There are 7 ways to avoid paying this fee… Including mailing them a check via US Mail. So either we are to believe that the process of receiving mail, opening mail, finding check, depositing check, applying said check to correct account, etc is somehow less expensive or Verizon hates you.

Being a former customer, I choose to believe that latter.  Read more from ABC News.

Where is Sprint 4G?

So, I live in Florida. Recently I switched my cell service from Verizon to Sprint for a few reasons that will bore you to death. So I’ll sum up — When I first switched, I absolutely couldn’t have been happier. I loved my phone (EVO 4G), thought the CS reps were the bomb, and loved how my phone bill remained constant monthly (with Verizon, no two were ever the same).

Anyway… then comes the iPhone… and now everything changes. The CEO made no secret that iPhone users are their holy grail and will be treated as gold. All of us non-iphone users will simply be… non-iphone users. Since the iPhone came, my “unlimited” account is now capped at 5GB (of course they say this is allowed in my unlimited contract).

But, I digress. Today’s article is about Sprint coverage maps and why you never ever ever should trust sales people. Look at that map above, remembering that I live in Florida. Florida looks awesome for 4G coverage, no? To help, here’s just Florida:

Florida close-up

I mean, just look at that — Sprint 4G is everywhere! Remember, this is a sales map and Yellow indicates 4G coverage. This map has one purpose, and one purpose only: sales. Sales people have one purpose only: get more sales. Anything other than getting more sales is a total failure of the entire function of either the map or the sales person.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at the non-sales 4G coverage map:

Brown is 4G, Orange is NOT

To clarify, remember here BROWN is 4G, orange is NOT 4G. There’s a lot of orange on that map. Kind of a huge contrast to the yellow being 4G coverage, but what do I know… I’m just a Sprint customer that can’t get 4G.

Bloomberg reports:

Sprint lost 101,000 customers on monthly contracts after dropping 114,000 in the previous three-month period, starting a new losing streak after reporting a gain in the lucrative users in the fourth quarter of 2010 for the first time in more than four years. The carrier is promoting handsets such as HTC Corp.’s Evo to compete with AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Wireless, which both now carry Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone.

“It’s costing them more just to maintain their base than anyone expected,” said Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG LLC in New York who advises selling the shares. Sprint said it spent an extra $120 million last quarter on customer acquisition and retention costs to stay competitive.

» Read the article at Bloomberg 

On a personal note… I love Sprint. I’ve had Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and more and Sprint hands down is the best wireless company I’ve ever worked with. No billing anomalies, friendly service, and reliable signal. That’s literally what I want from a company. I completely understand that this is just one opinion, but that’s my personal experience (whatever that’s worth)… which is apparently 16% less than it was worth yesterday.

Are people really seeing a lot of conversion on cold calls? For example, this beautiful call (below) I received within the first 10 seconds told me everything I needed to know. She had no idea what I did, what we were, and why we would ever need what she was selling.

But… that made me think…

Are people really buying from cold calls?

The old spam argument was that if Spam wasn’t selling products, we wouldn’t have spam. In other words, idiots out there actually click the links in spam and buy the products. If they stopped, spam would stop.

So, I guess I answered my own question. Cold calls must still work. I must be the minority of people that find it telephony spam and annoying.

(press the play button to listen to the audio…)
Download audio file (paper-upload.mp3)
(audio file direct link)

How can I not be me??

Ah, the joys of debt collectors and their mini-miranda warnings.

(press the play button to listen to the message… if it’s not you, please hang up) Download audio file (debt-collector.mp3)
(audio file direct link)

Those messages, left on my voicemail, for people I have never heard of gets my blood boiling. Plus, what does “If this is not you, please hang up” really mean? How can I not be me? I gotta be me!

In today’s litigious world, every company using a phone wants to protect themselves from lawsuits. Do lawyers, courts, and reasonable people really expect me to have to obey an auto-dialer’s warning that I cannot listen to the voicemail?

If a debt collector leaves a message on my pbx system, at my expense, who owns that message? Can I post it on the Internet?

I don’t have answers to these questions— although, if you leave me a message on a work system that tells you that all calls may be monitored or recorded… then I’m doing whatever I want with it. If you don’t want it monitored by others, then you shouldn’t leave the message.

Anyway, I thought I’d start the day off by sharing my morning voicemail. And if you’re Ernest Kiebler, Ernie Heyword, or whomever this message was for, you should call 800-503-3852 and refer to file number 21416930. You have a debt that is in collection.

RIP, Skype for Asterisk

Digium announced today the official end of Skype for Asterisk– ending anyone’s dream of a more friendly, open, Skype under Microsoft.

Their email, stated:

We expect that users of Skype for Asterisk will be able to continue using their Asterisk systems on the Skype network until at least July 26, 2013. Skype may extend this at their discretion.

The announcement of Skype and Asterisk came during Astricon 2008, a little less than 3 years ago. After almost a year, a beta program was announced with a pay per use licensing announced shortly thereafter.

The full announcement:

Product notification:

Skype for Asterisk will not be available for sale or activation after July 26, 2011.

Skype for Asterisk was developed by Digium in cooperation with Skype. It includes proprietary software from Skype that allows Asterisk to join the Skype network as a native client. Skype has decided not to renew the agreement that permits us to package this proprietary software. Therefore Skype for Asterisk sales and activations will cease on July 26, 2011.

This change should not affect any existing users of Skype for Asterisk. Representatives of Skype have assured us that they will continue to support and maintain the Skype for Asterisk software for a period of two years thereafter, as specified in the agreement with Digium. We expect that users of Skype for Asterisk will be able to continue using their Asterisk systems on the Skype network until at least July 26, 2013. Skype may extend this at their discretion.

Skype for Asterisk remains for sale and activation until July 26, 2011. Please complete any purchases and activations before that date.

Thank you for your business.

Digium Product Management

Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless.

From the folks at The Economist, comes a great little article about those amazingly annoying email footers. You know the ones, right? This email is intended for the sole use of yatta, yatta, yatta.

This email, its contents, and any attachments are confidential and/or copyrighted information intended only for the use of the intended recipient. If you are not the original intended recipient and, for any reason, have received this email, please delete it from your system(s) and immediately notify company

Boring and apparently as useless as they are annoying.

Here’s the link. Quick little read:

• The Economist: “Legal Disclaimers: Spare us the email yada-yada

Of course… The Economist uses this same annoying e-mail footer on their corporate mail. Ah, the bitter taste of irony.

Facebook Disconnect

Facebook, with it’s over 500 million active users, routinely faces concerns over the privacy; specifically the lack of privacy for its members. The Wall Street Journal recently found:

Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.

What’s a Facebook user to do? Yesterday, you had only two options: (1) simply not care or (2) shut down your Facebook account. But, now there’s a third choice.

Enter Facebook Disconnect

Facebook Disconnect blocks all traffic from third-party sites to Facebook servers, yet you’ll still be able to access Facebook itself. (Facebook Disconnect)

Bottom line: Facebook Disconnect will help prevent transmission of your identifiable data to more than 1 million sites using Facebook Connect. It’s open source (released under the Apache license) and although the author, Brian Kennish, is a Google Engineer, he states:

Although I’m an engineer at Google on the Chromium project, the work here is entirely my own and in no way endorsed by Google.

Neat idea. For more information, or to try it out, visit the Facebook Disconnect information page here.

Tropo Go Global

Tropo, a voice application platform, announced yesterday availability of local numbers in more than 40 countries. Tropo previously had offered local numbers limited to the United States, but now launched the program internationally.

Need to test an app that makes calls? Those have been 100% free in development for calls to US numbers. We’re expanding that support internationally as well. In addition to the free calls to US mobiles and landlines that you’ve always had, our developer program now supports free calling to landlines in 17 other countries.

Although SMS may still be limited to US numbers, the availability of International local numbers to developers makes testing voice applications incredibly easy and affordable (as in free).

More information can be obtained directly from their release announcement.