ARE YOU A ETIQUETTE VIGILANTE?

These days it seems that as the rudes have gotten ruder — abetted by BlackBerries, cellphones and MP3 players — the scolds have gotten scoldier. True, many people have grown complacent about having to endure others’ musical tastes or conversations — or more accurately, half of their conversations. But among the disapprovers, withering glances and artfully worded comments have given way to pranks and other creative kinds of revenge.

Her co-worker, Eelain Steketee, said that she had no qualms about accosting people for breaches of cellphone etiquette. “I get rude just because it will stop them from using the phone,” she said.

“I said, ‘Well, since you obviously want me to hear your conversation, I’d better keep a copy of it,’ “ Mr. Bartilucci recalled.

THE ploy worked: the man got up and walked away — but the victory felt Pyrrhic.

On Broadway, the actors Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman took turns breaking out of character during a September performance of their show, “A Steady Rain,” to admonish an audience member who refused to silence his cellphone. Patti LuPone, too, has recently garnered some of the most enthusiastic ovations of her career for stopping shows to publicly berate people for similar offenses.


But there is hope: For those who prefer a more passive-aggressive form of shaming, there is a company called Pardon Moi that makes cards you can hand to strangers with sayings like, “Can you please take your conversation elsewhere, like the corner of ‘polite’ and ‘appropriate’?”





http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/fa...ail1=y&emc=tnt

Can anyone figure out Wireless Plans? Who's really getting the deal?





“The whole pricing thing is weird,” said Barry Nalebuff, an economics professor at the Yale School of Management. “You pay $60 to make your first phone call. Your next 1,000 minutes are free. Then the minute after that costs 35 cents.”


“You give people a really good bargain on this bucket of minutes,” explained Roger Entner, a senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen. “People are risk averse, so you have a relatively high overage charge, which gets people to overbuy. You also get really predictable revenue out of it, which Wall Street loves.”

When Apple and AT&T started offering the iPhone for $199, plus $30 a month for Internet access, sales shot up, even though the previous deal — $399 for the phone and $20 a month — cost less over a two-year contract.

Phone companies have doubled the price for text messages, to 20 cents each, in recent years, even though they cost almost nothing to deliver.


When it entered the smartphone business in 2007, Apple tried to turn upside down the traditional model in which carriers subsidized the cost of handsets. It initially wanted customers to pay $599 — later cut to $399 — for their handsets, but they would pay AT&T, its exclusive carrier, only $20 a month for the Internet access, a portion of which would go to Apple.

Consumers balked at the high upfront cost. By the second generation of the iPhone, Apple reverted to a traditional subsidy model. The iPhone that now costs consumers $199 actually costs AT&T about $550, according to analysts’ estimates. To cover the subsidy, the Internet price increased to $30 a month.

Yes, consumers come out behind on that deal, to the tune of $40 over two years, but it was only when the opening price dropped to $199 that iPhone sales started to skyrocket.

But for all the complexity, cellphones American-style do have a certain supersized logic. Americans spend more money each month on their wireless bills than people in any other country. But the money we spend buys a whole lot more talk time and text messages than it does elsewhere. On average, we effectively spend about 5 cents per minute of talk time and about a penny a text message, lower than anywhere else in the developed world.

This year, the deals are becoming even better. For people who want to surf the Web on their phones, wireless companies are willing to sell them iPhones, BlackBerrys and other sleek gadgets for hundreds of dollars less than they cost. The catch, of course, is that customers need to pay $30 or so extra each month for Internet access. For those who just want to talk and text without a fancy phone, there is hot competition to offer lower- price, unlimited phone plans that don’t require contracts.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/bu...y&_r=1&emc=tnt

Its a sup-up DARE with all the right improvements. Texting is easier with pre-spelled words.

internet is FAST!

Wi-Fi connection to my home FIOS.

Speech recognition for google searching, just say what your looking for.

GPS immediately engages showing your location.

See The DROID REVIEW@... http://cellphoneforums.net/cell-phon...real-time.html

So the firestorm continues, but... can insuring ALL Americans really work for EVERYONE, call the government handle such a large system.

The democrats have the votes, they control the house, senate, and White-house... they don't need to convince anyone... nor can the republicans stop them, so why don't they just pass it.


Whose going to pay for all this FREE healthcare, will it really be FREE.

What do think??? Do you have an opinion??? Where do you stand.

Will universal healthcare fall short on care???

Mobile coupons — usually text messages with discount codes sent to a cellphone — are becoming the blue-light specials for the digital age, promoting last-minute clothing sales, two-for-one entrees and cheap tickets to the theater.

The widespread adoption of text messaging and sleeker, richer phone interfaces also makes mobile transactions easier. Some shoppers are turning to mobile applications that collect coupons, like Coupon Sherpa, an iPhone application that handles coupons for retailers like Kmart, Toys “R” Us and Zales. Since its release in April, Coupon Sherpa has been downloaded more than 65,000 times.

Analysts say mobile coupons are also more likely to be redeemed. Cellfire says its redemption rate for mobile coupons is 15 to 20 percent. Paper coupons, by comparison, have redemption rates lower than 1 percent.

“It’s so easy because the coupons are already sitting on your phone,” Mr. Gilmore said. At check-out, he simply shows the coupon on his cellphone screen to the cashier, who enters a code to apply the discount.

“It doesn’t feel like it has the same stigma as walking up to the cashier with a Velcro pouch, fishing around for a coupon, like my mom used to do,” he said.

Coupon Sherpa Mobile Coupons - In Store Coupon Application for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Printable Coupons in New York City, Free NYC deals guide | 8coupons.com

http://www.mobiqpons.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/te...nt&tntemail1=y

1. Carriers Overcharge For Service

2. You're a global laggard in new technologies

3. Handset discounts are a shell game, not a 'subsidy

4. You seek new ways to get money for nothing

5. You want to lock me in

6. You aggressively oppose net neutrality

7. You want to lock out competition

8. Your solution to public opposition is more lobbying

9. You're growing too powerful

10. You've forgotten that we own the airwaves

Some excerpts from the above statements....

And yet another example is the charging of minutes for both parties for each call. In Europe, the caller pays minutes for the call, and the receiver pays nothing. In the U.S., both caller and callee pay.

Carriers employ experts to examine all the angles to figure out which combination of bundles and packages and pricing will extract the most money from each customer. It's not about charging more money for better service. It's about charging more money for the same service.

New York Times columnist David Pogue launched a high-visibility effort last month to address just one of the many ways carriers shamelessly take money away from customers for nothing. Pogue noticed that most of the carriers have mandatory, 15-second voicemail instructions that are played after your own voice-mail message is played. For example, Verizon plays: "At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5."

Everyone already knows how to leave a voicemail message. Apple required AT&T to drop the requirement, for example, and somehow iPhone users are still communicating with each other.

Pogue estimates that Verizon, for example, takes $620 million a year away from customers for all the collective "minutes" required to listen to these messages. That's just one carrier, and just one example of how carriers make money by optimizing what they call Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

10 Things We Hate About Wireless Carriers - PC World

Have you UNPLUG your home phone yet????


One day our kids will ask us looking at it, “What is that machine with a wire on it?” We would say, “Child, that is a landline!” and he would probably go blank.

Analysts predict that 2025 could be the last year of landline phones in America because on an average these phones are being unplugged in favor of a cell phone at a rate of 700,000 a month.

Is it the end of landlines in America?

Scam downloads, joke-of-the-day, sexting, and third party offers can run up your bill.

many children have more sophisticated phones than their parents — its like having a computer.

Does your child text under the covers at night?

We’ve all heard that driving and texting is dangerous, but Dr. Milteer warned that pedestrian accidents have occurred because children were texting as they crossed the street and were not aware of their surroundings. And even though it may not be as hazardous to use cellphones while sitting at the dinner table or mingling with friends, it is just plain rude.

Not only is constant texting distracting and unnecessary, but “you have to wonder if it interferes with developing some social skills at some point.”


Do you text when your on a new date, does this show lack of interest towards your partner/date.

Cellphones are now a way of life, they just need to be used in a safe responsible way. Educate your kids, be a parent, hold then accountable for their actions.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/yo...y&_r=1&emc=tnt

The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002.

Documents: Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - The New York Times

The researchers also shelved a draft letter they had prepared for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to send, warning states that hands-free laws might not solve the problem.

Documents: Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - The New York Times

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

It added: “We therefore recommend that the drivers not use wireless communication devices, including text messaging systems, when driving, except in an emergency.”

Full Article@
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/te...nt&tntemail1=y

As i read this article and article like this before, i can't help to think back in the day when radios were put in cars, vanity mirrors, tape decks, and children restricted to back seats. Oh Well.

To cover different age ranges, two separate tests were set up on a road course--one with 22-year-old Jordan Brown, a Car & Driver intern, the other with the magazine's 37-year-old editor-in-chief, Eddie Alterman.

Using a Honda Pilot as the test vehicle, both drivers first drove a straight line and were told to hit the brake in response to a light that flashed on the dashboard. That measured their baseline reaction time. The second test had the drivers read a text message while driving; the third asked them to type a message while behind the wheel.

An additional test also compared the effects of DWT with driving while intoxicated, on the same day under the same road conditions. After downing enough alcohol to become legally drunk, the test subjects took to the road again.

The results showed that at 35 mph, it took a sober Brown an extra 21 feet to hit the brake while reading a text message, and an extra 16 feet while typing a message.

At 70 mph, it took him 30 extra feet to jam on the brake while reading a text, and an extra 31 feet while composing.

Those figures compared with an extra 7 feet at 35 mph and an extra 15 feet at 70 mph while intoxicated. However, in his drunken condition, Brown had to be told twice which lane to drive in--a dangerous scenario if he had been in actual traffic.

At 35 mph, a sober Alterman took an extra 188 feet to step on the brake while reading a text, and an extra 90 feet while typing a message.
At 70 mph, he took an extra 129 feet to hit the brake while reading a message, and an additional 319 feet while writing one.

While intoxicated, it took him at extra 7 feet at 35 mph and an extra 15 feet at 70 mph.

See Chart@
Road test shows texting slows reaction time | Wireless - CNET News



Texting While Driving: How Dangerous is it? - Feature/Features/Classic Cars/High Performance/Hot Lists/Reviews/Car and Driver - Car And Driver

15-year-old Kate Moore won the LG U.S. National Texting Championship.




For the Des Moines, Iowa, teenager, her 14,000 texts-per-month habit reaped its own rewards, landing her the competition prize of $50,000 just eight months after she got her first cell phone.

Moore, with a speedy and accurate performance, beat out 20 other finalists from around the country over two days of challenges such as texting blindfolded and texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course.

In the final showdown, she outtexted 14-year-old Morgan Dynda, of Savannah, Ga. Both girls had to text three lengthy phrases without making any mistakes on the required abbreviations, capitalization or punctuation. Moore squeaked through by a few seconds on the tiebreaking text, getting the best two out of three. As she anxiously waited for confirmation of her win, tears streamed down her face.

She sends about 400 to 470 texts a day. Among her uses of the text messages, studying for exams with friends, which she says is better done by text because she can look back at the messages to review.

The finalists, all 22 or younger, were among 250,000 people who tried to get spots in the competition. Some won their spots at the Manhattan finals by being the fastest people to text responses to televised ads.

Iowa Girl Wins US Texting Title

Texting is becoming more and more of an issue while behind the wheel.

Do you text and/or talk on your cell while driving?

Should we be allow to at least talk on our cell phones while driving?

Are Bluetooths devices the answer, or is the cell phone still a dangerous distraction?

Are cell phones just getting a bad wrap, some say children, radio, CD player, eating, makeup, and other stuff are just as much as a distraction as cell phones can be.

I think we all can agree, if we were to see a child being beat buy anyone, or being discipline with the intent to do harm, everyone would take some action.

What that said, have you, or would you say something to parents/parent who were disciplining their kid by with a spank or scolding.

Is it the public/YOUR business to step in or advise a parent to the point of confronting him or her on how they should discipline their child.

Should we the public be the PARENT POLICE, or should the parent be allow to do their job as disciplinarians. Is it no one else is business how other people raise their child, as long as there's no intent to bodily harm to the child.

Do you mind your business?

How far is to far... when to step in, or when don't we saying anything.

Ninety-five percent of the mobile phones were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria, with the potential to cause illness ranging from minor skin irritations to deadly disease.

We now have to keep in mind to wash our hands and our cell phones. This sounds sensible, germs live on hands and on saliva landing on the phone from talking into your cell.

Think about it the next time you use someone else's cell phone, or someone uses your cell phone. OUCH!

Researchers from the Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey led by Fatma Ulger tested the phones and dominant hands of 200 doctors and nurses working in hospital operating rooms and intensive care units.

Nearly 35 percent carried two types of bacteria, and more than 11 percent carried three or more different species of bugs, the study found.
Most worrying, one in eight of the handsets showed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain that has emerged as a major health threat in hospitals around the world.

Inserts and the full report can be found@
AFP: Cellphones may spread superbugs in hospitals: study



Banning phone use in hospital settings is probably not practical, they concluded, because the devices are often used for work in emergencies.

The study was published in BioMed Central's Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials.

In the United States, where national statistics are available, MRSA is the cause of more than 60 percent of all hospital infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA in 2005 infected 94,000 people and killed 19,000 in the United States.

Cellphones may spread superbugs in hospitals: study

1. Grab a calculator. (You won't be able to do this one in your head)

2. Key in the first three digits of your phone number. (not the area code)

3. Multiply by 80.

4. Add 1.

5. Multiply by 250.

6. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number.

7. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number again.

8. Subtract 250.

9. Divide number by 2.

Do you recognize the answer?