June 2009 Archives

I upgraded my iPhone from the original 2G to a 3S. I skipped one generation with the 3G. I admit I do like the phone a lot better. It's thinner and a lot faster, and it feels like the battery life is better too.

But I am annoyed at the price. Yes I paid $199 for it, but AT&T charges tax on the full, unsubsidized value of the phone: $599. This leaves me with a tax bill of $55.40, or about 28% of what I paid for the phone.

Another annoyance: My phone was shipped ostensibly for arrival on launch day of Friday, June 19. But it didn't show up until Monday. AT&T started my billing cycle on Friday, of course, making me pay for the service for 3 days when I hadn't even activated the phone yet.

Overall I'm happy with it, tho. I'm back to a legit version on the AT&T network. With my corporate discount of 18%, it's about the same price as I was paying to T-Mobile. Plus I actually get reasonable coverage in my house. Which as it turns out is a pretty important feature. Well worth the few extra dollars a month.

And I like that it comes in white to match my MacBook.

I hate the business model of cell phone plans, which is the same one used by parking meters and any system that requires you to buy credits to use it (like iStockPhoto).

I'm sure you've seen the stories. A teen texts 1000s of messages in a month which vastly exce eds the number on the plan, and the parents are stuck with a bill that would buy a nice used car.

The difference between paying $20 and $2000? The decision you have to make ahead of time on which text messaging plan you want. With AT&T, you get no free texts, $5 gets you 200, $15 = 1200, and $20 is unlimited. The same pattern goes for talk minutes and even data usage.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a cell phone plan where you actually paid for what you used, rather than what you think you might use with massive penalties for being wrong? What if they simply charged you the $20 for unlimited texting that month, instead of the $5?

Now of course we know why phone companies don't do that. Because they want people to pay for expensive plans that they don't really need except occasionally. But how about this for a more customer friendly model that still preserves most of the extra revenues: On the month that the customer exceeds their plan, bump them up to the next higher plan that covers their usage, then keep them on that more expensive plan for subsequent months. Customers could still switch back to the lower plan if they choose to. But as we know, most won't.

In the immortal words of Phil Haine, cell phone companies please steal this idea.

As we're sorting through the 5000+ pictures we took during our month in Africa, this one jumps out at me. It is probably my favorite shot. I love the depth of it: the springbok grazing in the back blending into the tall grass, while the one in the foreground looking up causes his face to really pop out.

It was taken in Etosha National Park in Namibia.

I don't have kids, and I don't want kids. According to Dan Gilbert...

If you beep people on a beeper while they're with their children and ask them how they're feeling, they're not so happy. But if you ask people what they like most in life, they say they love their kids -- their kids are the great joys of their lives. The way Dan puts it is that we're wrong. Kids really make us unhappy, but we think they make this happy. He gives different reasons why, but one reason is that we're fooled by the media. We're suckered in by this legend.

To me, it's an opportunity cost. I could invest my time and money into raising kids. Or I could invest it into other causes in the world. While most in society seem to choose the former, I choose the latter. But I do wonder how many people mindlessly have kids because that is the path society expects of you?

We'll find out this fall when The Equity Project school opens in Washington Heights, New York, NY.

The school... is premised on the theory that excellent teachers -- and not revolutionary technology, talented principals or small class size -- are the critical ingredient for success. Experts hope it could offer a window into some of the most pressing and elusive questions in education: Is a collection of superb teachers enough to make a great school? Are six-figure salaries the way to get them? And just what makes a teacher great?

[Teachers at the school will earn] $125,000: nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, and about two and a half times as much as the national average for teacher salaries. They also will be eligible for bonuses, based on schoolwide performance, of up to $25,000 in the second year.

Full article in the NY Times.