Much ado today on the internets regarding Comcast’s trial of metered usage in Portland.
Here’s my $0.02 (and then some).
The idea behind this is to identify (and punish) the high bandwidth users. Comcast (and other broadband companies) have skated by for years on this “bucket-of-bits” concept where you buy a bucket of bits (we’ve all seen the UPTO 16MB commercials). This is a whole additional discussion which I don’t want to get into here, but in short I refer to that advertisement as fraudband.
So with this bucket-of-bits concept you pay a monthly fee for a connection and you use it as much as you want. The problem is that the *more* you use it, the *less* the provider makes for your usage. This is an upside down business model and I’ve tried to think of other companies that are incented to sell you a product that you shouldn’t use (help me out by commenting if you know of a successful business model that follows this upside down paradigm (and don’t say cell phone companies)).
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life, Work Broadband, Cable Modem, Comcast, Fraudband, Internet
I know some of you are doing this, so take this as a kudos to you and not a criticism. Myself, I try, but I know there are areas where I could improve. Feel free to drop comments below for other ideas of things others (and myself) can do to improve…
I recently moved from Blacksburg, VA where there was a big push for local shopping and local dining (buy local. eat local. be local.). We took that to heart and while living in Blacksburg we dined at local establishments rather than chains (Blacksburg has actually been pretty successful (in the past) at keeping the chains at a distance). We shopped at the Blacksburg Farmer’s Market on weekends and we tried to keep it local for shopping when we could (we’ve been boycotting Wal-mart for years and my wife can claim not to have been in one for at least 5 years while I had to cheat once).
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Beef, Carbon Footprint, Environment, Farmers Market, Green, Local, North Carolina, Pork
I had a wonderful experience recently while attempting to get my North Carolina Drivers License. I spent three hours of my day for what should have been a 20-30 minute exercise. While I usually defend government and bureaucracies as I understand the problems associated with managing drivers licenses and identification for the 10th largest state (by population) which is over 9,000,000 people. I have to wonder at some of the rules and regulations that were put in place (for whatever reason) that make getting things done difficult, time consuming, and potentially even impossible.
Not to mention the fact that I almost failed the computer test (more on that later).
I did the smart thing prior to getting in the car and driving to the NC DOT offices. I looked online and determined all the information I would need and stuck all that information in a folder. The required information includes proof of residency, proof of age and identity, proof of liability insurance (huh?), and an original social security card.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Cars, Drivers License, Driving, Government, Insurance, NC DOT, North Carolina, Reviews, Testing
I’ve been in the market for a new car for several months. My 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee was starting to give me issues (not starting occasionally, computer malfunction, rough shifting (automatic), etc.). The Jeep had close to 145,000 miles on it and it was my daily driver. It was mostly highway miles and it was in excellent shape for a 10 year old car with that many miles. I bought it in 2000 and at the time, even though I considered myself greener than the average bear, I didn’t seem to mind the 16-20 MPG that it got. I wanted something big enough to haul around clients at lunch and something that I could get “out there” when I wanted to (I traded up from a Jeep Wrangler to the Grand Cherokee). I went with the loaded version (leather, seat heaters, moonroof, V8, Quadradrive, etc.)
While shopping for the new car, I wanted something with good fuel economy, but didn’t want to sacrafice on cargo space. As I told every salesman that I visited, “My three dogs go everywhere with me.” I didn’t really need the 4WD, even though it had come in handy a few times. I also didn’t need the gas guzzling that came along with the 4WDs.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Cars, Customer Service, Fit, Honda, MPG, Reviews
My mother recently told a friend of hers that I made great BBQ sauce (and BBQ to boot). Her friend sent me an e-mail and asked for the recipe so I responded with this e-mail.
Sorry this is late. I hope I didn’t miss the BBQ.
I love BBQ. It’s a passion of mine. My father and I have our disagreements regarding BBQ, and everyone I know thinks I’m right (of course). For instance, I did a pork shoulder (boston butt) for pulled pork last weekend when he was in town. I put it on the grill at 8pm on Friday night and we had it for dinner at 6pm the next day. I do it low-and-slow as to slowly cook the meat and make sure it’s not dry. I don’t peek at BBQ when it’s cooking, it’s BBQ, not a peep show. I don’t baste it. Just a bit of rub and 220 degrees for 20 hours or so until it’s done. In fact Julia said, “This is the best BBQ I’ve ever had.” My father said, “But it’s too moist.” Now, any BBQ connoisseur would laugh at that (as we did). I think he’s just jealous that I cook my BBQ for 20 hours to perfection while he is in a rush and his is a bit dry after 6 hours in a blast furnace. Now, I will admit that his pork is pretty damn good….but my pork is better!
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life BBQ, Big Green Egg, Pork
It must be my week to rant or at least complain about things I just don’t like on the Internet. Let me start by saying that this is the 2nd time I’ve had a similar experience, both times with car dealerships. I didn’t blog about the dealership in question last time, but it was First Team Volkswagen in Roanoke, VA. This time it was Leith Volkswagen in Raleigh, NC.
Let me start (again) with some background. People like to shop on the Internet. Many times, they are just looking for information to see what the current prices are, compare items, look at rebates or deals, do product research, etc. One particular reason they don’t visit a brick-and-mortar store is because they don’t want to deal with sales people and in some cases might not be ready to purchase something.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Cars, Customer Service, Internet, Privacy, Reviews
This is a bit of a rant, but I’m going to do it anyway. I drive a lot for my job. I spend endless hours on the road driving between client locations. I often have my iPhone on the dash where it gets better reception and use bluetooth for calls and even have it plugged into my car stereo via one of those junky tape deck adapters so I can listen to music, Podcasts, or more recently streaming Podcasts via Stitcher (which in my opinion is one of the killer iPhone apps). It’s also very handy for snapping photos of interesting things you see on the side of the road.
This morning, I was driving from Raleigh, NC up to Blacksburg, VA where I’ll be spending the week for work. I got off I-81 to fill up my car and when I was getting back on, I had a small altercation with a semi-truck driver. It was a typical entrance ramp on the right and as I was coming down the ramp a big rig, who was accelerating, got up close to the van in front of him in the right lane, making it impossible for me to merge. I am a pretty safe driver, so I slowed down almost to a stop and eventually was able to get in the right lane, but I was already in the gravel.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Customer Service, iPhone, Reviews, Social Networks
I have been an avid Firefox user since 1.0. It started mostly as an excuse to use something other than IE 6.0 and was one of my first forays into the anti-Microsoft movement. Prior to that, I had used Linux for servers, and tinkering but I wasn’t doing it for posterity, just because it appealed to me and was cool. But, I started to get the negative vibe from M$FT about the time Netscape folded so Firefox was a shoe in for me. I use it and encourage everyone I know to use it rather than IE.
On my Macs I’ve been mostly happy with Firefox, but I have to admit that it is slow. When Safari 4 came out I tried the beta and was pretty happy with it and only had a few unexplained crashes and only one of those caused me to lose some work (ironically, I was editing a WordPress entry when it crashed). I found myself using Firefox for the extensions (namely Delicious). Since the official release of Safari 4, it has become my primary browser on my Macs. The reason being speed; it is noticeably faster than Firefox. I even downloaded it on my PC so when I happen to have booted to Windoze, I run Safari.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Apple, Delicious, Firefox, Internet, Linux, Microsoft, Reviews, Safari, Windoze
According to this article from US Telecom, online video viewing is growing leaps and bounds. With 74% of broadband users downloading or watching videos online. The article is based upon two studies from Pew and the American Life Project.
What’s amazing about the numbers is that 15% more adults are watching online videos than using social networking sites. Another number that’s amazing is the “near-universal” use by 18-29 year olds (old media beware).
I work with a lot of communities who still think that “broadband” is just high-speed internet and nothing more (which granted, all this online video viewing is occurring over today’s broadband). I often coach them on the fact that broadband will deliver all of your telecom services in the future including services we don’t even know about yet as well as those we do (like cable TV, telephone, etc.). As more and more folks experience video online, they will pressure their local community leaders to become active in promoting broadband availability and broadband adoption so that they can experience the same services that those of us who live in more urban or suburban areas do.
Personally, I watch videos on my TV over Netflix from my Tivo, but also have a MythTV computer acting as a video server where I have ripped most of my DVDs and downloaded (mostly legal) videos. I also watch plenty of youtube, google video and plenty of old media sites (like comedy central).
If you don’t have broadband, why not? Is it too expensive or is it not available? If it’s not available, contact your local elected officials and ask what they are doing to bring broadband to your area. It’s not just for browsing the web anymore and has serious economic development impacts on your locality.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life, Work Broadband, Cable Modem, DSL, Fiber, Mythbuntu, MythTV, Social Networks
My boss and I were talking recently about blogs, the Internet, Social Networking (Social Media), Twitter, and the like. He brought up some statistic about blogs that I found interesting. That only 5% of blogs have been updated in the past 120 days (according to a New York Times blog entry from June). He considers himself one of the early bloggers and has had a blog since the dinosaurs. He regularly updates it (at least once per week but sometimes as frequently as dozen times per month) and has many opinions about the value of bloggers and blogs in general. I’m not going to go into that, but he can on his blog if he so chooses.
It got me to thinking about my own blog and the fact that it’s not something I update regularly. I sort of go through spurts where I’ll write blog entries a few times per week and other times where I either can’t think of a topic or I have bloggers block I just don’t want to blog on topics that may be on my mind.
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Sid Boswell Blog, Life Blogging, Internet, Social Networks, Twitter