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Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Monday, February 17, 2003
Teleconference Providers
I'd like to find a reliable, affordable teleconferencing service. A quick web search turned up a couple of likely suspects:123Teleconference
Budget Conferencing
ConferenceCall.com
Here are some of the features I'd like:
- No reservation, fully automated
- No minimum purchase or fee
- Caller mute function (to quell the noise on cell phones)
- Sub-conference (ability to break off into private conference)
- International number available
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
The One-Way Internet
The one-way Internet -- this is the best description of the broadband Internet I've heard.
Defining Broadband in Only One Direction. Wall Street Journal: After Internet's Big Bust, Broadband Shift Went On. Much of the new content being developed for broadband users is premised on the unproved assumption that people will be willing to pay for a wide range of entertainment on the Web. If they are, get ready for a two-tiered Internet, with the hottest content sites charging subscription fees.Implicit in this story, and the attitudes of the reporter and the companies mentioned, is the idea that broadband is solely about the delivery of "content" to consumers. This is little more than television, updated for online.
Oh, there will be some interactivity -- some clicking by users on buttons that say "Buy This" and "Vote" and other such things. But real interactivity requires bandwidth to be fast upstream, not just down.[...] [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
Dan Gillmor's description of the broadband conundrum is on target. The very notion of Asynchronous DSL is brain-damaged and a clear demonstration that broadband providers never imagined users would actually use the Internet. Rather, all they could see was consumers swallowing whatever providers could shove down the pipes. As Bob Frankston has said regarding the Net industry's fixation on entertainment, "You'd think the purpose of a roof is to keep rain off the television."
The media industry seemingly views itself as the only industry, and sees the only possible use for upstream bandwidth as a tool to steal from them. When stated so bluntly it's a preposterous position, but it is a real one.
The upstream speed on my DSL line is a pathetic 5-10k/sec. I use remote access software to get to my computer from outside the office, and even on high-speed lines the delay is interminable. There's no way I could ever run a server from home.
But I'd love to. I go to ClarkConnect in a heartbeat and buy one of their pre-packaged Linux home servers for $125 if I had decent bandwidth. And I'd sign up for their $7/month intrusion monitoring plan. No, I wouldn't host all my own web sites, but I'd host a single domain that I could use for storing photos, documents, and whatever else I wanted to access remotely. I'd start experimenting with audio and video blogging, and I'd develop my own photo albums for family.
I'm hopeful that eventually the old regimes will fall and we'll get to the point that the Internet can be used to improve the way we live and work on a broad scale. For that to happen we must get to a realistic market structure for bandwidth, and past the idea that the Internet is a one-way street.
Terry Frazier at 6:21 PM
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002
A Penny Saved
Switching to my own nickel for my office expenses has meant changing some things around the house. My office long distance used to be billed directly to a company account, which was nice because I never had to deal with it. Now that I'm off the copmany teat I have to pick a new carrier.We have a great consumer advocate in Atlanta named Clark Howard. Clark is the cheapest man on earth and his web site is filled with tips on saving and sources for cheap stuff. One area he covers a lot is long distance. While browsing Clark's site I found a link to OneSuite.
OneSuite sells LD calls for as low as 2.5 cents per minute. But better than that, they have a very usable service. There is a local exchange number right here in my little Atlanta exurb. That means I can call a local number to use the service (800 number is available if I'm traveling) but also means I'm not likely to get the intolerable busy signals I used to suffer when I tried using other cut-rate LD services.
OneSuite also lets me register my land lines so I don't have to use a PIN when calling from my office (or any other line I use regularly.) I can setup a phonebook of 2-digit "quick dial" numbers within the service. And I can configure the kind of information I get when I use the service -- I don't have to hear droning messages about how many minutes I have left if I don't want to.)
They're supposed to have a service called MessageOne available in October that will do Fax-to-e-mail and VM-to-e-mail for just $1/mo. Low Int'l rates, too, especially if you call Canada or China often.
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