Hold the phone; new iPhone not cheaper

Always check the fine print.

Last week’s big announcement of the new, improved iPhone relied on the buzzwords “faster” and “less expensive” when compared to the first iPhone released last year by Apple.

Certainly $199 for the 8-gigabyte iPhone is $200 cheaper than the first release. But wait, let’s do the numbers.

In fact, anyone buying the 2.0 iPhone will pay more than the first version adopters.

Here’s why: AT&T is raising the price of its basic unlimited data plan for iPhone 3G users by $10 a month, to $30. That rate is on top of the required AT&T calling plans, which start at $39.99 a month. So maybe you save $200 on the phone, but you end up paying an additional $240 over two years.

•U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman continues to request that Google officials censor and remove YouTube videos he says are used by al-Qaida to recruit followers and spread propaganda.

Lieberman, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote to Google CEO Eric Schmidt contending YouTube fails to follow its own rules against showing graphic and gratuitous violence.

YouTube videos produced by al-Qaida “show attacks on U.S. forces in which American soldiers are injured and, in some cases, killed,” Lieberman’s letter said.

In response, Google did remove some videos that depicted gratuitous violence or advocated violence.

Google’s public policy blog added: “Most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our community guidelines.”

WEB TOOLBOX

SimplyMobileMom is an Arizona company looking to customize personal information for the growing army of moms and dads using cell phones.

They’ve created this tool (Windows only) that one adds to one’s computer that lets you send information, by text message, to your phone.

It’s meant to be a personal note-taker or memory-jogger. Reading a recipe online, one can clip the ingredients with the SimplyMobileMom application, and it sends a text-message with the recipe to your phone.

If you use a smartphone equipped with a data plan and Web browser, it will send you actual links to online stuff, if that’s your preference.

It’s free, but you’ll see ads on your computer and at the bottom of the text message. No, the text messages won’t cost you anything. But with the data plan (smartphone) version, you’ll be charged for any data you consume.

•Tool No. 2: Mozilla Firefox users know there are hundreds of add-ons that let you do lots of nifty things. We’ve tested YubNub recently and approve.

It’s a plug-in that creates a command line search option along the bottom of your Firefox frame. You just mouse to the YubNub line and plunk in a search term and the results from Google load in a new browser tab. Simple but elegant.

MIXED NUTS

One new photo-sharing site takes the idea of group photos to a new level. Shwup.com offers people the chance to create a collective gallery of images of some event or occasion.

It works both with photos and videos. It works this way: you sign up and upload your page with images or videos. You e-mail the link to others, who can then add images and videos of their own.

The company behind the site, Muvee, automatically also creates a “muvee” — a short slide-show video comprised of some of the images you uploaded to shwup.

Best of all, it’s all free.