29th April 2008, 06:21 am
Harris Interactive, a market research firm, has conducted a survey of 9,132 adults conducted in 4Q of 2007 to find out the telephony usage patterns of U.S. adults. The survey shows that about 14% of adults are cord-cutters, up from about 10% in 2006. The percentage of adults with landline phones has dropped slightly to 79% from 81%. This shows that the number of people who use a cell phone exclusively for voice communication (i.e. have no landline phone), also called cord-cutters, is increasing.
The Chart and the table below show the telephony usage patterns among U.S. adults, as depicted by the survey taken in Q4 2007 through Q1 2008.
(source: Harris Interactive, techuntangled calculations)
1st April 2008, 11:27 pm
On 3/31, I noticed this new “New! Gmail Custom Time” notice on Gmail. Curious to know what it was, I clicked on it but the link didn’t work at that time. I was surprised that a Google link was not working, but didn’t take much notice beyond that.
Turns out this was an April Fool’s joke (The link started working on 4/1). I didn’t fall for it, because I heard about the joke before I got to the link on 4/1 (shown below), but I didn’t realize the joke on 3/31 either.
I can see how this feature could be used to abuse deadlines. But then again, I consistently get spam (on Yahoo!) that are future dated. That means that mailers (aka sendmail programs) don’t actually check the date field on incoming email. I can’t say for sure that spam filters don’t filter out future dated emails (apparently Yahoo! Mail doesn’t), but it would be mighty hard for filter out past-dated emails based on the time field.
So, the question is - why wouldn’t someone offer the capability to send past-dated emails? After all, there are plenty of companies that let you do all sorts of scams - from getting fake excuse letters (e.g. Print Doctor Excuses, Phony Excuses) to CallerID Spoofing.
Now that Google has made a fool of it, this just may be the catalyst for it. Let’s see if Google’s April Fools Joke becomes reality!
