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?

RMagick on Rails

There are some great guides for installing and configuring ImageMagick and RMagick on OS X for use with Ruby on Rails. In my experience, there’s always something missing.

I recently wanted to use the Gruff gem for generating graphs and my standard install failed. It turns out there are some font requirements, which I tracked down (but misplaced the link, so apologies for not linking back to the blog that helped).

Anyway, here is the end to end install that works for me (OS X Leapard, with XCode installed).

Get FreeType:

curl -O http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/ \ 
freetype/freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz
tar xzvf freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz
cd freetype-2.1.10
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Get LibPNG

curl -O http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ \
libpng/libpng-1.2.10.tar.bz2
bzip2 -dc libpng-1.2.10.tar.bz2 | tar xv
cd libpng-1.2.10
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Get JPG

curl -O ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
tar xzvf jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
cd jpeg-6b
ln -s `which glibtool` ./libtool
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.4
./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

If you get the following error with the JPEG install:

install: /usr/local/man/man1/cjpeg.1: No such file or directory

...you just need to check the man1 directory exists. If not, add it then re-run the make install (from within the jpeg-6b directory):

sudo mkdir /usr/local/man/man1
sudo make install
cd ..

Get TIFF

curl -O ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/libtiff/tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
tar xzvf tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
cd tiff-3.8.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Ghostscript fonts are needed, get the package

Download from here, then

tar vzxf ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz
sudo mv fonts/ /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/

Get ImageMagick

curl -O http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ \
imagemagick/ImageMagick-6.3.0-0.tar.gz
tar xzvf ImageMagick-6.3.0-0.tar.gz
cd ImageMagick-6.3.0
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-static --with-modules --without-perl \
--without-magick-plus-plus --with-quantum-depth=8 \
--with-gs-font-dir=/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Now Install RMagick

sudo gem install rmagick

Google’s Mobile Monday… Happened…

As predicted, Google announced the launch of a platform today to help open up the mobile industry. You can read about the details on Google’s Blog and many other news sources, including the BBC.

From a consumer point of view, real change is some time away. Hopefully a year from now we should start reaping the rewards. Further out – in say 2 years – I hope that the impact of this technology will have resulted in a open mobile Internet.

This is great news for developers – who will be empowered to create the next generation of content and services without the barriers that hold them back today. It is also great for consumers as it will introduce standardization and transparency around accessing IP based services.

The SDK and documentation is about a week away. Stay tuned for more.