I went over to the UC Berkeley campus to watch the debate. It was actually hard at times to hear the President's replies to questions because the audience was laughing so hard. I don't believe the President intended to be a comedian. But from the perspective of this audience, albeit a liberal leaning one, George Bush did not come across as presidential, nor did he succeed in sounding even as if he had serious answers to many of the questions asked. On the other hand, viewers left this location believing that John Kerry had succeeded in appearing serious, presidential, and smart about how he would lead the country.
Perhaps this is just a case of viewers having their own views reaffirmed. But there could have been a lot of other reactions to Bush -- boos, silence, disgust. But laughter? That was a surprise.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
flickr on blogpulse
Still a relatively small percentage of "all blogs" but it is interesting to see how BlogPulse shows the growth in buzz for Flickr against other interesting web 2.0 phenomena like typepad...
More Paparazzi on Flickr
Esther (make that Esthr) Dyson, snapping photos of Rich Karlgaard and Guy Kawasaki in Hong Kong at the Forbes CEO conference.
Steve Jurvetson hanging out with Skype founders
Only in an industry like the Internet would the "stars" play the role of paparazzi, taking (and publishing) photos of other "stars" -- here on Flickr. Steve Jurvetson (Yes THAT Jurvetson) posting photos of his current trip to Europe, and in this case a photo of Tim and Niklas (of Skype fame) on a kayak trip in the Baltic sea... DFJ is an investor...
The Late Great NYT
It is surely a sign of how bad things have gotten for the New York Times that they have become the butt of jokes... just heard the second one in a week today when Bob Bozeman spoke this morning at the Keiretsu Forum meeting about his experiences as an early investor in Google. Bob was talking about an early article that appeared about Google in the NYT and said,
"I don't know if any of you have read the New York Times, but it seems to be a known newspaper..."which got a big laugh. Sad that this paper, once holding the highest journalistic standards in the world, has declined to such a degree that it is the subject of such jokes.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Thursday, September 09, 2004
War on Terror
Ever since the President stated on one day that we could NOT win the "war on terror" and the next day flip-flopped with a statement that we would win, I have been thinking about what it really means to "win the war on terror."
In order to define how a war can be won, the enemy being fought must be defined. Is this war on terror a war against the tactic of terrorism, regardless of who uses it? Or is it a war on the idealogy of muslim extremism? Or is it a war on a specific group like Al Queda?
Outright, we can reject the proposition that this is a war on a single enemy such as Al Queda. Al Queda has splintered into many subgroups and muslim extremisim is not limited to the Al Queda organization.
But the notion that we are at war against muslim extremism falls down on two counts. Perhaps most important is the fact that world governments have identified non muslim groups around the world as terrorist groups under the "war on terror." So both the United States and our allies in this war have identified a broader enemy. Secondly, though, it would be difficult to make a case that we can "win" a war against a set of ideas, such as those espoused by muslim extremists. If, for example, we had said during World War II that our goal was to "win the war on fascism" we would have to admit that we either had lost, or that we are still at war today. There are still dozens of fascist regimes in the world and these governments have killed millions just in Africa over the last few decades. One might say that fascism has been contained, but not defeated. Given that muslim extremism is not a political movement so much as it is a religious movement, and thus trans-national, it would be difficult if not impossible to "contain" this set of ideas the way that fascism can be contained within narrow national borders.
But given the first point, that the US and others have defined non muslim extremist groups as enemies in this war on terror, we must conclude that the war is not solely against a set of ideas. Which leaves one to conclude that we are waging a war against the tactic of terrorism.
DEFINITION OF AN ENEMY
There is a basic discontinuity between the categories of activity that the words "war" and "terror" encompass. War is an activity, the object of which is an enemy. Terror is a tactic which can be used by anyone. It simply doesn't make sense to talk about a war on a tactic. For example, could one speak of a "war on hand-to-hand combat?" Or a "war on spying?" It just doesn't make sense.
Perhaps the closest examples that our civilization has in which we reject a particular tactical approach to combat are weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, and nuclear -- and genocide. Through a series of treaties, the countries of the world have sought to criminalize, in some global sense of crime, the use of these kinds of weapons or the elimination of a civilian population. One could say that we are now criminalizing terror as well. But it would be difficult to define any of these tactics as an "enemy" at least one that a "war" could be fought against.
Furthermore terror is fundamentally different from genocide and WoMD in at least one major way -- terror can be utilized as a tactic by a single person or a small group. Genocide and the creation of WoMD requires a large entity, typically a state. Certainly there are examples of small groups employing chemical weapons, such as in the Tokyo subways. But the mass production and utilization (thus the mass in WoMD) requires a large infrastructure. The crossover problem here might be in the concept of a briefcase nuke -- but today the origination of materials for such a device would still have to come from some national entity -- whether sold or stolen.
By contrast, one can gather a few dozen devotees and some easily acquired munitions and take 1000 school children and their parents as hostages, as was recently done in Russia. The easy accessibility of terror as a weapon makes it a tactic that cannot be managed through the existing notion of treaties and global national cooperation.
SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
President Bush had it right, the first time. A "war" against "terror" cannot be won. We can identify particular groups that have specific plans against the US and we can defeat those plans and groups. But we will never eliminate terror as a tactic.
1) There will always be people in the world who disagree and even hate western civilization and the US specifically. However, our national policies and the ways in which we interact with the rest of the world can serve to fuel or calm this hate. We should focus more energy and money on these issues.
2) Terror will continue to be a tactic used against the US and other civilized societies. We need to develop defenses against the introduction of terrorist elements and we need to have more refined ways of reacting to terrorists. This must be done while respecting and protecting our core beliefs in civil liberty and freedom of speech.
3) Organizations which promote terror are genuine enemies and should be fought. But there are different kinds of battles against different kinds of threats. States which harbor and promote terrorists can be battled through economic isolation, physical isolation (blockade) and ultimately through regime change as a last resort.
Transnational organizations such as Al Queda must be battled by evolving the tools we have available to fight organized crime. Many of the organizational and operational techniques, and even the activities (drug and gun running) overlap. The end goals of an Al Queda vs. Columbian drug runners are different but their methods are alike.
4) Finally, effective implementation of these methods to contain and reduce terrorism will only work through effective global cooperation.
I don't feel that I have done more to advance the world's thinking on these issues -- just advanced my own thinking. This process, however, does give me a framework for examining the decisions that we have made over the past few years -- for going to war in Iraq, and even Afghanistan, for the laws we are passing, and the statements that politicians are making. Time to think more on all of these things.
In order to define how a war can be won, the enemy being fought must be defined. Is this war on terror a war against the tactic of terrorism, regardless of who uses it? Or is it a war on the idealogy of muslim extremism? Or is it a war on a specific group like Al Queda?
Outright, we can reject the proposition that this is a war on a single enemy such as Al Queda. Al Queda has splintered into many subgroups and muslim extremisim is not limited to the Al Queda organization.
But the notion that we are at war against muslim extremism falls down on two counts. Perhaps most important is the fact that world governments have identified non muslim groups around the world as terrorist groups under the "war on terror." So both the United States and our allies in this war have identified a broader enemy. Secondly, though, it would be difficult to make a case that we can "win" a war against a set of ideas, such as those espoused by muslim extremists. If, for example, we had said during World War II that our goal was to "win the war on fascism" we would have to admit that we either had lost, or that we are still at war today. There are still dozens of fascist regimes in the world and these governments have killed millions just in Africa over the last few decades. One might say that fascism has been contained, but not defeated. Given that muslim extremism is not a political movement so much as it is a religious movement, and thus trans-national, it would be difficult if not impossible to "contain" this set of ideas the way that fascism can be contained within narrow national borders.
But given the first point, that the US and others have defined non muslim extremist groups as enemies in this war on terror, we must conclude that the war is not solely against a set of ideas. Which leaves one to conclude that we are waging a war against the tactic of terrorism.
DEFINITION OF AN ENEMY
There is a basic discontinuity between the categories of activity that the words "war" and "terror" encompass. War is an activity, the object of which is an enemy. Terror is a tactic which can be used by anyone. It simply doesn't make sense to talk about a war on a tactic. For example, could one speak of a "war on hand-to-hand combat?" Or a "war on spying?" It just doesn't make sense.
Perhaps the closest examples that our civilization has in which we reject a particular tactical approach to combat are weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, and nuclear -- and genocide. Through a series of treaties, the countries of the world have sought to criminalize, in some global sense of crime, the use of these kinds of weapons or the elimination of a civilian population. One could say that we are now criminalizing terror as well. But it would be difficult to define any of these tactics as an "enemy" at least one that a "war" could be fought against.
Furthermore terror is fundamentally different from genocide and WoMD in at least one major way -- terror can be utilized as a tactic by a single person or a small group. Genocide and the creation of WoMD requires a large entity, typically a state. Certainly there are examples of small groups employing chemical weapons, such as in the Tokyo subways. But the mass production and utilization (thus the mass in WoMD) requires a large infrastructure. The crossover problem here might be in the concept of a briefcase nuke -- but today the origination of materials for such a device would still have to come from some national entity -- whether sold or stolen.
By contrast, one can gather a few dozen devotees and some easily acquired munitions and take 1000 school children and their parents as hostages, as was recently done in Russia. The easy accessibility of terror as a weapon makes it a tactic that cannot be managed through the existing notion of treaties and global national cooperation.
SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
President Bush had it right, the first time. A "war" against "terror" cannot be won. We can identify particular groups that have specific plans against the US and we can defeat those plans and groups. But we will never eliminate terror as a tactic.
1) There will always be people in the world who disagree and even hate western civilization and the US specifically. However, our national policies and the ways in which we interact with the rest of the world can serve to fuel or calm this hate. We should focus more energy and money on these issues.
2) Terror will continue to be a tactic used against the US and other civilized societies. We need to develop defenses against the introduction of terrorist elements and we need to have more refined ways of reacting to terrorists. This must be done while respecting and protecting our core beliefs in civil liberty and freedom of speech.
3) Organizations which promote terror are genuine enemies and should be fought. But there are different kinds of battles against different kinds of threats. States which harbor and promote terrorists can be battled through economic isolation, physical isolation (blockade) and ultimately through regime change as a last resort.
Transnational organizations such as Al Queda must be battled by evolving the tools we have available to fight organized crime. Many of the organizational and operational techniques, and even the activities (drug and gun running) overlap. The end goals of an Al Queda vs. Columbian drug runners are different but their methods are alike.
4) Finally, effective implementation of these methods to contain and reduce terrorism will only work through effective global cooperation.
I don't feel that I have done more to advance the world's thinking on these issues -- just advanced my own thinking. This process, however, does give me a framework for examining the decisions that we have made over the past few years -- for going to war in Iraq, and even Afghanistan, for the laws we are passing, and the statements that politicians are making. Time to think more on all of these things.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Essayist vs. Diarist
The New York Times recently referred to bloggers as "web diarists". When I saw this article I immediately reacted negatively -- I don't think of what I do on my blog as being a "diary" -- nor are most of the blogs that I read "diaries." The next day I happened to hear a piece on NPR about the art of essay writing. Essay writing seems to me to be much more like what I expect from blogs. Perhaps the medium has matured to the point where it is valuable to distinguish one type of blog from another -- diaries are certainly one important category, but not the whole story. Diarists, essayists, news aggregators, collaboration venues... each uses blogs as a technology but shouldn't they be distinguished from each other in how we refer to them? Diary blog, essay blog, news blog, collaboration blog?
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Mobile Apps at the Edge
The world is changing. My generation, which has accepted the mobile phone into our definition of reality defines it in the terms that we understand -- a telephone that happens to be in our pocket. The next generation, which has grown up with the mobile phone as an existing part of their reality, will make it into something entirely different. elastic space lists some of the fascinating social applications that always-on, location-aware mobile devices are making possible. Thanks to Marc Cantor for passing this on...
Monday, July 26, 2004
More BlogOn Wrap-Ups
A few other people had... issues with the way BlogOn was staged. Sean Bonner was a bit nicer about it in his blog:
Hopefully the conference organizers will get involved in this blog dialog and tell us what they plan on doing differently next time.
I think a lot of the panels were aimed at people who maybe weren't as dialed in on all the subjects being discussed. To someone with limited knowledge on the world of blogs it was probably very interesting...He has a slightly different proposal on how to solve the conference problem, one that I would be willing to try :-)
So I'm proposing this - let's actually do it and see what happens. We'll pick a hotel in some city with a big lobby with wifi access and a date, and that's it. No panels, no time limits, no structure, no sponsors trying to push their products. Just the people and the lobby. We'll publish the list of attendees as soon as they sign up and that will be the conference. A long weekend, or a few days during a week. I don't know if it will work, but if anyone thinks it's an interesting idea post here, or trackback and if enough people actually think it's worthwhile I'll see what I can do about setting it up.Marc Cantor echoes Sean's call for a "lobbycon" but calls it the "Open Source Conference" writing "WE (the people) need to just find someplace to hang out - BOTH in meatspace and virtual space and show eher the REAL power is." And Mike Rowehl has some good observations as well, pointing out that none of the presenters bothered to use the wiki provided by BlogOn organizers. Mike has a list of on topic questions that he wished had been addressed at the conference.
Hopefully the conference organizers will get involved in this blog dialog and tell us what they plan on doing differently next time.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Lets Reinvent Conferences
Frankly I felt that BlogOn was a waste of time and money. While I was sitting in the afternoon session (Track B luckily, as from all reports Track A was just a series of advertisements from sponsors) and blogging, reading RSS feeds, and watching the IRC channel stream by I recalled a post from Supernova by Martin Tobias -- Supernova Thoughts in which he writes
Revenue Vs. Content
Every conference organizer struggles with a balance between (a) providing content that attracts interesting paying attendees and (b) the value that this interesting paying attendee audience offers to potential sponsors. There are four ways that conference managers leverage the interesting paying audience in order to extract money from sponsors -- advertising (such as a logo on the conference bag); demonstration areas where sponsors have tables or booths to promote their company or product; special presentations in which companies have the opportunity to draw an audience to a demonstration of their product and talk by their representative; and (most insidiously) content participation, either in the form of keynote presentations or panel participation.
A particularly bad trend has been to present conferences, such as BlogOn, in which all of the sessions are panels. While this is a boon to conference organizers (more speaking slots to curry favor with sponsors) it is a disaster for attendees. Most panels are run as general investigations of a topic -- the moderator asks softball questions of each panelist, the conversation leaps from issue to issue, the result is a conversation that is a mile wide and an inch thick. This might work at a conference where the audience knows little about the topic. But at a conference like BlogOn the audience often knows MORE about the topics under discussion than the panelists.
Solution -- focused presentations by individuals that are in-depth and offer the opportunity for Q&A with a specific individual. Where a panel is scheduled, the topic should be specific (ideally divisive), panelists should represent opposing views (or at least a range of views), and the moderator's job should be to keep the conversation on topic, not dominate the conversation with his or her own questions.
Polyphonic Channels
At the modern conference we have wi-fi access allowing side bar conversations via IRC, wiki, blogs, IM, and email. Half the people in each session are typing away furiously on their laptops, more engaged in the blogosphere than in the meatspace. The challenge for conference organizers is how to bring these separate threads of conversation together, instead of allowing them to splinter. Can IRC, blogs, and wiki add value to the ongoing sessions in real time?
The suggestion was made at one point in the BlogOn general session to display the IRC channel on the main screen behind the panelists. Let everyone see the conversation amongst the attendees that was happening simultaneously with the panel discussion. For a variety of reasons this didn't happen, but the idea pointed in the right direction. For example, why should audience members go up to a microphone to introduce themselves and ask a question (which most often devolved into a statement... you know what I mean if you have been at one of these...) Why not have questions asked on the IRC channel and allow the moderator to sort out which of these really consitituted an on topic question?
Solution: This will require experimentation, but conferences such as BlogOn is the perfect place. Use technology to make these conferences a conversation amongst all attendees, not just a presentation by a minority.
Unfortunately, many of the sessions had an erie unproductive quality to them. The Gillmor Gang noted this as well. These days most conferences provide a wifi network and much of the audience is on their laptops during the sessions. But SuperNova, true to it's name, was OVER THE TOP in this regard. Nearly EVERYBODY was frantically typing away in e-mail, IM, or their blogs during all the sessions. Leaving the poor people on stage to wonder if anyone was listening! The CEO of Skype called in on a POTS line. It was erie to be in the audience looking up on stage at powerpoint slides being driven by an assistant with the dis-embodied voice coming over the PA. And of course he couldn't hear questions and the mikes didn't work well, so the Q&A was a disaster.I think that there are two challenges to the modern conference. Let me call these problems (1) Revenue Vs. Content and (2) Polyphonic Channels.
Revenue Vs. Content
Every conference organizer struggles with a balance between (a) providing content that attracts interesting paying attendees and (b) the value that this interesting paying attendee audience offers to potential sponsors. There are four ways that conference managers leverage the interesting paying audience in order to extract money from sponsors -- advertising (such as a logo on the conference bag); demonstration areas where sponsors have tables or booths to promote their company or product; special presentations in which companies have the opportunity to draw an audience to a demonstration of their product and talk by their representative; and (most insidiously) content participation, either in the form of keynote presentations or panel participation.
A particularly bad trend has been to present conferences, such as BlogOn, in which all of the sessions are panels. While this is a boon to conference organizers (more speaking slots to curry favor with sponsors) it is a disaster for attendees. Most panels are run as general investigations of a topic -- the moderator asks softball questions of each panelist, the conversation leaps from issue to issue, the result is a conversation that is a mile wide and an inch thick. This might work at a conference where the audience knows little about the topic. But at a conference like BlogOn the audience often knows MORE about the topics under discussion than the panelists.
Solution -- focused presentations by individuals that are in-depth and offer the opportunity for Q&A with a specific individual. Where a panel is scheduled, the topic should be specific (ideally divisive), panelists should represent opposing views (or at least a range of views), and the moderator's job should be to keep the conversation on topic, not dominate the conversation with his or her own questions.
Polyphonic Channels
At the modern conference we have wi-fi access allowing side bar conversations via IRC, wiki, blogs, IM, and email. Half the people in each session are typing away furiously on their laptops, more engaged in the blogosphere than in the meatspace. The challenge for conference organizers is how to bring these separate threads of conversation together, instead of allowing them to splinter. Can IRC, blogs, and wiki add value to the ongoing sessions in real time?
The suggestion was made at one point in the BlogOn general session to display the IRC channel on the main screen behind the panelists. Let everyone see the conversation amongst the attendees that was happening simultaneously with the panel discussion. For a variety of reasons this didn't happen, but the idea pointed in the right direction. For example, why should audience members go up to a microphone to introduce themselves and ask a question (which most often devolved into a statement... you know what I mean if you have been at one of these...) Why not have questions asked on the IRC channel and allow the moderator to sort out which of these really consitituted an on topic question?
Solution: This will require experimentation, but conferences such as BlogOn is the perfect place. Use technology to make these conferences a conversation amongst all attendees, not just a presentation by a minority.
Business of Blogging
Steve Boyd, Jason Calcanis, and Henry Copeland are talking about the business of blogging -- still this major problem in the format. By having a "moderator" who knows less about the business than most of the audience we end up with a discussion that is a mile wide and an inch thick.
More BlogOn Transcripts
Here is one on Business Transparancy and on The Transformation of Corporate Communications. The panel on blogging local media has not been posted yet as a transcript but was one of the more interesting. What I took from it was that local print media is dead -- wiped out by venues like Craig's List (Craig was on the panel to talk about this). But blogging offers a new mechanism for the content of local media to reach the local audience.
First Interesting Presentation at BlogOn
Shel Israel, a self-described recovering publicist, is running a panel on how social media is transforming corporate communications. A number of interesting items -- the business of "public relations" is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The press release was invented 98 years ago. Shel points out that 72,000 journalists have lost their jobs since 2000 and that as a result, the press release, once intended for the press, is now a primary news source in itself. The Internet allows companies to bypass news coverage, and provide information directly to its customers.
Shel is providing some case studies that show how effective press releases have been for his clients in driving business. I wonder of Shel has heard of Cluetrain -- he is making the case that the Internet allows markets to become conversations.
Shel is providing some case studies that show how effective press releases have been for his clients in driving business. I wonder of Shel has heard of Cluetrain -- he is making the case that the Internet allows markets to become conversations.
BlogOn Transcripts...
Amazingly, there are already transcripts for this morning's sessions online. Thanks to Mike Rowehl for these links: Defining Social Media and The Dark Side of Social Media
Initial impressions of BlogOn
BlogOn has attracted a set of very interesting attendees. In many cases the attendees know as much or more as the panelists. So why create panels in which a set of people blather on about topics in which the attendees all already agree? In other words, the conference is low value add, at least so far. Hopefully it will improve...
BlogOn 2004
Blogging from Chris Shipley's BlogOn conference. Fortunately for me the conference is being held at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley - about a 20 minute walk from my house. All conferences that I want to attend should be held here :-)
The first panel is underway and is entitled "Defining Social Media." Interesting group of speakers including James Currier (Tickle Inc), Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Michael Sikillian (Lycos), and Jim Spoher (IBM). The panel is moderated by Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. I just got here (and was a little late) so I need to start listening instead of typing :-)
The first panel is underway and is entitled "Defining Social Media." Interesting group of speakers including James Currier (Tickle Inc), Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Michael Sikillian (Lycos), and Jim Spoher (IBM). The panel is moderated by Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. I just got here (and was a little late) so I need to start listening instead of typing :-)
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Microsoft Mole?
Colly Myers almost destroyed Symbian when he was its CEO. He continues to say some of the same things (in this recent interview with The Feature) now that he leads IssueBits. According to The Feature Colly "...believes that OS-level applications have their place -- namely in extending the system level functions of a handset, but that Java applications make more sense for everything else" and he "....believes that the true mobile economy lies in services, and small Java applications are more akin to services, and more appropriate for cellular hardware / bandwidth than OS-level applications."
These are the same things that Colly, then CEO of Symbian, was saying to me two years ago, when I was the chief strategy officer for Borland trying to convince Symbian that they needed a development tools partner. Two years later, the world looks the same to me (and I guess to Colly) -- why doesn't Colly recognize that:
Is Colly trying to help out Microsoft? Convincing the non-MS world to ignore the need for a native device-side application development environment is tantamount to handing the market for handheld computing devices to Redmond.
These are the same things that Colly, then CEO of Symbian, was saying to me two years ago, when I was the chief strategy officer for Borland trying to convince Symbian that they needed a development tools partner. Two years later, the world looks the same to me (and I guess to Colly) -- why doesn't Colly recognize that:
- High-speed, reliable bandwidth is necessary for handset service-based applications to work and we don't have that now and won't have it for 10 years;
- there will always be a set of applications, or at least pieces of applications, that need to be on the device, not the network, and they need to be high performance -- think Doom as an obvious example and extend from there;
- 80% of all Java developers use the language as a SERVER development environment, not a client development environment. There are numerous problems with the quality of Java as a client side development tool, starting with standards;
- and then there is the problem with the size of the development communities. There are something like 2 million Java developers in the world (that is, professional developers, paid full time to write code). 20% of them use Java for real client side applications -- so we'll be generous -- 500,000 developers. There are 5 million developers using Microsoft tools, and 80% of them use MS for client side applications. That's roughly 4 million developers.
Is Colly trying to help out Microsoft? Convincing the non-MS world to ignore the need for a native device-side application development environment is tantamount to handing the market for handheld computing devices to Redmond.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Strange advice from T-Mobile
I have recently been having some problems with one of the GSM phone on my T-Mobile family plan -- it stopped receiving SMS messages. It could make and receive calls, send SMS messages but never received messages. So I called T-Mobile customer support.
I was quickly passed the dummy script of solutions and was passed on to technical support. The technical support person asked me to shut off the phone and wait while he "adjusted some settings." In a minute he asked me to restart the phone. Sure enough messages started coming through. That was strange enough in itself but the next part was stranger.
The tech support person asked me how often in a 24 hour period did I power cycle the phone. I told him that I never turn the power off. He then recommended to me that I shut off the phone at least twice per day! He assured me that he did this himself, and that this would give me much better service. He explained that when you turn your phone on, it registers with a particular cell tower. Throughout the day you may roam around and connect to multiple towers, but the first tower remains your registration point and the way the network finds you. However, as the day goes by, more and more people register at a given tower. The most recently registered devices get the best service...
Is this making sense to anyone out there?
I was quickly passed the dummy script of solutions and was passed on to technical support. The technical support person asked me to shut off the phone and wait while he "adjusted some settings." In a minute he asked me to restart the phone. Sure enough messages started coming through. That was strange enough in itself but the next part was stranger.
The tech support person asked me how often in a 24 hour period did I power cycle the phone. I told him that I never turn the power off. He then recommended to me that I shut off the phone at least twice per day! He assured me that he did this himself, and that this would give me much better service. He explained that when you turn your phone on, it registers with a particular cell tower. Throughout the day you may roam around and connect to multiple towers, but the first tower remains your registration point and the way the network finds you. However, as the day goes by, more and more people register at a given tower. The most recently registered devices get the best service...
Is this making sense to anyone out there?
Thursday, July 15, 2004
pulver.Communicator Beta Test
Jeff Pulver has granted special permission for me to blog about my experiences as a participant in beta test of his company's new pulver.Communicator software product which I will be doing over on my IP Inferno blog.
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