Here in Trinidad we are already ahead of this curve with Flow having subscribed to this model with a cap that is not placed on the amount of bandwidth used but moreso the speed of the bandwidth. In effect this creates the same situation as you are limited in your consumption if you speed is hindered.

The argument however is that with the growing number of services online that are bandwidth intensive and digital distribution becoming more prevalent how does the capping play a role in net neutrality and more importantly at the moment the education and development of our analog economy.

While the website is not the running for the next Web 2.0 design award when you take into account the obstacles that the team from Five Rivers was faced with in getting this completed it is a commendable effort.

Some of the comments and challenges faced included the lack of a reliable internet access at the school and the lack of an adequate access at their homes delaying the upload of information.Only one student had internet access at home and they had to depend on internet cafes and teachers to assist.

With only four to six computers reportedly available in the classroom and an unreliable internet connection what are the expectations to be had of those who should be at the forefront of the digital revolution to survive?

In order to participate in the Webcast you will be required to complete the Online Webcast Registration Form. The registration form will ask you to provide your name, contact information, and other details. You will receive a confirmation via email of your registration for the Webcast.

The webcast is scheduled to be an interactive event with the ability to ask questions during a Q&A session. All responses will be published online and the entire event is schedule t obe availbe online within 48 hours of the event.

TCL I believe also did this format last year for the same event but I am unable to find any archives of the 2007 webcast. This is hopefully a standard that the other public traded companies will soon follow and it will be interesting to see if this trend continues. 

Looking at their benefits page and the last bullet point for Residential Customers includes the sub heading Vanity Sales. It goes on to explain that “Some people will want service to keep up with friends.”

Other than the assumption that in creating the web content the bullet point was mistakenly pulled from some internal marketing document, this is unsurprising. If it was slated to be a benefit the attempt to create a need for the service is admirable.

It is unusual however to actually alert your customers to the fact that the business is trading on their sensibilities and possibly insulting their intelligence. Or is this something that TSTT has researched and struck on as being acceptable to the marketplace?

With this anyway, TSTT and Blink should work on the reliability of their service delivery and support before brandishing that we need to “keep up with the joneses“.

The Speaker asked rhetorically, “what would prevent 41 members from using laptops during the sitting? One doesn’t know if they are looking at pornography or chatting on-line”.

The fight against laptops in the Parliament based on the Speaker’s rhetoric may be a battle in the war for attentiveness. With some members occasionally drifting off to sleep only to be revived during a desk pounding session, this war may already be lost.

Embracing technology within the confines of the parliamentary sitting may be more useful to the 41 members. They surely would be more productive if digitization and availability of parliamentary records with the ability to search for various clarifications, previous meeting notes, and inter-party communication via IM that can add to the parliamentary discussions.

In contrast to this two weeks ago, Laptops were to the rescue as the Senate adopted the suggestion of a House committee that senators should be provided with laptop computers and wireless Internet connections.

Nothing is said of the source or usage of the laptops or the internet services provider for the Senate’s suggestion but by all estimates they will either be on the Blink or 3G.

What would be your ideal political technology setup, laptop and internet access for all or a continued ban? Maybe with Senators having the same challenges as the general population for access this may lead to an improvement in service delivery.

The initial trailer is here and the video is below

The look after the response to the globe is classic.

Invisible: Children living with HIV/AIDS is a film production focused on the story of a woman named Veronica and her two children. Both the mother and her young daughter are HIV-positive.

Late last year, Veronica lost her job, was evicted from her home and was asked to remove her daughter from pre-school because she and her children are living with HIV/AIDS. At present, she is homeless and her daughter’s health is deteriorating.

Having completed the film, the producers have two critical aims. The first was to raise awareness about mothers and children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS by widespread showing of Invisible.

The second, more immediate goal is to build “Veronica’s House” – a new home for this family. Fortunately, Veronica has recently been given a small piece of land on which, if funds and materials are gathered, a concrete house could be built.

An estimate for this house has been completed. Now, Veronica and her family need the generosity of concerned individuals and organizations to put together the resources.

Head on over to Stand Up Trinidad and Tobago where more information can be found on the epidemic, how to donate, the required materials and the team behind this.

Building this house not only gives a new home and a new hope for this family but it also is a symbol of change to a Trinidad and Tobago where people living with HIV/AIDS are loved and supported by citizens instead of being subjected to discrimination and stigma.

This service is said to greatly enhances the efficiency of the application process, as well as providing greater flexibility in scheduling the time and date of the interview.

The requirements to utilize the service are minimal and include an Internet browser (Internet Explorer Only), a completed Electronic Visa Application Form, a TTPost receipt and a printer to print your appointment confirmation.

If not head on over to TriniTurtle.com and join TriniTurtle on his adventures with Sunny and Sparky as they learn about past and current events of Trinidad.

They’ll also be frequenting Matura Beach to visit the protected leather back turtles on the east coast.

The concept for TriniTurtle began in April 2007 and centers around Kellyville. The first pilot show is scheduled to launch early 2008 with a range of fun but educational interactive CD-Roms for kids also on the agenda.

The characters include:
Sunny: the first to meet TriniTurtle and they quickly became friends.
Sparky: best friends with Sunny
Natalie: Sunny’s sister
Bareback: the local mechanic
Shoogz: the cutie of Kellyville who likes to “lyme”
Sydney: mischievous prankster
Mango Muncher: a mango eating monster.

If you are interested in producing music for the show or being one of the character’s voices you can show your interest via the forum or via MySpace. If not, sit back and enjoy this forthcoming, fun and educational animation.

If you are still on the hunt for that Valentines day token, head on over to Flowerline, who currently has a 2008 Valentines collection and Signature Valentines Collection.

Floweline consider themselves the premium flower facility in Trinidad and Tobago and stock a wide variety of exotic and tropical flowers second to none on the twin island republic. They boast a highly qualified team of florists who can construct just about any arrangement to suit your taste and needs.

In addition to shopping on-line via an order form Flowerline can be contacted without leaving your home or office through their toll free number from any land line or mobile in Trinidad and Tobago at 800 ROSE. Their facility located in the heart of Central Trinidad in Chaguanas, making Flowerline easily accessed north bound on the Uriah Butler Highway.

Payment options include using your credit card over the phone, performing a bank deposit or money transfer to pay for your purchase and you can have flowers delivered to any part of the island.

Other than for valentines Flowerline’s catalog covers other occasions such as Anniversaries, Birthdays, Sympathy and Special Occasions.

The ability to listen to local music of Trinidad and Tobago using the IZATRINI Music Player can now be done directly from Facebook with the launch of the IZATRINI Music Player App.

One the application is added to your profile you can add and share your music with everyone by signing up at IZATRINI.net and adding music to your profile.

What would extend the functionality is a plug-in that allows for the streaming of the local radio stations straight from within Facebook using this application. Maybe one of the radio stations will read this and realize the potential if properly developed.

What happens when the #1 Matt in the world and the founding developer of Wordpress goes out and purchases a dot TT?

Either you get excited for the coffers that may be filled by numerous others seeking to be as clever as Ma.tt or you groan at the process undertaken to register the domain.

While we have highlighted some of these issues as well as the government possibly playing a hand in the TLD’s, Matt reasoned that though it was a bit expensive, the cost of a good domain now runs between 1-10K USD and this individualized domain was worth it.

As a shrewd SEO and branding move as it sure beat a dot name, will this open the eyes to the untapped potential and value of the local TLD’s that have been largely ignored?

We can only hope that by the time it comes for Ma.tt to renew his domain, the process and price is more accessible and the market stays clear of governmental factors.

What would be a coup is if you can make a case of your ability to multitask and get your office to cover the cost.

I must warn that this is not for the light hearted, but if you are not interested you can surely pass it on to those that you noticed were a bit out of timing this season either embarrassing you or themselves.

Soca CD’s not included!

Triniscene has continued to add to their portfolio this year with the addition of on location videos and interviews that supplement their pictures.

The average length of the videos are approximately one minute so don’t expect to see any live performances. Short interviews, shot drinking and shutouts to friends are in order.

You can access them either via the site galleries or on their YouTube channel. Unfortunately the videos are mixed in with the picture galleries and were not as easily accessible as anticipated.

If you do find a video of yourself or your friends the ability to embed or share is available as they are utilizing the YouTube platform.

Here is a compilation of the video galleries for the parties covered thus far:
One Fete
Ladies First
Blue Range
Bachannal Wednesday
Tribe Thursday
Blue Range Cooler Fete
Moka Explosion

If you are looking for coverage of Trinidad and Tobago 2008 Carnival head on over to CTnt World.

C News who around elections launched Campaign 41 to bring you updates has launched their Carnival 2008 site at CTnT World.

Included is a live stream of the Carnival 2008 activities. Even though it forces you to utilize Windows Media Player for the stream it has been consistent thus far in the quality of the stream having watch some kiddies carnival and Panorama results yesterday.

The site has also been quick to update the results from each competitions even though I have found it hard to locate yesterday’s results once today’s are posted.

Hopefully on Monday or Tuesday it won’t succumb to the faith of Campaign 41 with bandwidth and uptime challenges.

All Fours Online
An online version of a popular local card game, it attempts to bring the authenticity and familiarity of all fours to the computer screen by allowing the different online modes of all fours and all twos, utilizing the familiar rules and scoring with the ultimate animation of hangjack included.

Features being worked on for future version include the ability to form teams and instant messaging support for “signs” to be sent between players.

If you need to practice at more regular intervals and are not connected to the internet you can download a mobile version of the game for use on your cellphones.

Cricket Online
From an adaptation of the Quickit board game from Parodice Games we have computer Cricket. The computer simulation is a Java application that once downloaded is fairly easy to setup. One may find it a bit much to understand how to easily get started though as the demo game is at such a high speed you’d think it was a Sanford 20/20 tournament.

For help you can utilizes the rules for Quickit as they seems transferable to the computer adaptation. Neither an online or a mobile version has not been announced as the site indicates that it continues to work on the computer version.

Both these games have some potential but the all fours “trumps” the cricket adaptation by being online as well as having already gone mobile. The opportunities for these games to expand their revenue to maximize their current strategy of in game advertising would be to form partnerships to have them offered as part of the cellular network game plans or to create tournaments that bring exposure to both games.

If you have had any experience with these leave a note in the comments and tell us what you think as well a any other game you would like to see either computer adapted or online.

They all have websites now that communicate their messages, but they all seem to be static, with nothing new to interact with on a daily basis.

This one way communication limits the commitment from those consumers of the brand and by extension the business’ bottom line.

The radical shift some of these business need to become a two way communicator could be solved through the development of local business blogs.

Without too much thought you can look at how a company such as TSTT could utilize a blog for service updates of its network, outages, upgrades, the roll out of new product offerings.

How much more customer service oriented would they be perceived if they had another communication channel to connect with their thousands of internet access subscribers that lament the constant lack of information and the wait times for service calls.

Smaller companies also have the ability to open their communication channels for current and potential customers. For example take Simone at Trinidad Weddings dot com and their blog.

Simone mixes the posts with a variety of topics that not only focus on weddings and the business but some personal aspects. This immediately puts a feeling of humanity to the business and as a service business Simone has already made a connection with her target market by the time they contact her.

Needless to say this as with any undertaking takes time and effort but should be part of any company’s current and future marketing plan. If a company fails to participate in the conversation surrounding their brand or service they have already lost the opportunity to create value for themselves.

What company or business would you like to see utilize a blog as a communication channel?

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