Category: Internet & Technology

Wind Mobile’s Calgary Coverage is Even Worse Than I Thought

I got my hands on my first Android phone a couple of weeks ago – an HTC Incredible S – and it was of the Euro/Asia 3G frequency variety. That means I wouldn’t be able to use it on the Rogers network here in Canada. I really wanted to test this phone out though, so I figured a relatively easy option would be to get a SIM card from Wind – they happen to operate on the 1700/2100 frequencies – and simply forward my old cell number to this new number. Seemed simple enough, right?

When I got home though and put the SIM into the new phone, I was impressed at how everything was automagically configured. Within the first day though, I noticed something really weird: my device said I was roaming. On Android – or on this Android phone at least – every time it happened I’d get a pop-up window I’d have to dismiss three times. I decided to call Wind today to ask them if this was normal, and they directed me to their coverage map…and I was surprised by what I saw.

That little green arrow? That’s me. Yes, the community I live in is on the western edge of the city, but it’s still part of Calgary and the Wind Mobile coverage ends about 2 KM from my house. Because I’m on the edge of the coverage, it sometimes works, but not reliably so. When I bought the Wind SIM I knew I was buying into an urban wireless network, but I thought for sure they’d at least cover the entire city. Nope.

The good news is that I’m in the planned expansion area – the yellow is where they expect to expand to by the end of the summer.

The Groupon/Coupon Bubble Will Burst Soon

I posted the above status update earlier today, and when asked to explain myself on Facebook, I wrote up a rather lengthy explanation that seemed worth of turning into a blog post…so here it is (slightly edited for clarity).

I’ve talked to a few small businesses now that have used these new coupon services, and in every case so far, they’ve been financially maimed by them. Some due to their own ignorance or poor financial understanding, some by the salespeople at the deal companies.

A carpet cleaning company used Kijiji and the salespeople wouldn’t allow him to put a limit on the number of coupons sold – because they wanted to gain as much revenue as possible from it of course. They charge 50%, like everyone seems to, and still tacked on another 2.5% in credit card processing fees. Talk about adding insult to injury. Thankfully for him, only 150 people ordered the carpet cleaning – he was smart enough to spread out the appointments, only booking the Kijiji deals three times a week. That makes it frustrating for customers like me to get the service in a timely fashion – it took two months for me to get my booking in – but given that he’s working at 77.5% off his normal price, he’s only breaking even on supplies and travel costs…so his labour is free. Hard to feed a family on that!

In my case he made some money – I had him do two sets of stairs, which weren’t a part of the deal – but he said nearly every time people only want what the coupon covers. So as soon as he hits 500 square feet of carpet cleaned, he stopped.

Most businesses hope for repeat customers, but the type of customers that use deals like these are usually the kind who aren’t willing to pay for a service at full price in the first place. So you end up with people using your service at no profit to you, and you don’t get many new customers out of the deal. There are some exceptions: the guy that did our carpets did such an amazing job I’ll absolutely use him again, paying full price and b happy about it. I think that’s rare though.

Some deals can scale, no matter how many coupons are sold. I just bought a $10 for $20 at Old Navy for example. Old Navy could sell 10,000 of them and their stores could handle the extra traffic just fine. But the small carpet cleaning business, if he suddenly has 500% more clients than before, it soaks up all his excess capacity (good) but also uses up all his future capacity for the next six months (bad), at no profit. I heard of a cleaning company that went bankrupt because they sold too many coupons – again, because the company wouldn’t let them restrict the number of coupons sold – and it was easier to go bankrupt than to absorb the losses of the poor business decision of using the coupon service.

Bing: Getting Better, But Room for Improvement

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been using Bing more and more lately – and for the most part, I’ve come away quite impressed with the search results I’m getting. I’m starting to see results that are even better than Google in some ways, which is excellent – Google allowed their index to become infested with spammy results. One area that Bing needs big improvement in though is maps – Google has a strong lead there in my opinion. The screen shot below is a perfect example of how Bing struggles to give proper directions:

Both of those addresses are in Calgary, yet look at where Bing thinks the destination is…Europe! How it can get delivered the keywords of Calgary and AB (Alberta) and get Europe is beyond me. Time to tweak that code Microsoft!

Performance Matters in Email Newsletters Too

The above screenshot is from a newsletter that I received today, and it’s pretty normal for me to see broken images in a newsletter, or images that take so long to download, they might as well be broken. We live in a world where there are all sorts of tools and services to monitor the up-time and performance of a Web site, and yet little to no attention gets paid to the up-time and performance of email newsletters. When I get an email about a sale at a big box retail store and the images in the newsletter take 60 seconds to load, that doesn’t make me think very highly of the brand in question. If you have an email newsletter, do yourself a favour and make sure it delivers the kind of experience you want your customers to have.

And in case anyone is wondering, the images were still broken after I gave Outlook permission to download the images…

Oh YouTube: You Attract Such Gems

I’ve seen a lot of stupid comments on my YouTube videos, but this one really made my day (here’s the video it was from). I know I talk fast, and that might be challenging for some, but my actual use of the language? Apparently my spoken English is so poor, this fellow from Portland, Oragon, USA, just couldn’t make out what I was saying. 😉

Finally, Something Nice Happens on Chatroulette

I didn’t get the full context right from the start – basically, it looks like the singers ask the name of the woman they’re chatting with, then sing their catchy song using that name. You can tell their aren’t native English speakers because they pronounce it “Deeeana” in the song, but I doubt the woman on the other end cared – she was clearly thrilled with a bunch of strangers singing her a song.

Why I Wish Domains Cost $100 Again

Anyone that remembers registering a domain in the ’90s from Network Solutions – I think they were basically the only game in town back then – will recall paying $100 for a standard .com domain. Now you can get the same thing for $10 or less from a variety of sources. When you paid $100 for a domain, unless you were a wealthy person, you’d only sit on a few domains that weren’t being used. Paying $100 a year for something you’re not using was a waste. Now that domains are $10, people sit on domains for years and years, never using them, and not feeling compelled to either because the domains are so cheap. If you’re someone looking to launch a new Web site, it’s extremely difficult to get a domain name for your new project because of domain squatters.

I say this myself as someone who has a few different un-used domains (MMA Thoughts.com, Photography Thoughts.com), but I’d be willing to pay $100 a year for those domains if it would force some of these squatters off their domains – I looked up one domain earlier today that was registered back in 2000 and still has nothing on it. If you can’t get your Web site launched in 11 years, guess what, it’s time to give up…

Bell vs. Teksavvy: Bandwidth in Canada

I have to admit that I’ve made an about face on this issue: earlier in the year I was arguing that bandwidth caps weren’t a big deal, because most people never went over them, but since then I’ve done some research on the bandwidth caps in place and am appalled at the trend I’ve seen: bandwidth caps at one of the major ISPs in my part of Canada have either stayed the same, or gone up moderately, while prices have either stayed the same or gone up. This isn’t the typical trend we’re used to with technology, where prices go down over time and the functionality/performance goes up. I’m all for companies making money, but there’s something very wrong with the current state of competition in Internet access in Canada – we have among the slowest and most expensive Internet access in the world, and that needs to change.

If you’re in Canada, stand up and make your voice heard.