Our California holiday house that we just moved into is 15 years old. It had a corded phone system, a slow DSL line to the Internet, horrible cell phone service and driveway lights powered from an overloaded circuit box.
Our man suggested beefing up the driveways lights with more circuit breakers and heavier cable. Better solution: solar lights. And beef up the landlines.
Land phone lines are no longer easy, cheap nor needed. Key is to boost the cell phone signal — use an extender or a booster? (Amazon sells both.) Need to get to the roof to install an antenna. A better solution might be something called “Wi-Fi Calling,” which T-Mobile apparently has and soon other carriers will.
This is from T-Mobile’s web site. This technology should dramatically improve everyone’s cell phone service. It’s a real reason to get a T-Mobile phone.
Meantime, for me, a short-term solution might be Magic Jack, which at $40 lets you make phone calls over your Internet connection.
The point of all this is twofold:
1. All these various communications technology improvements should really help Verizon and AT&T if they embrace them quickly. (Pray.)
2. What all your “experts” are telling you about technology you need is probably wrong. They are thinking in times gone by.
Meantime, I hear Google is about to spend billions on rolling out Google Fiber everywhere. It’s a fantastic service, delivering around one gigabit of data to and from the Internet each second. That’s 24 times faster than my Verizon FiOS. Fiber doesn’t make Google money, yet.Wiring the country with this speed sure is an ambitious project. I suspect Larry Page’s ambitious spending habits may be turning off some investors, which may account for the recent weakness in the stock.
Matt Taibbi is back with Rolling Stone. His latest piece is The Police have a legitimacy problem. It’s worth reading. Click here.
The coming fall of Facebook. That’s the tantalizing headline in the latest Atlantic monthly. The piece begins:
Facebook has won this round of the Internet.
Steadily, grindingly, it continues to take an ever greater share of our time and attention online. More than 800 million people use the site on an average day. Individuals are dependent on it to keep up not just with their friends but with their families. When a research company looked at how people use their phones, it found that they spend more time on Facebook than they do browsing the entire rest of the Web.
The argument is people are moving to more priviate social networks, away from Facebook. You can read the entire piece here.
No need to ever go traveling. Here’s a PowerPoint of the world’s most beautiful places. Truly gorgeous. Foto_dal_Mondo
World’s most expensive buildings. The most expensive cost $3.9 billion. This isn’t the most expensive. This is the Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort.
For the top ten, click here.
Neat ad proliferating all over Boston. This one is on a trash can.
Suggested Christmas presents. I have a whole list. But this machine is screwing up this morning. More coming tomorrow.
This one is $35 from here.
Two favorite New Yorker holiday cartoons this week:
Harry Newton who’ll be more inspired tomorrow when figures out what’s going wrong with WordPress this morning. WordPress is the popular ,reliable software which powers this site. …. Ah, ha, I’ve just figured the problem. Key: Always go back to the last change you made (no matter how small, no matter how “benign”) and UNDO it. Idiot me.
Goodness, how the Gods conspire to laugh at hubris. “The Police have a legitimacy problem” …. How about ROLLING STONE has a “Legitimacy Problem”! “All Conservative Republican Fraternity men are rapists!” … and then… “Ooops! Maybe not so much.”
Sounds like words written by someone whose daughter was never raped by “frat boys” who did it “just because they could” and and a fan of institutions whose leaders were more concerned about their “reputation” than their students’ safety.
Forget Magic Jack…I threw mine out long ago…what is wrong with SKYPE? I have been using it for years, works great 99% of the time and you get video…$39.00 per year last time I renewed, all USA & Canada calls free, other countries for 2-3 cents or a little more per minute. Get a SKYPE number and forward it to your CELL, friends can call you toll free anywhere you travel (most countries). Call them back on SKYPE free. Only give-out your SKYPE number if you wish…you can change it as often as you want for free and still keep your CELL number or land line number private.
Throw out your land line, use CELL and get an Xlink…you can answer incoming and make outgoing calls from, any former land line phone in your house all over your CELL phone. Use 3 different cell phones on one Xlink. Remember to disconnect the land line hard wire. We have been using one for about 5 years. No land line.
I have T-mobile cell, G-4 or 5 — no phone signal where I live in So Cal — it automatically switches to wifi — clear connections. Cancelled my landline. VZ and T better get aboard — they are being
disrupted.
Whose WiFi do you have?
Time Warner (Comcast) blocks cell calls over their WiFi.
Last I checked AT&T, Verizon and Sprint allowed cell over WiFi.
I have OOMA for my land line home phone and I am very happy with it, it is better than my previous fios land line. Although It does require good internet speed.