May 23
So I’ve been following the Network Neutrality debate pretty closely hoping that for once Congress could/would manage to look at technology in a way that didn’t involve buying into whatever weird logic (RIAA suing customers) the corporations brought to the debate. I’m happy to report that so far the government appears to be siding with the consumers. For those of you not familiar (all 2 of you) with the current Network Neutrality debate it basically goes like this: The bandwidth providers want to charge certain bandwidth users extra money if they use a lot of bandwidth or bandwidth of a certain type.
What it really boils down to is the fact that much like the RIAA or MPAA instead of joining WITH the companies using this bandwidth to offer amazing new technology and applications is the Telco’s want to get continually paid for upgrades they’d already planned to do that will make their backbones cheaper in the longrun.
For those of you in the Pacific Northwest you’re familiar with this business model thanks to Starbucks founder Howard Shultz. Shultz demanded that Seattle taxpayers pay for a new arena for the Sonics or he’d move the team. Apparently the sports team economics of “taxpayer money subsidizes my massively profitable business so I can then charge taxpayers more for tickets” is now being examined by the Telcos.
Why should Comcast or Verizon spend money to increase their profitability when they can just have the consumers pay for the upgrades?
On the one hand the corporate arguments do make a little bit of sense: Some internet companies are using massive amounts of bandwidth (YouTube, Google Video etc) but they are free to consumers. However with a closer look we see that with Telcos being able to make companies pay to use bandwidth free sites like those mentioned above will likely go to a pay model and we’re suddenly right back where we were in the late 90’s.
This debate has brought together the far right and far left in totally new ways as well as given us the great bizarre quotes from PR hacks in the industry; like the Verizon Exec who implied that by charging high bandwidth users more money that small “garage” developers would have a greater ability to create that killer app. So a garage developer could make a “killer app” like basecamp or sidejobtrack that gets a massive amount of traffic and pay for it how exactly? With great traffic comes great bandwidth responsibility.
Get off it Telcos. If you don’t like your own business model get out of the business. Don’t shift your inability to want to part with a buck to consumers (i.e. anyone who pays you for your service) it is not our job to subsidize you. Corporations don’t deserve welfare (amtrak, airlines and subsidized farmers this includes you as well). Don’t let Congress allow the FCC to drop the ball on communications regulating yet again.
Apr 01
Every year on April fools day many sites really embrace the day with funny and irreverent site redesigns. I’d planned on doing one this year but decided against due to time and well frankly too much else on my mind.
Here’s the sites I’ve found with great jokes:
Google Romance:
Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google
ThinkGeek:
Wireless Extension Cords
Planet Halflife:
“girly redesign”
Slashdot:
OMG Ponies edition
If anyone spots anymore let me know. I love finding stuff like this and Google and Thinkgeek usually have the best every year but anymore that can be found are always worth seeing.
Jan 06
Google today announced Google Pack beta, a free collection of safe, useful software from Google and other companies that improves the user experience online and on the desktop. In just a few clicks, users can easily discover, install and maintain software to surf the web faster and safer, communicate better, and effectively manage information.
From the Google Press Release:
“We’ve heard from countless new computer owners that it can take days or weeks to install all the software they need to make their computer useful,” said Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience at Google. “We developed Google Pack to give users a way to painlessly install all the essential software they need - pre-configured in a sensible way - in a matter of minutes. Better yet, users don’t have to keep track of software updates or new programs – we maintain and update all the software for them.”
Google Pack offers programs that meets Google’s high software standards and are considered best in their class, including:
- Adobe Reader 7
- Ad-Aware SE Personal
- GalleryPlayer HD Images
- Google Desktop
- Google Earth
- Google Pack Screensaver
- Google Talk
- Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
- Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar
- Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition
- Picasa
- RealPlayer
- Trillian
Google Pack also includes Google Updater, a new tool that intelligently downloads, installs and maintains all the software in the Google Pack. Google Updater alerts users when updates and new programs become available and ensures each program is always up-to-date. Google Updater can also be used to monitor the status of installation, run software that’s been installed, or easily uninstall software.
That last bit is really the most interesting part. Is Google positioning itself as competition for Microsoft’s Live Update suite that recently entered beta? Having Google handle the responsibility of system updates definitely seems like a step towards dominating the desktop management arena. With integration of all of Google’s main applications users will find everything they need to truly handle every internet need while at the same time placing more faith and trust in Google.
Download Google Pack
Dec 16
If you’re anything like me then you’re probably addicted to gmail and use it for everything (backups, email, notes etc). Well they’ve finally unveiled the most useful feature in gmail yet: gmail mobile. Like most mobile email sites you don’t get all of the bells and whistles but what you do get is quite nice and really customizable. I started using it last night and so far no problems with it. The ability to have my gmail contacts available means no more relying on mail2wap.com or anything like that. Most amazing is it’s ability to handle photos and pdf’s.
If you use Gmail, and the web browser on your mobile device supports xhtml & SSL, you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I do. I started using it last night and so far no problems with it.
