Wordpress iPhone Application

A quick one today, but worthy of note is the upcoming now out Wordpress iPhone Application.
This means an update of techdebug.com is on the cards…

You can read about it on the dedicated iPhone page.

via TUAW

Telstra has rights to Sell iPhone on Australia

Telstra have now announced they will be selling the iPhone as well. According to the Age, since Telstra’s NextG network covers 99% of the population the iPhone will get good coverage due to it using the 850Mhz 3G frequencies.

Additionally the Age have reported on the pricing Telstra will offer on their bundles:

The cheapest monthly plan will be $30, paying either $279 upfront for an eight-gigabyte iPhone or $399 for a 16Gb model. Customers who do not want to pay upfront could sign up to an $80 plan for the 8Gb model or a $100 plan for the 16Gb model.

I’ll still opting Vodafone for now, but lets see what the Vodafone pricing and data usage policy will be compare to Telstra’s. If they are almost the same (and I doubt it) it could prompt me to jump carrier. The coverage that NextG have is unrivalled in this country - but has been pricey to use for data so far. SMH Blogger Adam Turner correctly speculates that even though the pricing is out, there is no mention of data usage. Don’t get too hyped about Telstra’s offering just yet. Despite the fantastic infrastructure they are usually the most expensive.

Just to show I’m not entirely biased, Telstra are taking pre-registrations at their website. Thanks to @IdleThoughts for the heads up on this.

Australian iTunes Store offers TV Shows

Practically un-announced, Apple have made available a limited number of TV shows on the Australian iTunes Music Store.

While I commend the move, I have to question their pricing. The US store offers TV shows @ USD$1.99 per episode (with Some more expensive) The Australian Store offers the episodes @ AUD$2.99, which equates to approximately USD$2.85.

Why the difference? You can’t tell me Apple has set-up different infrastructure and have different hosting for Media in Australia. They are not paying to send the data over international links. So why the over 40% increase in pricing from the US?

I think the local media companies and licensers got greedy. It is as simple as that.

It’s not just the price that gets me down. The content is different. The continually stupid regionalisation of content has shown to be a road block to people GLOBALLY. For example:

• DVDs (remember region coding at the end of the last decade?);
• TV - why do shows still get screened outside the USA weeks or months later;
• Movies;
• or music.

Yes this is a global economy people. The ease of Torrent sites to circumvent this division of content drives the end user towards increased use of torrents. It is now apparently easier to get a season of your favourite show from the internet than wait for it to appear on TV; or on iTMS. The only people wising up to this are the Movies Studios whom now do simultaneous global releases, because they were losing too much money.

Until the pricing on the Apple store is the same, and Australia gets the same releases as the US at the same time (on TV or on iTMS) - people will continue to use torrent sites as their source of the latest TV shows from the USA. Plain and simple - “Listen up Media conglomerates!!”

Update: It looks like they did release a press release yesterday.