You Get What You Pay For

The title of this post seems like a concept forgotten. Don't get me wrong, those who know me personally can attest I'm as thrifty as they get. I enjoy deal hunting at thrift stores, buying second hand on Craiglist, and when something is FREE I will snag it up in a moment if it has value to me or anyone else. While some may say I am becoming a borderline hoarder I consider this a form of recycling. The laptop I'm typing on was purchased 2nd hand on ebay, the power supply is a spare I got at Goodwill. Buying retail makes me cringe but one thing I do know, you get what you pay for.

When something is free, there is always a hidden cost. This doesn't matter if the item is tangible or not. Free services are no exception.

Many of us use free services everyday. This blog is free, posting to it is free, sharing it on Facebook is free, in fact most of the popular services online now are free. Gone are the days when you paid to connect to the internet PLUS a monthly fee for the services you enjoy. Those who started out on AOL so when broadband internet came to the mainstream and it was a separate bill, some kept paying AOL. As I type I'm using free WiFi and free electricity.

But is free really free? This coffee cost me $1 more than the drive thru price. What are the hidden costs? It's simple really. There are two ways you pay for your free online services. You pay with attention or you pay with your privacy.

By attention I mean the ads on the screen that you view. Like TV commercials and radio ads, websites, blogs, and Facebook capture your attention with advertisements they sell. Google places context relevant ads in the unused spaces on nearly all of the services they offer. Most beta services they keep clean until you get hooked, then the ads start rolling. YouTube rarely had any advertising but now most videos not have commercials or sponsored ads in one way or another. This advertising is so effective they even pay me if people click on ads associated with my content. You should be seeing Groupon ads and Google Adsense ads on the right side of this post.

When it comes to making money exploiting your privacy, this is where the biggest growth will take place over the next few years. More people are walking around with trackers that report back where you are, and what you are doing at every moment. Some of us even help by posting what business we just "checked in" to and rating everything from food to music in real time. All this data is collected, analyzed, and monetized by the companies who provide these free apps, games, and services.

If you enjoy these things and yet complain about privacy, first think about why you get all this for free. Opting out of certain tracking is sometimes a good idea, but sharing your likes, dislikes and where you shop may not be such a bad thing. Before too long you may never see an advertisement for a product you have no interest in, everything will be so well targeted to where you are what you like you may even start enjoying commercials. You can be sure if you use Gmail, google knows more about you than your spouse and I think I trust google more to pick out my birthday present too.

Recently Sony's PlayStation network was hacked, users personal information compromised, and it still as of this posting is not yet back online. Unlike the XBox Live service that cost $59 per year to join, Sony's network was free. Sure you had to buy the console, but no annual subscription means it was a one time investment. Many are upset that this shouldn't have happened and that Sony was negligent. This was a free added value add on to the Sony game platform, if it is down for maintenance while they beef up security to prevent future privacy breaches I'm good with that. I'm not paying for the service so I'm not really loosing money out of my wallet.

Remember, you get what you pay for and if you complain about the quality of free services, then just ask for your money back and shut up.

That's my viewpoint.

Social Circle of Trust

Everybody on Facebook yet? Well.. not yet. It would seem most anybody who's anybody is. My Mother-in-law joined and she doesn't own a computer. Some friends of mine posted recently that they were setting up their parents with a FB page. Teens all had MySpace pages until they all learned Facebook was way cooler. MySpace is becoming a ghost town primarily focused on the music industry who is always late to the party and the ones left to turn the lights out.

One problem many people have with Facebook is separating business with pleasure. Official Facebook policy restricts each person to one user account. While many ignore this policy and create both a work persona and a personal account, doing so risks losing both and confusing those whom you are both friend and coworkers. It is possible to customize each post visibility but is not easy to find or configure.

Google is rumored to be cooking up a social dashboard to remedy the facebook fears for the cautious posters who risk offending various groups with over social awareness. Mike Elgan suggests that this new site "Social Circles" would allow you to define your social groups and allow you to post who sees what all while integrating all of the Google services you likely already use.

Will this service be as well received as facebook? Many of Googles launches have been half-baked and lacked the final polish of the many successful acquisitions Google manages. While YouTube and Picasa are amazing, Buzz and Wave have't made the same splash. Currently my Google Dashboard boasts I'm using over 30 of 42 potential Google Products, yet many overlap and often are just versions of the same basic information. How invested are you in Google's services? Would you join Google's Social Circle of Trust?

Do You Sync or Sink?

I think i figured it out. When confronted with the choice between Android and the Verizon iPhone, it is all about sync. When I first played with a smart phone it was not my own. My boss asked me to help sync his contacts on his Palm Treo, and we had quite the adventure getting things to work properly. Making Groupwise, Gmail, Outlook, and Palm all play in the same playground was not an easy task and I spent hours reading technical manuals, forums, and blogs to try and teach myself the skills only a trained IT professional should have been able to master. An IT guy I am not, but I pretend to be because my services are usually free and you get what you pay for. When I got my first smart phone it was a Blackberry. Because my employer had an enterprise server, synchronized contacts, mail & calendars was to be expected. What made me a Google fan was when they introduced Google Sync for smartphones. Simply installing an app, put all my contacts, and appointments in my pocket. When I added anything to my phone, like magic, Google had it in the cloud for me to edit and improve upon at my desktop and without relying on the corporate server. When I resigned and they remote wiped my phone, it was only a matter of minutes that I had re-installed Google Sync and my address book was back in business.

Because Blackberry was, and still is no multi-media powerhouse, when the iPhone was released I was blown away. Because my employer provided my phone and Verizon service, it was not an option for my daily phone so I immediately sprung for the iPod touch. You can read my many posts on the iPod touch and know I am a big fan, and again Google Sync can get your contacts all mirrored onto you iPhone or touch just as swiftly.

Now here's the rub. What about the best aspects of the iPhone: media? Google doesn't sync your music, your photos, or your video. By design you must use iTunes on the iPhone and that kills it for me. Yes there are alternatives, yes you can jailbreak and sure, if your already an iPod owner your accustom to iTunes so you may not mind. The reality without going rogue is if you just want to add an album, a photo album, or a video to your iPhone it requires iTunes to sync it over. Again, I am not an iPhone expert but I have attempted to assist many times in this assuming simple task, only for it to lead to frustration and often surrender. Just kill me if iTunes is due for an update. Why every update is 90+MB is a mystery to all.

While adding media to my Droid is not flawless, mounting it as a mass storage USB device and just dragging what I want over makes perfect sense. I have even rooted my Droid and done this over WiFi although slow, it was possible and begs the question, Apple, Why Not?

While I typically rant, here I ask for your council. Have you come up with a way to sync your media to your mobile device? Do you stream it, or do you sync it?

The technology front is evolving so fast, new phones, data services, and tablets are all being dumped into the market faster than the average consumer can digest them. My passion is reading sites like Engadget, and CNET, and yet even I can't decide what is going to replace my original Droid . Although it is less than a year old it already feels like a antique. But this just might be what they want. I get this sinking suspicion while I want to be syncing, I'm actually being sunk.

For now I'm sticking with my Droid, but convince me otherwise, the Verizon iPhone is very tempting and my birthday is just around the corner.

More Gmail Goodness

For the last year I have migrated from using two mail services, to just one: Gmail. Before this my work email was separate and I had a Blackberry that merged the two into one inbox. Since loosing the enterprise services for my Blackberry and now using the Motorola Droid phone, keeping my mail communication simple was getting sticky.

Gmail can handle checking in to any email account easily enough, yet I still needed a traditional email program for business use so I have entrusted Thunderbird for that task. Outlook was just too heavy for simply managing my mail and address book, Outlook Express was being a nuisance and would take eons to load and lacked fast keyword searching. Thunderbird loads quick, has a simple search and allowed me to easily import contacts.

The last piece of the puzzle just fell into place when I discovered gContactSync, a plug-in for Thunderbird that synchronizes my Gmail contacts into a new address book within the Thunderbird system. Now when I add contacts on my Droid, it syncs both to my Gmail cloud and then when I launch Thunderbird I have a hard-copy on my laptop too.

Now I might just be more inclined to clean up my address book as well.

Android 2.1 Letdown

I'm still waiting for Motorola to release the latest upgrade to my Droid OS, Android verson 2.1. The main reason I have been craving this upgrade is it was expected to provide multi-touch into the OS in native form. Currently only the Google Maps 4.0 supports multi-touch pinch for zoom, a major improvement over trying to tap a tool button and only getting incremental zoom. As for the web browser, fortunately PC world pointed me to a free browser called Dolphin I need to try out to fix the lackluster zoom provided in the included web browser on my phone.

Don't get me wrong, my Droid kicks my blackberry to the curb in most every way, it is still just disappointing how it still needs to catch up to features my 1st generation iPod touch offered years ago.

For some great details on the Android 2.1 release read RJ Raphael's review on PC world here.

Get Dolphin Here:

Latest version is V1.2.99 Scan or click the link below to download now!

(or search "Dolphin Browser"in android market)

*Don't know what the images above is all about? Use your barcode scanner on your Android phone and snap a scan of the above to see!

Droid Driving

My Droid has nearly completely replaced my iPod touch as my favorite gadget. What I needed to get the full convenience was the ProClip mount. Today it arrived and I replaced my ProClip iPod mount with my new Droid mount. ProClip has a vehicle to gadget matching system that allows you to dock your phone, iPod , or GPS to your dash allowing you to safely use your device. My iPod was always in easy reach, but now with my new Droid docked in it's place I have navigation and local search at my fingertips. If you spend any amount of time commuting it is worth the investment to upgrade to a ProClip system. They are a bit pricey compared to a universal system but they are well built and thoughtfully designed to fit each device. The Droid mount allows you to view the phone in portrait or landscape mode, and even allows the keyboard to slide out. The clip keeps the buttons jacks clear to connect the charging cable and the audio output.

Droid Does!

It has been almost a month now I have been putting my new Motorola Droid phone though the paces. My Verizon contract was up and for the past year I was planning on dumping them for AT&T so I could finally have the iPhone. This decision was not easy, and it weighed heavily on me. Yeah, your thinking it's just a phone, but my phone stays on my hip from the time I get out of the shower until I hit the sheets and serves many duties. Besides making calls, my relaible Blackberry pearl delivered my email, posted tweets, sent twit-pics, located places of interest with google maps, and accessed facebook mobile. Although it didn't have GPS, the location feature via cell service was good enough to keep me from getting lost in Yakima. I won't miss the little screen or the buggy delay of the pearl track ball, but I will miss the way it was quick to answer the phone and easy to charge. More on that in a moment.

The Droid is expensive compared to most phones in Verizon's arsenal, with a 2 year contract it sets you back $199, however I have a $100 rebate in route so if you net it out it's comparable to most smart phones. Where it begins to pay for itself is in the services it provides. The Droid comes with Google navigation, actual voice turn-by-turn directions, and unlike most car nav's it is powered by real time Google data. This replaces your VZ navigation charge if you subscribe and could save you the cost of the phone in one years time. The Android market is full of other useful apps as well, and since the phone has a large touchscreen, media player, and removable upgradable Micro SD storage chip it hold twice as much media as my 8GB iPod touch. Upgradable to 32GB you will have plenty of room for pictures, video, and music. So far it replaced my Car GPS & My iPod.

As for the Droid as a phone, it has great call quality, seems to have better reception than my Pearl, and a much louder and more clear speaker phone. As for comfort it is awkward to hold up to my ear and much heavier than many phones. Using blootooth is the best way to comfortably make calls, yet one nuance is the way you answer. W/O a headset you slide the answer prompt and it has more than once failed to function with ease. It is frustrating at times even to unlock or wake the Droid. I hope to find an app that improves the wake-up unlock gestures. The blackberry I just pressed a button, the droid takes some effort and is more likely to cause a call fumble.

Another minor flaw is the slider keyboard. A real keyboard should have been the major advantage over the iPhone but the flat keys are hard to handle. With no feel to the keys fat fingering is frustrating and frequent. While I still slide it out for most major typing every time I make a mistake I curse the designer. Motorola should have had a blind person design the keyboard but i will move on.

A major disappointment with the Droid is the the camera. It has a 5MP camera that shoots good quality video too, but don't throw away your digital camera just yet. The camera, like most camera phones, does poorly in low light, so it has an obnoxious LED flash that blinds your subjects and then casts a harsh glow on everything in the shot. The camera is also painfully slow, poor to focus, and crashes on many of the apps that use it. Don't think the Droid camera is going to be something to rely on, unless a software upgrade fixes it's slow response time, I will only be using it for the augmented reality apps I have installed.

What is "Augmented Reality"? Glad you asked. With a GPS location, and 3G connection to the information super highway, the Droid can become a window to real-time location aware information right before your eyes. Think of it like terminator vision, or a heads up display like a fighter jet pilot.. oh, yeah, and there is an app for that too.

Google Goggles allows you to photograph objects and text and it does an instant optical charicter scan and then shows you google search results of your photo. Take a picture of famous art, a logo or sign, and it uses your location and the object to feed relevant information to you from the web. The AR feature shows push pins of google maps data within your proximity. For example, the restaurant or store location and contact information will appear if you click the little push-pin icons withing the camera view as you pan around. This is difficult to describe so check it out on YouTube.

Layar is another AR app that allows you to choose layers of data to overlay your reality view through the camera or see it on a map view of your location. Many pre made layers exist from golf courses to the Wikipedia. Great for tourists! I recently tried Layar in Portland, it was keen to find places to eat nearby, but I ended up using Google Maps to actually give me walking directions to the nearest Pizza Schmizza store.

Google Sky is another app similar to an augmented reality app but it uses the phones orientation and your location to show you the constellations based on the place and time of day,the angle you hold the phone and the compass within the Droid. Pretty cool for star gazers!

A few other camera apps that have been fun but not yet all that useful are a bar-code scanner and a streaming video app that crashes my droid when I try to use it. Hopefully the bugs get worked out on a software update so I can stream some video to this blog. I bet you can't wait! One use the bar-code scanner impressed me with was loading new apps. Some websites include digital image codes on the page that you can snap with the bar-code reader and it takes your phone to the app download page to install it. No need to input any URL or search for the app in the app market, it just finds it in a 'snap'

I mentioned Driod replaces my iPod touch but one app that has made my iTunes obsolete is Pandora. Pandora is a streaming audio app that play music based on your preferences. Make a radio station based on an artist you enjoy and it picks similar music, commercial free, and streams it in amazing quality to your phone. I just plug my headphone jack into my car radio for my commute home. No more dangerously changing tracks, or looking for albums on my iPod, I just let Pandora pick and if they pick poorly I tap "Thumbs Down" and they pick a new track. Since pandora seems to have every song at my fingertips, I don't see the need to fill up that 16gb SD chip with Mp3's. More room for apps!

The web browser on the Droid is far superior to my Blackberry but not quite as friendly as my iPod touch was. The lack of true multi-touch in the browser is odd. Multi-touch works on the droid, but I have only noticed it function with Google Maps. Pinch works to zoom in and out of maps but not on images or pages in the media app or browser. Using the zoom controls makes tapping the wrong spot and accidentally hitting a link frustrating and frequent. This is overcome by google's voice search feature. Simply touch the voice search microphone and it listens to your request and searches google for your answer. Most of the time this is reliable, but short sweet statements are difficult for me. I typically ramble and blabber a query and I get nothing. I need to practice being short and to the point. Let me continue...

Since I used to Geocache frequently I am hoping the Droid may become a paperless caching solution that can also replace my hand held hiking GPS, but there are a couple problems with that. First, my GPS was waterproof, and 2nd, some remote geocaching locations may not have good 3G coverage. Provided I pre-plan my rural trips and keep my GPS handy for rainy days, the Droid may make spontaneous urban caching a pleasure. I downloaded Geobeagle and it works but is not very refined. A geocaching app from Groundspeak is in the works. I'll keep you posted.

The Droid definitely replaced my car navigation GPS, and my iPod touch for most uses, I can't stop at that alone. The multiple apps I have tried make the Droid far superior to my blackberry so by getting 3 gadgets in one make it a real value. I won't proclaim it to be a iPhone killer as some try to do, but for those of you who realize the superior 3G service Verizon provides, love everything Google, and love to be on the cutting edge of technology I highly recommend the Droid. If you can wait, you may want to hold out for the Nexus One. It is faster and and does almost everything the Droid does. Just to recap, below is a list of what my Droid Does. If you read this please give me your feedback, comment here, Buzz, Tweet, Facebook, or email me.

Email, Tweet, Google Talk, Twitpic, Listen to Mp3's, Watch YouTube, Navigate, Local Search, Surf the Web, Geocache, Geotag, Facebook, Text, Blog, Get a weather report (With Video!) Calendar & Contact Sync, Price Search with Bar-Code Scanner, oh, and I make phone calls sometimes too.

Ben

Getting UN-Wired

Wires and more wires, cables, jacks, dongles, adapters, splitters, and routers. I thought the wireless revolution was here?

This rant is about the gadget makers constant addiction to wires while they continually roll out new wireless technology. Why don't these wireless widgets free us from all the cables my new digital toys require? There is WiFi, Bluetooth, WiMax, 3G, CDMA, and new wireless video technolgy that has been around since 2008 and earlier. See Panasonic HD wireless solution.

Recently I finally dove in and purchased a TV with HD capability, guess what, more wires.. A HDMI cable is required to get the full effect of the HDTV, and low and behold, my digital camera can too connect to my TV, but alas, I need to buy another wire, a MINI HDMI cable!

I thought I had rid myself of so many wires, I got a dock for my blackberry so I just drop the phone in the nifty cradle and it charges. Yes it does have a wire that plugs into the wall, but the dock is just like a little stand, you just drop the phone in, and it charges reliably. Not little plugs to get aligned up and break off ruining the phone at the same time. The blackberry also syncs with my contacts wirelessly, using Google Sync, my email address book & calendars both online and in my pocket keep neatly synced up with out wires. Previously I have posted about my Eye-Fi card that wirelessly transmits my digtial photos to my online web-album and downloads them to my PC all without wires.

Ok, before you send me emails about the bandwidth required to stream HD video wirelessly and the neat wire organzation method you use, let me be clear, I know how and why there are limitations, what I am frustrated by, is why don't they come up with more creative solutions and why do I ither have to remove my camera battery to charge it, or plug in another wire. I want a charging dock for ALL my gadgets, not just my phone.

Eye-Fi Reunited

Today it arrived, my shiny new replacement Eye-Fi card. Ask and you shall receive, as long as you are buying from a company that cares about customer satisfaction. As previously reported, my Eye-Fi card was acting up, and when I called to see what the warranty was I was asked where I purchased it and what was wrong, then they authorized it's immediate return and replacement. Less than 2 weeks have passed since I called Eye-Fi service number and I am whole again. Now I need to login and re-activate the card so I can get back to taking pictures and once again give up the card reader and the wires.

Thanks Eye-Fi, Top notch customer service!

Buy yours today at www.eye.fi you won't be dissapointed, but I suggest you read my review here so you know what to expect.

Eye-Fi Review Customer Service

One of the top Google search keywords that drives traffic to this blog is my past review on the Eye-Fi wireless SD card, because it comes up in the first page of results. Since my purchase a year and a half ago it served me well and worked as advertised. Recently it suffered some trouble and stopped working or responding at all, and I could not even get it to function as a regular SD card. I called for customer service just to see what the warranty was, as I never read that stuff unless it's a high dollar purchase. Although my hold time was a few minutes, a live person, Joey, answered, heard my complaint, and without delay took my information and sent me instructions to send the card in for replacement. Within minutes I had a email with simple instructions on where to send it and what to expect in return. While I don't yet have my replacement, I am looking forward to posting about it when it arrives.

I'ts all about location, location, location.

Reading Mike Elgan's November 19th post regarding the death of Sirius radio, and a recent tweet this week regarding the Sirius iPhone app I recalled a thought I had when I discovered Google Latitude. Sirius needs to capture your location and create new revenue not from subscribers but advertisers through location targeted ads.

Satellite radios biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. Location. While listening to AM talk radio I frequently drive out of range just as the programing was getting good, or have been out of range on any radio station. While Sirius XM is one possible solution, my hang up is the dreaded subscription fees. Already I pay for internet, cell phone, TV, gas, water, garbage, electricity, when does it end? I just can't stomach adding paid radio. I still remember when paying for cable meant you had channels without ads. Now we pay for Cable or Sat TV laden with more commercials than free broadcast stations.

Where cable has gotten smart is in location based advertising, and this is where Sirius could thrive. If sat radio could partner with a cell phone application feeding instant geo-location sensitive advertising within the programming stream seamlessly they would create an entirely new advertising market that would be affordable for advertisers as well as relevant to listeners. Today's connected devices could blend cell phone triangulation, blue-tooth, and a car receiver into a truely integerated audio entertainment and news service.

Restaurants could advertise lunch specials to subscribers down to the city block's location, stores could advertise sales to drivers in the vicinity, and gas stations could advertise the lowest price right to the driver around the corner. The service would also not need to be limited to advertising, real time news, traffic, and weather could be location based, further enhancing the experience. Information could even flow both directions, location, direction, and speed could also help predictivly supply ads based on your destination, or help predict traffic congestion. Additonial information could be on demand as well, just like interactive TV, you could hit your radio dial to get more information and directions regarding the advertisement you just heard.

Sirius shouldn't' be talking to Apple, they should be talking to Google. If Sirius cold roll out a free service paid by location aware advertising Adsense & Sirius could kill the radio star, it's all about location, location, location.

Newbies

This week on my vacation I was running on as I often do about how blogging and twitter has become a passion for me in my spare time. I am often asked how do I find time to post, or to learn how to do this stuff, and it surprises me because of how little time I actually devote to my blog, or my tweets. More often the post arises from a brief moment of boredom, or sparked by a link that I can't wait to share. With the ease of publishing on blogger I recommended it to my parents, as well as my brother's in-laws, as a way to avoid the complexity of hosted sites, and web page design effort. The Lakeview Vocalists and St. Cloud Hog are two new blogs I have added in my links section. Totally unrelated to my topics, except for the way that Google technology has allowed even the most novice users to become instant publishers and web masters. Start yours today!

Find Jesus, with a GPS?

Mike Elgan's RawFeed blog, that I have neglected to read for the last week posted, GPS For Jesus where "Village officials in Wellington, Florida, last year inserted a GPS tracking device in the baby Jesus doll to combat theft. And wouldn't you know it? Jesus went missing, and authorities used the GPS to catch the 18-year-old girl who stole it. This year, Wellington officials plan to insert GPS trackers into the Christmas Tree, the Menorah and everything else in the holiday display that isn't nailed down."

If they are using GPS to find Jesus, would it be a sacrilege if I placed a geocache called find Jesus? I often find evangelical swag in geocaches, what a better way to get saved than by searching for him literally instead of figuratively. I am a Christian, just not a very respectable one apparently.

Hackers Ahead - Beware of Flash Update

A friend sent me a link to a video, and I love watching funny YouTube videos so I was eager to click even without reading any of the message that was included with the link. I was directed to a site with a typical video player as you would find on YouTube but it loaded for a few seconds and then popped up a notice that my flash player was outdated and I needed to upgrade, and provided a handy link to the update installation file.

Well most people would just run the new flash player right? While the notice may look ligitimate, I just know from experience that if my computer needs any updating, I will do so from a trusted source so I closed the notice, and instead went to official Adobe website to download the latest Flash Player from them. My player was not the latest version so I performed the update and returned to try and watch the video. Still no video, the site was a trick to get unsuspecting viewers to run a spyware program and collect personal information.

After some research this has been going on since August, and it was the first I have heard of it. Chances are you may have fallen for this, if you think you may have, you might want to be sure your virus and spyware software are up to date and scan your system.

Folding Display

Samsung demonstrates a folding display for portable electronics, I hope Apple considers such an idea, my iPod touch would be twice as awesome with twice the screen, I could flip it open into a mini multi-touch net-book! Ok, yeah I'm dreaming again.

Tip Courtesy of Mike Elgan

Photo Euphoria With Picasa 3 (Beta)

Google has released a new BETA version of it's photo wizard, and now it has even more super easy to use features like retouch, text overlay, & video slide show creator! If your not using picasa yet, you really don't know what you have been missing, but now you can download the new Beta3 version and get even more organized and creative with your digital collection!

Free The Airwaves

I am a big supporter of Google tech, and for this reason I watched the video found on FreeTheAirwaves.com regarding a grass roots movement to push the FCC towards free unlicensed use of some of the radio spectrum being freed by the ban on analog TV transmission.

Unfortunately the video, and it's message is not well communicated, produced, nor clear as to what free use airwaves can mean to us, the consumer. Consumer electronic makers could provide us some exciting connectivity tools without the need for subscription based services if the FCC allows some of the new radio spectrum to become free conditional use, as opposed to licensed use as it currently is. Licensed use, such as TV broadcast, radio stations, and cell phone spectrum, only permit the companies who pay for the licenses to use the airwaves, thus we the consumer pay for access. Consider we already pay monthly fees for phone service, internet access, cable or satellite TV signals, satellite radio, and some even for wireless broadband mobile web access, does the tel com and entertainment industry really need to control more of the airwaves?

What we the public must demand of our airwaves is free use by us, our gadgets, and providers of content to deliver our entertainment and communication across our public airwaves, without service fees. Although free airwaves still may require end connection to require some access agreements like you see when you visit an airport with free-wi-fi, or login to subscription based WiFi accesspoints, the free use of the spectrum provides choice, and open access for competion.

Imagine being able to access the web in your car with a mobile WiFi signal as reliable as your FM raidio station, and free of a monthly fee. Have live content such as traffic, weather, and local news accessable wheverver you may be without paying some content provider for access to there privately licensed wireless service.

The possiblites with GPS & in car navigation systems, WiFi enabled media players, to name a few, leave unlimited possibilites.

Don't let the major media, cable, and phone companies steal our airwaves and charge us access fees to use them, sign the petition and tell your friends to support this as well. This will shape our future and how we communicate, and more importantly what it costs us to keep connected in the future.

More iPod Touch Toys: PC Remote

iPod Command Central

My iPod touch has become my most valued possession, and to keep in close at hand for the hundreds of miles I drive each month I invested in a ProClip dashboard mount. This gadget & vehicle matched system delivers a perfect custom solution for safely reaching your toys while in transit. My iPod touch is already my portable jukebox, media player, and weatherman, and as soon as the LocoGPS navigation add-on is available it will be my navigation system as well. Unlike an expensive in dash radio, I can pocket my iPod so it doesn't get jacked, and unlike your typical vehicle nav system, my iPod can check the weather and email when a WiFi spot is in reach. If you have not experienced the iPod touch or iPhone yet, im sorry.

More Geek Video

This clip was interesting to me because I never understood how computers made calculations in binary because I am a visual learner. This is also why I used to love America's Funniest Home Videos and why I skipped college.

Marble Based Calculator - Watch more free videos