Symantec: Disgraceful the way things are sold with rebates, and then the rebates specifications make you jump through hoops, so maybe they'll have an excuse to deny you. Then they may take 3 months to send you your rebate payment. iOmega was famous for taking the longest back in 2001. Symantec at least it's 4 weeks exactly between mailing in for rebate and receiving Debit cards for ones' rebate. Not especially good, but better than most everybody else.

ATT iPhone moves data faster than the Verizon iPhone does: That's what PC World concluded. Story is here:

US BANKING CRAZINESS : Some time back I got a US MAIL letter from Capital One saying: ..."your Sony Card account is now with Capital One..." Turns out that is totally untrue. Capital One is taking over the Chase Account (likely hacked at Epsilon) on June 1; but no one at Capital One knows about it, and no one at Chase knows about it. Calling either Bank will give you a different answer for every person you talk to.

Could get worse. If were to call a normal CapitalOne CC 800 number, you'd get connected to a Third World Call Center where you'd be incorrectly told that all CapitalOne priviledges now apply; i.e. No 3% transaction fee for foreign currency transactions.

So a Chase Sony Card holder who unexpectedly was still charged Chase fees might call his cousin the lawyer who'd start a major class action law suit against Chase and CapitalOne.

Microsoft Money: For unknown reasons, Microsoft discontinued Microsoft Money, with the 2008 Version being the last one released. Now however Microsoft has made available a FREE "Sunset" Version that does not require Activation. Get it here :DOWNLOAD MS MONEY

AT&T caps Internet useage for dsl and Uverse: Buried in an email received from AT&T is the following:

As of May 2, 2011, AT&T's residential DSL High Speed Internet plans will have a usage allowance of 150 Gigabytes ("GB") per month, and its residential U-verse High Speed Internet plans will have a usage allowance of 250 Gigabytes ("GB") per month. The usage allowance is the amount of data you can send and receive each month

and

What will happen if I exceed my monthly usage allowance?
You will receive a notice the first time your usage exceeds the applicable monthly allowance.

In the following months, we will send you additional notices each month when your usage exceeds 65%, 90% and 100% of your monthly usage allowance. If you exceed your monthly allowance a second time, AT&T will send you a notice advising you that the next time you exceed your allowance - the third time - you will be billed $10 for each 50 GB of data over your allowance.

We will continue to send you courtesy notifications when your usage exceeds 65%, 90% and 100% of your monthly usage allowance to keep you informed about your usage patterns. All of these notices will remind you of what your monthly usage allowance is, provide you with information to help you understand broadband data usage, offer you tips on how to effectively control your usage to stay below your monthly allowance, and explain what your options are if you exceed your allowance in future billing periods. For example, you can modify your usage patterns to stay below your monthly usage allowance; continue your normal usage patterns and pay $10 for each additional 50 GB of data over your monthly allowance; or terminate your service, consistent with the terms of any special pricing offer that you previously accepted.

Importantly, if you do not receive a notice from AT&T, it means that you have not exceeded your monthly usage allowance. In some cases, it may mean that we cannot measure your usage yet. Either way, you should not be concerned about your usage patterns for billing purposes.

Amazon.com : Get free 5 Gigs of "Cloud" storage for music or data files.

FIREFOX 4.0 Just go to http://www.mozilla.com to download the new Firefox 4.0. And I'm pleased my favorite add-in for my favorite Browser is compatible with the new version. Ghostery can block all spyware.

Ghostery is now available in versions for Safari and Internet Explorer. Ghostery is a free download at http://www.ghostery.com

In contrast is a poor employer that still thinks it's a monopoly:

If you write to AT&T, what ever lame boilerplate they respond to you with is followed up with:

This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are the property of AT&T, are confidential, and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which this e-mail is addressed. If you are not one of the named recipient(s) or otherwise have reason to believe that you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and delete this message immediately from your computer. Any other use, retention, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited.

Apple proves what a good employer it is to its employees: I still think they practice age discrimination, but if you're employed, they treat you better than any employer I ever had, witness this letter to their employees in Japan (as found on MacRumors.com today)

To Our Team in Japan,

We have all been following the unfolding disaster in Japan. Our hearts go out to you and your families, as well as all of your countrymen who have been touched by this tragedy.

If you need time or resources to visit or care for your families, please see HR and we will help you. If you are aware of any supplies that are needed, please also tell HR and we will do what we can to arrange delivery.

Again, our hearts go out to you during this unimaginable crisis.
Please stay safe.
Steve and the entire Executive Team:

and then more on the EdibleApple.com website:

Kevin Rose relayed a story from an Apple employee in Japan who detailed Apple’s efforts at one of their retail stores to provide the masses with free wifi and unfettered use of Apple products so that folks could keep up with the news and contact loved ones and relatives.

You know how in disaster movies, people on the street gather around electronic shops that have TVs in the display windows so they can stay informed with what is going on? In this digital age, that’s what the Tokyo Apple stores became. Staff brought out surge protectors and extension cords with 10s of iOS device adapters so people could charge their phones & pads and contact their loved ones. Even after we finally had to close 10pm, crowds of people huddled in front of our stores to use the wifi into the night, as it was still the only way to get access to the outside world.

Apple also let employees and executives sleep in the Apple Store in addition to offering to cover any incurred expenses employees generated staying at hotels and paying for taxis in order to get where they needed to go.

“We want to help our customers connect with loved ones in Japan in anyway we can,” senior AT&T Vice President Mark Collins explained. “Connecting with family and friends is most important at times like this- we want to make it as easy and worry free as possible for our customers.”

AT&T comes Through: As stated in my February 14 posting; my AT&T Mobility account is now reflecting an extra 1000 rollover minutes. I had thought it'd appear with a new billing cycle, but no, it just appeared 3 weeks after submitting for them. In 5 years with Cingular, and now AT&T Mobility, I've never used one rollover minute, but it's nice never to have to worry about going over my allotted minutes and paying 45 cents a minute for each extra minute.

More on my Ooma: I love being able to block any telemarketer even those who use loopholes in DO NOT CALL law, i.e. Huckabee. I just split the output for phones on the Ooma, and ran a line to my legacy phone wiring. Now I can put a phone in any of my old outlets, and by running a line to my DirecTv I have Caller ID showing up on TV when phone rings. GREAT.

Windows 7, Service Pack 1: The Service Pack is now freely available for download at Microsoft.com I had no trouble what so ever installing on home systems, although one system that had a "Release Candidate" version, had to have that uninstalled first. Took over an hour to download and Install, but no glitches, and all seems well.

Yahoo News publishes secret formula for Coca Cola: Read it here:

ATT Promotion for their iPhone Customers: Send a TXT Message to 11113020 with the message / Subject of YES and in a month, you'll have 1000 extra Roll-Over Minutes added to your ATT Cellular account.
Details here:

WiFi issues: If you're having grief maintaining a WiFi connection in your house or apartment, prehaps a neighbor is using the same "Channel" as you and interfering. Used to be you could download a "WiFi Stumbler" program like "eWiFi" on your iPhone and it'd identify all the WiFi signals it could see. Then you could see if you needed to change "Channel". Last March, Apple removed all such programs from the App Store, perhaps because the programs could be used to help one without WiFi to glom onto a neighbors WiF for free.

So what's someone to do to check on possible signal conflicts? Luckily there's at least one web based program that peforms such functionality to assist one: Just use:

http://tools.meraki.com/stumbler

.

Twitter won't save you: Excellent review of a book about the downside of technology on the Internet. Read it here:

iPhone 4: Verizon vs AT&T models: Best article I've read comparing and contrasting the two models; by David Pogue of the N.Y. Times. Read it here.

Verizon doesn't have capacity for a flood of iPhones either: The President of Verizon snarkily promised they wouldn't have issues handling all the iPhones they were going to sell, like AT&T had. Well that lasted all of 2 hours before they had problems; Story here:

Chevrolet Volt: Interesting review of test driving a Chevrolet Volt, GM's "electric" car. Prolly
enough negative comments that I wouldn't consider buying one.

Google getting less useful: Washington Post today had a story that's a case study of the Google signal to noise ratio upon searching for a specific answer is getting ever lower. I often find a useless hit that's just Ask.com.

P.S. Lucky I use Firefox with the Ghostery add-on as the Washington Post website had seven instances of Spyware.