Cingular's EDGE Restriction

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a teeny-tiny Sony Vaio TX750P for the times when I'm on the road, but don't need a development-quality machine with me. If all I'm using it for is watching DVDs and playing poker in the hotel room, I don't need my doubles-as-a-boat-anchor Dell XPS notebook with me.

Built into the Vaio is a WWAN card, which is essentially a cell phone that connects to Cingular's EDGE network, to give me data anywhere I go (where Cingular has a network, anyway.) The idea is I don't need to rely on local hotspots, when Cingular already has a lot of coverage. Sounds good to me. So, today, I finally got around to activating my free 30 day trial.

While I was reading the fine print to make sure they weren't going to screw me by making me have a voice plan or some other nonsense, I noticed this line:

Yeah, that stopped me right in my tracks. They're charging me $80/month for internet access, then telling me what applications I'm allowed to run. If I want to play poker or use Instant Messenger, they can shut me down, apparently. Hell, theoretically, I'm in violation of that just by firing up my PC and having Google Desktop try to get my profile, or Windows Defender trying to access SpyNet, or any number of other valid internet applications that don't fall into their 2 broad categories.

In the Explanations page they DO say you can't run a server, so hopefully that's what they were trying to get across, but that's not exactly what they said. They're attempting to dictate what you CAN do in addition to what you can't. They also say they may discontinue service after "sessions of excessive usage". Nice.

I guess I'll pass on the whole WWAN thing. Sounded nice before the caveats.

[Kyle // 07:50 PM // permalink]

The Google

Google really is the coolest company on the planet. Every week, it seems, I start using a new offering from them, or I start using a previous offering more deeply.

I'm convinced that Google and the tools/services they provide are becoming so integral in people's lives that soon we won't remember what life was like without them. In fact, I'll go so far as to say some time in the not-too-distant future, the terms "the internet" and "the web" will be deprecated in favor of "The Google". "The Google" will be the generic term for the storage medium, the data stored there, the method of retrieval, and the interconnections. Google won't own the data, but people will be clamoring to get their data (and their own storage medium) plugged in to The Google. They pretty much already are.

Seriously. We've seen a glimpse of what it will be like ... Watch Star Trek. In Star Trek and other Sci-Fi shows/movies and they always produce a ton of facts/images/video at a moment's notice for whatever context they're in. Where does that data come from? The Google.

I hear you in the back saying "Kyle, Sci-fi movies aren't real." You're right ... they're not real yet. But take a look at the gadgets people are creating and we are consuming every day. Would we have bluetooth headsets if Uhura didn't have one first? Aren't Internet tablets an attempt to recreate the ubiquitous tablets Kirk and Picard were always asked to sign? Aren't those Nextel push-to-talk phones the same as the original Star Trek communicator? Geeks love Sci-fi, and geeks are creating the toys we'll be using in the future. (Next up: holodecks) The geeks at Google are creating the massive data retrieval system we'll need, and I salute them.

For the curious, this week, I stopped using Microsoft OneNote as the repository for development notes on the project for my current client, and started using Google Notebook instead.

I'm also using Google Notebook to track notes I keep on poker players on different online sites. This way, the notes are available no matter what computer I'm playing poker from.

Speaking of poker, I just converted over to Google Spreadsheets to tract statistics on the games I've played, for the same reason.

And, Travis just told me about version 4 of Google Toolbar (surprisingly, it wasn't pushed automatically, so I had to go get it), which has spiffy new things like roaming bookmarks. I'll have to get this installed on all my machines now.

I was already using the Desktop on all my machines, using their Maps and Local searches when I needed something, and watching Google Videos while waiting for someone else to join me on Google Talk. Clearly they're doing something for me. Rock on, Google.

[Kyle // 01:06 PM // permalink]

Hello Moto

The new Motorola Q phone is out, and damn it looks sweet. It's only available through Verizon. I'm a Cingular customer with 9 months still left on my contract, but I'm willing to switch and pay the termination fee just for this friggin' phone. I hope to pick one up tomorrow when I get back to Dallas.

[Kyle // 01:28 PM // permalink]