squared99

Im so poetical eh.

Many folks may have noticed the recent hullaballoo about Rogers’ (Canada) new ‘unlimited’ browsing plan. They are taking heat on some very negative feedback. I’m personally surprised they have decided to take a step back rather than forward with their data plans, it had seemed they were on track for proper mobile data plans for consumers. Perhaps someone there has decided it would be best to squeeze as much as possible while they can.

Funny related story here. My Dad pings me on messenger to tell me that Rogers has just charged him $17 on his last bill for downloading a wallpaper from us at voeveo.com.

My Dad is not exactly a techno-wiz but he has figured his way through his phone and regularly downloads stuff from us. Which I think is great, plus I have to swallow my pride and admit that he often notices things user experience wise that I cannot just chalk up to the ‘generation gap’, and so his feedback is always useful.

Anyway, we both knew we had set him up on a previous data plan rogers offered which was something like $5/month for 3mbs of data.

They tell him over the phone they never had a plan like that (huh?) and that he needs to go on this $7 ‘unlimited’ browsing plan. I check the website and I can tell you that even I was confused about what it meant in regards to when he might be charged. Would downloading an image count as a 3rd party data charge or not? I googled and immediately find all these stories about Rogers new plan and the backlash. So I let my Dad know and he calls them back, surprise surprise they suddenly found his old data plan and put him back on it.

This behavior of just pulling people off plans and hoping they don’t complain is total BS. Then to top it off they try to confuse folks when they call about what plans they offer and so on. Who works for these companies and makes these decisions? Do they pet some sort of white fluffy cat in a big swivel chair and think of the next way to screw their customers? Get real guys.

A couple of updates have gone up on the site over the last month or so, and in the meantime we have been uploading fulltrack mp3s from cd baby artists onto the site, a few growing pains but it is handling the volumes nicely so far, 50, 000 tracks.

A lot more can be done to optimize it, but Im happy with the batch uploading process considering the fulltrack uploads are the most intensive upload operation on the site, as far as file size and operations such as sample creation and so on. Its also a great test of the site under load.

Heading back to Canada today for a visit with friends and family, and a bit of work. Haven’t been back to Canada in the summer for a awhile so I’m looking forward to it.

Apple has just released their latest affordable home computer. Some say the high-end build is bit pricey at the ~15k mark, but here’s Steve’s take on it.

All joking aside that is one powerful machine, my gods we’re really moving into insane areas of computing power available outside of top secret security installations.

The best we can hope to do is cling on for dear life and stay for the ride.