Webculture

News / Technology — Comments Off
28
Mar 13

T-Mobile Cutting the Bullshit?

I admittedly have a soft-spot for T-Mobile.  After going through Comcast Metrophone, Sprint, and AT&T (later Cingular), T-Mobile had been the cellular service provider I had used for the longest period of time.  Moving from the near-suburbs of Philadelphia to rural farmland necessitated a change – so we went with two iPhone 5s with Verizon.

I was more than a little excited at the prospect of a cellular carrier dumping both subsidies and contracts.  I think TMO is making the smart move for the future.  Customers who are out of contract or who are likely to buy their own phones are most likely to be higher-profit users.  We’ll see how it works out over time as TMO’s network is fast but thin.

This comparison at the Verge of TMO versus Sprint versus ATT versus Verizon shows how little competition there is between carriers.  The TL;DR is that ATT and Verizon cost exactly the same, to the penny, over 2-years, with TMO being cheaper and Sprint being significantly more expensive.

Entertainment / Misc. / Webculture — Comments Off
26
Mar 13

#theWolverine teaser?

We’re all familiar with the concept of a movie trailer.  The trailer is typically a 30-second to 2-minute preview of a movie designed to ‘rope you in’.  The downside of the modern trailer is that it gives away too much, often several key action sequences or big laughs.

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The next X-Man movie, the Wolverine [IMDB], is a quasi-reboot telling the tale of the unbreakable feral Canadian’s adventures in Japan from the 1982 Claremont and Miller 4-book series.  I think this is good use of Twitter’s Vine, in that 6-seconds is just long enough.

Government / Misc. / Politicking / Webculture — Comments Off
25
Mar 13

Politicians wearing their gang colors.

I wrote previously that politicians should have to publicly, literally wear their funders names on their sleeves.

There’s now a petition at the White House site to make it so. Via BoingBoing.

Government / Politicking / Technology — Comments Off
18
Mar 13

A new GOP? Pardon my skepticism.

The GOP is promising a reboot, heavy on data (with Buzzfeed saying ‘data’ was mentioned almost a hundred times in near 100 pages), in their Growth Opportunity Project.  You can get the document as a PDF here.

The GOP believe that “conservatism can’t fail, it can only be failed” and that all their woes can be solved through better marketing messaging.  Happy talk about apps, the cloud, and big data won’t solve the GOP’s product problem.

The GOP has stubbornly and repeatedly denied reality, choosing to substitute their own.  I find it hard to believe that the GOP will not simply cherry-pick data that complements the political ideology of their funders and activist base as opposed to challenging them with a world that has left them behind (on many social and financial issues).

The highlights or TL;DR are here via TPM.

Technology / Webculture — Comments Off
14
Mar 13

You Bastards Finally Did It (or you will)!

reader we hardly knew yee

Google is finally pulling the plug on Reader.  Here is Google’s official announcement.  I’ve written about Reader previously, here.

gReader’s creator reflects.  There are alternatives (my preferred solution is Feedly as both a mobile app for Android/iOS and Chrome extension).

I wonder if Google realizes the PR hit they are going to take here, as so many journalists and pundits – particularly those with large audiences and/or who cover technology have effectively used Google Reader for years.

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