I hate to be blogging about Apple again, but it has been quite ubiquitous of late and given that I own an iPhone, an Apple TV, a Mac Mini and a MacBook Pro, I cannot help caring.

From a PR standpoint, the last few months have been mixed at best for Apple (more on that later), and yet from a financial standpoint it has been pretty much blowing right through this recession, announcing just last month the best non-holiday quarter in the company’s history. What’s going on here?

I grew up very much a PC guy. My first computer, in 1994, was a 75MHz Pentium I with 8 megs of ram and a 500 MB hard drive running Dos and Windows 3.11. I was 14, it was by far the coolest thing I’d ever owned, and the internet was just getting started. Sometimes when I’d go visit a school buddy of mine, I’d take a peek at his dad’s Apple PowerPC which, he liked to remind me, was much more expensive and cooler than my PC. It also wasn’t compatible with mine. It never would be. Apple actually cultivated that difference, it thrived on it: remember ‘think different?’

From that point until about a year and a half ago, I discarded Macs as over-priced, over-engineered rounded cubes without a delete key or a right-click button, designed by and for intellectual snobs.

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It’s been a quiet week in etility news, probably because most of the world is either talking about the iPhone 3GS or Michael Jackson. The relevant news mostly revolved around Google’s various services and its attempt to complete its takeover of the digital world.

Google Voice can change your phone number for you

Phone number from an area code where you no longer are? Google Voice can help: for $10 you can change your phone number without any activation delay, and Google even throws in three months of continued service to your old phone.

Google is trying to attract news publishers to YouTube

Google wants more content from reputable, legitimate sources on YouTube, not just videos of your neighbor’s cat falling off a couch. It is obviously in Google’s best interest to take all of the content available on Cable TV and bring it to the web, as it increases viewership and therefore ad revenue. And so once you’ve registered your source with them (and there seems to be a review process before you’re approved), you get perks like featured premium placement, viewership analysis and even revenue sharing from Google’s ads. YouTube already has a pretty big group of sources, since it’s starting with all 25,000 registered organizations from Google News.

Google antitrust investigations heating up

We hardly need to point out that not only is Google already huge, but it also keeps on growing and growing, slowly penetrating all etility and online markets to the point where it is becoming ubiquitous. It is not surprising then that it is increasingly receiving pressure from various judicial bodies to answer antitrust charges, as is the case with its Google Book service which would establish a monopoly on orphaned books (copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder).

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

This week in etilities: companies keep competing for dominance in the internet TV market, the case is made for and against Google Voice, and your last excuse not to back up your data is taken away.

Comcast, Time Warner, Netflix still going after Hulu

Comcast (Etilities Forum) and Time Warner Cable (Etilities Forum) are working on a response to the Hulu (Etilities Forum) phenomenon with the development of a ‘TV Everywhere‘ service that allows users to view content that they pay for via subscriptions on their computer. The main differentiator here with Hulu is obviously the fact that you need to be paying for a subscription. If, like me, you find yourself increasingly unable to tolerate advertisement, and if Comcast and Time Warner manage to keep the costs associated with this reasonable (this is where I’m not so hopeful), this could be the beginning of an appealing alternative to ad-supported TV.

Meanwhile, Netflix (Etilities Forum) is also looking ahead, projecting that the number of subscribers for its DVD-mailing service will slowly decline over the next ten years. Their answer? Boost the number of titles available for streaming, as well as their quality. Great idea on paper; the trick will undoubtedly be to sell the big studios on it.

The case for and against Google Voice

PC World put out a great piece this week on the five reasons to use Google Voice, and the five reasons not to. What it allows you to do is centralize the control of all of your phone numbers in a single location so that, for example, calling your cell phone number also makes your phones in your home and office ring. You can also manage your voicemails, SMS messages, and much more. According the PC World, the possible downsides mainly fall within two categories: privacy and reliability.

You can now afford to keep your data safe

Do you want a place to safely store your ripped DVDs and other large amounts of data at an affordable price? You may be in luck. Gizmodo came out this week with the review of a great new product from Western Digital: the My Book World Edition II. For $700, you can buy a 4TB networked storage book with 2TB of usable storage space (the other 2TBs back up the first 2TB). Unless you have a bigger media library than I do (yeah, right), that is more than enough space and you can sleep soundly and know that your data is safe from a hard-drive failure.

You no longer have an excuse not to back up!

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

This week in etilities: mobile phone practices are under close scrutiny in the public arena, AT&T tries to catch up to Apple, and lagging US broadband penetration is underlined.

Mobile phone practices under scrutiny

Competition between providers benefits consumers in the form of lower prices, better service, and more features. Unsurprisingly, wireless carriers tend to do whatever they can to either land exclusive deals or be on a level playing field with each other. The FCC, at the request of four US senators, is launching a probe investigating the AT&T / iPhone exclusivity deal while the Senate Judiciary Committee is exploring whether Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are colluding to set the price of SMS messages outrageously high. AT&T and Verizon claim that this is not the case.

AT&T is playing catch-up with the iPhone 3GS

The partnership between AT&T and Apple is proving quite a headache for the wireless carrier indeed. There has been much coverage about how the carrier is not yet ready to handle some of the new features of the iPhone 3GS, most notably SMS and Tethering. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the information out there is little more than hearsay. AT&T denied rumors that they were going to offer tethering for $55 a month and announced that multimedia messaging (MMS) capability will be included as part of the existing SMS bundles at no additional cost.

As for the iPhone 3GS early upgrade controversy, AT&T has announced that more 3G owners who are currently locked mid-contract will be eligible for the upgrade price of $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model as opposed to $399 and $499, respectively. There are several criteria for determining eligibility, including whether you’re a big spender with AT&T, and not everyone will benefit.

US broadband penetration needs a lot of work

Ars Technica published an article last week dicussing a topic dear to our hearts: broadband penetration. According to the survey, which measures per household broadband penetration rather than per capita penetration, the US ranks 20th, with 60% of households connected by broadband as opposed to 95% in South Korea, the top country on that list.
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This week in etilities: the DTV transition finally happens, two highly anticipated phones are placed under the spotlight, and AT&T takes a beating in the media.

The Digital TV Transition has finally happened

We’ve been talking about this for a long time, and it finally happened on Friday. Endgaget has a good summary of lead-up coverage here. As was expected, millions of people were still not ready, but the consensus seems to be that the transition was mostly smooth and that the delays did help in preparing more households for it.

New smartphones: the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3GS

This was a big week for smartphones, with the release of the Palm Pre and the announcement of the iPhone 3GS. Both phones have gotten a lot of media attention and generated much emotion among their respective fan bases. We are thrilled that the technology behind smart phones is further maturing, allowing you to take advantage of your online services everywhere you go.

AT&T wireless under fire

This week should have been a good one for AT&T (Etilities Forum), given that they are the only authorized iPhone carrier, but it was not. Indeed, not only is the carrier not ready to handle the 3GS’ new Multimedia Messaging Service or tethering capabilities, but this was pointed out pretty explicitly by Apple during its developer’s conference. This is being seen by some as a clue that it is going to be parting ways with AT&T as soon as it is legally able to do so.

Adding insult to injury,  AT&T also announced that it is charging $399 and $499 for an early upgrade as opposed to the $199 and $299 price tags if you are a brand new customer, which has generated much anger among current iPhone owners.

One thing is for sure: AT&T has a lot of PR work ahead…

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As summer looms, we thought it would be an appropriate time to offer a few recommendations to find savings in your Etilities.

• Switch from monthly plans to annual plans.  Many service providers offer annual payment plans which are economically advantageous over their monthly plans.  If you have a service that you aren’t planning on changing anytime soon, considering the annual payment plan may be beneficial.  In the case of Vonage (Etilities Forum) for instance, the annual pre-pay plan can save clients $59 per year.  If you are a satisfied Vonage customer, you should seriously consider it.
• Going on vacation?  It is not uncommon for individuals or families to go on vacation for several weeks at a time away from home.  What few people know is that many cables companies offer a vacation plan.  Cox Communications (Etilities Forum) for examples allows you to essentially de-activate your TV, Internet and Phone without returning your modem or worrying about termination or re-activation fees.  Instead, for a low $10 a month fee, you can simply leave your house for several months and reactivate all your services back to normal upon your return.  Some of the providers offer packages of up to 4 months which can save hundreds of dollars over the summer.
• Sign-Up for the Assistant.  By signing-up for the Etilities.Com assistant and completing your profile, we will continuously monitor the industry and evaluate savings opportunities.  If you have unique needs or specific questions about your Etilities, you may also e-mail directly at assistant@etilities.com.

Enjoy your Summer!
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

VOIP service Skype (Etilities Forum) made headlines everywhere earlier this week when it finally released its iPhone application. The reception was overwhelmingly positive with great reviews and millions of downloads. Wireless providers, however, were not so pleased: AT&T (Etilities Forum) quickly responded by changing its terms of use to restrict the use of third party apps like Sling and Skype on its network. For example, Skype can only work with a wi-fi connection. AT&T does not allow it to work over its 3G network. This of course generated much negative media coverage, with talks of already instigating FCC probes into whether these practices are anti-competitive.

Of course it’s understandable that wireless providers are scared of the prospect of a competitor offering a cheaper service than they offer on their own network. But why stop at VOIP and video streaming? Why not start banning e-mail from the AT&T network? After all, it constitutes free transmission of text that could otherwise be done via SMS, which directly profits the wireless providers. Why not shut down all web browsers, all third party apps, and lock down that phone nice and tight? That way it’ll be just like being back in the 90s!

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.