A mix? Why not.

 

Just some really great songs I’ve been listening to recently:

Young Love – Mystery Jets

Elizabeth – Ryan Adams & The Cardinals 

Ragged Wood – Fleet Foxes

Re: Stacks – Bon Iver

Brand New Colony – Ben Gibbard

Sleepy head – Passion Pit

Weird Fishes – Radiohead

[early morning commuters image courtesy of Mark Daniel Lowen]

Vacation

I’m on vacation in Florida and will return shortly. Here I am outside of the nauseating Star Tours ride in MGM:

 

About to hurl

Out with the old, in with the new

I must admit, I lied. I told you I wasn’t going to get an iPhone 3G. I kicked and screamed and cried about AT&T’s price gouging on the device, and bemoaned the lack of “new” features just because I have a blog and therefore am entitled to a little whining. 

But thanks to the miracle of eBay and a little common-sense concept disguised in fancy economist jargon called profit margins, I am the proud owner of the aerodynamically organ-like 3G. 

 

Like brothers on a hotel bed, except one of them is going to live with some lady in Canada.

Things for Wednesday – 7/9/08

- Thrillist sends you a daily email and tells you how to be cool, regardless of what city you live.

- New Death Cab video for “Cath…” One of four songs on the new album that are absolutely outstanding (the other three being Grapevine Fires, Bixby and No Sunlight).

- Blackberry etiquette reaches all time low for Boston rental agent:

Hi we can definetly set up a time for Saturday I just have a couple questions to see if I have any other listings that might work for you what is the maximum you guys can spend on rent what parts of town would you like to be in anything you can tell me about what your looking for would be very helpful thanks and I hope to hear back from you soon

- Sub Pop, the best record label around, turns 20 years old! I wish they would do another free iTunes sampler. Last year’s was superb, and Brooklyn Vegan linked us to their Single’s Club, but it’s $75, and my AT&T bill is too much to afford that. Damn.

- 25 well designed book covers. Cool. [EW via Kottke]

- Oobject is “…like a Billboard chart for gadgets”

- Google’s treading on Second Life’s territory with Lively, a new avatar based virtual world app due out later this year. [WSJ]

- Wind power guy T. Boone Pickens (who happens to have the best name I’ve ever seen) is using Facebook to drum up support for his interesting campaign.

- Mad Atoms wonders what will happen when the record store clerk – an iconic fixture in society – finally dies. Some potential replacements include sushi chefs or the “long haired asshole” at Cinefile.

- My Morning Jacket is going Ryan Adams on us (har har funny prolific musician joke har) by working on a follow up to Evil Urges a month or two after it came out. Nice.

Coming soon – these daily links are getting a little too disorganized for my OCD tastes, so all 5 of you that read this are going to start seeing a breakout of links between miscellany and music stuff. Don’t be alarmed.  

AT&T, the turd in Apple’s iPhone swimming pool

 

I hate AT&T. The service is horrendous, the EDGE network is a joke, the customer service abysmal, and the website impossibly confusing. The meters don’t update correctly to show my voice usage, they track data as though I should actually care how many gigs I’ve transferred on my unlimited data plan, I can’t receive pictures or media texts on my iPhone because they won’t enable the technology, etc.

But nothing irks me more than the “but what about us!?” stance they’ve taken with the release of the iPhone 3G. Rather than working with Apple to position the device at a price point that works for both companies, AT&T is taking its sweet revenge on new adopters by slamming them with high monthly fees. Combined with Apple’s sexy marketing, this is a recipe for consumer misbehavior of epic proportions.

Worse are the confusing rules regarding current iPhone owners who want to upgrade. You can upgrade, but only once, and after that you’ll have to pay to break the contract, rather than being afforded the option of just renewing several years out.

Apple has shown that it can revolutionize any device or service – and in most cases sets the standard for design, ease of use, and power of platform. The problem is that it is forced to work with companies that share only the vision of big profit – not of products that work the way they are supposed to, or rates that make sense, or excellent network coverage.

When Apple debuted the $.99 song in the iTunes Music Store, critics dimissed the plan as a failure; a ridiculous price to pay for a single song. Now most online music outlets clock in at around that – those that offer less, like eMusic, have poor selection and have trouble attracting ‘subscribers.’ Apple did it right from the start, and other companies floundered after trying to recuperate from years of poorly orchestrated subscriber-based and usage-based music programs.

Yes, the iPhone is a revolutionary device. This is the stuff from which James Bond is made. But AT&T believes too fervently that they’ve found gold. The nickel-and-diming of the plan options by AT&T makes the iPhone 3G a dangerous buy for people who think they can afford it. Be ready to shell out at least $75-100/month.  I won’t be surprised when the debt chasing and missed payments catch up to the billing folks at AT&T, making the overhead of supporting this device too costly in the long run.

This consumer misbehaver won’t be buying the iPhone 3G this time around. I’ll keep my logical plan and still scratch-free old skool iPhone. Here’s hoping it lasts another 2 years. I’m waiting for Steve Jobs to get so fed up with AT&T that he just buys it, shuts it down, and opens Apple Wireless – with bars in places you didn’t even know existed.