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Clean your computer out already — today
Yes, it’s a completely artificial “holiday” which had its origins with the Institute for Business Technology, but I can’t help but advise you to take heed of Feb. 8 as “Clean Out Your Computer Day.”
Because, let’s face it, if your computer(s) are anything like mine, you are a disgusting digital slob.
For more than a year now, I’ve been trying to wrangle my digital photos all into one collection, but the task is so daunting that I usually just curl into a ball and photograph THAT, creating one more photo that’s scattered on a hard drive somewhere.
Iolo, a company that makes a piece of software called System Mechanic, gave me a heads-up about the holiday and offered these sobering stats about our messy data habits:
- The average American adult has 1,800 digital files, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
- Americans waste nine million hours per day searching for misplaced items. On average, people spend a year of our lives looking for lost items, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers.
Gross!
So, tonight, I plan to at least clean some icons off my desktop and really think about how I might merge my photo libraries (which include photos across three computers, two iPhones and multiple copies of Picassa, iPhoto and Aperture.
Wish me luck and if you’d be so kind, post in the comments how you deal with digital clutter across multiple computers, hard drives and mobile devices. I’ll post some tips this week as I come across them.
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Google scores with Super Bowl ad; GoDaddy not so much
Last night, after seeing Google’s Super Bowl ad (below), I tried to remember a better, more well-executed tech-related ad that has aired during the year’s biggest football game.
All that came to mind was Apple’s “1984.” Sure, there were some creative ones during the dot-com boom (and some awful ones, too), but Google’s ad does so much in 30 seconds, that it became one of my favorite tech company ads of all time. It’s sweet, smart, conveys an amazing amount of information and gets to the heart of why Google’s important.
I was asked this morning why Google would advertise a search engine that everybody is already familiar with and at least two tech journalists I know expressed cynicism about the usefulness of such an ad.
Let’s think about that — Google this year introduced its first hardware product, the Nexus One smart phone, has been making moves in the netbook and tablet market and is incorporating more social media information into its bread-and-butter, search results.
Google wants to be your buddy — a company you trust and rely upon every day — and a Super Bowl ad is one of the ultimate ways a company can try to ingratiate itself to the general public. The ad’s quality is high and I think the company scored.
I also thought Austin-based HomeAway’s ad (above) was quite good — it played like a short movie trailer for a new “National Lampoon’s Vacation” movie — I got two big laughs out of it, and it made me want to watch the full 14-minute version. (I haven’t yet.) A Chevy Chase comeback? I never would have imagined that. (Read how that ad came to be in this story.
Less successful for me were Motorola’s only-slightly-amusing Megan Fox-in-a-tub ad, Vizio’s TV apps ad (which was busy and visually interesting, but also confusing) and the always execrable ads from GoDaddy.com, which are typically among the worst every year (and not worth a link). This year proved no exception. I’ve seen people post online that they were outraged by the Web hosting/domain registration company’s risque Danica Patrick ads, but they’re no worse than the ones in previous years. They must work in some way because cringing at GoDaddy’s witless, smutty, soft-core-for-beer-hat-wearers ads is becoming an annual Super Bowl tradition.
More thoughts on the big game’s commercials? Read a Super Bowl ad roundup from our TV writer, Dale Roe.
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3-D is a giant question mark in our future
Over my long break, I had a little bit of time — in between diaper changes and trying to function without basic sleep needs — to think about the coming wave of 3-D products that will attempt to infiltrate our living rooms and, more importantly, to go see “Avatar” with my wife at a 3-D-equipped IMAX theater.
Whatever you think of the movie itself (and I have mixed feelings that get more mixed the further away I get from my initial awed reaction), the damage is done: the movie had made so much money that it’s going to be the linchpin of the argument as to why we should care about 3-D entertainment in the home. (If you want to hear me ramble on about 3-D in the home, you can listen to me and David Cole on this podcast, though I warn you it may contain some salty language.)
When “Avatar” makes its way to DVD/Blu-ray, people will want to have that same experience at home and will be inevitably disappointed when the 2-D presentation of the movie is lacking. (They might also notice more plotholes the second time around, but I’ll leave that to the movie critics). Will the need to see the movie in its full glory be enough to push sales of new 3-D HDTVs, Blu-ray players and glasses? It reminds me of the old computer game days when a single video game like “Wing Commander II” could spur sales of new PC hardware, including sound cards, so that gamers could enjoy the fully realized version of the game.
If you talk to people who’ve seen the movie, as I did today with a group of friends I was having lunch with, you’ll find that even in the relatively controlled environment of a large theater, the experience varies widely. Some people I know enjoyed the movie despite getting a headache. One friend stopped wearing the glasses entirely about midway through the movie. Others thought the CGI looked terrible and cartoony, although to my eyes, it looked like the best computer-generated imagery I’ve ever seen on the big screen.
Take that kind of widely varying range of experiences and multiply it by the millions of living room configurations — TV sizes, proximity of the couch, viewing angle of the 3-D technology employed by the TV — and you’re going to see headaches that have nothing to do with wearing the glasses for too long. 3-D at best feels like an imprecise form of entertainment that will degrade depending on your home setup in myriad ways.
I’m not sure that our tolerance for glitchy tech — we drop phone calls and expect spam to fill in our inbox every day without much complaint — will extend to these products that, at least at the outset, will cost thousands of dollars.
Which makes me wonder… who is 3-D for? Certainly the early adopters, but what about everyone else? Who’ll have the patience to try to jump through the attendant hoops?
“Avatar” is now the highest grossing film in movie history, and with every set of $100 million the movie makes, you have to guess the number of fans who can’t wait to recreate that experience for themselves only grows.
I just hope the technology matures quickly because it’ll be a short window between now and the time “Avatar” arrives, ready for home viewing.
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Why digital media distribution needs to happen yesterday
Or, “Come on, get your act together, Netflix.”
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Further ruminations on that iPad thing
Here are some lingering questions I still have about the iPad, ones that I don’t have any clear answers to share. Macworld recently did an excellent job recently rounding up almost everything we know about the iPad. My questions are the ones not answered in that piece.
- Can the iPad print documents and Web pages to a printer (via WiFi, I would imagine)? This is actually a dealbreaker question for my wife, who would like to buy an iPad, but won’t if it has no print capabilities. The inclusion of iWork suggests it will, but we’re not sure.
- Would the iPad have been a better e-book reader if it included an OLED display instead of LED? If you’ve never seen an OLED screen up close, they are beautiful to behold. The colors are far more saturated than on an LED or LCD screen, but they are very pricey. When it looked like the iPad would be $1,000, an OLED screen seemed like a possibility.
- Why no iTunes TV service? The rumor going around a while back was that iTunes would roll out a cable-TV-like subscription service for a monthly fee. That didn’t happen. Wouldn’t that have made the iPad a more attractive product, positioning it to have almost DVR-like capabilities?
- Why did Apple opt for ugly dongles instead of a dedicated SD memory card slot? That would have made the iPad a great media player for digital photos and camcorder footage shot on SD cards. The Macbook Pro now has an SD slot and it should be a standard feature on all future Mac products that aren’t iPhones or iPods.
- How soon might we see other 3G providers for the iPad than AT&T? The iPad requires no 3G contract, so you could presumably use it with other wireless providers, but its insides are probably not compatible with Verizon, say, or others, since they use a different kind of 3G network. My guess: not very soon.
- Is there really a camera in there? I doubt it very much. Though it would be nice for Apple to spring a surprise on that for customers, there’s no way they wouldn’t have mentioned it in their presentation if it was going to be a feature. The iPod Touch has a space for a camera, but so far we’ve seen no camera in it. This is probably Apple’s designers just planning for the future when an iPad might include one.
- What kinds of apps will we see specifically for the iPad? If the iPhone has taught us anything it’s that app developers are incredibly creative and will find ways to use the hardware in unexpected and brilliant ways.
- How will it feel to type on the iPad when you’re not sitting down comfortably? I can’t see typing on one of these things and moving at the same time. Will this create a whole new kind of public safety issue? Will walking-while-iPadding be the new texting-while-driving?
- Will we see iPads at SXSW Interactive? Steve Jobs’ timeline for the iPad’s release (60 days for the WiFi version, 90 days for the 3G) places it sometime in late March, weeks after the fest. But it’s possible some key tech reviewers might get early access to an iPad or that Apple itself might show off the device at the festival (very unlikely, but possible). I doubt it would be the 3G version, though, because it’s going to be hard enough for AT&T to keep up with iPhone voice and data at the fest.
- Is it too late to change the name? Seriously, Apple. Think about this one.
Got your own questions? Post them in the comments.
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The official SXSW iPhone app is naughty
As part of my month-and-a-half-long gearing up for South by Southwest Interactive, today I downloaded one of the festival’s official iPhone apps, called, “my.SXSW.”
The app includes a map of the festival’s events, a full schedule and even a QR-Code-based bar code scanning tool that will allow you to exchange contact information with other badgeholders (hey, who needs a Poken?).
One surprise, though, is that the iTunes page for the app says that “my.SXSW’ is rated 17+ for reasons that include, “Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor,” “Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity” and “Drug Use or References” among a laundry list of naughtiness:
When you download the app itself, you get a pop-up window with the following warning:
Now, we’re sure the SXSW app isn’t going to be downloading Internet porn or sexting you at all hours of the night (though that would be interesting). It probably has to do with SXSW’s notoriously dirty band names that sometimes pop up or descriptions of panels or films dealing with sex or other adult content.
We’ll let you know if we hear about any incidents where anyone was scandalized by this app. Won’t somebody please think of the CHILDREN!?
Edited to add: Thanks to reader Michael Bartnett for pointing out that there is a second official SXSW app called “SXSW Play.” That app contains the same warning and is also Rated 17+.
UPDATE: 2:54 p.m. — it seems that any App Store application that includes an embedded Web browser or allows access to third-party content is required to be rated 17+, according to the Web site tuaw.com.
However, I just looked up “Tweetie 2,” which also contains its own Web browser and allows access to third-party content (Tweets, Twitpic images, etc.) and that app is only rated “4+” (Ages 4 and Up). Wow, inconsistent and useless ratings on the App Store? Who would have thought?
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Revealed at last! The secret of how to get more followers on Twitter!
Post good stuff.
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The Linkdown for Monday, Feb. 1
The Linkdown has returned after a long leave of absence in which tiny babies were born, iPads were revealed and everyone became a tech geek wearing 3-D glasses to see the biggest movie ever made.
Eventful couple of months! Here’s some of what you might have missed while I was gone. We need to catch up!
- A few SXSW Interactive updates: RSVP early for parties (including Mashable), check out the finalized list of keynote speakers (including Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter) and check out the most recent panelist/session list update.
- CNN says: “Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot.” His wife (and yes, he’s married): “You said you were trying to cure CANCER!”
- While I was away, AT&T and Verizon both announced improvements they’re making to their wireless networks. The pipes, they keep expanding.
- Logitech introduces free iPhone/iPod Touch app that turns your device into a wireless mouse/trackpad for Mac or PC. And it’s free. I’ve seen other apps that do this, but still — free app!
- Austin-developed Android app SocialMuse was one of 30 Best Mobile Apps for Android as chosen by Google.
- Connected Texas gets about $3 million to improve Texas broadband.
- Conjunctured Coworking turns a year old.
- Computer Club of Austin hosts a talk about privacy by tech expert Gary Chapman tomorrow night.
Got an item that should be featured is in The Linkdown? Post it in the comments or e-mail it here.
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Apple’s big reveal: it’s called the iPad
Ending months, if not years, of speculation, today Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s mystery product. It’s called the iPad and many of the rumors about what it is were right on target.
In form and function, it looks like a large iPod Touch. It has a touchscreen, a single button at the bottom and an aluminum back. It can be used to browse the Web, pull up Google Maps and browse photos, all the things you’d expect to do on an Internet-connected iPod Touch or iPhone. It has an on-screen virtual keyboard like those products, but because of the size of the screen, it’s much closer in size to an actual keyboard.
It includes iTunes for downloading music, TV shows and movies and can apparently play YouTube videos in HD quality. It has a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, is half an inch thick and will come in 16-Gigabyte, 32 GB and 64 GB sizes. It runs on a 1-GHz processor, which is not extremely fast for a laptop, but is probably swift for something modeled on a cell phone or mobile media player.
It’ll of course have apps — some demonstrated today included video games, a New York Times app and an app called “Brushes” for fingertip painting/drawing, like the app currently available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
The device is available in three Wi-Fi versions and three versions that can access 3G wireless networks. The prices start at $499 for Wi-Fi only, up to $829 for a 64-Gigabyte version with 3G. 3G fees will apply: AT&T will over unlimited access for $30 a month or 250 megabytes a month for $15 on the 3G versions of the iPad. No two-year contract will be required.
Apple’s iPad page is available for more details and videos.
Want to talk about it? Join our live chat at 1 p.m. CST here on Digital Savant.
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Live Chat: Apple’s big tablet day and more
Today at 1 p.m. CST, we’ll be discussing Apple’s “New creation” announcement, as well as any other news revealed at the company’s San Francisco event.
Though there’s no official video stream, we’ll be following the news on Engadget, Macworld and NPR, which will all be live-blogging the event when it starts at noon CST. Come join us right after to discuss.
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Twitter CEO to speak at SXSWi
The CEO of Twitter will take part in a keynote interview at South by Southwest Interactive, the festival announced today.
Evan Williams of Twitter will be interviewed by media analyst Umair Haque on Monday, March 15.
SXSW also announced that Valerie Casey will give the March 14 keynote at the festival. She is the founder and director of the Designers Accord. According to the announcement from SXSW: “Casey works with organizations all over the world to create positive social and environmental impact. She has been named a ‘Guru you should know’ by Fortune magazine, a ‘Hero of the Environment’ by Time magazine, and a ‘Master of Design’ by Fast Company.
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SXSW releases initial schedules
Attendees, start your planning: Preliminary schedules are now up at the SXSW Web site.
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SXSWi regular Brad L. Graham dies
Brad L. Graham, known for hosting the “Break Bread with Brad” event at South by Southwest Interactive, has died, the St. Louis Dispatch is reporting. He was 41.
Graham was a theater publicist and a social-networking pioneer. He’s also credited with coining the term “blogosphere”.
The time of death is unknown, and Graham is thought to have died of natural causes, according to the Dispatch story.
More:
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Digital Savant returns next year
I’m about to embark on the least-technological adventure of all: childbirth. We’re due next week.
I’ll be out of commission for several weeks, returning Feb. 1 . Of course, if Apple should suddenly introduce the tablet computer of our dreams, I’ll probably dip back in to write about it, but otherwise, I’ll talk you then. Have a great holiday season and a happy new year!
Thanks everyone for reading this year.
— Omar
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#Avatarhype
Earlier today, i posted a Tweet about James Cameron’s upcoming movie, “Avatar,” which is released on Friday.
I wrote, “I heard they’re installing nets behind seats for “Avatar” screenings because your brain gets blown out of the back of your head.”
I added the hashtag, “#Avatarhype.” Because I’m blessed with funny friends who followed it up with some very funny posts with the hashtag, within a half hour, a new Internet meme was born.
One of the things that’s hard to explain to people who dismiss Twitter is how easily and how quickly something silly like this can spread and suddenly involve dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of other people, many of whom you may not even know.
As of right now, you can see several pages worth of #Avatarhype Tweets (some of them Not Safe For Work; you’ve been warned). Some of my favorites are listed below:
- “Avatar” is so awesome it got “It’s Complicated” pregnant. #AvatarHype
- Don’t spoil it for your friends but Avatar actually is shown in 6D. #AvatarHype
- In recognition of Avatar’s special effects, all other movies will only have “effects.” #AvatarHype
- The “Avatar” title font is so beautiful, soccer moms around the world adopted it for all of their outgoing e-mails! #avatarhype
- Seeing Avatar will make your mistresses delete the texts and your wife put down the golf club. #Avatarhype
- Alan Moore is re-writing WATCHMEN and replacing the squid with the release of AVATAR. #Avatarhype
- “Avatar“‘s reach is so deep, that octopus just gave it “Five Coconuts Up.” #AvatarHype
- Garmin has created a new product (the Na’vi) whose sole function is to get you to Avatar screenings #AvatarHype
- People love the effects in Avatar so much that Vermont and Iowa made it legal to marry them. #AvatarHype
The hashtag worked so well that one poster asked, “Is #avatarhype real or an ingenious web 2.0 marketing campaign kicked off by 20th Century Fox?”
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Review: ‘Super Mario Bros. Wii’ for Nintendo Wii
When it was announced earlier this year, “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” looked like an instant classic. A follow up to the successful Nintendo DS game, “New Super Mario Bros.,” it looked like the kind of game that would unite old-school gamers and Wii late-comers. It would combine the classic 2-D gameplay of the original Nintendo “Super Mario” games with the Wii’s family-friendly motion controller and multiplayer gameplay.
On delivery, though, “NSMBW” is an odd duck. It’s polished and playable, of course. It has the clear markings of Nintendo’s A-Game in its intricate level design, subtle touches (though it’s 2-D, the game has bright, clever animation throughout) and enjoyable sound design. But by taking half-measures on both the single-player game and the frantic, near-impossible multiplayer side, this Wii game ends up being neither a classic nor anything revolutionary. In fact, it feels like filler. Very well-made, fun-to-play filler, but nowhere near the standards Nintendo has set with games like “Super Mario Galaxy” and “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.”
First off, the game is incredibly frustrating to play, even in single-player mode. Either I’m aging past my gaming prime or the game’s difficulty has been ratcheted up, but I found myself playing levels over and over again, dying often. Though the game offers a mode that shows you how to get past levels, it’s hardly useful; it’s not hard to figure out how to get past levels, it’s hard to coordinate your brain with your hands with the Nintendo Wii controller to do what you have to do with the split-second timing needed to survive.
Speaking of the Wiimote, the game goes old-school by having you play with the controller on its side. But the game does feature some motion-controlled “Waggle.” In order to pick up blocks and fallen turtles, you hold down the 1 button and shake the controller. Neat idea, but having to do this every time wears out its welcome quickly.
More frustrating is the game’s save system. You can only save your progress at the end of castle levels, which means that if you run out of lives before you get there (and you will. Often), you have to play those difficult levels all over again when you continue or revert to a saved game.
While that ups the (forced) replayability quite a bit, it makes for a game that you more often suffer through than enjoy when the going gets tough. The levels themselves are great and varied, if you can get to them, which becomes a major challenge. I found myself shutting off the Wii in disgust on several occasions when I simply couldn’t progress in the game. Maybe other gamers will feel differently; what feels crushingly difficult to me might be a welcome challenge to someone who typically breezes through games like this.
Multiplayer is hilariously fun at first, but also problematic in that introducing more characters to the mix makes the game exponentially more difficult. Jumps and other maneuvers that are already difficult in single-player become impossible when you have three other characters on screen bumping into you or taking your power-ups.
“New Super Mario Bros. Wii” is made up of some great parts that don’t add up to a cohesive or satisfying whole. It’s exactly the 2-D, old-school-style game that was promised, but there’s something disappointing about a big-budget game that delivers in that respect, but offers little more. As gamers, we sometimes have to be careful what we wish for.
“New Super Mario Bros. Wii
$50, for Nintendo Wii
Rated E for Everyone
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Holiday awesome: man builds ‘Guitar Hero’ Christmas lights
I heard about this last night from CNet, which in turn got the scoop from Make Magazine: a man has turned his garage door into a playable “Guitar Hero” game using 21,268 Christmas lights.
It’s the coolest thing you’ll see today. Trust me; just watch the video:
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AT&T going down same broadband pricing road Time Warner Cable tried (UPDATED)
It all feels a little too familiar.
Though nothing official was announced, de la Vega hinted that the company would reward customers who use less data and seek to educate its customers about bandwidth usage. He also said that a pricing structure that addresses data usage on the iPhone is a possibility.
It reminds me, as it should remind many others, of the kinds of things we heard from Time Warner Cable earlier this year when they suffered a PR disaster in the form of reaction to a trial on tiered bandwidth pricing for its Road Runner Internet service. Then, too, we heard tales of bandwidth hogs who were straining the network and how unfair it was for everyone else who had to pay the same amount for less Internet usage.
In that case, Time Warner Cable compared tiered pricing to the way cell phone companies charge for minutes. Now, one of those wireless companies, AT&T is discussing the possibility that the $30 a month its iPhone users pay for unlimited data usage may not be enough when it comes to the most active users. These users are presumably streaming video, one of the most data-intensive things you can do on an iPhone.
The biggest difference is that in this case, given the iPhone’s relatively closed structure on apps you can download, AT&T can’t insinuate that those same users are illegally downloading mountains of movies and TV shows on the Web. These are users who are downloading apps that are free or that they paid for and using the iPhone in ways that they should be perfectly free to. They’re paying for it, every month.
But, here’s the thing… not only is AT&T going down a very dangerous road with its most connected customers — one that Time Warner Cable emerged from bruised and battered and with no pricing structure successfully initiated — but it’s also using some of the same condescending language. AT&T says it wants to “educate” its customers about bandwidth usage, something Time Warner said as well, but to date, I haven’t seen the results of whatever educational initiatives Time Warner sought to implement.
I’ve received no notice from Time Warner Cable as a Road Runner customer that a bandwidth meter that would allow you to monitor your own usage has ever become available. And the only wisdom I’ve gleaned lately on what might have been is that the average Internet user is said to consume about 34 gigabytes of data a day, which would have been quite an expensive proposition for most customers had Time Warner Cable had its way on pricing. In fact, as Time Warner itself pointed out, Austin might be a city where the average is higher than in the rest of the U.S.
I suppose that’s some kind of learning.
The problem with de la Vega’s statements is that they undercut AT&T’s recent ad campaign, featuring actor Luke Wilson, in which the company refutes Verizon Wireless on its claims about AT&T’s 3G network.
On one hand, AT&T is saying that’s not true and that its network is the best in the nation. On the other hand, it’s saying that there’s a major problem with its most iPhone active users and that action needs to be taken to ensure the 3G network runs smoothly for everyone else.
These arguments aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do point to AT&T’s tricky balancing act. They must acknowledge what every iPhone user knows: that dropped calls and occasional data outages are par for the course, while also defending against Verizon’s potentially damaging (and not necessarily untrue) claims that it has a superior network.
And looming over the horizon is the possibility that the iPhone will become available on the Verizon Wireless network next year, introducing a whole new set of headaches for AT&T.
AT&T is doing itself no favors with public statements about tiered iPhone bandwidth pricing or with its embarrassing ads, which not only fail to ring true, but which seem even more damaging to the company’s credibility given de la Vega’s comments. And it’s sure not doing any favors for Luke Wilson’s career either.
The company acknowledges there are holes in its network and gives customers a tool to report those holes, but its ads seem to suggest a mighty, robust network, certainly not the one that this season’s Verizon ads have mercilessly tweaked.
The mixed messages seem most hollow when we see commercials for the iPhone itself. They highlight all the apps you can download and all the things you can do on AT&T’s 3G network.
The message to customers sound like this: “Yes, you can do all that — but we’d rather you didn’t. At least, not to excess.”
I think time will prove these to be significant media gaffes. It’s painful to see AT&T become the Microsoft of the wireless industry when it comes to confusing marketing seemingly designed to alienate its most loyal customers.
UPDATE: 3:56 p.m.— an AT&T representative tells me that de la Vega’s comments have been taken out of context by most news outlets. You can listen to the entire one-hour presentation here (registration is free).
Here are some excerpts AT&T sent of the Q&A:
From Ralph de la Vega:
“So you are right that about 3% of the smartphone customers are driving about 40% of the traffic. So I’m not going to give you in detail what we’re going to do, but if 3 are causing 40% then we’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage so they don’t crowd out the other customers in those same cell sites. And you’ll see us address that more in detail…
“What’s driving usage on the network and driving these high usage situations are things like video, or audio that keeps playing around the clock. And so we’ve got to get to those customers and have them recognize that they need to change their pattern, or there will be other things that they are going to have to do to reduce their usage. We have erred on the side of understanding customer behavior first, and then taking action second. But you can rest assured that we’re very, very sure we can address it in a way that is consistent with net neutrality and FCC regulations that are in place or will be in place.”
John Hodulik, Analyst at UBS:
“Right. Now is — we are starting to hear from a number of different carriers about usage-based pricing in wireless, and — but it hasn’t emerged yet. Do you expect that to basically come to the market next year? And has it not come because it’s sort of a systems issue or a competitive issue or a regulatory issue? Or why haven’t we seen user based pricing yet? Or all of the above?”
Ralph de la Vega:
“I think it’s probably a combination of all of those. I think one of the first things that we need to do is we need to educate the customers. And it’s something that customers today have not been used to doing, so we’ve got to get them to understand what represents a megabyte of data. And so what we’re doing now is we’re improving all of our systems so that we can begin to give customers real-time information about their data usage and begin to get customers educated. And I think longer-term, there’s got to be some sort of a pricing scheme that addresses the usage, but that’s going to be determined by industry competitive factors, regulatory factors and customer [successes].
“So I can’t give you a prediction, other than our first area of focus is to get the information to the customers so they know their own patterns of usage. We did a trial using our landline capabilities, using this same kind of concept. And what we actually found out is customers didn’t know how they were using data, including many parents who didn’t know how their children were using data. But once you alerted them to it, they actually reduced their consumption significantly without anything further than just letting them know that that data was being used in an inordinate fashion.
“So we are going to look at that and address that first, and then we’ll decide where to go based on the industry competitive pressures and regulatory situations.”
Thoughts? Post them in the comments.
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NORAD Santa tracking: oh yes, it’s happening!
Above: Santa and Mrs. Claus speak to Barack Obama, presumably about the government’s work to track the gift-bearer’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. Photo by Charles Dharapak, Associated Press.
The NORAD tracking of Santa Claus, the jolly (and obese) elf from the North Pole who delivers gifts to children, has become an annual tradition, like Austin City Limits Festival and Black Friday store trampling.
The tradition continues this year on Dec. 24 on NORAD’s Santa site, where at 1 a.m. CST (the night before Christmas Eve), the tracking will begin. The Santa Tracker will employ “Santa Cams” as well as Google Maps and Google Earth. You can even follow Santa on a mobile phone at m.noradstanda.org.
And, hey, it’s on Twitter, too.
Are you planning on tracking Santa this year? Let us know in the comments.
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Texas Social Media Awards ‘10: Return of the T’SMAckies!
When I look over the last year, one of the biggest highlights for me was the South by Southwester Interactive-adjacent Texas Social Media Awards (“T’SMAckies” for short).
It was with much nervousness that the American-Statesman embarked on an event to honor those doing great work in Texas social media. It’s always an invitation for fierce criticism to create any kind of list like this, but after much deliberation and work going through the nominations, the three judges — Statesman social media editor Robert Quigley, food writer and blogger Addie Broyles and me — whittled down the list to an amazing group of people who make me proud to be part of the online world.
Nominations for the 2010 event have opened up and you can add to what will probably be a much bigger nomination pool this time around.
I won’t get to be a judge this time. My wife and I are due for a baby delivery later this month, so I’ll be out of the office during the judging period. Instead, last year’s overall winner Michelle Greer has agreed to be a judge.
Remember — you don’t get to complain that somebody didn’t win if you don’t bother to nominate them. Let us know who should be on the list.
I can’t wait for the event itself — it was a great gathering last year and I hope those who gathered were as inspired as I was by all the talent and intelligence in the room.
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One more big one for Google: real-time search
On Friday, I wrote about the big week that Google had.
Apparently, they were saving the biggest roll-out for today. The company is introducing real-time search, which will pop up search results that are happening even as you’re searching.
It doesn’t sound much different from what Google already does. Aren’t Google’s search results pretty up-to-the-minute already?
Yes, but real-time search means that the latest Twitter and blog posts and other information will appear to you on a search results page as you’re reading, bringing even fresher information to you on what was previously a static page.
Not everybody can see this feature yet. When I do a search, I can’t see a window for real-time results, but if you go to Google’s Trends Page and click on any of the top 10, you’ll be able to see it in action. Keep your eye on the page and you’ll see an embedded box with scrolling information. Pretty neat, huh? This is what the future of search will increasingly look like.
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