Comcast sets a 250 Gb download limit per month, saying 99% of its Internet subscribers will never come anywhere close to that limit. That includes me. I’ve been using AT&T DSL service forever, hooking it up to my Mac 7600 in Feb. 2000, increasing my on-line speed from 36000 bps to a couple of megabits per second (Before that I was using a Mac IIci to connect through the modem). Not long after that, the 7600 was the limiting factor. I jumped to a Powermac G4, a G5 and an iMac. Somewhere along the way I upgraded the DSL service to AT&T’s 6 Mbps service. But as we all know, “6″ doesn’t actually mean six, and that’s only downloads. Uploads are down around 1 Mbps. With all the files I need to upload, including many large PDF, video and mp3 files, I decided to investigate Comcast’s high-speed service. They just rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 service in northern California, which bonds several channels together for really high speeds. At the moment, Comcast is marketing speeds to 50-up, 10-down, and you have to buy your own DOCSIS 3.0 modem (Motorola $100). So I added Comcast 50-10 service, and kept the AT&T service while I evaluated the cable. What I found was that the speeds are as advertised—but it’s spike-y. That is, you can get 48 Mbps down one minute, and 10 the next. Uploads seem to be more consistent. Since it’s considered a “shared” Internet service, that makes sense—more people are sharing the download bandwidth than the upload. Reliability is great and it works well with my Airport Express. Now, as for Comcast’s usage meter, they just e-mailed me that it’s activated. So how much did I use in my second month? Ahhh, 20 Gb. So I’m one of the 99%. So who’s using 10 times my traffic, and for what?

Starbucks has jumped into the mobile payment world with the announcement that you can now use an iPhone to pay for purchases at 1,000 locations within Target stores. You simply download the free Starbucks app, enter the 12-digit number of an existing Starbucks gift/payment card, and register your personal info. At that point, any time you want to buy something at a Target/Starbucks, simply press on “My Cards.” The program then displays a barcode (QR Code) that can be scanned by the cashier, which will debit your Starbucks purchase card. You can store information on multiple cards with the app, and check on their balance at any time. Sounds interesting…as in Apple store interesting. I know that Apple is working on “new things,” but haven’t heard details. It would certainly make sense to embrace mobile in some way—but how? The key for mobile Apple purchasing would be to link the mobile app to your bank-issued cards instead of an Apple-issued card. That would make the process much simpler, and would eliminate having to potentially transfer a large amount of money from a checking account to an Apple card in order to buy a Mac or other expensive product. But how do you do that without the cooperation of banks?

The concept and Web site might give you the idea that it’s a well-crafted piece of humor—but, no. PixelPads is a real solution to a real problem, and on Saturday it’s a real product. Andrew was designing Web pages in Utah a while back and wondered why there aren’t any sketch pads based on pixel dimensions. With the iPhone/iPod touch in vogue, he came up with a pad of paper with a lightly-printed 10-pixel grid that made the task of prototyping screens for clients much easier. But wait—Steve introduced the iPad last January, giving Andrew an even bigger target. So he re-engineered his small pads for the full-size iPad, complete with front bezel design and a metal-looking back plate. Guess what? The PixelPad for iPad goes on sale April 3rd, clinging to the coattails of the iPad itself. Their Web site explains it all, although you’ll have a tough time realizing that what you’re looking at is actually a pad of sturdy, gridded paper, attached to a thick cardboard backing. Even the “Tech Specs” page seems to reinforce that it’s an electronic device (and mimic Apple’s own tech specs page). The giveaway, of course, is the writing implements—Sharpies, VBall pens and Crayola Markers. We’re talking back to the stone age. But then, we’re also talking designers, who still love the connection between their hand and the design.

It’s not exactly a roadmap to Apple’s stores, but the latest 2009-2010 catalog of Cushman & Wakefield’s retail locations around the world will give you a head-start. It’s a very old (1917), privately-owned company in 58 countries around the world, with shopping centers and single spaces for all types of retailers. The catalog is full of photos showing their properties, some very new architecture and some very old. Overall, it’s a great way to see what’s being done and where. Download the 30 Mb pdf file here.

You’ll recall that Philadelphia has been the Forgotten City as far as an Apple store is concerned. The lack of a store has been conspicuous and, as always, it’s been because the Retail real estate team hasn’t been able to find the Perfect Location. Apple settled on 1619 Walnut St., a 40,000 s.f. retail-office building that was a former CBS affiliate TV studio and the Mike Douglas Show. For some reason Apple bailed out, picking a building just steps away at 1607-09 Walnut St. So what happens to old Apple picks? Apparently you get to use Apple’s architect to refresh the 1937-era building, that’s what. Vesper Property Group announced that Bohlin Cywinski Jackson has designed a large, two-level glass storefront, along with a redesign for floors 3-6. The company claims the design will retain the building’s original design, but a rendering (right) shows a complete overhaul. They also note that the Apple store will attract a “major national retail tenant.” The same thing has occurred before, of course, notably the West 14th Street (NYC) store. In that case, the real estate developer convinced Apple to be early-in to the Meatpacking District, and then used Apple’s presence to leverage other real estate deals in the neighborhood. So, does Apple still own this building or have some financial interest in it? Otherwise, why would BCJ even bother with a renovation for this property?

Yes, I was among the thousands who purchased the new version of Quicken for Mac without reading the fine print: it has no way to print checks and is, therefore, unusable. In perhaps the biggest programming blunder in the last 10 years, the company completely revamped the 2005-vintage program, giving a very nice look and adding vastly better reporting, and calling it Quicken Essentials, with the emphasis on essentials. But, while it still allows you to enter financial transactions, including payments to your electric company, it won’t let you actually print those transactions onto a piece of paper—you know, like checks. The lack of such an elemental feature wasn’t even on my radar when I purchased the downloadable version. Boy was I surprised! And I was also stunned to learn I was just the latest in a long line of people who made the same mistake—the on-line forums are filled with exasperated buyers. I just can’t fathom what the feature team at Quicken was thinking. Exactly why would you go to all the trouble of entering transactions into Quicken Essentials, and then hand-write the same information onto a check. And since you can’t pay bills electronically with QE, what’s the point of using it. So far, I haven’t seen any response from Quicken.

Over the past two weeks I’ve been transitioning a Web site from an older version of the Joomla content management system to the newest version of Wordpress—whew! Simultaneously, I took the opportunity to move the entire site to a new server, since the old one was running previous versions of php, mySQL and Apache. So what to do? It took about two days to find a php program that would ingest the Joomla mySQL database and spit out a Wordpress-format database. I then had to import the converted file and find a new theme (I settled on the clean Swift theme). Then, how about the server? I ended up trying out VPS.net, Amazon’s EC2 and Verio.com. VPS lets you set up “nodes,” each representing a certain horsepower of MHz, memory and disk space, and can select several prepared configurations. You manage it like a raw server, and can change the number of nodes at will either to accommodate more or less traffic. I liked the prepared set-ups and management console, but didn’t like the lack of FTP and mail service. EC2 was similar in set-up and management, but again, there’s no pre-configured FTP or e-mail. (I didn’t try out two other “cloud” type server offersing, GoGrid and JumpBox.) So, I came back to Verio, which is hosting the IFO site. Their virtual server offering is relatively inexpensive, includes loads of easily installable software, lets you easily re-compile php and other software packages, and is already set-up for e-mail, FTP and shell access. So after almost two weeks of experimenting and testing, I ended up landing back on Verio and am very happy with their server. I should also note that my previous server up-time experience with Verio has been very good, and their tech support for virtual servers has been excellent. And now I have more Apache server set-up experience than I ever expected!

Cisco Systems Inc. made a big splash with the introduction of its CRS-3 router, which is capable of handing 322 terabits per second, way beyond anything an ordinary person, company or even network would use. The splash came from the way Cisco put the speed into perspective—making the comparisons individual and personal. For example, the company said you could download all the movies ever made in four seconds through their router. Or everyone in China could hold a video chat at the same time. Well, nice try. This device really has nothing to do with personal, or even corporate, use of the Internet. For one thing, why would you even consider downloading every movie ever made, or hold a country-wide video chat? But more significant, what content provider is sending data out to browsers at this speed, and how many users have anything close to this speed from their Internet provider? Very few. Web servers are rarely set up to deliver HTML pages very fast, or even video. So even if you were to increase your ISP speed upward from 4 Mbps, say, you’d find little real improvement in how fast your pages or video are displayed. So, while I appreciate Cisco’s newest product, it’s really a upper-level network intro, not a device that’s relevant to individuals.

After my discovery of the company that designed and is now marketing the point-of-sale (POS) device used in Apple stores, Infinite Peripherals’ Linēa-pro, I figured it would be a trivial step for the device to become available in the stores themselves. Well—not so fast! Now comes word that the look-alike PAYware Mobile device by VeriFone will be sold in Apple stores later this month. Ouch! The device is a sleeve that slides on to an iPhone, links to a free VeriFone app, and includes a magstripe reader so you can begin taking credit cards for purchases. The process includes on-screen signature signing with a stylus and e-mail receipts—ouch again! Naturally, it can use cellular to transmit-receive transaction data, unlike the Linēa-pro, which uses Wi-Fi only on an iPod touch. And the PAYware doesn’t have a barcode scanner, as the Linēa-pro does. Like Infinite Peripherals, VeriFone only sells the device, not the payment processing service. You must already have a merchant account from a recognized provider. Interestingly, you might receive a call during a payment transaction—the software will ask, “Accept or decline?” and act accordingly. You can then go right back to your transaction. More interestingly, the device is free if you sign up for two years of VeriFone’s PAYware Connect gateway service, which is required for the device to connect to your merchant account. Apparently the monthly fee business model is alive and well. Apparently those fees are based on your transaction amounts, and can be “as low as 2%,” the company Web site says. That’s on top of your merchant account fees, which could be in the 3%–5% range. The bottom line for the Apple stores—you could be buying a VeriFone device off the shelf, and pay Apple using a Linēa-pro. Now that’s odd.

Tivo has announced their newest devices, somehow managing to miss lots of essentials but still managing to keep their business model just above the limit of irrelevancy. The screen menus have gone HD, which they should have been a long time ago. They’ve included a disk space meter, another no-brainer. The menus themselves are organized much better to allow users to speed right to what they need. The Tivo accepts a CableCard, allowing menus to include a picture-in-picture of the current channel while you’re looking at a menu. They’ve retained the fee-based structure, come up with an optional Bluetooth remote with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, left off built-in WiFi and they’re charging lots for the difference between the two models, one with a 320 Gb drive and the other a 1 Tb—why in the world don’t they just make 1 Tb models to start with? Overall, this latest update simply takes Tivo to where it should be, not beyond. And if you’re pushing technology these days, what you introduce today better be what people want tomorrow, not what they should have had last year. Now, are they going to let me transfer my lifetime membership from a Series 3?

Now Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has sent employees a note explaining the financial announcement he made earlier, and letting them know his plans—it’s a very strange message. Talk about a company in the dark. Shouldn’t the company’s employees already know they’re doing poorly? And then he tells them that for the past three weeks the executive team has been “working extremely hard to improve product performance.” And what has the rest of the company been doing for those three weeks? “In the next few weeks, your management will work with your to make sure your priorities are laser-focused,” Rubinstein says. Well, no sense starting right away. Read the entire message to see if this is the type of message that you’d like to receive as an employee.

It’s pretty sad to read about Palm, a company that was so early in the PDA marketplace that…well, did they actually invent PDAs in 1996? Now Palm is struggling—really struggling—to come up with a product whose features attract buyers. Heaven knows they’ve tried very hard. You’ll recall the Pilot and all of its progeny. At the time they were the electronic device to have. But tech moves pretty fast, and the rise of cellular phones pretty much ended the interest in the Pilot. And as we all now, the iPhone pretty much ended interest in bad cell phones. Most recently Palm came up with the Pre, which in ordinary times would be a very nice smartphone. It’s design and marketing was aided by Jon Rubenstein, who jumped to CEO at Palm from being iPod Sr. V-P at Apple. But since the Pre’s debut at CES in Jan. 2009, it hasn’t caught on. This week Palm announced its financial results will be down for the latest quarter because of “slower than expected consumer adoption of the company’s products.” The stock has plummeted as future confidence has evaporated. And even more sad, the price of the Pre and Pixi have dropped dramatically since the financial announcement—you can get a Pixi for free at Best Buy and the Pre for just $69.99. For a company who was so far ahead in the late 90’s, it’s sad to see it so far behind just 14 years later.