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Will This Redeem Alltel? by cogdogblog
posted 7 May ‘08, 10.13pm MDT PST on flickr

My battle to escape jail of my wireless internet provider seems in vain, but they did send me, for free, a newer USB mode, that actually has software for the Mac and promises to be a stronger connection (time shall tell).

Still it tooka call to tech support as they had not updated my account. But the thing works so far, am getting about 800 kbps download and am actually able to tun Second Life.

So I call this a partial victory. My new device seems to be providing good connectivity (in 2 locations so far in Arizona), and since it has the software now running on my Mac (and is a device that clearly is compatible with OS X), I guess I am in business.

I got the new device, a UM150 USB wireless thingie, on Tuesday. I installed software, tweaked preferences, and was unable to connect. I called “Rick”, the Alltel Executive Customer Rep who called my in Austin and arranged delivery of th enew device, but got his voicemail. I had to wait a day until I knew I had a couple of hours free in case I had to wade through the Seven Layers of Customer Support Hell, but actually, it took about 15 minutes, as the advanced tech person had to activate my device in the system.

This morning I got an early call from Rick, who had said he went and called tech support and asked them to make sure I was connected. This is the kind fo service everyone who calls Alltel should get, not just the headcases who make a big deal on the internet.

So while I lost the war to break free of my contract (which seems utterly hopeless anyhow), I consider this a partial win, as the ruckus Devon, Phil, Larry and others made online seemed to have an effect.

Or at least I think so.

My hunch is that you can have happy customer stories or horror tales with all carriers, so its a matter of just keeping the pressure on your jailer.

I really do not mind Starbucks as an establishment. They are comfy places and serve my favorite drinks, yes at inflated prices, but I succumb. My own, silly pet peeve is that stupid language thing when you order a drink. I want a “big” drink, so I describe it as “large”, and they say, “Venti”.

That is just plain stupid. WTF is “venti”? “Tall” is “small”? C’mon, speak English will ya? So my new silly travel game is to try and make Starbucks Speak English.

It goes like this. Order your drink, using real descriptive terms, “Small”, “medium”, “Large”. When they respond, “Venti?”, respond with, “no ‘Large’. If you can get them to say the real size, then you win! And we subvert StarbuckSpeak one franchise at a time. So if you are successful, or heck, just of you try, then add a coffee cup pin to this Google Map at http://tinyurl.com/49z88p (if it is set up right, it is open for others to edit)

View Larger Map

Let’s light up the map at establishments where proper human language terms are used. Go out there and use your charms to make ‘em speak in words people understand, not snobspeak.

This podcast is a few months old now, but I still believe it is a good listen. I spoke with Mary Ramsey, learning spaces coordinator, and Paul Schwartz, Teamwork Center coordinator, about Penn State’s development of collaborative learning spaces and Teaching and Learning with Technology’s involvement in this process. Collaborative learning spaces enable students to get together in one space to work on team presentations or team projects. Some spaces allow you to share documents on one large monitor, and some are comfortable lounge-type setups with wireless access.

Mary and Paul discuss the innovative design of these spaces, the technology involved, and how they enhance learning here at Penn State.

Take a listen: learning-spaces-podcast

Wireless classrooms - necessarily a good thing?

Student at Middlebury College in Vermont finds students ignoring lectures to surf on their laptops “overly annoying”.

What do you think? What can we tell students and faculty who are dismayed at the amount of students ignoring lectures and abusing wireless connections during class time?

Marco Satyro, associate professor with the Schulich School of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, has been using the Teaching & Learning Centre’s services and facilities to offer a graduate-level chemical engineering thermodynamics course since September 2006.

Videoconferencing allows Satyro and John Shaw, a professor and NSERC/AERI Industrial Research Chair in Petroleum Thermodynamics at the University of Alberta, to interact in their respective classrooms and Elluminate software lets them share documents, slides and websites during their lectures.

Satyro finds that offering a joint course with a teaching partner who shares his love for the subject offers students a much richer, livelier experience. “The biggest benefit of teaching the course by videoconference is that the students get different perspectives from two professors simultaneously,” says Satyro. “They see our discussions in real time and are exposed to in-depth, many times complementary and a few times controversial, points of view on different areas of thermodynamics. Essentially they get the best from both of us.”

If team teaching doesn’t appeal to you, the TLC also helps instructors share their courses with other institutions through videoconferencing. This works well when enrolments at one institution do not justify running a course, but combined numbers make it viable. The experience is seamless for students and offers another possibility for expanding your reach. And the TLC is there to help you every step of the way.

“I really can not speak highly enough of the Teaching & Learning Centre staff at both U of C and the corresponding U of A facility,” says Satyro. “The technological barriers are low and with the support you get from the Teaching & Learning Centre you are never on your own. We experienced a few snags in the beginning when working out a format we liked, but after a few lectures we simply forgot about the technology. The Teaching & Learning Centre is a great resource at U of C. Period.”

Hmmmm, this blog post title sounds like either a bad idea for a recipe with a food processor or a headline of a New Zealand rural road accident report.

But noooo, neither, it is this awesome video done by Clint Lalonde where he mashes up Brian Lamb for an intro to a keynote Brian did for the Distributed Education Conference at Camosun College.

Dr Mashup gets mashed up himself!

I think Stephen Downes’ voice has never sounded more natural And check the credits, “made with 100% free stuff”

See the wiki bits of Brian’s presentation Confessions of an unrepentant doomfreak… It’s all coming apart, but that may not be a bad thing but I am sure it pales to the in person experience.

I just took a quick spin through MSNBC’s Spectra which is sort of like, no not really, like a visual news/feed reader. You pick news “channels” (chosen by MSNBC not you) they are color coded (by MSNBC not you), and the headlines spin by you in a cyclical spiral. I guess it might be hypnotizing.

The description is a little bit full of grandeur and fluff:

Spectra merges the news spectrum and the color spectrum into an expansive news viewing experience. With comprehensive live news coverage, striking design, complete customization, dynamic browsing, human body interaction and many other unique features, Spectra brings A Fuller Spectrum of News to life in our most immersive extension yet.

So the headlines swirl by in a colorful display. I keep clicking the little cards in the spiral, but that does nothing, I have to either wait til they spill out on the bottom, or grab a slider to move through them.

The “human body interaction” is quite a stretch. You activate your web cam, and if you wave more move a colored object in front of the camera, you see those stories. So maybe if I want US headlines I have to remember to wear my pink t-shirt or have a green card handy to wave to get tech news.

The most lacking feature… it does not seem to remember the channels you pick. So if I return tomorrow, I have to pick the channels all over again. I can save stories to my “aggregator” but they vanish when I close the window. What’s the use?

Okay, I have barely a cup of coffee in me and am critical. The visualization effort is interesting, but I fail to see a reason beyond news eye candy to use this.

Next?

Editor’s Note: As you may have noticed, I have been posting TLT CoffeeReads to Twitter. After discussion with Cole Camplese, ETS director, we decided to make these more interactive by posting them to the ETS blog and having them announced on Twitter. This opens the articles up to discussion via comments, with the goal of creating discourse and hopefully exchange ideas. With this in mind, comments are both welcomed and encouraged. Hopefully, these transform from “TLT CoffeeRead” to “TLT CoffeeTalk”.

Education Next: Computer-Based Learning Could Transform Public Education Within a Decade Through ”Disruptive Innovation,” Experts Say

Computer-based learning is on the cusp of transforming traditional public education, say Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen and his colleague Michael B. Horn in the summer 2008 issue of Education Next. Based on their analysis of data on enrollments, about half of all education courses will be delivered online in just over a decade’s time. (click on link to read more including some interesting poll results.)

ETS Talk 43 is now available from both Podcasts at Penn State and the Penn State iTunes U space. In this weeks episode Cole Camplese is joined by Brad Kozlek, Chris Millet, and Chris Stubbs. Most of our time is spent answering questions from students at Millis High School in Massachusetts. We respond to a listener’s email and discover that Brad is an answer on the SAT.

For the 10 gazillionth time the network (as in the people I am connected to) saves the day again. For some upcoming presentations and conferences, I was hoping to set up TwitterCamp, a desktop app (Mac and PC) that runs in Adobe Air and displays in near real time the incoming tweets for a specific account. It is elegant, and very suitable for setting up as self-running apps on big shiny plasma screens at conferences.

The problem was that the version I had and last linked from the original site, was done in a much earlier version of Air, and did not run in the latest version, even after installing the older run time. Some comments on the TwitterCamp site hinted at newer code, but no links worked.

What else to do, except toss out a tweet and say, “help!”.

And Andy Rush came through (actually twice as I missed his first tweetback) with a link to a new version of TwitterCamp on the Google Code site.

And just ran it smoothly this morning:

So to do this, the steps should be:

1. Install Adobe Air on the computer that will run the app
2. Install the new version of TwitterCamp
3. This will be the basic version and should run out of the box. Login with a twitter account and watch the tweets pop in.

To customize the skin, you can follow the same instructions I posted July 2007 noting on Mac OSX you have to ctrl-click on the TwitterCamp app and select Show Package Contents. The 4 graphics you can customize are in the /Resources/skins directory.

I did notice the new version does not come with the config.xml file that allows you to change the default instruction text, but I simply copied the old one into the /Resources directory and it worked (there must be a default string coded). You can simply create this file yourself in a text editor, mine looks like:

and you should be off with a custom TwitterCamp!

Thanks again Andy, you saved me again…

In the “I am not sure why people should care (but there are 80 people on Facebook who say they do) department– the latests news on my fight to escape the clutches of my mobile internet provider’s contract is that Alltel still has me in their brig.

I’d like to say that I have a hunch/wish/belief that the internet campaign including the Facebook group started by Devon and the emails submitted by friends/colleagues is having some effect. While in Austin last week, I got a call from Rick at Alltel… I actually enjoyed the part (after my 4 hours spent on hold and getting disconnected from “customer service”) that I had the office put him o hold and then tell him I would get back to him. Little petty victories, take ‘em where you can.

So when I called back, Rick, who is with some higher than phone tree support level in “customer care”, was very apologetic and had spoken to the techs that had “handled” my case. I was tihnking at first that perhaps the net campaign was working since they called on my NMC number, not the mobile number that I had been using to call them. Maybe they had to investigate from my campaign trail who I worked for– but then there was the Doh! reflex, as the office number is the one where the billing goes to.

Anyhow, Rick felt confident that a newer model USB modem would solve my issue and he was going to send me a new one for free. He assured me it would work on Mac OS. He could not “comment” or offer anything on my basic issue of being treated poorly and not given an option to escape a contract that Alltel had not provided their end of the deal. So I may get anew gizmo, but am still bound and gagged by their contract.

IN the end, if the damn thing works I might be content, but I wills till toss as much light on the atrocious treatment I got and recommend people take their business elsewhere.

But my hunc is that all the wireless providers are Stinky Pirates, so its a matter of finding the one that is less evil.

With that I hope to get this blog back to its usual technical barkings.