So far, I’ve been keeping the files I want to be able to access on a regular basis from anywhere on Apple’s online storage space called iDisk (part of the MobileMe service that I blogged about previously). While it has been working well for the last few months, I have noticed a few synchronizing problems from time to time, and I find the service rather slow. In addition, the offline sync option is only possible on a Mac (you can access your files from a Windows computer through the web interface or through WebDav). The space available is also getting a little small for me (20Gb at the time of writing). And to increase the security risk, I’ve also kept some of the files I am working on on a USB stick that I carry with me… yes I know, not good, and I need to change that.

I therefore started looking at various alternatives for online services that enable to sync files across multiple computers, give access to your files through a web interface and is relatively secure (assuming you trust the provider of the online service). I’ve excluded Live Mesh as it is still in early beta, Windows Live Sync because it is based on a peer-to-peer network and requires at least one of the machine to be online to sync the others, and BeInSync because it is targeting the business users (pricing starts at $10 per month for 5 or more users) Here is a quick summary table of the various solutions I looked at and what they offer:

Regarding the pricing, you can compare this to the cost of storing files on the Amazon S3 service which cost $0.15 per Gb per month, excluding extra costs for transfer and access. This means that storing files on an S3 server would cost you $1.8 per Gb per year, or $36/year for 20Gb, $90/year for 50Gb, $180/year for 100Gb… OK, you might not need all the storage, but as you can see, some of the pricing above is very interesting.

Looking at the different options, I will give SugarSync a try for a while and see how it works out in the long term. I really like the ability to be able to start with a smaller plan, and then later add more space.

Update 1 – Feb 21, 2009: Thank you danlist for your comment and for correcting my mistake. I didn’t know that you could sync any folder and I have now changed the table above accordingly.

Update 2 – March 2, 2009: I have experienced some files & folders disappearing in the synchronized folder from SugarSync. I have contacted the technical support team to investigate and provide a solution. I will post an update in my blog when the issue is resolved. In the mean-time, remember that online sync should not be the only backup you rely on, only one of them.

Update 3 – March 13, 2009: All the problems with the files & folders disappearing are now resolved… from what I can tell, I did push the system a little to hard during my tests. Everything looks good now.

For those who are attending, I will see you there tomorrow morning… and for those to also subscribe to my Graphics blog on CorelDRAW.com, sorry for the cross-posting

There have been quite a few reviews such as the one from Lifehacker that gives other great perspective on the online service from Apple. The comments below provide those I noticed and have been making me happy, annoyed me or are driving me crazy (outside of the reliability problems).

The Good, e.g. the stuff I like

In my blog entry about the MacBook Air, I mentioned how I use iDisk from, at the time, .Mac to keep the documents I use / need in sync between my desktop and laptop computer. And with Secure WebDAV access to the iDisk information, I am also able to access the content of my online storage space from Windows XP or Vista computers while at work for example. And with the new storage increase by switching to MobileMe from .Mac, I am good for quite a while before I run out of space. I know that there are other solutions available that might be cheaper, but as far as I can tell (I didn’t do extensive research on this), none integrate as well as MobileMe with the operating system from Cupertino.

In addition to iDisk, MobileMe offers preferences, bookmarks, contacts, calendar, keychains … syncing acorss multiple computers. This is really great and is working as well with MobileMe as it was working with .Mac, e.g. overall pretty good. And when you install iTunes 7.7 on Windows, you gain MobileMe syncing for contacts, calendars and bookmarks with some Windows apps. I am so happy that my Safari bookmarks are synced across Mac and Windows that I really don’t care if some people find it sneaky to add the MobileMe Preferences with the iTunes update.

The new web apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts and iDisk are really nice. There is plenty of room for improvements, but overall, they are fully usable. The contact manager is almost a clone of Address Book on the mac, and the online Calendar feels very similar to the desktop app provided by Apple. Yes, there are things that can be improved with the email and iDisk apps (see below), but overall, it works. Having used Outlook for the Web 2007 recently, I would say that the Apple implementation has potential to offer the same level of user experience, but there is still some way to go before getting there.

The gallery feature works well for me, and now that I got the capability to upload photos directly from the iPhone, I will be able to publish photos to certain galleries while on the road… I am certain my parents will be very happy to see family pictures on the go. And the integration with iPhoto on the Mac makes it really nice. You can even sync iPhoto albums using the MobileMe galleries across multiple machines. I understand that the galleries are not working that well from a Windows computer, but this isn’t a problem for me at this stage.

The Bad, e.g. the missing things for a killer solution

There are a few things that annoy me. First, why is it that when I check “Keep me logged in for two weeks”, I need to log back in every time I restart my browser? Yes, it is not the best option from a security perspective, but if you give the option, make sure it works.

Another annoyance, at least for me, is the choice of color Apple made for the iDisk icon on the MacOS desktop: Pink! And even worst than than, when you change the icon to something else, it doesn’t seem to update the mini-icon in the Finder window. OK, it makes it really hard to miss, but I am not a huge fan of that color… if the MobileMe logo is blue, why not stick with that color?

On the subject of the iDisk, one of the biggest feature missing for me right now is access to my documents in the iDisk from the iPhone. Why couldn’t I have read access to my iDisk files while on the go from my mobile device… everything else is linked to the cloud offering from Apple. OK, there might be an additional application that will be released in the future, so just make it quick. The iPhone already has support to display various document file formats when they are attached to emails. Why not give access to your online files through an iDisk application, that connects to the back-end server through Secure WebDAV. To make things even more frustrating, you cannot go to the iDisk web application with Safari from the iPhone. Ultimately, you should be able to save email attachments to your iDisk from the iPhone email application, but that’s a future feature request once the basics are there.

To continue with the iDisk subject, why can’t I preview documents within the browser from a desktop computer? Every modern web browser can display txt, pdf, gif, jpg, avi, swf, … inline, why do I need to download the file first to my computer before I can quickly view the content. Makes it a lot harder to get the right image or PDF document for example.

The last thing I have in this list is regarding the online and iPhone calendar. OK, Apple changed its messaging and stopped using the concept of “Exchange for the rest of us”, but iCal on the Mac can invite people to calendar events, sending out emails in the background. Why can’t I do this with the iPhone calendar app or the MobileMe online calendar? And why can’t I accept or decline meeting proposals that I get per email from another iCal user on my iPhone / through the web interface?

Now to make MobileMe the killer offering, once you have the scheduling capability obviously, Apple should enable free-busy time information to be shared across all MobileMe members. Apple is already storing the calendaring information about all those who subscribe to the service on their servers… if you could expose this information on the iPhone / Online calendar / iCal (CalDAV anyone?), that would really offer an Exchange solution for the rest of us. Yes, having previously worked as a product manager for a group scheduling software company, I know that this is a lot more complex that you would think, but half of the problem is already solved: Apple has access to real-time information about availabilities thanks to push. OK, will need to wait for MacOS 10.6 to get that on the desktop, but even the 15 minutes delay is better than the average time it takes for an Exchange server to update the free-busy time information.

The Ugly, e.g the showstopper

The ONE thing that is preventing me from switching over to MobileMe for all my private emails is that there is no support for email aliases. I am not speaking about adding @me.com addresses to your existing @me.com account… I want to be able to send and recieve emails for my @metrailler.net or my @gmail.com email address from Mail.app on the desktop, the MobileMe online service and the iPhone. Gmail does it for free and it works great. This means that Apple needs to allow emails to be sent through their SMTP server with emails addresses that don’t end with @me.com or @mac.com and they need to give the option to change the from email address to anything the user wants (already possible on the desktop app). How hard could this be?

Ant the ONE thing that makes the web interface unusable is the fact that the site (outside of the account section) is not secure! Yes, that’s right, no HTTPS to access your mail, contacts, calendar or documents. This is simply unacceptable and makes it a show-stopper to use the online service for me. The IMAP access to the mail is secured, the iDisk access through WebDAV is secured, so why isn’t the web site access secured?

Overall, there are very few things that are show-stoppers for me at this stage, and many things I would like to see. Some of the benefits already available make the service worth the yearly subscription to me, but because of a few small things, I am unable to use it to its full potential. I fully understand that you cannot develop everything in one version… so if you are interested Apple, this post has a list of priorities from my side. Once these are done, why not open-up me.com to third-party developers and enable them to add apps to the ones you provide (using SproutCore), getting 30% of the additional subscription fee?

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the rules related to renting movies… Looking at how I normally watch movies (I do subscribe to Zip.ca, the Canadian equivalent to Netflix), I’ve rarely started watching a movie that I got through the mail more than two weeks after receiving it, and I don’t recall having once stopped watching the movie before the end of it to continue a few days later. Yes, being able to watch movies for 72 hours after pressing the play button the first time. But as I haven’t gotten used to the Tivo time-shifting experience as of yet, I don’t really mind the 30 days / 24 hours rule. Yes I know, I will certainly regret writing this in the future…

After updating my version of iTunes and the software on my iPhone (I was actually traveling with a trans-atlantic flight the next day), I rented a movie to give it a try (The Simpsons) and enjoyed watching that movie on my hand-held device while being stuck in economy class. Overall, the quality and experience was great, except that in the middle of the movie, I suddenly get an advertisement message for something!!! That destroyed my whole experience and, while being as unobtrusive as possible, is unacceptable in my mind.Update 9 July 2008: The “advertisement” I saw was actually part of the movie. Thank you Geoff for pointing this misunderstanding out to me

The other thing related to the new media offering from Apple is the fact that some DVDs you can buy (at least in the USA and Canada, yes, in Canada!) will also include a digital copy. While not specifically for iTunes (it also works with Windows Media Player’s PlayForSure, but not with the Zune), the idea is very intriguing… the only DVD I could find at this stage with the digital copy (another cartoon movie: Family Guy – Blue Harvest) actually includes two discs in the case, plus a little flyer with instructions for the digital copy. This card also include a unique serial number. When you insert the second disk in your computer drive, iTunes detects it and asks for the unique number on the card to unlock your very own digital copy of that movie. Type in the code, and then something strange happens. Instead of copying the movie from the disk and unlocking it over the network (strange I know, I don’t even complain about the fact that there is DRM all over this), iTunes actually starts downloading the movie! I get a second disk in the DVD case, and the only thing that is included on it is information for the media player to display a page on the store to start downloading the movie for “free”… In summary, these DVDs don’t implement and evolution of the DRM used by Microsoft or Apple, they simply link back to the normal workflow and require you to download the movie in electronic format… Handbrake still sounds very appealing for a digital backup of your purchased DVDs with this type of approach from the movie studios.

The last change regarding the media offering from the makers of the iPod, the new Apple TV experience, is great. Version 2.0 of the software installed seamlessly on my device, and it then was very easy to find a movie to rent, click a button and watch the movie within a few minutes of deciding what to watch. I understand that the HD version of the movie is not 1080p, but the quality on my HD-TV was really good. And the good news, I didn’t get any add on the movie I rented to try the Apple TV experience out (Michael Clayton). What I really enjoyed is the fact that from the moment I decided what to watch and the point where the movie actually started, only a few minutes where required.

The Apple TV experience is really seamless… once the size of the Interweb tubes grows a little more (Bell, Rogers, take this as a strong request from my side) and the quality of HD rentals move to true 1080p, the monthly fee for Zip.ca will be hard to justify. I don’t see myself stopping buying Blu-Ray movies that I want to see more than once for the foreseeable future (I stopped buying DVDs as a rule since I got the Playstation 3 last year). But for those movies that I just want to see once, getting it directly streamed to your TV is a seamless experience that I look forward to enjoy again. The one thing missing is as following: after watching the movie, why not offer me a 48 hour window to convert my rental into a purchase for an extra $9.95? As the whole thing has already been downloaded once, that shouldn’t be to difficult from a technology perspective… but then again, DRM and the studios might be the biggest reason that will prevent this from happening.

In summary, while there is still room for improvement in many aspects, this offering around movies from Apple is a great first start. Just start offering these outside of the USA, and get rid of this @$#%#*! DRM and I will be a very happy camper.

On the subject of DRM going away, when can I get DRM free music from all the major in addition to EMI outside of the USA??? Currently, the only option is Amazon.com if you have a US credit card. When will I get all the music DRM free on iTunes, wherever I am?

The two next steps are for other types of contents to be available DRM-free (TV shows, movies, audio-books, eBooks, …) and for the removal of country borders for digital sales and subscriptions… DVDs and Blu-Rays / HD-DVDs are region-encoded, but even more annoyingly, you cannot buy DRM-free music legally from Amazon.com and you cannot watch shows on hulu.com if you are outside the United States of America!

Why not make the digital content sold online available simultaneously world-wide… record companies and movie studios should consider this as another “virtual” country around the world, just like other physical countries / geographies. I would love to see the reaction of the press and blogosphere if there was a killer content available everywhere but in the US.

It’s not that I don’t want to pay for my content, it’s just that I can’t do it legally from where I live… I believe that this is really wrong.

PS: When is the iPhone coming out in Canada?

To help implementing the GTD methodology, many software and online implementations that have been specifically developed. One of the software I used initially is called ThinkingRock, a Java based software that works on Mac OS, Windows and Linux, and applies GTD to the letter. Many more are available and there are even sites that index all the GTD applications available. While the data file saved from ThinkingRock works on all platforms, I ended-up carrying a USB stick with me at all time when going from my home computer to the one I have at work. I also wasn’t able to quickly add something to my inbox when on the go or check my lists while away from my computer(s).

I therefore decided to move to an online solution, and the one I selected is called “Remember The Milk“. While not specifically designed to implement the GTD methodology, its approach at managing lists and its support for off-line, keyboard shortcuts, notifications and mobile access, including an iPhone compatible version, ended up making this my solution of choice that is both fun to use and easy to maintain up-to-date.

When I initially looked at Remember the Milk, or RTM as it gets regularly abbreviated as, I saw a flexible solution that could adapt to many different usages and that didn’t force you into one specific methodology. At the same time, I wasn’t clear if this would be something that could replace the tool I was using at that time. Doing a quick Google search online, I found a very interesting article on the Republic of Geektronica Blog about how to implement the Getting Things Done methodology using Remember the Milk. While this post and all the comments below gave me a good idea on this site and how it could be used, I very quickly added a few tweaks of my own.

It all begins with lists. In addition to the mandatory Inbox and Sent lists, I have added following ones:

• Delegated: For all the tasks that have been delegated to someone else (very good when sharing tasks)
• Private: For all the stuff I have/want to do on my private side of life
• Projects: This list includes all the tasks related to projects that take multiple actions
• References: A list dedicated to all the notes I make with references and information that can be useful for me
• Someday: Stuff I will need / want to do one day is stored in here and I look at it when I do my weekly action review to see if there is anything to move in another list
• Thoughts: This could be collapsed with the Reference list, except that I store ideas that are not necessarily actionable in this list
• Work: All the single tasks that are not in a specific list
• Everything: This is actually a saved search that shows me everything that I have captured in RTM

When it comes to the GTD methodology, contexts are an integral part of system. While some people have recommended to simply use tags for the context, I’ve decided to actually leverage the “Locations” feature of Remember The Milk to define context… Living in Ottawa, Canada, I’ve for example defined the “@home” context as being my home address as a location in RTM. @office is at my work address. And for the contexts that don’t have a specific address, I picked a spot on the map: @errand is for example in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, @online is in China, @phone is in Tokyo, … At the end, I’ve got various contexts defined by locations for my various needs. And if you pick points far enough from each other on the map, you can quickly display a specific context such as @phone when you are in front of your phone and have some time. And because all my contexts start with the @ sign, they are all together in the tag cloud as well.

Next steps: Tagging. While you can search for anything easily, populating the tag cloud makes it very easy to find stuff quickly and easily. While you can use any text as a tag, I defined some basic rules about those to help me group these in 3 different categories: People, Projects and the rest.

• People: Any time I tag a task with a specific person name because I am working on this task with that person for example, I use a pre-defined rule. If the person is called John Smith, the tag will be +johns. Using the + sign at the beginning, following by the short name of that person combines all the tags related to people together at the top of the tag cloud. In addition to that, when I add tags to a specific task, starting to type +j will show +johns in a drop-down list in real time (very nice and fast AJAX implementation). I also have a +team and a few other +groups tags that I use on a regular basis. When I have a meeting with someone, I simply click on his tag, et voila, I immediately see all the tasks related to that person.
• Projects: Applying the same concept as for People, I use the – sign at the beginning of the project tag. This will combine all the projects together in the tag cloud between the people (with the + sign) and the contexts / locations (with the @ sign). For example, I’ve got a “-coreldraw.com” tag for everything related to the CorelDRAW.com community site. In addition to that, these next actions are all combined in the “Projects” list described above.
• The rest: I use various tags for the tasks I have across the site. All the non-people, non-project related tags don’t have any specific sign and therefore are listed at the end of the tag cloud.

With all this configured, everything is ready for GTDwRTM… on a daily basis, using the keyboard shortcuts, this site is fun to use and easy to maintain up-to-date. The overview screen shows what you have to do today, tomorrow and what is overdue. The weekly planner makes it easy to get a full overview of your tasks. Using the Netvibes module or the iGoogle one integrates your scheduled next tasks very nicely with your home page of choice. And for the Gmail users out there, RTM is now integrated directly in your email application. There is even an off-line mode using Google Gears (I already use it for Google Reader)… works great when on a plane for example.

Being able to use various different ways to manage your lists, add tasks and get reminders makes Remember the Milk a very flexible tool to work with. You can for example email tasks to yourself, which is great for crackberry users on the go such as myself. Just add the unique email address in your contact list with the name RTM, and start sending yourself email. You can even set priorities, tags, lists, locations, … directly from the email using a simple to remember syntax. You can get notifications per email, Skype, MSN and other instant messaging protocols and the iCalendar support works really great, except that the version of Outlook I have at work doesn’t understand this “non-Microsoft” standard. The mobile version of RTM is also great from cell phones with limited web capabilities, and there is even an iPhone optimized version for the users of the Pro version of Remember the Milk.

Now that I’ve started to get some of my colleagues to try this online service out, we are also increasingly using the task sharing feature, so that when I add a to-do item in the delegated list, I actually delegate it to someone else who will see it appear in his/her inbox. And being able to define the due date as “next tuesday 4pm” makes it very easy to set time tracking in place. Really cool.

There are a few things that could be improved: First, there is no way to export your data from Remember the Milk in a clean XML file for example. While this isn’t a big issue as you can use the iCalendar connector or the ATOM feed to get all the information, it should be rather easy to offer an export feature. Another thing that I would like to see is to be able to set the SSL version of the site as the default in your profile. While RTM works both with HTTP and HTTPS, the default is to go to the HTTP URL, not the encrypted one. Would it be possible to have an option in your account settings to automatically redirect you to the encrypted site? Finally, I am surprised that there isn’t a desktop software version of it available yet, using the open API to store all the information on the server.

And to finish this review, I’ve left the best for the end: Remember the Milk is free and there is no advertisement over-crowding the site. If you like it and plan to use it on a regular basis, please go ahead and get the Pro account option for $25 per year. In addition to knowing that you support a great online service, it adds nice little extras such as the iPhone /iPod touch interface and a sync tool for Windows Mobile devices.

The team behind RTM has done an amazing job at adding new features on a regular basis… next step, get out of beta

Overall, I really like Google Reader as my RSS aggregator. Being able to tag RSS feeds into multiple folders is really nice, having quick and easy keyboard shortcuts to go through the feeds (the j key is certainly going to be used faster than others going forward) and having an off-line mode that actually works amazingly well is really great. When not connected, you can simply star an article, so that next time you are online, you simply have to go through these and follow the related links. I haven’t started using the Sharing option as I tend to save the most interesting web pages in my del.icio.us account. It also appears that Google Reader works great with mobile devices and that they support very well the iPhone… well, haven’t been able to test that as Canadian customers are (once again) left behind when it comes to the latest cool toys

There are a few annoyances that I hope will be solved by the time Google Reader will leave the beta stage it has been in since launch (if ever). For example, and I don’t know if this is related to Firefox or the Reader, but when I follow a link, I would like it to open in a tab (which is the case), but I would also greatly appreciate if the focussed tab could remain the one where I am reading my RSS feeds… all I want to do is to open that page for later reading, e.g. once I’ve gone through all the RSS feeds. This worked great with Newsfire for example. There might be a Firefox extension that solves this annoyance, but I haven’t found it yet.

Another thing that could be improved is that when I click back on the Google Reader tab in my browser, the keyboard shortcuts tend to not work… I first need to click inside the window, e.g. give a specific news item divider the focus. Again, this might be a limitation with the browser and not the web application, but if Google can provide off-line mode with Gears, it sure should be possible to get the user experience fine-tuned.

But, as there has to be a but, there is one thing that I really don’t get with Google Reader: Where is the search field? Isn’t Google THE search company? Isn’t Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful? So how can I search a news article I previously viewed. Let’s say I would like to find all the article / blog-post I’ve previously got through about the drobo external hard drive enclosure, shouldn’t I have a search field somewhere in Google Reader where I can simply type “drobo” for example, that I can then sort by various options (date posted, ranking, …)? Newsfire not only had an embedded search field, but it also had the option to enable search through Spotlight, the integrated search option of Mac OS X. Must be the reason why it is still in beta.

I am still having a hard time switching other desktop software to the online world (my main mail client is still software, even if I use webmail clients when I am not in front of my computer, and my blog editor is ecto), and having a hybrid type of application such as WordPerfect Lightning are better suited to my workflow… But looking at AJAX, Google Gears, Firefox 3.0 or Adobe Air, the direction is very interesting.

Update – September 9, 2007: Google Reader now has search capability built-in.

I’ve never been a big fan of purchasing music online. Yes, DRM has always been a key element playing against purchasing songs online, but more importantly, the sound quality was just not good enough. I was ready to continue purchasing CDs and encode them at 192-256 kbps AAC myself, to then pile the new physical media somewhere and never touch it again. The only things I’ve purchased online are those I wasn’t able to find in the physical world (there are quite a few exclusives on the iTunes Store). But now, with the recent Apple / EMI announcement, looks like I won’t need to purchase (certain) CDs anymore.

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, opinion

OK, there has been an announced extra charge of $0.3 for the DRM-free, double-the-bitrate songs, but from what I’ve heard, the album pricing won’t change… and that’s perfect for me. At CA$ 9.99 per album (Canada must be the cheapest place to buy music on iTunes based on current exchange rates), I don’t see any reason for me to continue purchasing physical CDs, outside the fact that the music I might want won’t be from an EMI artist

Starting May, Apple / EMI will start selling DRM-free 256kbps songs. No timelines regarding when the entire EMI collection will be available, but they stated that the global EMI catalogue will be on iTunes at a high-bit-rate DRM-free one day… does this also mean that I will be able to purchase French, German or Swiss artists who are under contract with EMI from Canada? I’m looking forward to it. To bad Stefan Eicher is under contract with UniversalMusic as he just released a new album in Europe that isn’t available in Canada. I just can’t stop thinking that the open letter from Steve Jobs was part of a very clever marketing campaign and EMI has jumped on it to get their name to the front page of the news, instead of focusing on the actual artists.

Having subscribed to eMusic for a while, I can only hope that Apple will open this arrangement to Independent music labels. The iTunes interface works well for me (even if with version 7.0, it is slowly becoming a very complex application). Steve, please think about the world outside of EMI: and I’m not talking about all the other majors. Quite a few independent artists have been selling DRM free music for a while, and I can only hope to find it in a DRM-free version shortly on iTunes.

Until the artists I like start to appear in this “new” way, I’ll continue purchasing CDs and convert them myself… Apple, next step: DRM-free 1080p Movies and TV Shows!

So that’s what Cash Machines must feel, when the same customers goes back to get some money multiple times a day. Staying at a hotel in Holland for two nights last week, I pre-paid a 24 hours Wi-Fi Internet access for 24 hours at EUR 15… or at least that is what I was expecting to pay.

Now EUR 15 for 24-hours is a lot, and Hotels / Wi-Fi providers are making a lot of money on Business travelers. Some Hotel chains offer free Internet access and I try to stay at these hotels when possible, but this time it didn’t work out… and as you will discover, this was only the beginning of my ATM experience.

The first evening, I Log onto the registration web site to activate my 24 hours access, I start using the broadband connection to get my email (quite a few had rather large attachments), my RSS feeds and latest podcasts, go to a few web pages, download the latest edition of my newspaper in PDF (about 8Mb in size) and do a few Skype phone calls (no video involved as the Mac version does not support it yet). Enough for that evening. Next day, same story. Few emails in the morning, RSS feeds and the latest edition of my newspaper. When I come back in the afternoon, I start going through my usual tasks. And suddenly, about mid-way through my 24-hours pre-paid Internet access, the connection stops.

I open a web browser again and try to log into the Wi-Fi network, but get the message that my transfer quota was exceeded and that I needed to buy additional time to continue using the Internet connection! But I still had about 10 hours to go… I missed something. So I took the time to read the small text on the pre-paid card. There was a condition of use message with a URL for more information. Going to that page, I discover that the 24 hours pre-paid card actually has a “fair Use Policy”, eg. which ever of these options you reach first:

• 24 hours since the first connection
• 250 Mb of download traffic
• 62 Mb of upload traffic

Lucky me I didn’t take the two hour pre-paid card for just under EUR 10 but decided to go with the daily connection… for the shorter period, you get under 100Mb of download traffic!

Yes I know, I am a power user. I get large emails (and usually a few of them). I subscribe to Podcasts and use Skype (and hotels must hate that as they normally charge an extra Euro for each cent the phone company charges them). But when I pay for 24-hours Wi-Fi Internet access, I don’t want to pay for the bandwidth and the time. I expect the connection to work for 24 hours. Period.

As a result, I took a moment to send my feedback to the Wi-Fi provider and to the hotel chain through their online forms. Here is the answer of the Wi-Fi hotspot provider (I haven’t heard back from the Hotel as of yet):

We are sorry for the inconvenience you may have experienced while connecting to (name of provider). We have in fact set data traffic limitations for our internet access. The reason behind it is purely technical. We have experienced that without limitations, a few customers start using peer to peer software and eat up the bandwidth not allowing other customers to connect. A number of other similar problems, like Viruses, provoking heavy data traffics in the background or automatic software and operating system updates were also identified. In order to be able to offer quality services to all customers, we decided to set the limits (around 250 MB download for a 24h access). We therefore we have included a clause in our Terms & Conditions stating that we may limit the service based on “fair usage”. The limits were set based on the average traffic we had monitored multiplied by a factor 6. The limit would for example allow around 10 hours of high quality radio streaming.

Yes, p2p can eat-up the bandwidth very quickly… but port filtering would be a better solution. And as there most certainly was NAT in place, I would not have been able to connect at full speed. And what is that about 10 hours of music streaming? Let’s do the math. 128kbps (what I qualify as high quality radio streaming) means about 16 kilo byte (as there are 8 bits in one byte as far as I remember) per second. So that’s 960 KB per minute (almost 1Mb). So 57600 KB per hour (57Mb). So that adds up to 576 Mb per 10 hours (give or take a few mega-bytes), which is more than double the allowed transfer. 56kbps is not High Quality!

Another of the comments in the email I got back from the Wi-Fi provider was:

The same principle applies to most services on offer in hotels ranging from renting a beamer in a meeting room to ordering a “Club Sandwich” from the bar; the price premium paid is linked to utilisation percentage and to the fixed and variable cost of the infrastructure required to deliver the services.

Well, when I rent a projector for half a day in a hotel, I don’t expect the projector to shut down because I displayed to many white pixels and not enough black, as this reduces the life of the lamp from that projector. The card I purchased at the front desk was a 24-hour card, not a 24 hour / 250Mb max transfer card.

I’ve decided to remove all references to the names of both the hotel and the Wi-Fi service provider in this post, but I will try to avoid any hotel that uses this provider for their wireless internet if at all possible. OK, now back to the bandwidth consumption with the little rest that I still have available