wow, thank god i pay 10€/month for phone with 1k minutes, 1k sms, 1gb data and 20€/month for 25/1mbit internet.

however i'd say this is offtopic. the question is: do you need a smartphone, not can you afford one.

i'd say the pressing need is integration with everything while staying in control of the content.

i don't want g+ to replace facebook, twitter and my private blog... i want it to become the tool to manage all my online presences/outlets.

example: that android image/video auto-push and later publish function is pretty cool. i would use it a lot, if i could publish uploaded media to youtube, facebook, flicker, ... from the already uploded g+ cache.

example: i find a funny webcomic... i want to publish the url on twitter with a hashtag and since it's funny, i also want it to show up on facebook (with a thumbnai!)... so i should be able to use my g+ app or the webinterface to do that. nice sideffect for google: i would also automatically publish in g+.

over time it could be, that i discover, i don't really need twitter anymore, because meanwhile most interesting people i followed on twitter also double publish via g+. i can now directly follow them on g+ only.

another problem i see with g+ is, the integration of twitter style "only short messages and urls" and the blog/journal style "long story about something" messages in one feed. i am not interested in long text when browsing my circles for news and interesting stuff. (a la browsing reddit for stupid cat images and memes) ... i want short text. so they should either create a separate feed-thingie for articles, or make reasonable small summaries (140 char has proven to work remarkably well in our short-attention-span times).

i could go on, but it all comes back to seamless integration. allright, now hire me and i tell you more...

omg, so much stupid:

"Most of all, though, if SMS and MMS really are “free” for a mobile carrier — if they really don’t conflict with voice and data traffic — perhaps the creator of Smozzy has *inadvertently stumbled* across an amazing, *untapped resource*."

also, sms go through control channels, but i always thought getting the data payload of an mms *does* require a data connection through grps or what ever means there are in your 2g or 3g network... but i could be wrong. (also this mms fetch traffic could be included in the t-mobile contract)

how about you and your colleagues on the other side of the world simply schedule meetings using utc? ... instant-non-confusion! ... meeting is at 10 utc ... call is at 22:30 utc ... put a utc clock on your desktop, buy a wristwatch with two zones and outlook converts the invitation to local time anyway ... done.

you still use am/pm!? are stupid or something? the day has 24 hours. this and dst ware way more realistic things to get rid instead of forcing people to get up at 9pm in the morning and switch from eg. august 27th to 28th at 12pm during the first coffee break...

jeeez... /.

and how much fuel was already wasted to get the crap up where it is now?

my point is reusing what was already achieved. *everything* other than dropping it into the ocean is better.

That's just sad... it should be landed on the moon. It it's too big in one piece, dismantle it and land the components. Even refurbishing as a "robot station" with just that robotic arm and the solar sails and some positioning systems for satellite repair or something would be better, than letting it all crash and burn. how about parking it in a different orbit... maybe around the moon?