Scott Elkin

June 30, 2009: Verizon announced the Blackberry Tour would be released on July 12,2009.

July 1, 2009: Sprint also announced the Tour would be available on their network the same day.

July 11,2009: I called Sprint’s Telesales and asked when the Tour is coming out and when they would be in the stores and was told, again, July 12, 2009.

July 12, 2009: Walked into a Sprint retail store and was told that they will not be getting any Tour’s until August 2^nd.  The employee there said that no stores were getting them.

I called AT&T yesterday to add our old phone number to our account so that I can port it over to a new VOIP account I am about to setup.

They charged me $40 for the phone activation, and $7.50 a month as the bare-bones rate to have the phone line.  No matter what I said, they wouldn’t get rid of the activation.

Today I called to cancel it when I realized that the VOIP system I am going to try out, Magic Jack, doesn’t allow number portability yet.

Notice the red badge on each envelope and the blue lock in the image below? 

The red badge tells me that the person is who they say they are, and the blue lock tells me that the message is encrypted.

Not only is this functionally important, but it really makes their email stand out and appear important.

This is accomplished by the use of a Personal E-mail Certificate, and is pretty easy to make work once you know the basics.

Here is a great tip that could save you over $500 a year:  You no longer need to keep a home phone just for internet access.

Costs and Savings

Historically, DSL or “Digital Subscriber Line” worked over your home phone line, which forced us to have to pay for basic phone service in order to get DSL.

Not only is this no longer true, but you would be astounded how much money you could save by eliminating the phone cost.

Every parent goes through a video phase where they want to document their kids life. Most realize pretty fast that their $1,000 HD video camera purchase was a waste since:

1. It’s a pain carrying around the video camera
2. Extemporanous moments don’t happen because to catch it you would be forced to shoot ALL the time.
3. No one wants to watch two hours of videos
4. Editing two hours of video takes a LONG time

So after the first video session, the video camera is forever left in the box.  And if it is ever used, the video it produces just sits on a disc never to be edited.

I just sold an old video camera on ebay for $203. The buyer paid via paypal, and normally my next step is to go into paypal to print the shipping information.

This time instead of presenting me with the buyers shipping information, Paypal prompted me to try to their new UPS Shipping solution.  Paypal said they had worked out a special deal for their users, so I decided to try it.

For my 5 lb, 10” x 10” x 8” box, Paypal told me it would cost $21.40.  I paid it, thinking I would just verify how much it should cost at the shipping place down the street.

Google unveiled their new “Notes” feature yesterday, and ever since I can’t use it in Firefox 2 (even Safe Mode).

This is what I see:

The errors below it are:

in file 1104796821-en-scr… (line 205)
missing } after function body
var Zs=”entry-via-link”;Qs.prototype.gC=function(a,b){if(!a||a.length==0)return;…

in file reading-list (line 111)
_FR_scrollMain is not defined
var userId = “GR-” + parseInt(_USER_ID, 10).toString(16);

Now playing: Nine Inch Nails – Letting You

Tags: firefox, google reader, Javascript

Since I bought my Blackberry 8830 from Sprint, I have been on and off having a dead battery half way through my day.  In fact, just last week I thought of taking it back.

I had noticed that I would take my phone out of my pocket and it would be slightly warm, like it was working while I thought it was off.  That still didn’t lead me anywhere productive.  I would just pop my battery out and in, and it seemed to fix it.

It certainly seems to be shaping up to be a Christmas filled with $200 Computers:

1. OLPC:
   
   (Although you will have to buy 2 – one for you and one for charity – to own one.)
2. Walmart Green gPC:
   (Already sold out on Walmart.com)
3. Asus eee Laptop:
   (Who wouldn’t want a laptop for $200?)

Tags: asus eee, eee, eee pc, gPG, green gPC, OLPC