To say that the plans were ill received would be an understatement, and I think Rogers would have had a better reception for them had they arrived flaming in a bag of poo on the Canadian public’s doorsteps.

The major issue, as I understand it, is that the plans don’t stack up well to cellular carrier offerings south of the border in the US. Never mind that comparing consumer goods and services between the two countries has always been like comparing apples and oranges, or at the very least, much bigger apples. Our tech loving brothers south of the border are seeing better voice plans, unlimited data, and lower costs. ITinfusion has explained this far better than I could.

My issue, and the purpose of this post, isn’t to jump on Rogers for being the big and bad corporation that they are, they have always been that and I never expected their initial pricing on the iPhone plans to be any different than what they announced. My problem is actually with the consumer. As a consumer, your best defense against pricing is to not consume. The Apple marketing machine has convinced you that you NEED that shiny new object the day it’s released but I’m here to tell you that you don’t. Wait it out a little and see what happens. I’m willing to wager that pricing will come down, service contract lengths will be reduced, and data allotment will increase. Hold tight for now, that phone you bought just 6 weeks ago still works, right?

Besides, Apple will have some other shiny object for you to stand in line for shortly, I’m sure of it.

What I have decided to do is rewrite things a little and release this design as a Wordpress theme for others to use. I have designed a couple of dozen Wordpress CMS websites over the last few years but have never released a blog theme and it’s time that I did. I’m getting excited about this one.

Something has happened to Digg in recent times though and it doesn’t have the same feel it used to. Perhaps this is because it’s outgrown its tech roots and the front page is now filled with artificially inflated election stories and top ten lists. These posts usually followed by one line comments from users trying to be witty enough to warrant their own Fonzie in the hopes that they see their own comments dug to the top.

My other issue with Digg is that it doesn’t feel honest. So much of what I see on there seems artificial, like the old days of viral marketing when companies filled discussion forums with trumped up posts about how great their product was. It seems that many of the same users are posting a large portion of the front page content and in my mind this defeats what the system was intended for.

I suppose at the end of the day I’m just feeling bitter. Where once there was a great tech information site, created by tech people, there is now a site trying to be all things to all people and in this watering down of content, they lost me.

On this site I use the cforms plugin for Wordpress. It’s the best form integration plugin for Wordpress by a long mile but as you may expect with something so robust, the configuration of complex forms can be tricky to the inexperienced.

There is another form application out there, however, that I have just started playing with called MachForm. While not as robust as cforms, and not free at $39US for a single-site license, the balance between functionality and ease of use is very good. It’s not a plugin but is easy enough to set up if you’re familiar with setting up a MySQL database and uploading files to your web server. It’s heavy on the ajax so adding fields and configuring them is about as easy as drag and drop. The connection to a MySQL database allows the ability to save form submissions and the slick admin interface makes downloading your data a snap.

*Added bonus - While not built into the admin as of yet, the ability to create forms in different languages is fairly simple. More information on that in their support forum.

For those using Wordpress as a blogging platform the impact should be fairly minimal, unless you have a lot of plugins configured. For those using Wordpress as a CMS, take care to make sure that your plugins are compatible with the new version and be sure to update the Codex if you discover one that isn’t.

My favourite WYSIWYG editor plugin isn’t compatible yet but I know they’re working on it.

I have toyed with a number of editors for Wordpress over the years, including various TinyMCE repackages and the unfortunately named FCKeditor. These editors all had the advantage of being open source but they fell short in terms of functionality. So, the price of these editors was right but I have never had an issue with paying for applications that work.

The best editor I have found is a commercial editor from ViziMetrics called WysiwygPro ($54 US). It handles all the formatting requirements you would expect but what sets it apart from any other editor I have used is the ability to upload and insert images, documents, and media files. Wordpress bloggers will like the push-button ability to ’split post with more’ and all users will appreciate the ability to clean up Microsoft Word formatting. The editor installs like any other Wordpress plugin and offers a series of configuration options. More details available at www.wysiwygpro.com.

In steps My Page Order. This plugin allows you to ignore the Page Order field altogether and provides a drag and drop interface for reordering pages and subpages. Once you have installed the plugin you find your way to Manage > My Page Order in the admin. You choose what section you want to reorder pages for and upon doing so are presented with a list of all pages in that section. Reordering them is as easy as dragging and dropping. Built in Widget support makes this plugin especially delicious.

The voice solution I have arrived at, after a decade of experimentation, is a phone system that allows me to make and receive calls through a landline, or through Skype, using the same handset. It has the added bonus of being wireless which allows me to have it anywhere in the house. This is especially cool on the Skype side of things where before I would have been tethered to my computer via headset. Think of it as a cordless phone system with Skype built into it.

There are a number of phone systems that offer this technology but the one I chose was the Netgear SPH200D dual-mode cordless phone system with Skype. This system operates as a traditional phone, allowing me to receive calls through my regular land line but combined with Skype Pro at $3/month it also lets me make all my long distance calls anywhere in North America, through Skype. The call quality through Skype is excellent with just a hint of the lag you generally expect when using a bandwidth based phone system. The added benefit to using Skype for me is that I receive half my calls through Skype anyway, and have voicemail attached to my Skype account so the people who are used to communicating with me this way can continue to do so.

Now, I just need to tackle my email …