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These are some good points. Antonio, have you considered making software to allow people to upload their phone bills? One would need to think carefully about ho

by gruseom 17y ago

These are some good points. Antonio, have you considered making software to allow people to upload their phone bills? One would need to think carefully about how to strip identifying data and demonstrate that you'd stripped it. But that seems like a soluble problem, especially in an open source context. If you made it easy for me to upload my bill every month and made it transparent how the data was being scraped, I would totally do it. In fact, it would be a pleasure to make a small contribution to genuine competition. The telcos would sooner or later try to thwart it, but that would draw attention to the whole endeavour.

alex_c 17y ago
That's a very interesting idea. It sometimes feels like the Canadian version of the vi-vs-emacs debate is Bell-vs-Rogers - specifically, which one is more evil. I would welcome any way to even the playing field a bit. If that involves sharing my bill - I'm happy to do it. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one.
acangiano 17y ago
> Antonio, have you considered making software to allow people to upload their phone bills? That's what I had in mind when I wrote my article. There are two viable approaches. The simplest one is to ask questions about the current or planned usage, and provide the best plans accordingly. The second, more complex, one would be to allow a person to upload their phone bill, parse it, analyze it and determine the most advantageous plan(s) according to their usage patterns. This is the most complex option because ideally it should allow for some flexibility in terms of handling bills from different carriers, entirely stripping the personal data (e.g., not even storing it somewhere on the server), and so on. However, it's also the sleekest and easiest one from the user's perspective. It would be neat to offer both versions, this way a user could decide which method they prefer. And from an implementation standpoint, it would make sense to release the first method first, and then add uploading capabilities at a later stage. Another challenge for the project will be ensuring that the data for the plans are up to date, but a solid effort in this regard and a good disclaimer should be enough to make a service like this useful, honest and (hopefully) lawsuit proof.

by gruseom 17y ago

alex_c 17y ago

That's a very interesting idea. It sometimes feels like the Canadian version of the vi-vs-emacs debate is Bell-vs-Rogers - specifically, which one is more evil. I would welcome any way to even the playing field a bit. If that involves sharing my bill - I'm happy to do it. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one.

acangiano 17y ago

> Antonio, have you considered making software to allow people to upload their phone bills? That's what I had in mind when I wrote my article. There are two viable approaches. The simplest one is to ask questions about the current or planned usage, and provide the best plans accordingly. The second, more complex, one would be to allow a person to upload their phone bill, parse it, analyze it and determine the most advantageous plan(s) according to their usage patterns. This is the most complex option because ideally it should allow for some flexibility in terms of handling bills from different carriers, entirely stripping the personal data (e.g., not even storing it somewhere on the server), and so on. However, it's also the sleekest and easiest one from the user's perspective. It would be neat to offer both versions, this way a user could decide which method they prefer. And from an implementation standpoint, it would make sense to release the first method first, and then add uploading capabilities at a later stage. Another challenge for the project will be ensuring that the data for the plans are up to date, but a solid effort in this regard and a good disclaimer should be enough to make a service like this useful, honest and (hopefully) lawsuit proof.