[mark@louis mark]$ uptime
 13:58:58  up 334 days,  6:49,  4 users . . .

of course, I just jinxed it, and the server will crash hard any minute now.

There has been a proliferation of web apps released in beta form in the past few years. For those who aren't exactly sure what beta means, basically beta is a term used for software that is not quite ready for release. It means that there are still some known bugs, and most likely some unknown bugs in the software. The software is in the need of some bug fixing and tweaking before it can go prime time.

Back in my early days of system administration, many of the GPL/open source software tools we used were quite usable in their beta stage, and it was very common for us to run beta software on our production servers. Most software projects had an alpha release that was, oddly enough, pre beta, and most alpha releases were quite buggy and unstable. Eventually these alpha products would become beta, and these beta products would become release versions. Alpha and beta versions were and are a way to release software to the masses for feedback and testing with the aim to produce a release quality version.

It seems many modern web based software products are using the beta label a little too freely and for other purposes. We labeled kinja.com a beta product when it was initially released, and rightly so as it was a new product just out of the gate. I left kinja well over a year ago, and yet kinja is still in beta. Google News, gmail and flickr are all still labeled beta well over a year from their initial releases. Its hard to believe that these companies have not been actively developing these products, and are unable to hammer out any of the bugs and features in the software at this point.

It is invaluable to release software early to your users so they can use it, touch it, and give you feedback on a work in progress. I think the idea of releasing alpha/beta software to users for feedback is an excellent tool that will help produce quality, bug free software. However, companies are using the beta label to excuse flaws in their web based software beyond just getting initial development feedback. What else can explain beta versions of web applications that have been in production use for over a year.

It seems that software companies think that adding a beta graphic to their webapp's logo gives them a bit of leeway in the quality of their wares. Maybe this is true, but how long can you label your live webapp as beta when people are using it as production software. Usually a beta release is followed by more advanced pre-release products, and maybe even release candidates, which eventually evolve into an actual released product, a 1.0 version of your software if you will. In the old days, if a product remained in a beta stage for overly long periods it meant that the software was most likely no longer being actively developed. I find it hard to believe that gmail has gone idle.

The beta label is being used to excuse flaws in software as opposed to being used as a tool to help expose flaws in software before final release. In the end it dilutes the value of releasing beta software if software is labeled beta without the intention of using feedback to produce release quality software. I imagine there is overlap in most cases, and most companies do wish to expose and fix flaws, but non the less, it still seems disingenuous when obviously production ready webapps remain beta for overly extended periods.

I went to to my Mom's today and helped her hook up her new fangled high speed cable internet access. She has been using a cheapo dialup serviced provided by non other than Walmart. They have a $10.00 a month dialup plan that she has been using forever.

I've mentioned a few times that she might want to try broadband internet access, but she has just retired, and was unwilling to pay the extra cost.

She moved into a new Apartment a few months ago, and since then her dialup access has been spotty at best. Her phone lines at the new apartment are noisy as hell, and she would get dropped off of the internet fairly often. I wanted to help my her upgrade to a better internet connection, but the question was how.

Rewind maybe a year ago or more to my boss Nick trying to convince my to switch to Vonage, a Voice over IP phone service. Basically, Voice over IP is a phone service that works over your broadband internet connection instead of the normal copper lines that your local provider uses to give you phone service. Now this all sounded great, getting rid of our local service which stunk and was very expensive, but we had been using Vonage at the space where I worked and it just plain sucked. We'd try to have phone conferences over the Vonage line, but it would be filled with static and echo, and people would drop in and out, and the net connection for every one else would be dog ( tam says, "Dawgs aint slow" ) slow while we were on the phone. Mind you, we were on a very crappy Verizon DSL connection that was spotty at best even when we weren't on the phone.

Fast forward a year to my friend Brian trying to convince me to try Vonage. I complained how it sucked at work, but he had been using it at home over his cable broadband connection, and he had no complaints. I decided to give it a try. I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised. The Vonage line is much cheaper then our old Verizon phone service, almost two thirds in fact, and we get unlimited long distance and local calls, as well as access to our voice messaging via the web. And we have had none of the problems we had where I worked. It has been great.

So how does this relate to my mother's crappy dialup issues you may wonder? Well, its basically a question of broadband cost vs. Voice Over IP savings. My mom's local phone provider was charging her about $40.00 a month with at least a $10.00 month long distance bill, and I imagine for some months it could be upwards of $20.00 for long distance. Her dial up was costing her about $10.00 a month for a grand total of $60.00 a month cost for phone and internet.

• Local phone: $40.00
• Long Distance: $10.00 (on a good month)
• Dial up service: $10.00
• total: $60.00

I did a little research and found that her local cable broadband provider was offering a special rate of $29.95 a month for the first year of service if you singed up before October 1st. An unlimited long distance and local calling plan from Vonage is $24.95 a month, totaling at $54.90.

• Optima Online year special rate: $29.95
• Vonage unlimited continental and Canada calling plan: $24.95
• total: $54.90

Mind you, this does not include tax and such, so throw in an extra 5-10 dollars for both totals.

In the end, my mom could save about $5.00 a month and get broadband to boot, a win/win if you ask me. So I helped her order the cable and Vonage, and today I went out to her new apartment and got her all set up. I threw in a wireless router and network card as a present from her favorite son, and she is now surfing the net like a pro while simultaneously talking to her loving son on her new voice over IP phone service.

So I say to all you dialup users out there who despise the local phone provider, The future is now. Throw off the shackles of local phone service and awash yourself in the freedom of high speed internet, where the porn flows like cheap wine, and pirated movies and mp3s fall like rain from the heavens.