AT&T-Mobile Is a Win for T-Mobile’s Customers

It seems as if the popular take among tech pundits in light of Sunday’s announcement of the AT&T and T-Mobile merger is that it is a bad situation for everyone involved. Among the reasons I’ve seen so far are a further consolidation of an already top-heavy industry, the threat of rising prices as a result of less alternatives, and a loss of one of Android’s most stalwart partners.

But let’s step back a minute from the insta-reactions of most of the tech world and look at the bottom line: merger or not, T-Mobile’s customers stand to benefit the most by far. The deal is written in such a way that even if regulators scoff at it, T-Mobile will exit in a much stronger position than it is currently in.

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A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of Telephone Competition in the US, 1982-2011

So much for quiet Sundays. AT&T announced today that it’s agreed to acquire T-Mobile US from Deutsche Telekom, a merger which, if completed, will make it by far the country’s biggest wireless phone company. It’ll also leave us with three national carriers: AT&T, archrival Verizon Wireless, and the much smaller Sprint.

I’m not an expert on the dynamics of the telecommunications industry, but Om Malik’s thoughts–that this is bad news for everybody except AT&T and T-Mobile shareholders–do a good job of summarizing the pessimistic view I’m instinctively inclined to tak. In the US, T-Mobile was a scrappy underdog that did shocking things like reduce monthly bills once a customer had completed a contract for a subsidized phone. It’s tough to imagine that T-Mobile’s personality will rub off on AT&T rather than the other way around.

Of course, AT&T does its best to make the case that this is good news: If the merger goes through, it will have more wireless spectrum to work with, and says it will bring LTE to former T-Mobile customers. And the company argues both that (A) there’s still plenty of competition, between national and regional wireless companies, and (B) past mergers have been good for consumers. Which is, I guess, the argument you’d expect from a company named AT&T.

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On the Quickbar, and Why It’s So Bad

Instapaper’s Marco Arment does a great job of explaining why the Quickbar in Twitter’s iPhone app is such a lousy idea–which has nothing to do with advertising. You think anyone at Twitter understands?

Ooma: A Nifty Way to Make Free Internet Calls

The Xoom Gets Flash. But Don’t Get Too Excited

When Motorola’s Xoom hit Verizon stores last month, it was missing some of the features that promised to make it the iPad’s first formidable rival–including its much-touted support for Adobe’s Flash Player. That got fixed today when Adobe released Flash Player 10.2 for Android, a version which supports phones and tablets running versions of Android dating back to last year’s 2.2 Froyo.

I installed the new Flash on the Xoom and started trolling the Web for Flash content to try. My experience was mixed.  Adobe doesn’t claim that this is a finished piece of software: The Honeycomb version of Flash Player is billed as a beta, and according to Engadget’s Sean Hollister, it doesn’t yet support hardware acceleration. (Apparently, the First Law of Mobile Flash–the version you want is always not quite here yet–still holds.)

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All the Web No More

There was a brief period–gosh, maybe ten years ago?–when All the Web was my favorite search engine. In fact, I steadfastly believed it was better than Google. Then it had a sad decline. And now it’s apparently going away.

TV shows occasionally call it quits when they’re still on top–Mary Tyler Moore, Seinfeld, The Sopranos. Why is it that every good Web site goes through a sad decline?

Is Android in the Kindle’s Future?

The New York Times’ Nick Bilton wonders why Amazon’s Kindle group is hiring so many Android developers.

NetFlix’s House of Cards Exclusive: Will It Be the Show Heard Round the World?

Wow. Netflix’s Watch Instantly service will the only place to see a new 26-episode version of House of Cards, based on the British show. It stars Kevin Spacey and is executive-produced by David Fincher, and generally sounds like something that you’d expect to show up on HBO or some other cable channel.

If this works–and even if it doesn’t–it could be one of the most important things that ever happened in the TV business. It could turn Netflix Watch Instantly from a place you go to watch somewhat stale old stuff into the only destination for a hot new program–and it could set off massive changes in how television content is distributed.

Isn’t the biggest single advantage that cable has over the Internet that it has the big shows first? What if that wasn’t a given? What if Netflix does more of these deals and starts to look more like an on-demand, all-you-can-eat HBO? Wouldn’t iTunes and Amazon and other well-heeled purveyors of Internet video be interested in doing similar exclusive deals? What if a sizable chunk of the most popular shows are Internet-only by, say, 2015?

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AT&T: No Tethering Freeloading

If you’re using iPhone tethering over AT&T without AT&T’s permission, you might get an e-mail like this.

People Are Still Buying Horse Armor

To the layman, the phrase “horse armor” may not carry any special meaning, but to gamers, it’s synonymous with being snookered. It refers to a downloadable horse costume for Bethesda’s 2006 hit The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and it served no strategic purpose. Horse armor only made your steed look fancier.

The costume’s uselessness became a source of outrage for Oblivion players, but in a new interview with Official Xbox Magazine UK, Bethesda Vice President Pete Hines said that even now, horse armor is a money maker.

“I swear to you I don’t have the report in front of me, but multiple people bought horse armor yesterday!” Hines said.

There’s a bigger point to be made here. Hines was talking about the success of downloadable content for Bethesda, and said that “so long as it’s good value, people will like it and buy it.” Apparently a lot of people thought a plate of false protection for a horse was worth $2.

In a way it’s not much different from the avatar costumes for which Xbox 360 owners and Playstation Home users happily pony up. They don’t serve any purpose but to make the player look good, but that’s something people value. Bethesda figured that out a long time ago.

The Never-Ending Browser Wars

Two links for you to stuff I wrote for other sites this week: My TIME.com column is about what a great a time it is to be a browser user–and why I hope the current era of harmony among browser makers gives way to more disagreement. And over at Techland, I wrote about a related question: Even if Internet Explorer 9 is good–and it is–will serious browser fans give it a chance?

Growing Up Digitally: The iPad As a Learning Device

His name is Bridger Wilson, and he’s two years old. He’s just like any other toddler, full of imagination. But Bridger’s father Mike has bought him an iPad. It’s not immediately clear how much experience that Bridger has had with the device previous to the taking of this video (which we should mention is about 8 months old now), but the results are seemingly rather stunning.

He appears to have the basic methods of navigating the device down, which is somewhat amazing since he likely cannot read and is just learning to speak. But Bridger’s father Mike says in the comments that “his speech, understanding, word recognition, and even hand eye coordination have improved within just a short while.” Quite an an accomplishment for a gadget from Cupertino, no?

See for yourself:

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The Cost of Chrome OS: How About $250 or Less?

When I wrote about Google’s experimental CR-48 Chrome OS notebook last December, I guessed that it might cost about $449 if it were a commercial product. That seemed high for a device that was entirely dedicated to accessing the Web (and nearly useless when you couldn’t get online). And a bunch of people told me my guestimate was too high.

Months later, nobody has announced any detail on the Chrome OS machines which will supposedly be shipping in just a few months. But there are rumors–courtesy of rumor kingpin Digitimes–that Asus has plans to release a netbook for $200-$250 in June. One that might conceivably run Chrome OS. (I say “might conceivably” because Digitimes’ sources say that Asus “should” use either Chrome OS or Android on the machine–which is a whole lot vaguer than saying that Asus will use either one of those operating systems.)

Could Asus sell a decent Chrome OS laptop with an 12.1″ screen and built-in wireless broadband for $250 or less? That sounds aggressive to me. But if they can manage it, the deal sounds a whole lot more appealing than the $449 Chromebook I envisioned. And if they can sell a clamshell device at that pricetag, couldn’t they whack off the keyboard, add an on-screen one, and have a plausible low-end tablet?

The Times Paywall: How About Yearly and Less Dearly?

Ken Docter has a good point : Why isn’t the New York Times offering an annual option for its paywall? Ideally one with at least a modest discount for up-front payment.

The New York Times’ Permeable Paywall: Coming March 28th

Fourteen months after announcing that it was going to begin charging for heavy use of its Web site, the New York Times has revealed the details and the deadline. Starting March 28th, the newspaper will institute a $15 monthly plan for access via the Web and a phone app, a $20 plan for the Web and the iPad app, and $35 for an all-access option. Subscribers to the print edition–which costs about $63 a month (after an initial 50%-off deal), at least here in the Bay Area–will get everything for no extra charge.

(Canadians are subject to the new plan immediately–they’re serving as beta testers for us Yanks. Thanks, Canadians!)

Other than the fact that the Times is attaching a price to its online content, the most important fact about its strategy is that this paywall only goes into effect for fairly voracious readers. You can read 20 articles a month at no charge. People who come to the site via Google will be able to read five stories a day for free; visitors from Facebook and Twitter won’t have to pay. Clearly, the goal is to extract some money out of people who treat the digital incarnations of the Times pretty much like a newspaper, without killing traffic from more casual types who come only occasionally or are directed to specific stories by their friends.

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Zediva’s Fast Failure

On Wednesday, Jared wrote about Zediva, a new movie-streaming service that offers new releases for cheap–by streaming them onto the Internet from banks of DVD players, without the permission or cooperation of the companies that own the content. He was worried it could turn out to be “another workaround that doesn’t quite work.”

Bingo! Or at least that’s the way it looks at the moment. The site went down, due to technical glitches that the company’s Twitter feed appears to blame at least in part on a mention on the Yahoo home page. (Being reviewed–pretty favorably–by David Pogue in his New York Times column probably didn’t help, either.) Then it came back up, but with a note explaining that the best prospective new members could do was to join a waitlist.

Now, some of my favorite Web sites and services have been crushed by unexpected demand upon launch. It’s practically a rite of passage. (Many come back up swiftly, and work just fine from then on–which always leaves me wondering, why couldn’t their proprietors provide sufficient infrastructure in the first place?) So it’s possible that Zediva will bounce back.

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