ChatDD Blog

According to an internal document, Sprint will finally make good on their word and roll out their pro-rated ETF (Early Termination Fee) plan on November 2nd. They are the last of the 4 nationwide carriers to release their pro-rated goodness. The company previously promised to release their plan the 1st half of 2008 but according to Roni Singleton, a Sprint spokeswoman, the carrier had to hold off to make sure all customers were on the same billing system as well as some other enhancements to be complete in their systems.

The newly Sprint pro-rated ETF will only be available to new contracts signed up after November 2nd. The ETF fee will drop every month after the second month of service is complete.

The pro-rated ETF craze started toward the end of 2007 with Verizon wireless pledging to offer pro-rated ETF’s for new contacts. Following suit AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint all promised to give their customers a long awaited relief to the contracts that are forced on their customers.

It seems things are finally starting to turn around for Sprint now that they have moved from dead last to first in a recent customer service poll. The release of their ETF service may finally put them over the top and give the other wireless companies a new contender to fear.

Google has unveiled the next version of its Gmail for mobile.

In a blog post, Derek Phillips, Software Engineer for the Google mobile team, announced the improvements and changes for Gmail mobile. Gmail mobile is a java based application that customers install onto their phones from Google’s mobile site. It runs on a wide variety of Java enabled phones.

“We rearchitected the entire client to push all the processing to the background, greatly improve the client-side caching scheme and optimize every bottleneck piece of code we came across” Phillips said.

According to Phillips users should see an overall performance improvement with smoother scrolling and no freezing. Google have introduced multiple accounts management. If you have both a Gmail and Google Apps email account, you can easily switch between them quickly. You can now save multiple email drafts in your mobile phone, so that you can pick and choose what you would like to send later. For QWERTY phones there are new short cuts to help you navigate Gmail mobile and if you run out of signal the new version you can still compose and read your most recent emails. Also, any outgoing messages will be saved in the outbox on your phone and sent automatically when you’re back in coverage.

Overall it’s a great improvement for Gmail mobile users. The company also posted a video demonstration of the new features, attached below.

Also, Gmail for mobile 2.0 is available in over 35 languages now. Please note, though, that not all features are available for all phones.

Go to m.google.com/mail in your mobile browser to download the new Gmail for mobile for your phone.

One million UK consumers have exceeded or come close to exceeding their broadband usage limit, research from consumer group uSwitch has found.

So-called usage caps, where internet service providers limit the amount of bandwidth users can have in any given month, are standard practice.

But the majority of users are still confused by the bandwidth curbs imposed on them, the research found.

For some who go over their limit the penalty is disconnection.

Bandwidth-hungry services such as iPlayer are proving popular

“With so much reliance on broadband, having the service disconnected could feel to someone as serious as having their electricity cut off,” said Tim Wolfenden, spokesman for uSwitch.

Small print

Its survey found that 56% of broadband providers who advertised services as “unlimited” did impose usage caps and were prepared to cut people off if they used their service to excess.

Only two out of the nine actually said what these limits were.

As a result, uSwitch found that 80% of UK broadband customers either wrongly thought that they had an unlimited broadband package or did not know what their limit was.

“Broadband companies should not be allowed to class their packages as unlimited if they are not,” said Mr Wolfenden. “As providers aren’t choosing to be fully transparent about this issue people need to be savvy when choosing their broadband and pay close attention to the small print.”

More expensive

Net suppliers argue that such caps are necessary if they are to continue to offer a good service to all at the prices consumers have come to expect.

The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISP), which represents UK ISPs, has strict rules on how such caps are passed on.

“An ISPA Member must not deliberately operate bandwidth caps unless it makes available to its customers and users in a clear manner the nature of the caps that apply,” said a spokesman for ISPA.

Fair usage policies are generally found in the terms and conditions of a broadband contract but, according to uSwitch research, only one in four people actually read it.

iPlayer
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The creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has made an odd request: for a kind of rating system to help people distinguish sites that can be trusted to tell the truth, and those that can’t.

Berners-Lee was speaking at the launch of the World Wide Web Foundation, which aims to ensure that everyone in the world benefits as the web evolves.

In his speech he referred to the way fears that the LHC could destroy the world spread like wildfire online. As the BBC puts it, he explained that “there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.”

He went on to say that he didn’t think “a simple number like an IQ rating” is a good idea: “I’d be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways”. Whatever process is used to hand out the labels, it sounds like a bad idea to me.

Berners-Lee himself directed us towards some of the its biggest problems:

“On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable…A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging.”

There are plenty of arguments online already about whether Scientology is a cult. I find it unlikely anyone will be keen to step in and label sites on either side as not to be trusted. Others might reasonably argue that all religions - whether established or not - should come with a warning message.

As for wading in to put a stop to conspiracy theories, I can’t image anything their proponents could benefit from more.

Berners-Lee also mentioned the system would help people find out the real science behind, for example, the LHC’s risks. You might think handing out rating for sites about science would be easier, with publishers of peer-reviewed science, for example, receiving a top rating without problems.

But there will be papers in the archives of any journal that have been entirely superseded. And a whole lot more that present results that are valid, but can be misleading to some readers. Web licences to ensure that people only read sites they can handle are the next logical step.

Fortunately it’s much more likely that the whole idea will quietly be forgotten, which will at least prevent Berners-Lee receiving one of the first “potentially misleading” badges for thinking it up in the first place.

Let’s hope the World Wide Web Foundation and its laudable goals have a rosier future.