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What are these wireless phone companies thinking?

What are these wireless phone companies thinking?

In Canada, Telus and Bell will start charging customers without a text message plan incoming sms text messages starting August 24th and August 8th respectively while customers with the plan are unaffected. Surprisingly, Rogers hasn’t made that change but it has its own dilema right now with the iPhone’s data plan.

As of now, you can only purchase an iPhone at Rogers or Fido stores and it comes with a 3 year plan. The cheapest data plan is $60CAD + tax for 150 minutes of weekday talk time and 400 megabytes of data. Therefore, you are tied up with paying over $800CAD a year, 3 years just for the plan itself, that is over $2400CAD PLUS the cost of the phone itself! Even though its cheaper than the BlackBerry plan, it is still more expensive than what people are paying or going to pay in the US.

Here are the plans they offer for the iPhone:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wirelessproducts/iphone_voice_data_packages

To me, these wireless companies are just a group of vampires sucking as much blood (money) out of us customers aspossible. Unless there is some sort of government regulation or intervention which I doubt, as long as they are the only major wireless providers, we are stuck with this monopoly. Hopefully Rogers will lower the price for the plans when there are less customers buying the iPhone and signing up for them than expected. It is an opportunity for Rogers to stand out from other providers like Telus and Bell if it does, but what I see will happen soon is that it will start charging for incoming sms text messages as well if this goes through for Telus and Bell.

I wonder what other excuses can they come up with later. Maybe something like:
“We will start charging a monthly fee for holding onto your phone number”

Source from TheStar.com:
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/456795

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Project Mobius

Very affordable domain hosting service: WhyPark.com

It is always nice to host your own website with a unique domain name instead of http://www.HostingName.com/your-user-name. If you are ready to spend a few bucks investing on a domain name, in fact 100 domain names for $99.95USD, a one time fee. Then I suggest taking a look at WhyPark.com.

There are so many hosting companies, why use WhyPark?

That was my first question immediately, what makaes it so different from any others. First, it actually generates contents based on keywords you provide daily (up to 20 keywords per domain), so this is ideal for people that have little time to spare to create their own contents. Of course you can also include your own pages. Websites hosted on WhyPark also benefits from SEO (search engine optimization) since search engines index and rank based on the quality of contents. You also do not need to be a programmer or web designer to build the website since WhyPark has user friendly form based interface and there are premade templates for the look and feel. Again you can also upload your own.

Features as quoted from the site:

Keyword rich titles on every page

Easy to follow index pages and automatically updated site maps

High keyword density. Since the only articles that appear on your web site are related to the exact keywords you’ve chosen, the result is a themed, content-rich web site with high keyword density

Layout and code optimized for search engines

New content is added daily keeping search engines coming back for more

Automated XML Sitemap creation to submit to search engines

Easily create an unlimited number of custom pages for your website

In terms of the cost, I find the price very affordable. Although its a one time fee of $99.95 USD for 100 domain names (no montly fee). That is less than $1.00USD per domain name which is pretty cheap. You can sell these domain names and might even earn a profit. For those looking for a site that will generate profit, you also get to keep 100% of revenue generated through say, Google Adsense. WhyPark does not get a percentage of any of the profit.

I’ve done some research and there are a lot of positive about WhyPark. Me and my friends might even give it a try. Again, to learn more here is the link to WhyPark.com.

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Project Mobius

What I think about Adobe Flex

I first heard of Adobe Flex from a friend through MSN chat. He told me it is one of many RIA technologies out there like Microsoft Silverlight, AJAX and JavaFX. Then it was during a team meeting my co workers started talking about Web 2.0, avatars and RIA. Since then, the words Adobe Flex have been stuck in my head so I have decided to take a look myself.

Adobe provides a getting started guide with Flex 3, the current version of Flex which you can take a look here. It covers from building a basic application to a more advanced application. And by the way, you need to get a copy of the SDK (software development kit) in order to compile the xml-based MXML source code into SWF file (basically Flex creates Flash content just like any other Flash contents you see on the net).

I won’t go too technical just like my other blogs as this is intended to be a overview. But I will write about the pros and cons.

Pros:

Easy to pick up, if you know HTML then you will find it even easier to pickup since Flex consists of tags similar to HTML.

If you know java scripts, then you will also find Flex’s action scripts work similarly. But if you are no web designer, don’t panic as you can create a fairly attractive looking site using just Flex tags.

Create attractive sites with minimal programming and/or web design knowledge (of course its good to have some and since you are interested in web design you should KNOW some).

It is an open source framework so you can find many samples to use on your site.

Cons:

If you want to have even fancier and flashier effects for your site, the learning curve may get steeper. An example would be the Book Beta Demo, it supports transparency, page shadows and even page tearing! Honestly that demo opened my eyes, not just about Flex but RIA in general.

Even though over 90% of desktops with internet connection today have installed Flash Player (to play SWF file). It might slow down or even freeze older PCs, something to keep in mind when designing a Flex website.

I love Flex so much I have decided to redesign my site using it as well, its not done yet but you should get the idea
Project Mobius

As usual any comments/feedbacks are welcome and I hope you enjoy this review!
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For those thinking of getting into web design the Web Design Mastery might be for you

This is my first blog and first product review, I have put in a a lot of efforts into writing this. Ok, let’s get to the point.

For your information, I have been a web/graphic designer for more than 10 years, I am not saying I’m a professional (skill wise) but I can say I know enough to judge that this Web Design Mastery is a good read for those wanting to know more about web design, promoting your own website, whether for business or personal purpose.

From the site it shows you the topics that are covered extensively in 8 volumes. If you are really interested, you can just go straight to signing up for a free trial which contains 77 pages of the full 500+ page ebook and no I don’t gain anything from anyone by signing up for the trail version ebook and that’s not why I’m here.

I got myself a copy of the trail ebook by signing up on the site, you can unsubscribe from the list once you receive a link to download the trail ebook through email (note if you are using yahoo or hotmail accounts, the email will most likely be in your junk mail folder). By the way its in a form of PDF, you will need Acrobat Reader in order to view it, you can get it here.

I have read through the content and honestly, even for a trial version, it covers a lot of the concepts and ideas of how to plan, create and promote your website. I am not going in details about the content, if you are still reading and interested, try it out yourself But there are a few key points that I should point out:

• Be passionate about what you do, in this case web design. You will be very disappointed if all you want is easy and quick money. There is no such thing, as least most of the time!
• Don’t be cheap! Invest money to make money. Personally I think it also motivates you to work hard for the money invested.
• Build a website in an ethical way, for example, don’t use images without the person’s permission.

If you made it all the way down here, I am really happy because my blog was worth reading. It means a lot to me if you could leave me feedback as well, even the negative ones please as I want to improve and get better at blogging. Finally, if you are truly interested about web design, get yourself the trial copy now and start making that site that you have always dreamt of making. It is also rewarding to see your own creation for the first time. I hope I have enlightened you a bit about web design (I used these two words so much I know!)

Feel free to check out my site!
Project Mobius

Thank you for reading and I will continue to try my best to produce quality reviews!
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