Tony Dye

Hearing Aid Technology

My dad, who will be 92 next month, got some new hearing aids a couple of weeks ago.  I got to go with him to the VA audiologist.  Let me just say it this way: hearing aids are NOT boring technology!  There is a tremendous amount of processing going on inside.  The units he received were from Phonak, and they are part of the Exélia Art product line (these links change often so don't be surprised if it goes stale).    Some of my quick notes: these things (as a pair) "listen" for voices, and when they "hear" a voice, they supress out most other noise.  They know the difference between a male voice and a female voice, and they can adjust to either one.  They are quite programmable, although the audiologist said that out of the box, they "just work."

This particular model has only one physical adjustment, volume, and that doesn't get used much.  These little things are smart!  If they notice that the volume is always adjusted, for instance, when a female voice is detected, they learn to make that adjustment automatically!  If you adjust the volume on one ear, it tells the other ear to make the same adjustment.

For people like my dad, who have a lot of high-frequency hearing loss, these things shift the audio into a frequency he can hear.  The units recognize when he's on the phone, and not only shut out other noises at the time, they also play the phone into both ears at the same time!

These devices have logging, to determine what environments the user is in, and to record what it did to improve the sound in that situation.  The audiologist can review this info at the next appointment and make adjustments, if needed.  Oh yeah, the firmware is upgradable and new releases come out a couple of times a year.  Here's a list of some of the other features:

EchoBlock - Understand well in echoey environments
SoundRelax - Eliminating annoying sounds
Real Ear Sound - Natural sound orientation
WindBlock Management - Suppresses wind noise
NoiseBlock Processing - Premium comfort in background noise
SoundFlow - Continuous and instant optimization to all environments
VoiceZoom - Speech intelligibility
WhistleBlock Technology - Feedback free hearing
Acoustically Optimized Venting (AOV) - Minimum occlusion
QuickSync - Control both instruments with one touch

My hearing is mostly OK, but these things are so impressive I want a pair.  Oh, wait, there's a catch.  The price is nearly $10k for the pair!  OK...guess I'll wait unti the technology has been around a bit longer.

Still, all fascinating stuff. 

Taking Over Failed Business Phone Numbers

Imagine that you're in a service business and you do superior work all the time.  Your customers love you.  Now imagine there are others in your city, who are in the same line of business, but they don't always do great work.  As a matter of fact, some of those competitors of yours are failing.

Well, this happens all the time.  But, for whatever reason, people (customers) still have the phone numbers of those old, not-so-good, failed businesses.  An idea that comes up from time to time is to take over the number of the failed competitor so you now get the calls and, of course, provide superior service to those customers.

I took on a little project recently to try to find a way to learn when a competitor is failing so you can quickly acquire the phone number.  I struck out!  I can't find any way to get a timely report of when a company fails, or more importantly, when their phone number goes out of service.  The only solutions I found were to auto-dial a list of numbers, and when one doesn't answer, or gives an "out of service" message, you call the phone company and buy it.

It seems that buying these dead numbers would be useful to lots of service businesses.  There must be a better way to find those numbers.

Anybody know a solution?  Anybody want to go into this business (finding failed numbers)?

CLEAR WiMAX, 2 Month Update

Exactly two months ago, June 24, I became a CLEAR WiMAX user.  It is now *all* I use at home and it's my normal mobile solution.  Sometimes I even use it when free WiFi is available because it's faster and more convenient!

It's fast, it's affordable, it's easy, and it works.  It's sure made me a believer.  When I go out of town, I really miss it.

If you're in an area with coverage, I highly recommend it.  If you're thinking of using CLEAR, I'd be glad to connect you with a reseller who I trust.

Moving on From Tape

For years, I've wanted to get away from tape backups.  Remember the Data Domain bumper sticker?  Last month I attended a quick presentation from Barracuda Networks on their Backup products.  One of the slides showed the answer I wanted: disk-based backup is now cheaper than tape.

According to the slide, for a 400GB solutions, tape will be a little over $12k, and Barracuda's service, including off-site storage, will be a little under $10k.  If you want the breakdown, here it is:

400GB Tape Backup, 3 years:
$1,954 Drive and Controller
 1,840 40 tapes + Cleaning Cartridge
 6,886 Software for multiple devices + Exchange and SQL agents
 1,510 2 years maintenance for above software

12,190 Total cost for 3 years (tape)

400GB Barracuda Backup Service, 3 years:
$2,499 Barracuda Backup Server
 7,200 Off-site Storage Subscription

 9,699 Total cost for 3 years (Barracuda)

That's almost a $2500 difference across 3 years.  OK, what's wrong with this picture?  Well, sure, you could probably find a lower cost drive, and maybe squeeze some on the tape and software price.  So maybe the cost is biased.  But wait...the tape solution cost is missing something.  Somebody has to swap tapes, and label tapes, and take them off site, and bring them back for restores.  What's the cost of that person?  And what's the risk of a mistake?  Plus, how many stories have you heard of a restore from tape not working?

When I consider that this is Barracuda (fast to install, easy to configure, simple licensing, "just plain works"), it's pretty much 100% automated, including replicating your data to TWO off-site locations, and the data is on-line all the time for quick restores without having to hunt for tape, the numbers skew even more in favor of disk-based backup.

So, why would anyone ever buy tape again?  Have I missed something?

Cables I like

I LIKE this cable:
 

This one is OK, but just OK:
 

This one is AWFUL!

This one isn't too bad:

How about you?  Have you seen cable vendors do it right?  Wrong?  How much extra is "right" worth to you?

Do You Want CLEAR WiMAX?

I've been using CLEAR for just over three weeks now, and loving it!  Great performance, good mobility, and amazingly affordable.  I've heard good things about service, but don't have any first-hand experience because everything has worked the way it should.

If you’re in the Atlanta area and thinking about CLEAR WiMAX, please allow me to tell you about it, and I’d love the opportunity to provide it for you.  (Yes, I make a few dollars.  That’s not why I recommend it!)  Leave a comment or send an email: tony [dot] dye [at] gmail.com.

Note.  I am NOT a retailer for CLEAR, but I have a relationship with a company who is.  I'll be connecting you with that company.

CLEAR Performance Update

Now that I've had a few days of using CLEAR in a mobile environment, I've learned something that's a bit too simple: Performance is based almost entirely on signal strength.  When I have all bars green ("Perfect Signal"), I consistently get 9.5-10 MBit downloads.  When signal strength drops down to just 2 or 3 bars (of 10), then speed also drops down to 2-3 MBit.

The good news: most of the places I frequent have something very close to that "Perfect" signal.  And, of course, even a 2-3 MBit data rate is not bad when sitting in a coffee shop.

Yup, I'm happy! :-)

No Need to Involve the IT Department

Saw this on a website the other day.  “Because {product} is easy to setup and use, there’s no need to involve the IT department or install any extra software on the PC.”

This sounds great from a user or customer service perspective.  Why does it cause the hair on the back of my neck to stand up?  I don't think it's a control thing...

Up and Running on CLEAR

I believe my world changed today.  I'm now living on a Wi-MAX Internet connection from Clear.  Clear, aka ClearWire, aka Clear Wireless, has introduced Wi-MAX into a few cities, with Atlanta being one of them.  The coverage map is great for almost all of my usual hangouts.  I did a little experimenting on the edge of the coverage area earlier this evening, with respectable results, but then I did a little testing at a spot with very good coverage.  Now remember, this is wireless from a glorified cell tower.  Here are the quick results:

 

OK, the upload isn't all that exciting, but quite adequate for 99% of my needs.  For those rare times I need something faster, there are plenty of free WiFi hotspots around.  However, given these results, if nothing changes over the next few days, I'm done with DSL, done with Cable.  The price is quite competitive too!

If you're in Atlanta, Portland, or Las Vegas, and have an interest in this service, please let me know before you buy.

Jeopardy Software Concept

I had an opportunity to look at some prototype software yesterday that had what the developer calls his “Jeopardy” feature.  He’s looked at the database he’s working from, and it’s many different views, and for each views he’s extracted numerical info and created all kinds of charts from them.  Basically, he’s tried to automatically chart anything that’s chartable.  In other words, he’s providing answers to questions that users may not have thought of yet, and sometimes, people find those answers to be so valuable they find lots of questions that can be answered.  How often do you stumble across such things, and then realize it’s just what you needed and you don’t know how you ever lived without it?

Does your software help answer questions (GOOD questions) you didn’t know you had?  Easily?  Hopefully we’ll see more of this kind of idea in the future.