moving the blog.

I'm going to move this to a different location - not that I post much, but it'll be at http://www.qmnonic.com from now on.

Awesome.

rateplans

While I'm generally happy with my phone service, a few months ago I (somehow) got on the phone with a bell customer service rep. After a short discussion she noticed that I had a highspeed internet and long distance bundle. She recommended switching off that given my calling history, and move to a different long distance package which would save me money. After asking a few questions, I agreed and she moved me to the new package. I hung up and went about my day.

Days later, I got into a long distance discussion with a friend who works at Bell and told them about how nice the rep was to optimize my billing. He looked puzzled and said something to the effect of "they're moving people off that because we lose money on them.. it's an old package that you can't switch back to".

So now I'm monitoring my long distance calls to see how this affects my overall bill. Of course this isn't overly straightforward, however, I was a little disappointed that they would trick me into switching plans under the guise of 'optimizing my bill'.

I recently got a similar notification from Telus Mobility and am hesitant to act on it without doing my homework.



Wouldn't it make sense to have an online tool that shows your existing history, but allows you to apply different rate plans... to see how your history actually applies to that new rateplan. Wouldn't that just make sense for the consumer?

ATG and Usability

I apologize in advance for this, but the ATG site is a usability nightmare. Searching is slow and never seems to find anything. The developer portal is nonsense, contains nothing and is not searchable. The navigation is different on the main page than it is on subsequent pages. And my favorite part - it's impossible to tell what licenses cover which products. One would assume this is basic information.

As bad as that site is, all of the related ATG sites (for technical help, etc) are WORSE! The default search on the ATG User Group doesn't search the forums by default.... what other useful content is there to search? Same can be said for the Dynamo Zone.

To make a bad story terrible, you can't search the forums (of the ATG User Group at least) without logging in. What does this mean? It means google or any other search engine can't actually index the content, so you'll never know what's in there, which makes it useless. Google doesn't know whether ATG is a software firm or deals with walking and cycling tours in europe.

So, I've started my own forum and am asking and answering questions as I go. It's a free, low budget forum, courtesy of Nabble, but might prove useful to someone someday. At least google can index the content, so people can learn from my mistakes.

You can find it here - http://www.nabble.com/ATG-Dynamo-f15678.html

frequent flyer programs..

I barfed a few ideas onto the flyertalk forum, which is where most of the Aeroplan management and executive team spend their time... I don't expect any responses, but I know a few of the people who check it (if they still work there), so it should be interesting.

It just occurred to me that airline loyalty programs are okay, but not great. Most of the features are driven by management, not by the user. Or by the top of the line member, which doesn't actually represent the majority.

And I figure I should get my 2 cents in while I've still got AP*E status.

You can see my rant here.

heating and cooling your house properly

Commercial buildings do this, and so do rich people, but I'm wondering why it's not more accessible for the average person.. I'm talking about having thermostats in each room of your house, and controlling the flow of hot/cool air into that room based on the temperature.

I've looked into the technology and there isn't much that will actually help you properly heat your home. I currently live in a 80+ year old home and each room seems to have it's own atmosphere. The middle of the house, where the thermostat lives, is always just the right temperature. However, all rooms around it, are always too hot or too cold. So, people tend to adjust the thermostat until the surrounding rooms are comfortable, which uses more gas/electricity than is actually necessary - and now the room with the thermostat is too hot/cold.

Ideally, this is the system I would like...

A central thermostat with multiple wireless satellite thermostats that control the vents in each room. If the furnace is on, the thermostat in each room controls whether the vent is open or not based on the room temperature. If the temperature is right, it closes the vent and indicates to the central thermostat that the furnace can be shut off. When all thermostats indicate that the furnace can be shut off it is turned off. Similarly, when the satellite thermostats indicate that the room temperature is not right, the central thermostat decides when to turn the furnace back on.

This would allow your home to be properly heated/cooled and likely reduce the use of your furnace, thus saving overall gas/electricity consumption. At the very least, it would optimize the use of your furnace.

One day, I will solve this problem... or find someone who already has.

Digital Camera + GPS = Awesome.

After reviewing a few pictures in flickr, it occurred to me that the picture properties, i.e. the meta data stored by your digital camera, that tells you the details of the photo including camera type, should also include the coordinates of your picture - latitude and longitude, as discussed on the o'reilly radar almost a year ago (I clearly just got a new camera). These cameras do exist, but clearly aren't that popular [yet].

You can use that information in a million different ways, but my immediate thought would be an A9 type mapping. Google could integrate this as a "micro zoom" on their mapping service. Imagine looking for a location, zooming in as far as it can go using the satellite images, then going one step further and viewing the pictures taken and shared at that exact location?

Flickr has a few groups doing this kind of mapping, you can see one of them here.

Of course there are privacy concerns, and this could possibly be a theif's greatest searching tool, but if everyone was honest, this would be super cool.

Hotspots in Toronto.

 
If you've ever noticed the Hotspot sticker at your local Starbucks, Second Cup, Timothy's or other coffee shop and figured how much they charge, that symbol should make you feel faint, sick or bring up images of paying $5 for a $0.50 coffee. I'll spare you the research - they charge $10/hr for access, or optionally about $40/month.

They should have thought that pricing strategy through, because they have a great opportunity just waiting to be exploited. They are currently partnered (if not owned) by Bell, Fido, Rogers and Telus. To pay for your service, you must actually pay through your providers website. Ya, through their website. Which means they have the opportunity to push advertising, PERSONALIZED ADVERTISING (because they know EXACTLY who you are), to you.

Wouldn't it be worth $5 to get 15-30 seconds of guaranteed facetime with a customer? They could easily push an add about US roaming packages and family plans to me, with a high chance of conversion. At the very least I would click-through to read more about it. I'm at a coffee shop, I've got nothing but time on my hands. Isn't that well worth subsidizing the internet access fee?