Service Provider Journal

Comcast's terms of disservice

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

InfoWorld hangs in there, online

Congratulations to InfoWorld for making a successful transition from print to online. Some of the editorial nowadays strikes me as a little silly (the recent April Fools stuff fell flat for me) but it's great that the InfoWorld editorial brand lives on in this new age.

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.

Review: Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick

Pinnacle Systems recently offered to let me evaluate the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro stick. This little gizmo lets you watch digital TV (including HD) on a Windows PC.

Today it arrived and I installed it. It consists of a USB dongle, to which one can attach the supplied coax antenna, or go out to a house's rooftop antenna (still a few of those around), or connect to cable or satellite boxes.

I opted for good 'ol broadcast. It installed easily and certainly displays over-the-air HD TV beautifully. I couldn't get the full electronic program guide (EPG) to load for my zip code (or any zip code nearby) but there's a bare-bones EPG to give you some inkling of what's coming up on each channel.

Older PC owners take note: The system requirements call for a Pentium 4 running at 2.4 GHz, a Pentium M running at 1.7 GHz or an AMD Athlon. I tried it on an AMD Sempron running at 1.79 GHz and the Pinnacle Media Center software duly warned me that "this may not be enough to display HD TV. Do you want to continue?" I did continue, and indeed my PC is only strong enough to receive most, but not all, the HD frames and audio. (It depends also on which station I'm trying to watch.) Other than that, at $99.99 this sure beats buying an HD TV for occasional access to broadcast TV.

One other cool thing: the software found and played a bunch of HD radio stations. They played fine on my underpowered PC.

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.

No more GYM, just GM?

I had a funny thought: Google-Yahoo-Microsoft may become Google-Microsoft, which when shortened is GM, and of course what's good for GM is good for the country. :)

Cringely: IP Multicast turned on

Cringely on Cisco:

"One huge difference between the Nexus and Catalyst lines, for example, is that Nexus comes with IP multicast turned 'on,' while Catalyst came with multicast turned 'off' as a default."

Thus might IP Multicast at last become ubiquitous. Ten years after the predictions of folks like me.

ISP usage caps: Let the market decide

I haven't strayed so far from my ISPCON days that I could sign on to petitions calling for a ban on Internet usage caps. ISPs have to make a buck. But to urge ISPs to forego caps and rely instead on spending their way out of the problem seems to me ignorant of how much benefit technology can deliver in this case. I'm not convinced it's all that much. Let the ISP usage caps flourish, and if competitors can find a way to sell bandwidth cheaper, the market can sort it all out.

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.