Princeton University professor Cornel West was arrested at an Occupy DC protest on Sunday, but he won't face charges (Image: Facebook)

• Cornel West Won’t Face Charges for Supreme Court Demonstration Arrest

Civil Rights activist Cornel West and 18 others were arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court during an Occupy DC protest on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors announced Monday that they did not press charges against the group.

The author was in Washington for the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall.

Read more about the Princeton University professor’s arrest at CBS News…

• James Brown Inducted Into Georgia Radio Hall of Fame

The “Godfather of Soul” was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame on Saturday. The late legend’s daughter, Deanna Brown Thomas, accepted the honor on his behalf at an awards ceremony.

James Brown was among several honorees, including Ben Porter, a Macon radio station owner who got his radio start in south Georgia as “Jack the Bellboy,” and Ernie Harwell, the renowned voice of the Detroit Tigers, to receive their award posthumously.

Read more at The Grio…

• FCC Rules Set to Curb ‘Bill Shock’

Gone are the days of surprise cell phone charges.

New U.S. policies will require that wireless providers send customers usage notifications when they’ve reached their monthly limits or are roaming overseas, announced the CTIA, Federal Communications Commission and Consumers Union in a statement Monday.

Cell phone users will receive updates before and after hitting their text, voice and data limits. They will also get roaming notices while traveling outside of the country.

The free and instant notices will come by voice or text. Providers are required to offer two of the four notifications — overseas, text, voice and data — by Oct. 17, 2012, and must provide all four by April 17, 2013.

Read more at Mashable…

• Danroy Henry Athletic Center Honors Pace University Football Player

Family and friends of Danroy “D.J.” Henry Jr., a 20-year-old Pace University student who was fatally shot by New York police, gathered on the first anniversary of his death outside an athletic field named in his honor.  The D.J. Henry Athletic Field is located in his hometown of Easton, Mass.

Read more at ESPN…

“People today tend to have way too much,” says Sam Simon, chairman of the Telecommunications Research & Action Center (TRAC). “They have too many phones and too many bills.”

Though the average local monthly cell phone bill is $48.54, according to the CTIA, a wireless trade organization, adding texting plans can cost at least $10 to $20 more a month, and Internet usage can be dangerous territory, amounting to an extra $40 a month or more.

Before you shell out extra cash for that whopper of a phone bill, be sure to follow these steps:

Evaluate your plan: Cutting wireless costs can be as simple as removing unused features and add-ons. People “need to make sure they’re on the right plan and they’re not leaving unused minutes at the end of the month,” Simon says. Review your cell phone bills from the last three months. If there are unused minutes or text messages, you might want to downgrade your plan. Conversely, if you’ve been going over your allotted minutes and texts, you may want to upgrade your package. A plan that costs a little more per month may be cheaper than the recurring overage charges you’ve been accruing.

Consider prepaid: Some prepaid providers may not offer the futuristic feature-intensive phones that come with contracts. But if you’re an occasional talker, this may be the plan for you. Simon says if customers are using 200 to 300 minutes a month, prepaid plans are a low-cost alternative to expensive monthly deals. But he cautions that for some there is a per-day surcharge. “I would urge people to never have a prepaid card where there is a daily surcharge because too many carriers out there don’t do that,” he says. Simon recommends looking into Virgin Mobile and Tracfone.

Nix the land line: If you have your own plan or a family plan and everyone in the house has a cell phone, ditching the land line can save a few bucks a month. Here are some questions Simon says people need to consider before cutting a land line.

How often do you use the land line?

Are you out of the house a lot?

How many cell phones do you have in the family?

“If have four cell phones and are working a lot, the odds are you don’t need a land line,” Simon says. But if you find it hard to get rid of the house phone, talk to your provider about a limited service plan. The monthly fee is lower than a regular phone bill but you’re charged for any incoming or outgoing calls. Some limited service plans offer unlimited incoming calls and long distance features for house phones.

Be a negotiator: Negotiating is an art, and if you’ve had run-ins with creditors, it’s an art most of us should learn to master. “I think your best bet is to call you provider and ask to speak to a supervisor,” Simons says. But he warns, since carriers are not given as much discretion anymore, it may be harder to negotiate. But it’s still worth a try, especially if you’ve run over your minutes or text allowance. If you’ve paid on time or have been a longtime customer, some providers may credit the fee or at least part of it.

Understand your bill: Aside from reviewing your bill for any usage patterns, it’s important to understand all charges. Understand peak calling periods, area coverage, roaming and termination charges, says the Federal Trade Commission. Take advantage of the trial period offered by most providers. Use this time to make sure the service provides coverage in all the places you will be using the phone, i.e. home, work, and places you frequent.

Check out my cost-cutting blog to find more on what all cell phone subscribers should know.

Buy at the end of the month. Apparently salespeople in this industry have quotas too. So, if you’re looking to buy a cell phone or plan, sales representatives maybe a bit more flexible towards then end of the month when they’re grinding to meet that quota. Sweeten the deal by offering to opt for a family plan. Also, be sure to do your research before hand. Know what other providers are charging for the same or similar services. Companies may be even more inclined to add more to your package or offer a greater discount.

No service, no fee. If you’re moving overseas, even to an area of the country your provider does not service, you do not have to pay a cancellation fee. Be sure to check your contract to verify. There’s no reason you should be charged roaming fees or international fees, since it’s not initially what you signed up for. You may even want to talk to a supervisor to get out of your contract.

You can call 411 for free! This is probably the best piece of information I found since my family dials 411 more than we dial each other. Dial 1-800-FREE-411 or 1-800-GOOG-411, which will connect you to Google’s directory service. This can save on those exorbitant surcharges just for calling information.

Above all, understand your bill. This is crucial, as it can prevent wasteful spending on features you don’t need or never knew you had. Set aside a few minutes one day to call your provider and have every charge on your bill explained. Tedious? Maybe. Helpful? Without a doubt. I took the time to do this over the summer and found that my mother’s line on our shared plan was being charged megabytes usage. Nevermind the fact that she just learned how to open her e-mail a month ago. The Federal Trade Commission offers a breakdown of every charge on a sample bill.

Cell phones are convenient and a great way to keep in touch with family. They can even occupy your time when you’re simply bored. But there’s no need to break the bank paying the bills.

Appearance
Weighing approximately 110 grams, the sophisticated steel-inspired design of the Diamond represents a sleek upgrade to the minimalist character of the first generation HTC Touch, which Sprint began carrying late last fall. The back cover features accented facets resembling a diamond, hince the name. Unlike the iPhone, which has a touch screen, or the BlackBerry, which uses a trackball, the Diamond comes with a stylus that secures in a magnetized slot on one side of the device.

Phone Components
Not only does the phone feature a good-looking handset, but it also boasts a range of components that help to drive the Diamond into Touch 2.0 territory. The touch-friendly user interface comes equipped with 3D TouchFlo technology, enabling richly animated presentations of graphics and text on a 2.8-inch, VGA resolution, LCD screen.

It has a generous 4 gigabytes of internal storage. The device also comes with a 528 megahertz Qualcomm processor, has a 3-gigabyte data capability, and features a Windows Mobile 6.1 professional platform, which includes the Microsoft Office mobile suite and Exchange e-mail support. The device is also GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 enabled.

User Features
Aside from the Internet Explorer (IE) browser, the Diamond scores major points for supporting Opera’s 9.5 mobile browser. Opera 9.5 allows a user to not only zoom in on specific portions of Web pages, a user can cut and paste pages and send links via e-mail, or SMS and MMS text messaging. Browsing on the Diamond simply becomes much more dynamic. A special treat came via Diamond’s FM radio, which has an exceptionally strong signal. (It even managed to pick up reception underground on the subway.) Under moderate lighting conditions, the phone managed to snap some exceptional pictures with a 3.2 megapixel color camera. It comes equipped with a second camera in the top right corner for video call conferencing capability, which might make calling an impromptu meeting from afar quite convenient.

Technical Downsides
Even with a stronger chip, the device has a lag time of about a second or so navigating between screens. Also, this time around, users are prevented from swapping out portable Micro-SD cards.

The battery drained much faster when the device was used both as a phone and as a music player. And when it comes to sound, with such a muscular arsenal, the Diamond’s speaker phone feature came off a bit wimpy.

Sprint is the official carrier of the HTC Touch Diamond in the U.S. The phone retails for $549.99, but with a two-year Sprint contract, it can be purchased for $249.99, after a $100.00 mail in rebate.

Hey you, with the cell phone on your desk just a few inches from your hand. Or maybe it’s in your pocket or purse, or it’s clipped to your belt. Wherever this handy communication gadget is, the fact that it’s within reach should tell you just how powerful a business tool it can be for the company that’s looking for innovative ways to communicate with new and existing customers.

According to a recent Jack Myers Media Business Report, mobile advertising is expected to increase to $1.1 billion this year and to $2.44 billion by 2009. By comparison, the organization reports that newspaper advertising nationwide was expected to decline over 2008 and 2009, while broadcast network TV and radio advertising were expected to start decreasing in 2009.

The numbers don’t lie. As more companies scale back their “traditional” advertising methods, they are pouring more money and time into mobile options, which find companies using data services such as Short Message Service, (SMS, also known as text messaging), Multimedia Message Service (SMS, which includes picture messaging), content downloads, and the Mobile Web to reach customers. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, these media channels carry both content and advertising, thus allowing for precisely targeted communication with users.

Jeff Lerner, chief technology officer and co-founder of WHAM Mobile in Houston, which develops mobile marketing technology and solutions for businesses, says the growth in mobile marketing use by American companies is largely driven by its direct and cost-effective nature. An e-mail campaign centered on a “send a text message to 0000 to win a free prize” message, for example, is both inexpensive to create and easy to quantify.

Liz Lee, director of content and mobile initiatives for Urban Wireless in Los Angeles, says smaller firms like mobile marketing for its geographically specific qualities. For example, a small boutique that wants to attract new customers in its city by offering a 20% first-timer discount, could use mobile marketing to focus tightly on that target user base (as opposed to using a more general, Web-based approach that would reach the entire country).

Lerner says restaurants are finding mobile marketing particularly useful. For example, a pizza shop in Texas that wanted a more accurate way to track its billboard advertising efforts included the verbiage “Text the word PIZZA to 0000 and receive a coupon” on its outdoor advertising. The efforts paid off, with the restaurant redeeming more than 100 coupons during the first week of the campaign. “It didn’t cost the small business much to add the mobile aspect to the billboard,” Lerner says, “but the owners were thrilled with the results.”

In another example, Lee says a small event marketing company created a mobile campaign that found cell phone users texting a keyword to a specific number to receive important updates, information, and possibly win tickets and apparel related to a summer concert. “It allowed the company to announce the event and to give individuals a lot of information that they wouldn’t otherwise have received,” Lee says. “It kept the event at the forefront of the recipients’ minds.”

Such campaigns typically involve an agency that’s already set up to do business with the cellular carriers (which are sticklers about avoiding junk mail-type campaigns that don’t offer any value to their customers) and to use what are known as “short codes,” or special telephone numbers that are shorter than regular numbers and are used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones. A robust mobile campaign that ties in with other media can cost $10,000 to $20,000 to develop and administer, says Lerner, while smaller, more targeted campaigns may cost only a few hundred dollars per month.

In return, Lerner says firms get exposure to a greater pool of potential customers and a new sales channel that blends well with existing advertising strategies (such as radio, TV or billboard – all of which can easily incorporate a text message campaign). “It doesn’t cost anything to add a short code to a radio ad,” Lerner explains, “but doing so makes the campaign more measurable and more effective as a lead generation tool.”