tech.am

Weirdness happens in the most strange places, and the Fon forums are an endless source of fun. Their moderator, known as moderfon, throws his wrath around like a dragon, censoring posts that are not convenient to Fon’s image. Those who complain or even link to external stories that deal with topics such as replacing the Fonera’s firmware, or problems and bugs such as the overheating routers, are ruthlessly censored, and the posters threatened with being banned.

I have moderated public forums for almost 10 years now, and there is a very delicate balance between keeping things on topic, abusive users, and the community. You simply cannot have a forum about a topic, and then arbitrarily decide when and how its members can or cannot talk about the topic. If the topic of Fon’s forums is Fon, then users should be allowed to say anything related to Fon, be it good, bad or even how to hack the routers. People should be allowed to complain about a company on the company’s own forum, else, it is basically a propaganda tool, or something one must have for public image. “Sure, we like our community, we have a blog and a forum!”. Keeping a company forum on topic does not mean keeping it on the topic the company would like to see, but making sure there is no spam, users don’t become abusive, flame wars are tamed, and people get a feeling that they are contributing to something. Censoring uncomfortable topics is not the way to go.

In this particular case, a UK ISP known as Fondoo.net, who define themselves as “the UK’s first FON Friendly ISP.”, has had its name censored from Fon’s forums. Any mention of the word ‘fondoo’ will be shown on posts as *xxxx*, as can be seen on this thread (scroll down a bit to the first post by euronerd). Seems like a very fast way to lose friends, and shows how to not build a community. As this thread will probably be censored (there was a thread about censorship that itself got censored!), I took a screenshot of the relevant bit:

Update: I found a link to this Wikipedia entry (I tend not to link to Wikipedia as a general rule, but I’ve reviewed this article and it seems just fine), which is a great introduction and explanation of what it means to moderate a forum (wink wink, moderfon). Thanks to Kyros for posting the link on AustinTX’s blog, it will come in handy more than once methinks!

No pun intended, honestly, but Tony Smith’s article on The Register’s RegHardware ‘How to get your Wi-Fi working again‘, while making a nice and broad effort at examining the problems plaguing WiFi nowadays, and reviewing several options to improve your experience around WiFi, also uses somewhat pseudoscientific methods to measure things like signal strength.

Not that the N1 is a poor choice. Belkin’s software makes set-up a doddle and it’s handily compatible with both 802.11b and 802.11g for older, un-upgradeable devices. I hooked the N1 up to my cable modem, and was quickly up and running with the 802.11n USB adaptor plugged into my Vaio in the next room. Here, the signal registered as four blocks, two higher than the 802.11g RangeMax router yielded in the same location, albeit at a different time.

What exactly is four blocks? -60dBm? -110dBm? Cutting Tony some slack, he attempts to explain the issues and measurements in layman’s terms, so that as many people reading the article as possible will understand what he is talking about, but still, there are better ways to measure performance of WiFi networks. Signal strength readings are as reliable as my 90-year-old granny at the shooting range, save for a few cards which provide pretty accurate figures. A good measure of the performance, or lack thereof, in the various setups he studies, could have been net throughput. There are various tools to do this, such as the excellent yet very simple NetCPS from Netchain Communications. In WiFi, throughput is proportional (amongst other things) to available wireless bandwidth, that is, theoretical bandwidth minus artifacts such as interference and background noise – thus, between two particular machines, NetCPS would provide a good sense on how good a combination of routers, bands and adapters is performing.

Not much point to .mobi domains in the realms of Verizon, it seems – the New York Times reports that starting 2007, ads will be placed on sites that are accessed using their mobile phones. The Verizon Wireless release claims that certain types of ads and video clips will not be allowed, as they may not be compatible with the limited browsers found in the phones, but this is not very encouraging – meaning that they will allow video clips. Will this not hugely increase the amount of data used during browsing? I believe Verizon offers all-you-can-eat data plans, but if you are not using one of those, you could feel the pain. In any case, having to wade through a mobile website rendered on a tiny screen is hard enough as it is, with some devices not being able to cope with the amount of processing required, resulting in a very slow and frustrating experience. Add videos, which require much higher resources to be played back, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Reading an article in The Register by Bill Ray, he thinks the Apple iPhone will fail, actually, fail badly. I somewhat doubt his conclusions.

The main argument to support his analysis is that since network operators have to like the phone, then Apple has to do a good job convincing them. Remember the ROKR? It was rather a failure due to the fact it could only be loaded with iTunes music over cable, and thus mobile operators were left out of attractive data chargers levied when buying music directly from the phone. There was even speculation that Apple allowed it to launch on purpose, to protect their audio player market.
Where Bill goes wrong in my opinion is that the handset market is heavily controlled in the US, but not in Europe – go to any shop in the latter and you will have a very large variety of handsets to buy unsubsidized. Why? Because a lot of people value the ability to switch operators as they see fit, without having to enter into contracts involving their soul. In the US, there isn’t a culture of operator hopping, but rather of staying with one just to get a phone $50 or $100 cheaper.

One thing I have never understood is why people get themselves tied into a two year contract for a $50 saving. If they worked out how much they could save by moving operators taking advantage of special offers, they may think twice.

There is a very large number of paths Apple could follow, first, they have a nice distribution network with excellent shops placed in key areas, second, they have a large and loyal crowd of followers, who would probably not mind paying an unsubsidized device, and third, there are already a number of MVNOs and fixed-line operators that are willing to take a bite from the large networks. As for the subsidy, I wonder…are iPods subsidized by anyone? Apple costumers are used to pay for quality, and in my view, the iPhone will be no different.

Robert Scoble writes about whether having a decent WiFi connection at a conference is something that important, and concludes that if you can afford the $3500 price tag to get in, you can also afford a $80 a month Verizon mobile data plan. Ethan Kaplan thinks it is important, and I agree, but for different motives.
What Robert fails to appreciate is, that while Web 2.0 may be more US-centered in terms of visitor origin, there are many conferences where the bulk of atendees come from abroad. In this case, it makes little sense to get into a Verizon plan just for the few days when you are visiting. Roaming data charges (when roaming data connections such as GPRS even work, which I found impossible around California) are astronomical.

I am in favor of event organizers providing a good quality, solid and stable WiFi connection, even though it can be very expensive. An example was the WOMMA conference at the San Francisco Hilton, which didn’t provide WiFi, as the hotel wanted $20.000 to put a router in the hall. However, a compromise between the two postulates would be for Verizon to offer a rent-a-card service. Just like I pick up my car at Hertz for a week at SFO, I could also pick up a Verizon card, use it while moving about, and return it at the airport before leaving the country. I can already hear critics saying “but people would just keep the cards” – maybe, but what good would they be to them? Additionally, just like you have a retainer placed on your credit card when you rent a car, the same could apply to the card, if you don’t return it, Verizon actually could make more money!

Reading with interest the flurry of posts about Google’s purchase of YouTube for around $1.6 billion, it seems the main worry right now is that since Google is a very rich company ($131 billion cap!), the lawsuits for copyright violations will start raining faster than you can say MPAA. Mark Cuban is particularly pessimistic about the business decision.

My take is that Google in general, Larry and Sergey in particular, are rather smart, and would not have taken this step, putting the entire company at risk, without first having an agreement with the main content providers that would be likely to sue. This would include TV networks, MPAA, RIAA and the usual suspects. A very obvious conclusion is that if there is money to be made placing ads on content, or selling premium accounts the way Flickr does, why can this not be shared with the copyright owners?

A more twisted conclusion is that the copyright owners could be giving up on microcontrolling every individual byte in an Orwellian manner, and see the light. What is better at promoting new content than the word-of-mouth of millions of fans?

YouTube videos are of notoriously bad quality for the most part, in essence, making it possible to turn the originals into streamable flash clips. Have you ever tried to watch a video full screen? It sucks. What the clip may do is convince me to go out and buy the DVD!

Time will see, but I place my bets on a blanket all-you-can-eat license that will allow YouTube to promote content, keeping both users and moguls happy. 15-second ads at the start of each video? Maybe, but then if you pay us $19.95 a year…