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My buddy Michael and I rode in the Summit to Surf bike ride on Saturday. The ride was absolutely remarkable. The American Diabetes Association did an amazing job organizing the ride, especially when it came time to supporting the riders.

There are several distances you can choose from when you do Summit to Surf. When Michael and I signed up for the ride, we were only planning to do the 56 mile leg from Welches to Hood River. However I was feeling adventerous on Saturday morning so I suggested to Michael that we do the Timberline climb, adding 12 additional miles and 1700 feet of additional vertical climb. We did the crazy climb and the views were simply amazing.

When we finished the ride in Hood River, we feasted on Burgerville cheeseburgers and some fantastic Widmer beer. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.

A while back I rode in Reach the Beach that took me up and over the Coastal Range. The ride on Saturday was roughly twice as far with almost twice the vertical climb as Reach the Beach. I’m stoked I was able to do *both* rides without ever walking my bike.

Another cool thing: as a team, Michael and I raised $270 for Diabetes research to find a cure for this terrible disease!

For more photos, see the slideshow below:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Wow what a couple of days for two particular tech stocks that I follow.  Amazon.com, the great online retailer, reported that their net profit is up 250% when compared to the same quarter last year.  WOW!  I’m a firm believer in Amazon’s business model and I use their services as often as possible.  Check ‘em out - their symbol is AMZN.

On the flip side, another tech firm I’m a customer of, Netflix reported some not-so-good news yesterday.  For the first time in the companies’ history, they had a loss in the number of subscribers.  They are facing some competition from Blockbuster.  However, BB has a huge overhead to account for and Netflix is known for their operational excellence.  I agree with the market that Netflix is in a but of a rut right now, but Reed Hastings will see them out of it.  For your reference, their ticker symbol is NFLX.

If you want to know more about what KTHXBAI means, it’s “Okay thanks bye”. You should really check out lolcats more

Anyways here’s the letter I got from SR,

Dear Customers,

After significant effort by the Company to avoid this result, SunRocket is in the process of closing its operations and therefore will no longer be able to provide you with the phone service that you have been accustomed to. However, this email provides you with an opportunity to sign up with select service providers who we believe will offer outstanding replacement service.

In order to assist you, we have entered into negotiations with a number of service providers. As a result of those negotiations, we have entered into agreements with 8×8, Inc., provider of the Packet8 service, and Unified Communications Corp., provider of Teleblend service to offer you the best options and we are proud to recommend the following alternatives to you. Please make your decision to move to a new service provides immediately as future service is uncertain.

8×8/Packet8

The Packet8 Internet phone service incorporates patent protected technology from 8×8. Inc., a publicly traded company in business for more than 20 years. The service works in the same way as SunRocket’s and offers a virtually identical feature set.

• No Startup Costs
• FREE activation
• FREE equipment
• FREE shipping
• FREE first month of service
• Quickly port your number at no charge

A Savings of over $100!

Click here to order (or copy and paste the following link into your Internet browser: http://getpacket8.packet8.net/sunrocket/) or call 1-800-868-0068 and mention special offer code SUNROCKET

Unified Communications Corp. / TeleBlend

The TeleBlend Internet phone service incorporates patent-protected technology from Unified Communications Corp., a privately held company in business to provide outstanding customer service and telephony products. Teleblend has been working behind the scenes already to restore and continue service for all Sun Rocket customers. The service works in the same way as SunRocket’s and offers an identical feature set with our Unlimited Transfer Plan.

• No Startup Costs
• FREE activation
• Use your existing Hardware
• FREE shipping
• FREE and Quick transfer of your current number
• UNLIMITED calling to the US, Canada and Puerto Rico
  

Click here to order (or copy and paste the following link into your Internet browser: http://www.myteleblend.net).

It has been our pleasure to service you at SunRocket!

My phone rang yesterday and on the other end was a reporter named Samar Srivastava from the Wall Street Journal. Apparently he saw my post about the demise of Sunrocket and wanted to get a customer’s point of view on the debacle.

I spoke with him for about 15 minutes. When we were wrapping up the phone call he wasn’t sure if the story would run or not, but to my surprise it ran today, on page B9 of your Wall Street Journal.

Here’s my excerpt:

“SunRocket customers were irate. “I feel really disappointed and let down,” said Jason Harris, a Web developer in Portland, Ore., and a SunRocket subscriber for the past year. He says he plans to switch to ViaTalk, a division of HostRocket.com Inc., because he has read good things about it.”

Go ahead and read the whole article. I’m pretty stoked.

So Sunrocket is going down in flames.  The dslreports forums and GigaOM are reporting that the company is shutting it’s doors.

Great, just fricking great!  This is really bad for two reasons.  First and foremost, I have my number with them and I’m actively trying to port it away from Sunrocket to a new VoIP provider I just signed up with.

Secondly this brings down the WAF (wife acceptance factor) in VoIP.  I had to market VoIP to my wife, and now this shows the volatility in her trusting me on this.  We signed up for a $199 per year with a free extra year deal.  We had to front the 200 bucks for the luxury of having super cheap phone service.  Also, the wife didn’t want to do this, and now I’ve got egg on my face.

I have loved VoIP thus far and I hope my new provider will be good.  I feel really bad for those who were laid off from Sunrocket and I with all them the best.  I have some friends and family members who I have to go and hopefully get their numbers saved from Sunrocket’s demise.

I’m all registered for Summit to Surf, a ride that starts on Mount Hood in Oregon and finishes in Hood River, OR. I’m SO excited to do another ride. As you may know, I rode in Reach the Beach and the Gorge Ride in the last two months.

Summit to Surf is a fundraiser for the National Diabetes Association to raise funds to fight Diabetes. A person in my family was just diagnosed with Type II diabetes so it’s a personal ride for me.

If you’d like to make a donation, please visit my ride page. Your donation is tax-deductible and every dollar goes to fighting diabetes.

I was just reading this article on LinuxInsider regarding the new young workers entering the workforce and how IT groups inside companies are handling their hunger for “Web 2.0″ technologies.  While I agree with the general premise of the article, they highlight Apple and specifically the iPhone.  Here’s as excerpt:

“Not only will the next generation of new hires demand these kinds of collaborative tools, the customers of the companies who hire them will as well. A study by Booz Allen said, “Web 2.0 seems to cut across age and gender and — more importantly to businesses — it influences purchase decisions. The study’s conclusion: “The need to evolve existing business models by integrating the Web 2.0 environment is urgent.”

Apple’s youthful culture is certainly one of the driving forces behind the iPhone and its Web 2.0 support. Once again, by embracing open standards, Apple is driving the technical flow in many cases, especially small to medium-sized business where reports claim they’re gaining market share.”

What “Web 2.0″ support does the iPhone have?  The iPhone doesn’t do any things that are new, it just makes operating advanced features that have existed for a long time on many phones easier.  Such as taking pictures/video and uploading them to flickr/youtube.  Actually the iPhone doesn’t currently do video.

It’s true that the iPhone enables you to get on the web anywhere at almost anytime, but this isn’t Web 2.0

The problem here is that the term “Web 2.0″  is being overused by ignorant people who don’t know it’s meaning.  What is the meaning of web 2.0?  Look here for your answer.

A while back I got an email from a representative from Callwave, inviting me to use their new service. The basic idea behind their voicemail service, called vtxt, involves using voice recognition on your voicemail in order to send you a text message with a summary of the audio message.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work. Say for example you get a message from your Mom that’s very wordy, but she’s just really trying to get you to call her back:

Actual example message:

“Hi, This is Mom, I really want to talk to you so please call me back at 503 555 1212″

vtxt example translation:

“Hi, This is Mom, call me at 5035551212″

BUT, the vtxt speech recognition has a long way to go. Here are two actual messages and translations that vtxt has done for me recently:

Actual message from Josh:

“Hi this is Josh, call me”

vtxt translation:

“Hi, this is Josh, don’t call me”

What?! The Callwave service totally screwed that one up. Talk about technology having the power to fracture personal relationships

Here’s another message, this time from my buddy Michael:

“Hey this is Mike, just calling to see if you want to go on a bike ride”

vtxt translation:

“…call us if you wanna go to my grad later.”

Heh - Michael graduated college about two years ago

So as you can see, Callwave’s speech recognition has a long way to come before it’s personally useful. I know it’s a hard thing to do with less than acceptable audio from cell phones and what not. It’s pretty fun to see what funky text messages come across. Thank goodness I can call in and get the actual message.

This is a follow-up to an earlier post.

Read it for yourself on Google’s Blog - they’ve swallowed GrandCentral.

Looks like google will have even more of my data now.