34/365 – 10/31/09

23/365 – 10/20/2009

24/365 – 10/21/2009

16/365 – 10/13/2009

17/365 – 10/14/2009

18/365 – 10/15/2009

19/365 – 10/16/2009

20/365 – 10/17/2009

21/365 -10/18/2009

Finally decided to take the plunge over the weekend and upgrade my iPhone 3G to the 3Gs!!!

I had become so frustrated with the speed of the 3G. Hopefully, the 3Gs will be significantly faster. So thats my new toy to play with. I’m looking forward to a better camera. Ideally, it may be able to replace a point and shoot.

8/365 – 10/5/2009

9/365 – 10/6/2009

10/365 – 10/7/2009

11/365 – 10/8/2009

12/365 – 10/9/2009

13/365 – 10/10/2009

14/365 – 10/11/2009

I use iPhoto primarily for what  I consider personal shots (shots w/ friends, family, camera phone etc) mostly because I had the library organized the way I wanted using folders and, when I first moved to a Mac, iPhoto understood this organization. I use Aperture for more what I consider my photo projects which has become the lion share of current photos taken.

Now I find Aperture more difficult to use (I am not as fast with it) but very powerful, while iPhoto is quick and easy to use. specially for just the random vacation shots (with Faces and Places).

The problem I’m finding is more and more of the pictures I take cross between these two applications. So I end up importing from a camera into one application and then exporting out some photos and re-importing into the other application. That’s not too difficult, but the line between which application to use is increasingly blurring.

To compound the matter, I essentially have to pick one application to share photos with my Apple TV and my iPhone. So on my portable device I 1) either pick Aperture or iPhoto to carry with me, or 2) re-import photos from the other application I want to have with me, or 3) consolidate all my pictures into Aperture (really, I’m not going back to iPhoto for all my project photos).

Does anyone else use these two applications together, or have any suggestions? I’m really not looking forward to the idea of bringing over all my iPhoto pictures into Aperture and reorganizing them but, that may be my only option.

1/365 – 9/28/2009

2/365 -9/29/2009

3/365 – 9/30/2009

4/265 – 10/1/2009

5/365 – 10/2/2009

6/365 – 10/3/365

7/365 – 10/4/365

See you next week!

I do like the 50mm lens, I feel it makes the photographer move to compose the frame. However, seeing as how I’m still working back into shooting I’ve decided to be a little less restrictive with my 365 project (come on 365 days is a long time!) in hopes that by providing myself the flexibility to use other lenses and cameras I can improve my overall skill.

So here are my own self-dictated rules:

1) at least ONE photograph taken per day (Now I know there will be days when it just doesnt happen, but the goal is at least one photo a day).

2) Can use any camera and lens combination (I’m even going to allow my iPhone in this category but seriously hoping that I don’t end up using it very often. The goal is to get me out shooting, not reaching for my phone).

3) I’ll post the one photograph of the day to the Flickr set I’ve set up. Now the posting will likely not be everyday so I’ll try to get them up as often as possible. I’ll also likely end up doing a weekly summary here.

4) That’s it…. I think.

While I’m not limiting myself to only 50mm shots, one of my goals will be to use the lens as often as possible in order to force a different prospective. Feel free to add anything in the comments.

And with that, the first picture 1/365 – 9/28/2009

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big twitter user. Previously, I’ve tried to find the perfect twitter client for me (worked only so well). However, recently I’ve started to feel the brunt of twitter (coupled with Google Reader) overload. I follow a good number of people and do try to read everything that comes across, which I feel is part of the problem I’m now facing. I’ve being coming around to the idea that twitter is a lot about stepping into the stream and then back out, consuming what you want while in the stream and ignoring what happens when not.

As a result, earlier this week I started to pair back on some of the people (in many cases bots) that I followed. For most of these twitter feeds I simply moved them from my twitter timeline and into Google reader as RSS feeds. So far, it’s been an enjoyable experience. Most of the users I transitioned were feeds or users who posted a lot of links; being able to consuming these links during my RSS time seems more efficient.

Now I’m left with one more issue to tackle, within my twitter stream there people I follow that I would prefer to see all tweets from, or at least the majority of them, even for the periods that I am “out of the stream”. Sure, I could add these to SMS notifications but I really hate twitter over SMS. The iPhone handles SMS poorly and I already get too many notifications on my iPhone. So I’m looking for an alternative to SMS for a subset of the people I follow.

I’ve considered hiring a programmer to modify the email twitter client that I had made to only email me tweets from select users in my feed. I like this idea; it allows me to continue to manage just one list of friends and the ability to read all the tweets no matter how long I am out of the stream. The downsides: 1) cost, hiring a programmer=$, 2) since I spend a lot of time in my main stream there’s the risk too many emails will pile up and go unmanaged from the time I’m in the stream and I’ll end up ignoring these emails during the times I anticipated using the system.

At this point I am going to try and setup an additional twitter account to follow this subset of people and launch that timeline when need be. The downside is maintaining two accounts and the potential confusion other people may have with the situation (so if you get followed by my second account you knows what’s up). The advantage being it should take quite a while for 200 tweets (the upper limit for most twitter clients to pull) to cycle through this timeline.

So I’m looking for alternative and am open to any suggestions, please let me know if you have any thoughts.

Brad’s post raised a tangential question I had, which is the purpose of this post, how does Apple’s licensing of Active Sync affect Google’s attempt at interfacing with Snow Leopard’s native applications? A while back Google licensed Active Sync from Microsoft for use in their Google Sync product which helps connect Outlook and other handheld devices to Google apps. So now that Apple’s native apps can sync with Exchange and Google Apps have Active Sync capabilities when will Google Apps  sync with Snow Leopards native apps? Brad ponders that the Apple license may in an attempt to keep Google Apps out of the enterprise, but if Google is able to utilize their licensed Active Sync protocol do eventually Google and Apple do and end run around Microsoft and control the enterprise back-end and front-end? This of course assumes that enterprises would be willing to switch to Google Apps, which is still unproven. But as a user of Google Apps, I’m left wondering will I shortly have built in sync for all services between Google and OS X’s apps?

Besides an iTunes in the cloud, i think updated iPod touch’s that include GPS and a camera would be nice. Not necessary but nice. I would actually like a large capacity Touch to put all my media on that would have GPS (camera don’t care so much about) to travel with. As a result of the limited iPhone battery and my constant usage of the device I’m basically unable to play music on the iPhone and would shell out for a second device to travel with. Even more impressive would be functionality to keep two device “in sync” so that application data would be shared between two device. The goal being a seemless user experience transition between devices (including data stored in applications) *even more important for an Apple Tablet, assuming it runs an iPhone like OS*.

On a related topic, come on Apple why can I not sync my iPhone/iPod Touch with my Mac via Wi-Fi if I’m on the same network? That would simplify things greatly.

Until google creates an official option, does anyone know of a work around?

Bugging me the most lately is the fact that you can not end a call (unless you are using a headset) without first clearing through (selecting close or view) EVERY text message received while on the call.

This may not seem that annoying, but with how often I get SMS messages from twitter and other people cobmined with confrence calls it becomes really annoying. Even for the short calls.  I REALLY JUST WANT TO END MY CALL, I’LL DEAL WITH THE TEXT MESSAGES LATER.  What I don’t want to happen is for me to forget about the text messages just so I can end a call.

Please Apple fix this.

What little quarks about the iPhone aggravate you?

After a few weeks of internet research of sailing schools in the Annapolis, MD area I decided to attend JWorld Annapolis. I chose JWorld because of the high frequency the school was recommended in online forums,  how highly people spoke of the school, and because the school’s focus is more on performance and racing rather than just cursing around the bay (If I’m going to do something, I might as well be able to do it well, or at least try to).

My week of “school” was the last week in July and in one word it was AMAZING! The staff was friendly and very knowledgeable and the boats (J80’s) were great. It was a pleasure learning on such a high performance boat. With one other student in my class for the week and the nearly 7 hours a day of sailing I received a great deal of personal attention and training which gave the the confidence to want to spend more time sailing.

Now that I am hooked I look forward to finding a boat I can use frequently and trying to make it up to Annapolis as often as I can for the Thursday night races. I recommend JWorld to anyone looking for a sailing school in Annapolis. And if anyone is looking for a sailing partner let me know, I’m always up for a sail.

Shot from JWorld (via Flickr)

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know I am not a fan of the road construction! Granted, one could make the argument if the repairs were not done than the poor quality of roads would result in wasted time and damage expense. However, in my limited experience thus far, I feel the roads that fall into the later category are not under construction but the roads I never had a problem with are all torn up.

Hopefully it’s better elsewhere, or at the very least someone considered the impact on the individual before starting these projects.

Below is the UPS.com tracking, Product shipped and delivered in 11 hours 45 min on a Saturday! Thank you Amazon.com and UPS

Click to enlarge

The EZ-Pass lane was actually moving while all the other toll lanes were backed up for about 2 miles. A quick glance at many of the license plates revealed many of the cars were from DC, MD, VA, and PA. So I’m wondering how many people in the these states do not have EZ-Pass and why. One of the first things I did when I got my car was to get an EZ-Pass, I rarely use it, but it is always faster. Why do people not have EZ-Passes? it baffles me.

Via: Dataviz

Thanks Slate.com

Click to open

View Set at Flickr

No more fish in the sea. Interesting data on the change in fish stock.

From dataviz

Click to play the slideshow

Visit the slidshow at Flickr

Visit the photo set at Flickr

Click to play

Click to pay at Flickr

Click to view set at Flickr

Click to play

View Set at Flickr

Play slide show at Flickr

The Worlds resources.

Via -dataviz:

There are a few things to note regarding the sync function, which I have been told they are working to speed up. First, group members really only sync every 20 minutes, so you should run an instance for at least 20 minutes to make sure the changes get pushed to the server. Second, when you launch TweetDeck on a second machine it appears when the application sync the new group list the users will not actually be filtered until a NEW tweet is recenved from that user, at that point prior loaded tweets from that user will be properly filtered.

All together, a good update to TweetDeck and I am glad to see them responding so quickly to bugs!.

Highlighting a few changes besides the design, first, I’ve added a new tab at the top for my tumblr like blog, Tumblelog, for more “life streaming” posts (for now these posts will also appear on the home page). Second, the other new tab at the top for photography will link to posts and galleries I’ve posted. Otherwise the updates are mostly cosmetic.

Besides linking to my John Milner twitter account on the right side, I’ve decided to test out a new twitter account that will post blog updates (will post more on this later), so feel free to grab the RSS feed or email updates on the right side or the blog update twitter feed here at @JMBlogUpdate.

- John Milner

Issue

Group names will sync between all tweetdeck installs but members of the each group DO NOT sync between machines in all cases. I don’t know exactly what the issue is but, in 3 entire fresh starts I have been able to replicate that group members do not sync in their entirety (actually its more like 5% of group members sync). I have a hunch part of the issue relates to the follower list tweetdeck loads. According to tweetdeck’s feedback forum many users (those who follow mare then 100 people) will not have all the users they follow in their local list (for groups or auto complete). According to Tweetdeck, this is because they only pull the last 100 and then builds the list as the application gains “experience” and is done in order to save on API calls. In general, I am fine with the approach as it shouldn’t be a big issue. However, where it seems to be a major issue in the only tweetdeck group members that appear to sync are those that are included in the local copy of the following list. I can not confirm this, but it appears to be the case through my testing.

Conclusion (sorry I know I’m jumping a step but my ADD and all)

Tweetdeck syncing will not work for people who follow more than 100 people OR there is another flaw that prohibits tweetdeck from actually syncing all group members across all machines.

Testing

As I mentioned, I have spent hours trying to get this to work over the last few days to no avail through three separate tests.

First, since I had been using tweetdeck prior to the 0.26 release (which provided the syncing capability) on my work PC for about a week, I already had approx 5 groups set up which was working just fine (again it was only on one machine). With the 0.26 release I upgraded, created a tweetdeck account, and began syncing. After syncing my work PC (which had the base tweetdeck) I proceeded to install tweetdeck on my home Mac (there was a previous version installed so it was a replace) and use the “I already have a tweetdeck account” option. Upon syncing my home Mac I noticed all my groups were present, but people that I had placed into groups were appearing in “all friends” but not in the groups they were assigned to on my work PC. I also tried out the iPhone application and again, all the groups were there but the users in the groups were wrong. Changes that were made on the iPhone were not replicated on the Mac or the work PC. In short, I had all the same group names but across machines none of the groups had the same members. Painful. During this period tweetdeck did quickly release 2 updates, up to 0.26.2, all of which I installed.

Thinking maybe I had jumped the gun and having read similar reports I decided to try setting up a new tweetdeck account. Thus my second test. I started by removing all the groups from my home Mac (and from the server). I then created a new tweetdeck account and proceeded to recreate my groups and spent an hour or two over the day repopulating the groups in tweetdeck. At this point this is the only machine that has run tweetdeck linked to this new account. After I had pretty good coverage of my groups in tweetdeck, I then removed all the groups from my work PC instance of tweetdeck, removed the old tweetdeck account, restarted, and added my new (the second) tweetdeck account. Again, all my groups I had created on the home Mac appeared on the work PC but the group members were not complete. People that were clearly in the “friend” group on the home Mac where not members of the “friend” group on the work PC, same thing when I tried the new tweetdeck account on my iPhone.

For the third and finial attempt, I did a clean install of tweetdeck on my home Mac (everything including Adobe Air was reinstalled with all the preferences removed). I set up tweetdeck with my twitter credentials, and created a new, third, tweetdeck account. Again, I proceeded over the course of a day, to propagate new groups in this fresh install of tweetdeck and this third account. During this time my home Mac was the only machine running tweetdeck. The following day (allowing time in case the server needed time, why I don’t know), I did a clean install of the latest tweetdeck on my work PC (yes, I removed all settings and preferences and started clean), after loading tweetdeck on my work PC I logged in with this third tweetdeck account, again all the groups synced and appeared but only a handful of the group members actually synced. Again, a totally failure and waste of time.

Observation

I will note here, that in each of these three cases I was building the groups using the “user-> add to group” feature of each tweet, I HAD to do this because the “edit this group” listing did not have all a complete list of everyone I follow. I also noted that if I had added group members using the “user-> add to group” function on an individual tweet and then edited the group using the “edit group” listing , and saved changes, those people who where not present in the local listing of people I’m following were no longer members of that group as new tweets came in. This was observed on the same machine without another machine syncing with the account. As a result, I believe when tweetdeck sync the members of a group it relies or requires those users to be part of the local “people I’m following” list to be included in the local group, if those users are not present in the local list they are no added to the group on the local machine but will still be part of the group on the machine I create the group on. Moreover, it’s entirely random that tweetdeck does not add users to this local list when I add them to a group and they are not already present in the local listing of people I am following. These observations lead to my conclusion regarding the incomplete listing of people I am following in tweetdeck and its impact on its syncing.

I’m going to go try Seesmic desktop now, and it appears you can do your own syncing of groups and with their historic rapid development and upcoming iPhone app I can only assume group syncing will be included, and that it will work from the start. Fingers crossed.

UPDATED: update posted on 7-20-09 here.

Thanks to The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien

I didn’t really know what to do until i came across this excellent post from Eric about organizing reader feeds. So i decided to give it a whirl. I spent a hour going through my feeds (cutting some out) and organizing them into 6 folders based on when i should read them or their type.

Tier 1 – those that i read throughout the day. Feeds like breaking news, friends blogs, time sensitive feeds (mostly financial related) and blogs that i consider to be thought leadership. This tier gets the most attention.

Tier 2 – feeds to read in the morning or throughout the day if time permits. This tier is mostly news feeds from the mainstream sources.

Tier 3 – feeds that i should read in the evening should time permit. Included in this tier are mostly blogs related to news and local happenings as well as blogs from more random sources but are current events driven.

Tier 4 – these are prolific technology related feeds (like engadget) that I try to get to once a day, but will get to at some point.

Tier 5 – these are feeds from news sources or blogs are often updated but i place less value on them. This tier i read if i have extra time. However, having them in their own folder makes it easy to hit mark all as read. This is the “nice to have” folder.

Tier 6 – these feeds related to hobbies and lower priority things, that i read on the weekends or when i have free time. They are not time sensitive, so it really doesn’t matter when i get to them. For example, recipes and photography related feeds.

I’ve been doing this for a few days and so far I am really happy so far with this layout. Its has really simplified things. The only feature that i would like Google Reader to add is the ability to nessle folders.Thanks Eric!

Every few miniutes the script running on a web server connects to Twitter and send me an email for each tweet from my timeline, my friends timeline, and reply’s. Each email is fully customiable via a tempalte, so ive spent some time develping a tempalte that works for me. As you can see by the image below, it includes the thumbnail, metadata, and links to reply, DM, or RT the post via email using twitermail.com.

From an organizational perspective it works wonderful. I use gmail with tags and filters i am able to continually refine the organization of how i read Twitter. For example, all tweets are given the same label and archived so none appear in my inbox and i can visit one label to see everything. From here i’ve divided up the people that i follow into different groups, you’ve got those people that i personally know, people that i always what to see their tweet and never miss one, news or other information feeds, day traders, investors, new people that i’m following, macro economics, and so on. Really the possibly are endless with tagging (which you already know) And with the speed of gmails web client its very quick to key through each post as its own email or just review the subjects (which also have the tweet text, or one could make the subject just have the username whatever) for a quick scan.

I really consider this nearly close to perfect. Much like tweetdeck (which i think is really cool) but accessable anywhere on any computer or my iphone.

So now that I’ve told you why this is now my favorite twitter client de jour there are some downsides. First and foremost the way its currently set up to post tweets, reply, and re-tweets via twittermail.com (which is a great service) However, in Gmail there is no way that i have found to count the characters in my tweet (if anyone knows how to do this, please let me know). That causes problems as a result, I often end up posting with another client like twitterfox. Second, because the tweets are sent to my email its becoming more and more easy to ignore the Twitter traffic for longer periods at a time resulting in more tweets to sort through at any one point it time (this is good and bad). and third, the UI and functionality is all based on email which is somewhat limiting, however having everything come to one place email and twitter is wonderful. All that said, i really like the ability to catch up on all of twitter exactly from where i left off no matter what computer I am using online or offline, espcially in Apple Mail.app and the imap client of my iPhone.

The question is does anyone else think such a client would be benificial to them? This might be a concept that I try to build out to multi-user client but only if there seems to be enough demand. Please let me now what throughts or recomendations you might have on such a client.

Right now I am in search of the *perfect* Twitter client.

Presently I use twitter all the devices that I have, my iPhone, BlackBerry, Mac’s , PC, and via SMS. On my iPhone and on my two Mac’s I really like Twitterriffic. Its simple quick and pulls a lot of back tweets (the biggest problem is when switching between machines I don’t know where I left off). However, I have yet to find an equivalent on the PC side. I’ve tried Twhril, Spaz, TweetDeck, and OutTwit. Twhril is the closest example, but I’m not sure that is what I am looking for. In fact I like Outtwit the best, although it has some limitations.

The biggest determination as to what is the *best* twitter client I believe centers around how you want to use Twitter. I know Guy Kawasaki uses TweetDeck and only has replies and searches presented. For me Twitterriffic is great on my iPhone because it displays the latest tweets to me in a clear and simple interface. On my Mac’s its great for the same reasons, but I use my Mac’s as my personal machines while I am at home not working. As a result I am either actively using Twitter or it’s running during a period of low activity and unread stored tweets are rarely ever pushed off the timeline. However, what happens while I’m traveling spending hours at a time on flights, or during a normal work day sitting at my work PC where I rarely have the time to be constantly checking the timeline and often hours may go by between reading the timeline. In such a situation even Twitterriffic wouldn’t work very well. At least Outtwit is integrated into Outlook so it stores my timeline so I can read it offline or comeback to it after I’ve reconnected but it doesn’t fetch enough tweet’s and its not accessible on other devices.

So what would the perfect Twitter client be in my mind?

Something like NewsGator I believe would be an idea Twitter client. When I first started using RSS feeds I was quickly drawn to NewsGator for the Ability to have the feeds always updating in the cloud and then accessible from different machines using different interfaces while maintaining the read/ unread/ flagged status. Such a solution would be idea. And I would be the first PAYING customer of such a solution (yes I would actually pay a moderate subscription service for this). However, to recreate such a service would take considerable resources (Hey NewsGator, maybe you should add Twitter into your system!).

The second best solution in my mind would be for an email based client. A system that would send an email for each post in my friends and my timeline, replies, direct message (if I wanted duplication). Of course the first reaction is; wow what a boat load of email, and that’s true it would be a large volume of email. With some filtering it would all go into a folder(s) and one could set rules so that tweets deemed important (based on sender or keywords) had some other action taken (Now that I use gmail rather than Exchange for my email, this would be very easy and accessible. Not to mention quick and easy to use from the website and keyboard shortcuts).

What benefits would this solution provide?

1) Online and offline access to my entire timeline regardless of when I last accessed Twitter.com or any of the local clients

2) Mobile access: have the folder/ tag sync with your blackberry/ iPhone

3) Always knowing where you left off in your timeline and never miss a tweet.

4) An easy way of saving Tweets/ URL’s you want to revisit at a later time.

Obviously the biggest competitor and most obvious substitute to this would be twitter.com itself. I believe a lot of people would say; if you want to go back in time go to twitter.com. Which I fully agree with however, I almost never go to twitter.com mainly because I never know where I left off last time or I spend way to long looking for that spot. To some people they may not care. Personally I do care and believe there are other people out there like myself.

The other large concern would be the interaction with Twitter. This is by far the biggest problem I see. How would one post, reply, DM another user if it all came through email. Well there are some easy workarounds but none would be nearly as good as a local client.

1) You could use Twittermail to email in tweets (the easiest and most ubiquitous way, but it would require copying and pasting usernames if you didn’t know them and that’s not the easiest thing on the iPhone).

2) One could build in some type of reply email gateway like Twittermail.

3) Use a local client only for posting when one is available.

So I am going to see if I can have a proof of concept built for me to play around with. In many respects this would act just as Outtwit does now (I get the posts into a folder in my inbox, but it would be universally accessible and ubiquitous)

I would like any feedback you may have on such a service and/or your thoughts are on the best twitter clients for your use!

UPDATE: See this post about the twitter client I had built to suit my needs.

Usually I’ve got books, tablets of paper, files, and other junk. But as I sit here on a flight writting this on my iPhone (wordpress app) looking at what I’m carrying I have virtually no paper except for a few business cards, boarding pass, and a passport.

This time in place of the bulky paper I’ve got my macbook air, iPhone, blackberry, and kindle. The best part, it all fits nicely in a very slim bag giving my shoulder a break for my camera bag with my cannon 50D, lenses, and a flip video.

I’m carrying less than I normally would and hopefully am able to be more productive. Only thing I’m going to miss… Always on 3G data. No way am I using iPhone data out of the country.

Over the last week after canceling my service with Comcast I am getting up to 2 recorded phone calls per day (at really bad times). There is no one on the other line, just a recording. Comcast, if its that urgent you contact me PICK UP THE PHONE AND HAVE A PERSON CALL!!!!! Don’t give me this crap with a recording to call a number. I’m not a customer anymore, Idont care about my service with you any more. Comcast your the company that drove me to Verizon Fios, STOP calling with a recording! Here are my tirades on Twitter about my service.

Now these calls have got me looking at my bill. There is now a $101 “one time charge” on the bill. I call and ask what its for, but customer service cant give me a straight answer. They say I am owed a refund of $13 though.However, i wont be able to see if that’s been changed until my finial statement in about 3 weeks.

I now have a belief Comcast is over billing me.

I’ll let you know what comes of my research but the back of the envelop math doesn’t make sense. If i canceled a few days into my new service (aprox $140/mo) and there was a $101 change that was reversed i believe the refund should be larger than $13 ( (140/30)*5 (est days in new billing cycle)=$24, $101-$24 = $77 not $13) But who knows what elseComcast has decided to throw in there.

At the end of the day avoid Comcast at all costs!

The installation went smoothly for the most part. From start to finish it took just under two hours. The installer was very helpfully and did not appear to be in a rush (more  than that I say about myComcast experiences). He introduced himself and walked me through what he was going to-do during the install and consulted me on how I wanted the service set up. One downside, he didn’t come withCableCards (apparently i didn’t get the order for them in time to make it on the truck) However, the installer set me up with an extra HD set top box until the cable cards arrive. That was a nice gesture. Overall the installation was easy everything was set up from the hallway telephone room, the only hardware in my unit is the set top boxes, modem, and router. The first router he tried wasn’t functioning correctly, the second router he triedworkes just fine. Upon completing the install he walked me through the system and interface.
First impressions of Fios, WOW! the quality is amazing and the speed of the TV interface is incredible. The guide and UI is beautiful. The picture quality on my SD TV has improved from a very washed out image to an incredible sharp image.

One positive, with the expanded channel lineup i now i have 3 CNBC channels (CNBC, CNBC World, and CNBC HD) to laugh at the octa or decabox lineup! Fios does have Bloomberg as a dedicated channel which is awesome.

I am very happy with Fios so far. I do believe this was a great switch. Time will tell how well CableCards will work (will post again once they arrive). Again I Cant believe I didn’t make this switch earlier. If you can get Fios i highly recommend it.

Last week:
My TiVo arrived and I scheduled a visit from Comcast to install the required Cablecards to receive encrypted and HD channels. The install was schedule from 9am to noon on Saturday. Prior to Saturday I setup the TiVo as recommended and made sure it was up-to-date.

On Saturday the installer arrived at 1:15pm an hour and 15 minutes late without a notice phone call. )Wow, what’s new Comcast late again. At least this time it wasn’t 4 hours late like last time.) The installer ended up butching the job. He installed one card and before he tested it he tried to install the second card. Upon inserting the second card the TiVo began a cable company required firmware update to the cablecard. The tech not wanting to wait up to an hour to see the update complete removed the card, despite the warning message to the contrary, and re-inserted the card. Again the TiVo tried to update the firmware. Not wanting to wait the installer left to take care of another call in my high-rise (which was fine by me), upon returning a half hour later the card was still “updating”. Guess what… he didn’t want to wait. So he called in the details of the first card to activate on the Comcast network. He said it was activated, but we couldn’t test it because the second card was still “updating”. The tech said to just let it update, and give him a call to activate in on the network, and took off. He also left with my old working HD box (I should not have let that happen).

Two or so hours later the card was still updating the firmware. At this point Google had told me the card is not going to work. I removed the card and tried to test the first card. Guess what…. no channels came through (except for broadcast channels).

So the installer has left with my working box, did not test the first card and now i have two bum cablecards and no working cable (beyond basic). A call to Comcast to explain the situation didn’t get me very far. They were respectfully and sympathetic but the best they could do is have a truck roll on Thursday (a full 5 days away) until then I will be without most all cable channels, including the Redskins game and Entourage. Frankly i found that to be unacceptable, they should have been significantly more responsive to fixing a problem they created.

After hearing this and upset at Comcast I started looking into alternatives. My first thought was Verizon Fios, after being pelted with mailing and flyer’s for their service (I live in a high-rise they have pre-wired for Fios, (I know what was i thinking not going with them to begin with)). After pricing out their services with all the specials they were offering I could get faster* Internet, more channels, more HD Chanel’s, a DRV for my bedroom, and the significantly better picture quality* for $40/mo less than Comcast and to top it off they said they could install on Monday. So I made the jump, and Verizon is scheduled to install my Fios service on Monday. We’ll see if 1) they show up 2) its as good as its promised. But that will be for another post.

My main motivation for switching was not the difference of 4 days, in the grand scheme of things that’s not as important, I still would like cable (that I’M PAYING FOR) this week to work  (especially since no one in this economy is making deals so work is pretty slow and i actually get to have a life this week). The motivation was to stop putting up with the extremely poor customer service I’ve received from Comcast. Nearly every experience in dealing with them has been problematic. They have always been late to appointments, needless hassles with billing problems that take months to resolve and a general lack of effort of the majority of the Comcast people I’ve dealt with.

Hopefully, Fios will be a better solution. It may end up not being, but who knows. I can always go back to the craptastic service Comast has offered me if Fios doesn’t work. But trying something new is worth a shot especially with all the good things i’ve heard about their service. I will report back with my Fios experiences.

In all fairness, after complaining on Twitter and writing an email (after having ordered the Fios service), i did receive response from Comcast that would expedite a resolution, supposedly on Monday, which is nice even if it is a little to late. It is refreshing to see that a few employees actually care about the customer experience, but that’s the exception not the rule in my experience.

* indicates a marketing promise, although i have witnessed the Fios service at friends.

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