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Mobishark’s SharkModem for the BlackBerry lets you view detailed connection info in a simple format.

Up until 20 minutes ago, I had no internet access from home. How could this be, you ask? Living as I do, in a rural part of the country, however, high speed access is not ubiquitous by any means. In my case, I could get cable, but until two weeks ago, my service provider was Adelphia (soon to be bought by Time Warner Cable), and now is Time Warner Cable (staffed apparently by new and different, yet equally incompetent, call center gnomes). Neither of these moronic corporate behemoths are able to muster the energy to appear at my domicile, even to extract an exorbitant $24.95 a month for ‘mediocre-speed’ 256kbps access on top of a $49.95 ‘installation fee,’ which is where the company’s tech gets paid training in how to set up a cable modem, and I get to pay him or her for it. Dialup is the same price, and therefore a rip-off in its own right. So what’s left?

The Blackberry, dingus! Pay attention.

Now, the fine folks at Mobishark, errr, Software? have created a truly interesting piece of software, not to mention a good way to stick it to the big wireless companies for their strong-arm tactics. Here’s the breakdown of the scam your service provider’s probably trying to pull: (1) An ‘unlimited’ data plan with a provider such as, say, Verizon Wireless grants you ‘unlimited access’ to use your Blackberry handheld to surf the web, no matter how many of those little bits and bytes you steal through the mysterious magic wires in the sky that let us all be ‘IN.’ (2) Your Blackberry can be a modem. Pure and simple. After all, Verizon’s perfectly willing to sell you their NationalAccess or BroadbandAccess plans for another $30 a month, so it must work, right?

Heh, yup. Download the trial of SharkModem from Mobishark’s website, and you’ll find just how freaking easy it can be. Install it on your computer and use the app loader to put it on the Blackberry, and you’ll be up and running almost right away (albeit with a 5MB throughput limit on the demo). I was sold immediately. After all, it doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense to be paying for unlimited data which is being unfairly limited (SharkModem uses the device itself to make HTTP and socket requests, so it’s exactly like surfing the web on the Blackberry, only with a real screen) solely to make free money for your wireless provider. At $34.97, on ‘sale‘ right now, SharkModem is around what I would’ve paid for a month’s service through my wireless provider, and it’s a one-time fee.

The speed is not bad, although it’s nothing like Verizon’s BroadbandAccess in terms of being able to stream media or live content. Not surprisingly, the big delay is on the initial request, while (I assume) the device has to wait its turn to send the request through the tower to a computer, to the content’s host, back through the computer to the tower and back to the Blackberry. It can take up to 5 seconds before there’s a response (which you can see on SharkModem’s simple yet highly informative Connections tab), but once you’re going, download speeds on Verizon’s network average around 10KBps with 2 bars of service, or approximately 2x modem speed. And the price is right.

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Sports fans are a long-suffering crowd. We’ve endured rising ticket prices, wayward basketballs and players emerging from the fields of play, and even the ultimate ignominy of the $6 hot dog. But now we have to deal with being told we don’t matter.

Here’s what I’m talking about. ESPN, the sports channel and empire which proclaims itself to be a ‘leader’ in the sports world, recently debuted an online version of their TV service, called ESPN360.com. With ESPN 360.com, the lucky sports fans who subscribe to a limited list of cable providers (such as Adelphia) are automatically granted instant free access to this cornucopia of multimedia sports excitement. Everyone else gets a message suggesting they email their ISP to request that it add the ESPN360.com service to its list of offerings so that you, the sports fan, can get it for free.

Now, I understand that ESPN would not want just anyone to connect and start streaming video for free from a cable channel that normally requires a paid subscription. But I do have that subscription–I’ve been a loyal ESPN viewer through Comcast, DISH Network, and now Metrocast Cable of Belmont, NH. Hear that, ESPN? I pay just as much as the people 10 miles north of me who have Adelphia, but I simply can’t get access, because I need to petition my podunk provider to pay you guys.

And that’s what really gets me angry. The fact that I simply can’t get access to ESPN360.com, no matter what. There’s no option to create a subscription account for a standalone service, as in the case of Major League Baseball’s well-designed, well-executed, and fan-centric MLB.TV. Instead, I get a pithy request to petition my ISP. In other words, if ESPN can’t sell this service in huge contracts to large-scale ISPs, it’s not worth selling. ESPN, it appears, is above even selling a product to the fans themselves–they’re out for the big fish.

It wouldn’t be hard to correct this problem–many fans, I’m sure, would be willing to pay for the service on a monthly basis, so that they can watch it on the road in hotel rooms, at the workplace, and anywhere they might be that happens not to be on one of a few ISPs. If you let us buy it, we will come. MLB.TV proves that every day. But being forced to convince my cable provider to pay an extra cost to ESPN makes me feel about as unimportant as could be, and it sure doesn’t make me feel very good about what interests ESPN has at its corporate heart. I know money’s a huge part of sports, but so are fans, and you shouldn’t forget that.

NB:So please, if you agree with this standpoint, and you’re frustrated by ESPN’s attempt to use you as a marketing tool to cable providers and other ISPs, comment below or share this article with others. It seems pretty clear that ESPN will only respond to large groups with significant market shares, so let’s become a large group.

A colleague and I recently discovered a massive security flaw in ESPN360.com’s browser checking functions. According to the website, you must have a particular cable provider, such as Adelphia, in order to use ESPN360. However, the page only uses a simple variable, affiliate, to determine whether or not your ISP is one that contracts with ESPN. This is easily visible via the source code, which shows a link of the following if you do not have the proper ISP: http://static.espn.go.com/broadband/ebb2/360SiteRedesignStaging/index9.html?affiliate=nonaffiliate

Now, anyone with a modicum of web programming experience will immediately plug the following into a browser: http://static.espn.go.com/broadband/ebb2/360SiteRedesignStaging/index9.html?affiliate=affiliate

Note here how we’ve changed the status from ‘nonaffiliate’ to ‘affiliate.’ This shouldn’t work. It couldn’t possibly work. But it does. That’s it. The entire check is a simple variable that you can pass through the URL.

I would like to point out that I do not advocate using this to receive a free service to which you are not entitled. I myself have a cable provider included on the list, but the ISP I use is separate and provided by work, meaning that it shows up as ‘nonaffiliate.’ As a subscriber to that cable provider (and their internet service at home), I am entitled to download the software there anyway. Finally, I have reported this flaw to ESPN360.com in order to allow them to fix it.

RE-Update: As of Wednesday, we found out that simply holding the ‘ctrl’ key while loading the link above avoids any and all of the security protections. Happy free online sports viewing (esp. the World Cup, boys and girls! Out-of-date-update: As of Monday night, ESPN updated their ESPN360.com page to run with Flash. I wrote an open letter to ESPN protesting the fact that I have to convince my ISP to buy something from ESPN. Read it and sign the petition here.
espn 360