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iPodderX

I’ve mentioned iPodder previously and things have been getting very active in the development of tools to make life easier for the subscriber. iSpider (though it’s now been renamed back to iPodder) is now the current cross-platform app of choice, but there’s a new kid on the block for Mac OS X users…iPodderX. It has a great User Interface and can make things pretty easy to manage considering the number of moving parts involved with subscribing and downloading enclosures from the web to your system and directly into iTunes.

If you’ve been waiting for an easier way, this is it.

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T-Mobile Hot Spot Marketing drops the ball

It really pisses me off to get a communication from a company as a customer when they clearly don’t know that. Here’s an example from an email I received a few minutes ago from T-Mobile:

Upgrade to an Annual or Month-to-Month rate plan and get 30 days of free T-Mobile HotSpot Wi-Fi Internet service.
You’ve experienced the freedom and convenience of T-Mobile HotSpot. You know how wireless broadband service makes it easy to stay connected when you’re on the go. Now you can sign up for a T-Mobile HotSpot subscription plan and get 30 days of Wi-Fi Internet service-absolutely free!

They’ve clearly created a catch-all for anyone who has signed up, rather than focus on some basics here. I AM a monthly subscriber and have been for about 6 months. It’s unlikely that their customer file is that old, though certainly possible.

They might think it’s OK to send this kind of stuff out since they used both annual as well as monthly, but it would have been much more compelling to try and sell me on the benefits of switching to annual (I assume based on price) instead. Instead of responding I’m ranting, so mission failed. I’ve made sure to tell at least 10 of my friends…

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Bloglines Updates

So nice to see keep as new… I am often cruising through a bunch of stuff and want to recall one for later – this makes it quite easy to do without having to leave a bunch of tabs open in Firefox.

We pushed out a couple of cool new features last night on Bloglines. First is ‘Keep New’, which lets you mark individual blog entries as unread. The second is ‘Related Feeds’, which are a list of feeds that are similar to the feed you’re reading. This compliments the Bloglines Recommendations, which are personalized for each user. [wingedpig.com]

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WP 1.3

I’ve been playing with Nightlies from the WordPress dev team for a while and have activated a new one tonight which enabled me to switch to the Kubrick theme which seems to work quite well.

I’ll let it stick for a bit and see how it goes. I’ve got my older template which while it had some quirks (my fault) also had a personal touch as well. Have to mess around and see about tweaking things.

I’m open to suggestions or comments if you’ve got them.

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Mossberg digs the G5 iMac

I actually got to see this beauty last night at the Apple Store in San Fran. It’s gorgeous… definitely something we’ll have to upgrade to at home in the near future.

The iMac G5 is another winner from Apple. It’s a computer that’s a real pleasure, not a hassle, to use. [WSJ.com]

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AT&T forms Net phone alliance

AT&T secures it’s place in VOIP… not that I was concerned or anything. This puts them in the driver’s seat for taking things to the next level – mainly enabling mass adoption.

Consumer electronics, chip and software makers will use specifications developed by AT&T to create telephone adapters, Wi-Fi phones, game consoles, set-top boxes and telephone networking equipment, the carrier announced Tuesday. The products developed in the VoIP Innovation and Interoperability Program will work with AT&T’s Internet calling services, the company said. [CNET News.com]

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TMO service issues

I’ve learned that TMO is having some service issues due to equipment in the East, they say from the weather… Calls from the east are having trouble making it through to the west where I am currently located. I received 50 extra minutes for my call to customer service… you might want to do the same if you become aware of an issue.

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Palm OS Cobalt Gets Bluetooth 1.2

Brighthand mentions Palm now has official support for Bluetooth 1.2 which is great news for devices with BOTH Bluetooth and WIFI, though also good for ones with just Bluetooth as well.

In June, PalmSource announced it had licensed from Extended Systems the software necessary to allow future handhelds running the Palm OS to support Bluetooth 1.2. Now, the Bluetooth Qualification Program has given its approval to PalmSource’s Bluetooth Stack for Palm OS Cobalt (6.x), the next version of its operating system.

“By continuing to support the latest industry specifications, our software enables Palm OS licensees to deliver infrared and Bluetooth short-range wireless communications capabilities to the next generation of wireless device users,” said Charles Jepson, president and CEO of Extended Systems.

Bluetooth 1.2 offers better performance than earlier versions do when used at the same time as Wi-Fi. It does this with Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH), which was designed to reduce interference between wireless technologies sharing the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Cordless telephones, microwave ovens, and several versions of Wi-Fi, including IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g, generally share the same wireless frequencies as Bluetooth. AFH works within the spectrum to take advantage of the available frequencies without limiting the Bluetooth transmission to a set of frequencies occupied by other technologies. [Brighthand]

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Cable VoIP

Andy cites a Kinetic Research report on Cable VOIP and notes:

What’s interesting is they also report that the home grown VoIP from Charter and Comcast is over a year away. Seems amongst the giants that only Cablevision saw the future of VoIP and moved quickly to roll out their own service. [VoIP Watch]

Cablevision has actually been running quite a few ads lately in the NY market (though interesting on Time Warner – heh). I’ve noticed they are really pushing the triple-play and have focused on same bill rates for each service – $29.95/mo.

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Ford going VOIP

The WSJ has a good piece on how SBC just sold a huge “internet telephony” contract to Ford to go live within the next 3 years. Not sure why they did not reference VOIP at all, but surely seems to be the topic.

SBC Communications Inc. is rolling out Internet phone service to 50,000 Ford Motor Co. employees in 110 locations, marking one of the largest such deployments yet as traditional phone companies enter the Internet-calling fray. [WSJ – link should work for a few days]

One of the clear benefits to large organizations is managing a single network for voice, video and data… sounds good to me. I like it from one place as well and I’m just one guy.

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No Skype for Palm…

Skype has now corrected the earlier reports that a Palm OS version was coming next month… It’s not looking too good for anytime soon either.

Last week, several Skype developers posted comments in their company’s forums saying that the ABC News report was in error.

At this point, Skype Technologies doesn’t seem to be developing a Palm OS version of their application at all. [Brighthand]

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Just Catching Up

I guess it might seem like I’ve neglected you recently dear reader… I apologize. I’ve been pretty caught up lately and have fallen behind in my reading of things let alone in my time to blog.

Should be back on track with the usual good stuff in the next day or so.

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XM Radio online

This makes a lot of sense and certainly allows existing subscribers greater access (though additional cost) to their subscription. I am not personally sold on whether people will pay a monthly fee yet for radio online. I guess I’ll reserve judgement until it launches and we can see how it actually works. Can you play in your media player of choice? Is it PC only etc… New Dell purchasers will receive a 30 day free subscription as part of the launch – guess Dell = Music these days on the PC side of the world.

XM Radio Online, will launch sometime in early October and operate commercial-free, just as its satellite programming does. XM will charge $7.99 per month for unlimited listening and offer a discount rate of $3.99 to subscribers of its existing radio services. [News.com]

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Partly Cloudy or Partly Sunny?

I love this email exchange just forwarded my way from my Uncle, a self-proclaimed anal retentive word-wonk, perhaps even the most anal retentive word-wonk.

—– Original Message —–
From: Brian Greene
Date: Saturday, September 11, 2004 11:33 am
Subject: terminology

After wondering about this for years, I just read your page on weather terminology and am still somewhat confused. What, if any, is the difference between “partly cloudy” and “partly sunny”?

Thanks,
Brian Greene

—————————-

From: “W-Lmk Webmaster”
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:38:41 -0400
To: W-Lmk Webmaster

One additional note from my email exchange requesting permission to post this:

I did realize, however, after I sent my response to their response, that it would make absolutely no sense to use the term, “partly sunny” at night!! Also, my math was inaccurate. If total cloud cover is 3/8, there are not “still more clouds than sun.” Still. I think it’s amusing for the National Weather Service to admit that the two terms mean the same thing. I also seem to recall both terms being used during the day, so…???!!!!????

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VOIP the Movie

No one can escape it, we’re all slaves to it.

Covad has created a fake movie site that looks kind of like what you might expect from CSI The Movie. It’s definitely high quality and well executed (but slow loading) in my opinion. I’d love to see the rest of this campaign to see how it was promoted beyond movie trailers…

The target must be CIO / CTO at Fortune level organizations since the product they show is a dashboard for your company’s telephony. I’d imagine there’s a pretty intense lead generation campaign going to work off the budget it must have cost to produce the site. I would imagine the close time on a lead in this space is many months so there’s probably quite a few moving parts. I don’t know that I would have been duped into checking this out, but am glad I did.

I have become quite interested in VOIP tech as of late (had you not been paying attention) and think things are only going to get hotter in the category. Unlike Andy, I don’t have any clients in the arena just yet…