Full disclosure, I don’t like Comcast. At all. One of the worst customer service experiences in my life was with Comcast. Given the choice between Comcast and the Titanic, I’d take my chances on the Titanic. With that said…

“Comcast Treats Lightly” by Don Sweeting (Video Business Magazine, www.VideoBusiness.com, 8 Sept 2008). Btw, Don also does a noteworthy blog: www.ContentAgenda.com/Sweeting.

There are only two ways a company can get away with supplying less for the same price:

1 – Their competition is doing the same. In this case I don’t know of any other ISPs capping their customer’s usage. Internet access via cell? Yes, those often come with some sort of cap. But not DSL, cable or fiber.

2 – They have no competition. The truth is, from a marketing perspective, no company ever wants to give the other side a bat to be beaten with. If Comcast feared (for example) Verizon saying, “We have no limits. But those cable guys do” then they wouldn’t do it. No fear = no competition.

Btw, from a more technical perspective what you’re also seeing is the limitation of cable broadband. For those who don’t realize, when you have cable broadband you are actually sharing the pipe with others on your street. So if one user is sucking up all the bandwidth and thus compromising the experience of everyone else then Comcast obvoiusly feels it’s worth it to “confront” those heavy users. It wouldn’t be surprising if the next step is peak vs. off-peak pricing. It makes sense especially if the competition forces the issue.

Great one… “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close To You” by Clive Thompson (The New York Times Magazine, 7 Sept 2008)

About three-quarters of the way in you’ll find:

“Laura Fitton, a social-media consultant who has become a minor celebrity on Twitter — she has more than 5,300 followers — recently discovered to her horror that her accountant had made an error in
filing last year’s taxes. She went to Twitter, wrote a tiny note explaining her problem, and within 10 minutes her online audience had provided leads to lawyers and better accountants. Fritton joked to me
that she no longer buys anything worth more than $50 without quickly checking it with her Twitter network.”

More and more often there’s a story about someone using their network cloud – so the same can be applied to Facebook to some extent – to solve a problem that prior to hyper-connectedness used to be solved by traditional search (e.g., Google). Granted, this could be one of the reasons why Google wants to exert influence on the cell phone market. Given that their biz model is built on search it makes sense that they are more than a little concerned. True there are already sites where one can post a question, and wait / hope for an answer. However, cloudsourced answer(s) can come almost instantly; from birds of your feather; and are probably more accurate and/or suitable.

The real story here… At this point, who needs Google?

“Embracing The Software Service Economy” (www.CIOInsight.com, August 2008)  is an (edited and condensed) interview of Mr. Timothy Chou as given by Paula Klein.

Regardless of what side of screen / browser you sit on it’s hard to imagine a business that isn’t directly or even indirectly impacted by software in some way. In a few minutes this article will brief you on what’s it all about and where Mr. Chou predicts it’s all going. You might also recognize Mr. Chou as being the author of “The End of Software” (Sams, 2004) as well as “Seven” (www.lulu.com/activebookpress).

Another quick read that beats having to digest a whole book just for a couple good to know thoughts.