Twitter has communicated that they have disabled their sms notification service for users outside of North America and India. This is obviously bad news for people like me who have been relying on sms as the way of giving more visibility to some people I follow on the service by getting their updates and direct messages delivered instantly and directly to my mobile.
I have been wondering for a while how long they would have been able to pick up the sms costs as no new agreements with operators were announced since last year and no revenue generating features were added to the service.
Twitter has justified this change with costs (up to 1,000 USD per user per year). I think that is understandable and acceptable, but it is a cold shower for users who found value in this feature. It is always hard to remove free features from services, almost as hard as changing the business model and making users pay for that feature.
Maybe twitter could have tried (and maybe they have tried) to find ways to monetize this feature indirectly by attaching adverts to the SMS notifications the same way as full RSS feeds are nowadays distributed. How would have users reacted to it? And would advertisers go with it? How would that have impacted the cost structure and level?
Another option they could have tried is making users pay for it, but again that is easier said than done.
Anyway, I will keep using twitter and I am still looking for a replacement solution to this feature. Checking the m.twitter.com on regular basis does not work too well, you cannot access direct messages via it and you cannot select specific friends you follow and look them up their feed. Mobile email is a partial replacement (I have gmail inbox configured on my E71, twitter forwards direct messages to my email inbox). I also tried twibble (a java app for mobile) but did not particulary like it as it is an overkill compared to what I need...so I am still without instant mobile twitter notifications.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Beginners golf: online videos as best training solution
I have started to play golf last year and since then tried to learn the basics so to feel comfortable on the course. I did not find it easy and requiring a lot of practice and learning. On the other hand golf is nowadays one of the activities I like the most. It is simply a great experience.
I did attend a "golf for beginners" course at Tammergolf in Tampere (Finland) right at the start. The course lasted about 2 weeks with 5 sessions. It provided some basic introduction to the rules and basics of golf but I must say that it did not really teach me much. I don't think it was good value for the money. At the end of the course I could swing pretty much as well (or as poorly) as at the beginning but at least it gave me the chance to understand that I liked it.
I then went into the internet and looked for books and other material that I could use to learn more. I picked up a couple of books that turned out quite difficult to use for basic technique training. I turned then to videos.Videos are the best solution for me.
There is plenty of videos online that aim at giving basic golf training, some are good and some are not. The good ones are quite valuable as you can watch them when you want, at the speed you want and as many time as you need. You can concentrate on the different aspect of things like the swing, learn them and then go and put them into practice.
After some amount of searching and screening, I have been consistently following the videos from Shawn Clement on Youtube. He has posted more than 100 of them and they are all of excellent quality, covering most of the aspects of playing golf. I do certainly recommend those videos to anyone who has recently started playing and to people who are looking for things to improve in their game.
Most recently I have purchased Shawn's DVD series and I am now in the process again of going through my game to reach the next development level. This is really fun! More on this process soon on new posts.
I did attend a "golf for beginners" course at Tammergolf in Tampere (Finland) right at the start. The course lasted about 2 weeks with 5 sessions. It provided some basic introduction to the rules and basics of golf but I must say that it did not really teach me much. I don't think it was good value for the money. At the end of the course I could swing pretty much as well (or as poorly) as at the beginning but at least it gave me the chance to understand that I liked it.
I then went into the internet and looked for books and other material that I could use to learn more. I picked up a couple of books that turned out quite difficult to use for basic technique training. I turned then to videos.Videos are the best solution for me.
There is plenty of videos online that aim at giving basic golf training, some are good and some are not. The good ones are quite valuable as you can watch them when you want, at the speed you want and as many time as you need. You can concentrate on the different aspect of things like the swing, learn them and then go and put them into practice.
After some amount of searching and screening, I have been consistently following the videos from Shawn Clement on Youtube. He has posted more than 100 of them and they are all of excellent quality, covering most of the aspects of playing golf. I do certainly recommend those videos to anyone who has recently started playing and to people who are looking for things to improve in their game.
Most recently I have purchased Shawn's DVD series and I am now in the process again of going through my game to reach the next development level. This is really fun! More on this process soon on new posts.
Friday, August 8, 2008
08.08.08 A day to remember
08.08.08. Many say today is a day to remember mostly because of the opening of Beijing Olympic Games. I watched some of the opening ceremony today and I must say it really impressed me. A great show that I believe created even more interest in the Chinese culture. I felt like China is really a place I should go to sooner or later.
Today is also the day when I finally decided to start blogging. Given the amount of blogs already existing I guess I should consider myself a late adopter. Better late then never though. I have been pondering over the possibility for quite some time and found always good excuses for not starting. The main reason has been the fact that I did not have a good topic to write about or enough time to write. At least I though I had not. Now I figured that I could be writing mostly about things I experience during my daily life. The idea is to share with others good and bad experiences, recommendations and hints I come up with or collect from other sources. So that if you keep reading my blog you might actually find out new things or help me finding them out with your comments.
I will keep the posts hopefully interesting and short enough. I don't like reading long posts myself either.
So thanks for stopping by and come back for more interesting posts in the future.
And if you ended up here while searching for news on the olympics, jump over to twitter to hear more of what people are saying about it.
Today is also the day when I finally decided to start blogging. Given the amount of blogs already existing I guess I should consider myself a late adopter. Better late then never though. I have been pondering over the possibility for quite some time and found always good excuses for not starting. The main reason has been the fact that I did not have a good topic to write about or enough time to write. At least I though I had not. Now I figured that I could be writing mostly about things I experience during my daily life. The idea is to share with others good and bad experiences, recommendations and hints I come up with or collect from other sources. So that if you keep reading my blog you might actually find out new things or help me finding them out with your comments.
I will keep the posts hopefully interesting and short enough. I don't like reading long posts myself either.
So thanks for stopping by and come back for more interesting posts in the future.
And if you ended up here while searching for news on the olympics, jump over to twitter to hear more of what people are saying about it.
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