Today started just like any other day: sipping my coffee whilst reading through throngs of fan mail and news feeds. Obama seals the deal, iPhone 3G will kick tail, Comcast mulling net usage cap to discourage ‘excessive’ use (wired.com). Record scratch!

Thoughts raced through my head, “Why does Comcast always suck? What is ‘excessive’ use? This will never fly!” Fortunately the remainder of the article answered those questions.

Turns out, it’s not just Comcast that sucks, Time Warner, Cox and some other provider named Bend are all considering the same thing. In fact, Time Warner is already experimenting with defined bandwidth tiers ranging in price from $24.95 to $54.95 for a monthly bandwidth limit of 10, 20 and 40.

The natural question then is, how much bandwidth do I use?  According to Comcast, the average user consumes about 2gb bandwidth per month. Not bad, and what Comcast deems excessive is actually reasonable (to me, at least). This cropped up because a few handful of Comcast’s users were sending 40 million email, or downloading 50,000 songs a month! I don’t know the gb on that type of usage, but I agree this is excessive.

The rub is that these users were apparently subscribed to unlimited plans. As it turns out, these unlimited plans weren’t void of limitation. A user could use as much as they wanted, but at some point, would get a call from Comcast asking them to curb their usage or face cancellation. Comcast now claims they are looking to create more transparency.

One researcher quoted in the Wired article points out that it is probably to late to change users habits. I’m inclined to agree considering that all the major wireless carriers are now rolling out unlimited talk/text/data plans. If the wireless carriers are going this way, then the ISP’s are clearly moving backwards considering they were the first to roll out unlimited data plans.

In the meantime, if I’m exceeding my bandwidth usage, and Time Warner wants to ask me to cut back, they may politely send their request to my Cox address.

Tonight, while running errands with Jen, we stopped to fill up her car. At $3.40 per gallon it cost $48.00 to fill up her manual transmission Suzuki compact. I felt punched in the gut, slightly sick, and vengeful. I immediately jumped on Kansas City’s transportation website (www.kcata.org) to find the best route from my house to work.

Unfortunately, finding the best route is easier said than done. It took me a good ten minutes of hunting and pecking to finally get a route. That was thanks to a link from KCATA to GoogleTransit. However, turns out the route was for the bus leaving this evening at 9:07pm. What the KCATA site needs is a good dose of simplicity and a UI makeover.

First, get rid of the awful and vague dropdown menus. They read Route #, Name, and Region, respectively. Perhaps these are more for experienced users, and riders of the bus, but for newcomers, they mean nothing. I don’t know my route number. What is meant by name? Finally, what I would consider to be my region is not listed.

Second, provide less options for planning a route. It would greatly benefit potential users to do a study of friendlier transportation sites, then study how a handful of users plan a route. I do mean a handful, there is no need for a massive focus study. This would provide enough information to build a super-simple-to-use route planning web application. Chances are one of these is already built.

Third, and finally, tell the user the value of riding the bus quick and simple. Wouldn’t take much more than a bold headline that reads, Ride the bus for as little as $2. Better yet, link that headline to a brief list of prices as well. Either way, the point is that the user shouldn’t pay $48 two or three times a month when they could ride the bus for much cheaper.

When I was in junior high and high school I hated riding the bus, and rarely did. They were loud, smelled awful, and the diesel fumes gave me headaches. Now it is $150 in gas every month giving me headaches. I should not get a headache from trying to use the bus systems website, also. Who knows, maybe a few simple improvements to the site might yield more than a few more riders.

This, apparently, is a honest-to-goodness internal Microsoft video meant to inspire the Vista sales force. If this is real, and you still buy Vista after this, you are mom jeans. 

If you are like me, and you’re not face it, you spend a lot of time in front of your computer with your Instant Messenger client of choice distracting you on a regular basis. Often in my haste to please an IM buddy I’ll quickly type something and I’ve noticed that I make some funny typo’s. So, I’ve amassed them in a brief list. Feel free to add more in the comments section.

• fort = for - this is typically the result of a fat finger
• ti’s = it’s - not an ode to Frank McCourt
• dong = doing
• abou tit = about it
• noi = no i
• meat = me at
• pees = peace
• lame = my wife’s cat

Incidentally, any 10.5 users using Spaces frustrated by iChat’s hostile take over of your machine upon a new chat? Do. Not. Want!