January 22, 2007
NTL becomes Virgin Media
So last Saturday I got a letter from NTL explaining in breathy tones how excited they were about becoming Virgin Media. All very underwhelming actually. Does anyone really care about quad-play? At the moment, the reality of the converged operator seems to be cross-platform mediocrity and below-standard customer service. Take a look at Virgin Media's new website and see if it gets you excited. The facile multiple-choice quiz says it all really.
January 19, 2007
Slatemare
My house is tall and old. And ever since I read the surveyor's report five years ago - doom-mongering about possible repair and replacement in the future - the state of my roof has been a cause for concern. All looks well from outside, but I have found myself from time to time standing on the opposite side of the road, looking up at the slates, and predicting 'one day we'll get some high winds and I'll lose some of them thar tiles." Well, the unthinkable has happened. Yesterday, the gales brought three slates spiralling to earth and there's now a fist-sized hole in the roof. After frenziedly consulting the terms of my building insurance (and scanning the epic list of conditions not covered by the policy), it turns out that I *am* covered for wind damage. Hurrah. A man is coming tomorrow to sort things out, and hopefully putting all my roof-related angst to rest in the process.
X-Series: trials and tribulations
So. Day four in the X-Series house. The phone arrived from 3 a day after ordering it. Sexy silver packaging and the phone itself (Nokia N73) is smaller than I remembered (basically, same dimensions as a K750i, albeit a little longer.)
The problems start when I check the supporting literature: pages 5-12 of the X-Series Guide are missing. Which means there's no info for the five key services I want to use. I ring to activate my account and discover that all 3's customer support has been offshore'd. Not a problem, as the staff are very polite (although there is a modest degradation in call quality.) BUT. It takes 10 minutes for the operator to figure out that my details aren't on her system yet, so I need to ring back in 24 hours. Which I do. Details are on the system now, but activation won't happen for another 48 hours. Today the SIM has been activated and I can use the phone with it's 3-assigned number. BUT. I want to port my O2 number, which I've had for eight years (from back when O2 were Cellnet...) Another call; I provide the PAC code and am told that the number won't be ported for seven days! Whether this is a standard timeframe or not, an eleven-day wait before my phone is configured the way I want is just too long.
More thrills occur when attempting to set up the X-Series (Silver) services, especially Mobile Mail (which is definitely non-trivial.) Nevertheless, integration with Gmail is good, and it's a real boon to be able to access it on the handset. Skype is a breeze, and call quality is possibly better than over GSM/UMTS (despite the slight lag.) Should mean I'll stay under my 300 inclusive minutes forever. Messenger is fine too, although there's a bug that prevents you from keying the correct letter when a word is carried to the next line.
The phone GUI isn't exactly Apple iPhone standard either. Some of the iconography is a bit scrappy and it's not easy to find everything I need. But I'll get used to it once I've set up shortcuts etc.
By the end of the evening I've already driven Bron to drink through my constant mobile-mediated emailing and IM'ing. Not Crackberry then, but close.
January 11, 2007
They've done it again
It's hard not to engage in Apple-frotting hyperbole, but the iphone looks absolutely gorgeous.
What's so incredible about Apple is not their vision (sit down with a sheet of paper for an hour and think hard about what you could do to improve on current mobile phone product design: you'll probably come up with something like iphone), but the fact that the vision is actually executed, and in such an uncompromising manner. I'd bet that, on numerous occasions, someone in Nokia, Samsung, Motorola et al produced designs for something like an iphone. But they were never acted on because of existing product roadmaps, manufacturing constraints blah blah. Apple manages to create step changes in markets because innovation is placed at the core of its activities, and all else follows suit. Sure, stuff on the v1.0 iphone probably won't work as it ought, and there'll undoubtedly be a minor backlash. But what excites me is imagining how it'll improve over the next few years; look at the ipod -> mini -> nano arc. In a few years, the iphone will be an inconceivably powerful, sleek, tiny, cool piece of kit. And most other cellphone manufacturers will still be playing catchup.
One other point of note: iphone could be one of the few handsets in history that consumers are actually prepared to pay for. So MNO's wouldn't have to subsidise handset costs through pay plans and tariffs. Which might mean a better deal for customers in the long run. Come to think of it, Apple could just acquire an MNO in each key territory and disrupt the entire telco industry by bundling cheap call plans with the iphone. It could even sell minutes through iTunes. Now that's a thought...
I must say, it makes perfect sense to extend OSX widgets to the handset, as does the use of CoverFlow for navigating your music collection. I'm much less excited about my 3 X-Series N73 now...
January 09, 2007
Post-Christmas Tabs
A bit slow off the mark for this one, but Sleevenotez has been Vecosys'd. It would've been nice to say the we'd been Techcrunch'd, but in the wake of what happened between Arrington and Sethi it meant we missed our window of opportunity. Still, any coverage is better than no coverage, and I'd like to thank Mike Butcher for writing such a cogent, well-informed article.
We also got mentioned by Stephen Johnson, corporate business dev chappie at Nokia, who describes Sleevenotez as "...the shape of things to come. Not CRM, but metadata-powered M(edia) Relationship Management." Coolio! Thanks Stephen.