Bigfoot alert
John Bourn bemoans Yahoo's replies to emails (Feedback, January 24). I would add Bigfoot (my email has all but stopped) and Genie (my email-to-phone alerts have ceased). This is why we write to Jack Schofield for a human response. And when my £30 pay-as-you-go phone works in more than 100 countries, why is roaming so difficult with a computer? Christopher Dawkins
ChrisDawkins@cs.com
Mobile fodder
Here's some more fodder for Allen Ives who did not like my description of mobiles as intimate objects. In 1999 I created a product concept called the Vibrating Internal Pager, with a corporate video, a dial-in service from which you could send vibrations to the pagers, a business plan, and product launch events. More seriously, however, mobile phones are telephones but are also cultural objects through which people communicate and construct their identities. Lucy Kimbell
me@lucykimbell.com
Set the pace
The Pace £99.99 digital TV converter (What's new, 24 Jan) may mean industry (and government) suspects the public are staying away deliberately. They know the government wants the sale of analogue spectrum to happen as soon as possible. Can you record one digital programme while watching another? There has been a deafening silence on that one! Can the Pace box receive the four new free-to-air terrestrial channels without further expense? One shouldn't have to pay for channels from the BBC as the licence covers it, and ads pay for ITV output. Older TVs only have about eight channels, so after allowing one as the video recorder output, there aren't enough for all the digital channels. Richard Gosnell
rpgosnellg4muf@compuserve.com
Frozen out
I cannot receive Channel 5, and thus cannot use the Pace set-top box. I receive my TV signal from a relay station. This talk of a bright digital future leaves me cold. What will happen when they shut off the analogue signal? Can I expect a reduced licence fee? Rob Goldthorpe
rob.goldthorpe@btinternet.com
Clear the air Victor Keegan doesn't tell us whether Pace's set-top box addresses digital TV's killer problem: most households can view or record four or more channels simultaneously. If analogue signals are switched off, that ceases to be possible without substantial investment. Would a set-top box provide acceptable reception for sets with built-in aerials? Weak analogue signals give intelligible reception where digital gives zilch.
David Lewin
d.lewin@rl.ac.uk
Open wide Tristan Roddis hopes consumers oppose attempts to lock us into proprietary data formats but unfortunately most large consumers such as government agencies and organisations are keen to use expensive proprietary formats, which keep up the digital divide: not everyone can afford to upgrade equipment. Educational institutions are also culpable of enforcing proprietary standards: some insist that essays are handed in a Microsoft Word format. This is a great threat to academic freedom. There is a website at http://freedevelopers.net that discusses these issues.
Tony Goddard
hlamthecat@yahoo.com
XML focus I find it amazing that Walé Azeez (On the paper trail, January 24) fails to mention XML. Major players in the EDI market place such as GEIS have said that "e-commerce over the internet is poised for unprecedented growth, due to the introduction of a powerful new internet standard called the eXtensible Markup Language, or XML." Look at www.xml.org or www.ebxml.org.
David Morris
david@brassedoff.net
Work it out
The fact that it took nearly a quarter of a page to explain the workings of electronic data interchange is a good indication of its complex nature. This is why less than 5% of the world's businesses have taken up EDI since it was introduced over 30 years ago. An XML-based message, however, can be handled by the recipient, from receiving it by email to 100% automated receipting - a god-send. Combine this with the extensible nature of XML, and you have a technology that will "change the way we do business". EDI must now give way for a new generation of electronic transaction exchange. Eduardo Loigorri
eloigorri@exchequer.com
