Amy, my usage apparently almost doubled in Aprilband May which I find weird. Also, I use over five times what Joe does.

I had a heavy April, but in my case it's because I did a big road trip through Louisiana for Spring Break (The "April" on my graph is actually 3/15-4/15, the billing cycle that ends in April) and used Google Maps / Yelp ALL THE TIME, and did all of my buffistas/e-mail/etc over the phone since stupid Marriot charges for wireless.

I also had a heavy 12/15-1/15, which was my Christmas road trip. Same thing.

I hit 650 MB on the spring break trip, so can imagine that with a larger, more prettier iPad I might hit 2GB, even though I never stream anything. But I could always have just shelled out the $10 for WiFi in that case. I don't think it's a bad cap, but it does limit the "Everything is in the cloud! Don't worry about local storage! Just stream things!" campaigns.

That's a salient point. In addition, the new iphones (and android phones and the future) will have video chat and that will take a lot more data than my currently simple needs of reading RSS feeds and emailing.

Woah - I haven't gone over 100MB in the last 6 months. That's way less than I'd been assuming. I could sign up for the cheap plan!

[eta: Huh, and apparently I haven't had this phone as long as I thought - my contract isn't up for renewal until September. No new phone for me next week after all!]

I've been waiting for an article on this:

How to Disable Copy-and-Paste Hijacking Web Sites

Ever copied and pasted text from various web sites and found some extra text in your clipboard that wasn't included in the text you selected? Here's how to stop this annoying (and privacy-invading) behavior.

Recently, a company called Tynt has been providing a service to sites that allows them to automatically add citations to any text copied and pasted from their site. You can find Tynt's dirty work on The New Yorker (as seen on this page) and on other publications like Wired, Sports Illustrated, and Politico. If you try to copy any text from The New Yorker, for example, the pasted output will look like this (notice the citation at the end, which wasn't in the text I selected and copied):

Bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, may be among the world's most vilified chemicals. The compound, used in manufacturing polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is found in plastic goggles, face shields, and helmets; baby bottles; protective coatings inside metal food containers; and composites and sealants used in dentistry.

Read more:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/31/100531fa_fact_groopman#ixzz0pjMY3wBg

I don't think it's a bad cap, but it does limit the "Everything is in the cloud! Don't worry about local storage! Just stream things!" campaigns.

This is exactly what bugs me. That, and I would so rather pay more for "unlimited" than constantly worrying if I'm coming up against my limit (and about to get a $900 cell phone bill, which has happened). I guess part of the problem is that I've never trusted AT&T, which is why I went to Cingular in the first place, and this confirms it once again.

Ugh. Apparently most months I use about 250-300 mb on my iPhone. So that 200 mb plan would be right out. (Though the 2gig one would be fine...though I haven't tried an iPad yet, so who knows). I use it a lot while I travel.

I seem to have decided it's time for me to get a new TV.

I went back threadsucked back a few months to see what had been said on the topic, so I know that Jessica likes her Samsung. Any other recs?

Also, I know that I will need to get a new cable box that works with HD, and I have pretty much convinced myself to get the Tivo Premiere, and I see that I need blu-ray or a better DVD player (I think that part may wait a few months).

Anything else I need or should want?

If you Netflix, a PS3 will do Instant Watch without having to get the Roku or doing any other stuff. The PS3 also plays Blu-Ray dvds. We don't game (shush), so we sent all the gaming stuff to StY so he and the kids can use it. We kept the unit and one controller, and we're set for Blu-Ray and Instant Watch.

We have the Samsung flatscreen and home theatre system--audio bar and dvd player, plus separate subwoofer, and we've been extremely pleased with the setup, plus Comcast's cable box/dvr.

The NYT had an article on basically this topic this week: [link]

I am wondering how much longer our 2 year old tube tv will hold up. It seems to be starting very slowly.