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Written by Christopher Price
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Wednesday, 05 July 2006 |
I'm happy to report over half a thousand people have decided to "just say no" to RSS readers and are tuned in via the Yahoo! Widget.  Feel free to tune into PCS Intel on your desktop at any time on Mac or PC.  To download, just use the very anti-RSS image below:
Also, be sure to check out the Yahoo! Widget Engine if you haven't already...
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Written by Christopher Price
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Saturday, 01 July 2006 |
Okay, we've been busy, but on June 23, PCS Intel turned one year old. While not the easiest transition ever, PCS Intel is now much larger than Sprint PCS Info ever was. We've achieved our primary goal of opening our coverage up to an audience that's "more than Sprint".
In addition, today marks the third year of operations for Sprint PCS Info. That's a lot of coffee... and a lot of sleepless nights.
But, we're far from finished. Several projects are under way to make PCS Intel even better. Even things like our Knowledge Base are going to give PCS Intel a broader reach than ever before.
2006-2007 is going to bring a new look, a new feel, and new tools to PCS Intel. Thanks again for staying tuned in, and we're committed to making PCS Intel the best resource in the wireless industry.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Friday, 30 June 2006 |
After we gave up the torch of exclusive Sprint coverage... Sprint picked up the coverage with their business blog Things That Make You Go Wireless. It has been more than a month and a half, and there has been no activity on the site. So, what happened?
There are two ways to think of it. Either Business Blog was a marketing tool that failed, or it suffered the perils of executive blogging. After all, TTMYGW launched at the same time as Sprint's podcast, a venture of Sprint PCS's older marketing team (which is still on Sprint's payroll for internal communication). I'll tend to say it's the latter of the two. The blog was/is run by Vicki Warker, a Sprint Vice President. Clearly there is authority across the chain of command with Sprint blogging, this tends to be at the top of the chain.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for Sprint leadership blogging. I think it's a good thing. But, as I've told countless reporters, it will be a dismal failure if it accomplishes nothing more than saying nothing at all. In short, there is an audience for Sprint leadership to blog to... say something that is juicy to the masses tuned in! If all you say is that mobility is great, EV-DO is wonderful, and wireless broadband is the way of the future... well guess what? You've preached the choir to death.
PCS Intel is a success not because we're a mobile site, not because we talk mobility. There were countless people doing that before us and there will be countless people that follow. We are still around serving tens of thousands (and we're pushing on higher digits daily) because we cover things that people are interested in hearing. I could go on to more successful media ventures to explain why they work, but that's for another day.
To sum it up, well done Ms. Warker, you're blogging... now say something that people haven't already heard! Otherwise, Sprint PCS Info, a blog about another web site, will continue to be more popular than Sprint's own blog.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Thursday, 29 June 2006 |
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Every phone. Every carrier. Every week. Coming every week in July to PCS Intel, we'll give you the status of every phone we're aware of in the pipeline for every carrier, one carrier each week.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Thursday, 29 June 2006 |
Folks, if you've been tuned in for awhile, you know we here at PCS Intel like a good cup of coffee. The best home coffee maker I've ever seen is the Senseo. It's simple, does the job, and tastes great. Well, now it's free after $50 rebate. And no, this isn't some mad-dash on Philips part to discontinue Senseo... so there's no excuse to not pick one up.
Oh, and don't forget the dark roast coffee pods...
Senseo Coffee Maker @ Amazon.com
Mail-In Rebate (PDF)
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Written by Christopher Price
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Wednesday, 28 June 2006 |
We had to roll back to Joomla 1.0.9 from Joomla 1.0.10 yesterday morning. A URL generation error prevented the "friendly URLs" from being created.
Turns out it was Joomla's fault. A single character was missing from the permissions file. So, in the wee hours of this morning, we re-rolled out Joomla 1.0.10. One single, massive, and glaring problem with the Joomla project is that they do not keep track of issues outside the development circle.
Let's use this problem as an example. If there were a glitch in an operating system (say, Mac OS or Windows), that caused folders to cease opening... an update would be released the same day to fix it.
However, for some reason, web software doesn't have this standard. We had to do a complete rollback, research, find out that all the developers knew about the issue, and left deployers in the cold. We then had to later, rinse, and repeat the upgrade process.
That's not okay. If there is a show-stopping bug in software (web, consumer, desktop, or otherwise), it either needs to have a fix issued, or, deployers need to know the issue is there. Specifically, they need to know what to do about it.
Anyways, enough ranting on better software. It's 3 AM, and I'm finally enjoying (yesterday's) National Coffee Day.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Tuesday, 27 June 2006 |
Within 24 hours of the "major security update" to Joomla, we have deployed it on all systems and servers. We are confident that our protocol and code additions had already secured the site from most SQL injection risks handled by this update, but we chose to burn some midnight oil (or, rather, all of it) to make sure.
Sleep? Nah. It's National Coffee Day after all...
If you are running any version of Joomla below 1.0.10, it has been compromised and you should update immediately.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Sunday, 25 June 2006 |
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Despite May being a record-breaking month for PCS Intel, viewers have yet again broken all past viewership records for the site. June is our most viewed month ever at PCS Intel already, and we'd like to take a moment to thank you for, once again, making it happen.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Thursday, 22 June 2006 |
Sony Ericsson completes a full port of their operating system to CDMA, makes a perfect bridge between GSM and CDMA2000, and then kills the division that made it.  A limited release of 10,000 T608 phones trickle out to customers that realize the effort and benefit.
Replace Sony Ericsson with Nokia, and T608 with 6165i, and you have history repeating itself all over again.  Series 40 3rd Edition will likely never make it out to another CDMA phone, despite the 6175i being feature-complete.  Oh, and you can replace 6175i with T715 to link back in the Sony Ericsson analogy.
I'd end this post with a smiley face if it weren't such a disaster in terms of product management and business administration... all over again, and on so many levels.
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