iPhone alternatives to AT&T's texting fees

AT&T is facing the end of SMS. So it is mandating data plans for even unlocked smartphones while raising SMS costs.

In our case, our unlimited texting fees are equal our family's two new and unwanted 200MB/month data plans. So we're looking for SMS alternatives. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I revised reviewed Facebook Messenger last week, but it's really more of an IM app than a texting replacement. Fortunately, SMS alternatives are a popular topic these days. Lifehacker did a review for iOS and another for Android recently; in fact both reviews are of interest to iOS users. Here are some of the services they listed and others I know of. I don't like ads, so I'm listing ad-free costs where applicable.

• Google Voice: free (for now). Emily and the 3 kids all have GV numbers, though currently only i use the service regularly (I have two GV accounts).
• Textfree: The web site is virtually content free. The iPhone app is TextFree with Voice, a year of ad-free texting is an in app purchase for $6. Phone numbers are also purchased in app. Facebook chat.
• HeyWire: ad supported. iPhone app has ad-free in app purchase ($5/year) and option for "premium number" ($1). Facebook chat support.
• textPlus: $3 to remove ads, $1 for premium number, credits cost money (for what?).

I gather the ads in these products are not necessarily child-safe.

Plugging these strings into Google turns up some related products (most can't receive SMS, some can send)...

• Kik Messenger: No SMS, this is an IM app like Facebook Messenger
• Yahoo Messenger
• AOL Messenger

If an app doesn't come with a number though, it's not what we're looking for. We need to be able to receive SMS messages.

Lastly I came across some useful articles in my research:

• New Trends in Messaging - William Dudley: An inside industry perspective.
• How to Send Free SMS Text or MMS Picture Messages: most comprehensive review

From Dudley I learn that services with a phone number are called NUVOs (Network Unaffiliated Virtual Operators) and OTT (Over-The-Top) service providers, and that in the telecomm industry Sprint's decision to integrate Google Voice into their Android phones was a really big deal (giving up on SMS early). I also see why Apple's iMessenger is much more acceptable to AT&T than, say, Google Voice.

For our family I think we'll begin with Google Voice, even though it's not nearly as elegant a solution on the iPhone as it is on Android. My next choice is probably HeyWire, simply because two friends use it.

Update 11/13/11: I checked out iTunes reviews on PingChat!, Kik, and WhatsApp.

PingChat! and Kik seem to have high ratings, but the majority of the reviews are "13 yo girl seeking chat" (hopefully an FBI agent seeking pedophiles, probably a con man). WhatsApp costs $1, that seems to be enough to eliminate the "personals" reviews. WhatsApp is a Silicon Valley telephony app. I think I'll give that one a try first.

We may also create FB accounts for <13 yo children (COPPA violation) so they can use FB Messenger, but not give them the account passwords.

More on WhatsApp

• WhatsApp bucks convention, quietly builds a messaging titan GigaOm 11/11/2011
• Best App for Group Texting: WhatsApp (5/11 - Beluga did well, but was acquired by FB).

I like the look and feel of the app, but it has one killer bug. The point of using this app is to eliminate SMS use, but it uses a text message to verify accounts. (Correction: if you don't have texting it will time out and confirm by voice call. It does require a phone number however, which is a definite drawback.)

Enabling extensions slows Safari to a crawl

When I enable extensions in Safari 5.1.1 on Snow Leopard I get severe keystroke lag. When I disable it the lag goes away. Lately this showed up while testing the Feedly extension.

It's not a new problem ...

• Safari Web Content high CPU usage: Apple Support Communities
• Web Process + Safari now hogging 50-75%...: Apple Support Communities

I suspect it's worse in Snow Leopard in Lion; my now most 5.1.1 users are probably on Lion.

Frustrating.

Tumblr - a Google Reader social replacement?

I liked many things about Posterous. Alas, it doesn't seem to have a revenue stream. Recently, in a desperation move, they tried to become more like G+ -- they even dropped post tags!

I also didn't care for the Posterous bookmarklet -- it pulled in too much of the source material.

Today I'm visiting Tumblr. It and Twitter seem to be the new homes for many of the Google Reader Social Diaspora. For example, both Twitter and Tumblr are on Feedly's one click share panel, but Posterous is an extra click away. That extra click kills. (Unsurprisingly the new Google Reader really only supports G+ well.)

Tumblr has the usual rich text edit options, but for microblogging I don't care too much about that. The bookmarket is impressive; better suited to microblogging than Posterous. The work of creating a Tumblr post from Feedly is very similar to creating a Google Reader Note/Share in the old Google Reader.

Tumblr will create tweets for each post and they do provide a (proprietary) backup. However there's no secondary posting; one of Posterous' best features is that they'll create a replica post on Blogger and WordPress. I've seen mention of ways to repost into wordpress from an RSS stream, or import a Tumblr export file into WordPress, but nothing that looks rock solid.

I like Tumblr, but I don't like the absence of an exit strategy.

Still, it's ahead of Posterous - particularly because of the Feedly support (wish Reeder supported Tumblr!).

Did I just reboot my bicycle light?

This is kind of ridiculous.

I've been liking my Serfas True 500 bike light. It's one of the new generation of bicycle lights - compact, LiOn, charges from a mini-USB cable and power supply, and brighter than you can believe. These lights are a generation after the Ixon IQ that we were excited about in 2008.

Even if you're not a bicyclist you've seen these; in blinkie mode they are impossible to miss. In fact blinkie mode is so conspicuous its almost rude; I only use it in dim daylight.

These lights are amazing. Sometimes progress happens. It costs less than a replacement NiMH battery for my $350+ NiteRider gear of the 1990s, is brighter, 1/10th the weight, 1/10th the size and so on.

On the other hand, these are techie things. So progress is imperfect.

Coming home in the dark on a blustery sub-freezing night my Serfas was totally dead. Nothing - despite charging off my laptop just minutes before. Not good. Fortunately I use a Blackburn Voyager Click light as a sidelight (I go with one forward light, two lateral very bright white blinkies, and 1-2 posterior red LEDs and reflector), I made that an emergency front light. Aside from almost running over an off-leash wee doggie who dashed in front of me I made it home fine.

At home I plugged in the Serfas. Nothing happened. Not a blink.

Then, for lack of anything else to try, I pulled the battery. Looked fine, so I put it in. The light worked. It was fully charged.

So what happened?

Well, maybe the battery compartment wasn't quite closed. It seemed closed, but maybe it was a bit off. Or maybe this light has an embedded OS and I rebooted it when I pulled the battery. Could be either, but I like the second. This is one weird world we live in.

PS. The current generation of ultra-light and compact USB LiOn bicycle lights are amazing utility flashlights.

Update 5/1/12: This time it started turning itself off. It came right on when I pressed the power switch. I discovered tapping it on a hard surface would turn it off. Not an obvious bulb problem though; once it was off tapping didn't make it flicker and a power button turned it on again. I pulled the battery and again it seemed better. A bad battery sensor? If this is a widespread bug the Serfas True 500 deserves a recall.

iPhone on a budget: The AT&T GoPhone PayGo Option

AT&T is facing the end of their SMS lifeline. They're responding with innovations -- of a sort. For my family, their latest move is adding $35 a month to our bill.

So we're innovating too - by migrating away from SMS based texting sooner rather than later.

We're also looking at Paygo alternatives; moving the kids' iPhones off of our family plan. My friend Gordon F explained how it works, but see also a TUAW article of 8/11.

Here's the short version of Gordon's scheme:

1. Move your old number to Google Voice ($20 to Google) if you want to keep it.
2. Start with an AT&T GoPhone plan. You'll need any old AT&T dumbphone, borrow one or dig something out of the closet.
   • Pay As You Go Online
   • AT&T GoPhone - Prepaid Cell Phones
3. At the AT&T store get a GoPhone SIM in your dumbphone paying the minimal fee for the 10 cents/min voice plan.
4. Buy a $100 airtime card. This card has a 1 year expiration time.
5. If you want data, buy a $25 500 MB data package. This normally expires in 1 month, but then each month buy a 10MB $5/month on an automatic purchase plan. This causes the data package to rollover. Over two years total cost is $145 for 740MB.
6. If you want texting pay $5/month for 200 messages.

I've yet to way the costs of this plan against keeping the kids on our family plan and dumping SMS in favor of data messaging. I think the total costs will be close.

Update 111111: Must be in the air. Lifehacker did a story on this a couple of days after my post. I found some mistakes there and nothing new, but it's clear there's demand for data-free iPhones.

Microblogging with WordPress

After dispensing with Posterous as a Google Reader social replacement, I'm looking at microblogging with WordPress. This seems a good start:

WordPress › microblogging WordPress Plugins.

Posterous - a Google Reader social replacement?

It's tough to replace Google Reader Social (damn you Google). I've been generating tweets from Google Reader, but the workflow is awkward on the native web app. Tweeting from the feedstream is a bit better with Reeder.app, but still not good enough. In any case, Twitter isn't what I want...

Gordon's Tech: After the fall of Google Reader: Posterous, Tumblr and Zootool with Twitter on the side

I'm looking for ...

1. Bookmarklet that generates posts with title, url, excerpt and annotation.
2. Must have an RSS feed.
3. Must have a business model that involves me paying for services received.
4. Either I have control over the data store or there's a way to create a read-only repository I can keep.
5. Reeder.app support, so I can use Reeder.app for IOS and Reeder.app for Mac, avoid Google's miserable UI, and prepare for migration to another OPML store.
6. Twitter integration so it tweets shares for those who are good with Twitter's limitations.

There are GR.oldstyle replacements under development, but for now most of us are looking at Tumblr and Posterous as microblogging solutions. For unclear reasons I've been experimenting first with Posterous.

Posterous does pretty well against my list...

1. Big time bookmarklet with title, url, excerpt and annotation.
2. RSS feeds, though these are being minimized in favor of (yes, you guessed) proprietary and closed pub/sub (like G+).
3. Business model that .... ummm .... ok, so they don't have a way to make money ....
4. Each Posterous post can generate a secondary post to my Dreamhost Wordpress blog.
5. No built in Reader.app support, but good support for processing emailed content. Google Reader will 'send to' Posterous but I don't like how it works.
6. Tweets on post.

In addition Posterous will import from Blogger and Wordpress but not, alas, from an RSS feed (or I'd pull in my Google Reader Shares).

Documentation is a bit hard to find, in fact, once you sign in to Posterous it's pretty much hidden. The Posterous 'faq' is a good start, but eventually I blundered my way to Posterous Help. It includes ...

• A list of autopost (secondary post) sites: WordPress (XML-RPC only), Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz (!), Blogger, Tumblr (!), Drupal, Delicious - but not, of course, G+. A single Posterous post can produce many secondary posts. I believe the bookmarklet allows us to select a subset at time of posting.
• Posterous is integrated with several Twitter clients, so can comment on Twitter.
• Integrate with custom domain (so micro.kateva.org for example)
• Adding a G+ button (this is an ugly hack, a G+ API would make this feasible)

Overall, it's promising.

Except ....

Except for my #3 item. They're "free". I don't like "free". Autopost alleviates some of the risk, but free is bad. It's not good that just two months ago they went from a focus on microblogging to trying to imitate G+.

See also:

• Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous’s ass « PEG on Tech (1/10): To me this makes Posterous more appealing.
• HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Posterous (9/2009)
• Posterous Swaps Blog Platform for Social Network 9/11): Turns out a month ago they tried to relaunch as a G+ like service. Kind of ominous.

Update 11/9/2011: Thinking this over more. I see from comments on the Mashable 9/11 article that Posterous dropped tagging from posts. That's a real change in direction for a microblogging solution. I'm getting the sinking feeling that I would have loved Posterous in early 2010, but now their future is bleak. I'm not looking for a revenue-free small world version of G+. I'll review Tumblr next.

Update 11/24/2011: I searched. And searched. And I can't find any way to delete a Posterous Space. I do see how to delete accounts, but not Spaces. If there really is no way to delete a Space, short of deleting an Account, then Posterous is a crazy-most-avoid kind of place.