Some background. I previously owned an HTC 8525 (Windows 6 [upgraded] smart phone), and moved to the raved about Nokia N95 (Symbian 60 ver 3 awesome). Ok… so I was poking around and came across this:

MEdia™ Net - from AT&T Wireless’ Q&A section (link):

Q. What is MEdia™ Net?
A. MEdia Net gives you access to all the cool things you can do with your wireless phone—email, Web sites, games, and more. It is wireless Internet access for your wireless device.

• Mail & Messaging: Check your Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail and chat with friends with Yahoo! Messenger and Upoc.
• Sports: Get the latest scores from CBS SportsLine and ESPN.
• Ringtones, Games, and Graphics: Personalize your phone by downloading your favorites.
• News & Finance: Stay informed with round-the-clock headlines from CNN.
• Entertainment: Get local movie times and reviews, dining recommendations, and more.
• Weather & Travel: Check your forecast from The Weather Channel, get flight times, and traffic reports.

Neat! This MEdia™ Net shindig should allow me to do what I need on my N95 (and my PDA, but we’ll not get into that)… and the MEdia™ Max Unlimited feature looks like a good fit. As a result - I pick up the phone, and now have this featured added to my plan… and had the $39.99 (PDA Personal plan w/ 1500 txt message - no longer available) feature on my plan,as required by AT&T at the time for the PDA’s, removed.

Here’s a paraphrase of the conversation I had with the nice lady on the phone at AT&T Wireless:

Me - “Is there a bandwidth difference between the PDA plan and the MEdia™ Max (i didn’t say ‘tm’)?”
Nice Lady - “Not that I’m aware, I think it’s just if you have a PDA, you’ll be accessing your email and the Internet more frequently”
Me - “Oh, neat. So since my phone isn’t a PDA, I can get this MEdia™ Max Unlimited?”
Nice Lady - “Yep, would you like me to remove the PDA features from your plan?”

So, this confused me, as I told my friend Genevieve to do the same thing with her N95 about a week ago… and she got a guy telling her “The N95 is a smartphone, you’ll need to upgrade to the PDA data plan”… buh? (image right)

Ok… so the wheels started turning pretty quick in my head:

1. Does the iPhone qualify for the MEdia™ Max Unlimited Plan (yes - at least I think so)
2. Is the iPhone capable of email access? (yes, without MMS even… heh)
3. Is the N95 not a smart phone? (email, office, gps, camera, qik.com, web browser… hmm)
4. Why are Windows Mobile users getting charged $15 more a month?
5. Why does it seem that “some people” get the same features for $35 that others have to pay $50 for?
6. What the hell qualified a phone as smart? (answer)
7. Is AT&T aware of what a smartphone really is? Are their employees universally aware?

I’m going to figure that I just got lucky because I outright asked for the  MEdia™ Max Unlimited Plan and got someone who was completely unaware what the hell the N95 is, count my lucky stars and give this bit of advice to people that have … a “smartphone” that’s not an iPhone:

Call AT&T - ask for the  MEdia™ Max Unlimited Plan - if they say no, hang up and call back. Save yourself $180 a year.

Unless I’m completely missing something. Which … I just speed tested my phone after a reboot and I’m still getting 4.2 Mbps over their air… and uh… I’ll keep testing to see if there’s a downside here to paying less, anyway.

So about … 7 years ago in Spanish 2, I was teamed up with 2 other classmates to create an 8 minute presentation. We were given a choice, movie or skit. I was not about to be in front of a class with a skit… so it was Movie Time!

I actually had a good job at the time, so I just planted some cash on some MiniDV tapes, and a camera, wrote up a quick synopsis, and started to think about a shoot location.

Synopsis: Rico “Diablo” Carranzo’s shipment of product was stolen, he’s found the thief, and is going to make him pay.  The thief is a henchman on his own goon squad, cousin to his second in command, El Martillo. The Diablo way is punishment by death, and the trigger man has to be family. El Ladron is going to be an example of how bad ass Diablo truly is.

Oh yea… cheeeeese galore. Funny thing is, I know I didn’t invent this storyline, and chances are it’s been done 1000x before with REAL production money behind it, somewhere. I laugh just thinking about it.

Anyhow, in 2003 I wanted to digitally remaster my piece of work, because it really didn’t come out all that bad. Aside from the really horrible everything, it was well received by the class, at least - and! - I got an A on the project… I never did follow through with that project though. I ended up getting a job at the DoD, and that took me away from El Ladron.

I’ll post the trailor I created pre-remastering in 2003 in a few days to my Tumblr, I’m sure, but I’m seriously considering picking this 8 minute epic back up and dusting it off to share with the world. The shameful humiliating criticisms that will follow shall be glorious.

Oh, I forgot to mention, 1 of the people that were in our team dropped the class, so we were down to two people. After which, the stoner I was paired up with failed to show up to the two meetings we had about the project, so … I enlisted two of my good friends: Jason and Gabe. Good sports.

Interestingly enough, the photo included in this post is my “most popular image” on Flickr. Of all the photos I have on Flickr, models, architecture, events… aside from the one posted on mashable for a story about CommNext a month or so ago, this “Family Portrait” shot taken during a baby sling product photoshoot is the one that people flock to the most.

Why am I writing a post about a popular photo on a Flickr stream? Just as an observation really. This photo is getting consistent exposure via Yahoo! Image Search, and now Google Image Search - which I think is awesome… As a result, I thought I’d take a moment to offer up a word of advise to photographers that might be out and about looking for a means to get people to see your stuff.

Diversify!

When people ask me “what kind of photography do you do?”, my reply is typically “night-time architectural”. This response doesn’t really yield much interest, but that’s the photography I like to do, and I’m not trying to turn a buck with my hobby. But if I were, I’d say - “Family Portraits, with a focus on toddlers and infants”, based on the long-tail spread of interest this photo maintains in my stream.

If you take a look at graph on the right, you’ll see the numbers aren’t terribly high. Yes, it’s my second most popular photo with just under 550 views, which is peanuts compared to most “known” people on the web, but when you look at the consistency with the interest… at 8 to 20 views a day since it was posted… to get to 550 views is actually an achievement. Not to mention the comments, emails, and favorites that this photo’s received. These factors, as well as a little applied common sense, led me to believe that the interest in “Family Portraits” that caputre moments with mother and child are “gems”. So if I were in photography to make money… I’d stick with that.

Funny though, I take an artistic approach to my photography. I kept it all to myself for almost 7 years, never really showing people much of anything. Even still, only 5 people have ever seen my “original” night shots from back in 2000 … So, I don’t mind not getting a lot of attention with my photography, and if it weren’t for Flickr and the stats - I would have never guessed that my most popular work would have nothing to do with that at all anyway. Hind sight’s 20/20, I guess.

Alright… I did the lamest. I changed a password, and must have mistyped it twice, because now I can’t change it. Even better, I must have set up a secondary email address for my account to an email that no longer exists.

This kind of thing happens to the best of us. Sure.

Dilemma: If you forgot your password and have a secondary email account? Google will send your password reset information there and you’re good to go.

Problem: I must have set up my Gmail account with a secondary email address for an ancient domain that’s now dead. Hence the email being dead.

Can you still log in with anything?

I was still fortunate enough to have Google Talk with access to my inbox available through it set up in Trillian (isn’t it spelled Trillion - isn’t Google spelled Googol? Anyway - funny). I also had the Firefox extension for Gmail Notifier installed. So I was ok… I could access my account. So what to do?

Dilemma: If you can access your account, you can reset your password using your secret question.

Problem: My answer to my very obvious secret question didn’t work - which led me to believe that there’s a problem with altering ancient data in your Google account.

This just kept getting better and better.

The Work-Around

So, Google will let me do “something” if I don’t access my Gmail for five days… FIVE DAYS?! WITHOUT EMAIL!? ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME?! If you can access your account via a Firefox extension or Trillian, or other application that has your password saved, try this:

Step 1: Get into your Inbox via something
Step 2: Open a seperate browser (most people these days have two installed - i.e. - IE 6 or 7)
Step 3: Via your secondary browser & set up a new Gmail account
Step 4: Via the Gmail account you don’t have the password for? Forward that to your new one (Leave on server if you’d like - so you don’t lose mail once you get into your account again after the 5 day waiting period).
Step 5: Via your secondary Gmail account click on “Settings” (top right) >> “Accounts” >> “Add Another email address” under Send Mail as.
Step 6: Wait for the confirmation code to show up from Gmail Team, input it in the pop-up window, and you’re happy.
Step 7: Change your default “Send Mail as” address to your “locked out” Gmail account.
Step 8: Dance around happy.

I was lame enough to have two other email accounts in my “locked out” Gmail account, so I set those up in the new Gmail account as well - since the forwarding is only for your Gmail email address.

Aftermath

Now, I’m not sure if the forwarding is going to still count in my five day holding pattern to get me back into my regular Gmail account, but I’ll tell you this much: Since I still have GTalk on Trillian with the password saved, and I can still get my emails via Gmail with my new account - I really don’t have much reason to get my password sorted out… except now I have to make sure I don’t forget this password too, which would suck. Oh, and I can’t really take new contacts and add them to my old GTalk stuff through the Gmail interface, but whatever, I’ll live until I can get their stuff to fix my stuff.