T-Mobile has some of the best messaging rates in the US and definitely offers an unlimited plan. I'm paying (I think) $10 a month for unlimited messaging. That covers SMS and MMS. But the carriers are definitely raking it in, they charge Twitter to send and their users to receive.

I don't think the Oscars should resort to spamming. There is an easier way to get attention, make your site a destination worth going to. Put up some teasers (maybe some exclusive composite clips) with a MORE AT OSCARS.COM splash at the end. Not a 10 minute splash, just a friendly note. Then at Oscars.com have a really nice site with high-quality videos that are easy to link to, embed and email. Most of the time content producers put up their videos in the most hard to access fashion. On my Mac I usually can't even view them. YouTube is popular because it's easy.

I just went to their website and the videos are pretty good quality, but you can't even link to them. That's no fun. There's also not much to choose from, none of the good moments (not that there were many!). Very underwhelming.

As Ryan said, they have been doing this for a long time. It was actually part of the original launch back in June 2006. At launch they gave merchants $10 in Google Checkout money processing for free with every $1 spent in AdWords. That game has changed and now processing is free through the end of 2007. However it will revert back to that on January 1st, 2008.

I've only used Google Checkout as a customer and it was fairly easy. No complaints.

That's not a suite guys. Might be the same hotel, but it's not a Fillmore suite. Where is the other bedroom? It doesn't even have the flat screen TV or dining room that you mentioned.

If you hate these guys, why do you keep giving PPP so much publicity? Probably not the greatest ad buy in history, but it seems pretty harmless for $1,000 a bunch of free gadgets. Not anything like a real tattoo. She was definitely happy to be there and probably thinks she got the better end of the deal.

In a related note, Chris Pirillo drew on himself with a sharpie over at RentMyChest.com for a while. No harm in that. And it was a lot cheaper than a grand!

I'm perfectly happy with the cheaper HDMI cable I got from Amazon. I was shocked to see the prices at BestBuy and the like. Insane! Monster Cable is hardly ever worth the money, especially with digital signals. My picture is crystal clear and I still have a bunch of money left in my pocket.

I just checked Monster Cable's website and their top end HDMI cable costs $250 for the 2 meter long version. $250 for a 6 foot long cable! It should make dinner for that price.

http://monstercable.com/productPage.asp?pin=2402

I did a bit of research and it's pretty clear that you can NOT cancel your account without paying an ETF because of this. The contract makes that fairly clear. The pull quote:

"YOU CAN END THE AFFECTED SERVICE, WITHOUT ANY EARLY TERMINATION FEE"

What Verizon Wireless is offering to do is cancel text messaging. Without a fee! What fun.

I compiled the legalese about price changing from all the national carriers. We're at their mercy.

http://www.mobiletracker.net/archives/2007/01/12/verizon-wireless-sms-price

No Cingular did not allow customers to dip out without paying a ETF. There was some confusion right after the announcement, but the official stance was that text messaging is a "non-essential" service and doesn't apply as a "material change". Obviously a lot of customers disagreed. The vast majority probably just wanted to skip out on their contracts early--I doubt any real text user would be stuck paying $.10 a pop anyway.

What model did you get from TimeWarner? I've had fairly good luck with mine, which is from BrightHouse (formerly TW). It's made by Scientific American and the software does look like DOS, but it had a lot more functionality until TiVo came out with their Series 3. It's also about a thousand dollars cheaper. It may all depend on your area and what kind of compression they are using, not the box. That's the advantage of DirectTV, it looks the same everywhere.

Mac users have a distinct advantage here. DVI has been standard for a long time--by 3.5 year old PowerBook has it even. I have a Mac mini in my living room, it connects to my HDTV with a DVI->HDMI cable. Easy as pie. The mini is a perfect living room computer. A tower is out of the question if you want to keep a clean minimalist look.

But I agree that it will be a long time before most people have a computer hooked into their TV. Gadgets like the XBOX 360 and iTV will have to bridge that gap.

One quick note, there are cables that convert VGA to component. So it's not that hard to get most computers hooked into an HDTV. Connecting is just one issue though.