The call redirection worked great in our tests. You can manually set calls to route to either your iPhone or your "local" landline, which is programmed via location detection and can automatically switch when you get to a certain place, like home or work. Outgoing calls from your Newber number are shown as your Newber number, which is fantastic for hiding your real number from business contacts or people you don't quite trust. What's not cool, unfortunately, is Newber doesn't have access to your favorites list, so you'll have to re-add your favorites from your contacts list (which it does have access to).

Compared to GrandCentral, Newber is still missing features like being able to ring multiple phones simultaneously, listening in on voicemail as it's being recorded, and having people announce their names before you pick up (or deny) the call.

The biggest difference between the two is that Newber costs $5 a month and 2 cents a minute, whereas GrandCentral is free. Is being able to route your calls to your landline automatically worth what's essentially long distance rates? Tough to say. But they're still in beta, and it may be possible that they'll tweak prices a bit before launching fullscale. [Newber via Chip Chick]

Related: Gizmodo's Essential Iphone Apps

HOUSTON —(Business Wire)— Aug. 8, 2008 System of Proof, Inc. (systemofproof.com) has delivered the ultimate in recording any conversation that so many people wished they had recorded, i.e., sexual harassment, police profiling, business deals gone wrong, class room lectures and many more. The System of Proof technology simply turns your cell or land phone into a microphone. There is NO software installation requirement and NO other equipment, "Just the Phone You Have!"

How It Works:

This technology can be used with any cell phone, land line, VOIP at home or at your office. It's as simple as dialing a phone number. The user dials a number that is assigned to them upon subscribing to the service (they can use speed-dial or voice activation) that automatically activates recording. The recording gets stored on a mainframe computer at the company. When the recording is completed, a voice email is automatically generated to the user's email address that user assigned when subscribing. This email file can be archived to the subscriber's hard drive, to a CD, iPod, mp3 or any other data storing device to be retrieved at a later date. There is no log-in process to retrieve your recording—it comes directly to you! No time limit to your recording!

Uses for the System of Proof Technology:

— Deter profiling of an individual whether it be race, sex or religion

— Provide proof in the case of harassment, civil rights abuses on the job or in other public settings

— Capture evidence of spousal abuse whether it be physical, verbal or mental that can now be admissible to law enforcement

— Record your lectures to make sure you don't miss pertinent exam notes

— Provide a recording device in board and business meetings to avoid miscommunications

— Do 3-way calling recording of threatening bill collectors or other disgruntled callers

— Record your spouse or your significant other

Plans & Cost of Service:

Silver Plan: 1,000 minutes for $4.95 per month*

Gold Plan: 1,500 minutes for $6.95 per month*

Platinum: Unlimited recording for $9.95 per month.

*here is a $0.15 per minute surcharge for additional minutes.

The EFF asked, "What's so bad about what Comcast's actions?"

One objectionable aspect of Comcast's conduct is that they are spoofing packets—that is, impersonating parties to an exchange of data. Comcast is essentially deploying against their own customers techniques more typically used by malicious hackers (this is doubtless how Comcast would characterize other parties that forged traffic to make it appear that it came from Comcast or its subscribers). In this sense Comcast is behaving worse than if they dropped a propor¬tion of packets under congested circumstances in order to throttle bandwidth usage, or even if they blocked certain ports on their network. In other words, Comcast is essentially behaving like a telephone operator that interrupts a phone conversation, impersonating the voice of one party to tell the other that "this call is over, I'm hanging up."

It scores higher on the frequency response test compared to the BlackBerry 8800, Helio Ocean, LG Prada, Nokia N95 and the Treo 750. The audio quality is great as well, as is the send frequency response. The iPhone did have a bit of "side tone", which is the amount that you hear yourself in a conversation.

Wireless Info

We inquired with Global Sky and they said their support is actually for the "One Follow Me" service from Microsoft that lets overseas workers communicate cheaply with their families back home. Microsoft themselves also said there have been no formal announcements about anything to do with Zune phones.

Rumor smashed. – Jason Chen

One Follow Me