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Written by Christopher Price
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Thursday, 28 September 2006 |
Someone in a position of power much higher than me once said "UI takes a lot of resources to do". Well, on behalf of the PCS Intel budget, I'm finally ready to admit he's right.
We're rolling out our new forum look and feel, which should be completed within the next couple of days. A long time coming, but we're happy with the completed look.
The Knowledge Base will be up next, we promise.
Discuss
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Written by Christopher Price
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Wednesday, 20 September 2006 |
We're gearing up for more change at PCS Intel, and you may have already noticed some of it...
We're not done yet, and we apologize if a few features are not online right now (we're putting them back up, we promise). Most of these changes will make it easier to access PCS Intel, and will become a bit more clear as we rollout some sweeping changes. When we said that the new look was just the beginning, we meant it.
And, of course, please let us know what you think.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Thursday, 14 September 2006 |
A lot of people ask questions to us about certain nuisances about our site (and we read all of it, don't stop). Usually we don't have time to answer, but I'll take a stab at this one. A lot of people ask why we constantly reference older news.
"PCS Intel delivered groundbreaking coverage on such ventures previously." Sentences like these are not aimed at relentless self-promoting. Instead, they are a reinforcement of how the internet works. It's a good thing to point to older things when building on new coverage. In fact, it's essential to do so... we are so creditable because we have been here for over three years talking about this industry, analyzing, and trying to make it just a little better for you too.
If you've been reading us for the past three years, you may be annoyed by this. And that's perfectly understandable. However, if someone stumbles onto our site tomorrow, they may not have any idea about what news we covered one year ago, let alone one month ago. By linking back to older news, we build on our news rather than throw rocks onto a pond.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Wednesday, 13 September 2006 |
And we thought Cingular didn't like us... this is setting a new standard.
Anyways, Cingular's customer forums had banned the word "Engadget" as an inappropriate word. We've known about this for awhile, but Engadget finally took action and told the world. Hours later, Cingular capitulated and removed the filter.
Update: Engadget spoke too soon... their name is still a banned word on Cingular's forums. Censorship's bad, don't do censorship, okay?
Update 2: Cingular has finally pulled the ban, you can now say Engadget on Cingular's forums.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Tuesday, 12 September 2006 |
We're here in Los Angeles, and despite what has been covered by others, there actually is no new news so far. Granted the expo hasn't technically started, but only Handmark comes in close. They showed off the same On Demand that comes free on Sprint phones running on GSM Motorola handsets... Wow.
Oh, and if you think we get "special treatment"... spare yourself the "glamor" of an open bar and realize that simply parking made the press reception not worth the effort.
Unfortunately, this CTIA expo is looking to be a train wreck in process, barring any surprise announcements (Apple, Can you hear me now? Good...). Not only is it shaping up to be lacking in new things to tout, but, we may not have any photos to show.
That's the one (extremely blurry) photo we could take before security swarmed... literally. They hadn't put up the new no-photos-without-expressed-permission signs yet (yet still tried to nuke our camera for the fun of it). Meaning, this could be the driest coverage of a CTIA expo yet. We'll literally have to walk around with our camera asking to even take a photo booth. Excuse me, CITA? Can I have some brown paint for my nose?
Our policy hasn't changed. If a company denies us the ability to provide proper coverage, we will deny them coverage. It costs money to cover these events, and if a company doesn't want us to document what they have to show... we simply don't want to talk to them.
Others with less scruples will of course break these rules, so our coverage may have to depend on others running around with their camera phones. Why are we telling you this? These new (and in our view, pointless) rules make our jobs more difficult, which means we have to break the coverage up onto more pages, meaning it takes you more time to get the same information. We hate that, you hate that, and you can thank CTIA organizers. If you don't want photos of products, don't show them on a show floor next to thousands of camera phones.
Oh, and one more big shocker (if you aren't sick enough of dripping sarcasm), cool.Prepaid won't be at this year's expo... Don't feel bad Cool, half the national carriers didn't bother to show either.
Want the funniest bit of all? RCR Wireless (one of our friendly competitors), which actually sponsors part of the event, has declared CTIA Day 0 part of their "worst of the week". Now, we hate to rag on the competition, but that's money well spent... you can't buy that kind of advertising.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Monday, 11 September 2006 |
We're a few hours away from heading out to start our CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Expo 2006 (we'd make the name longer if we could) coverage.
And, as the most connected place for news in all things wireless, we want to know what you want to see. Events, people, places, etc... tell us what you want to see, and we'll try to fit it into our comprehensive coverage. Let us know over in the forums...
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Written by Christopher Price
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Saturday, 02 September 2006 |
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We apologize for the delay in rolling out some of the articles mentioned in our last post. No, we're not on hiyatus. PCS Intel has been under attack over the past 48 hours from spammers. We immediately deployed filtering and time-delay options, so you shouldn't have seen much (if anything). In all, we've had to block access to over 100 IP addresses, and change several server spam detection routines. Hopefully we will be back on-track tomorrow.
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Written by Christopher Price
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Thursday, 31 August 2006 |
Yes, another Coffee Anyone post. We're up late delivering necessary tweaks. What's up tonight?
For starters, reviews. Reviews of MobiTV for Windows Mobile and the LG CU500 are both being finished, and should be online by morning. We're rolling out a new review system, based on a five-point scale. Old reviews have been assigned this score as well. Here it is...
- 5: Excellent. Almost perfect for the intended user.
- 4: Good. Some minor problems, but still a good buy.
- 3: Adequate. It may be great for you, it may not. Try before you buy is suggested.
- 2: Sub-par. The product has glaring issues, but it may still be an usable product.
- 1: Poor. We suggest you avoid this product... as much as possible.
Happy? If not, let us know.
In addition, we're rolling out the seriously-delayed Quarterly Reports. Folks aparrently didn't like the segmenting of carriers... so we've split the difference and put T-Mobile and Verizon into one report. Next quarter, we promise we'll put it all into one (very long) article.
Finally, we're rolling out necessary updates to Joomla, taking us to version 1.0.11. This is mostly a security release, which makes it top on our priority list. There may be some downtime... but that's why we're getting all this done at 1 AM (and 2, 3, 4, well, you get the idea).
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Written by Christopher Price
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Monday, 21 August 2006 |
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While we've been hard at work giving PCS Intel a new look, we haven't forgotten Sprint PCS Info. Now in blue to match PCS Intel, we've made several improvements to the Sprint PCS Info look-and-feel.
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