Nigel Armstrong posted a
link to a
UPEI Blog regarding the future of our local newspaper, The Guardian.
Kate goes onto say that the The Guardian hasn't been tossed away yet because of the online world.
Nigel Armstrong said in his blog post that The Guardian will slowly become more of a multimedia company and not solely a print based news system. The Guardian's website already does a bit of multimedia however there is much lacking before they take the cake.
The Guardian needs a overhaul of their website, as it gives off the appearance that things are just being thrown all over the place and it makes a lot of it non-appealing, such as the web poll. A lesson to be learned from Halifax's
Chronicle Herald website. The Chronicle Herald keeps the reader interested with their layout and notice how they make their ads tie in with the site?
What I like about The Guardian's site is that it is semi-constantly updated with new news, if the event is big enough. While this is the new way of life for media, it takes a chunk out of their revenue as well as people don't need to purchase the Monday copy of the newspaper when they already know what happened on the weekend.
I know that I haven't purchased a copy of The Guardian for a long time, but have read it in local coffee shops or where ever it may be. But then again, I've probably only ever purchased a handful of copies in total.
What I would like to see is, The Guardian Video. Actual video competing with CBC News as it occurs, with perhaps a short advertisement at the first of the video. After all, they do need to make revenue/profit.
For all media, I think online video is the future. While The Guardian currently has a Video-On-Demand option, it makes it feel more like a Youtube then actual local content.
Watching a video on local news is much more appealing to me then reading the newspaper on my computer. Therefore, I can only hope that The Guardian will do more local video content.
Island Services Network is being purchased by
Eastlink Communications. As most are aware, ISN is a small ISP that offers two types of internet services.
The options available at ISN are either dialup (Yes, people still use Dialup) as well as High Speed Internet.
Since 2001, ISN has been reselling the Eastlink High Speed Internet services which Eastlink offers over a cable connection, much like cable TV.
Much like reseller hosting, the only difference in the service is who provides your technicial support & the billing. In ISN & Eastlink's case, they both use
Advantage Communications in one way or another.
Therefore, any ISN users migrating to Eastlink shouldn't really notice a difference in regardings to their internet connection, if anything it may speed up their services a bit and at a cheaper rate.
ISN founder, Kevin O'Brien, has stated that he believes users will still be able to use their @isn.net email addresses as well. Something which I would sure as heck hope that current ISN users will be able to do.
ISN uses Advantage Communications for their technicial support, whereas Eastlink uses Advantage for their billing support.
So does this change the playing field on PEI for ISP's? Not really. While ISN may have been one of the first ISP's on Prince Edward Island, they've always been going over another local ISP's loop.
For instance, at first ISN was using IslandTel as a backbone, therefore if IslandTel went down, sure enough so didn't ISN.
Then, ISN made the switch to Eastlink as a backbone provider. So, if Eastlink went down, sure enough ISN did too.
So in short, ISN customers is merely a glorified customer of a larger ISP such as Eastlink.
My own experience with ISN years ago was good. That was back in the dialup days when they offered their 33.6k dialup connection, while Sympatico was offering 56k/v.90.
The only thing I was unimpressed about with ISN was their co-location room when I inquired about housing a dotServing server within their room. The room was a mess with cables running every which way and was in no way up to dotServing standards, we require at least 2 continuous backbones.
And their lack of interest in bringing High speed internet to me years ago when living at my parents place.
Other then that, I haven't heard many complaints or many praises for the company so I would assume they were typically doing a good job.
I read the occasional blog and lately the reads have been rather boring. I enjoy reading about how people have accomplished things and what they did to get there.
The last thing anyone would want to read is a blog that does nothing but says purchase from us! purchase from us! Its rather boring and should be left to the main content on your website. Its kinda of like during an election campaign when you go to listen to someone speak and all they say is, "Vote Me! Vote Me! Vote Me!". Another analogy would be its like those telemarketers who call you when your eating lunch. No one wants to listen to then constantly go on and tell you about something your not even half decently interested in.
It's boring and not entertaining.
Tonight I was speaking with a manager from Apple who is in town visiting Online Support, a local call center who handles the support for Apple's iPhone. The manager, from California, was telling me that the next generatation of the iPhone will have a GPS system built in, however he was unsure when it will be released. This is certainly good news for someone who is on the market for a new PDA phone.
The new GPS feature will take care of one of the
problems I had
previously mentioned about the iPhone.
He also mentioned that the iPhone will probably not be available in Canada until the next generation is released.
Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt has made
comments
that he is looking at other ways to generate revenue from their internet subscribers. Such ways include, charging Google to deliver their content via the Time Warner pipes.
Former SBC CEO Ed Whitacr has also made such
comments.
Unless all internet service providers come onboard with such plans, we may see a major rise & fall of dsl/cable companies.
For those in major centers such as Toronto or Chicago, changing your ISP may be easy. But for Islanders, our options are extremely limited, lets hope Aliant and Eastlink never consider the idea.
Videotron is taking a step backwards. They are now limiting the amount of bandwidth you can use in one month. Their old measures were that you could use as much bandwidth as your pipe could handle however now, they are imposing 100 GB bandwidth restrictions.
Island based Eastlink once did this, but were quick to reverse it due to the number of upset customers.
Research in Motion is coming out with a new Blackberry. The phone will be known as the
Blackberry 8820 and may be used to replace my current Motorola Q.
The major difference between the Blackberry 8820 and the Motorola Q is that the Blackberry will have the WIFI option, whereas the Motorola Q does not.
It will be exactly what the iPhone is
not. The new Blackberry will be a dual mode phone, it will have a GPS system capable of giving directions. It will also allow for SD Cards up to 32 GB.
The only question remains is, are those additional features worth the price tag of $500-600? The answer remains no at the current time but without a doubt the price of the Blackberry 8820 will go down as RIM tries to convince users that its phone it superior to the iPhone
In
previous threads I discussed the iPhone and the planned move to Canada.
After speaking with a iPhone Technical Support member he has informed me that the phone is already setup for use in Canada therefore no new software needs to be developed. According to the source, the phones can recognize Rogers Communications and even puts up the R logo for Rogers. By the sounds of it, Apple already has the firmware setup for the iPhone. The last important step Apple has to take is to finish their contract talks with Rogers and almost immediately I believe we will have the iPhone in Canada.
I have been with Telus Mobility for the past 4 years. For the first 3 years, service was good, my bill never had mistakes, things were almost flawless.
The Motorola V710 was amazing. It did everything I wanted to do and some!
I then decided to move up to a dataplan using the Motorola Q.
So I moved onto the new top of the line smartphone. Every since the switch with Telus, it has been nothing but disappointment after disappointment. And the switch took place almost a year ago!
Telus tried to charge us double twice. They've messed up our invoice at least 5 times, and tries to change our contract for numerous months thinking we would not notice.
On PEI, we have 4 options:
Telus, Aliant, Virgin Mobile, and Rogers.
Virgin Mobile is a newer company but looks like they deal with lower end users and don't offer data plans. Virgin Mobile piggybacks off of Aliant's cell phone towers.
Rogers is a major player in the local phone market but as previously
reported, they aren't reliable outside of Charlottetown. Rogers has their own cell towers on PEI.
Aliant is owned by telecom giant BCE, which was recently take over by the Ontario Teachers Fund. I have never used them directly.
Telus Mobility is a Western-Canada based company who also piggybacks off Aliants cell phone towers. They are bigger out west but not so much in the east.
After talking about the
Apple iPhone coming to PEI, I am no longer as excited about the iPhone. Steve Jobs has certainly did a very good job getting the media all hyped up about the iPhone. In fact, he did such an amazing job, very few are reporting on the negatives about this phone.
For instance:
1)
The Battery: With most phones you can pop the battery out of the phone. With the iPhone the battery is built in and in order for it to be replaced, you need to send it into Apple. Sure, some might consider thing not necessarily a negative thing as batteries will last a long time right? Wrong, the iPhone battery will need to be replaced every 12-24 months.
2)
GPS: Where is the GPS capabilities? Being an explorer I love to travel short and long journeys.
The bad news: there is no GPS system inside the iPhone.
The good news: there is a google maps option, assuming you know where you are, which is not useful for backpackers!
3)
Memory Card: Okay, I think this one is pretty simple. Sure, 8GB is a lot of space, but as time passes on software is becoming more massive in size (now we have a lot of games now that are 1-2 gb!). Video is also skyrocketted from a usual 800-900 mb to 1.5 gb!
Some other interesting facts:
- The world wide web was developed on a NeXT Cube computer. Steve Jobs was the founder and creator of NeXT Cube computers after being kicked out of Apple.
- Steve Jobs is the largest share holder of Disney (7%) and was CEO of The Graphics Group (later renamed to PIXAR) till Disney bought it.
The iPhone release date has been announced and is due to be released on June 29th! The features (Wifi and a connection via your provider, among other things) sound really good I won't be the second person to purchase one in Charlottetown. I spoke with a local businessman who already made a down payment on a iPhone at the local
mac shop.
The phone does not interest me due to the fact that the only provider that can carry the phone in town initially will be
Rogers Wireless, which has horrible cell phone coverage on
Prince Edward Island.
However on the flip side the lack of coverage is not Rogers fault, as they have
tried
to setup more
towers however due to public outcry on PEI, NIMBY (not in my back yard) which is normal for anything new to PEI.
