Blind Calls By Deaf People

They call me almost every week. I recognize them as they are the only callers not presenting their caller id. The sales people working for my mobile service provider. Yes I must have had agreed somewhere in my contract to let my MNO contact me over the phone. Silly me. But I really did not realize they can be so silly too...

They call me when I am on vacation, interrupting my sea - side lazy afternoons. Or when I am on a business trip. Generally they call me when I am roaming, forcing me to pay for receiving the calls. Silly approach. Their HLRs know I am on a foreign network, and that generally means it is not the best time trying to sell me something on the phone. Is it such a big IT integration issue for a call center software working for a mobile network operator (MNO) to query a HLR before making a call? Or is it cheaper just to call a subscriber ignorantly pretending the operator's sales department has no idea of subscriber's whereabouts (while the billing department precisely knows where I am)?

Each time they call me they try to offer me some more free minutes. I am an asynchronous data type. I love messaging but I hate voice calls. My monthly plan gives me five hundred minutes. Any unused minutes are carried on to a next month. Over two years or so I have accumulated some five thousand unused minutes on my account. That is what my personalized mobile online portal shows. And each month three hundred new minutes are added to the pile. Again the billing department knows all that. So why on earth a salesman from the same company wastes time to annoy me offering an extra thousand minutes to be added to the same pile? The matter of fact I could sell them some... Again, when pre-selecting subscribers to be called with the bonus offer, would it be so difficult to run a query and check whether a subscriber eats up whatever plan she or he is on?

And somehow they must have figured a subscriber-repelling live sales agent is more cost effective than an email template. I bet there are a lot of people like myself, who prefer to answer an email instead of being molested by a sales voice call. They have my email. And it is really what they try to sell what matters, not how hard they push... What they offer, simply does not address my needs, so I do not buy. They would better listen to what I say... Last time they called I asked if I could buy a new phone instead of piling extra voice minutes. "You cannot, sir." was the answer. Yes I know the tele-salesman is running a computerized script and he has no option of selling me a phone (even if that was what I asked for). But he must have somebody he reports to, who designs those call scripts. They are simply blind, not seeing the opportunity.

And they must be deaf, since it was not just once when I asked for an offer for a new phone. Hello! Can you hear me? My Blackberry is in a really poor condition. I dropped it a number of times on a pavement. It survived, but is badly scratched. And the thumb scroll ball gets stuck quite often. And I would love to have 3G along with my UMA / WiFi calling. I heard the new 9700 Bold can do that. Hello! Can you hear me? Silence... Last week they told me to go to the physical store. Hey, I know precisely what I want. Hey, I even can afford the new toy. Hey, you know my address. And a phone number. Hey, I am willing to spend money on a product you offer. Silence...

Well... Year 2010. Information at fingertips. Digitally modeled processes. They have budgets, they have IT support, they can have almost all information about me they want. Yet they behave like souvenir salesmen walking along beaches. Embarrassing...

Living With Many Computers

For years I have been absolutely happy with my Lenovo X200S laptop. It was light enough to follow me almost everywhere and powerful enough to be the only machine I had. Especially after the SSD upgrade. But I wanted more. I mean less :). I fell in love with the Nokia Booklet 3G and decided to swap the Lenovo for the Nokia. Looking from today's perspective I very often think this was not the best decision. The keyboard on the Nokia is far from what the Lenovo offered. And I miss the trackstick - yes the touchpads are far inferior. And most importantly the Nokia is slow. Even after the SSD upgrade. But on the other hand I love it when I have to carry it, feeling almost no weight in my bag. It fits nicely in my Kata 123-GO photo bag. And most importantly, with its tiny weight, it is able to work all day on a charge. So I never ever carry a power supply with me.

I made some extra setup for the Nokia at home. 22-inch FullHD monitor - the iiyama ProLite E2210HDS (what a name!) connects audio and video via a singe HDMI cable. And the Logitech DiNovo Keyboard / Mouse, connecting via Bluetooth. So essentially docking the Nokia means plugging two cables - HDMI and power. I lived happily with this setup for two months, but realized I needed some more powerful machine for photo editing, video transcoding and other media intensive tasks.

As I was looking for candidates for a desktop computer, the new MacMini arrived. First I tried the native MacOS - the Snow Leopard. Soon I realized I could almost do nothing on this machine, as all my current stuff was on the Nokia laptop. Or in the FireFox browser there, to be more precise.

FireFox now has this FireFox Sync add-on (previously called Mozilla Weave). So I put it to the test. The Sync had been already installed on the Nokia, so all my settings and cookies and autocompletes were stored in the Cloud. I promptly downloaded the FireFox for Mac and installed the Sync. It asked for the account name and security key. The nice thing is the Sync encrypts everything before sending up to the Cloud, so without the encryption key nobody could get hold of your data, even if the Mozilla servers were compromised. After a while it synced the Mac. I could open any page and all passwords and logins were filled by the FireFox automatically. That I used before, when migrating from one machine to another, so no surprise, it worked. But I have never used two active FireFox sessions on two machines simultaneously.

The FireFox Sync has an item called "Tabs From Other Computers" in the History menu. It is a joy. It simply displays all machines you have the FireFox Sync configured on and a list of opened tabs on each of them. Of course the machines do not have to be running. It just displays the last synchronized state. So you can click on any of those tabs and it pops open on the current machine. First I expected all the tabs to be copied across the machines, but the actual approach they use is more clever. There are some tabs you want or need on just one machine. So no point moving everything, especially when you may be on a slow GSM connection or roaming. Any tab from any machine is just a click away.

As I have already moved almost all my workspace to the Cloud (GMail and Google Docs being the most part of my activity), the browser essentially is my desktop. And Firefox with the Sync addon perfectly implements the vision of virtualized context following me across many physical devices. At the moment there are just two devices. Or I should say - three. Three, because I decided to install 64-bit Windows 7 on the Mac Mini. It is a snap using Apple's Boot Camp Assistant and Windows simply flies on this machine. Actually the Mac Mini is the best Windows desktop computer I have ever had. It is fast (the processor / graphics score is 6.0). It is small and absolutely silent, mimicking a desktop lamp stand with a narrow slot for DVDs. And with built in power supply and HDMI out, there are just two cables coming into it: two-pronged power and HDMI. Keyboard, mouse and network are wireless. Beautiful and perfect. So the Mac/Windows 7 makes the third machine in Sync.

Later this week I will be installing the FireFox Home for the iPad. We all know the Safari is the only browser allowed on the iOS. But the Home is the "Sync" part that lets the mobile Safari stay in Sync with other machines, making my iPad just another device my context will follow me to.

GOOG vs AAPL, The Story Continues...

Apple bypassing Google and then becoming the biggest tech company in the World fuels a lot of talk and speculation. Apple is having a time of its life, with share price up 30% YTD in a shaky market. At the same time Google is down 30% YTD. Definitely investors have fallen in love with Steve Jobs at take whatever Google offers as granted. But paying a closer look may reveal quite a different picture. With all the credits due, Apple is chiefly a design company. Whatever they have done since the original iPhone 1 launch, can hardly be considered innovative or breakthrough. The iPhone was a breakthrough. Nobody expected anything close when they launched. But whatever happened after that has been just incremental, linear improvement. 3G. GPS. More memory and faster processor. Better screen and battery life. Yawn. The null-modem-cable iTunes connectivity remains the same. It is so hard to believe design sells so well. Or that good design is so hard to implement. I wrote about the new Mac Mini. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary about this computer, yet it is a class ahead of any comparable machines. So they can charge premium, people will pay.

On the other hand Google keeps silently improving the Web. Today nobody pays attention to the speed and quality of Web searches. We expect it to be fast and accurate and we take for granted it works. I guess not many people even noticed the improvements Google made to its service even this year. True. They never had an official launch, improving step by step almost every day. So the World pays no attention.

Then it takes a day like a week ago, when I returned from my vacation and uploaded some photos to Picasa. Then I got some comments and questions to reply. I started typing some comments when I noticed that whatever I type in Polish, Google types in parallel in English. My jaw dropped. Yes we have had Google Translate for some years now, but implementing online translation in a chat impressed me. A believe this is an order of magnitude more difficult than building a phone from off-the-shelf components and encasing it in two glass plates contracted from a 3rd party manufacturer.

The bottom line is, I think Apple is peaking today, being more smoke and mirrors looking forward, especially compared to the immense value buildout inside Google. The World is going to the Cloud, which is Google's primary domain and expertise. Open source Androids invade the market from all angles. Plus Google has a head start in the battle of the next generation TV. Half a year from now the tide will turn and I strongly believe investors will reward the value and reach of Google.

On a final note, just as a food for thought, may be Google should make more noise when they release some important features and upgrades to their services?

Web Or Apps?

I am a big fan of a life within a browser. I hate apps. Every time I have to install a program or application on my computer or smartphone, I don't like it.

Applications are evil. They crash. They have way too broad access to various niches on my hard drive. I don't trust them, in general. Imagine Mark Zuckerberg writing an application for Windows. What would it be doing? It would spend all time and resources scanning your file system and memory for things it could post on Facebook. It would invite all your friends to become fans of your bank account statements and post your Web browsing history as a Facebook news feed. Trust, or lack of it, is the reason I strongly prefer things running inside my browser. It is a big deal. Remember Activex versus Java in the late 1990's? Microsoft just could not implement secure enough way of handling native - code Activex controls, to prevent potential damage.

It is the same story again on the smartphone / teleputer platforms (the iOs and the Android). Yes, there are the Applications Stores and verification procedures promising to prevent malicious code from penetrating the security barriers. But realistically speaking, it is just a matter of time before a bomb explodes. Then there will be more x-ray machines and more strict procedures, increasing the burden of submitting applications to the stores. Never guaranteeing 100% security.

And apps are pain when they have to be upgraded. After just two weeks my iTunes shows 17 updates waiting for me. I have to download them, sync to all iPods and iPads. The civilization of upgrades.

But there is one very important reason apps are here to stay. At least for a time being. And it is not responsiveness in games nor ability to work offline. It is the monetization machines the application stores are.

Whatever it is, a scenario, an idea, or some piece of content. It is very difficult to monetize when implemented as a Web page. Yes you can run ads or make a member - only part of the site. But micropayments still do not exist on the Web, and there is no easy way to charge a small fee for what you want to offer. But when you decide to implement an app instead of a Web page, the monetization is seamless. Publish to the application store and get your share with every download. We need this for the Web. The one who successfully implements Web micropayments will be big. One day...

Traveling Light

It is summer vacations time again and I am taking a short break from the sunbath at the pool overlooking endless orchards of lemon trees at the foot of the majestic Etna volcano. This trip to Sicily, which I enjoy a lot, has brought usual thoughts on the state of the gadgets I pack with me.

Surprisingly, my carry on rucksack has been significantly smaller and lighter this year. A clear sign things are going the right direction for gadget maniacs. I no longer have to tug a set of trolleys filled with electronics. Speaking of the rucksack, I am very pleased with the Kata 123-GO-30. Kata is a brand that does not need explanation for photographers. They have probably the best equipment to carry the DSLR stuff. The 123-GO series bags are very light. I picked the 30, as it can accommodate my Nokia 3G booklet, along with the photo stuff (FujiFilm FinePix S5 Pro, four lenses, a flashlight, and some accessories).

The significant reduction of travel weight comes from well optimized set of power supplies and chargers. For the photo camera I picked the Hahnel Ultima II, a truly integrated and multifunctional charger. It is compatible with both European (including Italian) mains standard, as well as the American. It can also work in a car, using a cigarette lighter socket. And it has a USB port, so only a small cable is needed to charge my BlackBerry. The Nokia Booklet power supply is small and light too. Unfortunately it has the thick three-prong power plug, but at least the cable itself is short. Then there is the iPad power supply. It charges the family iPad, we share to browse the Net, play games and display photos. By the way, the iPad camera connection kit has proved to be the most essential iPad accessory. The iPad charger also charges the set of iPods, used for audiobooks and evening parties.

For playing music the iHome IHM79 speakers are a great solution. Compact. Portable. USB powered. And they sound fantastic.

Then there is yet another power supply. The tiny Amazon Kindle one. It is used to constantly power the Huawei 3G/HSPA portable WiFi router. The Huawei is probably the most essential, yet almost invisible gadget, automagically spreading a WiFi cloud around places we stay at. For connectivity in Italy I bough a prepaid SIM card from TIM. At 19 Euro for 100 hours it is not as cheap as the Austrian b.Free or bob, but works very well, delivering almost symmetrical 1-2 Mbps range broadband, enough for most leisure activities, even when shared among five or six devices.

And speaking of Kindle, I decided to take it with me too. It is far from being killed by the iPad. It is very light, does not need to be charged at all, and can be perfectly used on the beach or in the pool, and the screen is still the only one that can be used in sunlight.

The entire setup, as described above, fit in the 123-GO-30, totaling less than 9 kilograms (with camera and lenses probably being close to half of that). Not bad for such a multifunctional setup.