Pairing

Today was techie Wednesday, the day when, after six long years of living in the Incorporated Village with no cell phone service, we finally found a partial solution to our out-of-touch problem: Bluetooth. From today I can make and receive cell calls via new VTech cordless handsets that we have on a VoIP system. We still won't be able to use the home handset and the cell simultaneously but we can put one or the other on hold while we answer a call and conference between the two. And we can pair two cell phones with the base station and import the address books too.


Secondly we upgraded the home network to stream music, videos and photos from my computer to the den. I waited a long time for AppleTV to get to a price point that I felt comfotable with - and enough applications to become available - so I could play music from my iTunes on the flatscreen in the den. Now that Airplay for iPad is here I get all that, as well as a bunch of radio stations, photos from Flickr, youtube videos and a few other apps that never worked smoothly as widgets via the awkward Samsung dongle. AppleTV also proved much easier to set up than the previous wifi system. I had all my accounts, flickr, itunes, youtube, programmed in less than 10 minutes. If the iHome Airplay wifi speakers ever become available we'll have a whole house music system again but this time it will be fully integrated. I can't wait!


I also signed up for Netflix, a feature that wasn't offered on the Samsung 7000 LED last year (although video downloads from Amazon and Blockbuster were) so we now have instant movies on demand showing on the iMac, iPad and the TV! This should be a big help when the entire family descends for the Holidays.