Automatic page refreshes are so 1998

Dear CNN.com, MNspeak, and the internet at large, I don't know if you are aware, but automatically refreshing the web page I'm reading is extraordinarily annoying and completely unnecessary. There was once a time many years ago where automatically refreshing a news site or any number of other types of pages was useful. These days, however, I believe it actually drags down your reader's experience on your site. If I want to see the latest version of your page, I will click the Reload button in my web browser, thank you very much. I do not care to be in the middle of reading something then have the page suddenly reload itself. Now I have to hunt down what I was reading and pick up where I left off, assuming the item I was reading wasn't old enough to be archived off of the front page. And God forbid it's a longer item, and I have to go through this process multiple times before I finish.

To eliminate any confusion, the type of page refresh I'm talking about includes those in <meta ...> tags and javascript setTimeout() and setInterval() calls that unceremoniously reload the entire page you are viewing. Why in this day and age of RSS, AJAX, Flash, and hell, even iframes would you still use auto-refreshes? I will concede that there might continued value for mobile versions of websites where timely delivery of information is key (think live sports scores and stock prices), as there are still a great number of mobile devices that do not support Flash (iPhone anyone?). But taking away a reader's choice in the age of Web 2.0 and ubiquitous connectivity tells me that you just don't get it.

iPhone is all things to all people...except me

I was jazzed that Apple finally announced its iPhone, an iPod/PDA/mobile phone combo that industry wags have drooled over for years. It's more than I had hoped for. It's form factor is miniscule. It's impossibly thin. It runs OS X, has a touch screen interface (you use your finger, so no worries about losing a stylus), has a 2 MP camera, plays movies, and songs, and on and on and on. But here is why I will not be purchasing the iPhone when it comes out. For starters, it's only available from Cingular. If it were everything I wanted in an all-in-one portable device, I would consider switching carriers, but it is not. And at $600 with a 2 year Cingular contract, that is a huge ouch in the checking account. But moreover, at 8 GB of storage, it's not there yet. I've long said that I will not purchase an iPod or iPod hybrid device unless it has at least 20 GB of solid state memory. That's solid state, as in flash. Now that the iPhone is more than a pipe dream, I will add that I will not purchase an iPod until that 20 GB version is available in the iPhone. I have enough crap to carry around and keep track of day to day. This is why I don't own an iPod or other MP3 player right now. If it doesn't fit on my wrist or in my pants pocket, I'm not taking it with me. Notably, this is probably yet another reason why I don't have children. *grin*