Last I checked, the calendar said the year was 2010. We’ve had a pretty solid and useful wireless standard in the form of Bluetooth 2.0 which the Bluetooth SIG adopted in 2004, so why do companies still take it upon themselves to add unnecessary wireless adapters to products? Yes, I realize I’m ranting a little here and you’re probably thinking, “what’s the big deal as long as it works?” If you’re asking that question, you probably haven’t used a mobile device that has a limited number of USB ports. I have, and I simply don’t want to clog up a USB port needlessly for a mouse. I have 3G adapters, flash drives, portable external USB hard drives, phones and cameras that I’d rather — or must — use with those ports. Why bother having a perfectly standard Bluetooth radio in devices if we’re not going to use them? It’s not like Bluetooth is a new, unproven technology or not readily offered in mobile devices.

Simply put, there’s no reason — technical or otherwise — that wireless peripherals like a mouse should only be supported by proprietary wireless means. I’m not suggesting the approach is totally killed off because I realize that most desktops and some laptops don’t offer Bluetooth. But it’s 2010 folks — let’s at least make the proprietary approach secondary to the widely recognized standards solutions. And I hate to point this out, because it’s just an example, but out of the 13 wireless mice currently offered on Microsoft’s Hardware site, only three use a standard Bluetooth connection, while the other 10 require a special USB transceiver. It’s time to pull the plug on this wireless waste.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

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The company didn’t provide clarification on whether this is for free apps only, or if it applies to paid apps, how that might work. If paid apps are removed from customers’ devices then a reasonable assumption would be that refunds would be issued. We should also make it clear that this is not a likely scenario — hopefully, Microsoft will be diligent in the approval phase to keep such apps out of the store to begin with. It does hint at an example like the Kindle situation, where companies feel justified in deleting content from customer devices. It’s a wireless world we live in, after all.

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My email is pure Gmail, so the outage affected me like all the other Gmail users. My email went down, stayed down for a while, and then came back up just like yours. Did I panic? No, I knew it would come back, and pretty soon at that. Did the lack of email kill off my productivity? Nope. I just worked on other things.

Let’s face it, email is hosted on servers, whether Google’s or someone else’s. And servers go down from time to time. It’s a fact of life — nothing runs forever. Sure we can jump up and down and scream at Google, but why? I knew Gmail would come back and sure enough it did.

I heard all kinds of complaints when Gmail went down. People saying that email service X would never go down like that. Or others saying that Google OWED us to keep Gmail up and running. Give me a break, stuff happens. When I was in the corporate world it was oh, so common to hear employees at some large company or another wandering down the halls claiming that “email is down again.” And this the fancy corporate Exchange Server that only has to keep their own employees working. Stuff happens.

I had my own hosted Exchange Server for a long time and while it rarely went down, sometimes it did. The fact is that email servers are on the web and sometimes access to the server (or the web) is cut off. Stuff happens and we just have to get over it.

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Qualcomm Inc. as well as Qualcomm CDMA “are not authorized to use without approval of the Smartbook AG the character sequence ‘Smartbook’ in all notations in association with mobile computers — such as laptops (notebooks) — in the context of business communications expressed in technically retrievable Internet offers in the area of the Federal Republic of Germany without providing information that in the region of the Federal Republic of Germany any usage of the sign ‘Smartbook’ in association with mobile computers is exclusively reserved to the SMARTBOOK AG.”

According to this resolution, the fine applies — alternatively an arrest for contempt of court — in the case of a non-compliance.

“Internet sites of the Qualcomm Inc. such as www.hellosmartbook.com and Internet sites of the German branch office Qualcomm CDMA GmbH, which refer to the U.S. web site of the Qualcomm Inc., were already blocked for users with a German IP address,” according to Dirk Pick, CEO of Smartbook AG.

“We are confronted with an almost absurd but at the same time bold attack against our brand name. It is Qualcomm who forced us to implement defensive measures. We will protect our brand.”

Qualcomm is a maker of the chips used in smartphones and has recently been pushing the “smartphone” concept, a small netbook-like device that runs the processors that the company produces. Smartbooks are touted as connected notebooks that bridge the gap between a smartphone and notebook computer. The press release does not state exactly when Qualcomm web sites were blocked for those with a German IP address.

Smartbook AG is not a company that we have run across before this trademark situation, but from its web site says it sells traditional notebook computers.

(Photograph courtesy of Qualcomm)

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The company is Smartbook and I suspect they went after Sascha as he is German and netbooknews.de is a German language blog covering netbooks. The tactic is similar to the one used by Psion in their trademark fight over the “netbook” term. Psion’s fight went on to include Intel and Dell and was eventually settled out of court.

I feel for Sascha and urge him to hold on. The company is trying to bully him to get publicity for their cause. I suspect they will eventually go after Qualcomm and other companies actively promoting the smartbook name.

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We’re not talking about disabling it by default, no, Sony has deemed it wise to make it impossible to ever run VT on VAIO laptops. When will companies learn that customers do not want functions disabled on purchased products, especially expensive ones? In response to the building uproar, Sony is now backing down slightly and stating that they will enable VT on “select” VAIO models in the future, although they are not elaborating on which ones. It’s just one other thing to check into before buying that new notebook. Sheesh.

(via CNET)

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Image courtesy adotjdotsmith

The human body doesn’t like it when we do things repetitively. That’s why the number of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome cases has increased with the computer age. We often hear of other afflictions caused by “technology abuse,” the latest that doctors are reporting being Texting Teen Tendonitis. This is a new syndrome caused by teens who are texting a lot, often for hours a day. The affliction affects the back, neck, arms and of course, the thumbs. Symptoms include pain in all of the above, along with numbness of the thumbs.

We hear of teens who set records for texting, and we adults think how crazy those kids must be. The fact is, parents rarely have a real idea just how many text messages their kids are sending and receiving each day. It is a lot more common than adults are comfortable thinking about, but many teens are texting hundreds of messages daily. The wise parent got an unlimited texting plan long ago for their kid, and that has let teens go wild. This is why Texting Teen Tendonitis is being diagnosed more often. Hey it must be, it’s got its own syndrome name.

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Think you own that digital content on your Amazon Kindle, or any other device, for that matter? Think again. Although it appears we follow a “buy to keep” business model, consumers ultimately license most digital content. Not too many years ago, this wasn’t much of a problem because most media was physical — CDs, DVDs, printed books, etc…

Today, it’s a digital world which presents unique problems. Problems like the one that David Pogue shares today at the New York Times:

“This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.”

Although Amazon certainly did the right thing by crediting back the purchase price, what kind of precedent does this set for the future? Can you imagine if this same thing happened with digital files like your music, software, or videos? This situation also shines the ugly spotlight on DRM in general. Had the content not been locked into Amazon’s infrastructure, customers could have maintained control with a backup copy. In reality though, we’re just renting what digital content providers allow us to.

One of our readers tells me via email that his Kindle was hit with this content removal. I feel badly for him and for anyone else that lost their rights to the digital content. Ironically, the content in question was none other than “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from George Orwell. Talk about “big brother” — rather fitting in this case, no?

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Dear Verizon,

You are in this business to make money, I understand that. You are responsible to your shareholders to provide the best return possible, and you are obligated to find revenue streams toward that goal. I would like to exhort you to find streams that are in line with your core business, and not at the sole expense of your customers. Without your customers, you will fail. It makes no sense to take things from the customer that you have no business taking. I am referring to the GPS functionality of the smartphones that you sell.

Integrating GPS into smartphones makes sense on many levels. The ability for customers to have a full GPS unit contained in a smartphone is a big benefit to them. This benefit is the reason that handset makers are including GPS functionality in the phones in the first place. Smartphones are carried everywhere by your customers, and it makes perfect sense for them to leverage the functionality of the integrated GPS hardware. So please stop disabling this functionality.

Why do you release phones on your network that have sophisticated GPS hardware, yet you disable it so the customer cannot use it to its full potential? Sure, you always allow it to be used with your own navigation service, but other solutions are blocked from doing so. Even solutions that are included on the smartphones by the manufacturer, for example BlackBerry Maps by RIM, are routinely blocked by you so they cannot be used as intended. The only party hurt by this blockage is your own customer.

We can only make the assumption that you block the use of the GPS hardware by third-party providers in order to promote the use of your own subscription service. I understand your job is to derive as much revenue from subscribers as possible, but to do so by disabling functionality of the phones you sell is a big disadvantage to your customer. You are playing games with your customers, and this practice needs to stop.

The practice has been repeated with many smartphones released on the Verizon network, and it goes like this: A phone with integrated GPS hardware is released by Verizon. Customers buy it, only to discover that the GPS hardware cannot be used as expected. These customers sound off in user forums on the web, and Verizon’s reputation is harmed as a result. Months pass, and eventually Verizon makes an announcement that Smartphone X is now being opened to allow the GPS hardware to be used for solutions besides Verizon’s subscription service. Customers rejoice, but they remember how long they were denied the ability to use the handset as its maker intended. And they do remember, believe me.

This is not an isolated practice; it has happened over and over again, affecting numerous smartphones. The first smartphone affected was the BlackBerry 8830, and customers were so annoyed that a class action lawsuit was filed. Sure, the lawsuit was about the way the phone was pitched to prospective customers, but a suit filed by your own customers cannot ever be a good thing for your business.

As I’ve said, this ridiculous practice has been repeated too many times, the most recent being your announcement that you were going to allow your customers who bought the Samsung Omnia smartphone to fully use the hardware as intended by Samsung. If you believe that you come off as a good guy by once again removing the arbitrary restriction that you, and you alone, put in place, then I can tell you that is not the case. You come off looking as petty, and willing to gain at your customers’ expense. As I said before, customers remember. Make no mistake about that.

I fully understand that it is your network, and you have every right to disable hardware functionality on any phone. Your right to do so is not in question. The logic of doing so, however, is greatly in question. I am confident you would state that your constant disabling of GPS functionality (non-Verizon) is a matter of network security. That is usually your excuse for not allowing customers to do things they want to do. But in this instance I don’t buy into the security excuse. The programs and services you end up blocking are the same ones you eventually approve on every single device you restrict.

Thanks for hearing me out about this issue. Please stop disabling GPS in the smartphones you sell. We customers pay for the phone, we pay for the service, and we demand the ability to use them both to their full advantage.

Sincerely,

James Kendrick

jkontherun.com

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Let’s think about this for a second. Folks who would likely want, need or use such a feature probably already have an idea of what 3G data plans do or should cost.

Sure there are bound to be some folks that aren’t aware of their other 3G options, so they might be out of the loop somewhat. But most potential users of an Internet Tethering plan know what Internet Tethering actually is. More importantly, they know they’re already paying for that 3G data plan as part of their monthly iPhone cost. In which case: $55 is way more than the average customer will be willing to bear. It’s also more than what the current market demands for such a service. You can already find tethering options in the $20-$30 a month range from the carriers. What’s going to make AT&T’s alleged $55 plan worth paying double for?

Aside from my thoughts on the matter, AT&T has already chimed in. They’ve debunked the $55 extra claim as far as I’m concerned with this quote from their Facebook page:

“There are a lot of reports out there, but wanted you guys to know that rumors of $55 tethering plan on top of an unlimited data plan are false. We’ll have more news to share when the iPhone tethering option is closer to launch.”

What’s far more likely is the same $20-$30 price point to tether your iPhone as a modem on AT&T’s network. Tom Reestman, writing for TheAppleBlog, makes a good point with this tweet on the topic:

“I think the figure likely includes the $30 unlimited data, so “terhering” itself is just $25-30.”

I’d agree with Tom and perhaps that’s where the $55 figure is coming from. If the iPhone data plan is $30, an additional $25 for tethering adds up to $55 total, not $55 extra.

Rick Huizinga tweeted an approach that jives with what Matt Miller said just today on our podcast:

“I hope AT&T makes tethering pay-as-you-go, metered by how much bandwidth you use.”

If we can’t have free tethering, then this is the next best way to go. In my case, I only need the 3G access from time to time, which is why I’m likely to kill my $60 monthly EVDO plan. Occasional use is what I’m looking for and I’d hate to pay for a monthly service that I only need a few days a month.

The shame of the entire situation applies to any carrier that charges extra to tether a 3G phone for modem use. The data usage takes place the same whether directly on the phone or indirectly on a tethered notebook or netbook. It’s the same pipe and shouldn’t be charged for twice simply because it’s used across two devices.

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