Paul Danter

Phone Contract Confusion - Even Voicemail Varies!

I’m not stupid. But…

1. I should be able to compare mobile phone contacts and weigh up the benefits
2. Why are phone bills impossible to interpret?
3. I know 1 & 2 are done to confuse me and stop me asking questions, but why do we all put up with it?

The reason for this entry is that while I was trying to find out why I get cut off on some voicemail messages, I found that there quite a difference even in the basic voicemail service you are given on each major operator in the US.

The list is endless, but here are three ubiquitous features to compare:

AT&T

20 messages maximum
2 minute maximum per message
14-day retention

Verizon Wireless

20 messages maximum
3 minute maximum per message
21-day retention

T-Mobile

15 messages maximum
1 minute maximum per message
15-day retention

Sprint

20 messages maximum
2 minute maximum per message? (But I had to get this details from their forum)
20-day retention

Most offer a we’ll-nickle-and-dime-you upgrade for around $1.99 a month, but that’s pathetic!

Some of us rely heavily on voicemail and I’d have though it would be a commodity service, identical on each network. I would never even think to check out the specifics.

What else are we missing?

When you think of all the feature multiplied by all the plan variations multiplied by all the different handset capabilities, I’m surprised anyone ever buys a phone.

Is there a good comparison service out there?

Pragmatic Rails Deployments

The pragmatic bookshelf has done it again – this time making sense of the one burdensome issue with the Rails platform: deployment.

While still in draft, “Deploying Rails Applications A Step-by-Step Guide” by Ezra Zygmuntowicz and Bruce Tate brings the whole process back to basics with great insight, tips and tutorials that ensure however you deploy, it is less painful.

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Correct Re-directs and Pretty URLs

If you use WordPress as your blogging (or website) back-end, you may want to change it’s default URL structure so that things make more sense to readers.

The goal being that rather than:

http://someurl.com/?page_id=2

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Using Apache 2.x as a Proxy to Other Physical Servers

If you have multiple sites (domains or sub-domains), that you want to host on a separate physical web server(s), you can proxy requests from an apache server to other servers. This uses a similar Virtual Host configuration as when you are pointing many sites (domains or sub-domains) to different directories on a single server.

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