Maine Clammer’s Association
founded by Maine’s wild clammers (as opposed, I guess, to aquaculturists)
Month: January 2008
Beta blues – Jet Blue’s almost-internet in the sky
On the second half of my march home from Raleigh I was on a JetBlue Airbus between New York City and Boston that was equipped with JetBlue’s new internet service, BetaBlue. Basically it’s a 802.11b/g wifi node which is accessible once the plane hits 10,000 feet. One can connect to it via notebook or wifi smartphone (certain Blackberries for example). Once connected there are two services – Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger. This modern magic is performed with some 800Mhz spectrum, a method for switching rapidly between cell towers on the ground, and custom versions of the Yahoo apps. If you get in the air without a Yahoo account you’re SOL, though account opening is coming.
I had my X61 ThinkPad tablet snoozing in suspend mode, so as soon as the steward said it was cool for electronic dee-vices, I had Access Connections hunting for a wireless node … and there they were; two of them. I connected, opened Firefox, and was hit with the usual terms and conditions blah blah.
54 mb of inflight goodness at 97% signal – what could be better than internet in the air?
Well, given the name “beta” and given the price, “Free” I won’t rant about this uselessness. The service at present only does two things – access Yahoo mail, and Yahoo instant messaging. Okay. I don’t use my Yahoo mail account and I don’t use Yahoo’s messaging directly (I aggregate my account with Trillian), so there wasn’t going to be any inflight air blogging that night.
And, wouldn’t you know it, neither mail nor messenger worked in the scant 15 minutes I had at the top of the Kennedy-Logan parabola somewhere over Long Island Sound. I’m patient – I’ve only had full Internet above 30,000 feet once, and that was a Boeing Connexion service on JAL from Tokyo to Boston. If I recall that connection cost me some $20 bucks but was a good thing, albeit a bit vexing to be in 100% uptime connectivity with the office, thus ruining one of the last bastions of interruption free meditation in modern corporate life – business class.
Engadget reviewed last month after the press flight.
“Ultimately the utility of this service comes down to one’s own particular mindset, it would seem: those folks who just want to stay connected at any cost will find this to be a great perk that isn’t available anywhere else, while anyone expecting an open pipe or even broadband speeds is likely to be severely disappointed. When and if JetBlue begins adding more local multimedia content and opening up its network to other service providers, however, BetaBlue could eventually force other domestic carriers to finally get with the times and stop ruining our otherwise ubiquitous connections to the Grid.”
JetBlue is predicting better stuff:
"Customers on BetaBlue will not be able to access the Internet. This is not an
Internet-surfing connection.
We wanted to provide a product that everyone can use and at a great price: FREE.
BetaBlue’s email and instant messaging services are pioneering service
enhancements, and we will continue to listen to what our Customers want as we test
the aircraft’s current offerings. BetaBlue is our trial aircraft for new connectivity
services available in-flight. Stay tuned for future enhancements!”
Screen floaters
Among the annoyances of using a PC is the “Floater” — some weird graphical artifact that sticks on the screen like a spot on your retina after you stare at the sun too long. I’ve had two in the last day — need to reboot to clear them, but I’m literally too busy to even do that.
See it? “New_england_map_1677?”
Here is again
It’s one of those, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t things and it is driving me nuts.
Fake Steve Twittering from MacWorld ….
Dan Lyons Fake Steve Jobs liveblogs — make that twitters — from Macworld. Pretty funny stream of consciousness.
The Google ecology
This post could rapidly turn into a massive digressionary polemic and I have no time, so let me expel this bit of brain flatulence:
My first Google registration was for Gmail in its earliest beta incarnation (back in the day when people sold invites on eBay, got mine from Jim Forbes). I used it to set up a spam catcher — an anonymous address for those times when I didn’t want to part with my personal addresses in online registration forms. Other Google products used that mail address — Google News, Google Reader, iGoogle, even the mobile suite of Google apps on my Blackberry — and as they gradually took over more of my screen time they gradually became more important, enough so that were it not for corporate enterprise demands like Lotus Notes, I would probably run my life through Google.
Doing so under a registration designed to trap erectile dysfunction spam was becoming an issue. I had to transition to a sensible account such as david.churbuck, not sexypapa123 ….
The transition has not been pretty, but the promise — especially if I can create a parallel computing environment that compliments Lenovo’s (cross calendar conflict resolution, email forwarding) — is very compelling.
So, surprising how a personal beta of a beta product turns into a headache after two years because I considered it too experimental to run under my primary identity.
Ford: Car owners are pirates if they distribute pictures of their own cars
Ford: Car owners are pirates if they distribute pictures of their own cars – Boing Boing
Fester points at this legal head-scratcher on Boing Boing.
“Josh sez, “The folks at BMC (Black Mustang Club) automotive forum wanted to put together a calendar featuring members’ cars, and print it through CafePress. Photos were submitted, the layout was set, and… CafePress notifies the site admin that pictures of Ford cars cannot be printed. Not just Ford logos, not just Mustang logos, the car -as a whole- is a Ford trademark and its image can’t be reproduced without permission. So even though Ford has a lineup of enthusiasts who want to show off their Ford cars, the company is bent on alienating them. ‘Them’ being some of the most loyal owners and future buyers that they have. Or rather, that they had, because many have decided that they will not be doing business with Ford again if this matter isn’t resolved.””
I’d send 8 x 10 glossies of laptops, keyboards and towers to Lenovo’s fans if they wanted to have a calendar printer. Better yet, go to our Flicker stream and take what you need.
Whereabouts week of 1.14.08
Monday-Wednesday: RTP
Thursday-Sunday: Cotuit
What I am reading — Mourt’s Relation
Mourt’s Relation — arguably the first piece of American literature –Â the first first-hand account of the first year of the Pilgrim’s after their landing on Cape Cod and Plymouth in 1620, and the basis for most stories that have followed. Samoset and Squanto, theft of the Indian corn at Corn Hill in Truro, first meeting with Massasoit, herring/shad to fertilize the corn, the first Thanksgiving — and a ton of other detail not usually taught in the elementary school Thanksgiving mythology most of us were fed as kids.
Written by Edward Winslow and William Bradford, but published by a George Morton, hence the “Mourt” — a “relation” is a retelling, as in “he related the story of how the Nauset tribe attacked them at First Encounter Beach.” Again, thanks to N. Philbrick’s Mayflower for getting me on the early colonial history thing. I had a great dinner conversation Saturday night with Ross Kerber from the Boston Globe about the book and we both geeked out over stuff like the Great Swamp Fight.
Fleeing the storm
In full pack and panic mode to make a 5 pm direct to Raleigh tonight ahead of what the National Weather Service is saying will be a nasty winter storm. half-a-foot to ten inches predicted for Boston, which means my morning flight won’t be happening.
Off I scurry to the land of cotton.
update: I landed, turned on my blackberry, and got this from JetBlue: “Due to weather in the Northeast, we are unable to complete your travel as scheduled. Your flight #1223 on January 14, 2008 for travel from Boston has been cancelled”