Yesterday John Gruber linked to an article over at the New York Times, which stated that Facebook's messaging system, Apple's iMessage and similar services are slowly reducing the usage of SMS around the world. He said:

It’s hard to think of a technology that more deserves to die than SMS.

​I have to disagree with that. SMS might be a limited standard in terms of what can be transferred, and as the link in Gruber's quote shows, the average cost for a SMS is incredibly high in the U.S.A. (even more so over here in Germany). Still, the service is useful, because 1. it is universally compatible with almost all types of cellular networks around the world and 2. because it's fairly reliable due to the fact that it works when a data connection (needed to send any kind of email, iMessage, Facebook message, etc.) cannot be established. More info on SMS here.

The problem​ is—as it is so often—greed by the carriers. A simple network-inherent, ubiquitous functionality is marketed and sold at a premium, with nearly no price decline over the last ten years.
SMS doesn't need to die, carriers should just stop charging customers for a fairly limited service that costs them close to nothing.

If you believe that any of these sentences have meaning at all, you need to have your brain examined. The bad thing is, hundres upon thousands of marketing students and normal people, too, believe this stuff, becoming New Media Douchebags.​

Thanks to Kate Solomon for the link.​

P.S.: Don't know what a New Media Douchebag (short: NMD) is?​ Watch this little video to get to know the most harmless types:

​I encourage everybody to read this post and if you can stomach it, the comments by the misogynistic prick below the post.

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It should really come as no surprise to anyone.​

Useful if you're looking for some terminal command, but can't remember what it was.​

via Stephen Hackett​

​If you're trying to figure out which online storage service is for you, I urge you to listen to this episode of inThirty. The hosts succinctly cover the most popular ones, giving a great overview of what you get.

David Chartier on Nick Denton's plans to reinvent online comments and publishing alongside it:​

Mathew Ingram:

In particular, Denton hopes that handling comments in this way will encourage the subjects of stories to become involved in rebutting these reports directly on the site, instead of calling him to rant at him about them. “I want to take all of those people and I want to have them in the discussion,” he says. “I want to see the story evolve and see the rebuttal, and the rebuttal to the rebuttal.” Not only does that produce drama — something Denton admits he has a fondness for — but he believes it could also help to get at the truth, broadly speaking.

I’m not a fan of Nick Denton or his Gawker blog network in general. But if he thinks he’s found a way to fundamentally improve comments, I’m willing to listen.

​This, to me, looks like an excuse to produce more inflammatory, link bait content, do even less fact-checking for stories and let the readers do the leg work. In turn this will lead to more aggravated and stupid commentary, which will then be positioned on the site prominently, so even more people will become enraged and click Denton's links. A concept like this does nothing to further the evolution of online content. It's like he says himself; it produces drama and drama equals clicks.

I agree that Gawker's commenting system is crap, especially the rewards system. Quoting Denton himself:

It was a terrible mistake. It doesn’t work because people game it — and the people who game it are the people with time and social-media expertise, and those are not the people with information or insight. What person who actually has a job and a reputation… would give a f*** about getting some little badge like they’re in high school? It’s patronizing.

​This new system won't improve this situation, it'll make it worse for readers and better for New Media Douchebags, including Denton; the loudest people will get the most attention from Denton's site—because that's what he wants, make no mistake here—while the sane commentary will be mostly ignored because it doesn't generate the oh so desirable hits.

Source: Giga OM, via Wind on a Leaf​