Or should I say that AT&T sucks, instead?

Either way, this particular company has done little or nothing to endear me to them or their crooked little nickel and dime pinching policies.

Since I got my RAZR in 2005, we’ve been using Cingular as our cellular provider. We chose their “FamilyTalk 1400″ plan as we were using a fair number of minutes at the time. We were also using the text messaging feature quite a bit. Imagine my surprise when I found out that when Glenna and I sent messages to each-other, we were being charged for two separate messages (one being sent, one being received - even though it was the same message).

In other words, Cingular charged us twice as much to send a text message between two phones within their own network as they did to send (or receive) one out of it - even though the cost is surely negligible to them and we were already paying for each phone.

Upon finding out about this, I explained why I thought this ludicrous and finally got them to agree to cancel out the extra text message costs I had already incurred. In order to maintain my current usage levels I saw that I would have to purchase a $9.95/month add-on to get the number of monthly text messages we would need. So, I asked about the add-on.

It was then explained to me that we would need to purchase two of these add-ons as the benefit could not be shared between phones (even though we were on a FamilyTalk plan, owned by a single customer). My $9.95/month add-on doubled to $19.90/month just because Cingular had some ridiculous artificial restriction in place to soak up money from people who use their phones in a completely normal and expected fashion (”What? Two people on a family plan sending text messages to each-other? That will never happen!”).

Anyhow, as of today I had lived with Cingular’s inflated pricing and annoying restrictions for long enough. Both our phone and text message usage have since dwindled, even more now that Glenna telecommutes from home and we can use traditional instant messaging to communicate. I no longer have much need for anything more than the basic family plan.

Just a bit ago I called Cingular and tried to get my plan dropped to the lowest FamilyTalk plan available and have the text messaging add-ons removed. The billing representative on the other end then told me that the “roll-over” minutes I had earned would be reset, from something like 12,000 to a starting amount of 550. When I asked why, she explained that this was a recent policy change they had made, and that it was largely due to people having high-end plans for a while only to downgrade after they earn a large number of roll-over minutes.

Apparently Cingular has a real problem with pesky customers actually using the services they pay for.

Anyhow, when I explained that I felt Cingular was more or less engaging in a bait and switch scheme, they offered to “allow me” to keep 1,000 of the minutes I had already earned. From my perspective, this seemed like someone stealing your car but patting themselves on the back for having the grace to leave behind the tires.

Granted, this is more a matter of principle than pragmatism. Our usage is so low now that the roll-over minutes I had would likely expire, unused. Even worse, while I did make it known that these experiences would be kept in mind for when my 2 year contract expires later this year, in the back of my mind I knew that all of the wireless carriers suck on a monumental scale. If I left Cingular, who would I go to? Verizon? Back to Sprint?

I have to say, while the inability to install additional software onto an iPhone was already an issue for me, Cingular’s role as the sole wireless provider for the iPhone dampens it even further. I hope Apple realizes that Cingular is hardly capable of providing the sort of customer experience that Apple/Mac customers are used to, and that this can and probably will impact the iPhone’s reception when it is launched in a couple of months.

…

Oh, yeah, and I’m hardly the only person who thinks that Cingular sucks. Here’s just a taste:

The Consumerist entries about Cingular
Cingular / AT&T Receive Most Complaints In 2004 Says FCC
Final PUC decision in Cingular customer service case
CingularCucks
FCC Complaint Filed 4/17/02 # 2920496
Cingular tops in customer complaints

…

Update (5/7): Not just lame, inept as well. We noticed that Cingular had turned off our ability to send or receive text messages entirely (even though they specifically asked if I wanted to keep that ability, which I did - I just didn’t want to pre-pay for so many in advance). Upon calling them today to get it fixed, I found out that they turns of their own ability to send me messages as well. Oops!

One of the things I miss most from earlier times are 2D side-scrolling platform games, with classics such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Ninja Gaiden, Bionic Commando, Metroid and Earthworm Jim. I wasted spent many an hour trying (and occasionally, beating) these games.

In the quick move into the 3rd dimension in the mid-1990’s that came with the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation, most of these types of games went away. While they were once the most popular video game genre by far, these side-scrollers are now quite rare (the exception being those on the Nintendo Gameboy and DS handheld platforms, though even there many are simply re-releases of older games).

While I understand (and appreciate) the appeal of 3D gaming - platform or otherwise - there is something about the simplicity of the older style which makes them easier to pick up and play. Each level had a beginning and an end, and usually it was fairly obvious how to get there (more often than not, all it took was going right). By contrast, their 3D successors usually involve a far less linear hunt for items and enemies in a three dimensional landscape. Enjoyable, perhaps, but not really the same thing.

There are some signs that the 2D side-scrolling platformer may be returning, however. Last year’s highly successful New Super Mario Bros. proved that the genre had some life left in it still. While it was for the Nintendo DS, it did show that with some updating the concept could be successfully brought to a new generation of gamer.

More recently, the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console has made many classic platform games available to a new audience and rekindled interest among those who played them in times past. Nintendo has even released another side-scrolling Mario game (Super Paper Mario), though it has some RPG elements as well.

While Nintendo has perhaps the longest and most well established history with the side-scroller genre, they’re not the only ones who are seeking to revive it. Even with its strong focus on graphical flair (at the expense of game-play at times, I would say), it is Sony who has successfully courted independent developer Media Molecule to develop LittleBigPlanet, a curious little side-scrolling platform game headed to the PlayStation 3.

In a departure from similar games from the past, LittleBigPlanet takes a “2.5D” approach in that it mostly functions along a single plain - but highly stylized with 3 dimensional elements. Players progress through levels in mostly typical side-scroller fashion, jumping from place to place and interacting with a highly manipulatable environment in order to traverse tricky areas. Sony has stated that the game will feature simultaneous cooperative game play, which is unusual for the genre but could be a lot of fun with a group of people.

Oddly enough, at this time it does not appear that the game features any actual enemies - the terrain itself poses the greatest challenge.

Another unusual twist is that players can modify levels on-the-fly during play, and then share those changes with other players online. This is the sort of promise that online-capable consoles have, aside from allowing developers to ship buggy software and worry about patching it later.

As the following video shows, the power of the PS3 is being put to full use to impressively model the physics associated with various items players encounter (ie. a soccer ball, rocks, strings, fruit, etc). Pretty impressive when compared to the sprites and bit-mapped scenery found in previous games.

While game options for the PlayStation 3 are still pretty slim, this game shows a lot of promise.

Not only could it show that it’s not only Nintendo that is capable of creating fun, unique and engaging games (though I suppose Sony did have to outsource this one, whereas most the best Wii and DS games are developed in-house), but it may also play a part in reviving a fun genre that faced a premature death.

There has not yet been any announcement of a release date, though it sounds like LittleBigPlanet is slated for release in the first half of 2008.

Along with this most recent generation of gaming consoles (especially the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360), we’ve seen a greater focus on online integration. Many games now feature online multi-player, rankings, etc.

This is great, but there’s also a dark side.

Sony recently announced an update to MotorStorm - the other decent-looking game available for the PlayStation 3 (the first and only other so far being Resistance: Fall of Man).

What awesome new features does this update include? Absolutely none. The list of changes - fourteen in all - are mostly bug fixes (some pretty serious, such as #10 which claims to fix a data corruption issue) along with a few extremely minor improvements thrown in for good measure.

One of the reasons many people prefer to play video games on consoles is because they just work. No dealing with driver issues, video card incompatibilities or operating system bugs on a console.

How hard can it be to ship non-buggy code for a console game? You’re only dealing with a single platform, not a plethora of machines with literally thousands of possible configurations. It’s a lot easier to be sympathetic toward those who write computer games.

Say what you will about games for previous generations of consoles, for the most part they usually weren’t buggy - because whatever shipped was the game customers would experience from that point on. The ability to patch things down the road should not be an excuse to ship buggy software.

And yet, ship Sony did - along with the multitude of bugs supposedly fixed in the patch listed above. If these had been new feature additions added at the request of customers, that’d be a whole other story, but this update fixes bugs that should never have made it out of quality control in the first place.

(No, I’m not just picking on Sony - the other guys have started doing this as well, to varying degrees.)

In working on MobiLog! v2.0, one of the biggest problems I’ve had to face is this: By including commenting functionality into the software, I am potentially making MobiLog! a target for comment spammers.

As just about anyone who operates a weblog knows, comment spam is an annoying, obnoxious side-effect of spammers’ lust for Google PageRank. Spammers use automated (and sometimes human) effort to post off-topic messages containing veiled links to weblogs with the intent to increase their sites’ PageRank.

By default, I hope to make MobiLog! as comment spam proof as humanly possible while avoiding any unnecessary inconvenience to weblog commenters. My current design thoughts for MobiLog! are as follows:

• By default, CAPTCHAs will be enabled for all postings. While not 100% perfect, this makes the software reasonably resistant to automated comment spam. I’m not too concerned about the oft-rumored outsourcing of CAPTCHA-clicking - as I see it, at sweatshop wages it just doesn’t scale well enough to result in huge amounts of spam, and the occasional human-originated spam is easy enough to deal with.
• A second option would loosen up the CAPTCHA a bit, only requiring the use of a CAPTCHA if the comment appears to be “spammy”. By definition just about every piece of comment spam has a link associated with it, and that can be considered a sign of spaminess. Multiple submissions from the same IP, as well, would be a good sign of spamminess. The intent here would be to remove the need to use a CAPTCHA for obvious non-spam comments.
• A third option would be to not require CAPTCHAs at all, no matter what. Good luck keeping the comment spam load nice and low with this one, though.
• Finally, I’d provide an option to hold comments for manual approval. A thought: Perhaps such comments could be automatically approved (or denied) after a set period of time, so that the site owner needn’t have to manually approve or deny each and every comment.
• Another thought: If I implement a user account system, regular posters in good standing could be set to be “trusted” and have their comments approved without ever needing a CAPTCHA. This would necessitate the use of opt-in confirmation, but would likely be optional.
• Yet another thought: I’ve found that I’ve been able to greatly lessen my comment spam load by manually disabling commenting on very old entries. Perhaps the very newest entries could be wide open, with any over a certain age requiring CAPTCHAs - or simply be closed for comments entirely.

If anyone has any thoughts on how best to deal with the comment spam problem (either as a commenter or a weblog operator), let me know.

Though it surely looks slow from the other end, work on MobiLog! progresses. My end goal at this point is to make it a worthwhile replacement for any of the current major weblogging tools out there, most notably Movable Type and WordPress.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with either of these tools - I have personally used MT for several years now, and have found it entirely workable for my personal needs. However, I do think that they can be greatly simplified, and as they are now don’t necessarily provide the best environment for writing.

A few things on the table, some of which are complete or mostly complete:

• Comment support. Users can now leave feedback to your entries (you can turn comments on or off on a per-entry basis). Built in CAPTCHA support helps prevent comment-spam.
• AJAX-ified administrative section. It’s looking a little raw right now, but most of the entry editing interface works without unnecessary reloading of pages.
• Administrative user authentication. No longer will you have to provide a password each time you compose or edit an entry (unless you do it from remote).
• Media browser, making it simple to upload and embed images, etc. into a weblog entry.
• Easily insertion of ’snippets’ - commonly used text or HTML - into weblog entry text.
• Multiple weblog support. For the most part, this entails a single weblog with “sub-weblogs”. A good example is this site, which has a moblog as well as a primary weblog. Administration for these will be integrated.

I’d love to say that this is almost done, but I’m afraid it’s not. However, once the new version (which will likely be labeled 2.0) is ready for abuse I will be sure to release a public alpha/beta. In the meantime, if you have any feature requests in general for weblogging software or MobiLog! in particular, please let me know.