Sprint Still Sucks

Three times in the past few days I've received a phone call on my mobile from 866-463-3017. Each time, when I've answered the call, the caller hung up. I've dialed the number back, only to be told by a recording that Sprint ("together with Nextel" lest we forget) wanted to share some information with me concerning phone plans. The message then gives instructions for how to remove my number from their call list. I've followed the directions all three times and have been told that my number has been added to Sprint's Do Not Call list. Seems they don't check it before they call out to me. I just switched from Sprint. I already hate them. This harassment gives me yet another reason.

Hopefully, bloggers will start posting this phone number all over the place and the blogosphere will jam their call center. (One can hope, right?)

Blink Better Be Good

Chase sent me a new debit card last week, which I activated today. I was a bit tweaked, because my old debit card was a Mastercard and didn't expire until 2009. The new Visa card has a new number, which will necessitate changing my card info at a few websites and calling to change at least two recurring monthly bills. Oh, well. Anyway, this card supposedly has Blink in it, which is evidently some sort of method for buying stuff without swiping the card. I can't imagine who might be so lazy that they consider having to swipe their debit card some sort of chore. I guess we'll see how convenient it can be.

But for right now, I'm updating my billing information with a few online services. I think it's kind of a chafe that Chase would force me to update my debit card with a different type so soon, and with so much time left before the existing card expires.

"Exclusive" Web Rights Are Soooooo 1997

BoingBoing gets not just a nastygram from a law firm, but a preemptive nastygram.

Infront anticipates the possibility of unauthorised streaming and downloading of FIFA World Cup matches, other unauthorised use of clips or images of the matches and services which facilitate such activities. Infront and its agents are therefore taking active and strong measures to prevent such unlawful activities, both civilly and criminally.

In this respect you should be aware that Infront and its agents are actively monitoring your website and others to identify unlawful activity and will, if necessary, take appropriate action to ensure the protection of Infront's rights and those of its licensees.

In other words, Infront was sold exclusive online broadcasting rights and intends to defend those rights, apparently borrowing it's legal stance from The Washington Post circa 1997.

No doubt, with visions of millions of football fans happily streaming FIFA matches from its servers (and its servers alone) dancing in its head, Infront apparently thinks the Internet is a broadcast medium where one entity can "own" concepts and thoughts. This, of course, is ridiculous. Does Infront plan to go after fan websites where people post photos of their favorite players? Won't that be fun to watch?

By my count, Infront needs about half a dozen clues to bring them back to the future. Here's the most glaring one:

When you hope to make money by buying rights to stream content, you WANT people to post clips, images and whatnot. It's called free publicity, stupid. In other words, keep the lawyers at bay and let people post clips of the first round of matches and you'll have more people showing up to legally stream the second round of matches. Dumbass.

I won't even get into the notion of inferring that people are criminals BEFORE THE FACT. That one is so stupid, I won't touch it in fear of having stupid particles accidentally rub off on me and take my IQ down by several dozen points.

Blog Semantics

When blogging was first emerging, the blogosphere knocked around the notion of what constitutes a blog. Of course, some basics were challenged, like whether or not a blog necessarily requires a chronologically-ordered archive of posts or whether or not a blog needs to be topical. Those were the minor, almost inconsequential elements of the discussion. The bigger point was that in order for a blog to be considered a blog, it had to encourage conversation through comments or some other form of feedback. Without a two-way channel, it's not really a blog. I think we can all agree on this. Except for the bandwagoners. I'm talking about some of the folks in the established publishing world who believe that if you post a press release once a week through a Blogger account and turn the comments off that somehow, this qualifies as a blog.

I've seen quite a few media vendors try to sell us advertising on "blogs" that are nothing more than repurposed content published via a blogging interface. In many cases, there's no interactivity involved - no comments, trackbacks, message boards or anything like that. They still call them blogs, however.

When I asked one recent office visitor why comments weren't turned on, he essentially told me that turning comments off made the environment safer for advertisers. Kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, huh? Needless to say, they didn't get an order from us.

And this, friends, is yet another example of how those who don't get it are making money from the popularity of the blogging movement.