Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

I have heard numerous reports that Apple and Verizon are working together to get the newest 4G version of the iPhone setup on their network. I have actually heard recently that they are already testing together.

So what do I care (damned Canadian blogger!)? Well I really don’t think that it will affect me directly except that eventually changes in the US market affect Canada in one way or another. I am all up in arms about this video -

I am afraid that by pissing of Apple and by Apple I mean Steve, then you might kill the pending deal. To me that means that the new 4G testing slows way down. We have two carriers up in Canada that are CDMA and have just released their 4G network. I am not on either but compentition for the iPhone on a carrier other than Rogers means good things for me.

I know it’s far fetched, but be careful Verizon! Don’t mess this up for us :)

Geek on!

On my way home from work and all of a sudden I start getting text messages from a familiar provider, 21212. It took me a couple of minutes but I realized it was Twitter sending me SMS updates all of a sudden. I haven’t gotten SMS updates from Twitter since they took down that service last year. From what it sounded like at the time it was due to the cost, which leads me to believe that they have worked out a deal with the major Canadian cell companies.

I took a trip to the twitter.com website as soon as I got home – low and behold; the service has been re-instated. I was able to find this blurb on the page where you register your cell phone number in their system:

Note: In Canada we currently support SMS notifications for Bell Mobility, Rogers, Fido, Telus, Koodo and Virgin Mobile Canada subscribers

So congrads to Twitter. The only issue I have now is SMS subscription management. It seems like many of the people whom I added as freinds are listed to update through SMS. Time to search for a tool to mass switch it off so I can add the people I want. Which won’t be many for SMS udpates due to the number of posts I will get…. I just can see it going all night.

My wife would kill me!

Last night I was out and started to receive large numbers of text messages. I couldn’t look at my phone all the time and I wasn’t sure what it was until we were on our way home. Strangely enough I started to received updates from Twitter. It was really late when we got home so off to bed I go leaving the investigation until this morning. Well sure enough when I login to Twitter I see a message saying “SMS Alert: Canadian SMS delivery is now enabled for Bell Mobility subscribers.” Well that’s great news but I am not with Bell! Their blog post regarding the deal can be read here: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/for-whom-bell-texts.html#links

It seems that their deal reached with Bell has opened up text messaging with Rogers as well and I can only assume if that happened it was a mistake that opened it up with Telus and Fido. So today I hope I am living the good life and we’ll see how long it lasts. They probably opened up all the texting because they don’t have a way to desciminate between different carriers… but I am sure they are working on that if costs are concerned :)

PS: Here is another perspective on the subject: http://mashable.com/2009/02/20/twitter-canada-sms-2/

Okay, many people have been asking for this for quite some time and there seemed to have been a push when the US released their version of the list but ours seems to suck. Apparently there are a ton of exceptions. According to an article on the CBC website any number of groups can still call you.

“Charities, political parties, polling firms, newspapers and companies that have done business with an individual over the past 18 months can continue to make unsolicited phone calls. Canadians who do not wish to receive such calls can ask at the time of a call to be removed from the organization’s list, or contact them ahead of time and request the same.”

I suggest you give the article a read if you are a fellow Canadian. Then forget about using the service because the investment of your time in adding yourself will possibly out weight the time lost on hanging up on the telemarketer.

I must say that I prefer to get the one call, tell them I am not interested, ask them to remove my name from their list and then I log into my Primus account and perminantely block their number :)

Oh, and don’t forget that you will have to call them back ever 3 years to keep your phone number, cell phone number or fax number off that list.

Hey… maybe we can waste a couple of billion dollars on this like we did with gun registry that is a more of a bureaucracy registry than anything!