Blank Weather Forecast On Your Device? Blame MSN Direct

I remember it well: standing in the Sharper Image store debating between a three-day Bushnell wireless weather forecaster featuring AccuWeather forecasts and an Oregon Scientific model alongside it that offered more detailed information from a competing service provider, MSN Direct. Both weather stations did something unique: They didn’t require owners to hook up outdoor sensors that generate fickle forecast icons based purely on barometric pressure as opposed to a bona fide regional weather forecast. These weather forecast alternatives, unlike the vast majority of weather gadgets on the market, receive a radio signal that automatically displays forecast data from a genuine weather service.

For a weather junkie or just about anyone who doesn’t want to watch several minutes of TV, boot up a computer or drain a battery on a smartphone merely to check the weather, having weather alerts, pollen counts, humidity and UV Index information at a single glance at no cost beyond that of the device itself seems almost too good to be true. And, in hindsight, it was too good to be true. For those of us who chose wrong, the convenience was not to last. MSN Direct, the service provider for Oregon Scientific-branded weather units, powered down its US and Canadian network of FM radio transmitters on January 1, 2012. And yet, weather watchers were not the only ones to lose. MSN Direct broadcast a variety of data including traffic information, gasoline prices, Doppler weather maps, news, stocks, local events, movie listings to a variety of devices, all of which began with the debut of Microsoft’s novel “Spot” wristwatch in 2004.

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A Not-So-Unlimited Talk, Text & Web Plan by AT&T

If you haven’t been in the market for a cell phone recently, perhaps you missed it: AT&T’s Unlimited Talk, Text & Web GoPhone Plan, ushered in by a June 21, 2011 press release.

The FCC, FTC or state attorneys general really ought to look into AT&T for the marketing of their “unlimited web” mobile phone services. Without the benefit of a clear-and-obvious disclosure, AT&T’s prepaid smartphone customers, like their contract-bound counterparts, need to sign up for a separate data package, otherwise there is virtually no web to speak of under so-called unlimited talk, text and web GoPhone plans. A data plan will set consumers back $10 to $45 or $5 to $25 per month in additional fees depending on whether or not the service is under contract (postpaid) or prepaid (with prices subject to change, of course).

For consumers trying to keep their costs down in a tough economy, every dime counts. AT&T and its largest competitor, Verizon, would like us to think they are competitive in the prepaid market so they’ve crafted their own definition of the word “unlimited”. Verizon stipulates parenthetically that their unlimited prepaid option applies only to “basic phones”. By contrast, AT&T makes an implicit suggestion that web access is unlimited to any prepaid handset owner. The reality that it does not comes on top of the industry’s controversial practice of capping or throttling data access on the part of its heaviest “unlimited data” users. It is, in a nutshell, a case of what Sir Richard Branson calls “confusion marketing“.

AT&T titled their press release this past summer “Prepaid Calling Just Got Better: Nationwide Unlimited Talk, Text & Web Plan Now Available for $50″.

Two things stand out: 1) The news organizations and blogs that covered this new plan largely parroted the headline to perpetuate a patently false notion of the true cost of owning a modern prepaid phone, and 2) AT&T and its competitors need to abide by standard English usage in the use of the word “unlimited” when paired to “talk, text & web”. In fact, they have a legal obligation to abide by truth-in-advertising laws.

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Why the Occupy Wall Street & Tea Party Objectives Dovetail — or Should

If the headline-grabbing Occupy Wall Street movement proves anything, it is that Americans are gravely concerned about the state of our union.

Just as the Tea Party was regarded with suspicion in their initial rallies to reduce government bloat, throngs of leaderless Occupy Wall Street protesters have been derided for their all-over-the-map set of gripes: Wall Street traders who have funneled investors’ money not into the real economy but speculative gambles that have led to questionable lending practices, volatile commodities pricing and taxpayer bailouts; a higher education system that has become a financial albatross to indebted students; legislative favors aimed at Big Business, and widespread unemployment even among the young and the educated.

Arguably, Occupy Wall Street is to Big Business and Banks what the Tea Party is to Big Government and Waste — two sides of the same coin. Both groups — which for the purpose of this discussion are defined as principled participants not to be confused with their salacious or lawless detractors — grasp a large chunk of the problem.

To cure what ails us, Americans must reach for broader and more inclusive views and bigger and bolder solutions.

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