Month: May 2011

SHAW does something right

On By Rick McIn economics, internet, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Internet service providers are normally sneaky, or downright evil. One of the most hated industries.

But SHAW in Canada is garnering a wee bit of praise in the Tech community for this:

“We’ve created a non-cap kind of regime. If you’re always going over, we’re going to ask you to go into a package that really fits you.”

The immediate result is that the download limits on existing plans will at least double, so that high speed jumps to 125 gigabytes from 60 and Extreme to 250 gigabytes from 100 at the current price.

The company will also offer a number of new plans that provide choice in download and upload speeds, as well as increased data limits, including two unlimited options.

Those will become available next month, with new additions rolling out over the next 16 months as the analogue to digital TV upgrade happens and capacity is created.

“It should provide sufficient choice for our customer” …

Shaw responds to public outcry over Internet pricing, increasing data limits

Those packages are still way over-priced. But it’s the right direction.

The BIGGER issue is whether or not SHAW and the other Canadian oligopoly carriers will be able to convince the new FREE ENTERPRISE Conservative government to stiffle competition …

Click PLAY or watch a CBC TV News feature on YouTube.

keep the Internet FREE

On By Rick McIn government, internetLeave a comment

Jeff Jarvis has been working on a A Hippocratic oath for the internet.

He’s attending the first e-G8 summit on the internet gathered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week in Paris.

I. We have the right to connect.
II. We have the right to speak.
III. We have the right to assemble and to act.
IV. Privacy is an ethic of knowing.
V. Publicness is an ethic of sharing.
VI. Our institutions’ information should be public by default, secret by necessity.
VII. What is public is a public good.
VIII. All bits are created equal.
IX. The internet must stay open and distributed.

Jeff makes the point that the internet “frightens institutions of legacy power”. That’s why they keep trying to regulate and limit “using convenient masks — privacy, security, civility….”

The last one is the internet’s best protection: its own structure. To the leaders gathered in Paris, I say of that architecture: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.

If you have no legacy power to protect, you should be fighting to keep the internet as free as possible. It’s our best hope for the future.

I signed Jeff’s recommended online petition.

why I love the S.W. USA

On By Rick McIn travelLeave a comment

Beauty and the Bleak.

At first glance the desert is empty and barren. The life you do find there is more precious for it.

See over 2000 more photos selected in the I love the desert! pool on flickr

The Mojave desert is place where it’s still possible to get away from civilization and enjoy solitude. The days can be brutally hot, but when the sun gets low on the horizon, the temperature begins to drop quite quickly. Some of the coldest nights I’ve ever spent have been out on the desert in the summer.

Night also brings the stars. The desert sky is huge, and without the light pollution of cities and towns, you can see the Milky Way. …

Thunderstorms out on the desert are a sight to behold. The sky becomes very dark and lightning splits the sky. The sky above you may be clear, and you may be standing in the sunlight watching a huge black mass of thunderheads pouring hail onto the desert floor a mile away. …

The desert holds many mysteries: roads that go nowhere, strange little buildings seemingly without purpose, petroglyphs and ruined settlements, odd lights in the night sky, and hermits who only wish to be left alone.

If you know what you’re looking at, you can see mountain ranges sinking into the playa as great, alluvial fans carry away the soil and rocks from their summits and lay them at their feet. It’s possible to look back in time a million years. …

That’s from something called Experience Project

In the S.W. USA “dispersed camping” is allowed on most National Wilderness land. Simply put up your tent anywhere you please.

Sir I love the freedom, Sir.

If you’re sleeping for free in a vehicle, my parents call it (for some reason) “boondoggling”.

President Daniels, Pawlenty or Paul?

On By Rick McIn government, product endorsementsLeave a comment

One of the joys of driving a rent-a-car in the USA is right wing Talk Radio. (I don’t ever seem to listen to them in Canada.)

The jocks are squirming since Obama is vulnerable in 2012, but the GOP have no clear front runner to endorse.

Shawn Hannity, this week, is interviewing all the potential nominees. Interesting.

Huckabee is out. Good riddance. He is well spoken, though, calling the nomination race a “demolition derby“.

According to the Washington Post yesterday:


Mitt Romney 20%
Sarah Palin 18%
Newt Gingrich 11%

Newt is the kind of two faced, lying slimeball who formerly thrived in the GOP. But he seems to have lost a step or two. He sounded befuddled on the Hannity show Tuesday. Romney and Newt are dead in the water on Health Care, in any case.

I’d love Sarah Palin to get it. That would be hilarious.

As of now, I’d vote for these candidates, in this order:


1. Mitch Daniels
2. Tim Pawlenty
3. Obama
4. Ron Paul

President Daniels

Pawlenty is new to me. But I found him quite winning on the radio. He speaks well. The hard right don’t like him. That’s a good sign.

Mitch Daniels won’t even reply to Hannity’s request for an interview. Now that’s a Republican Maverick.

The USA needs a massive economic correction. Obama is not going to do it. Ron Paul would. Daniels or Pollenty might.

Some seem to think that Charlie Crist would be the second coming of Reagan. I don’t know him. But he sounded on Hannity as untrustworthy as Romney. Stay out, Charlie.

Rick Santorum was worst of the interviews I heard, a tongue twisted stumble bum.

Michele Bachmann was surprisingly intelligent sounding. She just might stand a chance in the upcoming debate against 10th Grader Amy Myers.

… By the way, I’ve always assumed that Sean Hannity (rhymes with Insanity) was another Big Fat Idiot clone. But he’s OK. Dogmatic, one-eyed, but consistent, at least.

The only radio ranters I like better are Lee Rayburn and Libertarian Dennis Miller.

Rush and his ilk get their (encrypted) talking points each morning from the Fox News / Republican / Military / Industrial HQ, then drone those ad nauseous for the day. It’s boring.

But I’d listen to Rayburn or Miller.

not recommended: Boingo Wi-Finder

On By Rick McIn Apple, internet, product endorsements, travel3 Comments

This is an update of an old post.

____ original from April 10th, 2011:

I’ve been a Boingo member in the past.

… a private company that provides global Wi-Fi services at more than 125,000 325,000 Boingo hotspots worldwide – including hundreds of airports, thousands of hotels, and tens of thousand cafes and coffee shops. …

Though signup is seamless, canceling the service requires a call into customer services. …

It works. But there are some deceptive billing practices. At times you THINK you are logging into your Boingo account, but in reality it’s some ‘premium’ partner. … At the end of the month you find you’ve been billed extra. Without warning.

UPDATE:

Baochi from Boingo responded instantly to this post. (They really do have superb customer support.)

Due to complaints like mine, Boingo has improved the notification that you are going to get DINGED for an extra (unknown) amount. It now looks like this:

The premium locations that incur additional charges are available by default. … Perhaps they should be OFF by default, and only turned on by two or three clicks.

Certainly every month Baochi gets complaints from customers charged more than their expected monthly total. Most cannot recall clicking on any premium locations. They were in a rush, and didn’t pay attention to that text.

If you travel, you could get good value. … On the other hand, since Starbucks went free, I’ve not needed a paid subscription. And don’t plan to get one in future. Starbucks has a strong WiFi signal 99% of the time. Many Boingo hotspots cannot stream a YouTube video.

However, Boingo’s now released a brilliant FREE service that I recommend for everyone.

A FREE app that helps you find and locate FREE and Boingo hotspots at thousands of locations worldwide.

Click PLAY or see how it works on YouTube.

Download it here.

Choose Windows, Mac, iPhone / iPad, or Android.

Every time you open up your computer in a new location, the app will tell you if there’s free Wi-Fi available.

Brilliant.

After testing it the past couple of weeks in California and Nevada, I’m getting about 70% false positives. The app says there is free WIFi … but that’s not true. I’ve deleted the app on my laptop.
__________________________

For example, in the case of Starbucks (log-in required) it gets it wrong.

screen grab

I have to find the Starbucks log-in page. And log-in, as usual.

walking away from your mortgage

On By Rick McIn economics2 Comments

Kris from Vegas linked to this graphic. It shows the very worst time to have purchased a house in the USA was July 2006.

source

The situation in Vegas is worse than the national average.

Last week I toured the new Vegas home of a couple who defaulted on their old mortgage. They could easily afford to pay the (high) mortgage on their current house, but they got a far better home for much less due to the current market.

This was a strategic default.

People who default on mortgages they can afford to pay are savvy about credit and tend to have better credit histories than other defaulters, new research shows …

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business estimates that strategic defaults accounted for 35% of defaults in September vs. 26% in March 2009. In January, the Nevada Association of Realtors released a study showing that 23% of Nevadans who lost homes admitted to strategically defaulting. …

USA Today – Study: Underwater homeowners who walk are more credit savvy

They don’t seem to be too worried about any drop in credit rating. So many people are making strategic defaults that it’s become normal business practice.