Jamison Foser

Timeliness is in the eye of the beholder

This graf in today's Wall Street Journal article about a potential Google/Verizon deal jumped out at me:

Broadband providers say they need to be able to manage their networks so that all customers get the best possible experience, which might involve slowing some traffic, such as email, so other more timely traffic, such as phone calls, can get through.

When the email you're waiting for is a contract that has to be signed by 5 pm, and the phone call you're most likely to receive is a telemarketer trying to sell you something you don't want, I'd say the email is considerably more "timely" traffic than the phone call, wouldn't you? Conversely, when the phone call you're waiting for is your doctor's office calling with test results, that's a little more "timely" than some spam email trying to sell you a year's supply of Viagra.

Point being: Broadband providers have no idea what my most timely traffic is, or yours. Sometimes it's an email, sometimes a phone call, or an IM, or a web page. Sometimes it's traffic I'm initiating (downloading a file) sometimes it's traffic I'm a passive recipient of (a phone call.) Broadband providers don't know which is more "timely." Users often don't know.

Privileging types of traffic doesn't privilege timely traffic at the expense of less timely traffic, it privileges certain users at the expense of other users. (In the example above, it privileges phone users over email users. And, thus, phone providers over email providers.)

Bars are meaningless

Me, June 22:

Apple, July 2:

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars."

Yeah. Stunning.

I should make clear that my June 22 tweet had nothing to do with the complaints around the iPhone 4's signal degradation when users hold the phone on the lower left corner: I do not believe those complaints had been made yet, as the phone was not yet publicly available. My tweet was based on the fact that I've never owned a cell phone on which the number of bars was a reliable indication of the quality of the signal the phone was receiving. Not one. So when I encounter a cell phone review that treats the number of bars displayed as a valid metric for assessing the phone's reception, I conclude that the reviewer has absolutely no idea what s/he is talking about.

Also, for the record: Apple's response to the fact that its flagship communications device is designed in such a way that it stops working when you touch part of the exterior is, basically, "Putting the phone in a a case will stop that from happening. We happen to have one we'd be willing to sell you; it's $30 bucks for a glorified rubber band. Oh, but the problem isn't that the phone's design causes it to malfunction when you hold it; it's that it doesn't tell you it's malfunctioning." None of that strikes me as particularly compelling, and this post should not be construed as an endorsement of Apple's contention that the problem is simply that their phones have been showing too many bars in some situations.

DC's Emergency Alert System Needs Work

It seems whenever Washington, DC is about to get hit with a thunderstorm, I get a text message and an email alerting me to the oncoming storm from the DC government.  That's nice of them, though I could get the same information easily enough from a few dozen other sources.  It's weather, after all.

At 10:08 AM today, the DC government sent out an email alert warning residents of much of the city  not to use their water due to increased chlorine levels. Oddly, I got the email, but didn't get a text message. It seems like "Don't use your water, it isn't safe" is precisely the kind of message that they should send out via text -- certainly much more so than "It's going to rain tonight."

Even more odd: According to an 11:34 AM update at DCist, the DC government announced a modification of the affected area -- a modification that excludes my residence from the warning.  Yet DC never sent out either a text message or an email announcing the change.

Odder still: At 3:40 PM, DCist posted an entry indicating that the warning had been lifted.  It's 6:15 PM as I write this, and I have not gotten any such notification from DC.  And if you go to the DC government web site, there's no indication there ever was a warning.

So, it turns out I could have been using my water fro the past 6 or 7 hours, but DC -- which earlier sent an email telling me not to use my water -- never got around to letting me know.

And it turns out DC doesn't consider "your water isn't safe to drink" (or "OK, now your water IS safe to drink") important enough messages to merit the use of the text-message alert system they use whenever they expect a heavy rain.

This does not inspire confidence in the city's emergency preparedness. 

Lesson learned: DCist.com is more reliable than DC.gov when it comes to emergency situations.

UPDATE: I now have an email from the DC government canceling the warning; apparently it was sent at 4:15.  The fact that it took two hours to get to me is a pretty good indication that they should have sent a text message, too.

A note at the bottom of the 4:15 email reads "Sent by DC HSEMA to e-mail, pagers, cell phones .... powered by Cooper Notification RSAN." (Ellipsis in original) But I see no indication it actually was sent to cell phones -- I haven't gotten a text message. 

The 10:08 AM email advising DC residents not to use water includes this note: "Sent by DC HSEMA to e-mail....powered by Cooper Notification RSAN." (Ellipsis in original)  So that seems to suggest they didn't even try to send it to pagers or cell phones.

The iPad's Achilles Heel

Ok, the iPad. Yes, the name is ridiculous. Yes, there are features I hoped for that are missing. Yes, despite the "low" $499 price tag they're touting, you have to spend closer to $900 to get a reasonable HD and cellular data.

Despite all that, I'd be tempted to buy one, were it not for one fundamental problem.

I currently have an iPhone and a laptop. I pay for unlimited data for the iPhone, and I pay for unlimited "unlimited" data for the laptop (via a Verizon USB modem-thingy.) That's bad enough: Given my usage, I'm badly overpaying Verizon for the laptop data; I'd much rather be able to tether to my iPhone for occasional data use. But that isn't possible*, so I overpay Verizon for what is essentially an insurance policy: I have access to 3G data on my laptop whenever I need it.

Now: The iPad.  For this to be worthwhile, it has to be something I would sometimes carry with me instead of the laptop -- I'm certainly not going to carry both around.  So I'll need a data connection for it.  That means yet another data plan.  And that's a deal-breaker -- there's just no way it makes sense to pay for three separate mobile data plans, particularly when two of them won't be used all that often, but need to be there just in case.

So, if a cellular carrier offered me an unlimited data plan that could be used for all three devices, at a reasonable surcharge over my iPhone data cost, I'd be interested. Or if I could tether the iPhone to the laptop and/or iPad, and piggyback on its data connection. But $30 per month for iPad data, $40 for iPhone data, and $50 for laptop data? No way.

That's a problem Apple and the cellular carriers should think about.  They would likely make more money selling me things I want (books, music, apps, whatever) if they didn't gouge me so much for something I don't (redundant data plans.)

* Yes, I suppose I could jailbreak. That's an entirely different discussion.