Don’t Pay AT&T $20 Per Month for Text Messages — Switch to Google Voice

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google_voice_iconAT&T is “streamlining” their text messaging plans effective August 21st (full story) — no doubt in preparation for the iPhone 5. In this case, “streamlining” is a business euphemism for “taking away lower-priced options that too many customers prefer.” More specifically, AT&T is getting rid of their $10 per month limited texting plan, and only offering a $20 per month unlimited option. They claim to be doing this because “customers have expressed a clear preference for unlimited plans,” however I have a strong suspicion that this has more to do with customers who prefer to pay less.

Unfortunately, Verizon customers shouldn’t be too smug about the news because our day is almost certainly coming, as well. There is so little competition in the mobile phone industry that AT&T and Verizon essentially operate in collusion. For instance, one company goes from one-year contracts to two, and after waiting a respectable period of time, the other does the same; as one company’s early termination fee goes up, so goes the other’s; one carrier gets rid of unlimited data in favor of tiered plans, and rather than offering a more attractive and competitive service, the other eventually makes the switch, as well. As long as consumers don’t have realistic alternatives, it’s more profitable to raise rates for existing customers (and/or provide less service) than it is to compete for new customers. (I know T-Mobile is still an option, but they will soon merge with AT&T, and Sprint just doesn’t have the network coverage and device selection it needs to satisfy a large percentage of customers.)

AT&T is telling existing customers that they will be able to keep their $10 per month plans, and that the price hike is only for new customers. I suppose that’s some consolation, however that won’t last long. The next time you upgrade your phone (remember, the iPhone 5 is coming!), you will discover that your grandfather status has expired. At that point, you will be right where the mobile phone industry wants you: out of options.

That’s why I recommend switching to Google Voice. Google Voice still isn’t as easy to set up as it should be, but once you get it configured, you get all of the following features:

  • Free unlimited texting (on both Android and iOS devices).
  • The ability to send and receive text messages from your browser using a Gmail-like interface.
  • One phone number that maps to multiple phones. (When someone calls your Google Voice number, you can have the call forwarded to multiple numbers simultaneously — home, office, mobile, etc.)
  • The ability to make voice calls from your browser (this is how I make most business calls now).
  • Free voicemail with very humorous speech-to-text (it’s good enough to skim and get a feel for a message, but don’t base any important decisions on this technology just yet).
  • All kinds of very sophisticated call filtering, screening, and grouping capabilities.
  • Integration with Google Contacts.
  • Seemingly unlimited archiving and indexing of text messages and voicemails. (If there is a limit, it’s very generous.)
  • Completely free.

I should point out that I don’t expect Google Voice to remain free indefinitely; the service can still be a little rough around the edges, so I’m guessing they’re waiting until it’s more robust before actually charging customers. However, assuming it’s a fair and competitive rate (I’m guessing maybe $10 – $20 per year), I will be happy to pay. Google Voice is far more innovative than just about anything AT&T or Verizon have done in recent memory (or distant memory, for that matter), and I’m happy to pay for services that provide real value.

If you use Android, Google Voice integrates seamlessly with the OS to the point where you won’t even be aware that you’re not using your actual mobile phone’s number. If you use iOS (that is, an iPhone), your life isn’t going to be quite as good. Unfortunately the Google Voice iOS application is very buggy and not all that well integrated into the OS, but in my opinion, it’s still much more functional and feature-rich than anything you get from your standard mobile phone plan. And even on iOS, it’s certainly better than paying $20 per month for text messages which, believe it or not, cost carriers all of about 0.0002¢ each.

Mechanical Keyboard Roundup

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mx_keyswitchesUpdate (2/11/2013): Added a review of the Realforce 87U with Topre switches.

Update (1/14/2013): Added a review of the Filco Majestouch-2 with Cherry MX Red switches.

Update (2/1/2012): Filcos (my favorite mechanical keyboards at this point) are now available on Amazon!

Update (1/27/2012): Added a review of the Leopold Tactile Touch.

After sensing something profoundly lacking from the modern typing experience, I decided to delve into the world of mechanical keyboards. As is the case with most fetishes, I discovered that there are entire online communities, cultures, and movements surrounding the magic of the mechanical keyswitch. I could have easily spent many months and several thousands of dollars acquiring, experimenting with, and reviewing all of the mechanical options out there, but with both time and money in short supply, I decided to focus on five specific models: the Das Keyboard Model S Professional, Filco Majestouch-2, DSI Modular, Matias Tactile Pro 3, and the Unicomp SpaceSaver M.

There is a lot of personal preference involved in picking a mechanical keyboard. Factors like key travel, clickiness, tactile feedback, weight, force, build quality and more all contribute to the typing experience, and all of these things mean different things to different people. Keep in mind that the reviews below represent my own opinions, and I tried to differentiate between things that personally appeal to me (clickiness, for example), and more objective characteristics (like build quality). The upshot is that there is no clear winner, and you will probably just need to try a few of these out to see which ones inspire you to get out of bed in the mornings and begin your day of typing.

If you know you want a mechanical keyboard and you’re just here to see and hear about some different models, skip on down to the video reviews. But if you’re wondering why in the world someone would buy a relative expensive mechanical keyboard when you can get a membrane or scissor-switch keyboard for far less (and sometimes for free), read on.

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The Best Air-filtering Houseplants

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peace_lilyI recently came across a list of the best air-filtering houseplants compiled primarily by NASA while researching the use of plants to clean air and provide oxygen on space stations. It inspired me to purchase a peace lily for my home office. From here, I’ll work my way up to the 15 – 18 good-sized house plants that NASA recommends you use to help keep the air in your house clean. I have no idea if they will really make a difference, or even if the air in my house contains the kinds of impurities that these plants excel at removing, but I figure they can’t hurt.

How to Fix Pink/Purple Textures or Shaders in Fallout New Vegas

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purple_head_2The first game I decided to play after building a new gaming PC was Fallout: New Vegas. Unfortunately, I installed both Steam and New Vegas before I finished tweaking my video drivers which resulted in some very bizarre purple/pink textures or shaders. As you can see from the picture above, poor Doc Mitchell was the first victim.

I fixed it by uninstalling New Vegas and Steam (I could have probably just uninstalled the game, but I wanted to be 100% certain), getting all my video drivers and settings properly tweaked (including the newest version of DirectX), and reinstalling. When I started the back game back up, not only were the textures and shaders correct, but I had also fixed an occasional crasher I got when the New Vegas launcher started up (which I believe had to do with the detection of DirectX).

I later came across this post which may have saved me the trouble of reinstalling. It recommends holding down “A” when the game loads until the Bethesda logo appears which apparently clears some sort of cache, fixing the issue for some Oblivion players. I have no idea if this works for Fallout, but it’s probably worth at least trying before reinstalling.

New Gaming PC

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After relying primarily on consoles (Xbox and PS3) for gaming over the last few years (and occasionally a very nice Lenovo ThinkPad with a surprisingly capable graphics card), I decided it was finally time to build a serious gaming rig. I’m still tuning and tweaking, so I can’t give a final verdict yet, but so far, I’ve been very happy with it. Here are the components/specs:

  • Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz CPU
  • 2x MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr II OC GeForce GTX 570 video cards
  • 16GB (4 x 4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 240-Pin 1.5V SDRAM
  • 2x Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM drives in a RAID 1 configuration
  • SAMSUNG 470 Series 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (so game data loads faster)
  • MSI P67A-GD53 ATX Intel Motherboard
  • LG Blu-ray/DVD/CD reader/writer
  • CORSAIR Hydro H70 CWCH70 CPU Cooler
  • CORSAIR 750W ATX12V power supply
  • COOLER MASTER Black Steel/Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
  • Microsoft Windows 7 Professional

At this point, I’ve still put more time into building and tweaking than actual gaming, but hopefully that’s about to change. I’m a few hours into Fallout: New Vegas, and will probably go from there to Mass Effect, Brink, L4D, and eventually StarCraft II. Any other suggestions?

Update: I’ve gotten a lot of questions on cost, so here’s some additional information. I paid about $2,300 for everything (including Windows 7), shipped. If you’re interested in building your own gaming system, you can do it for much less, however. Here are some ways to save money without sacrificing very much (if anything) in the way of gaming performance:

  • Shop around rather than buying all your components from the same site. I spent enough time researching components that I didn’t want to spend even more time finding the lowest prices on them, so I was lazy and bought them all from the same retailer. That said, I bought them from Newegg which has pretty aggressive pricing, so I probably wouldn’t have saved very much.
  • Skip the liquid CPU cooler. The fan that comes with your CPU is sufficient. I just used a liquid cooling system for fun, and just in case I want to get really aggressive with the overclocking (which I haven’t yet).
  • Use fewer hard drives. I could have saved a lot of money just using a single 500GB drive rather than two 1TB drives and an SSD. In fact, this could probably have been my single biggest savings.
  • Buy a cheaper case. The case I decided on was expensive, but I wanted something nice and big for air flow and expansion, and I figured I’ll have the same case for a long time as I upgrade individual components. But there are much cheaper cases out there that will still work fine.
  • Buy less RAM. 8GM would have been plenty. 12GB is kind of ridiculous, but as you can see, I had a little too much fun designing this thing.

If I had really wanted to, I could have probably gotten the cost of everything down to about $1,800 and still had an amazing machine. Of course, I could have also spent much more, so I figure it all balances out in the end.

Two Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Garter Snakes

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Update: The photograph below (taken by my daughter) is now part of the Wikipedia article on Garter snakes, and is the best picture of a posterior tooth I’ve seen.

Garter snakes are probably the best known species of snake in the US. They are easy to recognize, and they occur just about everywhere in North America. Most people will tell you that garter snakes are harmless, which they are, but probably not quite as harmless as you might think.

Garter Snakes Have Pretty Big Teeth

garter_snake_tooth

The picture above is of the snake I recently caught which taught me that garter snakes have relatively large teeth. Although he was very aggressive, I caught him without being bitten, however while holding him, he managed to get one of his teeth into my thumb (I would have been more careful if I’d known what he was packing). For a moment, I thought I’d misidentified him, but his markings couldn’t have been more clear. I used a small stick to (very gently) open his mouth, and sure enough, he had two needle-sharp teeth in there. While doing some research when I got home, I discovered another surprising fact:

Garter Snakes are Venomous

It was recently discovered that the saliva of a garter snake contains a very mild neurotoxin. Rather than injecting it through fangs, they spread it into wounds (presumably caused by those teeth) through a chewing motion. Although the venom of a garter snake is only potent enough to cause some minor swelling or itching in a human, it can stun a toad or small rodent enough to make swallowing it much easier.

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An Audio Version of “Containment”

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I’m very excited to announce that Containment will be an audio book published by Tantor Audio and available exactly one month from today (6/27/2011). It will be distributed through various vendors, including my favorite, Audible.com. Narrating will be William Dufris who has done everything from Isaac Asimov to Mark Twain (and was also the original voice of Bob the Builder in the US and Canada).

I’m a huge fan of audio books, and I always thought Containment would make a great production. I’m really looking forward to hearing it for the first time, and I hope some of you will check it out.

Snake Rescue

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This is why it’s so important to clean up debris you find outside. This deer fencing probably blew out of someone’s yard in a storm and ended up in a creek by the Potomac. The garter snake inside was so ensnared that the fencing was cutting through his scales in several places.

garter_snake_in_deer_fencing

It took about 30 minutes to fully cut him out of the nylon mesh. We’re keeping him until his wounds heal since they may become infected.

rescued_snake

Where is Mobile Phone Privacy Headed?

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There has been a lot of talk recently about privacy in the context of mobile phones, primarily thanks to the recent O’Reilly Radar article pointing out that some iOS devices store users’ location information. If you think this kind of thing is interesting and/or scary, I encourage you to read the Wall Street Journal article entitled The Really Smart Phone which argues that this is just the beginning of what mobile phones can and will track. In addition to several interesting experiments that are currently underway, the article points out situations where mobile sensor data is already being used/abused:

Cellphone providers are openly exploring other possibilities. By mining their calling records for social relationships among customers, several European telephone companies discovered that people were five times more likely to switch carriers if a friend had already switched… The companies now selectively target people for special advertising based on friendships with people who dropped the service.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the direction this kind of technology could go in, and I’ve incorporated several of my ideas into two short stories: Human Legacy Project and Venom.

Both stories take place in a future United States (mostly) which has become increasingly totalitarian. The government gradually enacts legislation which gives them access to mobile phone and other sensor data which they use to track and control anyone they consider to be a dissident. Human Legacy Project tells the story of a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the life stories of everyone on the planet, and how the group is transformed into a terrorist organization by the government’s ever-tightening grip. The two parties continue to feed off of each other until the conflict culminates in an event that nobody was prepared for.

Venom is a parallel story which describes how the controlling party gains and keeps power in what was once an open and democratic system. A young engineer figures out how to build a device which she believes will lead to the ultimate sustainable democracy, but when she discovers that her ideas have been used against her, she joins the HLP in an attempt to undo the damage her life’s work has inflicted on the entire nation.

I believe the number one job of science fiction is to entertain, however I also think that it can serve as both inspiration for the future, and a stern warning.

hlp_350x525

venom_350x525

Update (4/29/2011): Here’s another great example of sensor data being abused, this time by TomTom.

Update (5/11/2011): The government will require a special new chip in mobile phones.