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TECH SUPPORT tiple clients. These include user-confi g- urable auto attendant, voice mail, call forwarding and other call-management features, conferencing, computer-based consoles for receptionists, unifi ed mes- saging, and integration with other IP- based applications such as Microsoft Outlook. Unifi ed messaging lets subscribers collect voice mails using e-mail soft- ware. They can scan message headers, as they do with e-mail, and save time and tedium by skipping more quickly over unimportant messages. One other huge benefi t of hosted IP services is that they support the use of soft phones — software that turns a headset-equipped laptop computer into a phone. Soft phone users can connect to the hosted PBX anywhere they have high-speed internet service and make and take calls as if they were sitting in the offi ce. 2008 Canadian Lawyer Buyers' Guide This means lawyers can be more pro- ductive when mobile or working from home. It also simplifi es business con- tinuity planning. You no longer need to provision an emergency backup site with phones. Lawyers and support staff can work from almost anywhere. But for all the undoubted benefi ts, analysts such as Angl warn that hosted PBX services are no panacea. They pose some real concerns. If the provider's server goes down or the high-speed data link to your site fails, you could lose your dial tone. An on-premise system is arguably more likely to fail than a service pro- vider's facility, although most providers have more system and network redun- dancy than an individual law fi rm and they almost always have proper uninter- ruptible power supplies. Still, fi rms need to do careful due diligence. Avoid providers that con- STICKS AND CURVE S and sexy PDA phone. Digital Stick is a new secure fi le-transport sys- tem from Toronto-based Telecompute Integrated Systems Inc. Digital Stick is not really a retail product — T yet. It's a software platform for building cus- tom database applications that run on one of those USB fl ash drives sometimes referred to as thumb drives. But, out of the box, law fi rms could use it to securely transport sensi- tive fi les they don't want to risk sending over the internet or burning to CD. Like U3 technology, which we've written about here before, the idea is that you can plug the Digital Stick into any computer and access and modify the data on it — without leaving any trace behind on the host computer. The dif- ference is that the Telecompute product off ers much stronger security. The data is fully en- crypted, and until you authenticate yourself — it involved two levels of user ID and password in the demo I saw — you can't see the data. Also unlike U3, Digital Stick works on any USB drive. www. wo gadgets for the price of one this time, both variations on themes we've sounded before. The BlackBerry Curve 8330 is the CDMA (Bell, Telus) version of Research in Motion's sleek Rogers Wireless first introduced the Curve, the smallest phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, last summer. We reviewed it here. It's stylish and elegant, with a great colour screen and very intuitive user interface. It also has a two-megapixel camera and plays music through stereo headphones. It has built-in GPS navigation and of course delivers BlackBerry's unbeat- able e-mail experience. Bell and Telus were Curve-less until earlier this year when they launched the 8330. Telus has it for $200 with three-year contract, $450 with two years, $500 with one year. Bell has it for $200, $400, or $500. How is the 8330 diff erent from the original Curve? Very little. The Rogers product is a quad-band EDGE/ GPRS/GSM phone that works in roaming mode almost anywhere there is cellphone service. (Most of the world has GSM-based networks.) The 8330 is a dual-band phone that works on CDMA networks, including the high-speed EVDO networks that Bell and Telus have deployed in major urban areas. But it doesn't work in many, if any, places outside North America. — GB Law ye rmag.com A UGUST 2008 31 nect from your premises to theirs using an existing high-speed internet con- nection or that use the public internet anywhere in their network — it's of- ten congested and for that reason un- reliable. "Our recommendation," says Angl, "is to look to providers that are well established and have a number of reference customers for which they're delivering the service." Bell Canada says it will eventually of- fer a service, when demand warrants it. Rogers has announced plans to offer a hosted service but it's not clear when it will come to market. Other companies besides Primus already offering services: Computer Talk Technology Inc., Activo Inc., Aizan Technologies Inc., all in the Toronto area. Gerry Blackwell is a London, Ont.-based freelance writer. He can be reached at gerryblackwell@rogers.com Gadget Watch