30 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

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The Telecom Digest for July 1, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 159 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Your E-Book Is Reading You (Monty Solomon)
"tell me" no more (danny burstein)
For iPhone Users, Plans Get Cheaper (Monty Solomon)
Why the Apple Demographic Is So Important to Orbitz and Retailers (Monty Solomon)
Multiple Missteps Led to RIM's Fall (Monty Solomon)
Twitter's Mobile Ads Begin to Click (Monty Solomon)
A Cheat Sheet for Verizon's New Shared-Data Plans (Monty Solomon)
Five Years of Walt Mossberg's iPhone Reviews (Monty Solomon)

====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using any name or email address included herein for any reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to that person, or email address owner.
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See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.


Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:30:41 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Your E-Book Is Reading You Message-ID: <p062408d1cc1414cf9bb1@[10.0.1.6]> Your E-Book Is Reading You Digital-book publishers and retailers now know more about their readers than ever before. How that's changing the experience of reading. By ALEXANDRA ALTER June 29, 2012 It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader - about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one. In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them. For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public. The major new players in e-book publishing - Amazon, Apple and Google - can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books. ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html ***** Moderator's Note ***** The Wall Street Journal site requires a subscription to read an article. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:05:59 -0400 From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: "tell me" no more Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1206292203560.10429@panix5.panix.com> The "tell me" service, 800 555-tell, which was established a decade or so ago to demonstrate IVR and gave out directory info, stock prices, news, weather, and other useful material... ... has gone offline as of Fri 29-June-2012. If you call the number you get a message saying to pull out your computer and bring up "bing.com". _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:58:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: For iPhone Users, Plans Get Cheaper Message-ID: <p062408d9cc141bc83e06@[10.0.1.6]> For iPhone Users, Plans Get Cheaper By Anton Troianovski and Andrew Dowell June 7, 2012 The economics of the iPhone are changing fast. For years, cheaper, contract-free offers from prepaid wireless carriers got little attention from many consumers because those companies weren't offering the most highly desired phones. That is no longer the case, which means that for people in the market for a new, high-end smartphone, month-to-month plans could be worth another look. On Thursday, Sprint Nextel Corp.'s Virgin Mobile said it would start offering the iPhone, becoming the second prepaid brand after Leap Wireless International's Cricket to carry the Apple Inc. device. The price at Virgin for a 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S is an eye-popping $649. But because Sprint isn't discounting the phone, the company is able to offer monthly plans at much lower prices-as little as $30 a month. As a result, while your up-front cost is higher when signing up with Virgin Mobile, the savings start adding up after about a year. Using plans that offer unlimited voice as a comparison, you'd save $400 in the first year picking a Virgin iPhone over one offered by AT&T or Verizon Wireless. After two years, the savings grows to more than $1,200. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said last week that the savings are compelling, but buyers seem to be very sensitive to increases in the initial cost of the iPhone. AT&T would look at offering such plans if demand holds up, he said. Here's a comparison of how much you'd spend on an iPhone and a wireless service plan with the major U.S. carriers that offer it today: ... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/06/07/for-iphone-users-plans-get-cheaper/
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:01:14 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Why the Apple Demographic Is So Important to Orbitz and Retailers Message-ID: <p062408dacc141c2653fc@[10.0.1.6]> Why the Apple Demographic Is So Important to Orbitz and Retailers June 26, 2012 Many products attract certain personality types. Apple is practically creating its own demographic - one companies like Orbitz are starting to target. Orbitz found that Apple Mac computer users spend more money than their PC counterparts on hotels per night, and stay in higher-ranked hotels. So it has begun showing Mac users costlier hotels in some search results. (Orbitz notes that it doesn't show higher prices for the same hotel that a PC user sees, and all users can sort search results by lowest price.) A variety of researchers have taken a crack at defining the characteristics and behavior of the Apple demographic. The average household income for adult owners of Mac computers is $98,560, compared with $74,452 for a PC owner, according to technology market data firm Forrester. A survey of 24,000 people over the age of 18 in the U.S. from October to December found Mac owners tend to be younger, too, according to consumer data provider BIGinsight.com. Over 41% of Mac owners were 34 years old or younger, compared with 32% for wireless laptop users and 23% for desktop owners, the study found. Owners of other Apple devices had similar traits, with higher incomes than users of BlackBerrys or smartphones running on Google's Android software, according to BIGinsight. ... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/06/26/why-the-apple-demographic-is-so-important-to-orbitz-and-retailers/ -or- http://goo.gl/mtGVz
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:56:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Multiple Missteps Led to RIM's Fall Message-ID: <p062408d8cc141b2b193c@[10.0.1.6]> Multiple Missteps Led to RIM's Fall By WILL CONNORS June 28, 2012 WATERLOO, Ontario - As the BlackBerry smartphone fell steadily further behind app-loaded rivals like the iPhone in recent years, it was time for an unambiguous response from the chief executive's office. At Research In Motion Ltd., however, that was complicated. The BlackBerry maker had two chief executives. Moreover, their offices were about a 10-minute drive apart. Meetings with both of them present were rare, say former RIM executives and people who dealt with the company. Many forces have combined to bring RIM to the point of reporting a quarterly operating loss, as is expected on Thursday, but one of them was a split personality in the executive suite, former executives say. As investor pressure mounted at the company recently, one CEO, company founder Mike Lazaridis, was focused on a make-or-break push to launch a next-generation BlackBerry with a new operating system. His co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, started pursuing a separate strategy that envisioned licensing out some of the company's proprietary technologies. Both men are gone from the CEO suite now, replaced in January by former Lazaridis lieutenant Thorsten Heins. He is slashing costs. RIM says it is committed to seeing through the rollout later this year of its next BlackBerry. But Mr. Heins has hired investment bankers to explore options and hasn't ruled out a sale of a company, whose stock has tanked nearly 70% in 12 months and pushed its market value, at under $5 billion, to less than one-fifteenth of its peak. ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488610583090408.html ***** Moderator's Note ***** The Wall Street Journal site requires a subscription to read an article. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:54:15 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Twitter's Mobile Ads Begin to Click Message-ID: <p062408d7cc141a8cf3ec@[10.0.1.6]> Twitter's Mobile Ads Begin to Click Majority of Revenue on Social Network Comes from Phones; One Advertiser Calls Results Staggering By SHIRA OVIDE June 28, 2012 Twitter Inc. is showing early signs of success selling advertising on mobile devices, an area that is bedeviling Internet companies including Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. On most days, Twitter is now generating the majority of its revenue from ads shown to its users on mobile gadgets, rather than from ads on Twitter.com, company executives said. One key reason: People who see a Twitter ad on their phones are more likely to click or interact with it in some way, which is how Twitter gets paid for advertisements. The San Francisco company has only been offering mobile ads in earnest since April, and some companies buying Twitter ads said they haven't kept tabs on the effectiveness of their campaigns on mobile devices. But P.F. Chang's China Bistro Inc. is among the advertisers that say they were surprised at how many people are clicking on Twitter mobile ads. ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577491170573156612.html ***** Moderator's Note ***** The Wall Street Journal site requires a subscription to read an article. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:02:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: A Cheat Sheet for Verizon's New Shared-Data Plans Message-ID: <p062408dbcc141c9f7040@[10.0.1.6]> A Cheat Sheet for Verizon's New Shared-Data Plans By Anton Troianovski June 12, 2012 Verizon Wireless has just rolled out a complex set of new plans that give users unlimited voice and texts and allows them to share a pot of data among multiple devices. The obvious question: Should you switch? The answer: Only if you're already paying too much. The new plans - which new customers will have to buy after they go into effect June 28 - are cheaper for smartphone subscribers who use unlimited voice and text but little data, but more expensive for subscribers who spend most of their time using data-heavy services. The data plans begin at $50 a month for 1 gigabyte of data and range up to 10 gigabytes for $100 a month. You also pay a monthly device fee of $40 for each smartphone, $30 for each basic phone, $20 for each laptop and $10 for each tablet. The many variables at work make it impossible to say flatly whether the new plans are more or less expensive, but looking at a few options for individuals and families show the dynamics at work. ... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/06/12/a-cheat-sheet-for-verizons-new-shared-data-plans/
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:04:29 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Five Years of Walt Mossberg's iPhone Reviews Message-ID: <p062408ddcc141d1d8de4@[10.0.1.6]> Five Years of Walt Mossberg's iPhone Reviews June 29, 2012 As the iPhone turns five years old today, here's a look back at WSJ columnist Walt Mossberg's reviews of each iPhone over the years. Click on the links [inside the following article] for the full reviews: ... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/06/29/five-years-of-walt-mossbergs-iphone-reviews/
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