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The NYTimes David Pogue battles the cell phone giants: Take back the beep
In 2007, I spoke at an international cellular conference in Italy. The big buzzword was ARPU–Average Revenue Per User. The seminars all had titles like, “Maximizing ARPU In a Digital Age.” And yes, several attendees (cell executives) admitted to me, point-blank, that the voicemail instructions exist primarily to make you use up airtime, thereby maximizing ARPU.It's such a shameless scam. If I was dictator of the world I'd get these guys right after those colluding inkjet printer manufacturers.
Because I'm a nice guy, here a some free ideas for the cell phone industry. Perhaps some of these ideas have already been implemented on phones and/or by specific providers I am not aware of - but here goes anyway:
Predictive dialing. Just like in your browser's location field. Start typing a phone number and you get a pop up list of numbers from your address book and history that match what you have typed so far. So 2122283 would get me car service (probably just 21222 would do it.)
Home area code. If I just dial 5551212 and press talk my phone should attach my user specified home area code to the number automatically.
Selective ring. I should be able to turn my phone off (well, turn ring and vibrate off sending everything to voice mail) except for certain specified numbers. I want my family and current clients to get through, say, but everybody else goes straight to voicemail. Or in the middle of the night I want my colo facility to get through but nobody else.
Individual voice mail greetings for different incoming numbers.
Multiple numbers. I'm sure you can do this already, but it should be much easier and cheaper. I want several different numbers. Really I want dozens of different numbers. And I want to be able to set different ring tones for different numbers, and to send some numbers straight to voice mail while letting other numbers through. Due to the restricted number space I'd settle for one regular 10 digit number and then a second 10 digit number that will accept any combination of additional numbers (like extensions) on the end of it. So if 2125551212 was my secondary number I can give out 2125551212777 and 21255512129 and 212555121277701 and all these numbers can be set up in different ways (different outgoing voicemail messages, different call routing, etc...)
More below as I remember them...
About to pull the trigger on the new iPhone purchase. Finally. For the past year or two I've been feeling like the tech world has been stagnating, but now just lately, for me, I feel another surge coming on. And the iPhone and the various Google Android handsets are leading the charge. What I'm excited about is being called "augmented reality" and I think it's going to be a big deal.
The phrase is a play on "virtual reality" which was a popular thing to fantasize about around the time I became interested in computer technology (early nineties.) The idea is that through equipment like a head mounted display (i.e., goggles with computer screens instead of lenses) we would create entire 3D worlds that people could interact with. William Gibson's Neuromancer was the canonical text for describing such a thing, and Jaron Lanier was the main evangelist.
Augmented reality is similar, except the computer generated world is overlaid on the real world. It turns out this is a much more useful idea. And the inclusion of video cameras, GPS, and magnetometers in these handsets allows for some really new breakthrough applications to be built. Our phone now knows where you are on the earth, and what direction you are pointing the phone. Hold it up like a third eye, with the video camera on (doesn't need to be recording - that may turn out to be a seldom used function of the camera!) and it sees what you are seeing - only it can overlay information on the screen.
Point your phone/camera/third eye at something and these new apps can figure out what it is and tell you. Check out the videos in the first "augmented reality" link. Okay, you've got to use your imagination, but this is some seriously cool stuff. In short, I'm excited again. I couldn't see it for a while, but this is the next big step.
On a side note: in my little game I play watching the stock market - I guess like some people follow a sports team - I've started rooting for ARM (ticker: armh). I think Intel has missed a bit with Atom and the ARM A9 Cortext (the heart of the iPhone) is going to be tough to catch. At $6.30 it's up a bit in the last week but still pretty cheap.
No personal computer will ever have gigabytes of RAM. Oops. The "How sad" must be especially painful.
This makes me feel good about my skills at judging up front how long a project is going to take: University of Wisconsin is $40 million in the hole and not much nearer to patching their legacy payroll system. That's ridiculous, but this stuff is hard. Each individual piece is easy, sure, but when you try to put them all together you quickly move into unexpected territory.
A first attempt to replace it with Lawson Software was scrapped in 2006 after years of work and a cost of $28.4 million. The project, a public relations embarrassment for the university, was doomed by poor project leadership and planning, bureaucratic infighting and technical complexity.You think?
The university started planning for a second attempt in 2007, this time using Oracle's PeopleSoft system.
Giroux said earlier planning budget estimates and timelines had to be changed because "we did not have the full picture of how complex this project would be."
New iPhone camera looks very good.
Olympus releases their long awaited micro four thirds camera, the Pen E-P1. A little too rich for my blood but that's a great camera. I think cellphone cameras are going to hurt the low end of the digital camera line, but there's room for these compact but very sophisticated shooters. And I love that retro look.
AnandTech is seriously in love with the new MacBook Pro. For the short take jump to the conclusion here:
There’s no other way to say this. If you care about battery life and portability at all, buy the new MacBook Pro. Go to the Apple store and buy one....He did extensive real world battery tests and found that the new MacBook Pros show a 100% increase in battery life over the previous generation! He got 6.5 hour out of a full charge doing normal surfing and music playing. And over 8 hours in some cases. Yikes. That's pretty amazing. And the 15 inch model - with 4GB of RAM now standard - is now only $1699. I'm still in love with mine, but wow.
Ever since I first looked at the power consumption specs of Nehalem I thought it didn’t make any sense to buy a new, expensive notebook before Arrandale’s launch in Q4 2009/Q1 2010. While performance will definitely increase considerably with Arrandale, Apple just threw a huge wrench in my recommendation. The new MacBook Pro is near perfect today. If you need a new laptop now, thanks to its incredible battery life, I have no qualms recommending the new MBP....
I’m not sure there’s much else I can add other than Good Job, Apple.
I must say, Im quite upset. I have been using images from your web site on my web site for along time now and suddenly they are gone. and I am concerned. I am using my web site to build up my business which is not easy and you changed the location or deleted them or something.
My concern is that if you do not upload the images again I might have to contact my lawyer as I am using these images for the purpose of advertising and this sudden change without warning means I have to find where you have moved them to and get them working again.
Apple's annual World Wide Developer's Conference began this morning. Apple's #2, Phil Schiller, is giving the keynote speech right now. He's already announced new MacBooks although nothing too big to report: slightly faster, better battery, cheaper prices. I'm actually glad they didn't change too much because the MacBook Pro is easily the most satisfying consumer electronics product I have ever owned. It's really close to perfect.
The new OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard) is due soon, so that's going to dominate the conference because that's what software developers care most about. In terms of the keynote probably the only things of interest about Snow Leopard to casual users is what looks like pretty full Exchange support , and a $29 price tag (new versions are usually $129.)
New iPhone. $199 for 16GB. $299 for 32GB. The old iPhone will remain and drop to $99.
New iPhone includes 3MP autofocus camera w/ video recording. Compass. Much better battery life. Along with a bunch of software improvements that everyone will get with the impending release of iPhone OS 3.0.