As a messaging center, the AT&T HomeManager does well with traditional voice messages and falls way short
if you are trying to use it as an email device.
As you can see from the photo above, there are a variety of menu options that let you review missed calls, messages and more. 
As for using the HomeManager as an eMail client- well, it's just not very good. The email loads slowly, and it's hard to write even a simple message
Update: 8:30 AM CST...
While I am pleased to have broken the story on the first Starbucks in the US with AT&T WiFi, I need to be clear that this deployment has not official been announced by AT&T or Starbucks.
With that being said, they are still getting the store up and going and so for me to speculate on things would be irresponsible.
As of yesterday and today, the WiFi worked just fine.
As of 8:00 AM CST this morning, I tried to log on to the Apple iTunes store from my iPhone and it did not work. It's not a reflection of the service in any way. It's just where the service is as of now.
Keep checking back and I will keep checking the store with real time updates.
Reporters can call me at 210-410-3075 for tight deadlines.
If you are not on deadline, please call the office at 210-820-3075
email is: alan at weinkrantz dot com
Thanks!
Last week we had some pretty bad rain and thunderstorms in San Antonio. I don't know if it was due to the weather, but our Internet service went down on Thursday.
This was the first time in almost one year of having U-verse service that this has happened. 
I called AT&T U-verse tech support and after trying multiple approaches (unplugging the 2Wire Residential Gateway and the set top boxes) they determined that I needed a service call.
They scheduled me for Friday afternoon between 6:00 and 8:00 PM. Friday afternoon around 5:45, a service tech named Caesar dressed in his blue AT&T - U-verse branded shirt arrived.
Of course, before he entered the house, he had on his blue booties which I've sort of developed an affinity for. (I also noticed that his shirt also had the CWA logo on the sleeve.)
When Caesar arrived, so did my tech support guru, Moses Gomez who helps us at our offices and with occasional tech support at the house. I just got an AppleTV and I needed Moses to help me move the TV and giggle cables behind the rig that Bjorn's originally set up for me.
So, having someone named Caesar and Moses in my home put me at great ease. I knew things would get resolved and the Weinkrantz family would be back in the swing of its digital lifestyle.
Ceasar tried the RG. Nada.
Then went outside to check on the NIB. No dice. No Internet.
He then got in his truck and went over to the local DSLAM (pictured on the left) about 300 yards from the house.
Turns out there was a glitch there which he managed to fix (note: I am not that technical...I'm just here to observe the level of service and if the problem gets resolved).
When Caesar returned, he was on a push-to-talk cell phone with his team that was following the repair. He was reading off some numbers and going back and forth to get the IP address to resolve. He also decided to replace the Residential Gateway.
In the conversations going back and forth, there was a spirit of camaraderie and a sense of will that they were going to lick this issue. After several attempts to get my Residential Gateway to show an IP address and having the tech support team going back and forth on the push to talk phone, we were up and going with broadband.
While Caesar was finishing up, Moses and I configured the AppleTV which is way cool and highly recommended. So there we were, three grown men reveling in fixing our toys, all for the sake of stockholder value. (Disclosure: I own a tiny bit of AT&T stock.)
Moses and Caesar finished up at the same time, so we went through one final check to make sure the network configuration was good and that the remotes all work right.
Overall, it was a good service call, and kudos to Ceasar and his team for a job well done. (You too, Moses.)
I think the real service challenge for AT&T is this: when you have a market of 20,000 customers or so that's one thing. Delivering the same quality of service when you scale to several million customers will be the real test.
Photos by Alan Weinkrantz (c) 2007 - All Rights Reserved.
After an overview presentation by Jim Brady and Hemang Mehta, Group Product Manager, I met with David Sloo, User Experience Director, and Afshan Ali, Research Manager, User Experience, who work with a team of experts that monitor and study the end user experience. They have a facility in the building where they observe consumers, much like any type of market research company would do in evaluating and testing new products and services.
Then it was off to visit with Peter Barrett, the Chief Technology Officer. (see photo here) 
What a treat. Peter is driving the strategic direction and has to make
sure that Microsoft’s technology can be deployed on networks from
companies like AT&T.
Sitting in a mock living room, Peter demonstrated new features and programming concepts to come in the near future. One good example was a working prototype of a Major League Baseball game with the ability to watch several games at once and get player stats, participate in a fantasy league and even watch a particular game from different angles.
From there it was lunch with Christine Heckart, General Manager, Marketing. “Think Big. Start Small. Act Fast.” This was Christine’s mantra during lunch and what seems to be the message she is sending to her group in executing the Microsoft IPTV vision.
Christine is making sure that her team reaches out to network operators, content owners, application developers hardware vendors and other partners to deliver a successful end user experience. Aside from AT&T, she is working with 14 other telcos around the world, like Deutsche Telekom who are conducting rollouts of the Microsoft IPTV platform.
Any time I have friends over to see IPTV, I don’t give them an introduction and I don’t advise on how to use the system. I just hand them the remote and tell them to figure it out. To Microsoft’s credit, they have under, rather than over-engineered the user-interface that is much like a Windows-like pull down menu metaphor.
I can only describe the interface as being very simple and intuitive. To Microsoft’s credit, they have taken the front end for the end user, and the back end for the service provider like AT&T that works, is fast and easy to use.
Coming later today at 1:00 PM EST: 2Wire’s Paul Brunato’s living room.
With everything I write about AT&T, I thought it would be a good idea to expand my horizons a bit.
About three months ago, I started corresponding with Jim Brady from Microsoft’s TV group and Paul Brunato who is his counterpart at 2Wire. They both run the PR side of their business and help support and interface with members of the media, industry analysts, and bloggers like me.
Over the next 3 days, I will be writing about a recent trip to visit both companies. I am going to try to focused on I saw and learned and not get into all the techno-gobble.
Some of the information I learned was under NDA (non-disclosure) so there are certain things I can’t write about – at this time.
In the spirit of a blog, my meetings were nothing more than informational and thought provoking conversations. I hope I can return the favor of the meetings by conversing about my meetings in the three days to come.
For disclosure purposes, I went on this trip on my own nickel and I am not a paid consultant to either company. Microsoft did pick up lunch in the company cafeteria and 2Wire’s Paul Brunato served a Diet Coke at his house and gave me driving instructions back to the airport.
Check back tomorrow for my first post at 7:30 AM EST.
Starting next Tuesday 
(Monday is Labor Day in the U.S.) I will have
daily posts for the next four days re-capping my recent visit to see
the Microsoft TV group and 2Wire in Silicon Valley.
It's been a great summer here in the blogosphere. More posts to come.
T&T just brought me a new 2Wire HomePortal 3800HGV Residential Gateway. It’s awesome. 
What I notice the most is the wireless signal strength of this unit is much stronger. Because of where the Residential Gateway was located in our home, we were bouncing the signal to an Apple AirPort to extend the coverage area of the wireless signal.
Now with the 3800, we got rid of the AirPort and have great signal
strength throughout the house and on the deck. This new unit also has HPNA
(HomePNA) V3 built in, as opposed to having an additional external box
that was needed for HomePNA. (HPNA distributes the video throughout
the house and helps manage the network).
The broadband technology is VDSL and now having the HPNA built-in for networking of bandwidth-intensive applications (like video/IPTV networking) it’s a great solution for the home. The wireless standard it uses is 802.11G, and it also has two built-in lines for VoIP (voice over IP)- a service that should be coming as AT&T builds out their network and offers a full suite of IP-based applications.
2Wire not only makes great gear, but their stuff is good looking.
It has what I call “the wife factor” – meaning that it’s pleasing to the eye so you can display it in a family room, den, or wherever your TV may reside.
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