How well companies that offer something for "free" can do with a subscription option?
When there are so many "free" things on the web, one has to wonder how companies can keep their products up and running (or even if they can manage to get out of beta).
Some companies just don't. They close the service and tell the customers to get out of here:
Personal Media: Bluestring, Xdrive and AOL Pictures will be sunset. These consumer storage products haven't gained sufficient traction in the marketplace or the monetization levels necessary to offset the high cost of their operation. We have found that building media management applications within the context of a social experience is a more rapid and effective way to grow the business. For example, today the Bebo audience is uploading over three million photos per day. To effectively grow the XDrive online storage business we would need to focus on subscription revenues vs. monetizing through advertising revenue, and this business model is not in strategic alignment with our company's goals. We are exploring plans to migrate our users assets to ensure the best possible transition experience.
This is part of the memo AOL sent out to staff explaning the end of some of their services - including Xdrive an on-line storage service that offered 5 GB of storage free to anyone.
There's a reason why people buy external drives for home or buy Windows Home Server or NAS boxes. First broadband speed sucks around the world. Then the services don't work as expected or not as easily (Xdrive is only one that I know that could be mounted as a drive on your OS so you could just copy things from and to instead of having to open a browser window). And even so it was very unstable.
Which leads me to the next one: the on-line service businesses seem to be quite unreliable - unless they are a subscription service with a SLA, not a freebie. But even so sith happens.
When there are lots of free things, some won't last long.
Wellington City Council: where the process dies...
On a rainy day I parked on Tory St, Wellington and used the convenience of paying my parking via SMS. That would be $4 for two hours, plus $.50 for the privilege of not having to carry coins. But instead of getting the little piece of paper with the ticket to put in my windshield, I got an error message:
"Transaction rejected"
Interesting. But I immediately got a SMS back from Telecom saying "thanks, we debited your account for $4.50".
Bummer. So instead I decided to use a credit card. Again I got an error message:
"Transaction rejected"
Hmmm. It looks like the machine may be out of paper, but the developer for this company decided to stupidly save some bytes instead of providing a meaningful message - and a transaction rollback.
So I walk to the next machine, pay and display the ticket in the windshield.
But I wouldn't be short of $9 today, right? I called the Wellington City Council, explained what happened, and was assured someone would call me back to arrange the refund.
You guessed right. No one ever called me back.
Like so many other New Zealand businesses, getting you off the phone is what they want to do. The Wellington City Council is quick to slap a fine on your car if you are over five minutes in the parking lot, but they don't want to move a finger to refund you money that they took without providing the service.
By the way I am looking at my credit card statement. This was on 17 June. More than enough time for the Wellington City Council to come back to me.
End of rant of the day.
ihug Limited will no longer exist from 1st August
A lot of things are happening at Vodafone on this very special day:
- Prepay customers will start being charged a dollar per call to customer services when a Customer Service Representative is required
- Prepay customers will no longer be able to switch to the classic prepay plans
- ihug Limited will soon no longer exist and will completely be part of Vodafone New Zealand Limited.
It's not surprising that ihug will soon be completely part of Vodafone (rather than the current rebranding) as this fully makes their fixed line products to become part of Vodafone, and reduce confusion.
Things to note:
- Phone numbers won't change
Here are the numbers, just for reference:
Residential: 0800 438 448
Business: 0800 438 458
Red network: 0800 800 215 <- they finally release this!
- Billing is still separate, but pay Vodafone New Zealand Limited directly
Currently, we get a statement which needs to be paid to ihug Ltd, even though it's completely branded Vodafone
The webpage with the information about this changed from welcome to our place to our place is your place:
The Internet Home Users Group
IHUG
ihug / The Internet Group
(1994-2008)
IHUG
ihug / The Internet Group
(1994-2008)
Huge News! VMware ESX 3i is free from 28 July!
Significant competitive move from VMware to counter the threat of Microsoft Hyper-V . . . not that 3i was expensive before, but this price is certainly better :) This is part of a new strategy kicking in after co-founder Diane Greene's departure. ex-Microsoft exec Paul Maritz is running the show now.
Read more in this article at Redmond Channel mag.
Student benifits!
I'm currently doing a Bachelor of Communications and Information Technology at UCOL, Palmerston North.
A few days ago I received an email stating I am registered with the MSDN Academic Alliance: Online Software System. I visited the link included in the email and was very pleased to find out I have access to free downloads which include; Windows Vista Business, Windows 2008 Server, Visual Studio 2008 and many more! This is great, I can download hundreds of dollars worth of software for free.
I think I'll be reaching my monthly download quota very early this month!
http://www.e-academy.com/
Windows Server 2008 is my Desktop Workstation
After hearing lots of good stuffs about this new SERVER product from Microsoft called Windows Server 2008, I took the decision to move from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition 
The good thing is, Windows Server 2008 can be configured as a fully featured desktop workstation. Your one stop guide for completing this ‘awesome’ task is here
Below is my laptop configuration:
2) 4 GB RAM
I have Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x86 Edition installed
Below is the list of software installed:
1) Apple Bootcamp
2) Microsoft Office 2007
3) Microsoft Visio 2007
4) Mozilla Firefox
5) Skype
6) Apple Quicktime
7) Apple iTunes
8 ) Windows Live
- Live Writer
- Live Messenger
- Live Photo Gallery
9) Foxit PDF Reader
10) Flashget Download Manager
11) Virtual PC
12) Kaspersky Internet Security
13) tWhirl
14) Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1
This server is Fast, Sleek, and Customizable (in Features and Roles). That’s a huge benefit over Vista where many services get started no matter you use them.
I have also moved my development stuffs to a virtual environment now and virtual machines run quite fast than in Vista here. Yes, I am quite happy with Virtual PC 2007 and I don’t think I would install x64 version just for Hyper-V. The application support for x64 sucks!
Everything works good in my setup including sleep,shutdown and hibernate 
So far, my experience of having Windows Server 2008 as my main desktop workstation is good and I think I will continue to stay on this for a long, long time until Windows 7 comes out
Checking your mobile data usage online is not easy
Isn't that incredible that Telecom New Zealand can charge my mobile data usage every month but it can't provide a simple way, other then calling their help desk every day, to follow my usage?
They are able to put a $$$ amount in my monthly bill, but I can't find my usage in data terms (megabytes or gigabytes) anywhere on the invoice or on-line.
They use a very cryptic "data calls" unit that means nothing to me.
Telecom New Zealand makes it really hard for me to control my usage. And they charge dearly if I go over my limits.
Vodafone is a bit better in this area, but their on-line meter is frequently outdated or incorrect according to discussions in our forums.
In Australia the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission issued a warn to consumers regarding mobile data usage.
What about here? TUANZ? Commerce Commission? Anyone awake and aware that we have overpriced data plans?
File format standards getting sorted!
It has taken a flippin long time, but it is good to see these issues sorted/being sorted:
- Adobe PDF ratified by ISO as standard - finally let go of proprietary format last year and put it up for ratification
- Microsoft OOXML ratified by ISO as standard - although the ISO version won't be incorporated until Office 14 comes out next year, and the approval is being challenged by 4 governments . .. .
- ODF being supported by Microsoft - in an Office 2007 Service Pack to be released in 2009
Good article here on Computerworld.
Multiple Vendors Vulnerable to DNS Cache Poisoning
Multiple vendor DNS protocol implementations could allow a remote attacker to poison the DNS cache. Patches that resolve the vulnerability on the DNS may be rendered ineffective if the DNS is behind a NAT device that does not randomize ports. Public exploit code was made available on July 24, 2008. At the time of this update, neither X-Force nor IBM MSS has witness any active exploitation nor the integration of this exploit into any exploit toolkits.
The Windows Mojave experiment results
Yesterday I posted about Microsoft Windows Mojave, an experiement in perception.
A set of people were asked what they think is bad on Windows Vista during the Mojave Experiment. Their answers were recorded. They were then shown "Microsoft Windows Mojave", a new operating system that impressed everyone.
Microsoft then revealed "Windows Mojave" and "Windows Vista" are the same one.
I have just found out the full "Mojave Experiment" results will be available 29th July on The Mojave Experiment website.
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