Today Is World Backup Day…. You Backup Don’t You?

Backing up the stuff on your computer is something everyone should do. Today should give you extra incentive to do so as it’s World Backup Day. If you don’t presently have a back up strategy, you might want to click the link as it will give you all sorts of reasons why you should and discounts to online backup services. If that isn’t enough, I’ll toss in my two articles on the subject as I am a big believer in making sure you have a backup strategy.

Rogers Announces That They Have Manitoba Covered

You might remember that Rogers announced a while ago that they were building coverage in Manitoba. Today, Rogers announced that their coverage in Manitoba is live:

“Welcome to the world of choice, speed and innovation, Manitoba,” said Darrell Graham, Rogers Manitoba vice president. “Customers have been telling us they want a faster network in more places and more selection of mobile devices. They want to connect in a way that makes their lives better and easier. Starting today, Manitobans from across the province can fuel their passions by switching to Rogers and connect – in high speed, on the device they want – to what matters to them most.”

Manitobans across the province now have more choice with access to the latest cutting-edge devices including the iPhone, a large selection of Android devices, BlackBerry®, and a bounty of mobile Internet solutions. A number of new stores have opened today in communities across the province to service Rogers customers.

“We have a long history of innovation and bringing network reliability and fast download speeds to our customers,” said Graham. “Manitobans can depend on Rogers to always bring the latest technologies to its customers first. Now customers in Manitoba can use those latest technologies on a network that is 150 times larger.”

I’m still waiting for Bell to respond to this as I can’t really see them taking this lying down. Although they likely have other concerns at the moment.

Sigh… Nokia Hits Back At Apple With New Patent Suit

Here we go again.

Nokia announced that it has filed a patent lawsuit that covers “virtually all” Apple products:

The seven Nokia patents in the new complaint relate to Nokia’s pioneering innovations that are now being used by Apple to create key features in its products in the areas of multi-tasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories.

Oh yeah, in case you were wondering what Nokia thought of that decision from last Friday, here’s what they had to say:

Nokia does not agree with the ITC’s initial determination that there was no violation of Section 337 in that complaint and is waiting to see the full details of the ruling before deciding on the next steps in that case.

This war between Apple and Nokia has escalated to such a degree that I no longer think this will be settled out of court. This may go on for years and face many appeals before it gets settled. If it gets settled at all.

Playbook Won’t Have E-mail, Calendar, and Contacts App At Launch… WTF?

This was posted to crackberry.com today and I have to admit I am sort of mystified. According to a Verizon webinar, there will not be e-mail, contacts and calendar apps when the tablet launches. That will come in a future software update. I have no clue if this is accurate or not. But if it is, it’s one huge dis-incentive in terms of my decision to potentially buy one.

Why?

Buying a product and depending on a future software upgrade to bring functionality that should be present at launch is lame. The question is, will it be an epic fail for RIM?

Tune in on April 19th to find out.

Netflix Reduces Video Quality In Canada To Make Up For Your ISP Capping You

It really sucks to be Canadian. Because we have to deal with ISP’s having bandwidth caps, Netflix has to reduce their video quality to compensate:

This is Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer, to tell our members in Canada that starting today, watching movies and TV shows streaming from Netflix will use 2/3 less data on average, with minimal impact to video quality.

Lovely. Here’s why:

We made these changes because many Canadian Internet service providers unfortunately enforce monthly caps on the total amount of data consumed.

Sucks to be us. Here’s the choices Canadians get for video quaity:

Good: limits video/audio to 625 kbps/64 kbps. With this setting, 30 hours of content would be up to 9 GBytes per month. (about 0.3 GBytes/hour)

Better: limits video/audio to a maximum of 1300 kbps/192 kpbs. With this setting, 30 hours of content would be less than 20 GBytes per month. (about 0.7 GBytes/hour)

Best: will use any of the video/audio rates available. Our highest quality files are 4800 kbps (for 1080p HD video) and 384 kbps audio (for 5.1 audio). 30 hours of this highest quality streaming would be less than 67 GBytes. (about 1.0 GBytes/hour – or up to 2.3 GBytes/hour when streaming HD content).

Good is enabled by default.

This is a sad commentary on the state of the Internet in Canada. The fact that innovation is stifled to such a degree by ISP’s (well, not all ISPs. Just three of them) that Netflix has to do this clearly needs to be addressed. Seeing as Canada is currently going through an election, now would be a good time to do so.

The Last Few Days Havnen’t Been Kind To Rogers [UPDATED]

Gee. What do you do if you’re Rogers when you’ve had the last few days that they had?

First they got nailed by the CRTC for their telemarketing practices:

The Toronto-based wireless, cable, Internet and media company was using automated machines to make unsolicited calls to its own wireless customers, letting them know how to purchase more prepaid minutes for their cellphones. But under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s rules, telecom companies must first get prior consent for such activities.

Rogers, which, like other telecom companies involved in such disputes, does not admit that it broke any rules, is giving $175,000 to the École polytechnique de Montréal and $100,000 to the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Gee. Didn’t they learn anything from Bell? At least it didn’t cost Rogers $1.3 million.

Now today, a letter to the CRTC surfaced where Rogers admitted that they are inadvertently blocking gamers playing World Of Warcraft and Starcraft… Seriously:

In a letter to the CRTC from Rogers, the company admits to blocking the games because of a problem with its traffic management equipment. The company says it won’t be fixing the problem until June.

In an attempt to deflect the fact that it is blocking legitimate internet traffic thereby violating every tenet of Net Neutrality, Rogers intimates that the problem only occcurs when customers are using peer-to-peer file sharing applications while running the game, an accusation users deny.

Rogers has a history of being one of the more aggressive ISP’s when it comes to traffic management, so I’m not shocked by this at all. But let us take them at their word for a second… Ok, some of you will have a problem doing that, but work with me. If we assume that they are telling the truth, one wonders why they just don’t shut down their traffic management system rather than waiting until June for a fix. It clearly isn’t working. Plus it’s yet again creating bad press for them. If I were running Rogers, I’d pull the plug and made sure heads roll over this.

Oh yeah, let me address their assertion that the cause is using peer-to-peer software while playing Starcraft and World Of Warcraft (both made by the same vendor, Blizzard). Sorry. I Don’t buy it. Logic would say that this would apply to ANY video game. Not just World Of Warcraft and Starcraft. The more likely reason is that these games do something that confuses Rogers traffic management system into thinking that those games are peer-to-peer applications. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that patches and updates for World Of Warcraft are applied via peer-to-peer protocols? Perhaps that’s the big hint that Rogers traffic management system needs a serious revamp.

Here’s hoping that the rest of the week is better for Rogers.

UPDATE: My “best friends at Rogers” had this to say:

To provide some additional info on the automated dialer. The calls in question were to tell pre-paid customers that their service would be interrupted if they didn’t purchase more minutes. We believe we followed the rules but have voluntarily stopped these calls since there seems to be some uncertainty in the interpretation. Also, to avoid the time and expense of going to Court, we have come to a settlement that the CRTC has agreed upon.

I’d also like to provide some detail on World of Warcraft.  We have been investigating issues related to World of Warcraft (WoW) and what we know today is that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that is inadvertently slowing the game for some customers. While we have fixed some issues with a software modification, new problems have emerged that we expect will be addressed with a second software update in June.

We believe the problem occurs when P2P is running while simultaneously playing the game. If people experience problems we suggest they turn off the peer to peer setting within the WoW game and ensure no other P2P file sharing applications are running while playing WoW. WoW does use P2P for software updates, but with this setting changed they should continue to automatically receive software updates through other methods.

You suggest Rogers shut down all traffic management for the time being. However, doing that would result in a poor experience for everyone as we manage the network to limit spam, viruses and other security threats. This management ensures a high level of service for time-sensitive tasks such as sending email, requesting web pages, video conferencing and voice services. As I’m sure you know already, our network management policy makes clear that we only manage upstream P2P traffic on our network. You can find full details about the policy here http://www.rogers.com/web/content/network_management.

Rogers is committed to ensuring the best possible online experience for all our valued customers. And please know that this is only a temporary solution. We continue to work closely with the game manufacturer and our equipment supplier to help resolve this issue as soon as possible.

 

Bell Reinvents Usage Based Billing…. It Shouldn’t Fool You

Bell is clearly feeling the heat as they announced to the world via The Globe And Mail (which is owned by Bell Globemedia) that they’re altering their usage based billing plans:

In its original proposal, Bell asked the federal communications regulator to let it charge small Internet service providers, which lease space on its network, by the amount of data each of their customers downloads.

Instead, Bell is suggesting an aggregated volume pricing scheme, whereby smaller ISPs are charged for the data used by all their customers, instead of being charged for each customer who goes over set limits.

For consumers on the unlimited plans of wholesale Internet providers, Bell’s capitulation means that the huge price increases and onerous download caps many feared will not be implemented, at least for now. The issue will again be debated at regulatory hearings in July.

This according to Bell means that they’re taking usage based billing off the table. Hmmm…. I’m not impressed. Neither is Industry Minister Tony Clement:

In a message to The Globe and Mail on Monday after Bell said it would revamp its proposal, Mr. Clement wrote: “I’m not impressed.”

Here’s why you shouldn’t be impressed. It’s the same usage based billing scheme made to look different. Thus Bell is just trying to use smoke and mirrors to extract as much cash as they can. Don’t be fooled. Instead, tell Bell and the CRTC that this is unacceptable.

Kodak Wins The Latest Round Of Their Patent Lawsuit Against Apple And RIM

Seeing as I just posted about Apple winning round one of their patent battle against Nokia, it seemed only right that I report on the fact that Kodak has won a round of their patent lawsuit against RIM and Apple:

Kodak rose as much as 25 percent in late trading after the U.S. International Trade Commission said it will review a judge’s findings from January that Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry don’t violate Kodak’s patent on a way to preview digital images using less processing power and storage space. The ITC, which can block imports of products that violate U.S. patents, plans to make a final determination by May 23.

Just like the Apple/Nokia lawsuit, May 23 won’t solve anything. After all, I said that this lawsuit was dead a little while ago and we’re still talking about it. But seeing as Apple and RIM are looking at paying up to a billion dollars, we might see a flurry of cheques being written to make this go away.

Review: Acer Liquid MT Smartphone – The Wrap Up

So I’ve spent the last week with the Acer Liquid MT smartphone (click here to read my previous reports) and here are my final thoughts. This is a nice phone that has a nice feel to it, not to mention that it has a decent suite of software installed on it. The web browser has Flash support which gives you a great web browsing experience. The camera is pretty decent for still and video as well. The screen is visually impressive, but the audio quality of the phone is only average at best.

So would I buy it? I think it would make my list of phones to consider. But whether I would buy it or not really depends on what it has to compete against. Some of the Sony Xperia phones for example may come out ahead of this phone. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad phone. It’s not.

Bottom line. Those in the market for an Android phone should put this phone on their shopping list.

Canadians Go To The Polls…. Tech Issues Must Be Front And Center

For the fourth time in seven years, Canada is going to have an election thanks to the Liberal, Bloc Quebecois, and NDP political parties passing a non-confidence motion in the House Of Commons which held the ruling Conservative Party in contempt of Parliament because due to a variety of issues. It’s the first time that any government in any Parliamentary democracy anywhere on the planet has ever been found in contempt of Parliament. That’s says something about the ruling party and it should prove to be one of the talking points of this election.

However, there should be some other talking points that should be raised in this election. Take for example the copyright bill. In the past I’ve talked about how this bill isn’t good for Canadians. Fortunately it died when the government died. But now is the time to make sure that the issues that made this bill bad are communicated to every candidate that Canadians come across between now and election day. The same goes for usage based billing. The need for the “big three” telcos in Canada to make as much money as possible should not override the fact that it pretty much kill choice and innovation in the Canadian Internet space. Industry Minister Tony Clement of the Conservatives understood that. Now it’s time to make sure that every other politician gets that too.

While we’re at it, Canadians should also let their politicians know that Canada needs a much more competitive landscape when it comes to telco services. Even if it means that Canada opens up the playing field to foreign players. Contrary to what the “big three” telcos would say, that would be a good thing as it would give consumers more choice at lower prices. Finally, politicians need to hear that the CRTC needs to die a quick death as it no longer protects the interests of Canadians. Unfortunately, petitions like this one won’t get the job done.

So Canada when those politicians come knocking on your door looking for your vote, make sure that you tell them that these issues matter to you. Thus if they are willing to support choice, innovation and a competitive landscape for telco services, Government bodies that look out for Canadians rather than thumb their noses at them, and a better approach to Internet access in Canada, then they’re likely to get your vote. Because if you care about these issues, now is the best time to make sure that they get addressed.