Verizon backs down - no rate hike coming

 See my original post here. Verizon has decided not to impose the 300% rate hike on text messages sent from short codes. Woo-hoo! According to one article it was because of the strongly worded e-mail I sent to Verizon Wireless's CEO (and other public outcries). Kudos Verizon. Here's hoping it's a permanent decision.

Verizon Wireless triples SMS charges for mobile marketers

In addition to raising their text messaging rates 100% in the last year (along with everyone else in the industry), Verizon Wireless has now taken upon itself to triple the charge it imposes on sites that allow subscribers to receive SMS notifications to 3 cents per text.

For example, you pay $20 per month for unlimited text messaging. So you sign up for CNN to send you a text message any time there is breaking news. Starting in November, Verizon will charge CNN 3 cents for each message they send out, despite the fact that the consumer is already paying for the text message.

This double-dipping on Verizon's part not only comes across as greedy (it costs virtually nothing to send a text message - they were making a profit when they only charged less than a penny per text) but it stifles innovation. Sites like Twitter, Remember The Milk, Celllfire, and others may have to either close up shop or severely limit their functionality if Verizon insists on charging the fee.

I decided to be proactive and sent an e-mail to Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam telling him basically what I said here: it's greedy and it stifles innovation. I haven't heard back from him.

Maybe I should have also mentioned how they're delusional for wanting to be content providers instead of "dumb pipes" for giving people access to information. Verizon, when it comes to creating content it's you verses the Internet. And I think the Internet is going to win.

For more reading on the text messaging rate hike, hit up this link.

Logo courtesy of here.

Microsoft's second ad is out, and it's better

 The second ad in the Seinfeld/Gates/Windows campaign launched last night and hit the intertubes shortly after. I must say I like this one better. It's funnier and ties in better (although still loosely) to the actual product they're promoting. Check the ads out here.

Note: It looks like Microsoft is using Flash to run the ads instead of Silverlight, despite the "Get Silverlight" link next to the video. See below.

Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld aren't gay

Boy oh boy. People sure are reading a lot into Microsoft's new ad. I've heard everything from the phallic nature of the churro and the implication of two men shoe shopping with leather references to outcast minorities.

It's not a typical commercial. It's 90 seconds and doesn't mention the product until the last four seconds. The rest of it is filled with...nothing. And that's the point. Kind of.

What was Seinfeld all about? It was a show about nothing. Bill Gates is shopping at the "Quality shoes at discount prices store" not as some allegory to say that a Windows machine is less expensive than the Mac, but because it's funny that the richest man in the world is shopping for shoes at a discount store in the mall.

It's also funny that Jerry, also very wealthy, knows exactly which kind of shoes are available and their different qualities.

When Jerry is sizing Bill's feet and asks if what he's feeling is Bill's toe, Bill responds. "No. It's pleather." It's a joke. Get it? It actually sounds like something my sister in-law would say. Bonus: Bill isn't even buying real leather shoes.

I don't think the Hispanic folks who are looking in the store window are a symbol of the outcast people in third world countries who don't even recognize these famous, rich people shopping inside. I think it was a random clip to stick in to break up the shots in the shoe store.

I don't think Bill holding up his platinum membership card to the shoe store to earn "big top points" is symbolic of how Microsoft rewards its customers. I think it was a chance to work a joke in, as well as a more subtle bonus joke: the picture on the card is Gates' mug shot when he was arrested for speeding in New Mexico.

I understand, to a certain extent, why people are digging so deep to find meaning in the commercial because it doesn't talk about Windows at all. But the homo-erotic and/or Microsoft/discount shoe store symbolism people are trying to establish is simply ridiculous.

By itself, the ad doesn't work, no matter how deep you look at it. The additional spots in the campaign will shed some light on the direction they're taking and will tie it all together. In the meantime, take it for what it is: a quirky, somewhat entertaining spot.

Moleskine mania

 

Oh, the drama. First, I freak out because I can't get the specific notebook I want. Then my friend/distant relative Erin brings one up from Provo for me. Then I get the one I ordered online (and was too impatient to wait for) so I have two. THEN the one Erin brought up began falling apart, the cover ever so sadly separating from the spine, so I wrote Moleskine and ask/beg for a new one.

Being in Italy (Milan, darling) our correspondence was a bit delayed and with the language barrier a little choppy. However, they very kindly said that, since they're handmade, sometimes these things happen and they'd be happy to send me a replacement if I'd provide my address, which I did.

Long story short, they ended up sending me two replacement notebooks, one with the cover written in Italian and one written in German, in addition to the original one I'd ordered online. While all this was happening, I found some good glue and was able to (mostly) reattach the cover of the original notebook which I'm still using.

I wrote Moleskine, told them they sent me an extra and offered to ship it back to them. They wrote back and told me not to worry about it. 

So now I have four total (three unused) softcover, ruled, pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks when just two months ago there was only one to be found in the entire state of Utah. Crazy how things turn out, huh?

Bill Gates on Windows XP usability

Bill rants as he struggles to download Moviemaker. Here's the opening paragraph:

"I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues."

It only gets better. Click here for the full, internal e-mail which was published by SeattlePI.com.

I must say that reading the e-mail makes me like Bill more. It's nice to know he actually understands (and experiences) things can are frustrating for end users and isn't living on some other planet.

Image courtesy of here.

*cough* BS *cough*

Via CNN.

Will the iPhone soon be on T-Mobile and Verizon?

Something fishy is afoot. One thing I neglected to mention in my overview of the 3G iPhone is that the notorious revenue-sharing deal between AT&T and Apple is no more. (Up to this point, it was speculated that AT&T was giving Apple a monthly payment for each iPhone subscriber.)

So...why is AT&T still the exclusive provider of the iPhone? What's Apple's incentive to stay with them? Seems like a raw deal for Apple because they're still severely limited as to their potential market.

Don Reisinger over at CNET speculates the relationship between the two companies may be over in the relatively near future. He has some good points, so check out the article.

My speculation is that the (rumored) five-year contract isn't quite that long. In fact, I wonder if maybe the contract wasn't based on length of time, but quantity of phones sold. A wacky idea, I know. But it may explain a couple of things:

1. AT&T would be reassured in the beginning that they'd have a guaranteed number of new subscribers from this unprecedented arrangement.

2. AT&T says it will only gives kick-backs for the first year. Apple doesn't hit the 10 million mark in that time frame, so they lower the price and make it more difficult to unlock the phone so they can hit the target number and get out.

For what it's worth, I think T-Mobile may get the iPhone before Verizon (despite the larger Verizon customer base) simply because the hardware is ready to go. CDMA phones suck a lot more juice than their GSM counterparts, something Apple will have to address, especially if a CDMA phone is going to be using 3G and GPS.

Absurd? Possible? Likely? "You're a freak and should write about something else"? Sound off in the comments.

I spoke. And Twitter listened.

Yep. That's the kind of power I wield on these interwebs. Just earlier this week I said, "Twitter, you gotta at the very least stop leaving people in the dark." So what did they do? They opened a Twitter account.

Yes, you can now follow Twitter on Twitter.

www.Twitter.com/Twitter

This is brilliant because now they can let all their users know when something is wrong simply by using their own service!

Wait...

Non-news news of the day: Twitter is down

"Something is technically wrong" is the understatement of the year. It's ridiculous. As Michael Arrington said, if Twitter could keep the site live for 24 consecutive hours that would be news.

It's interesting. I'm reading Getting Real, the e-book from 37Signals (the guys who made Ruby on Rails on which Twitter is built). In it they're quite adamant about launching your product/site quickly and with minimal features - worry about scalability later. The whole time I've been reading it I've had the thought, "Oh yeah? What about Twitter?" rolling around in the back of my head.

I'm the first to admit I know zero about building web apps (I consider myself a consumer geek, not a back-end geek). But I do know that from a user standpoint, if your product crashes this frequently with no explanation as to why or when it will be back up, something's gotta change.

I don't know if the problem lies with Rails' inability to scale or Twitter's. But Twitter needs to figure it out and it certainly seems like they've had enough time to do so.

Apple sued: lied about displays in iMacs

Apple told consumers that both the 20-inch and 24-inch iMacs displayed "millions of colors at all resolutions."

Apparently that's not the case.

"While Apple describes the display of both the 24-inch and 20-inch iMacs as though they were interchangeable, the monitors in each are of radically different technology. The 20-inch iMacs feature 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screens, the least expensive of its type," according to the lawsuit.

What?? Apple produces overpriced hardware amidst hype of it being the greatest thing to ever be produced since the Ten Commandments? I find that hard to believe. But not really.

Full story here.

T-Mobile sues Engadget for using magenta in their logo

Seriously. No joke. See here. Apparently the higher-ups at Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile USA's parent company in Germany) don't want Engadget to use "their" color of magenta because such usage "could lead to confusion in the marketplace."

I'm not sure how many people are confusing Engadget Mobile with T-Mobile. Are people trying to sign up for cell service with T-Mobile through Engadget Mobile? If you are, you're stupid. Almost as stupid as the people who think people are that stupid. Like the higher ups at Deutsche Telekom.

Meanwhile, Engadget Mobile has taken a page out of my father in-law's book by taking it a step further. They changed their logo today to this:

Others have taken up the cause of thumbing their noses at Das Man by trying to get as many people as possible to use the color magenta that has DT's panties in a wad. Here's my contribution to the cause:

Thanks to Veronica for the tip.

Gmail introduces "Custom Time" - send e-mail to the past

Using Google's revolutionary "e-flux capacitor", you can "Just click 'Set custom time' from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option."

Very handy indeed! Now on Saturday when I remember my dad's birthday was Friday, I can send him an e-mail and using Custom Time, have it show up in his Inbox like it arrived on his birthday! I can even "mark as read" so he thinks he looked at it and forgot!

For more information on this feature, click here.

Google, what will you think of next? By the way, what's the date today?

Your medium is dying

How my friend was fired from KSL

As if getting canned via e-mail wasn't bad enough, check out what the guy said.

Southwest is at it again: were these girls "too pretty to fly"?

Oh, Southwest. What do you have against young, "attractive" women using your airline?

Recently, two girls (see photo, above) were escorted off a Southwest flight after pounding on a bathroom door ("HURRY UP IN THERE! I HAVE TO CHECK MY MAKEUP!"), yelling at another passenger and being generally obnoxious. After all this, the flight attendant only rebuked them, not the other passenger(s) involved.

Oh, yeah. And when one of them asked for bottled water when she got on the plane she was told she'd have to wait until they served the beverages to everyone else. *Pout*

Southwest says they were being disruptive and even went so far as to have them escorted off the plane by uniformed officers when they reached their destination. The girls say they were discriminated against because they were young, good-looking and (in one of the girl's own words), "Nobody else on the plane, really, looked like us."

The reporter asks, "Did being pretty get them kicked off the plane?"

Let me answer that question for you: HECK NO. Because at least one of the women involved looks less like she does in the first photo, and more like this:

Normally I try not to judge people on physical appearance. But when the whole incident is allegedly based on looks, you gotta take it into account.

You can see the full video at CNN's site.

R.I.P.H.D.D.V.D.

The Second Format War has ended (the first being Beta v. VHS) with Blu-Ray coming off victorious. Toshiba, the main backer of the losing format, has bowed its head and backed out of the race after having lost millions in product development, promotion and advertising. (Hopefully Hillary will do the same.)

I was rooting for Blu-Ray if for no other reason than I like the name a lot better. "HD-DVD" is just too clunky to say.

I don't imagine this is going to drive a lot of new Blu-Ray sales. Of course, those waiting out the battle will be able to go out with the knowledge their purchase won't be for naught. Granted, they're sill paying a premium $300+ for the player and $30+ for each movie. Not something I'm ready to do. I'll wait until you can get players for less than a hundred and the movies come down to current DVD prices.

Of course, I will need an HD TV first. Hmmmmm.

P.S. This is post 499!

Thanks to Tombstone Generator for the pic.

Apple could take a note out of Microsoft's book

Apparently Microsoft announced special edition, red, 80 gig Zunes to be available just in time for Valentine's Day. (Who knew?) However, the players are more popular than expected and there have been some delays in shipping. Here's an abridged e-mail from Microsoft to those waiting on their oh-so-romantic Zunes:

We wanted to provide you with an update on your order status. Due to some issues in our fulfillment center there remains a chance we will miss getting your Zune to you by February 14th. We are working hard to get your order to you as quickly as possible...

Our goal is to provide a smooth customer experience for ordering, customization, and delivery. We sincerely apologize for not meeting that goal in this specific case. We will be refunding the entire amount of your order, which you should be able to see on your credit/debit card within 7-10 days. We hope you love your Zune and that you will accept our sincere apology.

Dang. An official apology, full refund and they get to keep the product? I didn't get that kind of love from Apple when my new iMac broke. In fact, I had to wait a month to get it back, without any updates, and in order to get any kind of reimbursement I had to write a letter to Stevie J. himself and work through their "executive customer service". Even then, my experience was nowhere as good as this.

Get the full story here.

Microsoft aims to buy Yahoo

Wow. Microsoft just kicked in Yahoo's door and offered them over $44 billion for their company. Three thoughts:

1. That is a LOT of money.

2. Does that mean Microsoft will screw up what Yahoo has managed to do well? Such as Flickr? And semi-well, like Yahoo Mail? I kind of like Yahoo. It's the one non-Microsoft and non-Google company out there and that, for some reason, is reassuring. Sort of, "If Google starts being evil, I can always jump back to a Microsoft alternative."

3. Isn't Microsoft a software company? Why the heck are they trying so hard to get into search? Granted, it can be a lucrative business, but it's not their business. Personally, I think they would be much better served by focusing on improving their software *cough* Vista *cough* and innovating in that arena than trying (repeatedly) to get into search. That's not to say Microsoft shouldn't have an online presence. They should. If I were Microsoft and saw what Google Docs was becoming, I'd be wetting myself on a regular basis trying to figure out a model to get their software to be available as an online app. But that's not search.

Here's a quote from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, the guy who's going to replace Uncle Bill (or, as Fake Steve Jobs calls him, Beastmaster) when he retires:

"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition." Let's stop there and think about who just said that. Microsoft, right? OK. Just wanted to clarify. Read on. "Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers."

Soooooo... being a huge, dominant player who maintains its dominance in a market through acquisition is bad, so we (Microsoft) are going to offer to buy (acquisition) the second-largest search company (consolidation).

Pot. Kettle. You know.

Thanks to Engadget for the image. More reading can be found here or here or just about any news site on the Internet.

Get out of your AT&T Wireless contract free!

Looks like it's a drop-your-carrier-free-for-all now that AT&T is also raising the cost of their text, picture and video messaging to a whopping 30 cents each. I remember the good ol' days when incoming texts were free and outgoing only cost a nickel. *sigh*

Nostalgia aside, this bump in prices constitutes a materially adverse change to your contract which means that extra dime they're charging you for that text means you don't have to pay the $175 early termination fee if you want to bail and head to the next, less-evil carrier.

A couple things to note:

1. You can't have a text messaging package/bundle. If you have one, cancel it.
2. When you call to cancel your account, cite the text messaging hike as the reason.
3. Like my experience with Verizon, I'm sure they're going to try to make you feel cheap and stupid for canceling over a lousy dime per message. Remain firm. They have to let you out. And if it's not a big deal, why are they bother with the rate hike?
4. This may be a good way to negotiate a better deal on your plan. See what they can give you as far as retentions go.
5. There are a few more significant steps/details you should check out over at Consumerist.

Good luck. And if anyone decides to jump ship, please shoot me an e-mail/leave a comment and let me know how it went.

(I also covered this as a tip on my other site, LivSimpl.)

Death Star/AT&T logo courtesy of Gizmodo.