Sweet John’s posterous

I was walking in a Best Buy a couple weeks ago and was excited to see wireless broadband was coming to Austin. I showed up first thing on launch to find that my area was not covered. I got a call a few days later finding out it was. I then tried several times for a couple weeks always running into an unforeseen issue. Finally. I got signed up and waited a couple days for the salesperson to drop off the equipment. Arriving 20 minutes late to our appointment the salesman from Clear handed my modem for the home. (45 per month, a service level of 6mbs dl and 1mbs up, and a 5 fee for modem rental with a 2 year agreement) The next two days were spent turning the device micro degrees in the apartment to achieve a signal. Called Clear's customer service and tried to trouble shoot the problems I was having (at best a 1mbs dl w/ .07mbs up and a ping of 267). There suggestion (meant funny) was to move the hospital 50 ft that was blocking the service. My reply was to install another tower. Clear said it was too problematic and too much hassle goes into adding towers. So I cancelled. But the person on the phone tried to tell me I had to get my account transferred to another customer and they would give me a $25 gift card. This goes on until I say I just want to cancel and be done with Clear. They are not sending me a label and I will be shipping back my modem and getting a refund on the "trial" period. (It was a trial). Everyone at Clear seems very friendly but I am not sure I would recommend them to anyone. That's my take on Clear.

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I was really excited about this during SXSW. A short code SMS that sent your contact info (or whatever you put in 140 char or less) as a text message to the recipient. It then texts you the phone number of the person who asked for your contact info and kept a log of it online.

     What happens to all the excitement of SXSW Interactive? We meet these fantastic people with great concepts and try them out but why do we stop using them? Remember how tedious Twitter was in the beginning? Or Facebook? Or Friendster? Is it just our fickle nature to try these products but never actually put them into use?

     I'm guilty. I signed up for CONTXTS but never used it. Was it the cost? No, it was free, so why didn't I use it? I also did the same with Dodgeball and dozens of other services. But the lack of hearing about CONTXTS bothers me. It could be used as a great marketing tool. Now don't put me as a CONTXTS fanboy. It just peaked my curiosity as how I was so excited about something but let it collect dust. If you want to try it well you can't. It's gone. The short code is now used for Foursquare. Let's see if that will last longer than CONTXTS.

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