I talked a little about the Siemens S685IP phone yesterday but didnt really mention the new firmware release a couple of days back.  This had a widely-anticipated feature, that almost every other phone in the world has had for years: A mute function!

Good to see that Siemens have been listening to the community and implemented this useful function. The fact that an IP Phone is by its very nature connected to the Internet, and thus checks periodically for newer versions of itself, makes it a no-brainer to upgrade to the latest firmware and take advantage of new features, patches and fixes like this.  I literally had to press one button the other day on the handset to have the base station connect, download and install its firmware.

It’s a far sight from the days when you had to upload firmware binary images to a device over a RS232 link with X-Modem!

More and more appliances around the house are becoming internet connected in this fashion too – almost always because of at least one feature that requires internet connectivity.. But software updates are just as easy on the PS3, too.  What other appliances should be internet connected?  I wish my TV had wifi or an ethernet port so I could remotely program it.