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.

How many times have you picked up your VoIP phone and not had a dialtone and said, “damnit, service is out again.” I can’t count the number of tech calls I have been a part of or heard about where a piece of equipment suddenly stopped working and the user declared, with passion generally reserved for Samuel L. Jackson and Al Paccino at the climax of a movie, that they were positive it was plugged in and it just stopped working. After a long line of troubleshooting, unplugging and replugging it in miraculously cures the ailment, clearly a function of some latent factory problem.

Since purchasing my 1994 car some three years ago, I have on three different occasions forgotten that it has a kill switch on the ignition. If it sits for some small period of time, the kill switch engages and the engine won’t turn over. Lights work, radio works, but trying to start it results in a non-response. If the ignition is not fully disengaged, for instance if it is slightly on and leaves the radio playing, pushing the unlock will not disengage the kill switch. After forty-five minutes of non-response from Verizon’s roadside assistance, I walked out to the car, pressed the unlock button, heard the familiar “BEEP BEEP”, started the car and drove to the office. Even the pros sometimes forget to follow the basic troubleshooting steps and end up falling into the assumption ravine.

Two minutes of stepping back, forgetting that I know everything, and following a basic checklist would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment.

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.

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.

G-g-g-g-g-g-google.

I love my Droid. That being said… my love for Google wanes like a loveless marriage from a white, suburban utopia. I’m comfortable with Google, but the love affair is over. Both of us want different things from our relationship.

I want Google to be a kinder, gentler corporation. The one that doesn’t scream M-M-M-Max Headroom and make me think that the next leader of Google, Inc. may indeed be named Darth Vader.

One of the products that I loved from Google was GooG411. Using it was simple.

1. Call +1 800 GooG 411
2. Speak what thee wants.
3. Repeat as needed.

Great service. But… the service will soon be no more. Good bye dreams of a kinder, gentler Google. Somewhere, Yahoo is smiling; getting ready for a comeback.

From readwriteweb.com:

Google just announced that it plans to shut down 1-800-GOOG-411, its voice-powered directory assistance service, on November 12. GOOG-411, which launched in 2007, was the company’s first foray into voice-powered search. According to Google, GOOG-411 “provided a foundation for more ambitious services” on smartphone platforms like Google’s own Android and Apple’s iPhone. Interestingly, today’s announcement also notes that Google plans to put all of its resources “into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.”

For those who relied on GOOG-411, Google suggests using the company’s text message-based search service (466453) for finding local businesses.

And here’s the official word from Google:

Back in 2007 we launched 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice-powered directory assistance service that connects you quickly to businesses across the U.S. and Canada. On November 12, 2010, we will shut down the service.

GOOG-411 was the first speech recognition service from Google and helped provide a foundation for more ambitious services now available on smartphones, such as:

• Voice Search – search Google by speaking instead of typing.
• Voice Input – fill in any text field on Android by speaking instead of typing.
• Voice Actions – control your Android phone with voice commands. For example, you can call any business quickly and easily just by saying its name.

Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.

If you don’t use a smartphone, and you’re trying to call a business, you can send a text message with the name and location of the business to 466453 (“GOOGLE”) and we’ll text you the information, or on Gmail you can use the new phone-calling features to call any U.S. business free of charge. Also, if you don’t have the free voice search app pre-installed on your phone, you can download it here.

Thanks for all the calls, and keep an eye out for all the innovation to come.

The GOOG-411 Team

RIP GooG-411. RIP.

"Put down the phone. Slowly walk away. Say hi to the person next to you. Yes, that's a human. Yes, they are real."

Too much technology consumes our daily lives.

Ironic topic for a blog post? Probably. Blasphemous for a guy whose entire livelihood depends on the fact that internet connections barely even dreamable ten years ago are available at his house? Sure. True? Absolutely.

Last week I took four plane rides (thanks Usairways* for $27 first class upgrades) and spent four days on a cruise. In the airport, my disappointment towards people engaged in asinine, pointless conversations simply to avoid feeling disconnected made me sad. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide* they talk of a planet where the inhabitants need to talk constantly in order to keep their brains from working— well friends… we are there. Today, planes offer cell and wi-fi service so you can stay connected on the go. As a DBA, server admin and technology leader in a small team handling high-transaction, high-availability systems, I understand that emergencies happen. I have solved many problems driving 70+ mph down I-75 on my Verizon aircard (Passenger seat). That said — in over ten years of “mission critical” system responsibility, I have never had a business need that I couldn’t defer or delegate for less than six hours to take a flight.

On the cruise, we left the technological world behind. When I wanted to meet up with my friends, we had to pre-arrange it or just *gasp* roam around and find one another. We couldn’t call or text or tweet or blog. For almost four entire days, we used nothing but direct, personal communication. It was glorious.

No conversations were interrupted by an “urgent” phone call. No one secluded themselves in a private world by clinging to someone on the other end of a mobile phone. People actually interacted with new people. People made new friends. People spent time with old friends. Relationships were formed. Some of them ended with departure from a foreign port, some when the boat docked, some will end next week, or next month, and a precious few will last a lifetime. This is the silent victim of the new media revolution.

Email, blogs, Facebook, geocities, etc. were a way for friends to network and keep up with one another across great distances. Even when I was young (and using BBS‘s), the virtual world was a gateway to making real-world relationships. Now it’s the replacement. We use instant messaging, text messaging, Facebooking, MySpacing and Youtubing to avoid real, meaningful human contact. We don’t make friends anymore, we make virtual acquaintances.

Technology becomes cheaper, faster, more accessible. The disease spreads. The art and beauty of human contact dies an unceremonious death. We won’t even notice till three weeks later, when the smell is finally enough to tip someone off. By then, it will be gone and there will be no bringing it back.

Is it too late? Am I overly dramatic?

I take comfort in the backlash…could this bring the next next step,  marketing of premium, anti-technology travel?

“For every market, a sub-market grows…” -Grave Robber

*Footnote: Apologies to Fred for shout-outs to two of his nemeses, Amazon and USAirways.

Fanatical Support

Got Rackspace? Got WordPress? If so… you may just have a problem.

We’ve been getting calls today from Rackspace clients (hosting WordPress sites) that have been compromised similarly to the GoDaddy hack a few weeks back. The Unmask Parasites Blog has an excellent article on the attack posted on their, well, their blog.

There are some huge sites that have been hit, and some not-so-large as well (we personally were hit by an earlier attack). In the “Is Cloud the answer” debates, this will surely become an example of how a compromise in the cloud, can devastate an entire farm.

Update 6/19/2010

Shortly after this article was initially posted, Rackspace via their Rackcloud Twitter account posted the following message:

Reports, schmeorts.

Of course… details never came. I tweeted them myself (Oh no you didn’t… Oh yes I did):

Show me the money.

At this point, they haven’t replied to my request or posted any additional information on their twitter account. I think they moved on… the next day they were more interested in talking about how “Cassandra by Example translated to Japanese!”

Also, one day… one day I’ll spell check my tweets. Until then, read at your own grammatical risk.

Read more:

http://blog.unmaskparasites.com/2010/06/14/attack-on-wordpress-blogs-on-rackspace/