MacRonin Consulting

Verizon Plans Wider Options for Cellphone Users - Via NYT > Business: In a major shift for the mobile phone industry, Verizon Wireless said yesterday that it planned to give customers far more choice in what phones they could use on its network and how they use them.

While there are technical limitations involved, the company’s move could lead to an American wireless market that is more like those in Europe and Asia, where a carrier’s customers can use any compatible phone to easily reach a wide array of online services — and take their phones with them when they switch companies. The move, which surprised industry watchers because Verizon Wireless is known to be highly protective of its traditional business, is part of a larger shift in the communications world.

This entry has nothing to do with Privacy, but relates to one of the non-profits I work with. For people who have an association with CIBC World Markets it's a way to benefit a non-profit that won't incur any out of pocket expense. So if you have any affiliation with CIBC World Markets and approve of the goals of Sunflower Children's Fund, please consider actively participating in their Miracle Day 2007 program and please designate Sunflower Children Funds as the beneficiary of your net commissions.

Mark Your Calendars for Wednesday, December 5th! Sunflower Children Funds to participate in CIBC World Markets Miracle Day 2007

One Laptop Per Child, Plus One: " The One Laptop Per Child program has opened its give-one get-one campaign. For a limited time, members of the general public can get in on what’s otherwise a kids-only affair: get a rugged hackable meshable laptop.

iPhone Unlocking Secret Revealed: "The iPhone unlocking story took its next logical turn this week, with the release of a free iPhone unlocking program. Previously, unlocking required buying a commercial program or following a scary sequence of documented hardware and software tweaks.
How this happened is interesting in itself. (Caveat: This is based on the stories I’m hearing; I haven’t confirmed it all myself.) The biggest technical barrier to a software-only unlock procedure was figuring out the unlocking program, once installed on the iPhone, could modify the machine’s innermost configuration information — something that Apple’s iPhone operating system software was trying to prevent. A company called iPhoneSimFree figured out a way to do this, and used it to develop easy-to-use iPhone unlocking software, which they started selling.

John Todd - FreeNum: The Phone Numbers of the Future: In a deceptively straightforward presentation, TalkPlus CTO John Todd lays bare a vision for a global standards-based numbering system free from bureaucratic control and compatible with almost all existing iPBX or SIP proxy platforms and NAPTR addressable protocols.

Amazon.com: Amazon FPS, Amazon Flexible Payment Service: Amazon Web Services:Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon's reliable and scalable payment infrastructure.

openmoko.com: "OpenMoko is a GNU / Linux based open software development platform. Developers have full access to OpenMoko source and they can tailor their implementations to underlying hardware platforms.

OpenMoko is targeted at mobile platforms. We focus on a small footprint and power management. The first hardware delivery platform is an intelligent phone:

Using GoDaddy's Domain Back Order Service: "I recently got the domain name watchingthewatchers.com in a drop when the previous owner let it expire. Since Watching the Watchers has been published at the same name in .org since 2004, we've been losing traffic from people who mistakenly tried the .com and ended up at a parked domain.

To get the domain, I set up an account on GoDaddy and used its domain monitoring and back order service. You can monitor 100 domains for $5.99 and receive email when they're put on hold for non-payment or their status changes in other ways.

Google Video Adverts | Powering On With New Advertising Projects: "
I previously wrote a quick overview of Google’s video advertising endeavors back on April 1st. Now 2 months later Google is powering on and driving more video advertising initiatives off the starting grid.

RSS Web Feeds for Tags at Amazon.com: "Amazon.com just released a new tag-based RSS feed system. While not an Amazon Web Service as such (Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services are technically different organizations), it's a very compelling mashup opportunity--especially because the feeds pass an Amazon Associate ID as a parameter, which creates a unique revenue opportunity for developers.