So – Jonathan Schwartz – Sun’s President – blogged about Sun’s offer to let people try a Niagra server free for 60 days. According to Jonathan:
The program started off slowly – partly due to internal disbelief (there’s a long story, there), but secondarily, our focus group feedback suggested no one believed we’d actually send them a free Niagara. So let me reiterate: go to sun.com, fill out the form, we’ll send you the fastest server on earth, absolutely free. If you don’t like it, we’ll send someone to pick it up.
We were also serious about the following: if you write a blog that fairly assesses the machine’s performance (positively or negatively), send us a pointer, we’re likely to let you keep the machine. (And before you ask, the marketing team makes the decision about what qualifies for the promotion, not I – although I know they love drama, charts, and compelling competitive analyses.)
Not surprisingly, I asked Ross (my IT guy) to get one and give it a good workout. Look for a review here in a month or so.
One of the neat things about having a blog is getting feedback that actually teaches me something. I got a note from Brad Hugg that explained some stuff on 911 after I posted about the struggle I was having with Vonage and 911. Following are Brad’s comments, which are worthy of posting if only that he has a great first name.
Back in 1995, I was one of two founding partners in a company called 911 Datamaster. We provided local PC/LAN based databases for 911 systems. Think of it this way, SCC Communications/Intrado provided data warehousing and database services for the Regional Bell Operating Companies (US West, PacBell, et al) and we provided the same service on a local basis to everyone else that wanted/needed to maintain local control over the 911 database….(an interesting side note for you is that a lot of Alaska landlines are actually covered by my old data base). Local phone companies, CLEC’s, military bases, nuclear facilities, etc. all were mandated by law to provide 911 services if they were going to provide local dial-tone. Before the Telecommunications Act of ’96, 911 services were farmed out to the Bell companies, and then eventually to Intrado. All we did was provide the same class of services to an entirely new market segment…nice opportunity!
Now fast forward to cell phones. Initially the entire industry was up in arms because all Automatic Location Identification (ALI) was based upon info sent to the appropriate router and database from a land line. There is an organization called the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) that attempts to set industry standards for hardware, software, and information exchanges. I was part of the committee that helped draft ALI database standards for wireless carriers and through the use of tower triangulation and geolocation, wireless 911 calls are all pretty much under control. I suspect (I’ve been out of this business since 1993) the same thing is happening with the Internet based providers. We were talking about the challenges Internet telephony would present in NENA as far back as 1998. It looks like an industry standard was just published this past December to work out all the kinks that new technologies have created in the 911 business. There are numerous links on NENA’s homepage that discuss the pains you’re going through right now. www.nena.org.
Thanks Brad.
I got an email from Vonage today that they had completed 911 Dialing activation for my Vonage line. That’s good, I guess. However, even though my phone number is a (303) number (Colorado), they had my Alaska address on the 911 alert. I have no idea how they picked this address since both my Billing Address and Shipping Address on Vonage are Colorado addresses (not my home address – a PO Box.)
Fortunately, I read the email and was able to change my 911 address. It would be a real bummer if someone was trying to axe murder me at my house in Colorado, I dialed 911, and the police showed up in Homer.
I searched around my entire Vonage account for any place where my Alaska address had been entered and couldn’t find it anywhere. I did use my Vonage phone last summer in Alaska so it’s conceivable that the address is in their system somewhere, but it’s not on any of my account pages.
Sounds like a database issue to me. I love databases.
I just got another email – after receiving my confirmation that the 911 address was changed, that “Unfortunately, due to the follow error, we were not able to accurately verify the address you provided for 911 Dialing. There was an unidentified problem with the information you provided. Please re-enter your address.”
Ok – re-entering my address now. Oh – and if someone at Vonage happens to notice, your error message has an error – how about changing “… due to the follow error …” to “… due to the following error…”
One of my favorite examples of things newspapers do that baffles me is to print the stock tables every day. While I imagine there are a small number of people that continue to read these over the breakfast table, I can’t imagine the cost/benefit analysis of providing these in every local newspaper is worth it.
Recently, there’s been a trend of newspapers deciding to dump the stock tables. Hint – there’s this thing called the Internet – you can get real time quotes for free all day long.
I talked to editors at two of the three local Denver/Boulder papers today and found out that The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News stopped publishing stock tables within the past two weeks and the Boulder Daily Camera is in the process of doing this also. Of course, I didn’t notice this because I read the newspapers online (via RSS and the web).
Oh well – I guess there’s one less thing that I can use to kick the local papers around about.
Amy and I both travel with our laptops. Lately I’ve been using my Verizon EVDO card everywhere. It’s awesome. I was thinking about getting Amy one when Ross suggested that she could simply buddy breathe off of mine. We tried it for a week when we were in Miami – it worked flawlessly. It’s a little tricky (e.g. “non-obvious”) to set up – the directions are below.
There are two laptops. The first – the “Master” (e.g. mine) is connected to the Internet. In my case, it was connected via EVDO, but it could be WiFi or via a physical ethernet connection. The second – the “Slave” (e.g. Amy’s) connects to the Master via a WiFi connection.
Configure The Master Laptop
Configure The Slave Laptop
That should do it. Both computers should be able to access the Internet (assuming the Master is connected to the Internet.)
While this works nicely when you want to share, it’s no so nice when you want to go back to your primary connection. On both the Master and the Slave, you’ll need to undo this change. If you don’t do this when you’re done you’ll effectively be cutting yourself off from WiFi.
Undoing Buddy Breathing
This assumes you are using DHCP to connect. If you settings – prior to making the buddy breathing change are for a static connection (e.g. you don’t “Obtain Automatically” the IP and DNS) – you need to put the static IP settings in.
Last week I was disturbed by the announcement that AOL was going to eliminate their enhanced whitelist. It was reported that they were doing this as part of a new program they were implementing to provide a pay-for-access program for mailers using Goodmail’s stamp program. I’m indifferent to AOL providing Goodmail’s stamp program as an option (the market will determine whether or not it works), but I thought it was a horrible idea to eliminate the organic enhanced whitelist and force all mailers to use the stamp program to pay for access to consumers’ email inboxes. I expressed my opinion publicly and forcefully (oh – the joys of having a blog that more than two people (me and Amy) read.)
Charles Stiles from AOL commented that night on my post that “AOL will continue to offer IP-based white list and enhanced white list privileges to mailers that do not wish to take advantage of the CertifiedEmail program. As long as there is market demand and operational need for these services, AOL will continue to operate them.” There continued to be plenty of confusion and contradictory information in the market, based off a “confidential document embargoed until January 30th” that stated that AOL would eliminate the enhanced whitelist on June 30, 2006.
Matt Blumberg – who runs Return Path (a company I’m an investor in) – finally connected with Charles Stiles on Monday – and confirmed that AOL is keeping the enhanced whitelist and has no plans to eliminate it. This addresses the fundamental issue that I expressed in my post. While I continue to think that allowing mailers to pay for access to the inbox is a bad idea, as long as ISPs provide an organic option for mailers to earn their way through consistently good behavior into the inbox, I’m happy.
It doesn’t really matter whether AOL reversed a decision or the initial press interpretation was incorrect. What matters is that AOL has been thoughtful about this and is choosing a customer-friendly approach to keeping the bad stuff out and letting the good stuff in. I felt it was worth publicly acknowledging that as a bookend to my initial reaction to what was announced. AOL – thanks. Yes Jason – I’m happy.
Western Union announced on Friday, 1/27/06, that the age of the telegram had officially ended. The Western Union website has the following comment on it.
Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative.
Presumably they don’t expect you to contact them via telegram (they provide a nice email form, physical mail, and a bunch of 800 numbers.) I imagine that someday in the future a similar message will go out on some other communication medium about “the death of email.” I wonder how that’s going to work.
I’ve been deeply involved in the email business for the past decade through investments in companies like Postini, Return Path, Critical Path, MessageMedia, and Email Publishing and have been involved in the challenges of separating spam from legitimate email for a long time. On Monday, AOL announced a set of changes that I think are a gigantic step backward for users of email. While their announcement – that they are phasing out their IP-based Enhanced Whitelist and implementing Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program – seems simple enough, I believe it is ultimately validation and support for “paid spam.”
As an investor in Return Path, which has been deeply involved in the issue surrounding email reputation (e.g. is this piece of email spam; is emailer-X a spammer), I’ve always thought that the “pay for delivery” approach is absurd. While intellectually it might seem interesting (e.g. a mailer needs to pay a small fee for each email he sends), it results in horrible unintended side effects. At Return Path, we’ve spent an enormous amount of time over the past few years discussing and exploring this approach and continually come to the conclusion that it’s fundamentally flawed, bad for legitimate emailers, and terrible for email end-users who simply “want the good stuff but not the bad stuff.”
Fred Wilson – my co-investor in Return Path – has written an excellent explanation of why this is a problem. Matt Blumberg – the CEO of Return Path – has weighed in with a thoughtful, direct, and pragmatic reaction. Jason Calacanis – the CEO of Weblogsinc and now part of AOL – asks straightforward questions to try to better understand the issue (and generates a great comment thread on what’s going on as people dig in and understand this better.)
Last night at dinner I had a long conversation about this with the CEO of a major email security provider (not the CEO of our investment – Postini) who wants to remain unnamed because he’s uncomfortable with “rattling AOL’s cage” about the issue, even though he thinks it’s an absurd approach. Given AOL’s market power here, his reaction is typical – AOL obviously has the right to behave as aggressively as they want (e.g. “if you don’t agree with our approach, we aren’t going to let your mail through”). Of course, any rational AOL end-user who cares about what shows up in his inbox also has the right to simply say “screw it – I’m already paying AOL to deliver my email and block spam (anyone seen an AOL commercial lately?) – they aren’t doing it, I’m switching to Yahoo / MSN / Gmail.) Market power can be a dangerous thing – both directions – and I don’t think AOL has considered this carefully yet.
Following are two examples of the problem here. Assume AOL does in fact phase out their IP-based Enhanced Whitelist as they state they are going to.
eBay Example: eBay sends out an enormous number of transactional emails each day. I’m an active eBay buyer and I rely on these emails when I’m bidding on something (each time someone outbids me, I get an email, which is what I respond to.) In the “new AOL email model”, eBay is going to have to pay to get every one of those emails delivered. I have no idea what the numbers are, but they are big ($10m / year, $100m / year?) Either AOL is going to have to make an exception for eBay (which effectively guts the program) or they are going to have to get eBay to pay. Given that eBay is already paying AOL a bunch of money to advertise on AOL, eBay is already paying the cost of sending the emails, why are they going to be willing to pay anything to AOL for the AOL users to receive the emails? This isn’t going to happen and either (a) AOL is going to end up making an exception for eBay or (b) eBay is going to stop sending email to AOL users. Hmmm – wonder what happens at that point?
Feld / FeedBlitz Example: I have a growing list of subscribers to my Feld Thoughts blog via email. I’ve outsourced this to a service called FeedBlitz which is tightly integrated with my blog and my FeedBurner feed. 100% of my subscribers are opt-in – they have explicitly asked to get my content. This is true across all of FeedBlitz’s users. We (either FeedBlitz or Feld Thoughts) are now going to have to pay to have email delivered or AOL users aren’t going to get it. I have no interest in playing this game – I’ll simply tell my AOL subscribers that they have lots of other free email services available to them that accept my email.
I don’t really care whether or not AOL implements Goodmail’s solution. The fundamental problem is that AOL is phasing out their IP-based Enhanced Whitelist and forcing all mailers to either pay Goodmail (and correspondingly AOL since they get a big cut of the revenue) or no longer be considered legit email. The simple solution is to continue supporting the IP-based Enhanced Whitelist (and other logical solutions that enhance the quality of the email they let through.) Hopefully the service providers and end-users in this ecosystem that understand the issues will be brave enough to speak out clearly to AOL and AOL will be brave enough to look out for their end-users. If not, AOL is effectively telling the spammers of the world “if you are willing to pay AOL, we’ll deliver your mail to our end-users.” If I was an AOL end-user and I understood this, I wouldn’t be an AOL end-user for very much longer.
I decided today was a retro day at the office and decided to see if some of my old computers still worked. My dad cleaned out his attic last week and sent me all of my old computers.
My Compaq Plus – which hadn’t been booted up since 1988 – started up immediately. While it had PFS Write and WordPerfect on it, there was no TCP/IP stack or Ethernet card. So – I downshifted to my old Apple II.
Remarkably – it also booted up immediately. I don’t think it had been turned on since 1984. After staring at my old Silentype thermal printer for a few seconds, I decided to go back to work.