Don’t be a jerk, dude.
My column is up over at Intrepid Media and this month, it’s about how to be a better consumer.
I could have made it longer. There was much that could have been brought up and plenty of bitching to be done, but I decided to take the high road and leave it at three commandments and a request:
- Do your research
- Know that the person in front of you likely didn’t make the rules
- Have a Plan B
The recommendation was just to use “Please” and “Thank You” as often as necessary. I know in my line of work I don’t hear it enough.
Filed under daily | Comments OffI want to pass this along, this is srs bizness.
By ANDY KESSLER at the WSJ. I reprint the first few paragraphs here, then send you along to their website.
Earlier this month, Apple rejected an application for the iPhone called Google Voice. The uproar set off a chain of events—Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple’s board, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity—that may finally end the 135-year-old Alexander Graham Bell era. It’s about time.
With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone—office, home or cellular—rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.
Apple has an exclusive deal with AT&T in the U.S., stirring up rumors that AT&T was the one behind Apple rejecting Google Voice. How could AT&T not object? AT&T clings to the old business of charging for voice calls in minutes. It takes not much more than 10 kilobits per second of data to handle voice. In a world of megabit per-second connections, that’s nothing—hence Google’s proposal to offer voice calls for no cost and heap on features galore.
What this episode really uncovers is that AT&T is dying. AT&T is dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy.
To read the rest of this very important column, please click here!
Filed under 'spection, soapbox, to read | Comments Offa photo from Amsterdam and then I’m out for a muffin.
Here’s the beach in Den Haag, about 20 minutes by bycicle from the hotel. I LOVE to bike all around here, even when I get myself lost, and have to read a dutch map and dutch signs to find my way. Easy Peasy.
I didn’t say I was a terrific photographer! I’m working on that. When I get scads of money I’ll buy a nice digital SLR…right now, it’s a Samsung 102 point and shoot little thing.
Filed under daily | Comments Off