Pardon the Interaction

Sprint Customer Satisfaction August 29, 2006

TI, you may be salivating over the upcoming Treo 700wx from Sprint.  However, before you continue your newly found Sprint love affair, let me remind you that you once complained about some of the company’s policies (not too long ago).  Check out this story about Sprint from a very dissatisfied Sprint Treo power user.

Don’t fall for the “Double Dip Subscript”! August 26, 2006

I was reading an article this morning about bringing Directv to your automobile, and it occurred to me that there will be a new phenomenon that will be growing in the next few years.  Therefore, today, I am creating a new term.  I have coined it the “double-dip subscript”. Here is the concept… why should I have to pay for source data twice!  Providers, under the facade of “new technology” are trying to convince us that we should pay twice for the same information.   For example, why should I pay Directv twice for information that I am already paying for!??  In the article there is mention of paying Directv a subscription fee to have the same programming that I am paying for in my house available to me in my car…Come on! That’s BS!!!! Why?  In this age of evolving wireless connectivity, why aren’t these folks trying to simply figure out how to get my information to me in different locations??  Does the water department charge me for each faucet that is connected to my main water line?  Does the electric company make me pay to access their service from each outlet? No!  Then why do should Directv think it is OK to charge me again for tv programming that I am paying for .   Don’t get me wrong, if I need a new access card or box for my car, then that’s OK.  I understand this, but to treat me like a bald headed, stupid step-child and charge me again!!!!???

Sprint TV is a cool concept, but I already have television service that I pay for.  Work with me on getting my paid programming to me.  Charge me for the use of the medium and be done with it!   For those of you that have been following some of the other posts, this is why I want my 700w from Sprint.  This will enable me to bring my paid television programming and my TIVO items to my phone!  I can only do this now with a WM5 compatible phone.

To be honest, I was a little upset when XM teamed up with Directv.   After spending a lot of $$$$ on home adapters, speakers, and accessories to listen to XM in my home, Directv decides to provide the channels for free!  Another dds!  Now, fast follower has sirius in his car and the same xm channels that I pay for in his home!  Help me understand this. 

We have to start standing up now.  Can anyone think of any other dds’s.  Let us know.

700wx Rumors are true…already arriving in retail locations!!! August 24, 2006

For those of you that read my note to Mr. Sprint, it looks like I got it done and got them to give us a date for the introduction of the 700w for Sprint. The units are arriving in retail locations according to a recent ariticle.

Looks like the “two-step jerk around” is over! Do you mean to tell me that Sprint didn’t know this last week when I called??? What’s the big secret…. Never the less…I will be first in line!

The Future of Radio August 23, 2006

Seth Godin presents 4 possible scenarios for what might happen to radio in the future.  One that caught my attention was radio based on the satellite model.  TI, you have XM and Sirius.  I use Sirius only.  But I find myself gravitating to only 3 or 4 channels of the hundreds that I have access to.  Another possibility might be that we only pay for satellite radio programming packages that we want.

Vonage and other VOIP solutions…. Will it work for me? August 21, 2006

Everything I read about Vonage seems great.  Unlimited calling for 24 bucks a month with all of the features free… too good to be true?  I don’t know.   I have been on the confirmation page in the Vonage subscription process about 4 times now.  Each time I want to pull the proverbial trigger, I get cold feet.   I have so many questions, and I don’t want to have to go crawling back to MCI when I admit that I have made a mistake.   My primary questions are…

1. How will this impact my DirecTV boxes and the scheduled call-ins

2. How will my alarm/security system work with this service?  Will it be able to call the security system if an intruder sets things off?

3. I am now comfortable with the 911 issue so that’s no longer a hurdle…

 4. How does this thing actually hook up?   Will my phone jacks throughout the house be live? or will I have to somehow connect all of my phones to my computer in the basement (location of my wireless router)?

5. Do I need special phones or not?   I have received a couple of different answers on this….

6. Will I be able to use my traditional hard-wired landline phones?   How do I get them working with Vonage..

For some reason I can’t seem to get to anyone that can explain these issues with me.  Let me know what you think.    I just don’t want to jump into something that my wife will be reminding me of for the rest of my

The USA Today Piece on Mobile TV August 18, 2006

TI –

Today’s USA Today has this story on the acceptance of watching TV on mobile devices like mobile phones.  I still wonder why anyone would choose to pay a subscription for mobile TV access when they can placeshift content they already have with Mobile Singbox.

I’m watching Tiger and Phil right now on by PPC-6700 through my home DirecTV receiver and TNT’s broadcast of the PGA Tournament

Treo 700w from Sprint is almost confirmed August 12, 2006

TI – Your prayers (whining) may have been answered. Engadget reports about confirmation of the Treo 700wx coming from Sprint on September 3. What are you gonna do?

Follow our prior discussion on this topic here.

IPOD Fast Scrolling – I need help scrolling! Any suggestions? August 10, 2006

Don’t get me wrong, I think my IPOD is great.  While on vacation, though, I found myself in need of a feature/function.  How can I get to the bottom of my song list or scroll through the list faster?  I have thousands of songs, and sometimes when I am looking for a song, the click wheel scrolling gets very tedious.   I need a way to quickly jump either to the middle or the bottom of the list.  For example, when I go to my song list, the songs are listed in alphabetical order, and I can quickly get to those songs that begin with the first half of the alphabet.  But what if the song I am looking for begins with a “w”?  Do I have to sit there and work the heck out of my thumb scrolling through the entire list as fast as my poor thumb can spin the wheel? or Is there a way to scroll from z to a? or is there another way to quickly get me to the end of my list.  As I use these devices it occurs to me that I can’t be the only one that is wishing for this type of functionality.  Especially if younger folks probably have 10 times as many songs as I do.  It must be heck trying to get to the bottom of a 10000 song songlist.

I am hoping that I just didn’t read the manual and there is a way to do this.  Help me out before my thumb falls off.  Then I won’t be able to beat Fast Follower in golf any more! 

Competition for Slingbox August 8, 2006

Looks like there’s new competition for SlingBox.  PVR Wire reports on a placeshifting box called Hava.  Of course, TI, by the time you get a PDA/phone that can handle something like this, there may be many such devices introduced.

Switching to the Free AOL August 5, 2006

TI – Am I a knucklehead for keeping AOL all of these years? I’ve been paying $14.95 per month for as long as I can remember for broadband AOL. I never use it. My kids never use it. Now that AOL has just announced that there’s free broadband access, today I tried to get the free version. If there’s a way to do it within the AOL sight site, I can’t figure it out. So what am I doing, I’m cancelling the entire service. By fax ! ! Yes, by fax ! This just confirms that I’ve been a knucklehead AOL member paying into a stupid business model for far too long.

Microsoft Media Center Edition to Work with DirecTV?? August 3, 2006

TI knows that I’m not real happy with the difficulty of getting DirecTV Tivo’d content from the Tivo box to another video source in my house or to a PC in my house.  In fact it’s practically impossible.  Thus, if there’s a sufficient future answer to the question posed below, I might have to dump Tivo at some point.

Matt Goyer, a Program Manager for Windows Media Center (MCE) within the eHome Division of Microsoft, gave this Q&A blog post answer about Microsoft Media Center ultimately working with DirecTV in the future.
 

Q: All I want is an MCE that can recieve MPEG-4 DirecTV and stream to extenders all over the house.
A: Fortunately we announced at CES 06 that we struck a deal with DirecTV. Unfortunately, we can’t comment on the specifics about when this is happening.