As of Feb. 1, Verizon has ushered the home phone into the Internet age with the debut of its Verizon Hub.
The device, which includes a colorful 7-inch touchscreen, employs a broadband connection, and delivers all kinds of useful information both to the Hub and to your mobile phone. For instance, you can sync your calendar to the Hub and your phone and receive text message alerts for calendar entries, check traffic and weather on the device, and receive spoken turn-by-turn driving directions on your cell phone delivered by the Verizon Hub.
While the device isn’t entirely cheap – you’re looking at around $200 up front and a $35/month subscription – it does sound extremely useful.
With the array of services to marry home data with mobile delivery, I’d hope Verizon would also consider adding photo features to the device. Why not add the ability to send camera-phone photos back to the Hub or stream your photo library from the Hub to your phone?
Also, does this device look a lot like the early interations of the OpenPeak OpenFrame to anyone else? I wonder if there’s any connection here besides a resemblance?
On InformationAppliance: Behold The Verizon Hub | Digital Picture Frames wrote at February 19th, 2009 at 9:15 am
[...] On InformationAppliance.com: The Verizon Hub information appliance looks awfully promising, especially in how it bridges the divide between the home phone and mobile phones, with an array of smart features moving data between the two over the Internet. Plus, it’s also a digital picture frame! … read more [...]