The PhoneBoy Blog

Testing Wavelog Version 2

PhoneBoy — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:16:48 +0000

I am testing Wavelog version 2. Long-time fans of PhoneBoy will appreciate this picture of my daughter, particularly the shirt she has on.

At the moment, I am playing with the demo, which has somewhat restricted functionality. I can author up a post and post, at least. Will get a review copy and do a full review shortly.

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

Verizon Wireless: No Excuse For Data Security Issue

PhoneBoy — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:50:56 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been thinking about the compromise of President-Elect Barack Obama’s mobile phone records at Verizon Wireless. Verizon Wireless recently fired the guilty parties, as they should. However, this is not the end of the problem. In fact, it’s only the beginning.

As I work in a customer service organization, I understand the business need for customer service agents to have access to customer records. In order to provide quality service to a customer, access to their relevant data is vital.

How much access to that data is needed? Does every rep need access to all that data 24×7, anytime? The CISSP in me says absolutely not. Do companies properly control access to this data? Not in my opinion.

There are always going to be people who need access to all customer data, e.g. management or management designates. However, the number of people who have that level of access should be relatively small. All access to that data should be heavily audited.

For the lowly customer service rep–the people who typically answer the phone when a customer calls in–they should have access to the customer’s records unless the customer provides a PIN of some sort. Without a valid phone number and the appropriate PIN, the customer service reps should not be able to pull up the records at all.

Of course, there are going to be exceptions to this rule, for example if a specific rep is working with a specific customer on a specific issue, but as a rule, only people with a valid business reason to have access to the customer data right now should have that access. This needs to be enforced by business process as well as the tools themselves.

Really, though, it’s a simple matter. If you don’t have a legitimate business reason for looking at customer data, don’t do it. This has always been my policy back from when I was a systems administrator. Reputable customer service agents follow this rule, the good ones don’t even have to be told.

Back to Verizon Wireless for a moment. While I know it is a matter of a few rogue employees and I feel they responded to the situation appropriately, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. A large telecom like Verizon Wireless should have systems in place to prevent this kind of “data leakage” already. Clearly, whatever measures they employ either weren’t followed or were ineffective.

I hope that all telecommunications carriers learn from this experience.

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Comments

25 November 2008, spg writes: i have dealt with some pretty bad customer services situation where there was total contradiction between one rep and another or they even flat out told me a different policy the second time. since these were billing issues that had a very direct impact on my finances(even is only to a small degree) i take them very seriously. in these cases i really wish there would have been some way to play back the conversation when the story changed and the CS rep denied what they told me the first time. this of course being handled on verizon's end not me(the customer) having to be the one to record the call when it is already being recorded. spg
30 November 2008, PhoneBoy writes: I wonder if we can record the calls with Customer Service ourselves for exactly this kind of problem?

A Comparison of Low Cost Mobile Calling Solutions

PhoneBoy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:48:31 +0000

If you’ve looking at trying to find a cheap way to make long distance calls from your mobile phone, you might want to have a look at LowCostMob, which lays out all the various options and lets you do comparison shopping on the rates. Several favorite companies are listed there, including a few that I had never heard of.

Of course, it’s not all about price, though in these times of uncertainty about the world economy, price certainly is a concern. The one thing I don’t see in the various comparisons is call quality. Of course, that’s a highly subjective thing and subject to a number of factors anyway. However, it’s something you need to be aware of when you pick one of these services to try.

Fahrenheit 451

PhoneBoy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:48:19 +0000

There are many books I have not read by the great Ray Bradbury, but one that I’ve heard about on and off over the years was Fahrenheit 451. The title comes from the fact that paper catches fire at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, and a lot of paper–in the form of books–are burned in this story.

Prior to reading the book, I watched the 1966 movie of the same name, which adapted the book for the silver screen. While the basic story is the same, the movie changed several critical elements of the story. While I found the movie to be good, the book was far better.

Despite the story being more than 50 years old now, it holds up surprisingly well. We’re still waiting for the mechanical hounds, televisions are as huge as walls and people walk around oblivious to the world with contraptions in their ears. There is more entertainment than you could possibly shake a stick at.

While there are several themes in this book, the one that resonated within me the strongest was the rage against conformity. Throughout the book, society was immersed in televised and auditory media designed to delight and entertain, not to provoke any serious thought. The educational system of this fictional future society reinforced this by keeping children busy with memorizing facts and activities, giving them no time to stop and think.

The reason books were burned was because they promoted independent thought–thought that might make people unhappy. This fictional society saw this as a bad thing. Books were made illegal and firemen–with a long history of putting fires out–were charged with actually starting fires–namely to burn books.

The fictional “conformed” society reminds me a bit of the blogosphere. While there are many, many voices in the blogosphere, there seems to be a lack of differing points of view. We call this the “echo chamber,” and I could not help but draw a parallel to the fictional society in Fahrenheit 451.

I think the echo chamber, among many other factors, has dampened my passion for writing. The reason I am reading actual books versus the same old stuff in the blogosphere is that I am trying to find some new ideas and reawaken some old ones. Sure, you can find new ideas online, but I think a change of venue from the computer screen to a book is part of the process.

In any case, this book is very good. Highly recommended read. Even though I am not a fast reader, I was able to finish this book in the course of a few hours. It will certainly give you something to think about

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Comments

24 November 2008, Web 2.0 wake-up writes: [...] Boy has a snappy post up today. He’s appreciating Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 while simultaneously blasting the same-old-same-old intellectual [...]

Nokia Firewall, VPN, and IPSO Configuration Guide Now Available

PhoneBoy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:17:27 +0000

Andrew Hay and Warren Verbanec, two of my former co-workers, along with Peter Giannoulis and Keli Hay have come together to make the Nokia Firewall, VPN, and IPSO Configuration Guide. These folks have put together a comprehensive tome covering all of Nokia’s network security solutions, though the primary focus is on Nokia IPSO and Check Point VPN-1. I also played a small role in this book by writing the foreward for it, as well as helping both Andrew and Warren with various things over the years.

Of course, since the time this book was finished, but before it was printed and bound, and available on amazom.com and other places, Nokia announced it was selling off the Security Appliance business. Even if the boxes have a different name on them, which must happen eventually as result of new ownership, they’ll still be the same high-quality systems you’ve come to know and love from Nokia.

Jeff Pulver Is Starting Another Revolution: SocComm

PhoneBoy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:01:12 +0000

Starting another conference. In a down economy. Are you crazy? Personally, I think not, mainly because we’re talking about our good buddy Jeff Pulver, who started the Voice on the Net (VON) conferences back before VoIP became a household–or at least a business–word.

This new conference called SocComm isn’t about VoIP. It’s about social communications. It’s about all the ways people communicate with each other. Things like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, online games, and more.

Quoting from Jeff’s blog:

“Presence” is quickly becoming the trigger point for communication. I grew up in an era where the dial-tone on my home phone meant something to me. Today and in the future I believe that Presence is the new Dial-tone and that more and more communication sessions will happen because of presence. The evolution of presence has huge implications for a number of industries, including: advertising, media and telecom.

Let me repeat what he said: presence is the new dial-tone. I think that’s a powerful statement that has all kinds of implications. This conference will explore what exactly this means.

SocComm 2009 will be taking place February 10-11 in New York City. Jeff is looking for speakers for this event. He’ll take proposals until 5th December 2008, so if you’re interested, let him know!

I’d love to go to this conference myself, though I’m not sure how I am going to afford to make the trek. I can assure you, though, it will be well worth your time.

Comments

21 November 2008, The Jeff Pulver Blog - Notes, comments and observations writes: taking place February 10-11, 2009 in New York City. I’d like to acknowledge a number of friends who have helped to spread the word about SocComm: Andy Abramson: Pulver Goes Social Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy (a.k.a. “PhoneBoy”):Jeff Pulver Is Starting Another Revolution: SocCommKen Camp and Sheryl Breuker: SocComm / The Social Communications Summit - February 10-11 2009 in New York City Doug Mohney: SPOTLIGHT: Jeff Pulver's one degree of Obama separation - o.k. this had nothing to do with SocComm but it was Doug’s way of

Boingo Taking Over WiFi on Washington State Ferries

PhoneBoy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:58:53 +0000

Image of boingo

A couple years ago, I found out they were putting WiFi on the ferries in Washington State. Being as I rarely take the ferries around here, it’s not something I’ve been tracking all that closely. However, I do appreciate how useful it would be to have–particularly on that hour-long Bremerton to Seattle run

The entire fleet of ferries and ferry terminals does not have WiFi yet, but it’s certainly expanded from when I heard about it a couple of years ago. 11 Washington State Ferries terminals and 15 Ferries offer WiFi service today.

And now, those floating WiFi hotspots are owned by the folks at Boingo. Boingo has announced they’re taking over WiFi on the ferries from Parsons Transportation Group. The most immediate thing that customers will notice, aside from the new splash page, is the price will go down to $21.95/mo from the $29.95/mo it originally was. In addition, customers will be able to use WiFi at all of Boingo’s locations throughout the U.S. and Canada for that price, not just the ferries. If you have a supported mobile phone, you can use Boingo Mobile for only $7.95/mo!

Seems like a win-win for everyone involved. Passengers get a better deal, more access, and their WiFi is now managed by people that actually know how to do it. What’s not to like?

Comments

17 November 2008, VoIP Watch: WiFi on The Water In Washington via Boingo writes: [...] Last week it was airports being added by Boingo. This week they've added ferries and ferry terminals in Washington State. [...]
22 November 2008, Voip Blog writes: Last week it was airports being added by Boingo.This week they've added ferries and ferry terminals in Washington State.As PhoneBoy points out, the costs have been lowered and subscribers immediately gain access to the entire Boingo network around the globe. The official announcement is here while the maven of all things WiFi, Glenn Fleishman weighs in

At Least Get The Name Right

PhoneBoy — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:33:04 +0000

As I’m trying to process all the email in my inbox right now, I ran across something that I thought would be cool to write about. However, the PR firm made a big mistake: they didn’t get my name right. It wasn’t spelled wrong–a problem I’ve constantly had to deal with throughout my life, thanks to whatever drugs my dad was on when he named me–but it was just flat out the wrong name.

If you can’t at least get my name right when you pitch me in email, I’m not going to write about your (client’s) products, simple as that. It’s not hard to figure out what my name is, or even how to spell it right. Getting it wrong on the first go, that’s just sloppy, sloppy PR.

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OnSIP and Fring: Smart PR

PhoneBoy — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:09:40 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Perhaps I am getting a bit too cynical for my own good. To me, it just seems obvious that Junction Networks OnSIP hosted PBX solution can connect up with Fring, a mobile VoIP/IM client that supports many phones, including the Apple iPhone and my beloved Nokia S60 handsets. You might, therefore, wonder why it’s worthy of a press release since it seems so obvious.

Both Fring and OnSIP speak SIP, the lingua franca of voice over IP. OnSIP allows you to use any old SIP client as an extension to the hosted PBX. Fring can be configured to talk to any SIP-enabled service. Put the two together, and you’ve suddenly extended your PBX to the mobile phone.

Of course, given the Nokia handsets I carry, I don’t even need Fring. I can just configure my Nokia handsets to talk to OnSIP directly. Of course, it’s not something that I would expect the average Joe to try and do. Fring would certainly make it a lot easier to do.

While I am a bit ho-hum about this press release myself, in general I think it’s smart PR. It’s functionality people want. It’s free functionality for both OnSIP and Fring, simply by speaking SIP and making it easy to interoperate. Letting the world know about it is the right thing.

Advertisement: Cell Phone Batteries

Comments

17 November 2008, Michael Oeth writes: It was really my 12yo son who got me excited about the press release. I had setup fring on my iPhone and showed it to my son. I made a SIP call out fring telling him it was a free call. He was absolutely thrilled about the idea of a free call using wifi which he then used as justification for me to get him an iPhone. Sorry, that's not happening. However, it did prompt me to write my fring blog post which I shared with our PR firm first. They got excited and contacted fring for a quote and decided to make it it's own release. Sometimes the excitement just catches. fring is a SIP proxy and my preference would be that the iPhone work more like the Nokia in that it has a native SIP stack on the phone. We're working with TruPhone and CounterPath toward that end. I was interviewed for this article and the sharp reporter - Adam Stone - asked exactly what you are saying, "What's the big deal, it should just work." He and you are both right. It *should* just work. However, there are very, very few business VOIP providers where it does work. We are 100% SIP compatible AND we allow you to be registered on up to 10 separate SIP devices simultaneously. With Junction Networks you are not locked into our hardware and we don't track your IP addresses for validation. Most VOIP providers either lock you into their hardware, or since you pay 'per extension' you can only be logged into one device at a time. For us, fring (and Nokia) are a validation of our business model. For us, that's exciting. Thanks, --Mike Oeth CEO Junction Networks, Inc.
17 November 2008, PhoneBoy writes: The only real bummer about the iPhone piece of it is that you can't receive a call over WiFi. I blame Apple for not allowing background apps and/or making their device a little too carrier friendly. Business VoIP solutions, even when they employ open standards, tend to be walled gardens. You guys are showing it can be done by actually being a bit more open. Being open and "easy" for normal folks at the same time is quite a challenge. :)

CTIA Against Spectrum Caps, Against Competition

PhoneBoy — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:15:14 +0000

The latest post on the CTIA blog didn’t make a lot of sense. They were arguing against spectrum caps. Of course, they did nothing to directly explain what spectrum caps are and instead chose to use a bunch of flawed analogies to describe it.

In short, there is a fixed amount of spectrum available for wireless carriers to use to provide service. All carriers. In order to ensure there are enough carriers providing service to have some semblance of competition, there are caps on the amount of spectrum a single carrier can control.

The main reason this topic of spectrum caps is even coming up is because of the Verizon Wireless/Alltel merger, which was recently approved by all the government agencies. Of course, the merger is without some conditions, one being that Verizon has to give up spectrum in over 100 markets in order to comply with spectrum caps. Makes me wonder who the CTIA is really representing here.

The first analogy the CTIA tries to draw is that the spectrum caps are a bit like “setting a computer cap based on a 1992 computer’s specs - it would be like adopting a cap of 4 MB RAM and a 40 MB hard-drive and saying that no new applications can be written requiring more than that.” Some pretty innovative computing came out of those dark ages. Sure, it requires a bit more work, but it’s possible.

The second analogy: it’s like saying no highway should be more than two lanes. Unlike a road, where cars are generally a fixed size, one can always make more efficient use of spectrum. Look at the 802.11 WiFi. The original 802.11 specification–that predates b, g or n–was 2mb/s. The current draft 802.11n can go 300mb/s. The same can be said of the mobile phone networks themselves. AMPS–the old analog spectrum–required a lot of spectrum, CDMA and GSM use spectrum more efficiently.

The final analogy they use: spectrum caps are a bit like “restricting the number of coffee shops a company could have in a given city.” This is somewhat true, but keep in mind that there is a limited, fixed amount of spectrum available for all carriers to use. What the spectrum caps do is ensure that no one carrier controls too much of the spectrum to allow multiple carriers to exist, i.e. not all coffee shops are Starbucks.

Let’s take the CTIA’s position on spectrum caps to its foregone conclusion: without any spectrum caps, a single carrier could conceivably control all of the spectrum in a given market. Given there is only a fixed amount of spectrum available for mobile telephony, spectrum caps ensure it is possible for multiple providers to provide service in any given area. So how is lifting the spectrum caps helping competition exactly?

I will agree this is not the most optimal solution, but while I tend to think universal service is important, I think that mandate can be filled without lifting the spectrum caps,thus preserving competition. What do you think?

Comments

11 November 2008, spg writes: i agree. lifting the caps will only stifle competition. mergers could be approved with the condition the new monster company could not bid on any future spectrum in the given areas. that would make the next batch of spectrum available to a new competitor with the incumbent driving up the price.
11 November 2008, spg writes: correction: i meant to say: 'without the incumbent driving up the price'
12 November 2008, Aaron Huslage writes: I think that the CTIA is right in one respect. Due to technological advances, the caps make no sense anymore. But I would take it a bit farther in saying that selling licenses to airwaves makes no sense anymore. The FCC should become an agency that regulates open airwaves, not closed ones. There is no reason that "interference" should exist anymore given our current technologies. Having said this. They can't lift the caps and they can't open the airwaves until companies decide to cooperate on their own.
17 November 2008, Kenneth writes: I agree... it doesn't make sense to me.
21 November 2008, PhoneBoy writes: @huslage you're right that interference should be a thing of the past. We have technological solutions to this problem. Unfortunately, there is a LOT of legacy gear that isn't so smart.

They’re Doing WHAT To The Electric Company?

PhoneBoy — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:43:46 +0000

Growing up, The Electric Company was one of my favorite shows. I didn’t realize necessarily that it was trying to teach me how to read, or that it had big-name stars acting in it. It was just a fun show to watch after Sesame Street.

While I don’t make a habit of watching kids TV, it is an occupational hazard of having kids and working at home. One day, after one of the kids shows on PBS, there was a preview for something called The Electric Company. No, it’s not what I grew up with, but the segment or two they showed had elements of what I remember.

Then I go find the site PBS has set up for The Electric Company, which is set to premiere in January 2009. While it certainly has a lot of the same educational elements, and includes lots of animated vignettes like the original, they’ve turned what used to be a daily variety show for kids into a weekly show with an actual plot.

This show is coming out in a very different time from the 1970, when the original aired. Educational TV was still a relatively new concept in America, and there wasn’t a whole lot of other choices. There certainly wasn’t computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and who-knows what else. In the early part of the 21st Century, we’ve got 500 channels on TV, a bazillion web pages on the Internet, mobile phones, and more. Much like finding this blog post amongs the infinite bits of the Internet might be a challenge, getting the word out about The Electric Company and breaking through to kids is going to be a challenge.

Why am I writing about this program here, on a technology blog? Very simple: reading is important to technology. It’s important to just about anything else you do in life as well. It’s one of those fundamental building blocks.

And maybe, if you have kids around the 7-9 age range and you happen to stumble across this post, you’ll take a look at this program on your local PBS station when it comes out in January. Maybe the kids will like it, maybe they won’t. Hard to say. Given Sesame Workshop’s past history of excellent educational shows, it’s certainly worth a try.

Nokia Friend View: I Think We’ve Got A Winner

PhoneBoy — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:57:22 +0000

Here I was grousing about not finding something to be passionate about and today, my fellow Nokians in Nokia Research Center have come up with a service called Nokia Friend View that combines social networking and location in a compelling way.

Nokia Friend View requires a client that runs on your S60 3rd Edition device. Status can be updated easily from the mobile phone. Your location can be updated automatically either with GPS, using cell phone tower location, or manually. If you’re not comfortable sharing your location, or you want to save some battery life, you can always turn this feature off as you desire.

The interface where all your friends show up on a map reminds me quite a bit of Twittervision, though unlike Twittervision, it doesn’t jump around the map. You can, however, see all of your friends on the map and scroll around to them as you see fit.

The other important thing is that you can comment on other people’s status updates. Comments are kept with the original status update so they are easy to find. Also, as people comment on a particular status, it is moved to the top of the most recent status updates list, making it easy to follow active conversations!

I had been comparing this application to Jaiku all day, which Google bought out a while ago. This seems to me like this is next logical step to what Jaiku could have become, though it seems that Google or the Jaiku guys aren’t really saying much about future plans, and certainly haven’t released a new client in quite some time!

One thing that I appreciate that the Nokia Friend View client does is allows you to add friends from the client itself. You get notified of friend requests in real time and can easily accept or reject them. It’d be nice if one could see more profile information before accepting, but it’s a step up from Jaiku!

If you are not blessed enough to have an S60 3rd Edition device, then you can also use the web interface, which offers much the same functionality as the mobile client. However, browser support for the website seems to be limited to Firefox 2.x., Internet Explorer 6.x, and Safari. Various attempts to use Firefox 3.x, Google Chrome, or nightlies of Webkit met with not having the maps load. If you try and use Internet Explorer 7, you get a message saying the browser is not supported.

The service is not perfect, of course, as the service is experimental and the client was launched through Nokia Beta Labs. The only major issue I ran into on the client was that it would crash when I received multiple friend invites and I accepted one of them. A minor issue is that it doesn’t remember the zoom level I chose between sessions.

Things I’d like the service to have include: a proper mobile-friendly version of the website and service, some kind of SMS support, and an open API that would allow integration with third party services (e.g. Twitter) or even third party clients. However, for a first release, I am very impressed!

If you have a Nokia Account (i.e. for Ovi services), you can use it with Nokia Friend View. Otherwise, signing up takes just a minute or two. Once you’ve done that, download it to your Nokia S60 device and give it a try. If you want to add me as a friend, I am phoneboy (and it is case sensitive when you add friends, as I’ve found out).

I hope that my colleagues at Nokia continue to support and develop this service, as it really shows a lot of promise!

Is The Thrill Gone?

PhoneBoy — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:42:33 +0000

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t really been blogging that much. Quite frankly, it’s because there hasn’t been much that’s inspired me to write, at least that I can write about in any sort of public forum. Or when I have taken the time to write, I often fall asleep while doing it.

That isn’t to say there hasn’t been a lot going on. Plenty of stuff crossing the blogosphere and my inbox. Much of it doesn’t seem to break through my current signal-to-noise threshold. I can intellectually see why some of these things are important, but I just don’t feel it enough to write.

Maybe my “ooh, new shiny thing” modus operandi is changing. Maybe all that is “new” isn’t quite so shiny anymore. I see a lot of “me too” out there. I just don’t see anything that makes me stand up and say now that’s cool. The speed to cool has increased from seconds to hours, and even then the “cool” is lukewarm.

Or maybe between the confluence of current events, both global and those that have a more direct impact on me. As they say, It’s complicated. It’s not something I can–or should–get into here.

What’s interesting is that I’ve been spending more time in Facebook: something I’ve only begrudingly adopted. I can see why Facebook is popular. Sure, you have to do some work to weed out the noise, and it has walled garden issues, but the fact is, people I know are there, including some I would not expect. My boss and his boss both use Facebook.

I’m trying to find my thrill, reawaken my passion as it were. Maybe I should take a cue from my body and just sleep more, leaving this blogging thing alone until the malaise passes? Anything the peanut gallery can suggest to shake this off?

Comments

4 November 2008, luca writes: I find myself in the same position. I'm kinda bored of reading the same announcements, the same news in many different blogs, with articles that look pretty much alike. Need to find different sources of inspiration.
4 November 2008, Sheryl Breuker writes: I can't speak so much about my own writing, largely because unlike you I haven't been blogging with any regularity for any length of time. I spent far more time blogging about life, and even that has not been interesting enough to write about! :) I think that it's all a cycle. It seems almost redundant when all the new companies send out a press release and it's all really the same information. All you do is exchange the names. Look at our new company and what we offer. A few things may be different, or specific, but in general they want you to write about something and it's still the same as everyone else. I don't know what the answer is but I know Ken has certainly struggled with what works for his writing and has moved away from ipadventures for the most part. We take turns writing at Stardust and that eases things some. You may have noticed Facebook has become an arena a lot more interesting to me. And you can still write notes, post items etc. Plus you get all these nice new friends that think you're 'hot' or want stuff from you. :-) You might consider importing some of your blog stuff and see how it works. There is less control and certainly you don't have the statistics the same there as a blog, but you may get renewed vigor. See ya on facebook. :)
4 November 2008, spg writes: How about a gutsy review/challenge of DEFImobile? I have some serious issues with how this company has handled my questions about there 'unlimited roaming/long distance' offer. On a few separate posts to the users forum(which requires registration to read posts - something i find a strange requirement)they have emailed me directly very canned responses(all countries/phone types supported) but not answered the forum post or i most cases even posted my forum entry when the questions were specific(such as is a mobile phone in Germany included). i would try the service myself except that i do not currently own a compatible phone. anyways if they really offer unlimited calls to all phones anyplace in the world for $40.00 per month the rest of there package(the WiFi roaming) is peanuts in comparison. i certainly could see a lot of people interested in the service solely to reduce there phone bill to high cost termination countries. of course i can not see how they could possibly offer this service without losses a ton of money. anyways i would love to see a public third party review of there unlimited calling(to any phone) claim; and even better some comments from the company itself since they no longer answer any of my inquires. cheers. spg
4 November 2008, Michael Graves writes: I find that the only way to sustain the writing is to write about what I'm doing. Then dive into personal projects that catch my interest. The writing is a secondary phase of the project. I also find that I write less opinion and more about personal experience that way. Experience rocks. Opinion less so. I pretty much ignore press releases and the like as not being relevant, yet. My current project (ok, one of many) is to integrate a new home automation system (Vera & Z-Wave) with our in-house PBX. Of course I'm always interested in new hardware (Jazinga!)if it's something that I might really use in my home/office. Michael
18 November 2008, PhoneBoy writes: I've always tried to write about experience. I suppose part of why I can't write is that I don't feel comfortable writing about a lot of my "experiences," not to mention they are somewhat off-topic to the blog anyway :)

The Thrill is Gone

Can We Stop Daylight Saving Time Already?

PhoneBoy — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:42:03 +0000

I have never understood why one needs to change the clock twice a year to “save daylight.” You have the same amount of daylight, you’re just timeshifting it. You’re not saving it.

I was lucky enough to live in Hawaii for a few years. One of the benefits of living there, besides the fact my allergies were a non-issue, was that there was no Daylight Saving Time. I didn’t have to change the clocks twice a year. Time just was.

And that’s the way it should be. Especially since we can’t agree on when to do it. Since I’ve been alive, the Daylight Saving rules have changed twice, and yes I was old enough to be conscious of both changes

Different countries have different rules, of course. Some sensible countries like Japan and China don’t bother with this Daylight Saving rubbish. Let’s just enact permanent Daylight Saving Time and get on with it!

Advertisement: Emergency Cell Phones

Comments

3 November 2008, cribbagegeek writes: I disagree - the LAST thing I want to see is permanent DST. I want them to leave well enough alone and do away with DST and leave us on NORMAL TIME!!! DST is just wrong.

Responsible Participation in Social Media

PhoneBoy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:14:20 +0000

Charlie Schick over on the Nokia Conversations blog discusses a topic that comes up often as companies try to wrestle with the new world order created by blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, and the lot: how to promote your brand in these mediums without harming the brand in the process. There’s a fine line there for sure. Too much and you’re a spammer. Too little and it’s ineffective.

To be perfectly clear, I also work at Nokia, and I am proud to work there. It’s certainly not in my job description to promote Nokia–after all, I’m a techie, not a marketing/PR guy–but I feel it’s every employee’s responsibility to promote their employer in an appropriate manner.

I certainly promote Nokia’s products and services I use and believe in. I will raise points about our products and services that might have been missed in the discussions. I’m usually clear about where I work, though it’s not like I hide who I am, either. Five minutes on Google will clear things up if there’s any doubt.

While I may be helping to build the Nokia brand in some small way, I am also building my own brand as well. If all I do is say how wondeful Nokia’s products are, then my own brand is tarnished and my words will carry less weight in the social networks, ultimately damaging Nokia’s brand as well. This means I’m not going to go out of my way to post good comments about Nokia everywhere, nor am I going to post as anyone but myself. I’m also not going to ignore the fact the Nokia N96 has some software quality issues and that Nokia Maps is a FAIL experience for me.

At the end of the day, the conversation about Nokia–and just about every other company out there–is going on right now. If you’re going to participate in the conversation, you can’t attempt to dominate it. Each participant–vendor or otherwise–must be on equal footing. Put the facts out there, but be honest about who you are and what your stake is in it all. It’s the responsile thing to do.

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Comments

30 October 2008, Ray Schiel writes: This article reminds me of what Andy Sernovitz (The Blog Council) was discussing at Blogwell /San Jose this past Tuesday regarding "disclosure" and "transparency and openness". The council's best practices toolkit can be found here. http://blogcouncil.org/disclosure/

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