AT&T and iPhone Exclusivity

I think the article, AT&T Chief Isn't Worried About Losing IPhone Exclusivity, makes a good point about why the AT&T chief says that he is not extremely worried about losing customers once the company loses iPhone exclusively.  It was a good strategy, on AT&T's part, to exclusively offer the iPhone when it first came out because that made a lot of people switch to AT&T.  Once people switched they were then convinced to sign long term contracts with family and business plans, which will prevent some customers from immediately switching service providers.  In fact, this is why my family won't be switching service providers anytime soon. 

Even with these long term contracts that the CEO, Randall Stephenson, talks about, I can't believe that he is not at all concerned about eventually losing users to other networks.  Because, eventually, all of  those contracts will expire as well.  I think that although there may not be an instant loss of users, overtime as the contracts expire AT&T will see a major loss of customers to other networks, unless AT&T improves their customer service and can continue to compete on price.

e-books

The article, Barnes & Noble Expects $1B in Digital Book Sales By 2013 , caught my eye because I recently saw a Nook in Barnes and Nobles and wandered how it differed from Amazon's Kindle.  Although this article wasn't really about that, I was surprised how much e-book sales are surpassing hard cover book sales.  I have read a few books on a Kindle and I really liked it; however I don't think I like the idea of an e-textbook as they talk about in the article. In textbooks I like to underline, highlight and make margin notes because it helps me study, so I don't know how I would do that if all I had was an e-textbook.  But it would probably be a whole lot cheaper for us to buy our books online instead of going to Co-Op every semester and spending $200+ on textbooks!

Overall, what I got out of this article is that there is a major shift toward e-books as opposed to physical books, which is not surprising; however does that mean that soon there will no longer be physical book stores? To me, that's a sad thought.

Google Instant: Criticisms and Controversies

After reading the article, Google Instant: Criticisms and Controversies, I think there are both good and bad aspects of Google Instant, which is exactly why the author says "the debate rages on". 

I like how the searches are personalized to your location and how it suggests search queries as you type to find things faster.  However, I don't like how it doesn't show previously typed searches, even though the article says that 40% of your searches on any given day are repeated searches.

I also found it interesting when the article talked about searching the word "suicide".  I had never thought of that and I understand both sides of the argument.

Costly Help for Lost Cell Phones

This article,  "Help for Lost Cell Phones" caught my eye because I was just recently looking at a free iPhone application that allows you to locate your missing phone by logging on to your account from any computer.  I think this type of technology is useful because, as the article talks about, I have been in the position where I have to franticly return to a restaurant looking for my phone. 

However, the two applications referred to in the article seem to be unneccessarily annoying and expensive.  As I said earlier, the iPhone application I was looking at is free and it has features that I think are more useful than just emitting an alarm that demands attention.  These features include haiving the option of displaying a message or playing a sound even if the phone is on silent.  You can also remotely set a passcode that locks the phone.  I find these to be more useful than the $79.99 and $59.95 options described in the article.

Either way, I think this type of technology is useful for the consumer and worth looking in to!