Canadian Bandwidth

Really bizarre as so many services move to the cloud or streaming that all of a sudden bandwidth is at a premium.   not bad enough that they sell you up to speeds that you'll never be able to sustain... without power boost and if your file is over the power boost limit it is unlikely you'll get more than 10-12.5% of your up to speed.  On the top package my bandwidth recently dropped 30%; cost drop: 0%.  Should ISP be involved in cable TV delivery, or even worse TV content delivery - conflict of interest... seems it's all about owning competing products and wanting customers to pay for them all.  What are the odds of getting a solid OTA signial from a company that owns the broadcaster and a cable company that can deliver the signal.  And then the cable box compresses your HD signal so it's not as good as OTA anyway.

Bandwith is not water... it is not finite.  Hope Leo doesn't mind, here is Americam Tom Merritt's take on the whole deal:



Check the whole episode here:

TWiT 287: Finckenstein's Monster

Virgin Canada Froyo update for HTC Legend - Bell/Shaw

Seems since Bell got the last last 15% of Virgin Canada it's no longer a Virgin but rather an old hag.  Customer service has become second rate; spent 20 minutes with customer service and all she could tell me was that I had Eclair.  It seemed quite apparent this woman rarely if ever used a cell phone.
Anyways my Eclair is stale and I want my Froyo; as would Android developers so I could move my apps and buy more.
Anyone make any sense of these e-mails:

David
I'm the new owner of an HTC Legend.  Great phone and everything, but still running Android Eclair.

When we will have the update to 2.2?  Is is true that Virgin won't get that update?

I don't want to be stuck with a phone that cannot be updated unless I root it.

Thanks for your time :]
about 2 months ago

Virgin won't update the Legend.  I got this email from them a couple of days ago

Thank you for taking the time to write in to us.  We're happy to hear from you and we hope you're doing well today!

Virgin Mobile is not supporting the upgrade to the new 2.2 OS. The best thing to do would be to contact the manufacturer of your handset to get the information needed for the upgrade. Sorry!

Have a great day!

Cheers,
Christina
VMC Team


and when I emailed HTC this is what they had to say.

HTC



I do understand your disappointment with the fact that your device will not be receiving an update to Android 2.2. Unfortunately, the most telling sentence is the first in the reply Virgin Mobile sent you: Virgin Mobile is not supporting the upgrade to the new 2.2 OS. As we are the manufacturer, we can only make upgrades for carrier branded devices at the request of that carrier; they have to want to hold a license for the software version, and they also make requests for specifications for the OS. As Virgin has decided against supporting the upgrade, they will not have made that request to us, and thus we cannot create an update to the OS for that device. Were they to want the upgrade, our engineers would gladly be able to create the update, but unfortunately in this case that is not to be. I will give Virgin Mobile kudos on being upfront with you about it; I know that some carriers don't make public statements about whether or not certain devices will be updated and they leave their customers to speculate. The only thing I see wrong is that they directed you to us about it like we could change it; perhaps they just wanted us to be able to explain to you why we couldn't do anything if they did not want us to. I do apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.



Sincerely,

Philip

HTC
about 2 months ago
Virgin Mobile Canada
hey guys - i'm sorry for the mixup. we may, at one time, have been considering not supporting the android 2.2 froyo upgrade, but, as i tweeted yesterday, we're planning on launching the upgrade in mid-january.

follow us here on facebook or on twitter @virginmobilecan for updates closer to the actual launch.

sorry again for any confusion.

jeremy
social media manager
virgin mobile
about a month ago


So Froyo was originally going to be released in the fourth quarter of 2010, then mid January 2011; it's mid February 2011 and still notta from Virgin.  Perhaps those Virgin (aka Bell) folks are too busy in talks with Shaw to see how the can get more for our internet dollars.
At a time when Shaw claims people are using more they are dropping monthly usage rates by up to 30%, and telling me how much faster cable is than DSL... DO I REALLY NEED HIGH SPEED IF THE INTERNET HIGHWAY IS GETTING SHORTER!

Oh well, a post about Virgin's lack ends up with a Shaw grab; notice that since the elder Shaw passed the company to the sons everything went up in price and down in value.

Similarity - detect and eliminate duplicate music

Using Similarity to detect and eliminate duplicate music on your computer is really easy. Simply define the source folder, click the Start button and after several minutes you’ll have the list of duplicate music files right before your eyes. And believe me - the list will be much longer than you probably think! Similarity considers three factors when it checks if music files are duplicates. Similarity can compare music files basing on the sound content (regardless of the audio format of each file), on tags (ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2, WMA, Vorbis are supported), and on the precise analysis. Unlike the simple byte-by-byte comparison which is useless with media files, the acoustic fingerprint method utilized by Similarity provides utterly accurate results.

The advanced sound analysis implemented in

Instant Heart Rate monitor for Android

Instant heart rate is a heart rate monitor for Android smartphones that uses the phones built in camera to measure your heart rate.

This application measures oxygen saturation changes in your blood. On every heart beat your blood becomes more oxygen rich which causes a slight change in the color of your skin; the camera in your phone tracks that change and calculates your heart rate. It works similar to a medical pulse oximeter but without a dedicated light source.

Press your left index finger gently over the camera. Hold it steady for at least 6 seconds. Your current heart rate will be shown on the display.

It's important that you use this application with good lightning. For best results turn the back of your mobile towards the sun or a lamp.

To try it go to Androd Market on you mobile and search for "Instant Heart Rate"

This application is been made as a part of a study of using sensors built into mobile phones for measuring biological signals.  Check it out... it's FREE!

Android keeps getting Bigger!

A new report from Gartner Research claims that Google's Android operating system will grow rapidly in the remaining months of 2010, passing both Apple and RIM.

If you don't follow the smartphone world closely, Nokia is still number one worldwide. While their phones are offered by Canadian carriers, the market in other nations over seas encourages users to buy unlocked phones - often Nokia handsets.

In late 2009, Android had only 3.9% of the market - Apple had three times more. Google is expected to hit about 17.7%, which will cobbler Apple's iOS, and just edge out Blackberry. While iOS is still growing, Blackberry has been falling. The dismal response to the Blackberry Torch isn't helping.

That would leave Android behind only Symbian found on Nokia phones, which tend to be the least smart of the smartphones.  And coming soon... new Windows mobile phones.

The single down side to Android's rapid growth is turning out to be the number of devices.  With so many phones, all with different hardware and screen resolutions etc., how quickly are updates going to get rolled out?  My HTC Legend which is great is out of stock all over and new phones keep coming; I'm thinking the manufacturers are going to forfeit updates to sell newer versions of different phones.  

With so many different updates for so many phones the consumer is set to get screwed again.