ITNews

I agree with the premise of the PCmag posting There Is No Such Thing as Intuitive Technology.

Besides not being intuitive, a couple of things I’ve learned about technology over 40 years or so in this business is, technology is down right difficult, and anything but easy. I don’t care how much the ads lie, technology is difficult. Period.

I don’t have a clue how non-technocrats deal with it. I marvel at how successful some of them are. My spouse tells friends the only way she can deal with technology is by having a built-in geek electronics engineer.

The technology I find most difficult to use are telephones, especially cell phones. No, not because calls drop like flies, but no two models seem to work the same. Incompatibility rules.

The only way I work myself through some technology issues is by think about the hardware or software engineers who created the gizmo. What were they thinking? What user friendly logic did they drop on the floor in order to meet the unrealistic expectations of the marketing weenies to get the steamer out the door? I then mentally do some reverse engineering, lower my logical expectations, and give it another go.

…John

That’s what a local appliance store used to advertise, until it found itself in Chapter 11.

Chris Anderson is editor in chief of Wired magazine. His next book is FREE. It is about the idea of “free” in the old and new economies. Wired has posted an excerpt titled Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

I buy into the idea. Cell phone carriers make their bucks from “minutes,” so why charge for the handset? Ink Jet printer manufactures profits come from ink, so why charge for printers?

My advice to manufactures of products that use consumables is give the product away.

My advice to service providers is to stuff start up fees, and automatically upgrade existing customers to the same level of product, services, and pricing that new customers enjoy, without any fees.

Following my advice, manufactures and service providers will retain a loyal customer base longer.

Will they follow my advice? Some do and some will. Others suffer from myopia, hung up on short-term profits, and keep asking the question “Where’s the profit in that?”

…John

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon are all over each other offering $99 or less unlimited voice plans. The New York Times posting Verizon Stabs Sprint With Unlimited Wireless Plan gives the lowdown.

The stupid part is some of the “unlimited” plans limited text and data usage while others only include them at extra costs.

Most users rarely use up their plans voice minutes. Those with text and data enabled mobile devices are looking for cost effective plans that also include these services.

Myopic telecom greed-mongers are so short sighted they fail to see where the business is really going. I guess the hope of wringing out a bit more short term profit is more important than doing away with primitive handsets, restrictive contracts, obsolete technologies, and become telecom world leaders, not laggards (See Analog Sunset).

This stupid situation seems analogous to the early days of the Internet when modems were required to connect to an ISP. They had hissy fits with users staying connected for long periods of time, and erected all sorts of barriers including extra costs. The local phone companies rattled their swords and spewed forth threatening words.

Finally it dawned on IPSs and phone companies they could make a bundle off this Internet thing, if they offed unlimited services. Maybe someday telecoms will see the light. When they do, handset manufactures will get onboard in a big way with devices that are data centric that treat voice as just another type of data.

…John

It is official. Toshiba on February 19th officially ended its bid to establish HD DVD technology as an industry standard.

The Business Week posting R.I.P., HD DVD raises some interesting questions about the victor, Blu-rey.

MIDDLE-GROUND BATTLEFIELD
…six years after Blu-ray’s unveiling, consumers are being wooed by ascendant technologies such as $79 DVD players that “upconvert” low-resolution video recordings for giant-screen sets, as well as video downloads from the Internet that may one day obviate the need for physical discs and players. “Blu-ray now becomes the high-definition packaged media of choice, but it now finds itself squeezed between [cheap] upconverting DVD players on the low end, and digital distribution in the future,” says Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for researcher NPD Group. Even the middle ground is becoming a battlefield. Apple, TiVo, Sling Media, VUDU, and cable and satellite TV providers are all rolling out equipment that lets couch potatoes download high-definition movies directly to their set-top boxes. The video is not as high-quality as a Blu-ray recording, but it may be good enough to put a crimp in the format’s growth.

I’m thinking about augmenting my NetFlix account with Apple TV instead of buying a Blu-ray DVD player. If Apple TV pans out, I may drop NetFlix.

Looks like “disruptive technology” is once again shaking things up.

…John

The PCWorld posting Get Ready for a Crackdown on Broadband Use
subtitle says

As traffic increases, experts say ISPs may start charging by the gigabyte, limiting use of some services and snooping at the data passing through their networks.

Major broadband ISPs shrug off criticism that their networks can’t handle the increased demand for bandwidth. “We’ve been successfully delivering broadband services to our customers for 10 years, and that’s not going to change anytime soon,” says Mitch Bowling, senior vice president and general manager for Comcast’s high-speed Internet group.

I usually don’t comment on “maybe” postings. This one is a sort of “maybe” since some ISPs are in the planning stages for charging by bandwidth usage.

Time Warner Cable is experimenting with managing bandwidth by billing its customers, not at a flat monthly rate, but on the basis of how much bandwidth each customer uses. The cable company is rolling out a trial version of a consumption-based billing system in Texas later this year. “We have more than enough bandwidth, but we are looking to the future,” says Alex Dudley, spokesperson for Time Warner Cable.

Under the new billing scheme, customers who exceed their monthly bandwidth allotment risk incurring an overage charge. A spokesperson says that the billing scheme isn’t in place yet, so the company doesn’t yet have any hard numbers available regarding these charges.

Also, some ISPs are already throttling bandwidth.

Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas explains that a single customer who uses disproportionately more bandwidth than his or her neighbors can slow down the Internet for everyone on the block. Comcast has faced a user uproar for manipulating the way file-sharing programs work and for introducing bandwidth caps on individual accounts without identifying what those caps are.

I smell greed in the air here. The cable ISPs are claiming they are loaded with bandwidth, and

According to network monitoring firm Keynote Systems, broadband users rarely feel the impact of bandwidth bottlenecks today unless a big media event causes a brief spike in Web use or unless a major component of the Internet infrastructure suffers unexpected damage. Keynote describes these types of Internet slowdowns as virtually imperceptible brown-outs.

So why throttle and charge extra for bandwidth? I speculate it is all about movie downloads. The greed mongers smell money and are preparing to stifle any competition, such as iTunes download movie rentals.

We’ll see.

…John