Techdirt: Dial-Up: Dead Or Alive?: the bigger question is: do dial-up users, those hold-outs, even matter? What percentage of Internet commerce is instigated and completed by dial-up modem users? Are they even at the tail of the log-curve, or not even consequential at all in the greater scheme of web-economics? I redid our streaming-media specs to eliminate dial-up. I see 90% broadband use across our sites.
I wonder what Scott McCloud is going to make of the iPad?
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if just half of the iPad book apps are going to be like this, and I was Amazon or Dell, I would be having some crisis meetings in conference rooms right about now.
- #[From First Look: How Penguin Will Reinvent Books With iPad | paidContent:UK ]
If I was in the set-top box market, or TV content market, I'd react with a significant amount of fear to Tim Cook saying Apple had no interest in the TV market.
- #[From Apple Knows a TV Is the Next Step, But Won't Do It - Apple TV - Gizmodo]
Yeah, thought so. I bet the next platform is AppleTV. Natural fit.
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So the Windows performance analyst community is about as smarmy as the seduction community. Who'd have thought?
- #[From Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you) | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com ]
This happened to me on Orbitz when we went to Maui. I ended up having to call Orbitz and go through tons of levels to complain, called the GM of the hotel, etc. We got taken care of, but the hotel basically said that they treat Travelocity, Orbitz and Expedia bookings as second to direct or agent booked travel.
- #[From My Bloody Valentine: Expedia.com ]
Couldn't have happened to a better group. Love UrbanAirship.
- #[From Urban Airship Secures $1.1 Million in Venture Capital Funding | Urban Airship Blog]
I can attest to this. I've stopped buying Android phones because I figure every time you do, something "Amazing" is coming out on another carrier, or even on the same carrier. At least on the IPhone you know: Every July.
- #[From The Android Who Cried Wolf ]
Can this please be the DirectTV Tivo that we all so need.
- #[From TiVo schedules a March 2nd NYC event and we’ll be there ]
Why does the fact that someone is announcing a phone automatically mean its an iPhone killer? Lazy journalism, that's why.
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I’d have to go looking for any updates but the last stats I saw (about 2 months ago were that of the worldwide internet users (only about 15% of the world population) some 75-80% still used dial-up.
This is for various reasons such low cost, unavailability of broadband, cost of broadband. While many places have high penetration of brodband services, and in some cases cheap rates, that penetration is by no means as deep as the providers would have us think.
As to site stats those can be influence by many things. One of the most obvious is – does your content cater to material of primary interest to the average broadband user rather than the general user? Is the site media rich or slow and time consuming to use for someone on dial-up (which means they stop visiting and work gets around that it’s a slow site so fewer others on dial-up don’t visit).
There is a lot of life left in dial-up and it will be around a long time so long as some providers insist on gouging level priice for broadband in some markets. In other regions it’s simply a matter of access. Since the cost to provide, or number of customers is too low, some regions are ignored by most providers.
WD Milner: Well put! Your part on the statistics is just what I was going to mention!
Regarding availability; I’m in living in Minnesota, USA which is a pretty rural state. I’m in one of the more populace areas and we only have two broadband (one in most cases) providers to choose from. That’s pretty slim pickins. Especially when you consider the above Milner’s price gouging comment, it’s real and it happens all the time out here. There’s a particular friend of mine whose only broadband option is DSL at $80/m.
If you travel fifteen minutes away from this particular town, you reach a black hole. Dial-up is the only available service. So, it’s not just parts of rural China and South Africa that are lacking broadband access – it’s also parts of the United States.