I did an interesting experiment the other day–I tried dialing 0 for a number of phones. What does dialing 0 do? In the United States and Canada, dialing zero was how you reached the operator. You needed the operator to even make local calls at first, but as the equipment became more sophisticated and automated, the operator was needed less and less.
This video from an era gone past explains how operators helped route calls between different cities. Seems quaint today, of course.
In addition to routing long distance calls, operators also were the de-facto emergency service number. You could call the operator and get connected with the local police and fire department as necessary. The operator was used for this function well into the 1980s, in some locations, given that 911 service wasn’t widely available. It still isn’t available in some locations.
Back to my experiment with dialing zero. I have two mobile phones–one with AT&T, one with T-Mobile–and I have a landline with CenturyTel. Surprisingly, I was able to reach an operator on all of these phones. I did notice that some of the Nokia phones blocked dialing zero. My Nokia N95 and my Nokia N73–regardless of SIM–did not allow dialing of the operator. Not quite sure why, but some of my other Nokia handsets were able to do this without a problem.
CenturyTel’s operator was hidden behind a phone tree, mostly because you got the option of English or Spanish. AT&T’s operator gave me, predicably, an AT&T message. Dialing zero only let you dial a collect call. Dialing zero-zero was necessary to reach a real operator.
On T-Mobile, calling the operator was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Why? Because I got a Verizon operator–right away, even. I asked the operator what services they provide, and it still sounds like the same ones: call completion, collect calls, and emergency services.
I guess you still can get an operator, and you still can get service. They don’t even advertise the service anymore. Try finding anything on CenturyTel, T-Mobile, or AT&T website about operator service and you simply won’t find it. But by golly, it’s still there.
Can you tell by looking at the following screens which one is recording and which one isn’t? You can? Good for you.
Most of the people that read this blog should be able to figure this out. Perhaps without what is being videoed showing, and you know what to look for, you know the difference between recording and not.
Enter my wife. Normally, if she needs to take videos, she uses a Nokia N93 I have lying around. Today, the battery was dead, so I decided to lend her my Nokia N95 instead. Same video quality, different form factor.
When she came home, we discussed her video taking experience. It was horrible, as it turns out almost ALL of her experiences taking videos with the phone ends up being.
It boils down to one simple fact: she has no idea when the thing is actually recording. I showed her how it shows it’s recording, the little red area on the bottom. To her, that “blends in” and doesn’t stand out well enough. The “Pause” button is even more confusing, because to her, it means the camera is paused, especially since there is no obvious indication.
The solution to this problem would be dirt simple: a nice, large red REC in the upper left or right corner of the viewfinder. Something that emulates what you might find on a conventional video camera. Something obvious that you’re actually recording.
While I know Nokiainternallybeta tests products–I’m participating in one such test right now–I wonder how much outside testing is done with people like my wife. Someone who is not a mobile phone geek and doesn’t want to become one.
My wife wouldn’t mind carrying around a device like the Nokia N95, complete with the video and picture capabilities it has. However, the phone itself needs to be usable as a phone–the Nokia N93 fails due to it’s size and awkwardness as a phone–and that extra functionality needs to be easy to get to and intuitive to use.
Based on the fact I have to train her each time she uses either my Nokia N93 or N95, or she has to spend too much time familiarizing herself beforehand, I’d say the usability fails the “normal person” test.
Needless to say, I filed an improvement request on the device I am testing to make the recording indication a lot more obvious to people who aren’t geeks. It may not seem like much, but those little things make a big difference to people like my wife.
The folks at VMware have announced the availability of a new beta version of VMware Fusion, their virtualization software for Mac OS X. There are two reasons I immediately ran–not walked–to download and install this beta version:
Proper support for multiple screens–something that affects me quite a bit
The ability to convert a Boot Camp partition to a standalone VM–something I asked about early on in the VMware Fusion process
They’ve also added better support for DirectX (offering experimental support for DirectX 9.0Shader Model 2) as well as made it easier to print to your Mac OS X printer from Windows!
I am still kicking the tires, as it were. One issue I see is that their drivers for Windows XParen’t signed. Upgrading VMware Tools in my Boot Camp Partition converted to a virtual machine did not go entirely smoothly. There was a piece of undetected hardware initially, though it went away after a reboot. Nothing earth shatteringly wrong.
The good news is, for all you people who purchased VMware Fusion 1.x, version 2 is a free upgrade. If you’re not already a convert, they provide a license key you can use to try the beta version of the product out.
About an hour ago, Pat Phelan announced to the world that Twitterfone was live. Within 40 minutes or so, he had 1500 signups. Since the service is invite only at the moment, it might be a bit before you get your invite to the service!
What is it? Twitterfone takes your voice, transcribes it to text, and tweets it on your Twitter feed, complete with a link to the original audio. Yes, I know Jott, Spinvox, and others do this same thing. This is bog simple and free.
Local numbers are available in 10 countries, including the US, UK, and Ireland. Another 30 countries are coming in the next 6 weeks.
I recently had a chance to talk to a manager of one of the Qwest kiosks at a local mall. We discussed, among other things, the state of the wireless industry and how they were getting a raw deal in the wireless resale deal with Sprint. He also mentioned that a resale deal with either AT&T or Verizon was likely.
Given how buddy-buddy Qwest and Verizon Wireless are getting with this deal, which includes joint bidding on government contracts, and integration of Qwest’s IP network with Verizon Wireless’ network, and shared billing arrangements, I wonder if we might see another attempt by Verizon to purchase Qwest outright.
Ok, this has come up again. Deutsche Telecom, the company that owns T-Mobile in the U.S., is supposedly in talks to buy Sprint. The conventional wisdom is that Sprint uses both CDMA and iDEN, but T-Mobile uses GSM. That’s about like mixing oil and water. Sprint itself could not digest Nextel’s iDEN network, and it’s current financial woes can be partially blamed on it’s failed attempts at integrating Nextel’s network into Sprint’s CDMA network. It has the phrase charlie foxtrot written all over it.
However, I think I have an idea that might make this acquisition work. This is a technical/business solution and doesn’t even attempt to address the likely regulatory concerns that will come up.
While people get caught up on the technological differences between Sprint and T-Mobile, one thing Sprint has that T-Mobile can use today without converting a single customer is spectrum. Sprint has quite a bit of spectrum–spectrum T-Mobile could easily use to beef up their network. Obviously, there would be some cost in putting up GSM gear in Sprint’s existing tower locations as well as tying them to T-Mobile’s network.
As for converting customers? Run the CDMA, iDEN, and GSM networks as separate entities. Don’t integrate billing or customer service centers. Don’t spend a lot of time improving the CDMA and iDEN networks, either. Dump resources into expanding T-Mobile’s GSM network to match Sprint’s footprint.
Once the GSM (or maybe LTE by then) network is up to snuff, simply stop selling CDMA and iDEN services. Give customers great incentives to go GSM, including matching existing CDMA rate plans. Over the course of a couple of years, simply phase out CDMA and iDEN much like AT&T phased out TDMA not too long ago.
I have no delusions this process will be quick or painless, but I think it’s the only realistic plan for making it work. What do you think?
We’ve come to the end of another week of posts. It looks like I’m going to continue to crank out these posts, mostly because the automated methods to do this aren’t as attractive and, quite simply, don’t work that well.
There’s a story in the Seattle PI about how some rural gas stations in Washington State are running into a problem: they can’t display the actual cost of gasoline anymore! Old pumps that have dials that display the cost of fuel were not designed to have a price set any higher than $3.99 and 9/10 of a cent per gallon.
This creates a problem: fuel at some of these stations is over $4 a gallon now and they are unable to display the proper price, which is actually in violation of state laws! Station owners are having trouble obtaining affordable replacement pumps.
The good news is that state inspectors understand the situation and, assuming the station owners are making good-faith efforts to rectify the situation and clearly explain the situation to customers with appropriate signage, are looking the other way for the moment.
The good news is that these gas pumps are merely display devices. Payment is collected separately and can thus be a multiple of the gas price displayed on the pump, which is exactly what the station owners are doing.
One can hope that gas prices will eventually fall, but I have my doubts. I just hope those gas station owners get their updated gas pumps soon.
I can’t remember where I found out about it now, but cbs.com has, in addition to their primetime shows, a few classic shows. Specifically, they have The Twilight Zone, Star Trek (Original Series), MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O, and (not a classic IMHO) Melrose Place.
The Twilight Zone in particular has been the cause of productivity drains. Supposedly every episode of Star Trek is there–and I did watch one or two of them–but not all the episodes of The Twilight Zone are there. The first three seasons are mostly there, but there are some missing episodes.
Like most of the other network sites, the shows have unskipable ads in them, but each “commercial break” is a single ad that is either 15 or 30 seconds. You can, of course, skip around within an episode, though you get an ad if you cross an ad boundary. Not unreasonable.
What’s particularly cool about The Twilight Zone is that you also get Rod Serling telling you what’s on next week’s episode and you get the public service announcement at the end. I don’t know why I think that’s cool, but I do.
The video player gives good quality on both my Mac and Windows boxes. It seems to not get along with Firefox if there are network connectivity issues. I end up having to do a shift-reload of the page to get the Flash video to play again. I didn’t try Internet Explorer, but Safari on the Mac fared much better.
All in all, not a bad viewing experience. I wish I could download and save for later, but I don’t see the network sites letting me do that.
So let me get this straight. AOL is “opening” their telephony platform to allow SIP clients to connect in and make calls. So now instead of paying a penny a minute–or less–I can give more money to AOL. Yawn.
To give the contrarian point of view, David Beckemeyer calls this a great thing because “we now have a household brand not referring just to “VoIP” but referring to “SIP” - the standards-based protocol for VoIP, something neither Skype nor Vonage has done.”
The reason that Skype and Vonage haven’t promoted SIP is that end users don’t give a rats ass if it’s SIP or some sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic. They just care if it works and works well. Skype and Vonage both know this.
I’m trying to figure out what the hell AOL is trying to do with telephony. I know they tried doing something a couple years back, but what became of it? Nothing. What’s going to become of this? Nothing again.
We’ve come to the end of another week of posts. It looks like I’m going to continue to crank out these posts, mostly because the automated methods to do this aren’t as attractive and, quite simply, don’t work that well.
