by A.J. Wood

Time Warner Cable To Meter Internet Access

It appears Time Warner Cable has decided to test the waters for metered Internet access. Starting in Beaumont, Texas, customers will be charged additional fees if they go over their monthly allotted bandwidth. The proposed rate is $1 for every gigabyte of bandwidth exceeded.

Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley has stated that the new price plan reflects the impact of 5% of customers consuming a heavy amount of bandwidth. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch shoots back that metered access will stifle innovation.

I agree with the opinions that Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and other cable companies are simply extorting customers in areas where they are the only option for Internet access. It doesn’t surprise me that cable would make this shift given the availability and increasing use of media downloads via iTunes, Amazon, etc. The telecommunications industry has a better network to handle the bandwidth usage of its customers, and is not directly impacted by the consumer choosing to download an episode of Grey’s Anatomy from iTunes or ABC.com versus watching it on cable.

I’m not sure how many customers will jump ship when hit with the new metered access plans. The unfortunate folks trapped with TWC or Comcast as their only option, will have to pay. For myself, I will quickly change providers.

I don’t see this proposal as a long term option in a competitive market. Hosting companies used to charge for the bandwidth usage on a metered basis, but many now have super-large plans or unlimited bandwidth. Same can be said for cell phones; competition recently spurred the new onslaught of unlimited plans.

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 by A.J. Wood

POW! BAM! ZING! Updated Website!

Between clients, the birth of my daughter Sydney, finding time for Michelle, school, frequent air travel, and well, that which we call having a life, it’s taken several weeks to get the website redesign flushed out. But here you have it. I chose to build the site using Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme set. Overall, it wasn’t too difficult to tweak the theme, and Brian has some decent Camtasia tutorials on the website. He has also built a pretty active community around his themes. If Brian cannot assist you with web development, he has several recommended WordPress enthusiasts who can.

I can now direct my attention to generating the content that we (the collective) have so readily talked about in recent months. I have my minions working in the background to transfer content from previous sites, and launching the podcast is the next big update for the blog.

For longtime readers, I appreciate your patience during this transition, and for all the new folks dropping in, expect great things here.

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 by A.J. Wood

Adobe TV Launches Along with Media Player

Adobe launched a new Media Player alongside its new Adobe TV channel. A review of the Adobe Media Player is up at Ars Technica. I agree with the initial assessment that limited channels & limited file support will not do much to peak interest. However, as an AIR-based application, the Media Player is a cross-platform solution for watching and storing web content on a local machine.

Consumers have numerous decisions to make when grabbing their content on the web. I’m interested to see which media players, video channels, and file formats will rise as the people’s choice.

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 by A.J. Wood

This isn’t your father’s prom date…

Today’s current event isn’t all that current, but it was brought to my attention as I listened to The Morning Edge on the drive to work this morning. In February a 12yr old girl was beaten into a coma simply for being kissed by a boy at someone else’s birthday party. The news story quotes the mother as having told her daughter to “handle her business” at which point the violence ensued. Teenagers & adults at the party kicked the girl into unconsciousness (what kind of chaperones were they?).

Girl violence is nothing new, but I must admit I’m not sure if I find it all that appealing. Don’t get me wrong, I have an appreciation for strong, fiercely independent females (just ask Michelle). I enjoy Alias and thought Buffy was a kickass heroine, but is aggressive behavior something we should encourage from women?

Maybe I should organize my thoughts better before I continue. I know I’m generalizing quite a bit, but girls historically are known for their psychological methods of dealing angst & woe. Girls quite frankly can be mean and while guys can attempt to be mean, we are clumsy amateurs when compared to the deft skill women have developed. An art form not unlike the “Five Finger Exploding Heart Technique” there is a reason why hell hath no fury like the wrath of a woman scorned.

I hate to resort to the “back in my day” scenario, but girl fights were always more vicious than guy fights growing up. Most guy fights were about immediate pain and a quick display of macho-chest-beating. Girl fights in contrast were about complete & total annihilation. It wasn’t a good girl fight unless somebody had a fistful of clumped hair and an eye gouged out. Of course, nobody brought a handgun to a knife fight back then either.

Not sure what happened to my point, but I guess I never expected a movie like Mean Girls to be considered educational material.

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