The Fraud Department at AT&T Wireless is Asleep at the Switch

This will be my first blog post of the year. That is unfortunate in and of itself. Somehow last year simply got away from me at the end and my pace of writing dropped to zero. What is even more unfortunate is that this post is going to deal with my abysmal experience with AT&T Wireless and their quizzical notions of customer service.

Back in October of 2010, towards the very tail-end of my billing cycle, I received my normal monthly wireless bill only to discover that it had mysteriously grown to $500+ dollars from the normal $70-$80. Naturally, this was disturbing so I called AT&T to see what was going on. The customer service representative transferred me to the Fraud Department right away and we went through the process. She began to ask me if I knew where certain Apple stores were, etc. It turns out that someone added a handful of iPhone 4's to my account, each from a different store.

iPad Powered by iOS 4.2

It is old news that the next version of the iOS has hit the streets, but it's worthwhile to measure just how much impact it has. The biggest change is not to the iPhone - as the changes there are merely evolutionary at best. But the iPad - well, after the 4.2 iOS loaded up it was like everything was brand new again. Multi-tasking and folders were the biggest benefits that I saw and quickly embraced. Beyond that the unified inbox is nice and various minor improvements with Safari. 

iPhone vs iPad

I have had my iPad WiFi for a little over three months. And, now I've had the iPhone 4 for just over a month. It begs the question, which is a better device?

There are plenty of ways to consider the issue. Which one do I use more? Which one has changed my life more? Which one enables things I didn't have before?

I haven't been traveling much over the past month and thus have not had that much need for much of the iPhone ultra-portability. However, I have used my iPad for literally hours each day and for a wide variety of functions. I find myself using the iPad for games, to read books, browse the Internet and check email from the comfort of the sofa rather than at my desk. 

The iPad form-factor, while heavy for normal book reading is far more portable than the lightest laptops -- all with tremendous battery life. It is a delightful travel companion and doesn't even need to be removed from my carry-on bag like a laptop would. It is safe to say that the iPad significantly increased my appetite for media of all types. 

Is is Better to Be Hated or Popular?

Luckily, Facebook doesn't have to choose. It's both. This is on the heels of a report that their customer satisfaction ranking is below that of the IRS. They can take some small solace in the fact that they beat out MySpace by a point.

But, one has to wonder, what the future of social networks are if folks are that are so unsatisfied by their membership in a free club? Perhaps most Facebook users have arrived at the crossroad of Hype and Reality and find Reality to be the better road to take. I was not much convinced about the value of Facebook in my life and only grudgingly joined. 

My profile is as locked down as I can make it, and only a handful of friends have made it into my network. The UI, which was already chaotic to begin with, has only grown increasingly cluttered and overly busy - perhaps designed for a target demographic other than me... but nonetheless it lacks friendly customization features that can attract and hold members across all demographics. But most importantly, I find the causal dismissal of the importance of someone else's privacy to be somewhere between appalling and unnerving. Or maybe both.

It's time for Facebook to wake up, look in the mirror and decide if it wants to grow up. If so, it needs to take itself more seriously if it wants to continue to expand. It is only possible to do that if you hang onto the folks you have. Facebook is going to need to focus on servicing all of it's members all the way from 13 to 83.

Facebook, you don't know best - your customers do. So start asking them what they need and want and get them involved in your development process - before you don't have them anymore.

Curing Cancer, One Computer at a Time

I know a lot of people who leave their computers on for most of the day, or sometimes around the clock. They like the convenience of being able to walk up to it and instantly be productive. Or, perhaps they use their desktop computer at a media server, etc. That typically is just a waste of power most of the time. So, if you are one of those people, how about you take a look at the World Community Grid project. 

The software program called BOINC allows your computer to participate in distributed computing - break up a very large problem or problems into pieces and have thousands or millions of computers work on it in sections. Normally, this would be a problem that you might give to a super computer. That can be very expensive and difficult to schedule.

Instead, projects such as Clean Energy, Curing Muscular Dystrophy and Curing Cancer can get resources from groups of folks or individual volunteers all over the world. All you are giving up is a little CPU time on your side. The client itself is easy to install and configure. The sign-up process - well, just make sure you are a little bit patient and feel rather inquisitive when you make the choice to move forward. It's a multi-part process that sometimes can make you feel lost. However, if you persevere, the installation itself is easy as pie.

Once you've been running, you also can see your statistics on-line and how you are contributing to the effort. For example, I've been running this since late June and have returned 510 results. That's good enough to rank me at 109,000th. Ok, so it's not that great in context, but I feel like it is helping - and what's wrong with that? :-)

The Week in Apple

It seems like I saw an article about Apple every day this week on a different topic. On Monday, Information Week called Apple out on being the worst in security.  On Tuesday, Apple was still battling Psystar who attempted to create lower cost Mac computer. Wednesday showed some good news with Millenial Media reporting Apple at a 56% share of the smartphone marketplace based on ad views. Thursday Apple released iOS 4.01 for the iPhone 4 plus iPad OS 3.2.1.

Finally, we come to Friday and the mea culpa that wasn't. It probably wasn't the apology that everyone was hoping for, though according to the reports, Jobs did apologize a few times in there. But to those who are having an issue now, there's no immediate fix - nor any promise of a case free future. There has also been a lot of skepticism about the videos they showed with other smart phones doing the same thing. I was skeptical as well.

Distributed Teams Need Face Time

I've been managing a project/software development team for about six months now. While software development can be tricky in the easiest of times, we have certain challenges with our team which include having team members who are spread out across the country.

Beyond the normal time zone challenges that obviously occur, it is difficult to make sure that information flows and that folks can and do work together appropriately. We have struggled with these challenges since project inception and so I thought that it was time to take the time and invest in the expense to bring everyone together.