Paul Jacobson

News just broke about MWEB’s new pricing for its ADSL offerings including a remarkable R219 for uncapped ADSL (for a 384 kbps ADSL line).

Businesses can expect to pay between R499 for 384 kbps DSL and R2 359 for up to 4 Mbps DSL. These prices are a little misleading and they vary depending on whether you are including ADSL line rental in your 12 month contract with MWEB (oh, yes, you need to sign a 12 month contract with MWEB).

The local Twittersphere has just gone crazy at the news with a number of people spreading the news as if it is the biggest ADSL news for the year to date. It is certainly fantastic news for MWEB subscribers who have been paying ridiculously high prices for their ADSL access so far. This pricing is not, however, the best pricing available to consumers or businesses. I don’t know how many businesses are still using 384 kbps lines unless their traffic is pretty much limited to email for a couple people so let’s assume more people will be using the faster connections. Once you are looking at pricing for the faster 4 Mbps lines, you can expect to spend around R2 000 for the pure data component with MWEB. Still not bad for an uncapped and unshaped ADSL connection, for sure. Well, until you consider Afrihost’s pricing …

You may be familiar with Afrihost’s R29/GB pricing offer which just seems to keep going. You may even be aware of the occasional double-up offer where you can buy 2GB of Afrihost data for R29. I just noticed that Afrihost is giving a lot of data away as part of its higher end packages (granted, the service is semi-shaped if that makes much difference to you):

I have a 50GB package with Afrihost and we tend to use around 60GB to 70GB on heavy months. 100GB is, practically, an uncapped package for us. I could probably find some way to use 100GB if I try hard (yes, I know it is easy to use that much data on illegal data transfers, I’m talking about the legal or semi-legal stuff) but it is quite a bit of data for R950. The price will probably revert to R1 450 for 50GB in June but that is still cheaper than MWEB’s equivalent, at least for me.

So, yes, MWEB’s pricing is great news for consumers, particularly its users who have been paying its absurdly high prices in the past but it isn’t exactly revolutionary for those of us who have been Afrihost customers (and other pioneers’ customers).

Welcome to the party MWEB, what kept you?

I have been resisting the urge to speculate about the iPad since it was announced. I have a history of seizing upon the latest Apple/Nokia gear and proclaiming it to be the next best thing since the printed word (or the last Apple/Nokia gear). I have generally been wrong about just how awesome the device initially appeared to be and so I have decided to avoid the repetitive speculation about the iPad (except for the speculation below) until I have had a chance to actually fondle one.

The one topic I can’t resist writing about is the iPad as an eReader. My interest in such a device would be largely as an eReader as well as a general tablet Internet device. eReaders seem to be pretty special beasts. The biggest issue seems to be the screen which needs to be as close to paper while remaining versatile enough to handle a variety of publications. We have all had eReaders in front of us for years now, we call them laptops and desktops, but they haven’t been convenient eReaders for a variety of reasons including size, portability, orientation and, well, the screens themselves. I haven’t done a lot of ebook reading on my MacBook but the little reading I have done isn’t really as comfortable as a paper book.

One of the apps on the iPad is the iBooks application which is only available in the United States. Apple has signed up a couple publishers and the iBooks demo showed me a beautiful user interface, typical of just about anything Apple does. Steve showed us how turning the page is an experience in itself and the swish looking bookshelf. I don’t think I was the only person who cringed a little when I saw the Kindle on that big screen behind Steve right before it transitioned to the gorgeous looking iPad. There was obviously some clever psychology behind that Kindle portrayal and, having spent a good portion of the Stevenote looking at this gorgeous new device, listening to Steve’s superlatives, the Kindle does look a little dated and clunky.

Having said that, I wonder just how effective the iPad would be as an eReader. I haven’t heard anyone say that an LCD screen is as good as or better than the e-ink displays you find on modern eReaders when it comes to visibility in varying lighting conditions, general comfort or even power consumption (10 hours is still pretty respectable on the iPad and you can recharge the device). I came across a conversation thread on gdgt about LCDs compared to e-ink displays as an illustration of the general consensus. So the iPad may present a better looking interface for ebooks but will it be a good experience if you are going to use the device as your primary paper book replacement? The Kindle, for example, is often touted as pretty close to paper and so readable in every lighting condition a paper book works in, you probably won’t look back at your paper library again. That sort of thing makes a difference. On the topic of paper books, also remember that they tend to be pretty simple in terms of visual aesthetics and our reading experience need not be all that different. Of course our expectations will change when publications become more dynamic and start incorporating multimedia elements which e-ink devices currently don’t support all that much.

One big factor pretty much takes the iPad out of the equation as an eReader for anyone outside the United States. The iBooks application looks like it will only be available in the USA and, as yet, unspecified countries. If the iBooks’ availability is limited to those countries that support the iTunes Store then those people with illicit US iTunes Store accounts will probably be able to benefit from the application nonetheless. That still leaves those people with the question whether the iPad gives bibliophiles the sort of experience they would have on a Kindle?

Just to add to the debate, also consider Amazon’s Whispernet (free data wherever the Kindle is supported which is almost everywhere there is a GSM connection) and its catalogue (I am sure Apple will also boast a substantial catalogue soon enough).

I have had my eyes on a Kindle DX since they were first announced and I’ve been that much more excited about it since the global wireless version was announced last month. It is pretty big compared to the Kindle 2 (based on size comparisons) but my line of work makes it more useful to me. I really haven’t made my mind up about the iPad and probably won’t till I get to play with one. At the same time I am still pretty keen on the Kindle DX, even with its monochromatic screen and clunky form factor.

If you are going to buy yourself a Kindle, please consider doing so through the banner at the top of this blog. Any purchases will be tied to my Amazon affiliate code and will help support this blog and my own Kindle fund!

Nokia has dropped a bombshell and will be offering free turn-by-turn navigation on its smartphones. This is according to a Reuters report which I found via Engadget. The report is apparently based on a release of some kind from Nokia which I haven’t been able to locate yet Update: This news seems to be part of a broader Ovi Maps announcement. There is some great coverage on GigaOm.

As the Reuters report pointed out, this is bound to have an impact on more traditional GPS device producers like Garmin and TomTom. I’ve been using Ovi Maps on my N97 for navigation and it is excellent, when it works properly. The maps are more appealing, visually, although it can be a little difficult to search for and find places. That being said, Ovi Maps just keeps getting better with each release and I have seen an update that is still being tested internally which will make Ovi Maps an even better navigation option.

Nokia has been promising some pretty interesting location-based stuff using Ovi Maps as the core application for those services. It could make a huge difference to how we use location in our day to day activities so I hope it can pull it off and execute well. Nokia is facing increasing competition from Google and Apple, both companies have arguably more compelling devices based on more dynamic and appealing user experiences. Upcoming Symbian updates could change perceptions about Nokia’s products, though.

I am curious to see what happens next. Ovi Maps look better than Google Maps but I find that I can locate places a lot easier on Google Maps on my N97. Google Maps doesn’t look as good and we don’t have turn by turn navigation here in South Africa just yet but I think that will change. When it does, South Africans will have yet another option. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google roll out turn-by-turn in time for the World Cup either.

You either have to love or run screaming from the hype cycle these days, particularly when it comes to Google and its products. We’ve seen it with hype over Chrome OS (which I regard as very limited), Google Docs (in the context of it being a Microsoft Office killer), Gmail and more. In some cases I think the hype is justified. Gmail revolutionised email with much bigger mailboxes, threaded conversations and dozens of innovations over the years. Google Docs is great for relatively simple document creation and innovation but it is hardly going to replace Microsoft Office in the near future.

Where I take issue with the hype is when it comes to Chrome and Chrome OS. I have already written about Chrome OS so I won’t write about that again but I haven’t really written much about Chrome, the browser. Most of the reports about Chrome say that the browser is fast and it is. It is really fast. I have a development version on my Mac and it loads in about 4 seconds. Firefox 3.6b5, on the other hand, loads in about double that amount of time.

One of the big attractions that Chrome has is that it is extensible (at least, the current betas on PC and Linux are – I believe – and the current Mac dev version is). This means that Chrome supports a range of extensions that extend its functionality beyond the basic browser. This was one of Firefox’s big advantages over Internet Explorer from the start and it remains a big plus for Firefox. The extension ecosystem for Firefox is pretty well developed and varied.

Chrome does a couple other things that make it a great choice. One of these things is how Chrome runs each tab as a separate process so even if a single tab crashes, the rest of the browser continues on. Chrome has done really well. As Duncan McLeod points out in a recent post on TechCentral:

In a short time, Chrome has unseated Safari to become the third-largest computer Web browser. Its market share is still only about 5%, but the speed at which it has overtaken Opera and Safari is telling.

I agree that Chrome is a great browser and it sits on my dock alongside my default browser, Firefox. I have lately been thinking about kicking Safari off my dock (applications I remove from my dock are basically the apps I don’t really see as that essential but are not useless enough to be deleted) and sticking with Firefox and Chrome. Whether Firefox will become largely irrelevant and fade away into obscurity as Duncan suggests it might in the coming years, I don’t know. I really hope that doesn’t happen because Firefox is important to us all, even in the face of Chrome. One of the reasons I say this is because of Firefox’s history:

It is important to remember that Firefox was born as an alternative to Internet Explorer which is possibly one of the worst applications that Microsoft has inflicted on Web users for a variety of reasons, not least of which is security and a disregard to Web standards. It rose out of the ashes of the bloated Netscape browser suite (I remember using the first Netscape browsers – I go that far back). I still remember the excitement as Firefox neared a 1.0 release (I managed to convince my last firm’s IT department to let me use Firefox rather than IE) and I have been using Firefox on and off ever since.

Firefox, to me at least, represents a vital movement that works to improve my Web experience. I have been disappointment with previous versions because of really slow load times (it turns out a lot of this depends on your extensions and, besides, just how fast must the browser really be when loading?), relatively slow browsing and even because it has seemed a little clunky compared to Safari’s simplicity. What I have found, though, is that I have become more and more passionate about Firefox despite Chrome. Chrome is interesting, it is fast and it has a big appeal. At the moment it just doesn’t have what it takes to persuade me to give up Firefox. The dev/beta versions for the Mac don’t have a working bookmark manager, font controls in the Mac beta and there are operating system compatibility issues with some of the extensions (that struck me as weird).

On the other hand, Firefox works pretty much the same on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The extensions I prefer will work and enhancements like Weave make for a pretty seamless experience between browsers running on different platforms. To paraphrase Apple (ironically given Apple’s and the Mozilla Foundation’s philosophies), Firefox works. I recently had an opportunity to test a Nokia N900 and one of the apps I installed first was Firefox 3.5 beta for the N900.

Firefox is one of the few modern browsers that supports so much HTML 5. I don’t know if Safari supports HTML 5 (Chrome does) but I believe that IE is lagging far behind. I may be wrong on a technical level but it seems to me that Firefox already supports the next generation of offline Web apps and location based services. Its probably fair to say that it won’t be too long before all modern browsers support HTML 5 but I find it encouraging that Firefox has had some degree of support since Firefox 3.5.

I’d be lying if I tried to argue that Firefox has far more advanced functionality than Chrome or Safari. In many respects it does have better functionality or just functionality other browsers lack but most of the differences are fairly subtle and come down to that classic yardstick: personal preference. Despite all the hype about all the things Chrome can do and will be able to do, it is important to remember that Firefox does most of that stuff. In fact, aside from Firefox’s ACID 3 test results (can someone please explain the importance of this test?) and ring-fencing each tab as a separate set of processes, I can’t think of what Chrome does that Firefox doesn’t do, even if it is a little slower. Just as Firefox has innovated in the past and laid the groundwork for what we are seeing now (including Chrome which I believe to have been developed partly by Firefox engineers), it is going to continue to innovate going forward. We should see Firefox 3.6 release in the coming months (Firefox 3.5 was released just a few months ago) and there are plans for 3.7 and 4.0 in the year ahead.

Another aspect of Firefox that has a big appeal for me is the fact that it is developed by a community of passionate and independent developers. In contrast, Chrome was built largely by Google (the underlying code is open source) and I believe it is being developed to fit Google’s agenda for the broader Web. I think I just have a thing for the underdog and despite being the number 2 browser at the moment, Firefox is still the underdog on the Web that also happens to be excellent software. I believe that having a more independent initiative like Firefox that is not so closely aligned to any particular influencer like Google or even Apple is important. Firefox, in a sense, keeps the industry honest with its commitment to Web standards.

Firefox isn’t as trendy as Chrome and I can see the usual trendy folk on Twitter proclaiming Chrome the second coming of Google and the irrelevance of all other browsers but besides the fact that many of them are probably too young to remember what came before Firefox and the impact Firefox had, Firefox was around and thriving before Chrome and will continue to do so as long as there are people passionate about the browser.

Update: I had a couple other stray thoughts. It took a while for them to return to be processed by what passes for my mind (I may keep adding to this list …):

• Firefox has a working and pretty effective bookmark manager that lets me edit my bookmarks – still waiting for that from Chrome;
• As cool as search being integrated into Chrome’s Omnibar is, Firefox’s Awesome Bar is even better (just add search and Ubiquity and its a no-brainer)

At first I thought it was their fault. There are so many of them and they are all so enticing, how could I resist? It felt wrong and at the same time it felt very right. So I just started moving between them, using them, switching to another … eventually I just wasn’t sure which one to go for so my choices became arbitrary and yet it still worked out well for me. Now I realise it was really me, not them.

The thing is, there are so many great applications available that do all the things we want to do everyday. Not only are there these great apps, there are often a couple excellent alternatives to your default application. The clearest example of this your web browser. While the majority of Internet users still use Internet Explorer, a growing number of Internet users prefer Firefox, Chrome, Safari and other browsers. When it comes to choosing a browser you don’t need to pick one and stick with it permanently, you can choose whichever browser suits your particular task or even the browser you are in the mood for. It is that easy. Sure some browsers may be a little more limited than others in terms of functionality but modern browsers are fast, powerful and will enable a whole new generation of Web applications when HTML 5 adoption becomes more widespread.

I’ve started using instant messaging applications on my Nokia N97 a little more (I’m a late bloomer) after my realisation just how expensive sms/texting is compared to IM messages and I have installed both Nimbuzz and Fring on my phone. I spent some time flipping between the two to see which one I prefer. While one may have some functionality the other lacks or doesn’t implement as well, they are both excellent apps and I could switch between the two ad hoc. Both applications access the instant messaging services I prefer. I can send messages on my phone, make VOIP calls and even check in with Twitter.

On that note I also have a number of options when it comes to instant messaging applications on my MacBook. I use Adium for most of the IM services I am registered with and Skype for all that Skype functionality (If Adium supported Skype text and voice, I’d probably just use Adium). I have iChat available on my Mac and while it doesn’t connect to most of the services Adium does, iChat does connect me with my primary Jabber/GTalk and MobileMe services. There are other alternatives too, some better than others.

This kind of choice goes beyond these sorts of applications and include mobile phone OS’s (Android, iPhone, Symbian, Maemo and even Windows Mobile?); VOIP providers (Skype or SIP?); voice telephony more broadly speaking (VOIP or mobile/fixed line voice); text-based messaging (IM or sms?); computer operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Linux), and so on.

We have a range of choices when it comes to performing a range of tasks and there is an increasing degree of parity between many of those choices as technologies mature and converge on industry recognised standards. This degree of choice means companies need to innovate more to keep their users coming back.

Of course some services don’t have real alternatives or even satisfactory alternatives. Facebook has in excess of 350 million users and doesn’t have a feasible alternative. Google might be that alternative but its failure to implement a cohesive social strategy has given Facebook an opportunity to surge ahead, possibly out of reach.

Speaking of Google, Eric Schmidt has said that Google users have a perfectly suitable alternative to all of its services but are Yahoo! or Bing as good as Google search? Perhaps to some. Most Internet users prefer Google search by a comfortable margin. I am one of those users and I am ok with that although Google does control how I do much of what I do each day and that realisation brings with it a nagging fear in the background. I have similar concerns about Facebook because of its dominance in the space and its consistent failure to put its users first.

For the most part, though, we can choose the tool for a given task and that is refreshing. It wasn’t too long ago that Firefox’s introduction was a welcome relief from years of IE dominance and Netscape’s lackluster performance. As we enter a new decade (yes, I know 2011 is technically the beginning of the new decade, I still like to think of 2010 as the beginning of this new decade), we are likely to experience even more choice while, at the same time, we will see players like Google begin to tighten their grip and make it harder to leave their ecosystems simply because of the quality of their offerings. Apple and the iPhone is a good example of a tightly controlled ecosystem and a degree of lock-in, although Apple’s customers choose to live in that ecosystem because Apple makes such excellent products.

It all comes down to choice.

I came across this great email tool from Vibealicious a little while ago which works nicely if you have a preference for Web mail apps like Gmail, Google Apps mail and other Web-based email services.

Notify takes the form of an email notifier which Gmail Notifier users will be familiar with (it works similarly). One of the big benefits Notify has over similar notifiers like the Gmail Notifier is that Notifier supports multiple email accounts (although Gmail Notifier also notifies you of upcoming calendar events).

Notify enables users to really customise their email alerts for each mail account, compose and reply to emails within Notify and preview messages. These last two features are only available if you opt to buy a pro license for $10 but the free version offers a range of functionality that makes it a great choice. As a bonus you have trial access to the pro features for the first few days after installing Notify so its a good opportunity to try them all out.

I came across a great tip which you might find useful. If you are a Mac user and you use Web-based email as your primary email option, set Notify as your default mail application in Mail.app’s preferences. This should redirect you to your Web-based email when you click on a “mailto:” link rather than your desktop email apps.

There are a one or two things I’d like to see improved on. The one thing that immediately comes to mind is only relevant to the pro version which enables a preview of emails in your inbox. It would be more consistent with the Mac UI if I could preview an item by hitting my space bar instead of right clicking and clicking on the “preview” option. Well, it would be great if the preview option worked too … Update: The preview feature was fixed in version 2.0.7 and is triggered by the space bar like Quick Look.

Update: Evernote Support got in touch pretty quickly and I’ve been sending them reports from Activity Monitor and Console. Hopefully they will help.

I updated my Evernote app on my Mac to what I believe is version 1.6 (for reasons which will become apparent in what follows, I haven’t been able to check this within the app). Since that update the Mac app has become a memory sink of note, so much so that I just posted the following to the user forum:

The latest Evernote for Mac update is a shocker! I upgraded when I was prompted to do so and found that the app typically takes a few minutes to load and become usable (before then it is either unresponsive or I get a spinning beachball). It starts up using around 300MB of “Real Memory” (I believe that is the correct metric) and as I type this it is using around 435MB and the app still haven’t become usable yet. I left the app running on my MacBook during the day yesterday or so and found it was using around 700MB. This update seems to have converted Evernote into a memory sink.

I also find that the Mac app is incredibly sluggish for me. I have roughly 4 500+ notes and of those notes, around 3 500 to 4 000 are PDFs (I scan straight to PDF using my ScanSnap). The app is very sluggish when I try accessing notes, navigating to other notebooks and search for notes. I don’t know if the PDF volume impacts on this or not or whether this means the underlying database is bloated/broken but the end result is that Evernote is becoming more of a chore to use than something I want to use every day, all the time. I haven’t been able to load the app and view the version number for the purposes of this post so I have included the file name in the subject line.

Heck, this morning I wanted to type up a shopping list and it was quicker to open TextEdit, type up the note, print it out and give it to my wife than it was to open Evernote and create a new note.

Evernote is supposed to be my constant companion on my Mac. I used to have it open automatically when I booted up my Mac because I use it for everything. One of the reasons I have so many notes and PDFs at that is because I have been dumping all my old documents into Evernote to make it all easier to find and more useful to me.

This sluggish behaviour isn’t new to this version. I just noticed I filed a similar post for version 1.4.9 and I was told that the app would “pause for a bit” when loading large PDFs. This isn’t pausing “for a bit”, it is stalling and crashing. It is also tremendously disappointing. I have been evangelising Evernote here in South Africa and a number of people have started using it because I have been so passionate about the app and the service. Surely this must be something you can fix?

This is what my memory usage looked like shortly before I force quit the application (it was not responding):

This screenshot is a reading that was increasing steadily towards 1GB. Not good.