Abhi Yerra

Being a product of the web/mobile/text messaging generation, landlines are a bit of a mystery. They are phones people have at their homes, people call from them, but why are these antiquated things still around? In the land of cell phones why are those things even used. I decided to take a look and decided to put it on a diet at home, an extreme diet actually though not a diet that will lead to death.

So my parents had this $60 a month plan with AT&T called All Distance (meaning as far as the borders of the US… I guess AT&T has a patriotic meaning for all, false advertising suit anyone? I’m looking at you pre-law friends of mine) which provided all the wonderful features one would expect on a modern day cell phone on a land phone. But the pricing scheme is off the fucking roof especially since it’s only $20 bucks lower than the cell phone bill. Also, looking at the bills for the last 6 months (at least they got the website right… when it’s up) I saw that they barely made 40 calls a month on the service.

I told my parents to go basic and get the cheapest plan possible since we usually only get incoming calls not really outgoing. This automagically cut the cost of our bill by $45 bucks! So I was looking around their site and saw the “features” I could add to the phone line and was struck by how expensive it was. $15 bucks for CallerID! Are you fucking kidding me? I can get a fucking SIP provider who will not only provide a DID number with all the bells and whistles that these bastards are charging ridiculous amounts for less than they are charging for a basic plan!

My research continued a bit further. So what was the state of our cell phone? We have AT&T Wireless (I love my iPhone) and realized we were not using all of our minutes (hell we have about 10,000 rollover minutes with like a 1000 expiring every month) so I told my parents to start using the cell phone more. Your probably thinking, “You told them what? Are you mad?” Yes, I know it was unusual advice. Yes, I know I could have just gone to the lower tier rate and cut a further $20, but with almost $45 saved on landline bills and with how much my mom has her cell phone with her anyways on my parents long drive to their second store it was a fair call… no pun intended. My voice usage oddly enough coincide with the evening and weekends when calls are free so I don’t have many minutes used during the day (ah… college). Since we have enough minutes to last a recession using the cell phone a bit more is not a problem.

So what about the landphone why even keep it then? It seems a bit useless if I told my parents to just use the cell phone a bit more. Well since we did have it and local calls are free and I started liking Skype (ykabhinav… call me) so I got the $30 a year unlimited US & Canada subscription and setup Skype to Go on the home phone. Since my parents are used to the nuances of Calling Cards anyways it is not much of a hassle for them to call Skype and bridge the call. I even set it up so that it just dials through Skype in the address book.

So what did we do with the savings? Well my dad spend $5 bucks more to get faster internet at home and I spend $10 bucks more to get unlimited family text messaging, after all my sister is growing up and she needs texting as much as I do. And I figured might as well teach the parents a bit about modern day convieniences where not everything requires a call… (Sent some info to my dad about BofA which he was asking about yesterday, he replied, “Ok.” My father’s first text message…).

Update: After using Skype for a couple more weeks my parents have gotten rid of all but the minimal service at their store thus saving them even more per year. If people were to do this at this rate it would seem that the landline business is pretty dire.

I grew up on the internet! When the net was taking off it became my haven for information. As my generation grows up we are not going to be turning to printed newspaper for news. This is not a fault of the newspapers, but their inability to understand this change taking place.

The printed newspaper had been a fine way to transmit news and opinion in the analog world. However, we no longer live in a analog world and increasingly the death of the printed newspaper is imminent. My generation is tied to the online world in ways that people could not have imagined when the web becoming commonplace in the 90’s. We increasingly have short attention spans where the speed at which we get our information is limited to the speed of the internet connection that we have.

News and information, from gossip to business news, travels at such speed that the printed newspaper will not be able to weather it. The printed newspaper is a static entity: once printed we don’t see updates until the next one comes out. However, how do you deal with news in an ever changing society when news becomes obsolete five minutes after it comes out? Printed newspapers can’t deal with that.

When I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal I was hoping that the paper would be something I’d read everyday. However, there is so much information that I don’t digest in the paper that increasingly I feel like a large part of the paper is just a toilet for Stalin. I tend to read the paper online because it gives a convenient way to cherry pick the information that you want to read or feel interested in without feeling like your destroying the environment by not reading everything in the paper.

In the next 10 or so years the printed newspaper will largely die off in the form that it is now and will be a comodity that one goes online to find. The problem as it is now is how do you monitize print journalim in an online world where people are largely appatetic to paying.

I was reading Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper by The New Yorker and I must admit that it is one of the profound pieces I have read about the fall of the American newspaper. One of the conclusions that Alterman came up with is that there will be a lot more “red” and “blue” news as news becomes more and more opinionated as we move online. However, this is not bad since this will give us more of a conversation than it is currently possible through the news that we get from the traditional means. Anyways, read the article as it is quite interesting.

Arrested Development is one of the all time best shows! It has everything that one wants from a comedy: ironies, parodies, satire, and lets not forget the sex jokes i.e analrapist. The major problem with the show is that it got cancelled way too early; it was such a niche show Fox just threw it in the trash can.

However, what is Arrested Development Depression? It is that feeling of incompleteness that one gets after going through and finishing the show. The sense that you were just becoming part of the family before you were prematurely shunned. The feeling of what now and the emptiness that follows as you want another show.

My friend Angel just went through the show and she has had the same feeling as I did when I finished watching the show. In fact, I decided to ask my friend Sean and Alex and they both responded with the same feedback. After you finish watching you long for it to continue joining the misadventures of the family.

So my advice to any future viewers of this show is be warned that you will get the Arrested Development Depression after you have finished watching it and if you don’t I’m sorry to say you don’t get the show.

It seems America has done away with the monopoly that religion once had, according to the Economist’s Religion column called Brand disloyalty. This is interesting in that churches now are basically run like a business. There is probably billions in untaxed profit (churches can’t be taxed) that is being generated in the name of God.

Considering that we are in a recession, according to a person I respect Warren Buffet, they will probably generate a lot more. People tend to look for a higher call when something goes wrong in their life, i.e losing their job. Because of this community will form, some religions will do s better job at serving the community than others, in churches and networking of individuals will begin. This will be one of the factors in the multitude of variables that will lead to a recovery in the economy.

In contrast, according to the article, there is a larger unaffiliated group which means that religion is not the only choice anymore for picking a social network to join.