The K Unit

I was quite honoured when I was selected as “one of the first Canadians” to receive my Zoompass Tag. To incent or reward the use of this new idea, I was also zoomed an additional $15 into my account. It was definitely a nice gesture.

The Zoompass Tag is essentially a sticker that is intended to be put on your phone. I suspect it is embedded with an RFID chip of sorts inside it. Zoompass is geared to be a mobile payment tool and this is a logical step in it’s evolution. It allows the account holder to be able to use the Zoompass site or mobile app on the phone before and now you can physically use your phone to swipe at a pay station. All in all, quite clever. When I used it at the Tim Horton’s yesterday morning, the attendant was quite impresses and quickly jotted down the name of the product.

There are a few issues for me personally. The first is that I have at least 3 phones that I use and I use them interchangably. It’s not a major issue as I am quite unique in that regard. The other issue I have is the sticker itself. For one, it protrudes quite a bit. I’m worried that over time, it will be jarred off the phone. Secondly, I chose to put the tag on my iPhone. The issue is that I use a silicon sleeve and that didn’t seem to adhere well on it on first attempt. So I ended up sticking it on the phone beneath the sleeve. That didn’t seem to work when I was at the Tim Horton’s the first time. I had to remove the sleeve to use it. I’ll try again to see if it was a Kelvin issue.

Overall, I love the idea. It’s neat and convenient. It also frees up my wallet from one additional card in my 5-card wallet. It does consolidate my use of Zoompass.

It is a pretty known fact that I LOVE the Windows Mobile platform and consider it the best mobile platform purely from a technology standpoint. However, when I joined Canpages in November, I was given the opportunity to purchase any phone that was available by Rogers. Given that I owned both HTC Android phones and Rogers did not carry any Windows Mobile phones that was worth acquiring, the only real choice left really was to get a 16GB iPhone 3GS. I approached that decision with a lot of mixed feelings. In my initial use of the iPod Touch, I really disliked the experience. However, I only used it for a few hours at a time, I was willing to give it another try. Here are some of my thoughts after almost 4 months of use.

There was an interesting Buzz going on started by Louis Grey, one of my favorite bloggers on the web where he’s talking about the noise that cross posting makes. I tried to submit a comment and I couldn’t so I opted to write this thought on my blog instead

Historically speaking, there has been minimal overlap between my Twitter followers and my Facebook followers as I use both quite differently. Buzz is the first time where this problem is about to be an issue. I had originally started this comment with the thought that perhaps the answer is two-way response on Buzz but the solution really is much more intricate than that. It’s got to be automatic aggregation of posts ala Thoora as well. It’d be neat to post something and Buzz automatically recognizes that it already went to other feeds and not post it multiple times but just badge it to say that it was posted on Buzz, Twitter and Facebook for instance. That would make Buzz a much more powerful social tool indeed.

I was quite excited to receive this email from Waze yesterday. Waze has been one of my favorite mobile apps of late. My major complaint was of course that there were very no Canadian maps available. With new Canadian maps, this could very well be a killer navigation tool while still providing real time information that you’d have to pay for from other providers like Tom Tom for instance.

Hello Canadian mappers,
Some great news – we have acquired a base map for all of Canada (thank you Canadian government!) and we will start loading them to the cartouche.
While this change is great, we realize this brings a few concerns to all the hard work you’ve put into creating the waze maps so far, so we wanted to explain how this process will be carried out which is why we’re sending this email.

Before we start, you should know that you can take a break for the next 2 days. Any changes made after we start the process will not make it to the final version of the map, and we don’t want you to waste your time. We will also put a big red pop-up on the cartouche itself letting you know once we started our work.

The technical descriptions are below (and my apologies for sending such a long email… only read if you’re interested).

At the end of the process, Canadian maps will remain on www.waze.com/cartouche, and aerial images should be up and running in the background.

Thanks and please feel free to email us if you have any concerns or questions

Dror

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Technicalities:

So how will the maps be combined? I will refer to two maps – the GOVT (new base map from the Canadian Government) and USER (existing cartouche maps)

• Since the GOVT has more segments, this will be the base for the new map.
• Each segment from the USER maps will be checked for a matching segment from the GOVT. If there’s a match, the the GOVT segment will keep its shape, but the driving direction, street name and ownership will be changed to match the USER segment.
• If there’s no match, the USER segment will be added to the new map with all characteristics (including shape).
• We will run a process that automatically recognizes highways. This process connects the highways to ramps and opens the driving directions. In this case, any prior info from the USER maps will be kept (info will be added only on new segments).
• We will run all the drives in Canada up to date; this will open driving directions on all segments that were not created until today and create routing connectivity (allowed turns).
• As for connectivity; the GOVT maps come with physical connectivity (nodes and their connection to the segments) but without routing connectivity (allowed turns). Unfortunately, we cannot move the routing connectivity from the existing cartouche when a new segment is involved. The only case where connectivity is kept is where two segments were not recognized completely and copied as is from the USER maps (3rd bullet above).

What should you expect?

1. First of all, great new maps that will make it a lot easier for you to complete the work on your area.
2. But… also some problems. Most likely you’ll notice a few places where there are duplicates, in case that the USER and GOVT segments were not matched properly, and so both were created in the final map. This is where we will need your help in editing and deleting the extra roads, so if you are not an area manager yet please let us know and we’ll be happy to see if you can join the area managers community.
3. Routing might not be optimal; even if you got the routes around your house on a good level, you will notice a decrease. This is because we cannot copy the existing routing connectivity (see last bullet above).

As mentioned before, we will put the pop-up on the cartouche once the work begins (most likely in the next couple of hours or by tomorrow the latest) which will be your cue to take a break. I will also post this on the forums.
–
waze support team
www.twitter.com/waze
alpha@waze.com
Share your experiences on the road with other wazers – waze.com/user_blog

One of the worst kept secrets in the Canadian Mobile industry is that both Telus and Bell are going to be launching their W-CDMA network in 2009. The launch is now imminent with the announcement that both Bell and Telus will soon be launching with iPhones on their networks in the not so distant future. Competition for wireless in Canada is about to get really hot in the next few months and maybe even years.

I won’t claim to be an expert on wireless; I’m more of an observer. My sense tell me that when the dust settles in a few years, price points would remain about the same as they are today. We will get more features due to the evolution of technology but they will eventually stay about here. A large reason for that will have to do with our Canadian geography, the lack of population density and lack of population mass making this business a relatively expensive venture to undertake in comparison to other countries. Companies like Rogers and Bell might be in better shape to provide content delivery by leveraging their media divisions but in general, every other company will have very similar risks, costs and revenue opportunity.

The one factor that every company has control over is the customer experience. Being someone who is very interested in mobile, one of the Twitter searches I follow is “#telus #bell #rogers” and with a medium like Twitter, they can be vocal about how they feel. One thing in common is that people are extremely frustrated and are looking for alternatives from the big 3 today.

Good customer service is the tip of the iceberg for a great customer experience. This starts all the way from the start of a sale all the way through the time a customer chooses to leave a service. I can’t speak for any other service as I’ve been solely a Rogers customer for about 8 years now. Rogers has vastly improved its customer service from when I started using them. It used to be a pain to call them because customer service reps (CSR) could be extremely rude and unhelpful. Today the fear of calling 611 is no longer there and Rogers has gone as far as to hire a Social Media team to help deal with issues on Twitter. It’s still early on but I have high hopes of its success.

Beyond customer service, this is where Rogers falls down and needs to seriously shore up the organization to stem the tide of negative comments. It’s frustrating to call a CSR to know more about plans, features and products of the company that the CSR is representing. It’s also frustrating that there is more knowledge of Rogers on sites like HowardForums.com then in Rogers itself. This problem also extends to the technical side too. One such incident that sticks out in my mind is right after Rogers announced that they too were now able to send and receive Tweets via SMS. The transition was rocky at best. For myself, it took almost 5 days for it to work. One particular person on Twitter had an iPhone and the technical support rep insisted that the problem was with the iPhone and had the individual call Apple multiple times for support. It was pretty clear that if the person was receiving other SMS messages that the iPhone was not the issue. The resolution for the issue ended up being an issue with Twitter not entering all area codes needed to send via SMS. CSRs and Tech Support reps need to be armed with information and knowledge that will make them effective in their job especially when it comes to new high profile features. The truth is that things go awry and customers can accept that. What customers don’t expect is incompetence.

I’m doing more infrastructure changes at home so thekunit.com will probably be down for the next couple of days as I revamp the network internally. Thanks for everyone who still checks out my site even though it hasn’t been overly active the past month.

Although I really love my Macbook, there are certain aspects of my Asus R1F tablet that I really miss. The biggest one, of course, is the ability to use the tablet function. While I type a lot of things, I actually write and draw just as much. The only difference is that most of it is done on paper and they never get transferred to anywhere else and often times I lose them too. While I have my handy dandy tgrmobile (HTC Fuze) with me close to 100% of my waking hours, there are a few shortcomings to it. The first is that it’s a phone. When I type information with it during meetings, the assumption is that I am texting someone or emailing someone. It does have Evernote on it but the reality is that it is too small to be truly useful to write lots of notes or jott down my ideas fully with it. So lately I’ve been thinking a lot about going back to the Asus R1F or purchasing an Asus T91 to solve this issue. There were quite a few things that frustrated me about the Asus R1F, most of them stemming from using Windows Vista. When it was announced that Windows 7 would be released, I decided to give it another go. Although my initial install of Windows 7 RC was quite disastrous, the RTM seems much more solid. Here are some of my notes about setting up the Asus R1F with Windows 7.

Outside of Evernote, one of my other favourite apps today is Dropbox. The Dropbox concept is rather simple; it allows you to store information in the cloud but it’s implementation is extremely effective. Ever since I started working, I’ve always had portable storage. Traditionally it’s come in the means of a Compact Flash memory card seated in a PCMCIA adapter that is always plugged in to my notebooks. If I ever decided to leave my laptop at work, all I would have to do is to eject my PCMCIA card and take it home with me and I’d still be able to hace access to my core information wherever I went. PCMCIA cards are no longer the norm; ExpressCards are. More importantly though this same requirement can be solved by web services like Dropbox.

I do my work on multiple devices. I have a Macbook as my primary work laptop, a Vista machine for when I’m home and a Ubuntu Linux box that I rely on to do system admin type tasks. I love the fact that Dropbox works on all 3 operating systems. For all 3, you install a client which then creates a local directory on that machine. Any time you make a change to a document in the dropbox directory, it will synchronize it to all the other machines. In that scenario, it works really well. For my mobile devices, Dropbox has a mobile friendly web site that makes these folders easily accessible. I often put cab files that I need to install on my Windows Mobile there as often times sites don’t make it easy to download apps from their site.

One of the really nice things that I like about Dropbox is the ability to share folders. This is most useful when you are collaborating with others and need to have information flow to multiple people. Instead of sending multiple files to multiple people, you can always have the latest copy accessible through a shared folder in Dropbox. One word of caution though, it doesn’t support the concept of file locking. If two people are editing the same document, the file that is retained is most likely going to be the last one. The good news though is that it does support some rudimentary file versioning which is accessible on the web.

The free account comes with 2GB of storage. It may not sound like a lot especially when USB keys are so cheap these days and when Yahoo and Gmail both offer storage sizes that is much larger than that. It all boils down to how you use your cloud storage. For me, it’s a very simple and cheap way to synchronize and cache the most critical files that I need quick and instant access to such as my work documents. For the laptops that I access to perform work related tasks, I default my local Dropbox directory as my Documents directory. That way any work I do gets saved that quickly. The nice benefit from this process is that I get file versions out of this by default. Just in case I do something stupid, I can always log on to the web to restore an older version. Since it’s cached locally, it means that I can still have access to a copy of the file. One risk though is that if it wasn’t synchronized before you took your computer offline, you might not have the latest copy.

Should you find that 2GB is not enough for your needs, you can upgrade your plan to a 50 GB or 100 GB plan for a fee. You could also get small upgrades to your account by referring friends. Each referral will get you an extra 250 MB added to your account. If you did find this review useful and would like to try Dropbox, please use my referral link.

This review is about Android, the operating system, and not about any particular handset. I remember the first time I got my hands on the Android when @elusivejackal picked up a development unit late last year. I played with it for about 30 minutes and left with the feeling that it was a really solid operating system. Rogers, Canada’s only GSM provider, launched both the HTC Magic and HTC Dream a few weeks ago and I finally bit the bullet to pick up an Android device for myself.

Playing with the Android, Google seems to be taking a hybrid approach and picking up the best and worst of what has been done on the iPhone and Windows Mobile platforms to date. The Android’s native home screen looks like the iPhone. It breaks it up into 3 panels and you can add more apps by swiping up the menu screen from the bottom and adding them to any of the home panels. An additional thing you can do is to add widgets to the home panel which is useful. The panels are finger friendly where you can swipe up (to see all the apps you have installed), down (sees all the system notifications), left and right (to move between panels).

As soon as you turn on the phone, it asks you for your Google credentials which makes sense. It is a Google Phone after all. By default, the phone will synchronize with Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk and Contacts. It will also activate your Latitude if you choose to do so when you run Google Maps on the Android. However, you have to re-enter your Google credentials for any third-party apps you use on the Android. I would have hoped that it would ask me for confirmation if I wanted to re-use my Google credentials. Hopefully this will change as I think that tight integration with Google is one of the most attractive features with the Android.

Android, like the iPhone, has its own centralized application repository which they call Marketplace. You can do keyword searches to narrow down the application list. Once you click on the app, you get to see all the reviews, see other apps the developer has published for the Android and even email the application developer directly. One thing which I do like about the Android is that it gives you the ability to install apps even outside of the Marketplace. You have to check it off in the phone settings and be able to find an app to install. A prime example of such use is Brightkite. One thing I didn’t like about the Marketplace is that it didn’t alert you when an app was updated. The application developer has to build the capability into the app or you have to stumble upon an update by searching for it in the marketplace.

The performance on the GPS is phenomenally fast and accurate. One of the things that I like about it is how the GPS is abstracted that multiple apps can access the information without causing a conflict. For instance, I can publish my location on BrightKite while Google Maps is running.bWindows Mobile actually attempts to do this but unfortunately most developers bypass the generic GPS driver which provides the same abstraction layer concept because of performance issues.

Once you get out of the “pretty” and look at the guts of the Android, as a developer, you can quickly see how much of it is Java and Linux. When I was setting up the Dream for my mum, I deleted something I shouldn’t have causing the phone to crash a lot. The only way I could recover from it was to hard reset the phone. The best way to uninstall anything really would be to go through the marketplace. The nice thing however is that it is really easy to install apps even though they aren’t necessarily in the marketplace.

Overall, the Android shows a lot of promise but still lacks the polish of Windows Mobile. If Android can capture the heart and minds of the developer community, it will turn out to be a very solid product. Already HTC has developed a new UI with the Sense and it looks promising.