iPhone

Right, yes -- sorry, I was unclear twice.

A friend's app for medical tracking does something like that through Google Health or Amazon A3, but aside from those words, I know nothing about that... .

ddt

Are we talking about Diamond Age-style mesh networking?

In support of what John's saying, what it sounds like you're asking for is very much akin to usenet/nntp

How rigid is the no-server constraint? Obviously if you're not on the same network, there will be various outside resources you rely on, like DynDNS at a minimum to even find the other peers. There are plenty of low-maintenance shared resources like Dropbox you could use to store state.

Thanks for all the great ideas... I'm fine with content syncing when the user goes online (3G or Wifi). Like I said, there shouldn't be IM, just posting to threaded boards on set topics (no adding or deleting of topics by users), comments on uploads. 37signals' Draft goes one-way: iPad app to Campfire chat; I want in-app ability to post to a topic thread which others, when they sync later, can see and respond to. Outpost 2 has a good UI for comments, using popovers.

Mmmm, popovers.

ddt

(P.S. to johnny: for a collab design class, we were assigned to examine each others' wallets, discover a design problem, and build a prototype for a solution. I did NOT copy your neato projects, though I told people about them. We came up with an in-wallet (or add-on) small pouch for things you put into your wallet but should be transferred out, like receipts. A small sensor detects when there is something in the pouch, and when you get home sends a signal to your "shoebox", which buzzes and stuff annoyingly enough that you file your receipts in their proper place right away.)

Man, that's a problem I have. I'm wary about the digitalization of money, but I'd kill to get all my receipts by email, particularly for one business credit card. I assume Apple's rumored payment system means Apple Store-style paperless transactions.

Wow, we came up with something useful! Johnny, if you add that to your smart wallets (feel free), can I be a co-author?

ddt

New AT&T data plans, first fruits of losing iPhone exclusivity. Somewhat contradictory reports:

MacRumors

Apple Insider

To protect against the onslaught of iPhone users, Verizon is compressing web content for all http requests. Prepare for compression artifacts in images. Also, if you are in the top 5% of data users (Gizmodo estimates that as over 2GB/month), then you will be throttled down for the remainder of your pay period... AND the next one. Also, download on Verizon is slower than AT&T (when AT&T has a good connection, anyway) and upload on Verizon is half as fast as AT&T. AT&T's looking better every day.

Of course, everybody's reporting that the Verizon is significantly better for voice calls.

I remember Sprint doing that on their 1xRTT network in the old days. I was able to tether my old Samsung i330 to my laptop via USB to get online. All images were recompressed by Sprint's transparent proxy. Artifacts galore.

That's my memory, and also from Sprint tethering. How does this work with Verizon's vaunted hotspot capability? They're "optimizing" images for mobile devices, but I'm tethering my MacBook Pro!

They're not publicizing this either; Boy Genius Report just found an obscure PDF detailing this. This sort of thing should be on a document read aloud to phone purchasers at the time of purchase, and folks already in contracts should be allowed to opt out or be freed from contract obligations.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2011 09:25AM by John Willoughby.

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All images were recompressed by Sprint's transparent proxy. Artifacts galore.

More of a translucent proxy, then? ;-)

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YDD

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All images were recompressed by Sprint's transparent proxy. Artifacts galore.

More of a translucent proxy, then? ;-)

Bwahaha! Touché.

It can't touch anything over HTTPS so, if memory serves, I think I had set up a proxy server that I would connect through.

Verizon. Maroons. Pinheads. People are clamoring for true internet, and Verizon's running them through filters. If this works, AT&T may follow. My position would be that if I'm paying for data bandwidth, then I get to select what data I receive.

Sadly, this is probably the sort of thing that will be held up as a "win/win" for net neutrality. You get "access", they get to "network manage", and telcos über-alles when they're able to charge providers and users for "unproxied" access (a ValueAddedService™) as opposed to standard access. Bastards.

It does worry me a bit on the wireless side. On the wireline side, I think there needs to be more municipal broadband plans in place.

The best municipal broadband story is about 30 miles northwest of me in Monticello, MN.

A few years back, the city was tired of lagging behind the larger metro area when it came to broadband. So they asked the telco to build out a fiber network. The telco refused. I mean, really, why would they want to invest in a fiber network for a municipality with only 11,000 residents. After all, it wasn't like there was any risk of those residents going somewhere else for their service.

So the city decided to build its own fiber network. The bond issue passed and they broke ground... only to have it all come to a screeching halt when the phone company, TDS Telecom, sued the city. They claimed that it was illegal for the city to use bonds to pay for building an Internet service. In Minnesota, municipalities may use bonds to pay for building utilities but TDS claimed that broadband Internet access wasn't a utility. Their logic was ridiculous. They claimed that it can't be considered a utility because not enough people have access to it. So, until everyone has broadband, municipalities can't do anything to help everyone GET broadband. Yeah, the judge thought it was stupid, too.

But, get this... in the meantime, TDS suddenly started building a fiber network in Monticello. Apparently, the threat of competition made them reconsider their earlier refusal.

The city eventually won the court case and built their fiber network as well. Now this relatively small town has TWO high-speed fiber networks.

And if ANYONE ever tries to claim that competition isn't very important, consider this:

TDS Telecom provides service to lots of cities and towns around the country. But pricing isn't uniform. Let's do some comparisons of their fastest services offered in a random selection of their markets:

Monticello, MN:

50Mbps Internet - $49.95/month

Merrifield, MN:

25Mbps Internet - $74.95/month

Madison, WI:

25Mbps Internet - $69.95/month

Winterhaven, CA

15Mbps Internet - $39.95/month (plus the cost of local phone service)

How do you suppose it costs $20/month more for half the speed in Madison, Wisconsin? I'm guessing it has something to do with Madison not having its own municipal fiber network there to keep 'em honest.

Wonderful story. And yet so many people believe the fairy tales of private enterprise as the solution to every problem.

I want to live in Monticello, MN.

Being on the cutting edge of Android must be great.

Getting there can be impossible, for some.

And may be getting harder.

The Motorola thing isn't so much Android as it is Motorola.

There's a very simple rule that people are just learning: Never buy a Motorola phone.

The web market thing is curious. I have a theory about that which I haven't been able to test yet.