Smashing Magazine posts their favorite desktop wallpapers at the beginning of every month. The wallpapers contain the month’s calendar. Most of the wallpaper designers also provide a non-calendar option so you can use it throughout the year. This month is special to me because my birthday falls on the 1st. The image above, which is my favorite, comes from Vladislav Gerasimov from Irkutsk, Russia.

If you are in San Francisco and live in an apartment building, check out Webpass, a local ISP that delivers really fast broadband (upstream and downstream) service. I am getting around 50 Mbps symmetrical speeds. Read my review on Muniwireless: Webpass delivers over 50 Mbps down, 47 Mbps up in San Francisco.

I can finally use the Wordpress admin on Safari 4 after many months of waiting. I downloaded the latest version of Safari for the Mac and wonder of wonders, I can post articles via the Wordpress admin page. Many Wordpress users have been plagued with problems when they use the Visual Editor, especially when they try to upload photos or video, or even highlight a word or phrase and try to add a link. Now I don’t have to go back to Firefox when I have to post an article using Wordpress admin.

If you are in the UK and want to find the best mobile phone plan that fits your calling/texting/data habits, make sure to check out Billmonitor.com, a price finding and comparison site for mobile phone plans. I am impressed by the clean, uncluttered interface and the ease of use. It’s the only mobile comparison calculator accredited by Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator.

Cellular operators seem to have discovered a new cash cow: the iPhone (and for those who don’t carry it, a variety of smartphones and netbooks all to be given away for free or at low cost). Coupled with cheaper data subscriptions, it seems like a fiesta for gadget freaks like us until we find out that telcos like AT&T still use ancient DSL/copper networks as backhaul for many of their cellular base stations and worse, given constraints in the equity and debt markets (plus the NIMBY attitudes of many communities), they’re not rushing to upgrade the networks to ad capacity.

Read The coming 3G network Armageddon.

And every other website that thinks the Internet is broken up into regions and countries and blocks you from seeing video or listening to music as soon as you have stepped outside the boundaries of the United States. But it’s not just Hulu and Pandora. There are websites in France, the Netherlands and other countries that block you from seeing video when you are abroad. Who is to blame for this mess? The copyright cartel, the rights licensing bodies, and most of all, the various countries’ legislative bodies for utterly failing to live in this century and for kissing the feet of powerful media companies.

I travel a lot and work from many locations in different countries. So do many people. I want to be able to view video or listen to music wherever I am. The way sites like Hulu and Pandora work, they pretend it’s still 1960 and we’re all stuck in front of the TV or radio and never travel overseas. Does anyone every wonder why there’s so much content piracy and so many ways that people are devising to listen to music and watch video at their own convenience no matter where they are on the planet?