The price is wrong

(Upstart) Yesterday, free phone dot-com PhoneFree.com, which had been supporting its IP voice services entirely through advertising revenue, succumbed to the harsh economic climate and was forced to start charging consumers two cents per minute. Here at Upstart, we don’t like to see scrappy start-ups suffer. Additionally, we allow a lot of alliteration abuse from an ace assortment of authors.

Anyhoo, a bunch of us here stayed at the office all night trying to come up with possible new names for the company (which should explain the previous sentence and my use of the word “anyhoo.”) We also watched Ishtar and experimented with new recipes for Blue Curacao, but only after we had finished our work.

Needless to say, a lot of good ideas were on the table, but we managed to whittle the list down to our top ten by dawn. PhoneFree.com, there is no reason to thank us. Godspeed, compadres.

1. PhoneNotSoFree.com

2. Talk’sCheap.com

3. NowJustTwoCentsPerMinute.com

4. PhoneFee.com

5. Phonefree.net

6. PhoneFreeIsJustAnotherWordForNothingLeftToLose.com

7. We’reNearlyBroke.com

8. WhatAreWeYourFreakin’SugarDaddy?.com

9. TheQualitySucksAnyway.com

10. JustSendAnE-Mail.com

Editorial Director Jason Meyers entered a career in business journalism after his on-line guide to complimentary public bathrooms, PeeFree.com, tanked. Console him at jason_meyers@intertec.com.