Google Voice - still working - and its 16 May 2014
Lavarock7:
This reminds me of an old cartoon:
A guy with a gas can is walking across the desert and the sign says: NEXT GAS 20 MILES.
Seems the gas gauge kept saying EMPTY but the car was still drivable...
drgeoff:
I had one of the estimated circa 35,000 original UK TiVo boxes. I chose to pay the upfront one-off £200 lifetime subscription rather than the ongoing £10 per month.
TiVo never put their heart and soul into the UK side of their business. Possibly their appointment of Sky had been a bad decision as Sky soon launched and actively promoted their own twin tuner satellite receiver cum hard disk recorder. The UK TiVo was nothing more than a rejigged version of the first US TiVos. However the service worked reliably enough for its ardent band of users who found the TiVo UI much better than the Sky one.
Some years later, TiVo announced a new exclusive deal with the UK's major (by a long way) cable network. A new box able to receive and record programmes from the cable network and featuring the famed TiVo UI. But the 'exclusive' part of the deal meant that all existing TiVo boxes would cease receiving the EPG updates from a certain date. A sweetener in the way of early access to and a discount on the new service was offered to existing owners but a very significant portion of those could not get cable service even if they wanted to.
There were many protests directed to TiVo US but they seemed to fall on deaf ears. The due date for end of EPG updates came and went but the updates kept coming. Had TiVo had a change of heart?
No, the updates did stop about two weeks after the publicised cut off date.
However the story does not have a completely sad ending. A bunch of clever people figured out how to set up their own EPG server. It was fairly easy to change a field in the TiVo's config pages to point to that server. Many people including myself are still using it.
Pepi:
Quote from: Lavarock7 on May 19, 2014, 10:58:49 am
This reminds me of an old cartoon:
A guy with a gas can is walking across the desert and the sign says: NEXT GAS 20 MILES.
Seems the gas gauge kept saying EMPTY but the car was still drivable...
Yep, that was me in my Ferrari ;)
vtsnaab:
I am very grateful for the YEARS of free phone usage courtesy of the Big G and Obihai's very affordable little box.
At the very same time, my GV number DID become my main point of contact for most of the folks I stay in contact with.
Though I am not eager to change my 'main' number - this is exactly what I will do because trying to plan ahead is quite impossible with no specific information regarding when the Obi/GV combo will die.
So...I'll keep using it until it does die and have made multiple solutions ready for when that time comes.
I am also very grateful to see folks posting every day that it's still working for them - as this can reveal much about any failure pattern (if/when one should emerge), and after all - this IS all about communication, so it's ALL GOOD !!
vadr:
Quote from: Pepi on May 19, 2014, 06:31:43 am
I'm glad I've got 911 support now.
Don't you have a cellphone?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page