The iPhone 3G price plans for Rogers Wireless in Canada were announced today. As per usual it looks as though we are being ripped off compared with the UK and USA.

Not only are you required to sign a 3 year contract, Rogers also nickel and dime you with “system access fees” and making caller display an added extra (what year is this??).

Here’s a nice chart I’ve made that shows the cost breakdown of owning an iPhone in Canada compared with the USA and UK. You’ll be amazed at the difference in cost.

(Click for a larger version)

$3,225! And that is just for the basic plan here in Canada. Sheesh. At least it’s here I suppose?

Update: A nice quote from someone over on the ehMac forums:

“So in other words for the same price as the US we get about a third of the text messages, a third of the anytime minutes, no call display, evenings that start at 9 pm instead of 7 pm and an extra contract year. Oh and I almost forgot, 400Mb of data instead of unlimited.”

Update II: What can we do as Canadians? Here’s a couple of things:

• Learn more about bill C-555
• Sign the bill C-555 petition
• Join over 18,000 24,000 32,000 50,000 other unhappy potential Rogers’ customers and sign the petition at: ruinediphone.com

Not a bad title for a post about code, so if you’re reading this expecting something non-geeky then look away now! Ready?

Since WordPress 2.5 a new $wpdb function has been included called ‘prepare’. I’ve been using the new function extensively throughout BuddyPress. As it’s so new, there are still quite a few plugin developers who are not aware of its existence.

So what does ‘$wpdb->prepare()’ do exactly? Simply put, it replaces the old ‘$wpdb->escape()’ function for escaping variables passed into an SQL statement. Escaping variables is great for preventing SQL injection attacks and keeping the bad dudes out.

With $wpdb->escape you would usually do something like this:

$field1 = $wpdb->escape("Andy Peatling");
$field2 = $wpdb->escape("It's like that, and that's the way it is.");
$id = $wpdb->escape($_POST['id']);

$wpdb->query( "INSERT INTO $wpdb->sometable( id, field1, field2 ) VALUES ( $id, '$field1', '$field2' ) ");

This works great, but you still have to deal with remembering to put single quotes around strings, and calling the function for every single variable you want to pass into the query.

The $wpdb->prepare() method simplifies things further, generally making your life a lot easier by combing everything into one call:

$field1 = "Andy Peatling";
$field2 = "It's like that, and that's the way it is.";

$wpdb->query( $wpdb->prepare( "INSERT INTO $wpdb->sometable( id, field1, field2 ) VALUES ( %d, %s, %s )", $_POST['id'], $field1, $field2 ) );

Notice that you no longer have to worry about quoting strings. Instead of including the actual variable name within the query you simply place a ‘%d’ for integers and ‘%s’ for strings. Then for the second parameter onwards you pass the variables in the same order they are in the query.

The new WordPress coding standards page touches briefly on the new prepare function. The WordPress Codex however still includes references to the escape method which I will be helping to update. has been updated to include references to the new prepare() method.

Leave any questions in the comments, I’d be happy to help.

As one of the millions who participated in the Firefox Download Day, I’ve enjoyed using Firefox 3 for the past few days.

Firefox has improved hugely on the Mac platform. It now feels less like a clunky Java app, and more like a native application should. The page load times, memory usage and launch speed have been significantly improved.

Despite these huge improvements, the new default theme doesn’t quite feel right to me. It’s like a hybrid of Mac and Windows interface standards, and in my opinion it ends up looking a bit quirky.

The default mac theme for Firefox 3

Thankfully Annorax has stepped in and created a whole bunch of Mac styled themes for Firefox 3. I’m using the GrApple Yummy (blue) theme and it’s fantastic. Firefox looks and feels almost identical to Safari.

Firefox 3 with the GrApple Yummy (blue) theme installed.

Head over to takebacktheweb.org and check out the themes on offer. Each one has subtle differences so you can choose which theme suits you best.

Update: Top 10 Firefox themes via Rebecca

Mockups of the new BuddyPress default theme. The theme has been designed so that colors and the logo can easily be changed. It has also been created to make use of every BuddyPress feature, theme designers can then cut and paste functionality they’d like in their own themes.

The theme will pass most of the admin area functionality through to the front end. However, all components can still be controlled within the admin area itself. This means simple BuddyPress compatible themes can be created, without having to create designs for each component.

There will be an option to set either the profile or the blog as the default screen for a user.

The profile for the current logged in user.

Listing of friends, and their status updates.

Viewing a friends profile.

Your inbox of messages

The interface for reading and replying to a message.

The interface for writing a new private message.

What happens when you view a blog when logged out of BuddyPress?

Interface when you view your own blog

Listing of all the groups you belong to.

The home page for a group with overview and activity.

The forum for a group, based on BBPress.

Overview of your own activity, and friends activity too.