David LaPlante

LOST in Nevada: Bye Bye TDMA..you kept me married. Bye Bye Cingular.

So 2007 is going to be interesting in the mobile and wireless for a few things:

First up: ATT/Cingular to shutter TDMA by 2008! This is very relevant to Nevada and to those of us who spend considerable amount of our time out in wild wide open that is Nevada. Many of us have been lulled in to being tremendously dependent upon what used to be AT&T wireless' backbone and is currently Cingular's (and soon to be again AT&T wireless' again). In August, Cingular began enforcing a surcharge on customers who remained on its TDMA network. At the time of the announcement, the carrier said the $4.99 a month charge would only affect a small number of its customers since the majority (more than 90%) were already on its GSM network.

Cingular is soon to become AT&T again has announced that they intend to shutter all of their TDMA networks by 2008. So the question remains for all the hunters and fishermen and the bike riders and the people who motor around in the greater reaches of Nevada, what now? It seems that a lot of places that used to have cell phone access...may not. This may cause some trouble in calling the honey and letting her know you're coming home a "little bit late" while you stop off at Brunos...So I would like to see if anyone has any information that they can post or share on what we can do with regards to cell phone access out in the greater hinterlands of Nevada.

Second up: Here's a funny video from YouTube talking about the ATT/Cingular thing....oh wait:

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International, Inc."

This will be an interesting re-re-re-rebranding challenge that unfolds before us.

Wi-the-Fi Can't You Get WiFi at a Convention Center Here?

I write this sitting from a local casino convention center floor with the thumping beats of Huey Lewis & the News in the background...groovy.

While I've written many times how wonderful our EV-DO and EDGE connectivity is in the Reno and Tahoe destination, it's only been in the last year that WiFi connectivity has been lit up aggressively. Visit even the smallest privately owned coffee shop/bar and you're likely to find free WiFi. Places like Java Jungle, the Chocolate Bar, Deux Gros Nez, the Record Street Cafe, Walden's, and of course every Starbucks on "Every Corner" offers T-Mobile HotSpots. Even Anchors Bar & Grill in Sparks has better WiFi than most.

So Wi-the-Fi can't most of the convention centers at the casino gaming properties get it dialed in!? (Insert image of me throwing my cell phone  against a wall and it bursting in to a 1,000 pieces to highlight the emotions that well up while contemplating that last statement.)

For the record, my best experiences have been at the Siena and Harrah's. While pretty much every property touts WiFi of some sort, it's pretty hard to find and reliably connect.

At right is a picture of my desktop as I sit and write this on the floor of one of our largest local hotel convention centers. Bleak. Barren. Devoid. Zip. Zero. Nada. Crazy.

Thanks Sprint for the EV-DO. You should sponsor me. I'm your biggest fan!

While I respect that our visitor demographic on the whole is not part of the "Always On" generation, northern California is our market and that place is lit up.

Perhaps it has in large part to do with local casino executive leadership? When's the last time you saw a local gaming executive hanging out in Java Jungle or Starbucks for that matter banging away on a laptop?

Most casino executives in this region are self -admittedly "unconnected". This doesn't mean they're "bad people", it simply means their priorities are perhaps out-of-sync with the 20/30/40 something's that are living out their business careers in Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton properties. The "unconnected" will never never prioritize WiFi until they get plugged in themselves.

So as we businesses leaders continue to move our office infrastructure to VOIP soft-phones and access to our business intelligence systems and functional processes management to online web applications, I can assure you I will not be the only frustrated business professional "stranded in the desert". Help. Please. 

Backseat Blogger: Staying Connected from Reno to Heavenly, Lake Tahoe in a Car

I hope that the collective marketers responsible for the Reno/Lake Tahoe destination become more aggressive in trumpeting its connectivity and ability to serve the 'Always On' crowd. While we're a far cry from Philly or the SF Goofleplex and our RNO airport wifi isn't free...from a cell service perspective we're blanketed. It's pretty hard to play in the Tahoe basin and not have great cell service.

The conventional thought is that "staying connected" is not appealing to people who are trying to play in Reno-Tahoe. This is misguided. The Travel Industry Association recently released results that concluded:

• "While the point of a vacation may be to “get away from it all,” travelers bring a surprising amount of technology with them in order to stay connected during their leisure trips, according to the latest Voice of the Traveler survey by the Travel Industry Association (TIA) and Synovate."
• "Thanks to technology, travelers no longer have to wait until they return from vacation to share their stories – 18 percent use the Internet to stay connected with family and friends while traveling. Nearly as many use the Internet while traveling to find places to visit or things to do (16%), or choose accommodations based on availability of a high-speed Internet connection or Wi-Fi access (15%)."

Clearly we wired business folk like to have our connectivity. Nothing STRESSES out an 'Always On' executive more than being 'OFF'. (If you happen to be the proprietor of an establishment in Reno-Tahoe, I politely remind you that it is 2006 and it's about time to get that wifi thing licked.)

So, I recently had a meeting up at Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe. So.Lake is about 50-60 a minute drive from my office in south Reno. (From 1996 thru 2000 Martin, Matt, Johnny and I raced the R.A.T.S. town league ski races and routinely made it from Reno to the base of Heavenly in under 50 minutes twice a week leaving at 4pm for a 5pm race-start.)

Carson City is much larger now and that's no longer possible to do it under 50 minutes without serious risk to yourself and others.

Now, it's no secret that I suck at driving. I really do. I just don't care. Hey - I grew up in Crested Butte. The only need for a car was to drive after the bus closed, to get 4wd somewhere to ride your bike, or to drive to Gunnison to go to school. Parallel parking is still one of my greatest fears. Before I graduated high school I'd totaled two of my Dad's cars...yeah. Best to let me ride in the back seat...

Which is why I was STOKED to note that I was able to sustain a permanent VPN connection over Sprint's 3g EVDO cellular network from Reno to So. Lake without so much as a hiccup in service. I was able to instant message over Yahoo and Skype the whole time and iTunes was downloading the Brian Krolicki podcast Robert and Josh had just laid down. Pretty cool.

 

tags: Reno, Nevada, Heavenly, Lake Tahoe, tahoe, Sprint, cell, 3g, wireless, wifi, alwayson, connected, vacation, travel, skiing, snowboarding

Nokia officially launches US-friendly E70 - Engadget Mobile

Since Nokia released the 6682 back in 2004, it's been my phone of choice. There's many a photo of me with this phone in my hand. Every 6682 I've owned is polished from spending hours in my hand.

While I've managed to break a 'couple, it's from living a very hard life. I carry my phone 24x7. It goes skiing. It goes fishing. Hunting. Drinking. To parties. In the mosh pit. It gets drinks spilled on it. It gets sweaty. Steamed up. Frozen. I drop it at least daily, if not more. I've thrown it at people. It keeps working...for the most part.

The 6682 is a text messaging machine. It's the most important piece of tech I own. It's how I stay in touch with most of my close relationships. I send more text messages a day than email. 160 characters. Short, sweet, and to the point.

And now the E70 has arrived in the US.

The new Nokia E70 is perhaps the most anticipated piece of tech for 2006 for me. I saw it at CES in January in Las Vegas and have been dying for it to arrive.

It's been officially released. I have one on order. (My last 6682 has a sticky #5.) I'll let y'all know what I think.

Link to Nokia officially launches US-friendly E70 - Engadget Mobile

tags: Nokia, 6682, E70, cell, phone

Technorati : 6682, E70, Nokia, US, cell, phone
Del.icio.us : 6682, E70, Nokia, US, cell, phone

MoBlog: A simple flight to San Jose

As I start writing this, I'm on my way back to Reno after a day of learning some forgotten lessons about being a Road Warrior.

It was just a regular day of hopping a plane (a.k.a. "Nerd Bird") down to San Jose. Get on a plane at 6 am, fly to San Jose, have a meeting, jump back on a plane at noon and be back in the office at 1:00 pm.

It didn't work out that way. What's worse is that I convinced myself to go "extra light" and not bring backup batteries or chargers. After all, I'd only be gone for six hours. I was about to learn a hard lesson all over again.

When I arrived at the airport, I noticed that my mobile phone was at 20 percent charge (expletive deleted)! Apparently, I had not connected it all the way to the charger the night before. Then the flight to San Jose was delayed an hour and a half due to fog. My gut told me right then to call it off and reschedule, but when they announced boarding at 8:45 am, I couldn't resist the chance to take care of my meetings and be back on the 3:00 pm flight.

As we circled over San Jose for an hour and a half, I realized my mistakes. Most importantly, with no battery chargers, I was about to face the unpleasant reality of a cell phone and laptop dead on arrival with my PDA to follow shortly thereafter.

They routed our plane to Orange County. By this time, my chance of making meetings and returning to Reno in time for a birthday dinner was slim. Using the last of my laptop battery, I logged in to Southwest.com and looked at options. As the plane I was on prepared to leave for Oakland, I asked to disembark and pleaded with the gate attendant to route me back to Reno.

From there it was to Las Vegas and then a flight back to Reno. I arrived at 4 pm having never made it to San Jose. By the time I landed, my PDA, cell phone and laptop were dead. Had it not been for text messaging, I wouldn't have been able to preserve the battery on my cell phone and facilitate about twenty communications during the few moments on the ground.

Lessons:

1. Always bring the cell phone charger and a spare battery, no matter how short the trip. OK - maybe a quick run down to 7-Eleven doesn't count.
2. Always bring the laptop charger, no matter how short the trip.
3. Never schedule MUST ATTEND meetings within six hours of an expected flight arrival in the winter. Eight of my last 10 flights have been delayed.

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MoBlog: Sitting at the DMV

I sit here at DMV moblogging as I wait to renew my car registration and driver's license. I wish the DMV could alert me about renewals and deliver other important information by way of Short Message Service (SMS, known as text messaging). A lonely piece of direct mail gets lost in a busy entrepreneur's life and all hell breaks loose if that direct mail signifies an important deadline such as driver's license renewal. Oh well: I multi-task by making phone calls and plowing through e-mail.

At least I know I'm not the only one that fails to pay attention to direct mail from the DMV. Bumped in to a fellow business owner in the same situation. It's hard enough to find time to get a haircut! I look forward to the day when DMV meets SMS.

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Hard Hat, High Tech: How Technology is Changing Construction

An article for the Nevada Business Journal titled "Hard Hat, High Tech: How Technology is Changing Construction" recently appeared in the magazine and on NBJ's web site.

David LaPlante, CEO, Twelve Horses North America, is on the road a lot. With clients and employees worldwide, he spends less time in his office than he does in his conference room and less time there than he does ... well, elsewhere.

But wherever he goes, he takes his phone. Big deal. Cell phone, right? Not exactly. LaPlante's phone can plug into any data port anywhere and function as office phone and computer, and allow clients to reach him at his own extension. That's high-tech, and it's right at home in the conference room at Twelve Horses' office at the Reno/Tahoe Tech Center. The conference room sports a big horseshoe-shaped table with 15 stations so everyone present can be plugged in to power, data and VGA ports and connected to the Internet while video-conferencing on two major display screens and talking via microphones at every station rather than through a central speaker phone.

"It sounds like overkill. But I can't tell you how much more productive that is," said LaPlante. "So much we do in the world today is mobile commuting and mobile collaborating. I spend my life in the conference room. With customers and employees all over the globe and employees, we spend time on Web connections and conference calls."

I would like to offer one minor correction to this article.  My cell phone is not the VOIP Cisco phone that I attempted to explain when interviewed. However, my laptop is softphone enabled.

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Cell Phone Use on Planes: The pros and cons

Today's WaPost pointed out the other side of allowing cell phone use in airplanes:

"People who don't hesitate to talk in restaurants or other taboo venues will take their disrespectful attitudes with them to the skies and turn a once-quiet place of refuge into a noisy, office-like environment to the detriment of all," Archambault said. "Overuse of the devices, loud talkers and self-important businessmen who get a kick from showing off their power will turn our airplane cabins into intolerable chatterboxes, further removing, and perhaps eliminating, all the remaining vestiges of civility in air travel."

I don't necessarily disagree. I see bad mobile manners all the time. Earlier this year, a lady at a nice restaurant screamed at me when I politely asked her to take her mobile conversation elsewhere as my wife and I couldn't hear each other talk. (She got kicked out, I got dinner comped, and half the patrons in the restaurant applauded.) If in-flight wireless use on an airplane was limited to SMS/text messaging, mobile e-mail and other wireless applications, everyone would still be able to communicate QUIETLY!

Once the cabin doors are closed, voice calls should be terminated, but you should be allowed to use wireless connectivity or SMS until your fingers bleed.

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Bad Experience on Delta

Okay - I waited 48 hours to write this...a "cooling off" period. Here's what happened:

At LaGuardia, our Delta flight to Atlanta ended up sitting on the tarmac for an hour. Air traffic controller delay. Not Delta's fault.

First observation: The Delta pilot did little to communicate the situation and waited too long to clue us in. And they wouldn't let us use our cell phones to update folks on delays. Strange. I'm sure there's some FAA rule about that, but I also recall a similar situation on another carrier and they allowed us to make calls.

Second observation: I asked the flight attendant about how they would be handling those of us with connecting flights. Her response: "We can't obtain or give out that information. My advice is to call Delta." To which I replied, "You won’t let us make a call right now." "No," she replied. "When we land." Ah. Makes perfect sense...?

We landed at 7:10 pm. I walked off the plane at 7:12 pm and sprinted from concourse B to concourse A as fast as I could drag my suitcase. This frantic race occurred after I failed to navigate the Delta phone tree while trying to free my bag from overhead storage.

I arrived at the gate at 7:21 pm. Departure was 7:25 pm. The plane was still at the gate but the doors were closed. The gate attendant appraised the ten of us stranded with that “here we go again” look, but refused to let us board. The plane didn’t pull from the gate until 7:29 pm.

Fortunately, I was first in line so I didn’t have to listen to the bellyaching of the nine others behind me. I knew the story and it would do me no good to moan about it. Especially if I wanted the gate attendant to actually try to help me get home.

I’m just curious why Delta didn’t hold the plane for us? A ten-minute delay to an end-destination flight? It would have saved them ten hotel rooms. I’ve heard a Southwest captain say many times, “Folks, we’re just going to hang out at the gate for another couple minutes so a few folks can make this flight and get home. Do unto others as you’d have done unto you. They want to get home just as bad as you do.”

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Lemonade and Traveling: Making downtime productive.

I arrived at Reno-Tahoe airport at 4:30 for a flight. Fog and ice in Salt Lake. Delayed three hours then re-routed through Atlanta. Thank God for my Sprint cellular modem. I finished three hours of e-mail and work.

In another three days, I synced and sucked down over 420mb on a Sprint cellular modem. I can hardly wait for 3G. While 2.5G is NOT dial-up, it is NOWHERE near DSL broadband.

During yet another trip, my flight out of LaGuardia was delayed an hour, which meant I missed my Atlanta-Reno connection. I caught a flight to Salt Lake only to miss the last flight to Reno by 30 minutes. I got in to SLC at 11:30 pm MST. First flight out of SLC to Reno was at 5:30 am. The decision goes like this: Do I get a room and get two hours of sleep and the hassles of getting to and from the hotel, or do I suck it up and stay at the airport and work.

SLC’s airport has Sprint’s blazing fast WiFi now. Easy decision. In two minutes,  I was, I believe, the only user of what I thought to be a DS3 connectivity. From midnight to 4:30 am I was able to work. Made a lot of phone calls to Germany and Ireland and in general made some lemonade out of lemons.

This is the third time this has happened to me. Once, I pulled an all-nighter only to have the 5:30 am and 8:30 am flights cancelled due to weather. That was rough. The graveyard janitor recognized me.

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