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Time for Device Independent Data Plans

Posted on January 27, 2010 ·

Now that everybody talks about the iPad, let’s talk about something just as important as the new device:

iPad data plan

It’s a screenshot from Engadget’s coverage.  Yes, reasonable data plan prices. Except… how many of them do you need?  An iPhone data plan, too?   A data plan for your USB stick for the times you do need a “regular” notebook to work on?

Remember this?

rotaryphone

Yes, phones looked like that.  And there was a time when phone companies (Ma Bell) charged extra when you had more then one outlet in your home….

Remember the early days of cable TV?   You had to ( well, were supposed to) pay extra for each additional cable outlet.

How about the early days of the Internet, before wireless became pervasive?  Yes, ISPs expected us to pay extra for each outlet.

These anachronistic charges are all gone – we pay for the service, no matter what device we use to access it.

So why would wireless access be any different?  We will soon have an increasing number of devices, but the underlying service is the same.  In fact chances are when I use my iPad (which I don’t have), I will not be using my Netbook / Notebook, or browse the Net on iPhone, Google Nexus One … as a consumer I may own a variety of devices, but chances are I will only use them one at a time.

It’s time wireless providers wake up to the 21st century and charge for consumption on a per account (person) basis, not per device.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , , ,
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Time for Device Independent Data Plans

Posted on January 27, 2010 ·

The Apple iPad event is still on, and the Internet is crumbling… Twitter barely crawls, CoveritLive isn’t exactly live, the major sites providing blog coverage are barely accessible… this is iKill – the day Apple Killed The Net. 🙁

But I want to talk about something more important:

iPad data plan

It’s a screenshot from Engadget’s coverage.  Yes, reasonable data plan prices. Except… how many of them do you need?  An iPhone data plan, too?   A data plan for your USB stick for the times you do need a “regular” notebook to work on?

Remember this?

rotaryphone

Yes, phones looked like that.  And there was a time when phone companies (Ma Bell) charged extra when you had more then one outlet in your home….

Remember the early days of cable TV?   You had to ( well, were supposed to) pay extra for each additional cable outlet.

How about the early days of the Internet, before wireless became pervasive?  Yes, ISPs expected us to pay extra for each outlet.

These anachronistic charges are all gone – we pay for the service, no matter what device we use to access it.

So why would wireless access be any different?  We will soon have an increasing number of devices, but the underlying service is the same.  In fact chances are when I use my iPad (which I don’t have), I will not be using my Netbook / Notebook, or browse the Net on iPhone, Google Nexus One … as a consumer I may own a variety of devices, but chances are I will only use them one at a time.

It’s time wireless providers wake up to the 21st century and charge for consumption on a per account (person) basis, not per device.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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Look Who’s Talking: ASUS, the Designer Brand

Posted on January 5, 2010 ·

asusnx90 Brand vs. Quality. Which Would You Pay For? – I asked recently, making the case that “trusted old brands” like HP are producing inferior quality, while formerly “no-name cheapo” component maker ASUS is becoming a household name.  They are basically doing what Honda, Toyota (and now the Koreans)  did to the car business.

Sure, ASUS rode a good wave becoming the leading netbook-maker, but they are not stopping there. First it was price, then performance, reliability – now it’s design.

“We are looking forward to leading the PC industry into a new era of thought behind computer design,” said ASUS chairman Jonney Shih, after unveiling four new computers at the event. At one point, Shih seemed to allude to Apple as a role model, saying that an overriding focus on design has been the domain of one company in the industry.   (Source: TechFlash)

Now, who’s “the Brand”?

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Marketing / PR, Misc, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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Why Isn’t There a Reliable Pay-As-You-Go Internet Fax Service?

Posted on December 10, 2009 ·

The title pretty much says it all, and frankly, how is this possible in 2007 is beyond me.

But wait, isn’t it 2009 (almost 2010?).  Yes it is. An therein lies the rub.  I wrote this two years ago, and the fact that most of it is still valid is quite sad.  Fax technology should be dead  – it’s ridiculously unpractical to translate meaningful text to dumb image, when on the receiving end they need meaningful text again. Yet in many professions faxes are still used, and from time to time all of us are forced to dealing with it.  That means finding a service appropriate for the ad-hoc, just-in-case use, nothing less, nothing more.

I’ve had a trusted old eFax numer for perhaps a decade, never gave it a lot of thought.  However, some glitches prompted me to check again. Here’s an updated version of the matrix I published in 2007 – the comparison of 10 Internet fax services by Top Ten Reviews:

faxmatrix

What’s wrong here?  There’s not a single offer tailored for individual ad-hoc users.  I’m sure a busy office has enough fax traffic to justify the $10 or so that most of these services charge, but as a consumer, the grand total of faxes I receive in a year is perhaps 2-3, and I don’t send more than 5 per year.   $10 is not a huge amount, but why would I pay a monthly subscription optimized for 1-200 pages monthly traffic?

The free version of eFax (btw, how could the granddaddy of Internet fax services escape the comparison?) allows free inbound services, but no sending at all.   I don’t expect free sending, but why can’t I pay per use, only for the pages I send?   Oh, well, since the previous (2007) vintage of this post, I’ve found two free / pay-per-fax services that solve the outbound problem:  FaxZero and GotFreeFax.  Very well – problem solved.  Except now there’s trouble on the inbound front.

In the past two years two of my eFax numbers “disappeared”, and so did an alternative one @ FaxDigits (in fact FaxDigits no longer seems to exist). For now, any time I need to give my fax number to someone, I need to send a test fax to it first to check if it’s still operational.  That’s crap.  Yes, I get what I pay for, you might say – which is zero.  But like I said, I’m willing to pay, just not $10 per month – that would make the 2-3 faxes I receive par year really expensive.  I can’t believe I am the only one with such usage pattern and there is no reliable provider with a usage-based pricing plan to match such usage.

I understand it may not be economically feasible for a service provider to maintain all these phone numbers and charge pennies – so perhaps the solution is lump it with another service that already runs millions of phone numbers – Google Voice?  Let’s hope they will step up. 🙂

Finally, here’s Dilbert’s take on the issue.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: SaaS, Technology · Tagged: , , , , ,
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Brand vs. Quality. Which Would You Pay For?

Posted on December 7, 2009 ·

Time to re-evaluate just what we consider “good brands” vs. junk.

I could not resist the summer back-to-school discounts and upgraded two laptops – one of them is already making funny noises. Tired already?   It’s an HP.  Perhaps just a co-incidence –  but my desktop monster, just two years old has long been pretending it was a turbine – at least in terms of the unhealthy hard disk whining it makes.  Oh, it’s an HP, too.  Noticed it while under warranty, but did not have any desire to deal with HP Support again. So be it.

Of course I had not seen this report before those purchases.  Yes, shocking as it is, every fourth HP laptop fails within three years.

malfunctionrate

That’s awful.  My personal experience prior to the recent purchases has been a lot better.  I can’t possibly recall how many computers I’ve had since the mid-80’s, but not one of them died on me. They slowly became obsolete – like the trusted old Sony after 7 years or so.

But there’s another name worth paying attention to: Asus.  They had been manufacturing component for PC makers, but were not exactly a household name until they emerged out of nowhere riding the netbook-wave.  And wow – look at the stats: the formerly no-name “cheap Chinese” (actually Taiwanese) laptops have become #1 in reliability. So just who has a better brand now?  Or: would you rather pay for brand or quality?

win7packsOh, before I forget.. as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s one of the three Windows 7 Upgrade packages waiting to be installed.

Amazon mailed the retail version in proper packaging on October 22nd, Win& Launch Day.
Sony took their time, they were 3 weeks late, but it still came in a decent plastic box.
HP?  Over a month late, 2 DVD’s stuck in one paper sleeve.  Reminds me of the tech-savvy admin assistant from the mid-80s who happily reported she overcame the technical difficulties, and finally managed to stick the 5.25” floppy disk in the drive.  Too bad it already had one inside.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , ,
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Comcast Data Usage Meter: What’s to Celebrate About Being a Year Late?

Posted on December 1, 2009 ·

I admit I’m baffled.  If a major service provider imposes consumption caps without providing a way to measure consumption, then promises a metering tool and fails to deliver for a year, than what exactly is the reason to celebrate when finally they start limited testing a year late?

But that’s exactly what’s happening: Comcast keeps promise, launches data usage meter says ZDNet and some others –  GigaOM calls it a step in the right direction.

Yeah… a right step. Long overdue.  I said over a year ago it was ridiculous to introduce the cap without a way of measuring it, and that the few tools available were largely inaccurate.

It’s not that Comcast had no way of measuring consumption – otherwise how would they shut down the “guilty” accounts?  No, it took them over a year to develop a tool to present the data – and even now it’s at limited pilot stage in Portland.

Not that such delays are unusual for Comcast. Does anyone recall the first promise of Tivo-driven Comcast DVR’s?  Was it two or three years ago?  I’m still waiting.

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(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Customer Service, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , ,
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Qu’est-ce QUE c’est? A Killer e-Book? A Kindle Killer?

Posted on October 19, 2009 ·

A picture is worth  thousand words.  So the next two images of the Que, Plastic Logic’s ultrathin, bendable e-reader should save 2,000 words… courtesy of MediaMemo:

OVI_Tablet_Hand_dark_fpo1-1024x768

QUE_horizontal_A-1024x719

I’ve said before, dedicated e-readers won’t go away anytime soon, and Plastic Logic’s product is the one to keep an eye for – simply because this is the first one that feels like holding a piece of paper.  I want my Que.  Now.

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(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

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Skype is not Only VOIP: It Reigns in IM But How Long?

Posted on October 19, 2009 ·

exochartwidget.aspx Nowadays the only context we hear about Skype is the legal fight (care to bet how long it will take for the previous Net Celebs to become the Hated Greedy Ones who try to sc**w all of us?) – I would much rather read about new features, improvements.

After all, Skype is the single most popular voice and video calling application.  But let’s not forget it’s also an IM system – in fact as this Infoworld article points out, it has become the reigning IM system.

And therein lies the rub: it is less and less suitable for text chat.

Continue reading…

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , ,
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USGS Now Embraces Twitter as Source of Earthquake Information

Posted on October 14, 2009 ·

earthquake This time it was personal.  The earthquake hit three miles from my house.  It was a minor one, magnitude 3.7, but I felt it very strongly, albeit very shortly, too. Just a sudden kick in the butt, nothing more.  Perhaps that’s the difference between being right above the epicenter or feeling it remotely.

I jumped on Twitter, and I was among the first few to report the quake.  Within seconds there were dozens, then hundreds of reports.

Not that it was a surprise, we’ve seen Twitter become the primary initial news source be it earthquakes, fires, military coups…etc.  (For a while Google thought I was some  earthquake expert simply because I pointed out Twitter was the first to report quakes in Japan and China.)  But clearly, not all information on Twitter is reliable, as was the case of the fake LA earthquake video.

Wee need both speed and reliablity.  The first comes from the crowd – nothing can beat having millions of “reporters” on the field, wherever, whenever significant events happen.  But we typically do expect some form of verification, be it a traditional news agency, or in the case of earthquakes often USGS, the US Geological Survey.  Until recently the information flow was one-way.  But after yesterday’s quake I found an interesting link to the Google Maps mashup above. It’s created by @usgsted, the  USGS Twitter Earthquake Detector. Here’s the explanation:

In this exploratory effort, the USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and quantity data to provide geo-located earthquake detection within 60 seconds of an event’s origin time. This approach also provides a central directory of short first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location.

Social Internet technologies are providing the general public with anecdotal earthquake hazard information before scientific information has been published from authoritative sources.  People local to an event are able to publish information via these technologies within seconds of their occurrence. In contrast, depending on the location of the earthquake, scientific alerts can take between 2 to 20 minutes. By adopting and embracing these new technologies, the USGS potentially can augment its earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information.

To be fair, the USGS has not been entirely deaf even before: once you locate the relevant quake info (which is quite an achievement in itself) there is a Did You Feel It? link where if you are really persistent, you can provide feedback.  The form is asking for a lot of data, takes a while to finish – enough to deter most.  Which is why the fact the USGS is now embracing Twitter is a major milestone: it combines the speed of crowdsourced reporting with the verification / authority of experts.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Bay Area, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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A Real Floppy Discovery

Posted on October 3, 2009 ·

A little digging in an old cabinet today, and look what I’ve found.  Oh, well, some of you Gen-Y-ers may not recognize it: it’s a 5.25” floppy disk.  From the time they were really floppy.

Disk and sleeve mismatched (3M in IBM), old media reused – the handwritten word “diploma” means this must be the diskette that has my University Thesis on it … probably in an early release WordStar fomat.  (For the Y-ers, WordStar is a piece of computing history).

So all this means I have it and I don’t – highly unlikely I will ever be able to access it.  It’s all my fault.  I did not have my advice piece to follow back than.

Related post:

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged: , , , , , ,
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