idea is quite promising and seems to be reasonable well designed. After launching the app, you lift the phone to your ear. The accelerometers in the iPhone sense the movement and the phone starts listening to your speech. You speak your search words and Google translates it into a text search.

This morning I was in a conference about pancreas transplantation and had a few lingering questions, so I decided to give it a try with the search words “pancreas transplantation”.

My first attempt yielded “sexy costumes.” Not exactly what I was looking for. Yes, I am sure I want to delete my search history.

With a second try, I got “transportation.” Close, but not quite.

The third and fourth attempts failed completely.

With the fifth, Google returned “Michigan”.

To be fair to Google, all this was done while I was walking to my office, but I spoke clearly and slowly.

Finally, I tried again in the calm of my office. The first attempt couldn’t be processed by Google, but another try finally got the correct results.

The speech recognition is supposed to get better as more people use it, but so far I’m not terribly impressed.

Google Flu Trends: “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.”

Nice use of Google’s power…

Not much to do when the power is out in you office and the laptop battery is dead.

Having exhausted the options on a borrowed deskto, there was only one thing left to do…