AT&T Data Plus 300MB: $20 for 300MB
AT&T Data Pro 3GB: $30 for 3GB (up from $25)
AT&T Data Pro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot / tethering

The lowest tier is $5 higher (33%) but comes with 300MB instead of 200MB (50% more).  The net effect is a reduction in the cost per 100MB from $7.5 to $6.66. If my math is right, that’s about an 11% decline.

The middle tier also rises $5 (20%) but comes with 3GB instead of 2GB (50% more).  So the cost per gigabyte actually dropped $2.50. A net reduction of 20% per GB.At the high end, the rate has actually dropped by $5 from $55 to $50 (see this price chart from PCMag just a few months ago). That’s a 9% decline.

Most of the coverage I have seen mentions the rate increase only in the lower and middle tier. I suspect the reason nobody is commenting on the higher tier in most of the coverage is because it contradicts the “rates are rising” storyline.  Why let facts get in the way of a good article, right?

The price drop for heavier users, and the fact that you are paying less for the equivalent amount of bandwidth, is largely unreported. I guess it just doesn’t fit with the established narrative that telecom companies are out to take more money but not improve service.

The Portal

Skylanders is based on series of character tokens that enter and exit the world via a power portal. Game characters are sold as action figure tokens – the dragon in the image below.  To select a character in game, you simply drop a new token on the portal.  The switch is instant, negating the need to change classes or restart chapters.  Simply swap out your token and a different character appears on screen.

The characters come in eight different series – air, earth, fire, water, life, undead, tech, and magic.  Each series has, at present, four different character tokens, for a total of 32 different playable characters.

As your characters progress in the game, their stats, powers, and equipment are stored locally on the token.  Take your favorite token to a friend’s house, drop it on his portal, and play with all the same characteristics you had on your own.

More importantly, however, you can drop your token onto his portal regardless of whether you have the same game system.  You play Xbox but your friend plays PlayStation?  Doesn’t matter.  You can play head to head or cooperatively with your tokens on the other platform.

Why this Game is Important

There are several factors at play that mark this game as a critical marker in video game evolution.  For some time now, the concept of downloadable content has been seen as the great future of gaming.  The console would simply be a storage platform for games and future releases and expansion packs would be delivered via the Internet.  That model is flipped on its head by Skylanders, but it is also complemented by it.

The downloadable content model simply continues two inherent flaws in the console model.  The restrictive nature of consoles is such that you can only play with friends on the same console. I can’t play Call of Duty with my nephew because he has a PS3 while I prefer Xbox.

If we play split screen on his system, none of my achievements carry over to my own console.  Making my character portable, as Skylanders has done, divorces my game play from the console.

In addition, Skylanders has created expansion packs as tokens as well.  For instance, the Pirate Seas expansion (below) includes a pirate ship token that unlocks additional playable content.  Like the character tokens, those expansion worlds exist separately from the console.

If I take my token to a friends machine, we can play the expansion even if he hasn’t purchased it.  When I take it home, the expansion goes with me.

The folks at Activision have made great efforts toward solving the digital rights management issue by making your content token based.

The Big Problems With Gaming

The main flaws in the gaming experience today are the lack of console interoperability, the lack of character portability, and the means by which content creators can protect their product.  With Skylanders, Activision has addressed all three.

The ability to keep chatracters separate from the game, to unlock expansions with a token rather than the console, and to move both freely between platforms will be a model more game manufacturers adopt.

While making great strides in addressig these flaws, Activision has also created fairly attractive game collectibles.  As long as they maintain support for previous generations of character, as the develop additional Skylander games, these collectibles can become a lasting investment in the games you own.  I just wish my character from the the first Fable could have been carried forward into future Fable frachise games.

In addition, the tokens are relatively attractive figures in their own right, making your collection equally interesting as a long term collectible.

It’s not often that I am truly impressed by game innovation.  I find most experiments of this nature to be fairly uninspired.  In this case, however, I think Activision may have scored a big win.  I expect to see other games employing the same mechanics – likely in the very near future.

Why that Scares the Hell Out of Me

While I am very impressed with the game and the token system, I am also a bit nervous about it.

As I mentioned, there are 32 playable characters across the Skylanders universe, a handful of “special” character exclusives only available at some retailers, and two expansion packs.  Each character token costs about seven bucks.  Buy the game starter kit (with the portal, disk and three characters) and you’re out $60.  Many in-game items require accessing locked areas that can only be opened by characters from a particular series.  The minimum investment to have enough characters to open all areas is another 5 tokens or $35-40.  To collect all the characters, you would be north of $200.

That’s probably not a big deal when you consider the typical cycle of a game, the expansion packs, and other DLC.

A token scenario for a game like Call of Duty could look significantly less complex.  For instance, having a token that could carry a single custom loadout would allow you to port your best class to a friend’s console.  That could also allow you to carry the experience and weapons you gain back from that console to your own.  It would still allow Activision to sell additional classes as tokens, however.

If token based characters and content catch on, and I think they likely will, it could make gaming a more expensive proposition for the hardcore gamer or collector.

The amount of student debt in the US is massive; over a trillion dollars currently.  Americans currently owe more in student loan debt than they do on credit cards.  The Stafford Loan, for instance, allows students to borrow up to $57,500 as an independent (with no parental support).  Students often compound commercial and federal loans into enormous sums of money – often under the assumption that they’ll be able to find work upon graduation.

Now before you suggest that’s the problem, look again.  The Labor Department for September of 2011 shows an unemployment rate of only 4.5% for those with a college degree.  So an inability to find jobs doesn’t seem to be the norm for graduates.

So we have people investing in their education, and rightly finding work after graduation.  Should be no problem, right?

No.  The problem is two-fold.  The average student debt for 2011 graduates is $22,900.  Since many graduates will have less or even no debt, the numbers among those who took loans is likely significantly higher.

The average salary of 2011 graduates entering the workforce is only $36,866.  Payscale.com provides a handy list of the average annual salary by degree.  It shows the salary for history, sociology, anthropology and others typically starting in the mid-30s and topping out ‘mid-career’ around $60,000.  Based on regional differences, in reality, you have students graduating who may have more debt that they can possibly make – even at Payscale’s “mid-career” salary level.

If we’re going to make changes to how that debt is repaid, we should also make changes to how it is accumulated.  The entire practice of student loans should be reformed in two significant ways.

Capping Student Loans

First, student loans should be subject to the same earnings litmus test that applies to other credit, but more strictly.

Credit cards, home loans, and other consumer debt limits are typically predicated on your ability to repay that debt.  Amex doesn’t hand out black cards to college kids with no income for good reason – they have little ability to repay.  Home loans, at least in theory if not in practice, require you to prove income before you can qualify for more home than you can afford.

Student loans have none of that. Student loans rarely take into account the potential future earnings of the student.  As mentioned, students frequently compound loans.  The problem is it becomes very easy to accumulate more debt than your future earnings will accommodate.

Student loans should be capped at no more than the average annual salary for a student with that degree.  If a student is likely to make no more than $32,000 with a degree in social work, they shouldn’t be allowed to accumulate loans of $57,500 or more.  By capping total student loans for that degree at $32,000 (combining both direct federal and commercial) and applying the administration’s 10% annual limit for repayment, most student loans should be paid off in significantly less than the twenty years proposed for forgiveness (low-interest rates being assumed).

It is inexcusable that students are allowed to graduate carrying debt nearly as high as, or higher than, their ‘mid-career’ earnings.

Restrictions on Student Loan Usage

Often students take out more loan than they need for tuition and books in order to cover living expenses and other incidentals.  Any credit expert will tell you that putting meals and perishables on a credit card is a terrible idea as the interest increases the cost of those items many times over by the time it is paid off.  Student loans have no such restrictions, and unless things have changed dramatically, there are no caveats against using loans this way.

Stafford Loans, as just one example, carry restrictions that the money is too be used for tuition, books, room, board, or “other education related expenses.”  So what qualifies, exactly?  It’s hard to say.  A search for “Stafford Loan Eligible Expenses” turns up absolutely nothing from the Department of Education on the subject, and the FAQs many schools host have that vague “other” language.  Apparently a used car is an education related expense, as are sneakers, iPods, or anything else.

Since the schools typically hand you a check or direct deposit the funds, there is really no telling what those expenses might be.

If we want to help students who are looking at debt based on future earnings, the least we should do is bring these restrictions in line with sound financial advice.  Allowing students to rack up debt on things Big Macs and tennis shoes is ridiculous.  The education system should limit the way these funds are expended so they cover actual school expenses.  The school should not be in the business of doling out excess funds to 18 year-olds for discretionary spending.

Just recalling my own college experience, I can tell you the day loan excess was disbursed was like a Roman orgy.  The only thing “school related” about the spending were the excuses for why you couldn’t make it to that 8 a.m. class the next morning.

By making these two simple changes, student loan debt might actually be used in accordance with the goal of getting an education.  It would, at the very least, ensure that degree in social work doesn’t come with a debt you’ll never be able to repay.

I found a number of references to adding international keyboards, but those weren’t doing the trick for my outdated 3GS.

I did, however, discover the trick.  Here’s the easy way to override your dictionary on even the oldest phones.

First, choose Settings -> General -> Keyboard:

Below “International Keyboards,” you will see “Shortcutss”:

Hit “Add New Shortcut”:

Now enter the word you find iPhone continually correcting as both the phrase and the shortcut:

(iPhone changes “hell” to “he’ll”, which I find highly annoying.)

Hit save, and iOS will never correct that word again.

That’s it.  No international keyboards. No hoops.

A la carte for video games! Why should I have to buy the storyline just to get the multiplayer?

Since then, it occurred to me that there is a larger point to be made from that idea.  Everyone agrees that a disk based video game industry is on the way out.  As next generation consoles include more drive capacity, broadband speeds continue to rise; and optical drives fall aside in favor of downloadable content, the idea of a straight download model makes sense.

As delivery changes, the options for sales grow.  Services like OnLive, Steam and the Xbox Live Arcade clearly illustrates that streaming or direct to drive game delivery are models that work.  Given the removal of physical constraints that accompany disks, there is little reason game companies couldn’t provide three versions of a game – multiplayer, storyline, and a combo pack.

If they did, people like me would never buy the storyline again.  I simply don’t find the storyline game all that interesting.  Linear games are boring affairs and open-world can get just as tedious.  Multiplayer is infinitely variable depending on the opposition.  Campers (those cowardly rat bastards) aside, human players make a more interesting game.

If I could buy just the multiplayer for half the cost of the combo pack, I’d buy a lot more games.  My total contribution to the industry wouldn’t drop, but it would be spread out across a wider array of companies.  I suspect a lot of people would do the same.

The possibility of owning a larger library of games I would play (multiplayer) and keeping my drive from being all crudded  up with storyline crap, appeals to me.  I hope the game developers will realize the options available to them and consider breaking up the product.

That said, I’m not about to demand FCC acton to regulate game companies to make that happen.

(Cross posted at Digital Society)

In the early days of the Internet, the newspaper industry made a terrible miscalculation.  Under the belief that the first newspaper available on the Internet would own the space, publishers worked furiously to make content available – largely for free.

The trouble with giving something away for free is it becomes terribly hard to start charging for it later.

Even free evangelists like Mike Masnick understand that you are forced to make money off of things around the free, as opposed to the free product itself.  Masnick often cites musicians as the case study – just accept the fact that you’ll never make money off the music and instead sell concert tickets and t-shirts.

So the newspapers pooched the deal when they went online for free, undercut their own business, and now cannot move to a pay model.

The video content industry would be wise to learn from this, but often seems doomed to repeat the mistakes of both music and newspapers.  More and more programmers are handing their content out for free; and not just the broadcasters who have always been free.  They seem to be operating under the same ridiculous construct that killed news – “this is the future, so we better get on board or be left behind.”

But television isn’t music, nor is it newspaper.  There is an absolute glut of news and music in the world.  Anyone can create either with minimal effort.

Compelling, stimulating, on the edge of your seat video is something altogether different.  Any monkey can pick up a camera and shoot video.  YouTube has proven that. But very few people watch YouTube 160 hours per month. News doesn’t approach that figure and neither does music. Only TV generates that kind of consumption.

Video is different.

Programmers need to figure that out and do it quickly.  Giving away compelling video for free is a recipe for disaster just as it was for news.

Fortunately, programmers have a tool the music and news industries never did – the app store.  Just yesterday Warner Bros made news by releasing Inception and The Dark Knight as apps.

While The Daily is attempting to create an app based news outlet (and charging 50 bucks a month for it), I expect that pilot program will be dead by this time 18 months from now.  There is simply too much news available for free.

For programmers, however, it’s not too late.

Programmers should follow Warner Bros lead and immediately start thinking of ways to protect their content within their own apps.  Why give the content away for free through Hulu, or your own website, when you can do it through an app, and protect the content.

Video delivered via apps (whether desktop or mobile) would allow rights management, and provide a revenue stream, not a revenue hole. Want to watch Lost via your iPad?  There’s an app for that.

The High Cost of Free

The suggestion that content owners move to an app delivered model should scare the bejeezus out of the free radicals like Free Press and Public Knowledge.  They want content to be freely accessible to all.  This model flies in the face of that.

The fact is there is simply no business model in “free” for the video industry.  Broadcasters have come to realize this and are pushing four fold increases in retransmission consent deals so cables paying subscribers can underwrite the free viewing of others.

Everytime you see your cable bill rise, thank “free”.  But that’s an unsustainable model.  More people will get tired of price hikes, and switch to free.  As more people switch to free, and fewer people pay, more content will go away – unable to pay the bills on a declining number of subscribers.

True A La Carte

Moving to an app model should be cheered by anyone who advocates for a la carte.   Under an app model, programmers could make all of the content from a channel available (which would likely be very expensive) or have different apps for different shows.

Buying all of the content from a channel would be the realization of those who pursue a la carte cable.  Alternately, you could buy all the episodes of a show under something like the Kindle model – that is the app is free, and you buy content within it on a per show basis.

But wait, you say, doesn’t iTunes already do that?  Yes, but as GigaOm notes in the article linked above, iTunes movies are available in fewer countries, so apps open up a whole new market for content creators.

Net win for the programmer.

Granted, programmers would need to pull their content from sources like Hulu and Netflix, and invest in the development of proprietary applications, but the cost of that over the long term is significantly less than the cost of going out of business.

As I was pondering the paper, it occurred to me that while most things are moving toward a leaner, greener footprint, the parking meters are actually going the other way.

Old school parking meters require no electricity.  They generate no waste paper. They don’t involve dial up or broadband networks to process the transactions.

Moving to a system that is more “efficient” has actually moved us to a system that generates paper waste and consumes electricity (albeit relatively small amounts) for the computing power to handle the credit card transactions and keep the kiosk running.

At a time when we say we want things to be more green, we’ve replaced almost the perfect green model with one that is arguably the anti-green solution.  It just demonstrates that our commitment to environmental friendliness ends when we can come up with a solution that makes our lives a little easier.

For those keeping score of wasteful, inefficient government ideas that refuse to die, back in April of 2009, Team Obama announced an $8 billion push for high speed rail.  I noted at the time the almost complete inability to go north by train.  I also noted the old adage that trains offer all the discomfort and cost of air travel, but in six times the time.

All of that still holds true.  The new plan still foresees a US population only concerned with lateral movement, and one that wants to pay top dollar for low value.

The one thing that changed is the price tag.  Now the government wants to spend $53 billion taxpayer dollars (a 6.5 fold increase in the cost) to subsidize a mode of travel that has never been profitable in the US.

That’s change we can believe in, and what counts as a commitment to responsible spending by the administration these days.

Apparently it wasn’t enough to bash the transgendered.  That ad was pulled and they issued a formal apology.  Now the fast food giant’s advertising brain trust has set their sights on a new scourge facing America – Hispanics who sell food door-to-door in offices.

For a couple of years out of college I worked in a warehouse – arriving every day at 5:30 am to get the morning shipments out the door.  Around 6:45 every morning, a guy would arrive carrying a cooler chest full of breakfast burritos.  They were, and to this day, remain some of my favorite burritos.

The point to that little anecdote is this: I would pay $5.50 for one of those burritos right now, before I would consider spending ninety-nine cents at Taco Bell.  The quality was far superior.  The larger reason, though, is that the Hispanic guy selling them got up earlier than I did every morning, made dozens of breakfast burritos, and then spent his morning selling them door-to-door.  He had drive, a good recipe, and found a way to support himself peddling those burritos. That deserves my support far more than Taco Bell does.

Taco Bell, part of a giant conglomerate of sketchy food brands, is now bashing exactly that sort of hard working individual – suggesting that it’s proud to be undercutting them and pushing them out.

That’s a lovely campaign.  Taco Bell should really be proud of themselves and their ad firm.

Sure, it’s a little more mundane than my past looks, and yes, it is very, very white. But I’ve always said my theme is a reflection of my mood. I’m feeling very minimalist lately.

As for the new logo, I really liked that image. The little blue guy is definitely blocking the kick. To me, however, it still looks like the little white guy has hauled off and kicked the other one in the junk. That made me laugh really hard. I’m not sure Keith Haring would be terribly excited to know he inspired an image of a guy booting another guy in the jimmy… but hey, that’s art, right?

I hope to update the site more frequently as well. So those of you who were shocked to see two posts in your feed reader – both in one month – beware. I’ve got some stuff on my chest I need to get off, and this is where I do that.