Service Provider Journal

DNS as newest censorship device?

From GigaOM:

While he says he supports letting a carrier supply a safe DNS service, he’s opposed to blocking the ability to reach DNS servers other than those the carriers are running. “Sometimes a compromise lets you move on,” he says. “Sometimes it’s the first step down a slippery slope.”

Up or down: The game

I wonder how long it will be before somebody figures out a way to game downforeveryoneorjustme.com. Maybe there will be a followup story to this one in the New York Times when that day arrives.

Comcast's terms of disservice

The folks at Comcast once again prove they're out to lose customers. Let's hope they're successful.

Hotmail is dropping inbound emails

Paul Venezia writes:

"Microsoft is simply deleting legitimate emails."

I can agree with this. As part of some calendar interoperability testing, I recently established a new Hotmail account. Sometimes, a confirmation email being sent to my account simply never arrives. Most of the time, it goes into the junk mail folder. But other times, the mail never shows up. Don't use Hotmail if you expect every email sent to you to get through Microsoft's filters, because some of them won't get through.

We need a list of housing complexes that provide good Internet access

George Ou writes:

"I live in one of these draconian housing complexes that force us to pay for bundled inferior analog cable service even though I don't use it.  The FCC has ruled against these types of exclusive contracts but I don't think that can overturn my current situation."

Here's an idea. Someone should start a list of those housing complexes who provide good service. Then, those complexes that aren't on the list will, by implication, have work to do.

More Web access coming in Office 14

It continues to frustrate me that I cannot easily retrieve and update my Microsoft Office documents when I'm on the road. Sure, I have some access to my stuff, but these methods are either complex and perform poorly (Virtual Private Network), or are a subset of what I require (Outlook Web Access -- and Outlook is the part of Office I don't use), and smart cards (which simplify secure remote access but aren't widely deployed).

So when I spotted a relatively short line for audience Q&As to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at this morning's Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, I got to ask him what Microsoft will be doing to make my Office experience more like my Gmail experience, where my email is available from any connected PC.

To paraphrase, Gates responded that the next version of Office ("14") will provide some additional Outlook Web Access-style support for Excel documents, and perhaps Word and other Office components as well. But he stopped short of promising a Gmail-style level of widespread access.

There will be more said at this event about improved Office Web access. Enterprises are using Sharepoint to do this. The ISP story is lot more muddled. Maybe the hosted Exchange providers are thinking about it, but as far as I can tell, they're not represented here at this conference.

Facebook: Liberate the entire news feed, now!

When will Facebook provide my entire news feed as a single RSS feed? Facebook made some moves in this direction back in August, but I just confirmed from Facebook customer support that to this day, it is not possible for a Facebook subscriber to subscribe to their entire news feed in RSS. If Facebook is truly opening up, this is the first place they need to do it.

Google/Blogger single sign-on debacle

So suddenly Blogger tells me the sign-on for my Blogger account is being switched to my gmail sign-on. It wasn't presented as a choice, it looked like it was mandatory ("I don't want to switch right now" was buried at the bottom of the page). So I shrugged and told Blogger to do it. Then, later, I got the following email:

Thanks for your interest in the new Blogger in beta. An error has occurred that has prevented us from switching your account at this time. Our engineers have been notified of the issue, and your blogs and Blogger account should not be affected.

Please try switching again later via the promo in your dashboard, and please remember your Google Account information as you will need it to switch to the new version of Blogger. For now, you can still log in to Blogger using your original Blogger account.

Thanks for your patience,
The Blogger team

I think it's reprehensible to shove someone into a buggy beta service without making it a clear  choice. So much so that I'm glad Google is experiencing these problems. They need to eat some humble pie.

Free the mobile phone 1 billion

Protest ringtones are an interesting idea. I'd like to buy one that said "Free the mobile phone 1 billion!" or however many mobile phones there are at present.

Nyetflix

Netflix appears to be experiencing a significant outage, at least an hour old.