TracFone Duped Me: Locked Hardware with no warning

I feel like I have been duped. If this had happened to me when I lived in Connecticut, and when Richard
Blumental was still Attorney General, I know what I would have done. I would have gone to his office with my issue. (I think that he was an incredible public advocate for consumers and consumer rights.)

So here is the story. I went to Costa Rica. I knew from prior trips that international calls are expensive as is adding international calling service. Even with international calling service (at a monthly fee), you still pay for both every call made and received. I added international data and texting, but not calling. I did what folks traveling do, I bought an inexpensive phone to use, and then bought a SIM card in the country to use for local phone calls. The local SIM card was inexpensive and gave me a local phone number.

I made a mistake though. I bought a phone, which I thought was just a phone. It was a TracFone.

Nowhere on the packaging does it say it. Nowhere in the agreement of terms and conditions does it say it. It is locked and can ONLY be used with a TracFone SIM card. The physical handset has no markings saying it is TracFone. Nowhere. Not on the case, not on the battery, not on the rest of the guts of the phone. Nowhere. (Bad marketing, by the way.)

I thought I bought a Samsung phone which came with TracFone service.

So not true.

I wound up going to a store in Costa Rica and buying another phone (Nokia, by the way), which is what I will use from now on for international traveling. It worked fine out of the box, and was even charged when I bought it (unlike the TracFone).

I had a series of emails with tech services at TracFone which were entirely unsatisfactory. Of course, I could have been talking with a machine.

They may provide a useful service, and I know some folks who have used it. However, I found them to be totally deceptive in my dealings with them. I recommend you not use them.

Links - Feb/March and LLA warning

Well, it is that time of year again, LLA (Louisiana Library Association) Annual Conference. Look for blog posts on Thursday and Friday.

You have to love this title: Data, data everywhere as a special report from the Economist.

I forget where I picked this up (probably Dorothea Salvo) about Open Access. I am only part way through reading it, but the opening analogy/story sure caught my attention.

Iris does a great job at Pegasus Librarian, and since this is "statistics time of year" for me (parish libraries are submitting their annual statistics, due, by law, by April 1), the title How Big is My Library caught my eye.

WebJunction is hosting a wiki and discussion on the future of libraries. Now I just need to find the time to read it!

Now, I don't do cataloging, and it has been a long time since I did any. I also have not followed the development of FRBR and RDA, except in a very broad way. Jennifer Bowen (of the University of Rochester [NY]) has, and has written a pretty clear article on metadata, libraries and the cataloging principles for ALA TechSource.

Eric Hellman had the opportunity to attend the Google settlement hearing and wrote a nice summary (which has links to other summaries).

I recently updated my"ALA 101" posts to reflect name changes in divisions. April Bunn, Media Specialist, has written in Library Garden about the fact that AASL is going back to calling themselves librarians! [My favorite job title was when I was "City Librarian!"]

Peter Bromberg has an interesting take on privacy (also in Library Garden).

Jenny Levine (the tech maven on staff at ALA) has a great post on Library 2.0 including some of the recent discussions. (Like Andy Woodworth's "Deconstructing Library 2.0.")

Starr Hoffman, in geeky artist librarian, has a long (for her) post on the academic library mission. Maybe it is the work I have been doing on MPOW's planning that is keeping me so in tune with this topic, but there are some good thoughts here.

Two web items from AARP (yes, I am that old!). Both relate to changes in the workforce:

1. Communication styles vary between generations; and
2. The demographics of the workforce are changing.
   

One of the themes I used to hear from NextGen librarians was about their insecurity in feeling like they don't really know what they are doing. Most of us will admit that there have been times when each of us has felt that way (no matter which "Gen" you fall into!). Steve Schwartz has written an interesting post on this theme.

This probably falls into the category of folks not completely thinking through all of the implications of a name: iMaxi: Finally, the iPad Gets the Protection it Deserves

One of my college buddies has co-written a very long, thoughtful post about the health care conversation. I am not sure I agree with it all, but it is important to pay attention to the thoughtful items!

This piece talks about how to find things inside slide presentations posted on the 'net. It would seem to be a useful resource.

Dorothea Salvo did something that I should probably do, but won't until after the weekend. She expicitly talks about the shift in focus of her blog, and even edited the tag line. [Stay tuned, folks!]

Links and miscellany

Most recently, I have been collecting interesting links from both Twitter and my Bloglines account. I have gotten into the habit of just leaving the link open in a tab in my browser. Well, it is time to clean up again. Some of the titles are self-evident, but I have added comments to some of them.

And now in categories!

Broadband:

Bringing Broadband to Rural America (the official FCC report)

Broadband Nation. A new blog about broadband issues.

Bringing in Broadband. The issues in one Florida county.

Mapping Broadband. This person/organization may well not be a friend for libraries.

Lobbying the FCC for access and no caps.

New technology and Web 2.0

Paper Highlights Pros and Cons of Twittering at Academic Conferences

"librarians express affection through information"

Resolving the 80/20 dilemma "End users are spending less time on gathering the information they need – but their search failure rate is going up." A great article of importance to all librarians, but this one is focused on special/corporate libraries.

Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment This links to a much longer PDF file on the Cambridge University web site

Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google Cory Doctorow in the Guardian

Study: Unselfish Individuals Benefit in Social Networks

9 simple suggestions for using social media

Twitter in the workplace. This is a presentation for government leaders on the use of Twitter.

Intellectual Property issues (IP)

IP rights and the Blind The US, Canada, and the EU try to limit the rights of blind people to use technology to receive written material -- Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing

IP: File sharing and Copyright. I have not read the full article (a link to the PDF is here), but the summary presents the intellectual property issues in file sharing in a new light. (Hmmm, maybe a full post is coming.)

Publishers are trying to avoid the Music industry's mistakes.

ALA

All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go: A Survey of ALA Emerging Leaders

General Library stuff:

Mommy haven takes a hit in down economy

How to love your library

The 'M' word always has good stuff about library marketing. Nancy Dowd does a good job, this one is on the future of the media we will need to deal with. {Memo to grammar caucus fans...I did that on purpose.}

Darien Library's new brand image was picked up from John Blyberg. Check out the other clients here.

Job seekers at the library. While this is not new, there are some interesting statistics at the end. I also have to comment that when I first looked at this site, I thought I was at NOLA.com which is the site for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Freemium A new way of thinking about library services and charging for them.

The Big Picture

Google takes on Amazon from the New York Times...and it is only for e-books.

Communicating a message. An interesting re-post from Stephen Abram on the differences that the wording of a message can make.

Personal

Free Range Librarian on where she is in her life and in her blogging life. It is actually a little similar to where I am.

Hot flashes -- a new perspective I found this one absolutely fascinating.

Want. Need I say more?

The rise and fall of LSU. I am not completely sure of the author's credentials, but it certainly is an interesting perspective on the positioning of state universities within the state power structure.

Links and miscellany

Somehow, with keeping up on Twitter and blog reading, I seem to have hit "the motherload" today. So, as I sit and wait for the sleep study to begin, here is today's harvest:

27 things to do before a conference. Stephen Abram pointed to this site, which I thought was going to be from him. Chris Brogan looks like someone I know, but in checking out his site, it is clear that I do not know him.

Leaders make the future. Jeff de Cagna of Principled Innovation (a blog I picked up from Mary Ghikas at ALA), did a podcast with the author of this book. There is some good content on the website without listening to the podcast (which I will admit that I have not done).

Stephen Abram also noted an Emmy winning video. Which he picked up from Nancy Dowd's blog about videos.

Google battles Facebook in search. This is a very interesting piece.

EFF on Google Books settlement. Via LIS news, this reproduces most of the text from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Clive Thompson on the future of electronic reading.

Data from the Feds. This looks like a very interesting site. I have not had time to play around with it. I look forward to that and a further report.

Board games and information literacy. My friend Chris Harris, of the Infomancy blog, has written a great article on the relationship of playing board games to information literacy and the AASL information standards.

Summer of Mobile Library Services. Tom Peters has written a great article for ALA Techsource.

Relevancy of Libraries in the Future. This is a thoughtful article from LIS News (I just wish they would give full names of the authors of these longer articles.)

Fiber-Fed Libraries can serve as an agent of recovery. Non-librarian Douglas Streeks has written a great article for BroadbandCensus.com

Global CEO Survey. This is a link to Stephen Abram's summary of this annual survey of global CEOs.

Wireless Substitution. Another post from Stephen Abram about the fact that few folks are connected by land lines.

Miscellaneous Library Links & comments

I haven't posted library stuff in a bit. With my new work schedule, I get up before dawn and drive through the dawn (actually, these days, dawn happens while I am still getting ready) to Baton Rouge, hitting the heavy in-bound traffic around 7:30. After a day at work (no blogging there, please) , I hit the road, and the traffic, at about 4:30. If I am lucky, I get back home by 6:15 or so. Then it is dinner and catching up, and bed fairly early -- 9 pm most nights. So, hence the lacunae.

I have been adding tabs to my Firefox windows both at home and work. It is time to clean them up in a miscellaneous post.

Four new search engines to keep an eye on.

ARRA funds for libraries This is an interesting post from Jeff Scott which focuses more on broadband funding in the Recovery Act. He has done some good work here.

Libraries need more Internet speed. Related to the link above, here is the ALA press release about the need for more speed.

Smartphones versus handsets. This is an interesting article on sales trends. I have a feeling reading articles like this that I am not making full use of what is available on my current device (which I HATE!)

Books born digital. Interesting LJ article about trends in book publishing and the trends that librarians need to follow.

Kindle2 and speech software. This is an interesting take on the Kindle debate and the Authors Guild' successful push to get Amazon to disable the speech abilities of the Kindle. If you know someone who is blind, but computer proficient you may well wonder, as I do, what the big deal is. Speech software is nowhere near the same as a book read by a person. (And since I am now a huge listener, I do know!)

For fun. This is from a local public library blog which has a link to a web site which has a video for each of the elements in the periodic table. I love it!

Library leadership and changes. Stephen Abram of Sirsi/Dynix picked this up on his travels. It is a great article which I suggest you click through and save the PDF. Stephen does a great job. The seven imperatives of library leadership may yet get a full post from me.

In library news:

Stupid Library Tricks. This is a great story of bureaucracy run amok! [Thanks again, Stephen.]

Bad news about salaries. I know that library administrators sometimes take a beating on salaries. This LJ article notes both the flatness of the library organization in Seattle, and our cost effectiveness compared with other departments.

The Law of Unintended Consequences, Oprah and KFC. My friend Jessamyn does a great summary here. Last Saturday (May 16, ten days after Jessamyn wrote), I was in a local KFC where they were STILL handing out rain checks for the grilled chicken. (I am glad I wasn't planning on eating grilled chicken!)

Twitter and Libraries. There is a great, link-rich post about how to effectively use Twitter.

Extreme Customer Service. Great article by David Lee King about a library that I knew fairly well in Connecticut. I haven't been there in a number of years, but the philosophy of extreme customer service is one that Library Director Louise Berry has espoused for many years.

Google Books Settlement. I forget where I picked up this link, and I have read a some about the settlement. This is an interesting article about Internet Archive and its view.

That's the wrap-up for now. [And I started this post two days ago, and it took until today to get it up.]

Electing Judges

I was driving this morning and finished listening to the book I had on CD, so I switched to NPR's Morning Edition. One of the stories was about when a judge should recuse him/herself and a case being argued in the US Supreme Court today.

I was amazed to hear that there are over 35 states where judges are elected. Maybe it is my naivete from having lived so long in states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island) where the judges are appointed by the Executive Branch and confirmed by the Legislative, to think about this. However, judicial election signs have sprung up in New Orleans.

But then I remember the election in Wisconsin last April. It was a pretty mean and dirty campaign. In composing this, I found a new web source, "Judgepedia" which has an interesting overview of the upcoming Wisconsin election. There is a long discussion on the Judgepedia page about some of the discussion of the pros and cons of judicial appointment as opposed to electing judges.

Maybe this was in my "scope" because yesterday I read the latest issue of "Deliberations Newsletter" from ALA's professional Parliamentarian, Eli Mina. While the newsletter is not archived on his web site (that I could quickly find), let me quote what resonated with me upon hearing the judge story on NPR:

Sometime ago I sat in as an observer at an orientation session for a newly elected municipal council. The guest speaker was a former mayor and an experienced politician. He provided useful advice, but there was something he did that annoyed me: Every few sentences he would insert phrases like: "and this will help you get re-elected" or "this is one thing you definitely cannot afford to do, even if you know it's needed, because it will surely undermine your ability to get re-elected" and, to cap it all: "every decision you make over the next three years must be guided by one key question: will it get you re-elected?"

Apparently I wasn't the only one who was annoyed. I was delighted to hear the newly elected mayor finally interrupt the speaker and make this refreshing statement: "Sir, I can assure you that getting re-elected is the last thing on my mind and I believe on the minds of my colleagues. With all due respect, we ran for office to help make a difference for the community of today and the community of tomorrow. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we cannot afford to be distracted by the fear of not get re-elected. This whole thing is not about us as individuals, but about what we do collectively to advance the interests of our community." I had to resist the temptation to shout: "Hurrah !!"

Thinking about running for re-election and electiong judges, certainly puts the Supreme Court case in a different light!

Names, Pseudonyms, etc.

Part of why I have not blogged much lately is the process of my moving from Wisconsin to New Orleans (LA). As a part of that, I have driven a couple times between hither and yon. It is a straightforward route through seven states and three state capitals. (Two of which are named for Presidents of the US.) (I'll review the route at the end.)

Today when checking one of my email accounts, a story about baby names popped up as one of the "highlights" when I closed the email. It reminded me of a note which I wrote to myself.

About the second time on the drive, I began to notice that in the more rural areas the exit signs often had two town names. Presumably, it is one town in each direction off the Interstate. Some of them struck me as interesting pairings for a pseudonym or for a stage name. Wikipedia has a good article on stage names, and some great examples.

Here is my contribution based on driving I-55, I-39, I-90, and I-94:

• Madison deForest
  
• Cambridge Madison
• Byron Genoa
• Mendota Earl[ville]
• Hennepin Oglesby
• Henry Streator
• Alton Greenville
• Antonia Barnhart
• Miner Sikeston
• Bertrand Sikeston
• Carter Holland
• Victoria Luzora
• Keiser Wilson
• Marie Lapante
• Joyner Tyronza
• Gilmore Truman
• Marion "Sunset" Wynne
• Lexington Pickens
• Summit Natchez

Many of these can be inverted with equal success, and I only included on three name combination because it particularly struck me. Remember, these are all real place names that have some geographic proximity.

Random thoughts from driving.

The route by the way (North to South) starts out on I-94 which joins I-90 in Toma (WI). In Portage I-39 joins. I-90 splits to the East in Madison, and I-94 splits to Chicago in Rockford (IL). I-39 ends at I-55 in Bloomington/Normal (IL). I stay on I-55 except for a short jaunt around St. Louis on I-255, until I-55 ends at I-10 just West of the New Orleans airport. The states are: Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The state capitals are Jackson (MS) and Madison (WI) [named for Presidents] and Springfield (IL).

Outside Rock/Country Concerts and Festivals

The news of the opening of the Woodstock Museum got me to thinking about some of the summer events advertised in this area.

This weekend is Sawdust City Days, sponsored by the local paper. I went last year, and it is a carnival with some big music acts each evening. It is really a big carnival or small state fair.

In July, on the same weekend the 17th through the 20th, there are competing outdoor music festivals which are outside the community and include camping as an option. Closest to Eau Claire is Country Jam. It is an open area west of town. Last year the headline act was Bon Jovi who was on tour promoting his new country album. This year's Saturday headliners are Clay Walker and Carrie Underwood (in separate shows).

A little bit away from here Rock Fest in Cadott, Wisconsin. Thursday performers include Boston, Godsmack is on Friday, Saturday includes Goo Goo Dolls and Stone Temple Pilots, Sunday concludes with Matchbox Twenty.

When I arrived in the area 18 or so months ago, I was surprised at the number of outdoor concerts with big names. Part of why it can happen here is the low price of land makes it economically feasible to keep a large enough plot of land to hold these kinds of events. At the same time, it is not outrageously far from population centers. From the Twin Cities to Eau Claire is about an hour and half (depending on where in The Cities you live). Cadott is 105 miles, so under two hours. The flyer I picked up for Rock Fest notes that it is 265 miles from Milwaukee and 340 miles from Chicago. From those cities, Eau Claire is about 50 miles closer.

I guess that the lessons learned at Woodstock (about security, etc.) have paid off.

A Break from ALA

One of my alma maters (the least likely one) has a team working its way to the NCAA's "big dance." See the link from today's Brown Daily Herald:

W. hoops to shoot for league title this weekend - Sports

It is interesting that for the first time there is a three-way play off. I may even have a chance to go to Saturday night's game (assuming that they win tonight) since the play-off will be held at a neutral site: Yale. [It was a topic of discussion when I was at the Rotary Club Board meeting where I sat next to a fellow Brown alum.]

A side note....the spell check Blogger uses wants to replace "NCAA's" with "Nazis" -- what a concept!

It's Public

Well, I guess it is now official. In her web log, Rochelle noted this humble offering. It is in large part thanks to Rochelle, that I did this. (There are other of my colleagues whose web logs I have been sporadically reading including Karen Schneider, Jessamyn West, and Walt Crawford. Reading them helped me to decide to create my own.)

This weekend was primarily related to fatherly and scouting activities. In two weeks I'll be at the 2005 National Jamboree at Fort A.P.Hill in Virginia. (The web site even has a countdown clock.) Saturday my troop (Troop 437, Nathan Hale) was doing a dry run of assembling our gateway. Here is a photo. I love the fact that it has a book. It was designed by several fathers, without my input. Note that the group is not particularly tall (or old). It is a good group (and there are a number of scouts missing from this photo.) We repeat this one more time before leaving for Virginia on July 22.

Note, that means that there will be a brief hiatus of 13 or so days while I am more or less incommunicado.

I promise the next post will be library related and cover the current Council discussion on Chapter Councilors and at least two of the resolutions discussed this past conference.