When Apple first released their legendary iPhone on June 29, 2007, there were many different reactions toward the device. Some people, such as myself loved the concept of being able to do virtually anything from the simplistic phone...and others thought the device could use major improvements, such as being able to access the networks faster data connections, multimedia-messaging or having a traditional "physical" keyboard which all the original iPhone lacked.

Through further releases of the device and OS updates, the device finally had the programming capability to do many and much more of the above critiques...but a few that the device still lacked in the United States was multi-media messaging. The phone was fully capable of doing so in OS release 3.0, but AT&T restricted use of the multi-media messaging capabilities. Why? Bandwidth.

On Friday, September 25th, 2009...AT&T finally made available multi-media messaging. I think it is absolutely ridiculous for a company such as AT&T to partner with a company and basically bag their users of features because of poor planning on their part. It is my belief that AT&T took off a bigger bite than what they could chew. They had many months before hand to prepare or upgrade their network to be capable of doing such high-bandwidth tasks.

People have said before that you cell phone is only as good as your service provider, and in this case that is true partially. It is of my belief that AT&T has given Apple a bad representation of themselves. The phone works great, the only lacking thing is quality and reliable service. Hopefully, AT&T will get their act together if they are smart and are completely sincere about getting their customers the best quality of service for all users of the iPhone now and in the future.

-Ken

Labels: apple, att, cell phones, history, mobile, revolution, service

Today, the internet search giant, Google encountered some "turbulence" when attempting to adjust some key routing numbers, in an on-going effort to transition from an older networking standard to a newer one called IPv6. This was a major issue for the search giant, leaving about 14% of their user-base in the internet dark.

Larger ISP networks that "peer" off of Google, such as AT&T, Verizon and others that are interconnected with the Google networks were effected greatly by this glitch. Google did have a backup system which became activated. This server is based in Asia, and was not designed to handle the amount of traffic the internet threw at it. This caused a major traffic issue, just as a simple car accident can bog down an interstate for miles. Google had the glitch repaired, stories report, by 9:14am PST.

Was this a forgivable mistake? Or should we start tallying up the points for Google? The way I see it, although it may be annoying or an inconvience at the time it occured, things happen. Google does, have backups for when a specific cluster of servers goes down, which is good. I have no beef with Google. I do rely very heavily upon Google. From e-mail, calendar, blogging, chat, news gathering, maps, research...blah blah. I would say about 80% of my internet activity would not exist without Google. What is amazing though is that a major glitch was repaired within an hour and everything was back up and working properly. If this had been a larger period of time, things may be different.

Point number two. I think patience has lost its value in society today. People seem to be in "I need it NOW" type of mindset. They then proceed to throw a hissy fit when time is not in their favor. One of many things that my parents drilled into my head is patience. When I see people demainding something "now" then observing the temper tantrum afterward, I just sit back and realize...do they know what kind of fools they are making of themselves? Really? What would they be thinking if they were watching themselves through my eyes?

Do some thinking. Take today and be patient. Even if it takes a few more seconds than longer to do something simple on the computer, calm down. Does that five seconds really matter that much in the long run??

-Ken

Read the complete story here.

Labels: application, att, glitch, gmail, google, hissy fit, internet, ipv6, mistakes, patience, verizon