My new hero for the moment is Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), who wondered why all four major wireless carriers had doubled the cost of sending text messages from $.10 to $.20 in the last few years.

Because they're robbing us blind? Yes.

Kohl sent letters to all of the wireless companies and found out they're less than straight forward about exactly how much each message we send costs them. But the New York Times tell us what we already know -- that it doesn't cost the carriers much more to send 100 million text messages than it does 1 million. So then, why have they all raised their prices?

Because we're stupid? Yes.

I've known for a while now that I've been getting screwed on text messaging. I've always figured that that's just the way it is. My allotment of 200 a month goes real fast and that extra $$ I'm forced to shell out in overages every month cost me about as much as it would to have an unlimited plan.

Which is exactly what the carriers want.

Once one understands that a text message travels wirelessly as a stowaway within a control channel, one sees the carriers' pricing plans in an entirely new light. The most profitable plan for the carriers will be the one that collects the most revenue from the customer: unlimited messaging, for which AT&T and Sprint charge $20 a month and T-Mobile, $15.

I use a lot of open source applications (Movabletype is one, though I use the non-os version) and I'm encouraged that Google's browser -- one of the best I've used -- is open source.

Also, the projects that the Knight News Challenge funds, like Spot.us and EveryBlock (and hopefully Connectifyed) will be or are open source. So it got me thinking. What Web apps / modules do online journalists, especially our recently new freelancers (the laid off masses) need and use? And why aren't we working together to develop open source modules that they can drop into their blogs or newspaper sites?

I've never really worked on an open source project, and if the Knight News Challenge passes on Connectifyed, I'll launch it as one, but I'm thinking about learning more about it. I mean, how does it work? How do you get people involved and how does everyone write code for the same app without screwing it up?

Questions, questions.

I'd forgotten about Esquire's history making cover until I saw it in a bookstore tonight. It's the first magazine ever to use E Ink - the brand name for electronic paper displays - on a cover. I was curious, then, I was underwhelmed. See for yourself (yes, this would've been better had my iPhone been capable of shooting video. It's not, so I did my best).

Thanks to some Feedburner oddness, I've changed my feed address to http://feedproxy.google.com/JustinMcLachlan (the old one had a "com" at the end).

Fear not, the old feed is still updating. I just can't access it through Feedburner to make changes, which is frustrating. No, make that infuriating. Well, okay, it's just inconvenient -- but mostly for all of you reading and not me. Feel free to jump to the new feed when you get some time.

Here's how the campaign lays out:

http://twitter.com/protectmarriage - 66 followers

http://twitter.com/NoOnProp8 - 136 followers

Is it a sign?

The project is still in the alpha stages, so a lot of this may change by the time we get to beta testing in (hopefully) the quarter of this year. That aside, here's a first look at what's happening with Connectifyed.



That's the main "network" page where nodes (people and organizations that make up the network) are listed. Clicking on a node takes you to its page, where you'll connect it to the other nodes in the network, based on whatever criteria the team leader's defined (political donations, working or family relationships, etc.).


Development has slowed a little while I work on the Knight News Challenge application for Connectifyed. If anyone has any ideas on how to make this into A-class project that they'll trip over themselves to fund, let me know.

A while back, I reported that William Gillis, Jr., a San Diego man, sued Apple and AT&T because he believes they misrepresented the speed capabilities of the iPhone.

Well, it's not the first time he's taken on Apple in court.

Gillis also filed suit against the computer maker here in San Diego in 2005, according to court documents. That time, he said Apple misrepresented the size of its hard drives on two different sized Powerbook G4s -- resulting in as much as 7 percent difference between the advertised size and actual capacity.

Coincidence of all coincidences, Gillis and another woman (presumably his wife, the complaint doesn't specify) purchased the only two computer models Apple was selling at the time that didn't have a disclaimer about actual hard drive capacity affixed to the box.

Apple settled -- saying it had already agreed to explain the variations in hard drive capacity on its Web site as part of a similar lawsuit settlement in Los Angeles county (a group there sued Apple and host of other computer makers over hard drive sizes).

For their part, the Gillis' got a free iPod worth $299 and their lawyer (the same firm and same guy representing them in the iPhone suit) got $7,500 to cover his costs and fees.

A few months ago, Los Alamos National laboratory announced that it had wrapped up the final phase of construction on the first hybrid supercomputer on the planet.

Codenamed Roadrunner, it uses a mix of traditional AMD processors and Cell B.E. chips - the same ones that power your PlayStation 3. It's also about 3-times faster than Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's computing powerhouse, BlueGene/L.

Now, if pop culture's any indicator of real-life-to-come, this computer will try and kill us all a few days after it comes online. The folks at Los Alamos will probably call me an alarmist, and, they'd be right. But just in case, I wanted to sound the alarm early. To that end, here's a look back at six of my favorite -- and decidedly homicidal -- fictional super-computers from entertainment's past.

The Los Angeles Times picked up on my post about Romenesko and his fading influence among the new generation of journalists.

But there are knottier problems for Romenesko. He's been criticized, bizarrely, for continuing to post the overwhelmingly bad news that spews forth from journalistic quarters. Blogger Justin McLachlan noted a "backlash against the industry-wide death rattles he seems fond of publishing." He concluded that the younger generation of journalists were turning away from the site. And he railed against Romenesko for not offering some solutions himself...

The writer's choice of adjectives aside (bizarrely?), I'm always happy with a link from the LA Times. To top that off, David Hauslaib's Jossip picked up on the LA Times post, asking "Is Romenesko just a dumping ground for he-said-she-said arguments and Sophie's Choice news about layoffs?" with a  quote from the Times piece quoting me. Nice.

This time, William Gillis of San Diego is suing the two companies, claiming that they "have misrepresented the speed, strength, and performance of the 3G bandwidth network," according to freelance journalist Justin McLachlan.

A San Diego man is suing Apple and AT&T in state court for "false and misleading" advertising and "unlawful" business practices, saying the companies sold so many phones that AT&T's infrastructure is being overwhelmed and that the phones aren't performing at the speeds promised.

"Apple Computer Inc., ... and AT&T have misrepresented the speed, strength and performance of the 3G-bandwidth network," the complaint says.

The plaintiff, William J. Gillis Jr., has also asked the court to certify his lawsuit as a class action. The suit asks for an award of punitive damages to "deter and punish", an injunction forcing Apple and AT&T to tell the public about the iPhone's true capabilities and compensatory damages from the company's "ill-gotten gains."

(and just on the heels of my iPhone = real-life Tricorder post)

related: Gillis v. Apple, de javu?