This post was originally written in 2011. I removed this post as I was an employee of Universal Parks & Resorts Creative, a subsidiary of Comcast from March 5, 2018 until November 6, 2020. As a result of moving in 2018 my provider options changed as well as the landscape of bandwidth overall. This issue is still just as important.

Bradford
November 6, 2020

Over the past few weeks there has been talk about Net Neutrality, including the FCC making rulings. I will be the first to admit that me writing about the issue is a little late, as the decisions have already been made. The decisions are not final and with Joe Lieberman now wanting to be able to turn off the Internet it is time for us to get more involved with the issues.

The item I am concerned about is what happens when Internet access providers start favoring their services over the completion. Now some will say that there is the ability to change the provider of high speed Internet. This issue is not entirely true. Just as one cannot in the United States freely chose which cable television company to use, one cannot freely chose which high speed provider to use. The Internet providers are limited by both technological needs and government mandates. Yes, one can use satellite or wireless or other solutions but it is not always comparing equal delivery of services. Think about the issues AT&T had with traffic saturation and the iPhone.

Currently my options for high-speed Internet access at my home are:

  • Comcast Cable Modem (22Mbps down and 6Mbps up)
  • AT&T DSL (1.5Mbs down/384kbps up)
  • Earthlink or other Dial Up (0.0336Mbs down/33.6kbps up)
  • Hughes Net (2Mbps down300kbps up; capped at 400MB of data a month)
  • FiOs and UVerse are not available

So given these conditions I am pretty sure that all of us would chose Comcast. Also given the pricing structure, Comcast makes the most sense financially. Now Comcast has some programs in place to provide additional services through them for their customer’s use. Comcast offering Mozy is an example of extra services.

From the Comcast press release: “Comcast High-Speed Internet customers automatically receive 2 GB of storage included with their subscription. This amount allows for storage of up to hundreds of photos, music files, or thousands of documents. Comcast also offers a 50 GB storage plan for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 annually, and a 200 GB storage plan for $9.99 monthly or $99.99 annually.” The webpage http://security.comcast.net/backup/details/ outlines the basic examples.

I knew that I needed more than 2GB of backup. I wanted offsite storage in addition to backup. The differences can be subtle between storage and backup, but that is another blog post. After looking at the options I decided to use JungleDisk, it is less expensive per month and has other features I want.

One can easily see how JungleDisk is competition to Mozy. They offer similar services and both require high-speed connectivity to work effectively. What happens if Comcast was to decide to put priority on the traffic to Mozy and degrade the traffic to JungleDisk?

The issue of how one selects a service becomes much more complex. If the bandwidth I am using to connect to JungleDisk is throttled back wouldn’t that change my experience and cause me to think about another solution. All of the sudden Mozy would be much more of an option as a result of being much faster for me as a Comcast user. Having a backup take an hour instead of two hours can be a very big deal – especially if one is trying to backup data before leaving on a trip.

Now you might say, under what guise would Comcast throttle traffic like that, “network management”. I easily see a situation where Comcast would decide that backups running at 2AM on everyone’s computer were causing congestion. The first solution any reasonable business is to make sure its customers and partners’ experience is optimized to keep the complaints to a minimum. The majority of the users might be using Mozy since it is included and I would be in the minority using JungleDisk. So the decision made to correct the problem for the majority by providing priority to Mozy would make sense from a customer satisfaction evaluation. I am glossing over the way that this management can be done, it is not just how data is transmitted to my location it is also how the traffic is transmitted across the interconnections of the Internet itself.

Due to the partnership between Mozy and Comcast and possible bandwidth management, Mozy might gain me as a customer while JungleDisk would lose me as a customer. Beyond that I would lose as a consumer as the choice I made would be compromised. I would have to look at the ability to use the service not just the price of the service.

This issue can be applied to many other products, virus protection software, website hosting, picture hosting, voice services. Yes, Vonage and Skype can be blocked and already have been blocked by Internet Service Providers. The same ones that offer phone service. The FCC did require the voice services to be unblocked.

To paint with a very wide and absurd brushstroke, it would be akin to the electric company also selling light bulbs. Of course their light bulbs work better for most users. They did not allow for people to tailor their light bulb choices as the power was optimized to work with the electric company’s bulb vendor. So to get effective lighting, the user is relegated to purchasing what the electric company is selling even if it isn’t the best solution for them.

Let me know if you want me to talk about Comcast now having NBC/Universal content. I am sorry why is Netflix or ABC or Fox or Hulu or …. streaming so slowly?

So when people talk about Net Neutrality, it is not just something for the technophiles. It can impact anyone who uses the Internet.

As I was taking pictures this weekend I thought about how I want people to be able to use my content and thoughts. Part of this was sparked also by my recent appearance on AVNation’s AVWeek Podcast Episode 189: I Know Who To Call. Tim brought up some topics that I have both experience with and opinions about, so I shared them with everyone. I was pleasantly surprised when I was also quoted heavily in an article on Commercial Integrator as well. So it got me to thinking, what are the rights I want to reserve or share? I am currently listening to Cory Doctorow’s book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age (hardcopy). This link is to the self-published audiobook read by Wil Wheaton. One of the things I am learning from these thoughts is the question of how much do I want to share my created content.

I have already created some content obviously you are reading some now, I have have images available at photos.bradfordbenn.com that can be used. I have until now been keeping a tight leash on the images with watermarks and right click protection. I plan on keeping some protection in place, not quite sure how much yet or how it will be set up. However I want to share the information and experiences with more people. Yes, I would like to earn some money along the way, however at the moment that is not the key goal for me. I want to create things and put them out in the open for people to enjoy. I just want to know when things I create are being used.

So having said that you can see the description of the usage rights I have created at the page https://bradfordbenn.com/creative-commons/. The idea is that if you are using my content for personal use, you may do that with attribution. If you want to use my content for commercial use, there is still licensing issues to be discussed. I encourage you to consider how you want your content handled, keeping in mind that many of the tools we are open source and are being shared as well.

My loyal reader and twitter follower is aware, I just attended the InfoComm2014 convention. I found myself struggling what to do with all these business cards I had acquired. Not only the question of how long should I hang on to them, but how to get all the details into my electronic system. After looking at a few solutions, I have a request for all my readers – make the lock screen on your electronic device your QR business card.

As someone who has some nice Moo.com business cards, with 10 different pictures on the cards, I appreciate and enjoy the statement and symbolism of exchanging business cards. What I do not enjoy is trying to get all the data into my various electronic organization tools. It is time consuming. First was the problem of finding a good tool to scan and then read all the data. Then comes the problem of verifying all the data that just got imported and loaded into the computer. There are pieces of software that can do this for you, but even those are not perfect and require some tweaking.  I have tried CamCard for iPhone but am not totally happy with it. The interface is pretty good, but there are short comings. I do like that one can review and edit them on the web. However one cannot easily export it from the corrected version on the web. One has to give CamCard access to your contacts to load it into your contact information. I probably sound paranoid and stereotypical but giving a Chinese company access to my contacts is not something I feel comfortable with. I do like the batch scanning option though.

I can continue talking about the various options I have used and tried. I am using Evernote Hello for my personal contact management. It does not do as good a job dealing with unique layouts on cards. It also does not include a way to include the address.

The thing I would like for more people to start using is a QR vCard. There is a protocol that allows for embedding contact information directly into a QR code. The protocol does not require actually being connected to the Internet to retrieve the information. It simply requires the receiver to have a QR code reader, many of which are free. The process is fairly simple and painless.

  1. Load a QR Code Reader onto your phone.
  2. Using the camera on your phone ingest the QR code you are interested in
  3. View the results

I have created a QR vCard that is the lock image on my iDevice. (A QR card size of 450 pixels by 450 pixels about 305 pixels from the top of the image for an iPhone 4S works.) I do not even have to unlock the phone to provide the QR code to someone. I also have a QR application (Qrafter Pro) that allows for reading QR codes from pictures. I can take a picture without unlocking my iDevice as well. If you really want to be sneaky smart, take a picture of the person also so you can remember what they look like.

To get you started, here is a sample QR code that I created online. There are also sorts of other tools available, Qrafter Pro also allows for creating the grids.

Trial QR code

Go ahead try out your reader.

Relatively easy? Simple?

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go back to reviewing scanned business cards. I think I will even update my personal cards to have a QR code.

Shout out to Linda Seid-Frembes who gave me this idea years ago – You can read more about it at her blog.

Yes, I now that this topic has been talked about before but I really think it is worth considering.