Ed Zitron has a fantastic idea:

Google 16GB Nexus 7 retails for $200. Cheap Android tablets are rapidly racing toward the $50 range – though one can’t guarantee quality at $64.99 – and I see no reason why Google hasn’t jumped into [the consumer GPS industry] and squashed the competition. Google Maps navigator is twice the GPS that TomTom or Garmin has created (I’ve used around 8 in the last year) and is better than anything I’ve seen inside a car outside of Elon Musk‘s Tesla. Android is cheap to build for, easily customizable (look at the Kindle Fire or any of the different open source ROMs like Cyanogen Mod and Jelly Beans).

Google could create a small tablet – 6 inches, perhaps – put a SIM card in there much like Apple does for their cellular iPads – customize Android to focus on maps, and price the thing at $200. They could run a deal with Verizon like they do for the Chromebook – 100MB a month, for free, for two years.

I know that this idea is fantastic because it’s what I have been thinking for some time now. Indeed, it’s a variation of a goal that I have been working towards. I want an Android GPS system. I’d prefer it inside my dashboard, but I’ll take it outside of it. In fact, I’ve been road testing all sorts of Android map apps (I’ll be posting reviews) in preparation for buying one to have installed in the Forester. The Forester’s stereo interface is dreadful, and when we bought the car we agreed that I would be able to replace it. I hadn’t thought of Android – or even a GPS-capable player – at that point, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I like it.

What are the advantages of an Android GPS system? Namely, that I can use all of the addresses I already have stored in my phone. That’s a pretty big deal to me. The apps tend to be lackluster, either because they’re online-only (like Google Navigator, Waze), they don’t incorporate contact data easily (NavFree, MapFactor), an inability to work offline (Skrobble), or some other issue. But I’m working on it. If I get my Android car stereo system, I’ll have a map program in there.

Right now I am switching between my Garmin standalone device and putting my phone on a mount and using that. Both have their problems. I’d really like a dedicated device. I hope that there’d really be a market for it and I think Zitron has some good ideas.

I think it would be even better, of course, if they were actually talking directly to the car companies. More and more of them are working towards devices with interfaces and apps. But they’re proprietary. I don’t see a whole lot of great reasons that they shouldn’t be using established OSes with an established app-base. But absent that, I’d be more than happy to have a device propped up on the dashboard while being able to keep my phone in its holster.

This is terrible!

The Oak Brook, Ill.-based chain had said earlier this year that it was evaluating whether to continue selling the Angus Third Pounders, which were introduced in 2009. The company also said at the time that it was it was cutting Chicken Selects and Fruit & Walnut Salad.

The changes come as McDonald’s looks to keep up with shifting tastes, even as it underscores the affordability of its food. Notably, the Angus burgers were among the chain’s priciest items.

At a time when the restaurant industry is barely growing, McDonald’s has been playing up its Dollar Menu in ads to boost sales and steal customers away from competitors. Even if that hurts profit margins, executives say the strategy is critical to gaining market share and ensuring the long-term health of the company.

But Richard Adams, who consults McDonald’s franchisees, noted that Dollar Menu has also made the Angus burger a less attractive option at around $4 to $5.

“When you can get four or five burgers off the Dollar Menu, nobody’s going to buy the Angus burger,” he said. “The Dollar Menu has become a real problem for these chains.”
But… but… but I was buying that burger!

If you never had an Angus burger from McD’s, it was actually surprisingly good. It isn’t just about the meat. The other ingredients were better, too. It really tasted like something other than a McDonald’s burger.

So why, you might ask, would one Will Truman go to McDonald’s for a burger that expressly doesn’t taste like a McDonald’s burger and cost significantly more than a McDonald’s burger? Well, because I live in Callie Arapaho. There are two fast food burger places. As it happens, the other is Dairy Queen, which serves good burgers also, but (a) it keeps shorter hours when it’s open and (b) it’s only open when the owner feels like it. I mean seriously, sometimes it’s closed for months at a time. It also lacks a drive-through.

We don’t have In-and-Out Burger here, or White Castle, or Happy Burger. To get a good burger, you have to go to a real restaurant or make it yourself.

Despite the initially shocking cost, I thought that there was a good market rationale for having that burger on the menu. Basically, because sometimes you have mixed families. By which I mean, you have people like my wife married to the guy who I was ten years ago. She could get the Angus burger, and I could get the cheapo burger. The range made McDonald’s a good compromise location so that she wouldn’t have to get a lackluster fast food burger, and I wouldn’t have to spend $5 on my burger.

Apparently, that isn’t enough anymore.

I blame assortive mating. Now fast food people marry fast food people, and gourmet fast food people marry gourmet fast food people.

I always find it curious when I see an opportunity for a company to monetize that isn’t being taken advantage of.

Take email, for instance. Gmail offers free email. Yahoo offers the basics for free, though last I checked they charged for some of the “extra features” (ones that Gmail gives away for free, I should add). I’m honestly not sure what the current status of the service formerly known as Hotmail is.

I think that all of these services are leaving some potential money on the table.

One of the big things about the major services is that, because they are major and there are so few, it’s really quite hard for people to get the email address they want. Unless you have a really unusual name, chances are pretty good that the common versions of your name are taken. Nicknames, too. I was able to get “trumwill” but others, including nicknames that aren’t words, have been taken by people somewhere. My father has billhtruman at most of the major ones, but had to settle for billhtruman1942 for Google’s services, because there is another billhtruman out there (these are pseudonyms, people, in case you need reminding).

All of this is because every gmail account ends in gmail.com. Yahoo and Microsoft each have three options, so this thought is less useful to them. What I’m not sure about is why Gmail doesn’t have a ton of other options. Except, while Gmail is free, the others have a one-time fee. So dad could get billhtruman@notgmail.com and use that for his Google accounts.

I wouldn’t expect this to be a huge moneymaker, but it would cost next to nothing and when someone has the same username across other services, at least some people would be willing to pay for it.

So, today we drove out to Umatilla to have the baby’s hip checked. While on the table at the ultrasound room, she pooped all over the sheets. As the ultrasound tech put the dirty laundry in the laundry heap, I made the blindingly obvious observation, “This place must have to do a lot of dirty laundry.”

She replied that most ultrasounds are not on live, poopy babies, but that they do have to clean the sheets in between visitors time. She commented that they do it in-house.

“Isn’t that always the case?” I asked. I mean, I would have to think that it would be in the interest of just about every such clinic to have some monster washing machines. She said that no, actually, most places have cleaning services. She then said that when she was an ultrasound tech in Austin, they actually hired a cleaning service that trucked it to San Antonio.

Clancy is, for reasons I will not get into at the moment, ineligible for life insurance. So with my career on hold, if something happens to her, I really don’t know what I’ll do. Not to get too serious in an otherwise light-hearted post, but there is a disconcerting vulnerability there.

Well, I thought I had found my solution. If something happens to Clancy, Lain and I would move to Austin where I am going to start a laundry service for hospitals and clinics that doesn’t require trucking clothes to San Antonio to be cleaned. There is apparently a need.

But wait, somebody is already doing that. So why in the world would a clinic in Austin be shipping laundry to San Antonio? Curses, foiled again.

Bloomberg ran a piece about the inadequacies of the Internet in the United States, making the oft-mentioned point that we really don’t get much bang for our buck. She wonders why broadband isn’t more of a government venture, citing some municipal initiatives such as the one in Lafayette, Louisiana:

In 2004, the Lafayette utilities system decided to provide a fiber-to-the-home service. The new network, called LUS Fiber, would give everyone in Lafayette a very fast Internet connection, enabling them to lower their electricity costs by monitoring and adjusting their usage.

Push-back from the local telephone company, BellSouth Corp., and the local cable company, Cox Communications Inc., was immediate. They tried to get laws passed to stop the network, sued the city, even forced the town to hold a referendum on the project — in which the people voted 62 percent in favor. Finally, in February 2007, after five civil lawsuits, the Louisiana Supreme Court voted, 7-0, to allow the network.

From 2007 to mid-2011, people living in Lafayette saved $5.7 million on telecommunications services.

Since Lafayette went down this path, other communities have followed. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a group that advocates for municipal fiber networks, these community-owned networks are generally faster, more reliable and cheaper than those of the private carriers, and provide better customer service.

I have seen one of these municipal networks in action, and I have to say that they are a pretty great deal. Especially when the local utility companies are charging too much or dragging their feet on upgrading service. More generally, there is a strong argument to be made that utilities that lend themselves towards natural monopolies, like cable internet, cable TV, and phone service, ought to be government rather than private ventures. I mean, if you’re not going to have actual competition between suppliers, why not cut out the middle man?

Sometimes, it’s because the middle man has something to offer. Out here, broadband began as a co-op but eventually was sold on the private model in large part because the cable company had access to more and better resources for expansion and upgrading. The co-op more or less abandoned the city right about the time I was arriving, though they still cover the outlying part of the county. However you look at it, there’s no good reason that a private company shouldn’t have to prove itself to the people.

There were other aspects of the article I was less keen about, however. Where I felt like the article was misleading.

It’s true that in the past private industry had little interest in covering rural America and needed the pitchfork of the government to do so. Rural America and small towns owe a debt of gratitude to the FDR and the federal government in that regard. And, as is the case in Callie, a lot of it they had to do themselves because they were (and in some places still are) below the radar of corporate America. However, it has to be said that (as far as I can tell) this is a lot less true than it used to be. Proclamations that but for the government, national communications and entertainment companies would tell small towns and rural places to go to hell no longer seems to be true except for a relatively small sliver of what we would consider to be rural.

My current town, Callie, population 3,000 with nary another town of remotely comparable size (or larger) for 50 miles in any direction, has 3G from Verizon and (non-LTE) 4G from AT&T. Verizon’s LTE network extends to cover almost 90% of the country, which includes a lot of small towns. Places such as Butte, Montana, and Twin Falls, Idaho, are covered. You see something similar with local channels in satellite. Back when I used to work for a satellite carrier, they had all but said that there were some DMA’s that they would never bother to cover. Now, Dish Network covers everybody and DirecTV covers almost everybody. Twin Falls and Butte both have their local channels broadcast by satellite. And they aren’t actually charged any more than the big cities are for the privilege (a hat tip to arguments about the USPS being a giveaway to rural America because letters to the middle of nowhere cost the same as letters between population centers). There is, in fact, money to be made in rural America and small towns, and the same subsidies that the government has actually apply to private industry as well (ie Dish Network makes more per subscriber in Seattle than Twin Falls because of per-capita usage they get out of resources expended).l

Another issue I had with the article was any comparison whatsoever between the United States and South Korea and the like. You simply cannot compare the two in any meaningful sense. Not with Internet, and not with cell phone coverage. The US faces enormous challenges that smaller and more urban nations do not. The degree to which we are spread out makes coverage more difficult. This applies to rural areas, but also suburbs (and the fact that our urban cores themselves are not remarkably dense, in most places). This is one of the downsides to American settlement patterns, but it’s not going away any time soon. So coverage of such things is going to be weaker, and more expensive.

Which brings us, of course, to questions of how and where the federal government should promote service. I’ve written on this before. Now, as a rural-liver, I wouldn’t mind it one little bit if the federal government decided to lay broadband out here. I’d use it and happily so. The only downsides are the extent to which the same people who would champion a national broadband policy will turn around and complain about “rural subsidies” and, more substantively, I don’t think it’s actually the best allocation of resources.

While we do need to make sure that everybody has access to high speed Internet of one sort of another (I’m a commie that way, I suppose), I believe it only makes sense to approach each areas needs individually. Callie doesn’t need fiber. A lot of places don’t. As satellite internet gets better and more affordable, this may well be a problem that takes care of itself. So long as we keep expectations reasonable.

Which is why, ultimately, I think this should be mostly a local issue. More cities should either do what Lafayette has done or use the threat of doing so to leverage a equipment upgrades by the local suppliers. The primary role I see in the federal government is to use fiber for redevelopment zones. Take cities that have capacity outstripping their population or that are simply struggling to keep their population numbers stable, and start offering it to those areas. Places like Detroit or Redstone. That could be helpful in enticing employers to utilize these services and attract and retain local talent. But beyond that, different places are going to have different needs. The alternative starts to look like this.

T-Mobile has been getting a fair amount of attention for its decision to terminate smartphone subsidies.

I want to be excited about this. Or, more excited about this than I am. This is, to my mind (as with Yglesias’s) how things should work. And T-Mobile, as a company, has always done business the way that I want cell phone companies to do business. I am not a T-Mobile customer due to their complete lack of coverage in my part of the country. That’s a bit of a cop-out, though. There was a regional carrier that I could have signed with and chose not to. Good people though they were, they couldn’t provide me with the service I wanted.

I am currently under contract with The Dark Side. They were the only ones that could.

Anyhow, T-Mobile is in a similar situation where they are virtuous because they have no claws. It is not likely the other major carriers will follow suit. Further, for it to be really advantageous, we’d need common standards and unlocked phones so that I can take my phone from one company to another. If I were to switch to T-Mobile, I’d need to buy a new phone. So whether we’re buying our own phone or accepting a subsidy, we’re talking about significant barriers to exit.

My sister-in-law recently recruited my help to set her up with a modern smartphone and mobile plan for her relocation to Alaska. Alaska is a peculiar case as far as mobile phones (and many, many other things) go, but it got me looking at the various options out there. For a whole lot of people who aren’t me, the arguments in favor of prepaid plans are becoming stronger and stronger. It may even be something I look at when our contract with The Dark Side expires. The prepaid market works more closely to how I think things should work and are increasingly including things – like unlimited whatever – that keep me deciding between the big boys.

Now, most (all?) of those carriers rely on either AT&T and Verizon’s networks (do any of them use Sprint?). Which makes me wonder about the long-term viability of this, if their leasing out their lines is cannibalizing their own business. I don’t think such leasing is actually required (I remember reading that T-Mobile was approached but declined), so if the downmarket carriers get too competitive, the big two can put a stop to that.

Honestly, though, I’d actually consider it desirable to have two overlapping national networks if we ended up primarily having competition on the storefront level.

The other day at Safeway I happened to end up in line in front of the young lady I sold Crayola, my old Ford Escort, too. I was particularly happy to sell the car to exactly the kind of person she was: young and poor. I offered the car for a really low price and even knocked another $150 off after I met her and her boyfriend, the prototypical struggling young couple. I almost had an offer for the full asking price, but I ended up glad that didn’t work out because it was a gift for a grandson who was apparently less than impressed that his first car was going to be a compact. I wanted the car to go to someone that would appreciate it the same way I appreciated having any car that would run.

While we were waiting, I asked them whether they still had the car, and they did! I thought that I had seen it around town, but I hadn’t seen it in a while. Apparently, the old car successfully drove from the Mountain West, to the Great Plains, to the Texas, and back. I was pretty stunned since I had become reluctant to try to drive it to Redstone.

I will confess, however, that “wait, so you’re saying I could have held on to that car for two more years?!” crossed my mind. But a greater part of me was glad that I didn’t rip them off with a car that had less than a couple months left on it. Besides which, the car had become unreliable in extreme cold conditions. We haven’t really had that since I sold it to them, but piece of mind was also one of the things we purchased along with the new car and warranty plan. Also, with little Lain, the two-door compact would no longer have been useful to us anyway.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law is asking me about smartphones and is interested in upgrading to one. That sort of stuff makes my day to begin with, but it worked out even better when it turned out that a phone I have that’s been gathering dust (literally – I’m looking at it now and it’s very dusty) fit her needs perfectly.

I always like it when things I can no longer use can find a home with someone who needs them.

A little while ago, I got a really sweet deal on a used smartphone off eBay. It had a crack running through a corner of it and was a lower-range model to begin with (though the specs were fine). I buy most of my smartphones off eBay, and there have rarely been problems. I’d recommend it, generally. This post is not one an “I got ripped off by eBay posts”.

However, this purchase started off on an odd foot. The seller had not reset the device, so after booting up the phone, I was locked out of it. Not a big deal as I could reset the device myself. After that, I set the phone aside to take a look at when I got the time. When I picked the phone up again a week later, I learned that not only had the device not been reset, it hadn’t been deactivated. It was still receiving text messages and calls.

I did my part. I contacted my carrier to inform them that somebody out there (at [phone number]) was still being charged for a voice and data plan that they weren’t using. I was informed that unless the account-holder called, there was nothing I could do. (They also informed me that I couldn’t activate my new/used phone until it had been deactivated by the accountholder of the number it was assigned to.) I also found the email address of the original owner of the phone. I wrote them an email explaining the situation and that they needed to contact the carrier to cancel their coverage.

To which I got a six word response: “Who are you? Leave me alone.” I started to respond, but then realized that I was merely repeating what I’d said in my last email. The end result of all of this being that some girl or woman in the rust belt is going to be continually charged for a wireless phoneline that she isn’t using. She’ll probably be wondering why they are contacting her since she dispatched the phone and that obviously terminates the account right? At some point, debt collectors will be involved. Her current balance is over $1,000 in payment due.

Meanwhile, I have a smartphone that I can’t really use yet. Actually, I could use it as a separate phone line if I were so inclined. But I have a phone. I bought this for backup purposes in case I lost my phone. I assume that service will indeed be cut off at some point. Hopefully before I need this one. The next-to-last text message said that I needed to contact the carrier within 24 hours. That was over 24 hours ago, and I just got a text message from an irate friend wondering why he or she is being ignored.

It’s actually somewhat amazing to me that I have never actually lost a cell phone. I ran over one, once. I crushed one under an exercise bike. (By the way, never insure your smartphone. Trust me.) I have misplaced my phone on a couple of occasions, but I was quick to realize it was gone and recovered it.

Of course, I don’t know if she lost this phone, whether it was stolen*, or whether she just sold it. The bigger issue is that upon the dispatching or disappearance of the phone, she didn’t get it replaced or cancel the account. This is actually the sort of thing that I am bad at when it comes to wallets. I wait a week or two for it to pop up. I keep an eye on my credit card usage, and then if it hasn’t popped up I start making the calls.

I get the sense that there is no such deliberate process involved with the original owner of this phone. That she is like the guy who thinks that since his car was repossessed that his relationship with the creditors was terminated. These are the sorts of things that genuinely depress me. We live in an increasingly complicated world. The deck is enormously stacked against those who aren’t equipped for it.

* – A lot of people are under the impression that used phones are always stolen. I’ve actually never bought into this. As people continually upgrade or replace their phones, the old phones have to go somewhere. In any event, the girl in question had an opportunity to declare it stolen. She didn’t. My conscience is clean.

The situation with Audible has been resolved. The issue, basically, is that when I signed up for an account, they gave me two. One had an account, one didn’t. When I asked them to delete the surplus account, there was some resistence on the basis that there was no reason to since it didn’t hurt to have the second account, but once I explained the problem with email confusion over the status of my membership, they killed the account.

The situation with the optometrist has not been resolved and has in fact gotten worse. When they finally send the prescription to Walmart, they sent a contacts prescription. I don’t need contacts, I need glasses. I haven’t been able to check with them in order to see whether or not they even have a glasses prescription or whether they were under the impression that it was specifically for contacts. I’m never going to get my new glasses. If I have to get a glasses prescription, I’m just going to go to the Walmart eye center. The most frustrating thing about all of this is that my vision hasn’t changed. This was confirmed on my last visit.