Today, I am no longer a subscriber to Sirius Satellite Radio. After two years of loyal subscribership, the company tossed me away like I was nothing. I loved it, wanted to keep it, but they feel like I owe them more that I should and I have to draw the line somewhere. Let me explain.

Two weeks ago, I noticed my radios stopped working. I tried to log into my account, no dice. I was baffled, but didn’t have time to call until today. After 15 minutes of frustratingly yelling instructions to the automated teller I finally got to a real person.

Paul seemed like a nice guy. He quickly pulled up my account and informed my that my account had been closed. “What”? I asked, immediately confused. “You were canceled for non-payment” he said. I replied that I had been on auto bill from my debit card and his reply was, “Yes, I see that but the last transaction didn’t go through, you’ll have to call the bank to find out why”. “Oh, well” I said… “Not sure what happened, but let me take care of it right now.” This is when the hammer fell. Paul informed me that I needed to pay the past due ammout (a whopping $12), and then pay a whole new setup, and activation fee to start a new account.

So, after two years, something happened, the bill wasn’t paid, and they just cut me off? No calls, no emails, nothing. They must not want me as a customer. Listen, I’m not sure how his happened, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give them more money just because of some bank issue. The account has been fully funded since I opened it.

So, after that long conversation on the phone and several angry emails, I give up. Sorry Howard, I will miss you. I pulled the radio out of my car and threw it in the trash. I don’t need it that bad. Besides, there’s always bittorrent.

While I am completely caught up in the craze over the new iPhone, I have to admit, I’m a bit surprised by the mass hysteria over the app store. I’m not saying it’s no big deal. Apps like “Twitterific” and “Loopt” have absolutely blown my mind. However, apps on the iPhone are really nothing new. The difference now, of course, is that you have to pay for some.

Almost since the launch of iPhone, web developers have been creating custom user experiences for iPhone users. So much so, that Apple actually created a directory where it catalogs and displays these “web apps” for your convenience. Plus, with the quick creation of a web clip, you can even save these apps to your iPhone home screen, just like a real application.

With categories like, games, news, social networking, productivity, and more, you can see some striking similarities between these WEB apps and some of the apps in iPhone’s new app store. Could people be paying for some stuff that’s already available on the iPhone for free? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Web apps have some obvious limitations. They are designed to run in the iPhone’s web browser only, so they can’t take advantage of the accelerometer, the cocoa touch platform, the graphics engine, etc. There are some limitations. However, don’t thumb your nose up to these things just yet. You might find something you can’t live without was right in front of you all along.

http://www.apple.com/webapps/