Category Archives: General Posts

Verizon rebounds and tells AT&T “Our ads are true and the truth hurts”

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Verizon Wireless responded today to a lawsuit filed by AT&T earlier this month that accused Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” marketing campaign of misleading consumers about AT&T’s 3G coverage in the United States.

In a nutshell, Verizon said AT&T’s request to have the ads pulled is without merit. From the court filing (PDF):

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts… AT&T now is attempting to silence Verizon’s ads that include maps graphically depicting the geographic reach of AT&T’s 3G network as compared to Verizon’s own 3G network because AT&T does not like the truthful picture painted by that comparison.

att-sues-verizon-over-_there_s-a-map-for-that_-ads

In the court filing, Verizon outlines the reasons that AT&T’s arguments are without merit. They include:

  • Because the ads are truthful, AT&T is attacking them under faulty theories, including a claim that they are misleading. But Verizon says there’s no real evidence – aside from an AT&T commissioned survey – that proves that consumers are misled by the ad.
  • There is no emergency that would require the court to issue an immediate restraining order – as AT&T has requested – without giving Verizon the opportunity to conduct its own research and present evidence to prove that consumers are not being misled.
  • The harm to Verizon and the public, in general, caused by pulling the ads is greater than any alleged harm being inflicted on AT&T.

Read more about this topic by Sam Diaz at ZDNet

ATT Wireless preventing Google Voice inside A-List

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ATT A-List

ATT Wireless recently launched its A-List, which is their version of “your 5″ (or 10 if you have a large family talk plan). A-List lets you add commonly used phone numbers (landline or mobile) to your “A-List” and essentially have those minutes be unlimited and not count against your plan. While this works so far for most people, others have noticed that it worked early on and not any longer with Google Voice numbers.

I personally use a Google Voice number as a mobile office number. Not primarily for the free calls, but more so for the transcription features it offers. When a user calls in to my Google Voice number, if they leave a message, Google will translate that as best it can to text and send me an email or SMS text message with the attached audio file and text from the message. This has proven invaluable when in a meeting, watching a movie, etc.

Here are the promoted features for this service:

11-16-2009 10-37-55 AM

So now for the good part. ATT, being the typical large corporation that they are, is blocking heavy users from using an in-bound Google Voice number. They are letting you your Google Voice number to your A-List, but tagging it in their system as an anytime-minutes call, while reducing your monthly available minutes if you receive a call to your Google Voice number.

I fail to see how this is in any way different from my choosing to forward an office phone (which I do via follow me features) when out of the office. To me, there’s no difference. I have a choice as a consumer to let my customers reach me wherever I am.

For some additional background, when ATT first came out with its A-List offering (which is only available to larger plans, by the way), I called up ATT and asked if they cared that I planned to add my Google Voice number to my A-List, explaining that it would ultimately lead to unlimited calls if customers or friends called me through my Google Voice number. One two separate occasions when talking to an ATT customer service representative, the unified reply was “We don’t care. That’s what it was designed for” (to sum it up in so many words).

How then, does ATT reserve the right to publicize an offering with clearly spelled out rules on its website, yet go against those rules? I (for one) feel another FCC investigation coming, along with the possibility of another class-action lawsuit. Just because you’re a large company doesn’t mean you can walk all over your customers.

Join the discussion here.

I welcome discussion from ATT on this post and invite them to comment. I’d like to know how they can justify something like this. It doesn’t seem right.

Informational Resources:

Other News:

http://www.wireless.att.com/answer-center/main.jsp?t=browseTab&ft=browseTab&opentopic=4200008&topicName=A-List&topicTreeId=solutionPropertyTree&showcontent=true&lstLanguageResults=&locale=en_US&_dyncharset=UTF-8

Thanksgiving Giveaway at Jaypeeonline

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About Blog Contests is running a new contest for Thanksgiving.

Contest URL: $1,500 Thanksgiving Giveaway
Prize: Various
Deadline: 30th November 2009

Thanksgiving Giveaway from Jaypeeonline. Cash, premium WordPress themes and web hosting ($1,500 worth) as prizes. Below the full list:

1st Prize
Pro Plus All-Theme Package from StudioPress ($199.95)
Single Theme License from Pro Theme Design ($79)
Single Theme License from Press75 ($75)
Single Theme License from WP Zoom ($49)
1 Year Theme Club Membership from Elegant Themes ($19.95)
1 Year Hosting w/ Free Domain from DreamHost courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente
$50 Cash via PayPal from Jehzeel Laurente

2nd Prize
Single Theme License from Pro Theme Design ($79)
Single Theme License from Press75 ($75)
Single Theme Package from StudioPress ($59.95)
Single Theme License from WP Zoom ($49)
1 Year Freedom Plan Hosting from WP Web Host ($80)
$25 Cash via PayPal from JaypeeOnline

3rd Prize
Single Theme License from Pro Theme Design ($79)
Single Theme Package from StudioPress ($59.95)
Single Theme License from WP Zoom ($49)
Single Theme Licenses from WP Now ($29)
1 Year Freedom Plan Hosting from WP Web Host ($80)
$10 Cash via PayPal from JaypeeOnline

Consolation Prizes
Single Theme Package from StudioPress ($59.95)
Single Theme Licenses from WP Now ($29)

And the sponsors that made this possible are.

  1. StudioPress
  2. Pro Theme Design
  3. Press75
  4. WP Zoom
  5. WP Now
  6. Elegant Themes
  7. WP WebHost
  8. Jehzeel Laurente
  9. Batang Yagit

To enter this contest, follow these simple rules:

  1. Subscribe to JaypeeOnline’s RSS feed via email
  2. Write a post about this contest, including a link to the original contest post, list of prizes and sponsors
  3. Leave a comment on the original contest post

If you want to gain more points and increase your chances of winning, do the following:

  1. Follow him on Twitter and Retweet this post (+2)
  2. Write a review for JaypeeOnline on Alexa (+2)
  3. Join JaypeeOnline’s Facebook Fan Page (+1)

Original post located here.

Telenav GPS contest

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Want to win 6 months of TeleNav GPS service for free? TeleNav has offered up two 6-month freebies on any mobile device with any carrier if you win. To join the contest, check out everything below.

General rules:

  1. **Only for US readers**
  2. Contest Starts June 13th 2009 and Ends July 15th 2009
  3. Each entrants will get one unique number. The list of all the entrants will be posted at the end of the contest period
  4. Two winners will get a 6 month GPS navigator service
  5. The winner will be selected using Random.Org and announced here with a specific blog post

Check out the blog contest and enter to win!

Read more About Blog Contests online.

Related Information:

Should Twitter offer a paid service?

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Recently I’ve had the opportunity to play around with Twitter API and several services/software pieces that integrate with Twitter.  Until recently, I hadn’t run into any issues with the limitations of the Twitter API and how many connections a user is allowed access to in a given window of time.

So why couldn’t Twitter release a premium level of its service that grants paid users a greater level of access to the platform, additional features, more API connections, etc?  This seems the logical next step.  The main service would remain free as it always had (even I didn’t need to upgrade until now), but a handful of the Twitter power users would benefit from near-real-time Twitter updates with applications such as TweetDeck and mobile devices for the iPhone or BlackBerry such as Tweetie, Twitterific and TwitterBerry.

Here is some simple math that I’ve worked out.  The numbers seem fairly reasonable so far and I welcome comments on this model.  TwitDir reports 3,328,420 twitterers that they know as of today.  I’ll use this as the base number for my calculation.  If we estimate that there are 3.3 million Twitterers out there sharing ideas, and only 5% of them are power users that require a more powerful level of Twitter power (166,421), paying only $2.99/mo…

Users: 3,328,420
5% paying: 166,421
$2.99/mo $497,598.79
$4.99/mo $830,440.79


That’s almost a half a million dollars of revenue for Twitter and all they had to do was scale up a few servers and spend a few hours coding the management/login area for users.  Hardly anything else needs to change.  The infrastructure has already been layed out and is operational.  If they wanted to, they could charge $4.99/mo for a different tier of service and offer other incentives to those users that required even more.

I’ve found myself leaving TweetDeck open on both my Mac (home) and Windows PC (work) and constantly use Tweetie on my iPhone.  There go all my API connections for the hour…they’re used up in about 30 minutes even with moderate usage.

The bottom line, would we pay for this service?  Is it so necessary to the way that we network now that users would jump into paying for it, or do we only use it now because it’s free?  My vote is for the same level of service to remain free, but offer additional options to their already-ginormous user base.

Comments welcome.