Because I said so...

At&t-mobile merger

2011-06-01T10:24:00.003-05:00

It's really hard to not get behind Sprint's objections to the Att & t-mobile merger but it's going to happen. I'm a customer of both Att and t-mobile. I really don't like Att but my taste for Apple products and love of not getting screwed on early termination fees are keeping me there for at least a couple more years. Also, I'm not willing to jump to another carrier until the LTE/4G smoke clears. Who wants to re-live HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray or Beta vs VHS?

It's really like driving a shitty car. The car is junk and you know it, but it gets you where you need to go and you have all the little work arounds figured out for all of it's quirks.

Hey Att how does it feel to have your network compared to a 1984 Honda Civic?

I tell you how it feels...they don't care as long as your bill gets paid.

“While we take this customer feedback very seriously, we believe that churn, not surveys, are the best indicator of true customer satisfaction because it reflects the most important way people vote, namely, with their feet,” AT&T spokeswoman Meredith Adams said.

Yes, customers wanting to avoid early termination fee's is a sign of customer loyalty.

Must be nice to be that big...and that's why they shouldn't get bigger.

Is Amazon trying to get a good look at a steak by sticking it's head up a butcher's...

2011-03-30T08:56:00.002-05:00

Amazon has launched two apps this week and one has me wondering if they may have something here. For starters they launched cloud drive. To me this is just a dropbox competitor and really a logical extension of the S3 product to the consumers. What is cloud drive? One simple answer, cheap storage in the sky. Those of us who already know how to work S3 already have access to the same thing. This is just a nice wrapper for the rest of the world.

The second product is Cloud Player. This is the interesting one. Now Apple has pretty much locked the portable music device market with the iPod, iPod Touch, etc, etc. But the one thing everyone has been looking to Apple for is online storage and backup of their music (you know...that new data center they built). Oh and to be able to play it from any machine would be nice. Has Amazon looked at where Apple has lacked and beat them to the punch with Cloud Player?

Amazon has been positioning themselves as an Infrastructure company with series of pay for use data center products. Maybe they have looked at how people purchase and use online content and realized that they have to much to loose by risking money from selling the steak (i.e. end user experience). Instead they are focusing on what they do well and have experience with on a large scale and that is building the infrastructure to handle product fulfillment. If anything Amazon has put an unwanted expectation on any offering from Apple. I think this is a good move for consumers. Right now it may be confusing but until we get past the WWD 2011 we won't know if Apple has something to say about this development or not. If not we will be disappointed and if so it better be really good and not another MobileME.

Online/Electronic Magazines and why I haven't taken the plunge

2010-09-16T08:21:00.003-05:00

I own a Kindle.

I own an iPad.

The large majority of the books I purchase and read are on these two devices. 90% Kindle and 10% iPad. But the one thing I don't read on the iPad or Kindle are periodicals. Why you may ask. I've been asking myself the same thing and I've come up with an answer. Cause there are two many choices and two many vendors.

For example, if you read Men'sHealth logic would tell me just to go to Amazon or iBooks and look for it there. I associate Amazon and iBooks as the Borders and Barnes & Noble of electronic books (sorry guys). In the good old days of book store utilization if I couldn't find it at Borders and I go to Barnes & Noble. But back to the example, Men'sHealth, if you are in the app store you will see a Men'sHealth app...why? There is also Zinio who is trying to be the Kindle/iBooks for periodicals. They also have Men's Health but it's the UK version.....that makes sense right? No it doesn't and this is the main problem I have with Zinio. Lots of magazines but they seem to be for the rest of the world. US versions are hit and miss so buyer beware in their store.

Is this Zinio's fault? No, I think the publishers are struggling with a changing business model.

Here is another question. Why can't I convert my tree killing subscription of Men's Health to the electronic version, even if I have to use their stupid app? I've sent emails to the publisher asking this and I haven't heard a word. In fact, I wouldn't mind paying $5 to convert the subscription. No answer from Men's Health.

People constantly complain on the Kindle subscription reviews because they don't feel that they are getting value. This perceived lack of value occurs because they can read and entire magazine in an hour. If you remove all the ad's from the magazines (because ads are graphic and the Kindle doesn't lend itself to full page color ads) they are much thinner. This is like complaining to DishNetwork that the Discovery Channel stinks because your DVR allows you to skip the commercials. Think about how small a Cosmo would be if you took out all the ads.

Magazines are a different reading experience and I think the iPad will shine for this form of media. It comes the closets to replicating the experience and that's what will have to happen for periodicals. Magazine are more graphic intensive. But having said that, Magazine publishers should probably not focus on their own apps and decide to either give into the Apple machine or throw their weight behind someone like Zinio. The magazine publishers are going to shoot themselves in the foot by fragmenting the delivery platform of their content. We've seen this happen time and time again. Content creators do well when they do that...create content.

How realistic is it to update a blog from the iPad

2010-04-20T18:59:00.002-05:00

So I log into blogger.com the google blogging site. I can type in the subject of the article but can't edit the text field of the blog post unless I click the edit HTML tab. So at this point I would say that without an app to do this with i would say this is a minor FAIL. I state that it's minor because I can edit type in the text.

Adding an image is a major FAIL because there is no way to get the picture off of iPad or at least a way that I can figure out.

Typing is O.K. But it slides around on my lap So putting in lots of text without he Bluetooth keyboard at this point is not a lot of fun. I say at this point because lets face it. The iPhone wasn't a treat until I got used to it and now i consider all other smarts phones seem like a royal pain the the rear now.

All of these things are the result of being an early adopter of the technology. I'm not down on the iPad it's just the simple fact of the way things are now. Thank goodness the predictive typing works as well as it does. It truly keeps this from being the train wreck that it could be using this.

That's all for now.

iPad vs Kindle 2

2010-04-12T10:45:00.002-05:00

After a week of using the iPad and having owned a Kindle 2 for little more than a year I have come to this conclusion.

E-ink is better for reading than the iPad. The iPad is great and it's cool to have both iBooks and Kindle Reader on the same device. iPad is a better overall device. But when it comes to reading straight text E-ink is less straining on the eyes.

Now who will win the battle of the backpack? They will both be there. The Kindle is so light weight I'm not going to notice it. I don't think Kindle can pull off the kind of universal platform like the iPad for applications and I don't think it should try. I think they both have their places. It's all about the right tool for the job.

My blog sucks...but I'm working on it

2009-04-16T09:06:00.002-05:00

I have a couple of posts I've been working on. So stay tuned.

Evernote

2009-02-23T12:02:00.003-06:00

So I pulled the trigger today and moved from a free loader at Evernote to a "Premium" member. To tell you the truth it feels good and the $45 per year seems like a good deal over all. If you don't know what Evernote is or does, check out the website http://www.evernote.com.

Basically it's Google Notebook but about 100 times better. It's a place to store notes, scanned articles, web clippings, etc. More importantly, if you do PC support or work in IT, this is where the ability to have your notes on your iPhone becomes unbelievably handy. Not to mention that with you paid subscription you can take pictures of business cards with your iPhone. Load them into Evernote and the OCR function makes that card searchable.

Now, there are issues with the OCR but this thing works pretty well.

Hey Facebook buddies check this out scammers trolling for your passwords.

2008-12-29T15:39:00.002-06:00

Hey Facebook buddies....don't fall for this scam.

The Internet Storm Center has a post about people receiving notifications on Facebook about there images being stolen and reposted on other sites. You click on a link and that site asks you for your userid and password. BIG NO NO.

Please read this: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5575&rss

POST 300 - And it's a complaint to Nintendo...fix your freaking website

2008-12-29T10:21:00.003-06:00

Dear Nintendo,

Just wanted to let you know it was a good Christmas at my house. We picked up a Nintendo Wii and a Nintendo DS. Being a good customer I wanted to register my product so you can fill my in box and mailbox with crap. But one small problem. Mario tells me that Club Nintendo is down. In fact, he's been telling me that for 4 days now.

Other than that we are really enjoying your products.

Sincerely,
New Nintendo Fan

______ UPDATE _______

Just got everything registered today...it's about time.

Let's get this Election over...

2008-11-03T08:41:00.002-06:00

Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy but I'm so ready for this election to be over with. It's the stupid political ads. Everyone is a bad person and they hate old people and childern. They don't like the poor or the rich or the people in the middle. I'm just done with the whole thing.

On the other hand I'm also a little excited about the whole thing. I mean it does have a lot of hype behind it. We will see history made yet again.

Either way, don't be a dope go out and vote.

Peace Out.

Craftsmenship rarely seen these days

2008-08-11T13:34:00.001-05:00

Check out the tolerance between the door and the toilet at the Marriot
Residence Inn here in Parsippany, NJ.

Hey if anyone is paying attention...iPhone developers...SSH and Telnet - UPDATED

2008-08-08T10:22:00.000-05:00

UPDATE:

Hey someone was listening. Saw this posted over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). pTerm has been released and a patched version is coming out right behind it. For $4.99 you can rule the world. I'm going to buy it and give it a quick review.

Link to TUAW post here pTerm released, update due soon.

If someone comes up with a good SSH/Telnet client for iPhone, that would be a killer app. I don't own an iPhone 3G but if I did that's one thing that I would need. Because as a Data Comm guy, I could access my network via the 3G and Cisco IPSEC client. Then fire up that SSH/Telnet client and I could rule the world.

Dinner at Pondergrossa

2008-08-06T17:50:00.000-05:00

BlogRush....I'm I the only one who doesn't "get it"?

2008-08-06T15:18:00.003-05:00

If you read this blog on what would be considered a normal basis....wow. Because I'm not sure I ever have anything real to say. I do however use it as a forum to openly complain and while it makes me feel better, I doubt I'm making a difference out there.

On to the subject. BlogRush. I have been signed up for over 6 months. I have not seen any benefit from this service. Maybe it's because I'm not categorized properly. Maybe it's because, like stated above, I bring nothing to the table. I did however change my category today and I'm interested in seeing if this makes a difference.

If you use BlogRush and you think it works, leave a comment. I would be interested in your take on this service.

How I got an iPhone and why I'm writing this post

2008-08-05T18:04:00.005-05:00

I purchased a 1st gen iPhone for my wife for her birthday in Feb. of this year. She loved it. It's probably been one of 2 phones that she has had no complaints about. She even read the book I bought for her about the iPhone. She likes the phone that much.

Well, last month she dropped the phone in the toilet. She said that the toilet had been freshly cleaned. I will take her word for it. Anyway she came home and said that she had dropped it in the toilet. I told her before she even tried to turn it on again we needed to really give it a couple of weeks to dry out.

She was going out of town on business and decided she couldn't wait 2 weeks so she bought a new 3G version. Now, I know what your saying. She did it on purpose because she wanted a new phone. Well, if I would have done it that would have probably been true. But she really hates to spend money on stuff like that. So I believed her when she said it was an accident.

So, I took the old phone and dried it out for a couple of weeks. Plugged it up to the Mac Mini and fired it up. Low and behold it worked. The screen still had a little water in it, I could see some slight streaking but it worked. I popped the sim out of my other ATT phone and put it in the toilet phone and activated it.

It continued to work. I upgraded it to the 2.0 firmware and everything still worked..but the camera. I got an error message that there wasn't enough room on the iPhone for it take a picture. Which wasn't true. I have like 12Gigs available.

A little research revealed that lot of people had the same problem but the vast majority had been jail broken phones. Not mine, it was a standard straight out of the box iPhone. Nothing fishy going on here.

Anyway, I upgraded today to 2.0.1 and the camera is now working as you can see from the above picture.

InBev and Anhuser-Busch

2008-07-14T10:46:00.003-05:00

The take over of AB and the Budweiser brand may be marketing gold for a technology company.....

SAP

That's right SAP the German based accounting and so much more software company just popped a marketing woody when this went through.

I can see it now....SAP the power to join titans.

Tim Russert died

2008-06-13T15:06:00.001-05:00

I wasn't a big fan of Meet the De-Pressed (props to Rush Limbaugh for that one). But it's sad to hear that he died today from a heart attack.

Airlines looking at the next logical step......

2008-06-03T15:40:00.004-05:00

Saw this article at Bloomberg.com, airlines may start pricing you by weight. That could cause all kinds of problems. If company want to save on travel only send smaller employees? What next, if you are too tall there is a surcharge on height?

One thing is for certain, the airlines are going to have to find a better or different way to do business if they want to stay in business. Of course, if the laws of commerce prevail, then the weak will be weeded out of the heard leaving more paying customers for who is left. Out of those that are left, the one who raises the prices but keeps the business viable is the winner. The down side is that there will be a lot of people who are going to loose their jobs over all of this.

Here is the link to the Bloomberg.com article.

Attention Airlines!!! Let's make a deal...

2008-05-29T08:39:00.003-05:00

U.S. Airways announced that it will no longer serve "free" snacks on flights. Earlier American Airlines and some other announced that they are going to start charging for checked luggage.

Fine...If you want to play by these rules and break the whole thing down to a city bus experience, then lets get a few things straight.

1. Be on time. I'm not talking about that close the door bull crap that makes your departure numbers.

2. Do not overbook flights. Hey I'm not stupid. Your doing this to either reduce the weight of a paying customer so you can add paying cargo or your trying to reduce ground crew expenses or both. Lets don't forget that a lot of people will not want to pay for the soda. So you have also eliminated the weight of a couple of cases of soda.

3. Do have enough crew members on hand to not back up the whole works when some location has bad weather.

4. Flight attendants must be pleasent. Trust me, I would be annoyed also if I had to push that cart down the aisle for a bunch of cry babies.

5. Have change on hand. I don't want to hear that stupid announcement "does anyone have change for a $20" a hundred times while I'm trying to close my eyes and ignore the person beside me.

6. Give me the entire can! If I'm paying for a freaking soda, then I want the whole can. Not that BS half a soda crap you pull now.

That should be a good start. You guys work on that and I will tell you how it's working. My next flight is in about 2 1/2 weeks. So get cracking.

JetBlue and Southwest....when are you guys going to lower the boom on us?

CompUSA back from the dead????

2008-05-24T13:58:00.003-05:00

Last night I noticed an ad for CompUSA. I thought they were dead? So I headed over to CompUSA.tv and lo and behold, CompUSA is alive. The website really seems to be more like a TigerDirect.com but it's interesting.

---- Update ----

A little digging at news.google.com and I found out that TigerDirect has purchased CompUSA. See this entry over at Gizmodo here.

Travel Day to the Derby

2008-05-02T08:29:00.002-05:00

Arrived in Louisville around 5:30 local time. It was a good drive and we started a little later than we wanted. The Seelbach Hotel is beautiful. It was built in 1905 for $990,000 by two German brothers.

We had dinner in the Rathskeller room was built as a German beer garden.

I will post some pictures later. We had breakfast and are now getting ready to head to the track for the Kentucky Oaks.

Junction Networks website gets a face lift

2008-04-25T15:42:00.001-05:00

I use Junction Networks for SIP trunking. Today their website got a face lift and a polish. Looks nice.

If you laugh at them, they will remember it and...

2008-04-23T12:54:00.002-05:00

you will be one of the first ones slated for elimination when they take over.

Microsoft Live Mesh unveiled but haven't we seen this somewhere????

2008-04-23T07:52:00.004-05:00

Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere or what other people would consider "normal". You may not know but last night at 9pm on the West Coast Microsoft unveiled "Live Mesh". Now head over to that site and come back. I will wait.

OK, your back. In the 12 seconds that you looked at that website. Didn't it seem like something you've already seen before? Yep, looks a lot likel Apple's .mac (30,000 foot view) web synch, online storage solution, desktop sharing and news feeds.

Giving Verisign's PIP a spin

2008-04-22T15:31:00.002-05:00

So I got interested in this openid thing and decided to give the Verisign Labs PIP product a spin. it's free and they have a plugin for FireFox. I will let you know how it goes.