Don Bonnell, from Aliant Mobility, dropped by the mediaplex this afternoon to meet with a group of seven of us, all but one current Aliant Mobility cell phone customers. This meeting stems from an email I sent back in October to Chuck Hartlen, Vice President, Aliant Mobility, in which I said:

I’m one of a group of perhaps half a dozen Aliant Mobility customers in Charlottetown that would like to attempt to engage your company in a discussion about your products and services. We are all longtime cell phone customers; most of us work in the technology industry. We are seeking an avenue to bring forward our concerns in a venue that would actually be helpful to Aliant, and, we would hope, ultimately helpful to us. Would you be willing to meet with us, at your convenience, in Charlottetown?

Don, who is the product manager for data and handsets at Mobility, was Chucks’ designate, and he kindly came over from New Brunswick this afternoon and spent three hours in a room talking about cell phones with us.

I think we all came away having learned something from the meeting: Don was very open about explaining how things worked, why things work the way they do, and how they might change. He talked to us about AMPS and CDMA and 1xRTT, about handsets, customer service, the Mobility website and broken antennas.

I was impressed with his openness and his attitude, and encouraged by what he told us about plans for the future.

In my experience, Aliant has many people like Don lurking inside; too often their efforts and ideas get obfuscated by the beastly nature of the organization. It’s nice, as a result, when you can sit across the table from them and have an honest dialogue.

So thanks to Chuck for taking my original request seriously, and thanks to Don for visiting, and putting up with our barrage of questions and criticisms.

Having my name plastered all over this website means that, from time to time, I get old friends, from the pre-digital-Peter, dropping by as the result of an errant Google. As inveterate fan of keeping in touch with old friends, this is a source of great joy to me.

Today Neil dropped by, and he now officially qualifies as the person in the world I’ve known for the longest to have digitally dropped in for a visit.

Neil is the son of John Strickland, one of my father’s Victoria College roommates. There are pictures of Neil and I playing with pots and pans on the floor of someones kitchen when we were both no more than 2 or 3 years old.

Short of the OB/GYN who delivered me at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester in 1966, I can’t imagine anyone from an earlier time in my life stumbling across here.

So, welcome Neil, and Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Edward Hasbrouck, who, for my money, is one of the best travel writers around today, has posted a commentary on Priceline.com that sheds some interesting light on how airlines price tickets.

Now that I’ve choosen to maroon my working life across town, I walk to work every morning. While my walk isn’t anywhere as near ambitious as my brother Steve’s — he walks from St. Joseph down to CBC Montreal every morning, which, I think, is about 17 miles — it’s still an interesting change.

This morning was full of exciting morning walk events.

First, I was stopped on the street by Mandy, from HelloDita.com. She’s been on my blogroll for a while, but I didn’t have a face to put to the name. We had a brief chat on the way to Timothy’s, and then jumped back underneath our digital covers.

Inside Timothy’s, I spotted my arch nemesis Leo Broderick engaged in leftist plotting over in the corner. I managed to avoid eye contact.

And finally, the curiousity getting the best of me, I phoned my sources inside the Hardware Building and secured the knowledge that the secret new development now shrouded in plywood on Kent Street is, in fact, soon to be some sort of pub, apparently starting with the word “St.”. Leaving aside that what the world needs is a good Croatian pub, not another one that starts with “St.” (although who knows, maybe it’s St. Vlaho’s pub!), this will be a welcome addition to the downtown eatery community.

After first admitting that the Prince Edward Island deficit had ballooned from $11.5 million to $53.3 million, and then from there to $83.8 million, Treasurer Mitch Murphy today admitted that the deficit is, in fact, infinite.

“I realize that ‘infinite’ may be a hard concept for Islanders to grasp,” Murphy said to reporters, “so I’m happy to announce a targetted series of town hall sessions on the concept of infinity, to be held in January, to introduce Islanders to infinity.”

“We’ll also be covered concepts like ‘eternity,’ ‘timelessness’ and ‘forever,’” Murphy added.

Responding to opposition questions in the Legislature, Murphy suggested that Islanders think of “infinite” as “a whole lot,” but cautioned that he is working hard with his colleagues to develop a plan to harness the deficit, and went on to blame the infinite nature of the deficit on a series of unforseen infinite cuts in federal transfer payments, combined with an infinite drop in tourism because of SARS and infinite problems experienced by Island farmers this season.

Murphy also blamed the province’s math. He said that if PEI used the same accounting method as other Canadian provinces, PEI’s deficit would only be “almost infinite.”

According to an anonymous guy named Joe, Steven Garrity is a “dink,” is “in the know,” “need[s] to take a chill pill” and considers himself “cooler than the rest of the losers.”

This is not an unusual sort of blogback.

The common pattern is: blogauthor writes something that appears to suggest that they are part of a certain elite group (i.e. they listen to a particular band, wear a particular kind of knee-highs, or use a particular sort of computer) and the blogcritic responds along the lines of “you think you’re so important, you member of an elite group you.”

Leaving all of the pluses and minuses of anonymous blogflaming aside, I’m left to wonder what the alternative is.

If we humans don’t do things that distinguish us into little sub-groups of humans, wouldn’t we all be “the same?” And wouldn’t that be boring?

Isn’t Steven really saying with his radio show “I’m Steven, and here’s something that makes me unique.”

And isn’t “Joe” really saying “stop pretending you’re unique.”

Me, I’ll take unique over mundane any day.

Dink on, Steven!

Yesterday I went to the TD Canada Trust ATM at the corner of Queen and Kent in Charlottetown to withdraw some money.

I asked for $60.

The machine, helpfully, said “I can’t give you $60, but I can give you $50.” I say “okay.”

The machine then spit out a $50 bill.

Not wanting to trouble the merchants of Charlottetown with a $50 bill (actually, not wanting to be seen as a flashy bigshot with a wad of $50 bill(s)) I lined up to speak to a real live teller to get some change.

To get $50 changed into two $20 bills and a $10 bill, I had to:

• Attest to the fact that I have an account with TD Canada Trust
• Wait while the $50 was tested to see if it was counterfeit.
• Wait while the $50 was sealed inside a plastic bag.
• Wait while two sheets of paper were printed by a computer.
• Sign both sheets of paper, one confirming I had given them $50, the other confirming I’d received the change.
• Receive my two $20 bills and a $10 bill.

This rigamarole, from entering the line to leaving with my change, took approximately 10 minutes.

I know for certain that if I walked into the Toronto Dominion Bank in Carlisle, Ontario when I was 12 years old, and asked to have a $50 bill changed into two $20s and a $10, the teller would have taken the $50, opened her drawer, taken out my change and handed it to me.

So how is this progress?

Note to marketplace: here’s how you win my business:

I was reading through your recent postings on your website and noticed your discussion about “The Costs of Moving a Business Telephone Line”. I thought this would be an appropriate time to email you again and let you know that you can contact me with any questions or requests.

This is part of a note from Craig Cooper, PEI Account Executive for Eastlink.

Here’s how you lose my business:

Since Aliant is federally regulated by the CRTC with regards to their rates, these charges are standard and unfortunately cannot be changed to meet that of the competition’s. We at Aliant appreciate your business and look forward to serving you in the future.

This is the entire response from Aliant in reaction to an email I sent them asking if they could match Eastlink’s pricing.

Eastlink now has my business.

I am a veteran of the QuickTime VR wars, having created my first set of panoramas, 6 years ago.

This morning I thought I’d try and whip up a quick panorama of my new office. Here’s what I ended up with:

Obviously something went horribly, horribly wrong. And yet perhaps the image above does more to capture the essence of the new space than a photorealistic immersive panorama would.

Every company needs a “what we do” line. It’s the sentence that starts “Blahblah Incorporated makes…” or “ToodleDoodle Corp. designs…” under the “About Us” link on the company web page.

I visited a selection of Prince Edward Island web development company websites, and pulled off the “what we do” sentence of each. Here they are, cloaked in anonymity:

• …blends traditional marketing strategies and the latest technologies to strategically build your online presence
• …helps organizations understand and take advantage of the business opportunities presented by the Internet.
• …develop[s] or redesign[s] sites for small organizations with an emphasis on professional quality content, accessibile layout, usable functions and affordability
• …creates a variety of print and online media solutions, including custom web sites, e-commerce applications and other internet tools, and corporate brochures and other related marketing materials.
• …is a dynamic information technology company that provides its clients with complete Internet solutions.
• …is an Information Technology (IT) consulting company committed to providing quality, value-added services and solutions that meet clients’ needs in an evolving, competitive business environment.
• …we build powerful websites that are easy to manage for our clients and easy for their clients to use.
• … is an innovative web site design company that creates imagery and internet solutions.

Without in any way claiming that I have come close to cracking this nut myself, I am struck by the fact that these “what we do” statements are, almost without exception:

• generic
• undistinguishable from each other (can you match each of the above to the company they describe with any accuracy?)
• ultimately meaningless

I’m neither a business nor a marketing expert, but common sense would suggest that if you can’t communicate what you do, how you do it, and why you do it better than anyone else in a compelling, novel, unique fashion, you will get less business than those who can.

Just a thought.