The Insider - All Comments

re: Feeling phantom vibrations?

Tim Chambers — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:44:09 GMT

Have little cheese with your whine. It simply takes discipline to check one's email at reasonable times, regardless of device. "Working hours" are around the clock in global companies. I live in Colorado and routinely communicate with colleagues in Asia and Europe. More power to Volkswagen for trying to support work-life balance, but I'm sorry. Life is rough. Humans need to adapt. Welcome to Globalization 3.0. The world is flat. I love the freedom to work whenever I need to.

I look with nostalgia on the analog "brick phone" + 12V adapter my wife and I bought to share in the early 90's (whoever had the toddlers in the car had the mobile phone). Then we upgraded to a pair of analog flip phones. As Star Trek TOS fans we were both delighted to have our own Captain Kirk communicators. No one at work bothered us on our personal mobile phones back then, but I loved the freedom to configure my servers at work to send me SMS when triggered by interesting events. This was the mid-90's. To respond to the events I had to dial in over an analog modem, but it still saved me a trip to the office "after hours."

In the late 90's I started dreaming of a job that would enable me to do knowledge work from home. I joined the smartphone crowd in 2003 with a Palm Treo^H^H^H^H Trēo 300 and began living the dream. I refuse to look back. I bought a tethering app for Internet access through my phone. I started chatting with European, Asian and Australian colleagues – sometimes "after hours" during their workdays.

I avoided Outlook until 2010, preferring open source email systems. But the first thing I did when I set up Outlook was to disable email notifications. No one can count the damage Microsoft has done to office productivity by enabling by default real-time notifications of email arrival. And that insanity carried over to default settings on smartphones. In 2009 I finally retired my Trēo (unsuitable for checking corporate email) and bought a Palm Pre^H^H^H Prē. Since then I've enjoyed total mobility. But I refuse to let my phone monitor my email in real-time. When I want to know what's in my Inbox, I take the initiative. The only interruptions I allow are phone calls and SMS (now MMS).

re: Feeling phantom vibrations?

Bruce Frankel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:53:03 GMT

Late last December there were all sorts of articles about Volkswagon agreeing to stop sending e-mails to employees during non-working hours as an attempt to help thier work - life balance.

I'm glad at least some companies are beginning to take some steps, however small they may be, about this issue.

re: Watch out for Which?like watchdog on witch hunt

Bruce Frankel — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:16:07 GMT

I wonder how this "simplicity" thing (whether it is a selling point or not) fits in with the Apple products.

When looking things like iPhone/iPAD/iTunes/iEtc*,

isn't one of their main selling points simplicity...."it just works"?

Regardless of whether you are an Apple or an Android fan, most people agree that Android offers more flexibility, albeit at the cost of complexity.

----Note that I do not want to get into a discussion of Apple vs Android, or their various strengths and weakneses-----)

Its just that people seem to have no problem embracing, and even relishing Apple's simplicity.

Maybe it is because Apple has made simplicity "cool", while others don't seem to be able to do that.

Perhaps people buy the Apple products because they are cool, but later justify it by arguing simplicity???

I'm just trying to figure it out where simplicity fits into all of this........

re: Watch out for Which?like watchdog on witch hunt

John Streete — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:55:30 GMT

I think there will always be a market for simple plans (e.g. Bruce's mom), made up of those folks who don't have the time or the interest to try to understand the complexity of what's available, but to Mark's point, the majority of consumers do not seem to value "simplicity" as a selling point in and of itself.

re: Data privacy laws - like a cat chasing its own tail

Samuel Njoroge — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:50:41 GMT

I agree there's no shortage of countries that may disregard EU or US laws, but the risk to consumers may just be very high when data is stored in some countries. I think the key is how EU decides to handle and identify "citizen's" data stored abroad.

re: 4G jogs jobs

Neda Koci — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:39:59 GMT

I believe the message we should get from this very well written article is to try to imagine, what it will be the potential impact of investing the money used to 'buy' the spectrum, since one way or another the journey or the run toward upgrading the technology from 2G to 3G and then 4G has already started and putting 'artificial barriers' in this wonderful and very rhythmic travel might be counterproductive in the big picture.

re: Data privacy laws - like a cat chasing its own tail

Bruce Frankel — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:36:42 GMT

I'm trying to decide if I "trust" telcos more than any other company that might provide similar services.

I guess I have a general belief that most telcos are legitimate companies, but I'm not sure the mere fact that they are a telco makes me trust them more than any other established, legitimate companies, like Apple, Google, IBM, etc.

All that being said, I certainly would like to know how anyone storing data about me uses it.

re: What's in a name? Everything it seems.

Samuel Njoroge — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:15:54 GMT

This a good article. When AT&T acquired Cingular, they retained AT&T..makes sense, but when SBC acquired AT&T, they still retained AT&T... Wonder if AT&T can share the trick in a name. For EE, I would suggest Everywhere Everything.. but this would still be EE

re: 4G jogs jobs

John Streete — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:18:59 GMT

The job numbers you cite were created in an environment where spectrum was auctioned off, and I don’t see how giving spectrum away would lead to more jobs than the current system.

In fact, depending on how the recipients of free spectrum were chosen (not a trivial problem to solve), it could very well reduce job creation in cases where recipients were not technically or operationally prepared to make use of it.

re: Property, diamonds, gold or spectrum?

John Streete — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:57:02 GMT

When I read that article I wondered why broadcasters weren’t leveraging their excess spectrum by leasing it to wireless carriers. Googling a bit, it turns out something very much like that is actively being proposed.

The Coalition for Free TV and Broadband, a broadcaster-associated group, is proposing (and pushing) ‘broadcast overlay’ as a partial solution for the spectrum crunch. Instead of reallocation and auction of spectrum to wireless operators, they are pushing for removal of regulatory limits that would allow broadcasters to lease downlink capacity to wireless carriers, using broadcaster-owned spectrum. They cite benefits including more efficient spectrum utilization, and, maybe more importantly from a feasibility perspective, higher and annuitized gov’t revenue (est'd $62 billion over 15 yrs?) as the gov’t would be entitled to 5% of resulting broadcaster revenues.

I’m not sure how feasible this would be as far as solving the spectrum shortage, but it's easy to see why broadcasters would be pushing in this direction.