Do you Twitter? If you do, you may enjoy this:

How to Avoid the ‘Twitter Tax’

When I mentioned three hidden dangers of Twitter, one of the things I mentioned was the hidden cost of text messages. Here’s a more in-depth look at the problem and how to get around this ‘Twitter Tax’.

A few days ago, The Consumerist noted the following,

Verizon and other cellphone companies mark up the cost of text messages by at least 7314% when compared to their rates for data transfer services.

According to their calculations,

Verizon’s max text message size is 160 characters. At 7 bits per character, that’s 1120 bits or 140 bytes. Without a text messaging plan, those 140 bytes run you $.15 (fifteen cents), according to Verizon’s website.

When comparing this to the cost of regular data transfer, we see,

That’s $.015 per data kilobyte versus $1.09 per text message kilobyte. In other words, a markup of 7314%.

Given this markup (partially a result of how text messages work), no wonder people are going broke while they Twitter away. In light of this, I thought it would be nice to point out a little application based on FlashLite 2.x technology (supported on Nokia S60 3rd Edition and Windows Mobile 5.0 based Pocket PC/Smartphones) that allows you to access and update Twitter through a GPRS/3G internet connection instead of text messages. Simply sign up for a $20/month unlimited data access plan and you’re set.

Do you know of similar applications for other phones (platforms)?

Yep, you may enjoy this; then again, you may bawl your eyes out if you compare $20 unlimited data access on GPRS/3G in the States compared to what we have here in Australia.