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Loading ...The Future of Blogging
I found this write-up by a fellow blogger on Xanga quite interesting. Note though that it is blog-site specific (Xanga is the host site):
http://weblog.xanga.com/TheTheologiansCafe/673135561/saving-xanga.html
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Summer’s Over !!
Just thought I’d check back in to see if there’s been any posting to the Blogging idol. I guess now that summer is over its time for us to get back to the keyboard. Personally I’ve been trying to avoid sitting here at my computer as much as possible.
I got a copy of the article about me that was in ComputerWorld Canada. Guess I need practice in doing interviews……
I’m still busy playing with my brand new iPhone, and am still pretty happy with it. More in the days and weeks to come. I’ve got a wordpress applicaiton for it, but I simply can’t see typing significant amounts on the soft keyboard. Anyone seen a bluetooth keyboard that can be hooked up?
I just downloaded Google Chrome and IE8 Beta 2, so there’s lots to play with these days.
Anyway, wasn’t planning to write a major post tonight but thought I’d say that I’m still here and am planning to spend more time blogging now that summer is regretably over.
Hope you’ve all had a great summer and are now gearing up for a challenging and productive fall season!
Don
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(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Blogging Idol Webcasts and iPhones
Ok. I’ve been missing for a week now. I was enjoying my annual visit to Casino Rama to watch the Beach Boys concerts. It was interesting to see the technology at the Casino and how you can rack up player points.
In the meantime I noticed that the webcast got inserted into my earlier post on going out the the IT World Canada office. So, if we all did webcasts, then we wouldn’t need to type our blogs, right? Anyway, not sure what your reaction was but I think better with my fingers than I do with a camera pointed at me. I have new found respect for TV people who do this all the time!
So, I did indeed buy an iPhone with half the winnings (the other half is still going to charity). I actually had a reasonable experience and got it on the first day. I lined up first thing in the morning - right in front of my doctor, so I felt safe that I would be ok if I fainted with the excitement (joking!) - just to find out the little Rogers store across the stree from my office didn’t have any. They didn’t know when they would arrive, and didn’t think they’d get any 16G versions. As it turned out, they took my order and called me back in the afternoon to say they got 1 phone and they were trying to get it activated for me. I also downloaded the Facebook client and got that going right away. Sum total is that by 6pm I had my phone and it was useful a few hours later. Oh yes, it found my home network and had no trouble connecting after I put in the password - now it connects automatically whenever I’m at home.
After upgrading iTunes to version 7.7 I had absolutely no trouble loading up my songs (which are also on my old Nano), uploading my Outlook address book and calendar, setting up my gmail account and an email address from my hosting account (don-i@concon.com). All in all, a pleasant experience.
So far, the only thing I don’t like is that my thumbs are too big so the soft keyboard takes getting used to.
I hate to say it but I don’t think its going to take long for me to like it better than my blackberry!
I’ll keep you posted as I get more used to it.
Oh yes, if anyone can tell me how to download the webcast from the blog, let me know.
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(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...IPhone & the $30 Rogers offer - Something smells…
There is something that has been bothering me about the Rogers $30 for 6 Gb of data offer. While I’ll admit that the offer is good enough that even I am taking a look at my existing corporate data plans for air-cards and blackberry’s. But there was something that was bothering me about the whole deal.
It’s the limited time nature of the plan. A less cynical individual might assume that the August 31st expiry of the data plan was just to limit overall losses moving forward, but if any of you ran across the Boy Genius report on the AT&T after launch pricing, the limited time nature of the offer makes more sense.
Rogers knows that the vast majority of IPhone sales in the first 2 months will be from early adopters who really don’t care about price. History with the gen 1 IPhone shows that many people purchased the units knowing they wouldn’t be able to use them here in Canada. With rumours of Apple telling Rogers that it was re-routing the IPhone stock from Canada to other countries, Rogers can safely announce the plan as they just don’t have to worry about how many IPhones are sold, since they won’t have any to sell. Once the stock starts coming back and the 2nd round of consumers start lining up however, they will be in a position to control the losses as the plan offering will have expired.
The second round of consumers are usually individuals who will be wanting to avoid the 3 year contracts and purchase the units outright under terms similar to what AT&T will be offering. These consumers however will be forced to pony up for the higher priced/lower bandwidth plans, even if they avoid the subsidy and 3 year contract.
What’s more in talking to my Rogers rep today about the whole fiasco. Roger’s last minute ability to offer the $30/6 Gb plan become apparent. The plan offering is actually an extension of the promotion on their wireless-air cards for laptops. It is not a plan that was tailored for the IPhone.
So your options are to pony up early for a subsidized IPhone with a “better” voice/data plan on a 3 year term, or wait till Sept/Oct when general availability will occur and play the “higher” data rates to avoid a contract. Doesn’t seem like such a great deal does it?
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(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...David McGuinty steps into the Rogers IPhone pricing debate
David McGuinty will be stepping into the Rogers/Iphone debate over at ruinediphone.com
“July 8, 2008 On Wednesday July 9, at 3:00 pm EDT David McGuinty, MP, will be making an official video statement on ruinediphone.com”
Let’s see if politics can trump commerce?
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(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Bell takes another on the chin over P2P filtering
Google has spoken out about the Bell traffic shaping. Don’t underestimate the power that Google has in the marketplace. This is a major blow for Bell. Follow all the fun over at neutrality.ca
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Virtualization - A changing of the Guard?
I like to watch the stock market performance to get a forward view of the technology industry, where possible. Today, VMWare caught my attention: VMware shares fell $13.38 to $39.81 in heavy morning New York Stock Exchange trade. EMC shares fell $1.51, or 10 percent, to $13.63. Two reasons for the stock sell off are that:
1) Surprise departure of CEO. CEO to be replaced by a former Microsoft Executive
2) Lower revenue growth
It is clear already that by including virtualization software on the upcoming Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is moving in the right direction.
Bell, Telus, Rogers
Although Don is excited about the July 11 iPhone day, I was surprised to read that both Bell and Telus will now be charging $0.15 per incoming text message. This will mean that all the alerts you have signed up for and all the uncontrolled spam you might get will be billable. Rogers will not be making this charge. Is it time to create a facebook petition, or to simply switch to Rogers and to consider getting the iPhone too?
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Are the telecoms trying to kill off SMS?
Let’s face it with the tweens today, SMS is a vital feature on their phones. In many ways it is the killer app. That makes the Bell and Telus decisions to charge more for this feature really scary. Especially in light of the recent press over the cost of SMS (The Register, Phsyorg, SysAdmin).
So with Roger’s price plans revealed for just how bad they are, you think Bell and Telus would be making every effort to differenciate themselves by offering better and lower cost service.
All the more reason to support Bill McGuinty and his “C-555 Get Connected Fairly Act“
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(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...Blogging Idol Picks Up His Winnings
Went out to Scarborough to the IT world Canada offices to collect the prize last Friday morning. I got my picture taken (a few times) and tried to do a webcast (not sure how that turned out!)
A webcast seems a bit like an audio/video blog except you can’t re-read and edit what you say.
I think there’ll be some kind of article in the print paper sometime soon, so watch for it!
I’m away for a couple of days. I get back in time for Friday’s iPhone event. Its interesting watching the news on this one. Lots of free advertising from what I can see. Rates are higher than the USA, no doubt, but I wonder if that’s at least partly because their market is so much bigger? And now we have the Samsung/Bell response - another choice.
I’ll let you know what happens Friday!!
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(2 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...The week in review
Probably the biggest tech item this week is the final approvals being granted for take over of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTTP).
This has incredible implications for clients of BCE and for telecom market competitiveness in Canada. While this deal essentially allows BCE to remain a northern tiger, it will be a seriously declawed tiger for a number of years to come. As someone who recently survived an OTTP buy out, I can say that BCE is in for a rough 5-10 years. The rub of the deal is that BCE will be saddled with serious debt, easily in the 40 billion+ range. Now any CFO will tell you debt is not an issue, but with this type of debt you can assume massive covenants on earnings and debt-to-equity ratios. Unfortunately for BCE that means the availability of capital funds for new projects, services, build outs into western Canada, the rumoured change over to GSM is not likely to happen any time soon.
Also for those who may have missed it. Seems that my early comments about why Bell was introducing P2P filtering are being proven out by the data. The commentators are pretty livid about just how much Bell is miss-representing the data to justify traffic shaping.
On the copyright front, again the best collection of updates appears to be on Michael Giests blog. The funniest item is Peter Mckay tripping up on the issue. The Fair Copyright for Canadians facebook group is now pushing past 85,000 members and the discussions forms are quite active as members discuss both copyright issues and the political and technological impacts of the legislation. This is the first truely Canadian political item that I’ve seen gain this amount of grass roots support and seeing it played out on the IT front (FaceBook) is really encouraging for democracy in Canada in general.
As for Rogers, they are taking a real beating over the rate plans for the IPhone. The petition over at RuinedIphone.com is now sitting at over 36,000 members. That some serious numbers considering this is a commodity, consumer item with lots of competition. Rogers better take note as even the US media has picked up on the story with articles in the Washington Post, and CNN Money. Rogers marketing department is in heavy spin mode, with only a few bloggers taking their side.
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