Tag: Verizon

Commercials: I Can’t Not Look

There are commercials on TV I have to watch. Seriously, I can’t look away.

There are commercials on TV I have to watch. Seriously, I can’t look away. When the UPS guys nerdily sing to me about logistics my head turns so fast my neck might snap off! That’s amore!

This all started when Helaine noticed me watching the at&t ad with the two guys on the ski lift.

“You can’t not look?” she asked… but she was really making a statement.

Yes! I can’t not look.

I watch the Lowes commercial where the couple’s washing machine goes nuts… and they kick it into submission.

Now there’s a new one with a little girl who builds a lemonade stand that blossoms into a big business: Susie’s Lemonade. In the final scene her dad looks for her but is confronted by another grade schooler who asks, “Is she expecting you?”

I’ve watched it intently dozens of times. Unfortunately we had to roll back the DVR as I was writing this. I couldn’t remember whose commercial it was.

Sorry Verizon Wireless.

Who’s Spying On You? Nearly Everyone!

Hey Verizon and Yahoo!, saying you’ll be ridiculed and publicly shamed isn’t going to make me less interested. It’s not something I want my government hiding behind either.

Here’s another one of those stories that’s smoldering in the geekosphere but ready to light up like a Roman candle. A Freedom of Information request was sent to the US Justice Department by an Indiana University grad student looking for some insight into what info our government gets from our Internet service providers.

Before the DOJ could answer the ISPs chimed in. They were not happy.

From Wired: “Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.”

Hey Verizon and Yahoo!, saying you’ll be ridiculed and publicly shamed isn’t going to make me less interested. It’s not something I want my government hiding behind either.

I am very uncomfortable if the people I entrust with my email or to provide my Internet access give away my secrets, often without a warrant. This is just plain wrong on a variety of levels.

And don’t think these are isolated incidents. You will be shocked by how often this happens!

From “slight paranoia“: “Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009.”

Like I said, this is smoldering now, but not for long.

Confessions From An iPhone App Slut

They do a lot, but I suspect they would do more if there wasn’t such a stringent approval process from Apple–the controlling psychotic girlfriend of computing.

apple-iphone-3g.jpgAfter a few weeks with my new toy cellphone I am an iPhone app slut. There, I’ve said it. It’s out in the open now.

Apps are the little plug-in programs that extend the functionality of the iPhone. They do a lot, but I suspect they would do more if there wasn’t such a stringent approval process from Apple–the controlling psychotic girlfriend of computing.

Most paid apps cost $.99, though they do go higher. There are thousands of free apps too. In my role as an app slut I hardly ever pay. Of the dozens I’ve installed my total expenditure is still around $5.

Many of the apps take websites and customize their content for the phone’s smaller screen. We’ve got one (a very good one–no BS) at the TV station. The Times, Huffington and lots of other publishers have them too. I also have a few for weather data.

Oh–speaking of that the iPhone has no Flash or Java plug-in. That’s a major deal. There are a few weather applications I use daily which need Java&#185. I am suspicious this too has a lot to do with Apple’s control freak mentality.

Apple also prevents apps from running in the background. That means a GPS logger only logs when it’s the only thing running! Answer a call or look at an email and you have to restart the app. Maybe there’s a technical reason for this, but we’ve all come to expect multitasking and Verizon is heavily promoting it’s Droid’s ability to do that.

When the Google Map product just announced for Verizon’s Droid phone gets ported to the iPhone it will surely need to be downloaded as an app. This will happen. It probably won’t happen until the Droid has received the full benefit of its exclusivity and coolness.

I was playing with using the iPhone as a radio in the car, bringing in the NPR shows I like without the static I now get. My idea was flawed because NPR’s app is horrendously flawed (after using it a minute or two the buttons become extremely unresponsive) and Internet reception can sometimes be spotty.

Even if you lose the signal for just a second or two the NPR stations’ software sees this as a new connection and gives you a pre-recorded underwriting spiel before restarting the program. Sheesh!

On the other hand I’ve taken photos with the iPhone’s reasonably good camera (using an app called Tripod to steady the shot in low light) and had them posted on Facebook (using its app) seconds later. Very cool.

I downloaded the Joost app last night. It’s a video service claiming 46,000+ videos.

Don’t let the numbers fool you–that’s not a lot.

I watched a black and white Lone Ranger episode I’d watched as a kid. Even then I recognized very distinctive rock formations that amazingly showed up in every town the Ranger and Tonto visited. They were there last night! Now, with the Internet, I understand most of the episodes were shot in LA’s Griffith Park.

Joost suffers from what every video site suffers from–bad search. There’s just no good way to search video yet. That’s not an iPhone specific problem. Netflix and Hulu and, to a lesser extent, Youtube haven’t figured this one out.

The iPhone is a very good video player. It’s large enough, with a display dense enough, to make viewing a full show a reasonably enjoyable experience.

My secret friend from the San Fernando Valley said last night, “It’s the best toy I’ve ever had.” That’s a defensible position. This is a lot of fun and a lot of function.

I’m curious if Verizon/Motorola/Google’s entry into the market will force Apple to loosen up a little? I believe there’s a lot of potential being held under wraps, because even though I’m an app slut, Apple isn’t!

&#185 – Java is not javascript nor are they similar (One upper case, the other lowercase). The iPhone does javascript.

It’s No iPhone–Should It Be?

Open source! It’s the reason I expect nerdy geeky boys to write killer apps for the G1–because they can.

google-phone.jpgTo quote Jimmy Carter (out of context), I have lust in my heart. I’ve been looking at pictures of the new T-Mobile Googlephone and lusting.

Open source! It’s the reason I expect nerdy geeky boys to write killer apps for the G1–because they can.

OK, I know, that’s not the real name but close enough.

There hasn’t been a buzz in the mainstream media like for the iPhone or iPod. It’s only Google, not Apple producing the software and HTC, a Taiwanese company you’ve probably never heard of, behind the hardware. My editor at PC Magazine IM’ed the headline on another editor’s story this afternoon: “The T-Mobile G1 Is No iPhone.”

And yet there’s still lust in my heart. Why?

Actually, it’s simple and it’s summarized in this short paragraph from Sascha Segan writing on Gearlog (where I also write).

“I found out today that forget video recording (which the G1 doesn’t do) – the G1 doesn’t even have a video player. No fear, HTC reps said, there’s already a third-party video player in the App Market, and it plays iPhone formatted videos beautifully!”

Open source! It’s the reason I expect nerdy geeky boys to write killer apps for the G1–because they can. If Google and T-Mobile don’t stand in their way (I expect Google to be more open to this than T-Mobile) this phone and others like it will create their own excitement and market. T-Mobile, don’t stand in their way.

Right now there’s a lot of grousing in the dev community as Apple stands in the way of perfectly good iPhone apps because… well, just because. That shouldn’t happen on an open platform like Android, the open source operating system under the G1’s skin.

This past weekend Helaine asked about a Verizon commercial we saw. They were selling some overpriced music service. “Why,” she asked? Probably because the deal was formulated according to marketing potential instead of user desire.

Open source answers to user desire.

I still have a year on my at&t contract (it’s officially all lower case letters even though it looks wrong). I have a year to lust after everything new. Then, I have to curb my lust and become practical.

Verizon – This Really Worries Me

So, if Verizon decided to block geofffox.com or vonage.com or comcast.com, they now have self supplied permission. They can do it for any reason or no reason.

There’s a posting on Reddit.com, one of the techie sites I visit, about Verizon’s upcoming change to their Online Terms of Service. It is very scary – really, really scary.

…we have the right, but not the obligation, to pre-screen, refuse, move or remove any content available on the Service including, but not limited to, content that violates the law, our Terms of Service or our AUP.

AUP, in this case is Acceptable Use Policy.

So, if Verizon decided to block geofffox.com or vonage.com or comcast.com, they now have self supplied permission. They can do it for any reason or no reason.

Or, they could just place their ads on my site, or any site, before it gets to you.

I’m giving examples, but I have no idea what they would do, except to say they could do anything.

Throughout my lifetime, companies like Verizon have operated as common carriers. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on that:

An important legal requirement for common carrier as public provider is that it cannot discriminate, that is refuse the service unless there is some compelling reason (e.g post doesn’t allow to send cash). As of 2007, the status of telecommunication providers as common carriers and their rights and responsibilities is widely debated (network neutrality).

However, Verizon and other telecommunications providers like it aren’t businesses that opened and got saddled with these obligations. We allow them to erect their lines on our streets. We gave them (each incumbent wireline phone company) their original cell licenses.

We assume… I think we have a right to assume… they don’t inspect our communications across their network. We certainly wouldn’t allow it with their phone service. Is there really a difference here with this nascent form of carriage?

Don’t they have an obligation not to look over our shoulders?

I have written about Verizon in the past. Maybe you remember me quoting from Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon’s CEO, about cell service.

“Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?” he said. “The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement.”

Seidenberg said it’s not Verizon’s responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon’s service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.

I sense, if this becomes a mainstream news story, Verizon will relent. Sunlight is the great sanitizer.

Can they hear me now?

The Need For Speed

“The Cable Show,” an industry trade show for cable TV is underway in Las Vegas. To a certain extent, I’m surprised this show still exists. There aren’t that many CATV companies left.

Comcast Corp&#185. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience Tuesday, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today’s standard cable modems.

This is huge news. Speed is capacity and no one ever has enough capacity – think closets in your home.

It is easy to think faster cable modems mean getting web pages and videos faster. And, of course that’s true.

More importantly, higher bandwidth changes what a data service can provide. I can’t imagine all the possible applications, but this certainly brings us closer to an environment where everything is on demand. For instance, higher bandwidth could allow all video (TV shows, newscasts, movies, sports, etc) to be individually fed.

Since Verizon is already rolling out its FIOS service, with high speed data directly to the home via fiber optic lines, this cable achievement assures some level of ongoing competition.

My fear continues to be cable and phone companies favoring their own (more profitable) products when it comes to transmission speed to the home. It’s the whole concept of network neutrality. But even that becomes less of a factor when there’s a broader pipe.

&#185 – I own a small position in Comcast as part of my retirement plan.

The Customer Is Always Wrong

If you’ve read this for any length of time, you know I have been frustrated with the policies of Cingular, my cell phone provider. Maybe Cingular’s actions are just part of the prevailing attitude of cell companies in general.

Here are some snippets from an interview with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg as conducted by the San Fransisco Chronicle.

“Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?” he said. “The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement.”

Seidenberg said it’s not Verizon’s responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon’s service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.

The fact that he thinks this is not surprising. The fact that he’s actually said it in public (as opposed to having it dispatched to lawmakers through a lobbyist) is astounding. Somewhere within Verizon, some PR person is suffering cardiac arrest.

This is hubris. Ivan, can you hear me now? Good.

Blogger’s note – T-Mobile now provides high resolution coverage maps from their website.

The Cell Phone Quandary

In my years as a cell phone customer, I have used Lynx (owned by local phone company SNET before they were bought by SBC, and before Cingular), BellAtlantic (pre-Verizon), AT&T and now Cingular.

They all have their strengths and weaknesses (except AT&T, which in my opinion only had weaknesses). Unfortunately, none of them provides a signal here, where I live. After last month’s landline phone outage (four days without 911, among other things), cell service here seemed like a necessity.

It’s a suburban neighborhood with a rural feel. There’s plenty of population density with spendable income. There’s certainly a place to put towers (the company I work for has a site on a hilltop, with a TV antenna already there).

As far as I know, there are only two companies with a signal that covers my house, Sprint and T-Mobile. I know T-Mobile’s coverage through the rest of this area is awful, so they’re out.

Today, I borrowed a phone from Sprint. They lent me a high end Samsung with color web browser and camera. As far as I can see, having the web browser is close to worthless. The camera might have some application, but it’s pretty rudimentary with 640×480 resolution.

Here’s the real breakthrough. For the first time ever, I made a cell call from home while walking around! Signal strength was 1-3 bars and the call quality was fine. Using the phone while driving my normal route produced a workable signal everywhere except the final 3/4 mile hill to my house… and then it came back.

I’d sign with Sprint in a second, except, they have the world’s worst reputation for customer service. There was a time when they attempted to charge their customers to call and speak to them!

In order to get what I want, I’ll probably have to sign a two year deal. I’m scared to do it if they’re the devil.

Meanwhile, with cellular number portability about a month away, I will hang tight and wait for what I consider an inevitable price war. My contract with Cingular is up October 26th and for the first time in my cellular career, I’ll be in the drivers seat.