A scientist at the University of Leicester did some basic calculations and found that the cost of sending a megabyte of data via SMS is about £374.49. Going by the usual Singaporean rate of 5 cents per message (much cheaper than the UK cost of 5 pence), that’s about S$374.50 per megabyte. A fraction of the cost of the English messages, but still a hefty bill. Apparently, the cost of sending a megabyte of data from the Hubble Space Telescope back to Earth is less than a quarter of the English price.

For a more down-to-earth comparison, consider this:

On M1, I get 5 gigs of data transfer over 3G networks for $20 per month. That’s 5000 megabytes. For $20.

If it weren’t for free-SMS plans, I’d be a lot more concerned about this… but all of you still paying per SMS, like on a prepaid card, you should know you’re getting ripped off by a huge amount.

Reuters reported today that SingTel’s launching the iPhone “by the end of the year”, whatever that really means. SingTel’s also launching the iPhone via subsidiaries in Australia, Philippines and India, not that that concerns me much. To be honest, this is a non-announcement. “By the end of the year”? We already knew as much. Apparently a Starhub spokesman predicted that all three carriers here would have the iPhone by year’s end as well, so I’m not worried about a SingTel exclusive.

But the biggest reason I’m not whooping and cheering just yet is that, apparently, this deal is for the current iteration of the iPhone. You know, the one that runs on EDGE, has no 3G network support, and was released in the United States almost a whole year ago (more than a year by the time it’s launched here). Big whoop. It was at its release a lackluster and not-quite-there product for Asian markets, and now: even more so.

The interesting thing to wait for is Apple’s rumoured announcement of the next-generation iPhone, supposedly in June. Once that’s officially out, we’ll see who gets the deals to launch that version.

Because, seriously: if I have to choose between buying a first-gen iPhone for $500 legitimately in December, or buying a second-gen iPhone for $1000 and have to hack it in June… that’s a magician’s choice. (That is, of course, assuming that the second-gen iPhone addresses all my concerns regarding the shortcomings of the first-gen… which it may, or it may not. That remains to be seen.)

Edit: I might have spoken too soon. TUAW noted that the lack of concrete pricing or date information suggests that the deal covers the new 3G-capable iPhone. And Italian carriers have confirmed that Italy will be getting the new iPhone, which would imply the same for all the new international deals that are being announced about now. That’s good to hear.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are lined up to sell the iPhone in Australia, making it seem more and more likely that SingTel will get it here.

The Apple team might want to find a better way to shorten the word “sparsebundle”…

Matt Mullenweg, the creator (or something like that) of WordPress, recently posted about the need to keep your copy of WordPress up-to-date: not to keep up with the latest features, though that’s certainly a good enough reason for most of us, but to make sure your blog isn’t exploitable by known security vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress that have since been fixed.

The decentralised nature of web software has a part to play in this. Despite having patched the vulnerabilities, there is no way for the WordPress team to make sure you download the patched code. The most they can do is to tell you about it (which is why you should always at least skim through the headlines in your WordPress Dashboard), and hope that you’ll do your part in keeping your own blog safe. Matt pointed to an example of Al Gore’s blog getting hacked; the blog was running WordPress 2.0.4, which is nearly 2 years old now.

Well, guess what Singaporean political party’s blog is using that exact same version of WordPress? (Check the HTML source of the inline frame to see the WP version.)