MOBODOJO

This past Saturday, I walked into the 6th most trafficked Sprint store in the US and purchased a Sierra Wireless 598U USB aircard. I had heard that Sprint’s mobile data cards were fast and I wanted to see for myself. It was an easy enough purchase. After spending a hair North of US$60 I walked out of the door with it, ready to surf anywhere I was with my MacBook Pro at the famed high speeds of Sprint’s national 3G network.

By the time I had it all set up and was surfing away to sites like Neiman Marcus and ESPN, sites I generally never attend but did so just to see how fast they would load, I was blown away. It was more than fast. I felt like I was on my high speed cable network, it was so fast. My wife is with me, so I crank on Internet Sharing via AirPort and away we go…

Um, no. In fact, the network shuts off. I turn off sharing and the blazing speeds are back. I turn sharing back on, and no more connection again. Wow. I’m paying US$60 a month for this? Anyway, I stow it for later and we head home. I fiddle around and then head out to go to my favorite local spot for coffee and to get some work done for a few hours. Later, I spend time at home just futzing around. I’m really using the network to see how well it works.

This morning I head on over to the Sprint.com site to check on usage, since the SmartView app doesn’t keep track for you, and I am met with an amazing site. I have a mere 300MBs of usage left! What?! I spend a nerds worth of two days, around 12 hours, on the wireless network and I’ve supposedly used up my monthly quota already? Not even slightly, bub. I’m a nerd. I know what kind of data runs through a pipe being used for browsing and email.

I called Sprint support and told them the gory details and they decided that they couldn’t do anything except create a service ticket and wait. I wasn’t about to start paying US$0.05/MB in a few hours so I declined and turned it off. I boxed the whole thing up and took it back to the store for a full refund. I asked them about phone as a modem and the potential for unlimited data again, and they had no idea.

Now, if I were to start up a horticultural center and sell plants and gardening gear people would start coming to shop there. When people would come to me or other staff with questions about plants and feeds and stuff I’d have to tell them that I have no clue. I just sell the stuff. How many people do you think will shop at my store again, or at all?

Not smart, Sprint. Not smart.

Two days later, I return it.

Yes. I am railing against the “man” and on a rant again. Today I read an article from John C. Dvorak and from the Associated Press via Google News about how the FTC is planning on going after bloggers who do not declare if the products they review have been given to them freely. There is an issue at stake which implies that because a blogger has received a product at no cost that they feel obligated to produce a positive review, subsequently skewing the results in the companies favor. This is what advertising is for, but some bloggers have been taking advantage of this process with willing and monied PR folk itching to find easier ways to compel people to buy their crap.

Some bloggers get paid for articles. Others receive free products. I fall into that category, but only slightly. I follow the standardized and accepted practice of arranging for product reviews with PR firms and then I report on my findings objectively. This is called journalism, and it is a symbiotic relationship. I am under no obligation whatsoever to produce a positive review for any product I receive and the PR firms are under no obligation to send me anything. When I am interested in a product, and I’m rather discerning, I send a request to a PR contact. They either ship me the product or not. If they do ship it, more often than not I am asked to return it within 30-60 days.

This is a common practice which has been going on in legitimate consumer journalism circles for decades, and there’s nothing new about it. There are no secret, smoky back rooms where journalists hammer out deals worth millions. In fact, most of us our just barely scraping along. There is so much competition from upstart blog farms like Gizmodo and Engadget (at least in my end of the pool) simply drown everything in their firehose form of “journalism” that its now very hard for the quality reviewers to be heard over the sheer noise of blogger hell. PDA Handyman succumbed to the fury of blogging, briefly becoming Mobility Handyman, then shifting to the blog format of Mobodojo.

So, how does the FTC decide whether a person is a journalist or a blogger? Am I a blogger because I use WordPress? What if I used another blogging tool like B2evolution or Textpattern? What if I switched to Joomla or Drupal? Would I then be considered a journalist? What if I purchased all of the goods I review? Would I then have to prove that I used my own money and wasn’t given funds to do so from a manufacturer? What about PC Magazine, MacWorld magazine, or any other magazine which reviews products? They use the same exact processes I do to secure goods for review. Since they post reviews online are they, too, to be considered bloggers?

This entire FTC whirlpool smacks of having not been well thought through. What I’d like to know is if sites like Gizmodo and Engadget will get consideration for being large sites which each handle millions of monthly hits? Are they journalists? I’m sure they consider themselves such. They do journalist-like things, but they do it from a personal perspective which steps well outside the bounds of being objective. Maybe that’s my failing. I am, at times, very biased and in those moments I consider myself a pundit. Of course, I categorize these posts under “Opinionation” so they are not confused with news. When I do post news, which is rare these days, I often slip in some of my personal thoughts.

I never, however, allow any aspect of the procurement process to shade my reviews. I can point to a case in fact; the Sony Mylo 2. To be blunt, its a piece of crap and its nowhere near being worth the money Sony sells it for. I wrote the review, sent the link to my PR contact, noted that it was rather harsh but didn’t get upset, and she thanked me. We discussed some more products for review, and I’ve not heard from her since. I could ping her again, asking about the VAIO P or the upcoming Sony PSPgo, but I doubt it will result in anything. That’s the price I pay, and I gladly pay it to retain my honesty and integrity. That’s because I’m a journalist and a pundit. I speak my mind when I have an opinion (often) and I clearly and concisely review products when I get them.

I wonder what category that will put me in with the FTC. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see later this year.

I seriously doubt that anyone who reads the Dojo is unaware of my deep and abiding love of Apple and its fantastic products. You may, however, be unaware of my deep loathing for some things Apple manages to screw up, even when they are “teh shiz”. In this particular case I speak, as I make so well known in this posts title, that I am very, very, very peeved at Apple’s at once brilliant, then horrendous Mail.app application. Those of you who are stuck in Windows will never know the joy of Mail.app (when its working) and, at the same time, will never know what fear and hate is truly like. To love something so much that you continue loving it when it treats you like crap is a special feeling. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m noting this for posterity… I’ve set up a MozyHome Unlimited account and it is starting now. I just set up my first backup set and its working through it now. My complete backup, sans my large iTunes library which is already handled by Time Machine, is 97GBs. That’s a load of stuff and according to Mozy it will take some time before its fully finished. Once done, however, the local tool will only upload the items which are changed and not everything. That means won’t, or shouldn’t, take long once the big haul is managed. We shall see, and I’ll be updating you as we go.

Regarding the MozyHome software itself, its pretty easy. Its a little odd in that it offers pre-configured sets which you just check or not (i.e., preferences, application settings, Microsoft Office files, etc…), but you can also just tell it to backup your entire user directory. It appears that you can select both, which seems redundant, but there it is. Nicely, though, the system runs in the background and has options for controlling when it will perform backups and for throttling bandwidth usage. My issue with the bandwidth controls is that at the low end you can pick 32Kbps or 668Kbps but nothing in between. You can pick a lot faster (up to 5.2Mbps) but nothing in between the lowest two. Weird.

Anyways, it will take some time before its all done so when something interesting happens I’ll let you know.

I was watching KTLA’s coverage of the entry line at WWDC the other day and I noticed that someone was throwing little footballs and bundled t-shirts into the crowd around KTLA technology reporter Kurt Knutsson. What I didn’t find out until this morning was that those little footballs and those t-shirts and Kurt’s iron will to ignore these assaults on his person were coming from a cadre of bikini-clad ladies being pulled around in a horse-drawn carriage to promote iPorn, the first free porn video application for the iPhone.

I know this because iPorn creators AdultVest (yeah… that’s an adult industry capital investment group) sent out a press release this morning claiming victory over opposition. While they didn’t mention names, its clear that Apple was quite upset with all of these proceedings. Apple wouldn’t let them into the show, the San Francisco Police threatened to revoke the operating license for the carriage, and later the owners of the Gold Club removed all signs and paraphernalia regarding iPorn at a little soirée they had that night.

iPorn, however, got what they wanted. They wanted publicity and parading half-naked girls around the Moscone West Center had quite the impact. There were guys all around snapping pictures and, as you can see above, even Kurt was pleased to join in the carnal-related fun. iPorn also garnered 35,000 (or so they say) new registered users from the publicity stunt. Apple, on the other hand, is not so pleased as pornography is not what they want their iPhone to be known for. After all, Apple is related to Pixar which is now a Disney company and Steve Jobs is involved deeply in all three.

All in all, Apple can do nothing about iPorn unless is plans on compartmentalizing the iPhone’s web access to limit its ability to receive the videos which iPorn sends to its members. It turns out that the iPorn thing is not an application, so Apple can’t turn it down. I’m sure Apple’s lawyers are working hard on a “solution”.

In case I hadn’t covered all of the bases in my multi-platform ranting of the day, I figured I’d go take a look at the upcoming Zune HD from Microsoft’s “Beating A Dead Horse Dept.” and was not shocked to discover what I… discovered… Hm. It turns out, and I’m sure I’m coming into the rather later, that the Zune HD isn’t actually HD. The unit itself, a rather snazzy un-Microsoft-ian industrial design, can actually only handle a decidedly non-HD 480×272. In order to see HD video from the… ahem… Zune HD you need to get a “Sold Separately” HD dock, and even then it only supports up to 720p.

yay.

So, it has a small screen resolution, but it sports a touch screen, HD radio reception (that’s cool, really), and its very nice looking if you like brushed aluminum. Who doesn’t. Oh, and it has a web browser. It sorta sounds like an iPod Touch. Oh hell. I’m not going there. You know how hard Apple rocks the iPod Touch. It does really look quite nice, though. Maybe that’s the trick up its sleeve. Mesmerization by industrial design.