hitting the wire*

Don't buy a Nokia E65...

...or if you do/have, wrap the damn thing in cotton wool!

I fell in love with the iPhone on sight... but then realised, cute as it is, that it is right for an iPod or Apple junkie, but not the phone(?) for me.  Then I saw the Nokia N95.  And the idea of a GPS on my phone grabbed me.  Until I was then informed that the GPS was not the greatest and that I would have to pay in over R1,600 to secure this miniature PC to slip in my pocket. Mmmm...

I want :

Calendar and Addressbook synch'd with Outlook

WiFi + Bluetooth

camera for snapshots

no silly little qwerty keyboard for people with stunted fingers

predictive text

media player

browser

So I plugged that into www.gsmarena.com and spotted the Nokia E65.  Cute, powerful, meets my needs.  I went for it.

Now I've had a SonyEricsson p910i for over 2 years.  Before that a Nokia 6120 (I think it was - great phone) and before that a string of Nokias.  I prefer the Nokia interface and menu system.  I abused my previous Nokias horribly; I have been known to toss a phone across the room while gesticulating.  I abused my p910i.  It has the scars.  I never had to have any of them repaired.

Just over a week of mollycoddling my new toy (an E65), I was grumpy about battery life - having  to charge it every two days.   I was devastated to take the phone out of my pocket one afternoon to find the screen cracked.  No abuse.

Took it in and explained the context.  Asked around and got input that the screens on that model are fragile.  Was called by the shop to say that Vodacom refuse to accept that I did not abuse the phone, and I now have to fork out ~R500.00 to have it fixed.  How long will it last?  No idea.  Will I have to go through this again shortly?  Maybe.  Oh and supposedly there is nothing wrong with the battery, I must just flatten it and charge it fully 3 or 4 times and it will be right as rain.  Mmmmm...

Battery
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh (BL-5F)

Stand-by
Up to 265 h

Talk time
Up to 6 h

Am I happy with my Nokia E65?  No.

Your mileage may vary, but consider it before you buy.

what next... a virtual braai?!?

There are times when the use of IT to implement virtual reality makes me wonder if it's just me and all the other jokers are driving the wrong way down the M1, or what?!?

Checking out a suspiciously good deal on Dell laptops (not quite as good as it would have been if the blaps Henk Kleynhans and his mates spotted had paid off, but a good one nevertheless), an ad for what I can only think of as the DVD version of mood music caught my eye...

The virtual fire.  Just plug in the DVD, adjust your screen and volume, and voila, you've  all the mood that homo cavus or whatever he was called got out of a good blaze, without all the fussy, messy, time consuming stuff!

Not only that, but hey you can choose what type of fire you'd like!  Maybe you'd just like some glowing coals... or a gas fire, or ... hey, what about an electric fire!

I vaguely get the idea of a fishtank simulation... but this is just one step before some schmuck tries to tell me a pill with all the protein of a steak, with some esters for aroma and taste and a fake fire DVD can replace a braai.  If anyone ever does I'll make sure they use it as an enema!

Fake fire.  pah!

engineers. doomed for life.

Being who I am, engineer jokes are something I collect, if only to disappoint my lawyer, CA, and medic buddies when they say "have you heard the engineer joke about..." "yup".

This is the first animated Dilbert I've seen.  Love it.

 

wouldn't it be nice?

One of the perks of working at an ISP and getting in to work early in the morning is experiencing the raw, unfettered power of phat bandwidth.  The kind of stuff Americans have with their coffee @ Starbucks I imagine?

I've been putting off upgrading my Acrobat Reader.  Today when the upgrade suggestion popped up I thought "what the hell".  Hardly had time to swallow my coffee and more than 20MB had arrived on my desktop.  Won't it be great when bandwidth is so damn cheap and plentiful most of us will be used to this over DSL? :)

(OK, so we have choked the Storm office access to avoid the unintentional pillaging of bandwidth during office hours - "family hold back" and all that, but still, this is what broadband should be!)

OK, I take the hint!

When friends who read your blog send you a very nice bottle of wine like this for your birthday, you have to consider if there is a subtle message in there somewhere?

I'll hunt down my muse and get my act together shortly.

the blurb on the Flagstone website says :

2004 Tasting Description: Redolent, vibrant red with purple edges. Intense concentrated aromas of wild blueberry and ripe cherry supported by a frame of sweet heady oak aromas. On the palate the wine is ripe and generous with a core of black berry, preserved plum and youngberry. These fruit characteristics are supported by subtle toasty oak, hints of white truffle, freshly made milo and thyme.
Food Paring: Rare fillet of Kudu and parsnip mash.

"purple edges"?  "toasty oak"? How do they come up with that stuff!?!?

That being said, I can now hardly wait to get on the outside of this one! ;)

The rise of a new breed of Service Provider.

My first job in Storm, back in the late 90's was to add a Cellular LCR (Least Cost Routing) product to the International LCR product offering Storm launched with.  We were finding that we were losing deals to the likes of Orion and Telepassport because we did not offer "savings on calls to cellular".  TimWG's words to me were something of the order of "create a cellular product for us and just make sure you don't lose us any money".

None of us saw just how big the Cellular LCR market would be.  None of us realised just  how many more cellular phones than fixed line phones there would be by now.

Cellular LCR has always been a problem for the Mobile Network Operators.  The GSM networks were traditionally designed quite "thin", with some base stations only being able to handle 8 or 16 simultaneous calls from phones "passing through".  Installations of "SIM farms" or large Cellular Fixed Terminal CPE installations had the ability to "flatten" the networks in places.  An installation at PriceWaterhouseCoopers succeeded in causing dropped calls for anyone traveling past their offices in Sandton for weeks after their LCR installation went live.  The networks ended up spending many millions of capex to cater for LCR. 

Much better money was being made in charging Telkom to terminate calls originating in Telkom's network to cell phones.  But the fear of losing the LCR SIM business (and the traffic) to the other MNO network forced Vodacom and MTN to offer the likes of Storm attractive packages.  Once the LCR market had tapered off however, we saw them beef up "off-net" call charges to try and make more margin.  We had to become smarter about how we managed our base of SIMs.

Deregulation and the legalisation of VoIP has changed all of that.  Anyone who is trying to sell you on the idea that traditional cellular LCR is here for many years and it is worth committing yourself to a long term contract is blowing smoke.  The future is in aggregating traffic using either VoIP or once it is available a mix of CPS (Carrier PreSelect) and VoIP and passing traffic over interconnects.  Renewing LCR SIMs from now on is risky business.

The way forward is with the new breed of Voice&Data Service Provider (the EC Act calls them Communication Service Providers), who are geared to make most use of the changes in technology and regulations.  You just have to take a look at the M&A activity (traditional data guys buying voice guys, vice versa, and the likes of Vodacom starting their own ISP) to realise what Storm did years ago - the future is in IP.  LCR will be around for a while yet, unless either DoC or ICASA force some unwise and rather radical changes to interconnect rates.  The UK has one of the most competitive telecoms markets around, and cellular LCR is still alive with the likes of Westlake and True Communications.

Peter Walsh of DataRoom has written a good article on LCR on MyDigitalLife - worth a read if you're interested in a balanced outlook on this market.

UK allows 5.8GHz operators to pump up the power

Total Telecom reports that Ofcom is altering the power rules that govern the use of wireless equipment operating at the 5.8 GHz band in the UK, supposedly to "address the digital divide"

"[Using the 5.8 GHz band] is simply another way of providing broadband other than LLU or cable," said an Ofcom spokeswoman, speaking to Total Telecom on Monday.

Ofcom said that upping the power limits will extend the geographic reach of broadband services on the 5.8 GHz band, meaning more remote and rural areas will have access to high-speed Internet.

Now (a) it is great to see that the UK are allowing use of 5.8 GHz in the way they are:

According to Ofcom, the use of equipment in the 5.8 GHz band is subject to a light licensing regime that allows terminals to be registered with the regulator online.

The spokeswoman explained that the 5.8 GHz band needs only a minimal amount of regulation to protect it from illegal interference.

and (b) it is good to see regulator exploring ways to make better use of existing technology, but can one really call this a divide?

The report showed that 41% of adults living in rural areas have broadband Internet at home compared to 45% of adults in urban areas.

Tsk,tsk... can't have the lads in rural England lagging by 4% now can we?! ;)

But!:

The increase from 2 to 4 watts will lower the cost for operators intending to use the spectrum to deliver fixed wireless broadband services, the U.K. regulator said.

Now as far as I can recall from my days as an Elec Eng student, propagation of electromagnetic signals (using an omnidirectional and not a directional antenna) follow an inverse square law?  Which means doubling the power will increase the reach by only about 40% or so?  And as there is no indication of this use of 4 watts is restricted to urban areas, will doubling the allowable power not cause chaos in urban areas where previously workable solutions will be rendered inoperable?  Will this really make the deployment of rural WiFi networks @ 5.8 GHz more affordable and thus kick that 41% penetration of broadband up significantly?

Maybe the likes of Joe @ Amobia will have some answers for me?

Google buys Feedburner

Don Loeb has just announced on his blog that Google have acquired Feedburner.

  Reckon they'll call it "GooFee"? ;)

Is there any record for the most acquisitive company ever?  There is something about me that is never comfortable with acquisitive growth which begins to build empires that loom large over the rest of the market. 

I'm sure the guys at Feedburner are chuffed.  Not sure I am though.

How long before we start to view Google in much the same light we do Microsoft?

Storm appoints a new CEO.

"The time has come the walrus said..." to appoint a new CEO (to mangle the words of Lewis Carroll somewhat.  It is time.  As difficult a decision as it must have been for both Tims to stand back and allow someone else to take Storm to new heights, it is a wise one.  To be honest, I expected them to have done it before now, but have always known they were having too much fun.  We haven't seen the last of them, but for a while at least they will be leaving the new man to get on with making his mark.

Welcome aboard Willem.  We're looking forward to meeting the challenges of growing this outfit further!

Read more here.

(oh and by the way, if you decide to Google Willem - he's not the one who invented the new condom... ! ;)

what part of "no" did you not understand?

Yesterday, midmorning, our receptionist puts a call through to me...

Peter XXX, from ZZZ is on the line for you.

mmm, OK, put him through.

Dave Gale speaking.

Hello Mr Gale, how are you today, this is Peter XXX, from ZZZ.

Hello Peter.

Mr Gale am I right in assuming you are responsible for brand at Storm?

No, I'm responsible for company strategy.

Oh, but you do influence brand decisions?

To some degree, yes.

Good! You see I'm finalising the list of delegates for the XYZ Brand Strategy Conference and if you register by ....

Peter, I'm not interested.

Oh!? But this is such an important area, can you afford not to...

Excuse me?  What part of of "no" did you not understand?  Goodbye!

<sigh> Telemarketers - a different breed altogether!

So if you ever call me and Natasha asks if she may tell me who's calling, please don't abuse her... seems some people are inclined to bristle when asked.