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Would you pay $66 for 1 megabyte of data? You already are.

Are you a fan of texting?  I certainly am.  There have been months when I blew through my texting plan, and got a nasty bill in the mail.  I was thinking about this today and It’s amazing how badly we are being ripped off by the phone companies for what amounts to just standard data.

Did you know that a full text message, including text and headers is only about 160 bytes?  That’s right.  BYTES,  not kilobytes, not megabytes.  Bytes.  And even if you have a texting plan for lets say 1000 messages for $10.00 a month,  you’re still paying 1 cent per text.  1 cent for 160 bytes.  In that sense, that doesn’t sound like much, I know.  It’s hard to get angry over 1 cent.  But in this time of high speed mobile internet, and $30 unlimited 3g data plans,  charging 1 cent for 160 bytes, is the internet equivalent of throwing you on a bed of hot coals and raping you.

Let me explain.

You’re average MP3 from iTunes or Zune, or wherever you get your music, is somewhere around 4 megabytes.  Thats 4,194,304 bytes.

So, if you were charged the same amount of money per byte to download your music,  guess how much that single mp3 would cost?

$262.14.   OVER TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.  For a single song, downloaded once.

Hell, if you were charged that data rate,  guess how much it would cost you JUST to load the homepage of this site?

$32.00.  Just to go to ONE web site, ONE TIME.

Ridiculous isnt it?  And that is pricing based on having a texting plan.  Now granted, my math is off if you’re paying 10 cents per text,  or if you have an unlimited texting plan.   Also, you wouldn’t want to, nor be able to, transfer that much data over SMS, but the fact is, that since SMS messages are just standard data, there is absolutely no reason that Cellphone companies should charge you so much for so little data, especially in addition to an unlimited data plan.

The funny thing is, that people who would complain about tiered internet access, with 5GB per month caps, have no problem forking over the extra $10 per month for thier text plans.

This needs to stop, and it needs to stop now.  I would like to suggest sending a snail mail ( so that they actually read it ) letter to your mobile carrier, letting them know that you are fed up with the high prices for SMS data, and that a change needs to be made.  I’ll be sending mine to T-Mobile today.

Tags: Cellphone, Corporate injustice, SMS, texting

Yahoo launches Delicious 2

Thought this was pretty neat.  After years and years of langishing under the control of Yahoo,  the social bookmarking tool Delicious (formerly Del.icio.us) has released version 2 of it’s site.  A full overhaul was made, and it seems to be up and running with the same great stability it had before.  If you use Delicious, all of your bookmarks have been preserved, and the new homepage makes it much more accessible to non-users.

Here’s a screenshot:

Note,  if any of you want to suggest a story for inclusion on this blog, please tag it on Delicious with the tag justinfloodideas .  Thanks!

Tags: Delicious, Yahoo

Dell attempts new Mp3 player – EPIC fail assured.

Today is apparently MP3 player news day!

After getting out of the MP3 player market in 2003, Dell is back for another beating.  Except this time the war is already over and they don’t know it.  Apparently they didn’t get the memo.

According to Silicon Alley Insider:

Less than two years after giving up on their attempt to take on Apple and the iPod, Dell is getting ready to try it again. Any reason to think they’ll pull it off this time? Maybe: The WSJ notes that Dell has hired an Apple exec to oversee the project, which may or may not launch this fall. And it has a new strategy — rather than playing music you own, the devices are geared around subscription services. And the price sounds right:

The music player Dell has been testing — the product’s name couldn’t be learned — features a small navigation screen and basic button controls to scroll through music play lists. It would connect to online music services via a Wi-Fi Internet connection, and Dell executives said they would likely price the model currently being tested at less than $100.

So, can anyone think of a rational reason why Dell would decide to get into a dying market?  I certainly can’t.

Even Apple, the king of the market, knows the only way from here is down.  They’ve moved on from Media players to convergence devices like the iPhone and iPod touch.

Everyone and their mother has an MP3 player now, and chances are it’s an iPod or a Zune, or possibly a Sansa.  There is absolutely NO REASON why Dell should even bother wasting R&D money on this unless it’s going to make my morning coffee for me.   Personally, for me to even raise my head and CARE about this product, it would have to be better designed than the iPod touch, feature an easier to use interface,  feature a library of songs that’s LARGER than iTunes or Zune Marketplace, be ENTIRELY DRM free, and be a significant amount cheaper per song.  Since the chances of those all happening are extremely slim.  I officially don’t care.

The last thing I want is to carry more devices, so if I can get my mp3 player into my cellphone a la the iPhone or Instinct,  I will.

I can’t even imagine why Dell would bother, and I imagine that will be the general consumer would agree.

Oh well, at least you can look forward to getting one for free with your next Dell laptop.

Nice try…  I guess?

Tags: Dell, Epic Fail, iPod, MP3 Player, Zune

iLounge predicts Zune-like iPod nano?!

According to an article on iLounge:

It may be hard to believe, but from what we’ve now heard from multiple sources, it’s true: the fourth-generation iPod nano will look like… a Microsoft Zune. Well, sort of.

Contradicting speculation that Apple was planning to transform the new nano into a miniature iPod touch, complete with a smaller touchscreen, we’ve been told that this year’s nano upgrade will go in a different direction. Described by one source as looking like “a Zune Flash… or whatever it’s called,” the new nano has a vertically (tall) oriented display with a Click Wheel underneath, preserving the button-based control scheme that users have found easiest to use without looking down at the screen. The new nano’s screen will gain the same 1.5:1 widescreen aspect ratio as the iPhone and iPod touch, versus the 1.33:1 ratio of the prior iPod nano and iPod classic, and you’ll rotate the device to watch videos on it.

I can understand the reason why they wouldn’t go touchscreen on the nano,  It’s simply a matter of profit margins.   The touchscreens are simply still too expensive to put on a product that inexpensive.  Though I have a feeling Microsoft will have an absolute FIELD DAY with this if it’s true,  proclaiming that they beat Apple to the punch on design.

I have to be honest,  I own a Zune, and I absolutely love it.  The interface is fantastic, and the hardware is beautiful.  It might just be the single best product Microsoft has ever released, a close second being the original Microsoft Natural Keyboard.  That thing was freakin’ awesome.  The Zune Pass subscription service is also in my opinion a far better way to get music than to buy songs at 99c each.  For a pretty insignificant monthly charge, I can download thousands and thousands of songs, anything I want to listen to!  To fill up a comparable iPod with music from iTunes or Amazon, I’d have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars.  Unfortunately, the subscription services have yet to be marketed in real way, and they aren’t as well known as iTunes.

As for the iPod nano, even if these rumors are true, don’t think that touchscreen nanos aren’t in the works.   I’d imagine the next generation after these will bring the touchscreens.  Possibly a device half the size of the current iPhone, with full multitouch, but ONLY running the iPod app.  No home screen, no app store, no wifi, just the iPod app only, with storage probably ranging from 4-16 gigs.

Tags: Apple, iPod, Microsoft, Zune

Microsoft prepares to scrap existing Windows Architecture with “Midori”

When Microsoft was readying it’s announcement of Windows 7, the successor to Vista, I had hopes that Microsoft would go the direction of Apple and scrap the current Windows codebase entirely.  Unfortunately, the announcement was made that Windows 7 would just be a continuation of the current Vista codebase, and nothing entirely new.

This was a disappointment to me.  The biggest issue facing Windows currently, is it’s ridiculous level of bloat.  A recent software update was pushed to consumers to add words like “Obama”, and FOUR others to the built in Windows Dictionary.   So what?  It should be a 1 meg update tops, right?  Nope.  Because every feature of Windows is currently bloated beyond belief, a simple patch to add 5 words to the dictionary required a mind-blowingly large 56 megabyte download.  FIFTY SIX.  For FIVE WORDS.  Can someone please explain to me why adding “Obama” to the dictionary requires 11 megabytes of my bandwidth?

It’s totally ridiculous.  I can almost guarantee there are pieces of code running in Vista, that go back to Windows 3.1 and possibly farther back.  The only way to truly modernize themselves would be to start totally from scratch the same way Apple did with OS X.   In days like this where you can run a virtualized OS with little to no pain for most apps,   this should only be minimally painful, so why hasn’t Microsoft planned to do this?

Cut to yesterday, and an article on Software Development Times that stated that Microsoft is FINALLY planning to do just that!

That’s right, according to them the project is code named “Midori” and it’s an offshoot of the Singularity Project, which was research into a fully componentized OS.   I won’t go into the extreme tech details of it, as it can get a bit over my head at times, so please head to the original article to get more details,  but suffice it to say that this OS will be fully modern,  built from scratch, and able to run existing Windows code through virtualization, so migration should be relatively painless.

It’s likely we wouldn’t see something from this on shelves until at 2012 or so, considering how long it takes Microsoft to generally release a product,  but when we do,  we could finally see the beginnings of a new Microsoft.

Only problem is,  there’s a good chance the OS won’t even matter anymore by the time they get there.

Will they be a day late and a dollar short?   Only time will tell.

Tags: Microsoft, Midori, OS X, Windows 7, Windows Vista

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog now on Hulu

For all of you that missed the web phenomenon that was Dr. Horrible, it’s now available to watch on Hulu.  I’ve embedded the video so that you can watch it here for free, so please enjoy.

For the uninitiated Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is a 3 part web-only musical made by Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly fame during his writer’s strike induced hiatus.

It follows the story of Dr. Horrible (Neal Patrick Harris) and his exploits attempting to get into the “Evil League of Evil”.  It’s funny, both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and features surprisingly good music.  I could absolutely see this branching out into a new franchise for Whedon.

So please sit back, relax, and enjoy Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog courtesy of Hulu, while it’s available.

Tags: Angel, Buffy, Dr Horrible, Firefly, Humor, Joss Whedon, Superheroes