Scratching at Fido’s door
.27.8 | 3 Comments »
August 27th, 2005 by Alex
29 days into my love affair with an unlocked Treo and I have discovered why it’s nice not to be married to any one cell phone carrier. I made the leap into wireless, thinking that Fido’s unlimited data plan offered a net; they’ve since pulled the plan, though existing subscribers are grandfathered in — for now. One of Fido’s customer service reps told me today that Fido is planning to scrap its unlimited plan altogether once it migrates to the Rogers network as of September 15th.
I’ve written to Fido, asking them to make good on the access plan I counted on when I bought my Treo. If nice Mark of Fido customer service had the story right, then other Fido customers may want to start whining, barking or growling to make sure they keep the unlimited data plan that they have now.
I’ll be sure to post news of Fido’s response. I’m hoping for a happy outcome but failing that will post details on what’s available in terms of alternative data plans with other Canadian carriers (suggestions more than welcome).
Here’s my letter; contact information included for the benefit of other would-be letter writers:
August 27, 2005
Formal Complaints
FIDO
800 Rue de la Gaucheterie
Suite 400
Montreal, PQ
H5A 1K3fax: 514.937.2554
To the Formal Complaints department:
I am writing to request that you switch me to your unlimited data plan at a rate of $50 per month. I received a verbal commitment from one of your representatives that this plan would be available, and ask you to make good on that commitment.
On July 30 I purchased an unlocked Treo 650 while in the United States, at a cost of $600 US. I purchased this Treo after extensive research on different pda/phone options, and went to the trouble to purchase an unlocked phone during a US visit so that I could stick with Fido. I wanted to stay with Fido because I wanted to keep my Fido number, and because of your unlimited data plan. I know the easiest option would have been to buy your hiptop, but I had had the opportunity to review a hiptop for an article I wrote last winter, and while I was very impressed by it, my experience had convinced me it wasn’t the right device for my needs.
I returned to Vancouver after purchasing the Treo and immediately called to activate my data plan. The Fido representative I spoke with suggested that I start with the 5MB/$25 plan and see whether that met my needs, advising that I could always upgrade to the unlimited plan if my usage warranted it, and that I should simply call after reviewing my first bill on the wireless plan, since that would catch my usage halfway into a monthlong cycle, before I racked up major overages.
I received my first bill on this plan yesterday, and since I had a little over $36 in excess data charges, called today to upgrade to the unlimited plan. Imagine my surprise when I was informed that the plan was no longer available. I spoke with two people in your customer relations department, one of whom had little interest in trying to help me get grandfathered into the unlimited plan (as I understand you have done for people already on the plan – I suppose they were lucky enough to be advised to start with the unlimited plan and work down). Then I was very fortunate to speak with a terrific representative named Mark, who took some time to investigate the possibilities before advising me that the only thing he could do was to reverse that initial $36 in overages.
While I certainly appreciate Mark’s efforts to accommodate me on this first bill, that doesn’t begin to address the cost that I have incurred thanks to your precipitous change in data plans. I did a lot of research (six months!) before making my purchase, and would not have invested in a Treo if it were not for Fido’s unlimited data plan. (I wouldn’t have purchased a hiptop, either; I think I probably would have waited for the implementation of the CRTC decision allowing people to move their cell phone numbers to new carriers, anticipating new phone/pda and data options at that time.)
Thanks to your unannounced change in plans, I am now out-of-pocket some $720 Canadian for this device, not to mention the time I have invested in reorganizing all of my workflow in order to make the most of the Treo. (If you think I’m being dramatic, you can get a sense of how much time I’ve put into this transition by visiting http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/categories/treo/).
Mark mentioned that your upcoming transition to the Rogers system may result in the elimination of your unlimited data plan, which makes me all the more anxious to resolve this situation. At this point the only acceptable resolution is for you to either grandfather me into your unlimited data plan, or for you to waive any excess data charges for at least the next twenty-four months – the minimum amount of time I would expect to use a device that represents such a significant investment.
Since I have been tracking my Treo adventures on my blog, and since some of my fellow bloggers will be interested in the future of your unlimited data plan, I am posting a copy of this letter on my blog at http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/archive/fido-complaint/
Thank you in advance for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Why have one home page when you can have ten?
.24.8 | 4 Comments »
August 24th, 2005 by Alex
Just discovered a very cool Firefox feature. If you have several web pages open in tabs, and then click Peferences/General in order to set your home page, Firefox gives you the option of setting your home page to “current pageS“.
So if you like to check your bank info, the New York Times, and your Basecamp projects every morning, just open all three pages in tabs (but in the same window). Then follow the steps above to set up Firefox so you can get to all three in one step.
Speed feeding
.22.8 | 4 Comments »
August 22nd, 2005 by Alex
Part of the plan with the telecentre.org ecosystem is to bring relevant content into telecentre.org sites using RSS. In the case of event sites — like the Capetown site that is the very first telecentre event site to get up and running — we’ll use special tags (keywords) to help create our event blogs. That way people who already have their own blogs or web sites can post stories on their own blogs, but have the stories show up on the event site, too.
The challenge is figuring out how to gather all those blog posts together in a way that brings them onto the event site in something close to real time. In other words, how quickly can we move a blog post from a personal site to an event site?
I tested that out today with my first cross-post to the Capetown site. I wrote my post, then included the tag capetowntelecentre, which is the keyword we designated as our “flag this for syndication on the Capetown site” signal.
Next step was to check in — about half an hour later — with the various blog search services that could help us aggregate all these blog posts into a single RSS feed. I had already set up a PubSub search on capetowntelecentre, because PubSub only starts searching for terms once you set up a search; but my PubSub feed hadn’t found my post yet (six hours later, it still hasn’t; nor has it found the test post Rob wrote last night!).
Then I tried Technorati. Technorati had a feed for posts that contained the word capetowntelecentre (where I found my test post), and it had a feed for posts that used capetowntelecentre as a tag (where I found Rob’s post, but not mine, even though I used capetowntelecentre both as a tag and in text. Ah, the enigma that is Technorati.)
Next stop: Feedster, where a chorus of RSS angels opened their throats and spilled forth the whole universe of (two) posts containing the term capetowntelecentre (interesting, pulling mine in indirectly via the Web of Blogs site set up for the upcoming Web of Change conference.) I had a winner! Up went our shiny new RSS feed for capetowntelecentre, which the kind folks at Feedster were good enough to set up (on request) as an ad-free RSS feed, because they thought it was “just the right thing to do” for a “good cause” like telecentre.org.
One more note: Mark tried a test post too, but since he put capetowntelecentre in quotation marks, it didn’t get aggregated; it’s worth noting that you have to avoid quotation marks to make this kind of tag-based aggregation work.
Event blogging with Drupal
.22.8 | 1 Comment »
August 22nd, 2005 by Alex
This is Information Society Week in Capetown, and one of the events taking place is the first telecentre.org workshop to use the new Drupal-based event platform that I’ve helped develop.
The good folks at Bryght have set us up with a freelinking module that lets Drupal function like a wiki. The plan is to use this functionality to support an in-person event, the same way Aspiration uses PurpleWiki to power its convergences.
Because I live only to document, I’ll be posting notes on how our Drupal site seems to work as an event wiki and blog, along with any thoughts on workflow or site setup. Stay tuned!
This is your brain in binary
.21.8 | 2 Comments »
August 21st, 2005 by Alex
As part of my ongoing quest to find a Mac counterpart to the Personal Brain (thanks to Jerry Michalski for ruining my life with his software demo) — and as part of my re-evaluation of all my productivity apps in the wake of my Treo purchase — I have been playing with a bunch of new tools. The one that has most quickly insinuated itself into my workflow is VoodooPad, a very simple little tool that solves that eternal problem: what to do with all those little random notes, thoughts and jots that aren’t to-dos, calendar items, or full-fledged documents?
VoodooPad is basically just a wiki for your personal computer, but its very straightforward interface makes it ideal for keeping all your notes in one place, and creating links and categories (a.k.a. tags) that help you organize and retrieve your work. I now keep VoodooPad running all the time and use it for any note or work-in-progress, ranging from project tracking to incipient blog posts to early document drafts to to-do lists. Because VoodooPad offers wiki-style automatic link creation (but doesn’t require that your links be in CamelCase form), it’s very easy to create a new page for every new topic or idea, no matter how small, while preserving its relationship to other ideas/topics/pages; I also use categories as a way of tagging and retrieving all related pages. I’ve created categories for each project I’m working on, and since VoodooPad lets you assign multiple categories to the same page, I’ve assigned pages with code snippets both to the category for my current web project (where the code originated) and to a category called Drupal (since I might want to re-use code in a future project).
One of the intriguing things about VoodooPad is its open API; I’ve been wondering whether it might be possible to create a plug-in that would generate visual maps for link relationships within a Voodoopad document. If so, that would come pretty close to full Brain functionality.
But until that moment arrives, I still find myself searching for something even more Brain-like, which is why I was interested to see David Heinemeier Hansson — part of the 37 Signals team — describe his vision for their much-lauded Backpack tool:
It’s the product I tried to create through a mesh of outlines, email inboxes, post-it notes, The Brain, and a gazillion other systems under the sun.
This has me poking around Backpack again, as I have periodically since it launched. But I’ve yet to start using it, partly because I’m nervous about having big chunks of my life accessible only if I’ve got an Internet connection (yeah, that’s most of the time, but it’s not all the time) and partly because I’m not really clear on how it’s going to make me taller, smarter, or more beloved by small children and animals.
I was intrigued to find Christopher Wimmer’s post on engadgeted.net » a few suggestions on how to improve backpack, in which he talked about his own curiosity about how he’d integrate Backpack and VoodooPad. I’m hoping he may soon offer some insights about Backpack versus (or alongside) VoodooPad, now that he’s become an enthusiastic Backpack user. Does Christopher (or anyone else) have tips on how to make Backpack play nicely on VoodooPad, advice on which things I should use Backpack for and which things I should use VoodooPad for, or a compelling argument about why I should give up one in favour of the other?
Movie Central digs me out from Six Feet Under
.17.8 | 1 Comment »
August 17th, 2005 by Alex
Today’s online customer service award goes to Movie Central — that’s the (Western) Canadian equivalent of HBO.
I emailed the address listed on their web site last Monday (August 8th), as follows:
Subject: Six Feet Under season 5
hi,
I’ve somehow missed Season 5 of six feet under — I only just now
discovered that the season is almost over!! and it’s our whole reason
for subscribing to movie central, so i’m heartbroken. Can I ask when
you’re going to start showing season 5 again from the beginning so I
don’t miss it again?
Let me tell you, I wasn’t really expecting an answer. So I was just delighted when I got an actual e-mail from an actual human being today:
I’m sorry to hear this! We premiered Six Feet Under in a similar
time-frame to HBO. We will be re-airing this season likely in about 4
months or so. So you don’t miss it again you might consider subscribing
to MCeNews which will send you weekly updates on the series and movies
airing each week. Another great new series about to start is the HBO’s
Rome premiering on Movie Central August 28th. Check into our website for
more details.
The truth is they’re obviously flogging this Rome thing, but I was impressed that they thought to suggest a consolation prize. And really thrilled that Six Feet Under will indeed be mine, if subject to delayed gratification.
Meanhile would all Six Feet Under watchers please take this as a big NO SPOILERS warning. If I hear so much as a peep about Season 5 from any of you I’m going to be scouring my site logs for evidence that your IP number accessed this post. If I discover that you knowingly ignored my NO SPOILERS warning I’m going to subject you to creative RSS-enabled public humiliation.
Coding for deliberation
.17.8 | No Comments »
August 17th, 2005 by Alex
One of my favourite organizations working on dialogue and deliberation challenges is the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). They’ve done a great job of building community among people doing civic engagement, dialogue and deliberation work, and are the inspriation for the upcoming Canadian C2D2 conference.
Now NCDD is expanding its extensive web site and is looking for someone to do some PHP and MySQL Web development work. More details for you to peruse and forward to your favourite coders:
The specific project is called the “Learning Exchange.” This is essentially a redesign and expansion of a significant portion of the content available through our main website (www.thataway.org, see the resources section).
The specific goals of the project are:
1. To provide a vast amount of information in an organized manner
2. To make specific information easier for users to find, both through browsing and through basic searches
3. To add a sophisticated ”needs-based” searching interface
4. To create an administrative interface that enables quick and easy management of the site’s contentPlease look over our RFP at http://www.thataway.org/misc/ncdd_rfp.pdf to learn more.
In search of the perfect host
.16.8 | 3 Comments »
August 16th, 2005 by Alex
Rob and I seem to be in the market for a new web host. We’ve been delighted with our current hosts, Ace of Space, but as our site and domain empire expands, it’s beginning to look like it would be economical for us to get a hosting package that allows unlimited domains.
A friend recommends IV Hosting, which offers 3GB of space and unlimited domains for only US $99/year. A great deal, but not the most widely-known company, so we’re exploring the various possibilities. After all, switching web hosts isn’t like buying a house or getting married; it’s a serious, long-term commitment that can potentially enhance or destroy your connections to the outside world.
So I’d be delighted to hear from anyone with a reseller host to recommend. We’re looking for hosting of unlimited domains, ideally also IMAP support, and somewhere or other I swear I saw somebody offer free domain registrations into the deal. We might also consider Virtual Private Server options but those sound a bit high-maintenance, so I think we’ll be happier with a reseller package.
You got your Treo in my custom RSS feed
.12.8 | No Comments »
August 12th, 2005 by Alex
I’ve been talking a lot about RSS on this site for some time now. And lately I’ve been talking about Treos too. Now you can have both great flavours in one thanks to this little demo of how the best sources of custom RSS feeds can help you find everything you want to know about Treo.
If you’ve just started using a newsreader like Bloglines or Newsgator, odds are that you’re subscribing to RSS or Atom feeds from your favourite blogs and news sites. But there are lots of other great sources of RSS feeds, including feeds that are tailored to your particular interests. So here are some of my favourite sources of high-value RSS feeds.
And if, like me, you are exploring the wide world of Treo, you might be interested in checking out the sample feeds below. If you click on each one you’ll be taken to an example: an RSS feed for “treo” from that source. Want to see how that can rock your world? Want to know more about Treo? Check out my 100% RSS Treo page.
- the Technorati tag page will feed you blog posts about Treo
- a Pubsub blog subscription will give you slightly broader results than you’re likely to get from Technorati, since it will be searching for Treo as a keyword rather than as a tag
- PubSub newsgroup subscription will do the same thing for usenet group discussions
- Dulance lets you set up an RSS search to track prices for products
- a del.icio.us tag feed will give you all the latest web resources that people are storing on a given topic
- BlogMarks offers more tag-based bookmark subscriptions, like the one from del.icio.us
- the flickr feed will show you pictures taken on a Treo or of a Treo
- the Organic Broadcast Network gives you an RSS feed linking to streaming video content about Treo
- a Yahoo! news search will give you mainstream news sources on a given topic
- and giving Yahoo! a run for its money is everyone’s favourite new kid on the RSS block, Google news
Bonus RSS feed: It’s not a Treo-related feed, but while on the subject of custom RSS feeds I have to tip my hat to the eternal geniuses that be Apple, where you can set up RSS feeds from the iTunes store, which let yo know about new albums in your favourite genres.
RSS hall of awkward blushes and shuffling feet…if not actual shame. These are the big mysteries — the sites that should offer custom RSS feeds but don’t:
-
Amazon should let me subscribe to an RSS feed that notifies me when they add a Treo-related item to their store.
- The generally wise and wonderful people over at 43things offer a nice range of RSS feeds, but they won’t let you subscribe to a search result on Treo. So how will I keep track of those who share my Treo dream? That reminds me…time to cross “get a Treo” off my list.
- Rojo is all about the feeds, and even lets you create a custom search on stories that have been tagged Treo, but does it then offer you an RSS feed of the search? No! Where will this madness end?
- a href=”http://www.consumating.com”>Consumating People lets you create tag-based searches of people you might want to date…like Treo owners. Really. So how is it that people this visionary realize that people who find dates via tags probably want to take care of the whole thing via RSS? It’s at moments like this that I sure am glad I’m married..and that they hadn’t invented RSS or tags back in my single days. How could anyone settle down when that perfect tag set could be one feed refresh away?
eBay should let me subscribe to an RSS feed that notifies me when a new Treo-related item goes on sale.
The CNET/ZDNet empire should be downright embarrassed to be run tech news sites that don’t offer search-based topical RSS feeds.
Rob Cottingham » A little something for the Getting Things Done crowd
.12.8 | 1 Comment »
August 12th, 2005 by Alex
OK, Getting Things Done fans: my extremely witty and brilliant husband has got a must-see web page:
Rob Cottingham » A little something for the Getting Things Done crowd
My kingdom for a link*
.9.8 | 1 Comment »
August 9th, 2005 by Alex
Rob thinks my new comment form is lame and desperate. I say, maybe he would reassert some claim to even participating in our rank war if he actually deployed a little strategy himself.
As any politician knows, you’ve got to ask people for their vote. And any salesperson knows you’ve got to ask your prospect for that sale. So I figure, you’ve got to ask your blog’s readers for that link.
*Note: Actual kingdom may be smaller than it appears. Offer void in Hawaii and Alaska.
Drupalled
.9.8 | No Comments »
August 9th, 2005 by Alex
OK, I’m officially drinking the Drupal Koolaid. Boris skyped me through the process of putting our doc on choosing the telecentre.org platform right into the Drupal handbook itself. Now I feel all Drupally and won’t be able to sleep.