Today we announced the launch of Anthem on Sprint in this press release here. It has been a lot of hard work from our team but we think that the end product is something that will help define communities on mobile devices. What exactly is Anthem? From a user perspective, it is a donwloadable application that will allow people to interface with existing web based communities they use on the web. At launch we are rolling out Xanga, Live Journal, Vox, Rabble, Black Planet and several other properties from Community Connect. What the user sees is a web like experience on their phone. They have full read and write access just like they do on the website.
We expect to announce a number of additional carriers very soon as well as a number of additional social networking sites/communities. One of the great things about our approach with Anthem is that it will lead to preinstalled applications on the handset that bring the flexibility to add communities in the future.
On the Rabble front this brings us to 9 carriers with deck support from the carrier. We are working with the three largest carriers, Sprint, ATT, Verizon as well as Virgin, Cricket, Metro PCS, Cellular South, Claro Puerto Rico and Centennial Puerto Rico.
Showing posts with label sprint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sprint. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Net Neutrality
One of the wonderful surprises of the Mac has been the ease of use of my Sprint Upstage phone as a EVDO modem. I can't say how amazing it is to pull out the laptop, connect to the phone wirelessly and be online anywhere with some screaming connectivity.
Over the last two weeks while using this I have had some intermittent connection problems. I would connect, and then disconnect. This kept happening to me so I started turning off applications like Adium and Skype. Through a process of elimination I realized that if Skype was up, the connection disconnected. That of course led to the aha moment that Sprint is blocking Skype traffic through whatever port they happen to use. As someone who works with carriers this isn't news to me so I turn Skype off and away I go.
I had originally planned to post this observation around a post that highlighted the fact that the wireless networks are closed networks and not the Internet and that they had to bid on spectrum, put up towers etc.
Since then the new FCC guidelines around the 700 mhz spectrum auctions were announced with a lot of flaming back and forth about whether or not this was a gift to Google and a shot at carriers and how carriers are stifling innovation etc. As a reader of tech blogs the blogosphere was heavily in favor of this and in general was pretty unkind to the carriers. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it as in general I find that the biggest critics are people who either have difficulty working with the carriers or who think everything should be free, Internet, music etc.
Before I boarded the plane to San Diego I picked up the WSJ and read a couple of interesting articles about the spectrum auction. There was a strong argument made that this move was an attempt to change the nature of the auctions to the advantage of tech companies. I know that the truth lies in the middle somewhere but as a free market person, I think that the journal made much stronger arguments than what I read online. It will be interesting to see where it all shakes out. If you have any interest in the topic I would try to check out pieces from both sides as there is a lot of merit in both arguments.
Over the last two weeks while using this I have had some intermittent connection problems. I would connect, and then disconnect. This kept happening to me so I started turning off applications like Adium and Skype. Through a process of elimination I realized that if Skype was up, the connection disconnected. That of course led to the aha moment that Sprint is blocking Skype traffic through whatever port they happen to use. As someone who works with carriers this isn't news to me so I turn Skype off and away I go.
I had originally planned to post this observation around a post that highlighted the fact that the wireless networks are closed networks and not the Internet and that they had to bid on spectrum, put up towers etc.
Since then the new FCC guidelines around the 700 mhz spectrum auctions were announced with a lot of flaming back and forth about whether or not this was a gift to Google and a shot at carriers and how carriers are stifling innovation etc. As a reader of tech blogs the blogosphere was heavily in favor of this and in general was pretty unkind to the carriers. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it as in general I find that the biggest critics are people who either have difficulty working with the carriers or who think everything should be free, Internet, music etc.
Before I boarded the plane to San Diego I picked up the WSJ and read a couple of interesting articles about the spectrum auction. There was a strong argument made that this move was an attempt to change the nature of the auctions to the advantage of tech companies. I know that the truth lies in the middle somewhere but as a free market person, I think that the journal made much stronger arguments than what I read online. It will be interesting to see where it all shakes out. If you have any interest in the topic I would try to check out pieces from both sides as there is a lot of merit in both arguments.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Rental Cars, LBS and Cellphones
Sometime last week I received an email from the Sprint Ambassador program soliciting feedback for the Phase 2 timeframe. I have to say that I have really dug the program and it has forced me to evaluate things I wouldn't normally look at in the course of my information ferreting process. After giving my feedback I fired up my phone and did some deck cruising to see some of the things they have that I may not normally look at. Combing through the record crates as it were.
For some reason, that is mostly historical, I usually rent cars from Budget. The primary reason I think is that I really like the guy who runs the Budget franchise at Union Station in Los Angeles and he always takes care of me when I am in LA. Beyond that I really am on the fence about Budget, especially the outfit at the airport in Seattle. those people are a case study in miserable customer service.
So yesterday I headed up to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a busy day of meetings. While booking a car late at night on Monday, budget was sold out at SJC, which happens more than occasionally. Big sigh. I went over to Hertz and found a bunch of cars and went ahead and booked.
The next morning while picking up the car, I was asked if I need satellite radio or GPS or anything special which I declined but I realized that I had a little bit of all those things in my Sprint phone, which is an LG Fusic.
I have to admit that the thought of GPS navigation on my cell phone for the car seemed really ridiculous. I recalled from my previous digging around that there was an application I had subscribed to called TeleNav Navigator. I fired up the application and set it up for directions to San Francisco. I know how to get to San Francisco but I wanted to see how well it works.
As I exited the Hertz parking lot the phone started barking out directions to the city. Very cool. The speaker could be a bit louder but the experience was as good as what I have seen pre-installed in cars with the exception of the sound volume. While flying up the 280 I pulled out the phone and was blown away by the really cool 3D representation of my car cruising up the coast route.
I spent the better part of the day making the application map my directions and all in all it was really good and surprisingly kind to the battery. At $10 a month for an application like this I have to wonder what sort of threat this poses to the guys charging $2000 to load this stuff directly into cars. If I can do a bluetooth connection to a car speaker system I can get the sound piece worked out and I am good to go. Just a thought. I will come back to some other implications of this shortly as it relates to the mobile relevance of applications or not in a post I am working on assuming I actually finish it.
For some reason, that is mostly historical, I usually rent cars from Budget. The primary reason I think is that I really like the guy who runs the Budget franchise at Union Station in Los Angeles and he always takes care of me when I am in LA. Beyond that I really am on the fence about Budget, especially the outfit at the airport in Seattle. those people are a case study in miserable customer service.
So yesterday I headed up to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a busy day of meetings. While booking a car late at night on Monday, budget was sold out at SJC, which happens more than occasionally. Big sigh. I went over to Hertz and found a bunch of cars and went ahead and booked.
The next morning while picking up the car, I was asked if I need satellite radio or GPS or anything special which I declined but I realized that I had a little bit of all those things in my Sprint phone, which is an LG Fusic.
I have to admit that the thought of GPS navigation on my cell phone for the car seemed really ridiculous. I recalled from my previous digging around that there was an application I had subscribed to called TeleNav Navigator. I fired up the application and set it up for directions to San Francisco. I know how to get to San Francisco but I wanted to see how well it works.
As I exited the Hertz parking lot the phone started barking out directions to the city. Very cool. The speaker could be a bit louder but the experience was as good as what I have seen pre-installed in cars with the exception of the sound volume. While flying up the 280 I pulled out the phone and was blown away by the really cool 3D representation of my car cruising up the coast route.
I spent the better part of the day making the application map my directions and all in all it was really good and surprisingly kind to the battery. At $10 a month for an application like this I have to wonder what sort of threat this poses to the guys charging $2000 to load this stuff directly into cars. If I can do a bluetooth connection to a car speaker system I can get the sound piece worked out and I am good to go. Just a thought. I will come back to some other implications of this shortly as it relates to the mobile relevance of applications or not in a post I am working on assuming I actually finish it.
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