Technology

Cellphone subsidies = trap for consumers

Walt Mossberg makes some good points on why it’s important to open up the mobile telephone industry. The carriers argue that they have to force long-term contracts and lock down access in order to offer subsidies. As Mossberg points out, this is a trap for consumers. I’m sure we’ve all seen those prepaid wireless phones they sell at Target and Wal-mart. They usually run about $60-$100 per handset with the expectation but not the certainty that they will get more money out of you. This price point is not far off from what the carriers charge even if you get a one-year contract. If the FCC mandated handset portability as they have in Europe, carriers would adapt their product to meet the market demands.

But the problem is even worse. The government didn’t require the CDMA companies to include a removable account-information chip, called a SIM card, in their phones. So, unlike people with GSM phones, Sprint and Verizon customers can’t keep their phones if they switch between the two carriers, even though they use the same basic technology. And, the government allows the GSM carriers to “lock” their phones, so a SIM card from a rival carrier won’t work in them, at least for a period of time. Techies can sometimes figure out how to get around this, but average folks can’t.

The carriers defend these restrictions partly by pointing out that they subsidize the cost of the phones in order to get you to use their networks. That’s also, they say, why they require contracts and charge early-termination fees. Without the subsidies, they say, that $99 phone might be $299, so it’s only fair to keep you from fleeing their networks, at least too quickly.

But this whole cellphone subsidy game is an archaic remnant of the days when mobile phones were costly novelties. Today, subsidies are a trap for consumers. If subsidies were removed, along with the restrictions that flow from them, the market would quickly produce cheap phones, just as it has produced cheap, unsubsidized versions of every other digital product, from $399 computers to $79 iPods.


QR-Code: Linking the physical world

QR-Code from WikipediaQR-Code (quick response barcode) is a 2-dimensional printed barcode-like system used to encode information such as URL’s, phone numbers, text, and other data. The code image can be read by a scanner or decoded from a photographic image of the printed code.

From the QR Code web site: “QR Code is a two-dimensional barcode, used widely in Japan. The advantage of QR Code from well-known barcode is larger data capacity (more than 100 bytes, typically) and error correction.”

From Wikipedia:

Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR-Code is now used in a much broader context spanning both commercial tracking applications as well as convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users. QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that a user might need information about. A user having a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phones browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. A user can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.

The use of these types of codes allows more physical world interaction with our communication devices. For example, you could launch a URL directly from the code image printed on a show flyer or film showing. Or, you could print a QR Code on your business card to allow people to easily capture your contact information and copy to their phone.

Related stuff:

  1. PHP and Perl scripts to generate QR Code.
  2. Semanote: Tag the world This looks like fun.
  3. QuickMark: Read barcodes and QR-code with your webcam
  4. Web-based QR-Code generator
  5. TED Talks: Jan Chipchase: Our cell phones, ourselves: Must watch video.
  6. QR-Code processing library
  7. QR-Code WordPress Plugin: WP-QRcode is a highly configurable plugin that generates QR codes for your blog posts and lets you show them in specific places in your WordPress website. The purpose is for mobile phone users to have easy access to your posts by capturing the QR code by the phone’s camera and then go straightly to your post from the phone’s web browser.

I would like to be able to photograph and read barcodes from my Blackberry, however most mobile readers do not support the Blackberry. If you know of any reader that does, please let me know.

If you have a Windows Mobile Device or Symbian device you can use the following applications: Kaywa Reader, QuickMark. Devices that support J2ME can use QRMidlet.


Now I get it. I think.

I was startled when my 18 year old cousin told me to “email” him on MySpace. I asked, “No, what is your email address? So, I can actually send you an email.” Email = MySpace? Since I’m not a user of MySpace’s closed garden, basic old-fashioned open-protocol email is how I get in touch with people. He had a Hotmail account, but couldn’t remember it. I was really surprised that he contacts his friends solely via MySpace and the cellphone. But, my guess is a lot of other people his age are the same way. After all, on MySpace only your friends can message you, right?

It just seems like a strange way to do things. I have a feeling a lot of kids these days are comfortable using the Internet, but that maybe they find aspects of it a little complicated so MySpace and Facebook have a natural appeal. It’s easy. No need to manage multiple accounts for blogging, photos, messaging, etc. Just sign up for whichever social network is hot and go crazy.

I take it for granted that not everyone enjoys the challenges that come with some stuff on the Internet. So, I get it now. I think. Social networks make the Internet easy by keeping everything all in one place. It’s like AOL, but not old-skool AOL, which is for old people. Is that it?


Cheap and easy way to go paperless

I read a good entry over at Signal V. Noise about how to go paperless by using an expensive duplex scanner from Fujitsu. While I still think this is a great way to do it, and I may even buy one of those scanners, a while back I came up with an easier and far cheaper way to scan my mail and documents into a digital form and have been using it for a while.

Most offices, like mine, have fax machines or fax copiers. I also have a fax to email service through my toll-free provider, Ring Central, where your fax documents are scanned and emailed to you as PDF attachments. If I ever want to archive a paper document into a digital form, I just fax it to myself and save the PDF to my computer. I also leave a copy in my gmail account where I can access the file from anywhere.

The only downside I have discovered is that the faxed PDF is not transformed into indexable text via OCR (optical character recognition) during the scanning process. I compensate for this shortcoming by giving each document a readily comprehensible file name. If you fax each document at a high enough resolution you may be able to perform OCR on the output, however the descriptive file naming used in conjunction with Google Desktop Search has worked well for me.


The Real Fleury Blog

My friend Phillip recently recommended the blog of Marc and Nathalie Fleury. Marc is the former CEO of JBoss, which was acquired by Redhat. Both Fleury’s are entertaining bloggers with a matched sharp sense of humor. Maybe it’s a French thing. Many of Marc’s entries are delightfully over the top like Fake Steve Jobs, but with the added bonus that it’s the real Marc Fleury. For example:

From Remember, I don’t give a shit:

And, while you’re at it, please address me as Doctor Fleury, and no, that’s not my DJ name. I didn’t suffer through ten years of differential equations to be talking on a first name basis with some random honky.

From Life After Marc Fleury:

And then I wonder, maybe Cameron is on to something. Could it be that all the ballsy visionaries are in one place and all the pontificating windbags are in another? Is it possible that Cameron is very happy at Oracle, just as it is apparent that Shaun is happier at Red Hat and I am only happy when I call the shots?

Good stuff.


Wake up like Bill Murray

groundhogday.jpgThe Blackberry makes a pretty good alarm clock. It has a weekend off setting, so you can leave the alarm set all the time. And, it’s portable and battery-powered so you can hide it on a shelf or behind something, so you have to get up and turn it off. It also makes an awesome travel alarm. Just stretch out, set the alarm and you’re good to go. Another good feature is the ability to set the alarm to play any sound file based on how you like to wake up. The other day I had the idea to create a ringtone from Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” to use as my alarm sound a la Phil Connors in the Harold Ramis classic, Groundhog Day. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is jaded weatherman, Phil Connors. Trapped in time, he wakes each morning to a clock radio playing “I Got You Babe” to relive the same day over and over.

When every day can feel like a repeat of the day before, it makes the perfect song to wake up to. Download it to your Blackberry or cellphone.


Plano, Texas Library Lookup via Amazon

A while back I recommended a cool Greasemonkey script to check the library for the books you are browsing at Amazon.com. It has saved me a ton of money (sorry Amazon) and has turned me into a regular library patron. Now when I click a link to Amazon, the script checks to see if my libraries have the book. Then I can click through and put the book on hold and grab it when I get to the library.

I was talking to this guy I work with about good books and I told him about this script and found out which library he goes to. Then I just edited the script to support his library. So, if you get your books at the Plano library, you can now use this script. (Remember to install Greasemonkey for Firefox first.)

While we’re at it, if you have a library and can’t find a similar script on userscripts.org, let me know what library you go to and I can whip one up for you.

For more on Greasemonkey, you can read Mark Pilgrim’s Greasemonkey Hacks in its entirety online.


Amazon Prime is genius

Due to my general lack of patience, I was a late arrival to shopping with Amazon. With the zeal of a convert I am convinced that this is the way people will shop in the near future. It is just a superior way to buy things, especially if you hate shopping or fighting the Malthusian crowds. Anything not needed immediately can be ordered online. For any trip to the grocery store or a place like Wal-mart or Target, a certain percentage of items will be non-perishable. Most of these items are already available via Amazon. Amazon has also recently started delivering fresh groceries in select cities.

As a business, I think Amazon could grow to eclipse even Wal-mart. Sure, anyone can sell products online, but Amazon just does it better. Also, with an online model they need fewer facilities (lower overhead) and fewer employees than their bricks and mortar counterparts. The retailers deliver goods to you and you ship them to your customers via UPS. No truck fleets to manage, no shoplifting, no fancy stores with big electricity bills, etc. Pure sales. For customers, you get a good deal and often no sales tax unless you’re in the same state as an Amazon facility where they must collect sales tax. With no sales tax, this is an automatic 6-8% discount.

Amazon Prime is a good example of this superior approach to retail. With Amazon Prime, you pay $80 a year for super cheap shipping. This is a great deal if you use Amazon frequently. As an Amazon Prime member you get free two-day shipping and $3.99 per item for overnight shipping.

Amazon Prime is also genius for a few reasons:

  1. When you join Amazon Prime, you buy a whole lot more. With free two-day shipping and super cheap overnight shipping, you can order something and have it the next day, which is tough to resist.
  2. Amazon Prime also trains you to buy more exclusively from Amazon versus from other retailers who offer products on Amazon.com. In addition to selling their own stock, Amazon is a storefront for independent partners who use Amazon as an ecommerce platform. The thing is, if you’re an Amazon Prime member and there are multiple sellers for a particular product, given the choice you will buy from Amazon since only Amazon fulfilled products qualify for the free shipping.

MySpace is for dating. Period.

myspace.jpgI’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get so-called social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, etc. I don’t use them to find music, hang out, send messages, or whatever it is people do. I don’t use them period. I have signed up to try them out and to see if I could stalk find people from high school, etc., but after that what else do you do? Just leave notes on people’s pages? Why not just send an email, instant message, or make a call? Whenever I go to the library it seems like all the people on the library computers are using MySpace. I don’t understand it. Is it basically asynchronous, public instant messaging?

My working theory is that social networking sites are the successors to online dating websites. In effect, MySpace reintegrates online dating into some semblance of a normal, social life, albeit one that is semi-virtual and online rather than physical and actual.

Rather than cruise for connections with strangers (the normal online dating paradigm), social networking sites facilitate lively echosystems where people can potentially pair off. In fact, I believe this is the whole point of MySpace-type sites. According to this theory, I would expect the people who are most active in MySpace/Facebook to be single and looking. Or cynically, in a relationship and looking. In simple terms, dating sites are the online equivalent of a singles’ bar, whereas MySpace is a party. Even though the goal in both often comes down to romance/sexual gratification, they both go about it in very different ways.

Social networking sites will eventually replace dating sites because they perform one very important function: they erase the stigma of meeting people online.

This is just an idea because I am clueless about it. I’d be curious to know what the appeal is. If you participate in social networking, how do you use it? What purpose does it serve for you?


Prune your feeds

I subscribe to several feeds. It’s the main way I do any recreational web surfing since I don’t generally participate in social networking, forum posting, or whatever else people do on the Internet. I use the web in a mostly functional manner, either to look up specific information or to stay on top of some of the things that are going on. I’m one of the legions of asocial lurkers out there. Sifting through the dross to find useful information.

There are several sites that update 10+ times a day. Even if I enjoy the content, this is too much for me. I can’t keep up. I organize my feeds by category, but I also have one folder for my daily reading. These are my personal A-list bloggers. Everything else is read only when or if I have the time. With a couple hundred feeds, it’s a chore to try to keep up with them all, so I don’t.

The bloggers on my A-list have some things in common: the authors are smart, perceptive and insightful, they are not part of the echo chamber (In fact, they are often the source of popular blog postings elsewhere. They start an echo.), they have their own interests, and most importantly they post no more than 5 times a day. I have a feeling that many people out there are exhausted by the sheer volume of information posted to their favorite sites.