While the vast majority of comments have welcomed the new theme we’ve adopted here, I have heard from a handful who are having problems with the theme or layout.  Upon further investigation, I have uncovered most fall into one of these categories:

• Internet Explorer 6.  You -must- upgrade your browser.  Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported and represents a serious security risk in today’s online world of browser exploits and malware.  I wouldn’t feel safe using IE6 to do any secure tasks these days.  Functionally, there are several features here which will not work with this browser properly.  If you are using this browser, you will see a security warning at the top of your screen prompting you to update effective today.  You don’t need to rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  In truth, the majority of our visitors here access this site using Firefox, Mac users prefer Safari (and there is a Windows version available as well).  I use Firefox myself.  It’s free and will import all of your bookmarks, so it’s painless.  You’ll also enjoy a lot of the new features and faster browsing.  The truth is, a lot of web pages are going to look strange using IE6, not just ours, and that will increasingly be the case as more and more sites drop support for this ancient browser version.  At the very least, if you like Internet Explorer, upgrade to at least version 7.  You’ll find it on the IE update page referenced above in the lower right corner.
• Screen Size.  If you are running at less than 1024×768 screen resolution, things are probably looking mighty squished.  I understand this, and the “busy-ness” it creates.  I have been waiting for the theme author to release his next update which will fix some of this.  In the meantime, I think the best choice for us will be to try switching to a two-column format.  You’ll see the articles appearing in 66% of the space, with the right side column containing the featured articles, recent comments, and some other stuff.  I have temporarily disabled some of the items that were in the center column to give people more white space.  Tonight, we’ll try expanding the layout.  However, as the vast majority of our visitors here arrive using a minimum of 1024×768 resolution, that will be the minimum resolution that I will be developing this site to work best with.
• Mobile Browsers & Netbooks: I am testing some plug-ins and add-ons to greatly improve options for those using these devices.  Hang in there.

I also strongly urge people who want to participate in our comments to register for an account here so they aren’t bothered with having to enter their name and e-mail address each time they want to leave a comment.  It literally takes seconds, because we don’t have a bloated sign-up procedure.  Your temporary password will be e-mailed to you (and after that you can change it), so make sure you use a valid e-mail address.

Residents of Austin need to make plans to attend a meeting this Wednesday the 13th at 6:30pm at City Hall to be sure your voices are heard regarding the possibility of Time Warner Cable returning with its metered billing and rationing plan this fall.  It would also be a great time to call attention to the company suspending customer accounts for “excessive consumption” as we’ve documented.

Michael Chaney, one of our readers, gave us the heads-up and also pointed us to the Austinist news and culture site, which published news about the meeting:

Chairman Chip Rosenthal said public input last month justified further inquiry into the metered bandwidth issue, and that the commission is now looking for policy input from experts in regulatory matters. That process, which may take months, begins with Wednesday’s meeting of the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission.

Rosenthal said the commission faces two challenges:

“As far as we can tell, the city has little regulatory authority over the [Time Warner Cable] broadband Internet product. Yes, TWC does hold a city-granted franchise, but that agreement only covers cable video services,” Rosenthal said. “(Also) the grounds for action are more uncertain now that TWC has rescinded metering (for the time being, so they say). How do you ask for relief when you aren’t being damaged? So, the current effort may end up being groundwork, so that we’re better if they do come back.”

Stop the Cap! will be glad to work on some written input for the meeting which we’ll publish here before Wednesday, should one of our Austin readers like to provide it to them.  Rosenthal is correct — Time Warner Cable’s broadband services are unregulated.  However, forcing language that prohibits capping or tiered pricing into a franchise renewal agreement is a possibility, as would other options ranging from exploring municipal broadband or outright non-renewal of the company’s franchise.

Rosenthal is right to consider their exploration of this issue laying “groundwork,” because we are convinced Time Warner Cable has not permanently shelved these pricing schemes by any means.

What: Austin Community Technology & Telecommunications Commission meeting on TWC metered billing and other issues.

Where: City Hall – Room 1101, 301 W. 2nd Street, Austin, Texas

When: Wednesday May 13, 6:30pm

Details: Agenda & Meeting Information, List of Monthly Time Warner Cable Complaints, Emerging Tech Presentation

Website: Austin Community Technology & Telecommunications Commission

The nabobs of negativism, the panic-stricken shrieks about the Internet becoming full, the fear-mongering about broadband pipes becoming clogged because the kid down the street is running torrents again.  We’ve heard it all before, and as we’ve always said, technological advancement always seems to find a way to resolve the “crisis in bandwidth” before big businesses resolve it themselves by rationing, capping, or overcharging for access.

And so it has again.

AT&T, in association with Corning and NEC today smashed all prior records of fiber optic transmission capacity by successfully transmitting data at 114 Gigabits per second over a single strand of fiber for up to 580 kilometers over an optically amplified link.  The standard fiber optic cable AT&T used for the test contains 320 separate optical channels, meaning through the use of just a single optical cable, it is possible to sustain a transmission rate of 36480 Gigabits per second!

That exceeds by 25% the last record setting transmission rate test and effectively doubles the distance the cable can maintain data transmission rates without unacceptable loss.

AT&T announced the results as part of their technological solution for broadband growth — deploying 100 Gigabit networks across the country to accommodate growing demand for the Internet.

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We are working on the comments editor bug reported over the weekend, which allows some Firefox users to find their comment text spilling beyond the right margin of the editor.  I am not seeing this happen myself, and I use Firefox, but we’ll be double checking the code.

The About Us section here has been completely redone.  It contains a list of our team members, a revised Mission Statement, and our new Privacy Policy.  It’s part of my effort to overhaul the information that I haven’t had time to work on since April.  The alternative provider section will be the nightmare.  I really need help from folks outside of Rochester to help me develop appropriate information for other cities.  It is far easier for me if you are willing to work within our own online editor to develop this instead of sending me a lot of text in e-mail.  The editor is very simple to work with.  All you need is a registered account here and I can extend editor access to you.

The cities drop-down menu was not designed to be “comprehensive” going-forward.  Over time, if/when additional cities become hotbeds of capping, that format will be reconsidered.

Jay Ovittore is our first Issues Coordinator, for North Carolina.  We seriously need additional coordinators, especially for Texas which is a hotbed of capping.  The requirements are simply your willingness to develop content for Stop the Cap! and to be enthusiastic and engaged in fighting back.  We can use multiple coordinators in Texas because of the various cities involved.  Use the contact form if you are interested.

There are a few additional side projects I am also working on, particularly for e-mail notification of new content/calls to action and mobile access issues.

Keep an eye out for more new things, and some adjustments to our look going forward.

Todd Spangler, who we seem to spar with on a semi-regular basis here, has another blog entry up expanding on his views of why Time Warner Cable’s metered pricing experiment failed.  Of course, completely missing from the list is the fact most customers do not want it.  That’s dangerous to say in a cable industry trade publication like Multichannel News, however.

Todd still thinks it’s all about how they did it, not the fact they did it in the first place that created what even he admits was a “category five” storm of backlash.

Clearly, the company’s idea — given that these were trials — was to have the flexibility to tweak pricing, adjust specific cap levels, etc., and not have these things set in stone. But the ad-hoc communications on the usage trials was perhaps the biggest reason this blew up.

The only “trial” here was on the customer, and the jury was stacked with Time Warner Cable executives who already found themselves innocent of extortionist pricing and market abuse.  The “tweak” most customers wanted was none at all.  What was set in stone, until the groundswell finally achieved temporary results, was that the caps were coming no matter what customers had to say.  Just ask people in Beaumont, Texas.

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