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Showing posts with the label Verizon

Switched from iPhone to Droid for $20

With my contract expiring on AT&T I found myself in the market for a new cell phone. I could have waited for the next iPhone, by continuing month-to-month, but I really wanted to move to a 3G connection. With the announcement of the new iPhone OS only working on the 3GS, I had to spend $200 (and a 2 year contract) to get it. I'm not sure why with the threat of switching carriers that AT&T didn't have a better offer. From my research and testing a few Droids owned by 3 friends, it seemed like a good alternative to the iPhone. In speaking directly with Verizon, they too could only offer me a $200 Droid with a 2 year contract, so it didn't offer anything better. Then in searching Amazon, I found that I could get it for $20 on a 2 year contract. It's now been a few weeks, and I'm very happy with it. While the Droid has its own quirks, they're no worse than the iPhone quirks. There also is a promise to bring Flash to the Droid, which is a lot closer than Flas

2010 Tech Predictions

2009 was a very difficult year for our economy, and many friends and colleagues lost their jobs and/or their homes. While I can't very well predict how our economy will do in 2010, I will try to out due my 1 for 3 predictions of 2009 with my 2010 predictions. In no particular order, here are my 5 top tech predictions for 2010. With the number of players increasing in the eBook Reader arena, Amazon will adopt the ePub format as a supported file format. The next version of the iPhone , announced this spring, will be available on Verizon . Similar to the data loss that occurred for Sidekick users in 2009, a significant data loss or corruption will happen on a Cloud platform . Though hopefully like with the Sidekick data being recovered, even if the data is recovered, it will send a strong message to CIOs and others considering moves to the Cloud. Depending on the reports you read, the browser war statistics can vary widely. Regardless, Internet Explorer continues to dominate, despi

Time Warner wants to put restrictive usage caps on your Internet access

The cable providers are scared of losing their cash cow by people watching TV over the Internet. In the latest volley from the cable companies, Time Warner is rolling out restrictive caps that are high priced, and extremely high if you go over. Sure, $15 a month for Internet sounds good, until you realize it's for 1 GB of data and an additional $2 for each gig you go over . As Wired points out (in "Congressman Wants to Ban Download Caps"), that's 3 hours of Hulu video or half a standard definition movie delivered online. For a mere (cough, cough) $75 per month, you can get 100 GB per month, and only pay $1 penalty for each gig over. It sure makes Comcasts 250 MB cap at $50 - $55 per month look good. I've heard some folks defend the caps, claiming we don't need that much bandwidth, but each argument has been based on 1 user. The typical claim has been from 50 to 90 GB average usage. Multiply that by a family of 4 and now you're at 200 to 360 GBs. And if t

Use Verizon and everyone will think you're from Canada

I've been using Verizon FIOS for about a year, and up until recently I've been happy. Unfortunately, recently my ip address (which Verizon assigns to my router) changed and now it appears I'm coming from Toronto, Canada. In fact if I run a Trace Route, it says I'm coming from Toronto, Canada as it's taking 21 hops and traveling over 2100 miles within the Verizon network before they release me onto the Internet. Hop Time Host IP Location 1 1.183 xo-gateway 140.239.191.1 Rowland Heights, CA, United States 2 7.517 ip65-47-242-9.z242-47-65.customer.algx.net 65.47.242.9 Culver City, CA, United States 3 7.119 ge6-3-0d0.mar1.santaana-ca.us.xo.net 207.88.81.193 , , United States 4 8.589 p5-1-0-3d0.rar1.la-ca.us.xo.net 65.106.5.81 , , United States 5 9.406 te-4-1-0.rar3.la-ca.us.xo.net 207.88.12.153 , , United States 6 22.022 207.88.12.154.ptr.us.xo.net 207.88.12.154 , , United States 7 9.234 205.158.79.122.ptr.us.xo.net 205.158.79.122 , , United States 8 12.424 0.so-2-2-0

Your biggest privacy concern could be from your own ISP

Over the last 6 to 12 months there has been several battles between ISPs, users, and the government. ISPs want to choose what type of content can run on their network and how fast it should be delivered. One such example is Comcast's blocking of P2P traffic . During their FCC investigation, Comcast changed this practice, though after being ruled that it was actually illegal practice, Comcast is now challenging the ruling . For Comcast to block just P2P traffic, it had to scan all the activity on your connection to identify what part of the traffic was P2P. In the Comcast ruling, the FCC implied that it would be legal to monitor user traffic so that illegal content could be blocked such as child pornography and copyrighted material. While we would all like to see child pornography and other nefarious activity stopped, this would require the ISP to inspect everyone's content, from banking to love letters to new job applications and everything in between. It would be interesting t

Goodbye Comcast, Hello Verizon FIOS

In a blog on February 26, 2008 , I told you about Comcast being investigated by the FCC for their network management -- specifically P2P apps. I also suggest that you should quit using Comcast as a vendor. Well today I canceled my Comcast services as I now am using Verizon FIOS . So far, no problems with Verizon's service. Now, only time will tell.