Month: May 2009

Yesterday I picked up a Verizon MiFi.

It’s a 3g modem and a WiFi router inside a very tiny package. It’s smaller than the iphone.  And it runs off a battery – about 4 hours in use or 40 hours on standby.

It’s very simple to use. Press the power button and that’s it. The MiFi automatically connects to Verizon’s 3g network and I can share it with up to 5 WiFi enabled devices. I tested it with two macbooks and an iphone at the same time. No issues.

This is going to be a big help on family vacations.

As Jack pointed out, if you see an access point named “Bijan MiFi” you’ll know that I’m around.

Just last week I wrote about internet & pay television (cable & satellite).

A couple of follow up points:

1 – Live online video is just starting to emerge as I pointed out in that post.

Even since my earlier post on the subject I’ve seen new technologies that will deliver high quality, live online video at a low cost and faster than I thought. That’s huge.

The day I can watch live sports online in good/great quality is the day that my cable tv bill becomes endangered. And that day is getting closer. Already I’m addicted to MLB video (by the way, my yankees are now tied for first place. oh yeah). Next, I want basketball, football and golf.

2 – We are discovering over and over again that the younger generation values the internet over pay tv. My kids would rather play games online then watch tv. They would rather do lots of things online than watch tv. Current television (with dvr, vod, hidef, etc) isn’t as important as it used to be. Check out this video of these 14 year old girls talking this very subject. It’s striking.

3 – Today the WSJ has an article titled “More Households Cut The Cord On Cable”. Here’s the money quote:

“The reality is, we’re starting to see the beginnings of cord cutting where people, particularly young people, are saying all I need is broadband,” said Glenn Brit, president and chief executive of Time Warner Cable

We are going to see more choices on our big screen. And powered by the open web.

About 10 years ago, Microsoft had an idea for portable credentials with a product called Passport and later expanded into suite called Hailstorm. The basic idea: a better user experience across the web for personal information such as credentials & billing information plus other stuff.

Despite owning Hotmail and MSN, Hailstorm never caught on.

But the idea is quite interesting.

Fast forward a decade and we have a number of popular web services providing portable credentials today.

For example, you can leave a comment on this blog with Disqus. But you don’t have to be a Disqus user because you can also leave a comment using your Facebook username/password or Twitter credentials. I am biased but I think Twitter authentication with Disqus is fantastic. Super easy and a smooth user experience.

I think we are going to see more web services offer portable credentials soon. Apple now has over 75million accounts linked to credit cards. Will we see an “iTunes Connect” on third party sites?

Earlier today, my friend Fred Wilson wrote a post “Why isn’t PayPal more successful” about his recent experiences with PayPal and the benefits of stored credentials. In the comments, I wondered outloud if we will see “Amazon Connect” soon.

If Amazon offers something as good & easy as Twitter oauth or Facebook Connect for ecommerce, I would use it all day long.

Update: In the comments below JoeLaz points out that Amazon has Amazon Payments out for over a year. that is a good start but not as smooth as FB connect or twitter oauth. amazon payments requires too many clicks and takes the user away from the 3rd party site to log in to the amazon payment system. it has to work entirely outside of amazon’s site.