Well, it shouldn’t come as any great shock to readers of this blog, but Apple has officially announced a music themed event for September 9th in San Fransisco. While they don’t specifically mention the iPods, trust us, it’s iPod related. (as if the image on the invitation didn’t give it away) Be sure to check back here that day for a complete run down of what exactly Apple has in store for us this year.
Ever gotten a gift card you just have no use for? Now there is an easy way to turn that card in to cold hard cash.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I saw this site on Shark Tank tonight, but I thought it was such a great idea, and something I hadn’t heard of, so I had to share it. GiftCardRescue.com is a site that will buy your unwanted gift cards from national chains for approximately 65 percent of its face value. Once they receive your card, they pay you within 24 hours of receipt via PayPal.
The site then takes that card and offers it for sale to other people for anywhere from 7 to 20 percent off the face value. For instance, the site currently has an Ann Taylor gift card with a face value of $300 that can be purchased for $240 with free shipping. So, in other words, you essentially get to shop at Ann Taylor and receive an instant discount of 20 percent on whatever you choose to purchase. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Seeing as the gift card industry has hit $80 billion in sales annually, and $8 billion of those cards go unused each year, this is a win-win situation for both sides of the transaction. College students get tons of these cards at Christmas, imagine what a university student can do with the cash that mom and dad don’t know about… what?!? Stop looking at me like that! I’m just mentioning one potential use!
Joking aside, we here at StarterTech love the idea of this site and think it is well worth your time to check out.
If some security experts have their way, you may soon need a license to log on to the Internet.
It’s all in the name of “protecting” you, but there are people in Europe and Australia that think it might be a good idea for you to have a license to surf the Internet.
The theory is a simple one: there are people on the Internet who want to defraud you, and you should be required to take a class to learn to avoid these situations prior to being allowed on the Web. At least that is the idea that Dr. Russel Smith, principal criminologist at the Australian Institute of Criminology, has been saying to iTnews.
While it seems his heart is in the right place, Dr. Smith is simply going too far with such a concept. The majority of Internet fraud concerns can be solved with a short pamphlet that Internet service providers (ISPs) could send out to customers when they sign up. Essentially it boils down to three things:
There, you’ve just earned your “license”.
Dr. Smith attempts to make an analogy between driving a car and controlling a computer, both items being dangerous machines, but it just comes off as lame. Yes, the Internet can be a big scary place, but just because a handful of people get defrauded each year doesn’t mean that the hundreds of millions of other people on the Internet should have to jump through hoops to use their own computers.
You know what else is dangerous? Guns. But you don’t have to take a safety course before buying one.
You know what else is dangerous? Alcohol. But you don’t have to take a course before you drink.
You know what else is dangerous? Smoking. But you don’t have to take a course before you buy a pack of cigarettes.
I think you get the picture.
If you’ve been planning to buy an iPod any time soon… don’t.
As we previously reported, it looked like Apple is planning a media event for September 9th. Well those rumors have picked up even more speed, and now reports are coming in from multiple sources that Apple has allowed stocks of the current models dwindle to non-existent levels, if not allowing them to be completely unavailable.
None of this has come as a really big surprise as Apple has used an early announcement in September for the past four years to announce line refreshes to the iPod family of devices. While last year’s upgrades were pretty disappointing, this year seems to have some definite bite to it. Rumors are all over the place that the iPod Touch and iPod Nano lines will be receiving cameras, and there are even some rumors that the iPod Classic, the last iPod to still use a hard drive, may be getting a camera as well. The Classic rumor seems a bit far-fetched, but we’ll see.
In short, if you are in need of an iPod, wait another week and a half and see what exactly Apple is announcing for this year.
It seems the governors of some states in the U.S.A. have been receiving mysterious laptops, and no one is quite sure who is sending them, or what they may contain.
According to Computerworld, West Virginia Governor Joe Mahchin received a mysterious shipment of 5 HP laptops a few weeks ago that no one is quite sure where they came from. Seeing as the incident was just too odd, his office reported it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and they looked into it. It seems his office wasn’t the first to get such a shipment, nor was he to be last.
In total, four states received such shipments, and six more were scheduled, but those have since been held up from being delivered.
The belief is that these laptops may be true “trojan horses” with some sort of nasty surprise hidden inside of them to compromise security in the offices of these governors. Luckily the West Virginia governor’s office had the right mind set to report this and did not attach the suspicious computers to the network.
This is a great object lesson about never trusting any strange computer equipment. If someone hands you a USB thumb drive, and you aren’t 100% sure what’s on it, don’t use it. Same with laptops, desktops, PDA devices etc. Always be careful with unkown computer items.
It only took a few tries, but it looks like the full Facebook experience is finally making its way on to your iPhone.
While the Facebook application has dominated the most popular free application slot on the Apple App Store for ages, it has been lacking in a whole lot of functionality that users would like to have. Well, thanks to the 3.0 update, all of that has changed, and Facebook was kind enough to spell out everything that the new version will do.
In short, this new app will basically allow you to do everything you do on the full site, but on a mobile device. If you thought the old version of the app was popular, this one should just be explosive. It is available now, but it still needs a bit of time to show up in everyone’s iTunes and your iPhones and iPod Touches.
It looks like we can all look forward to the announcement of new iPod models being announced on September 9th.
For the past four years Apple has used a day in September to announce the new iPods for the upcoming holiday season. Well, rumors point to this holding true again for this year, and it looks like September 9th will be the day.
So far the biggest rumors are that the iPod Nano and iPod Touch will be receiving cameras, but the big news is centered around the rumor that iTunes will receive social networking compatability. No clue yet how exactly that will be executed, but my gut is telling me “Send the music track you are listening to out on Twitter” is probably a safe bet.
We will cover all of the latest news, but if you are thinking about buying an iPod right now, hold out a couple of weeks!
Ever had a charge show up on your credit card from a web site you forgot to join? Don’t worry, it isn’t just you this happens to.
Many subscription based web sites use a tactic called “opt-out” to their auto-renweing subscriptions to confuse consumers. What this means is that the site automatically sets your account to automatically renew each time your subscription expires. To stop it, you must go and change the setting yourself, which is known as “opt-out”.
Sadly I just went through something like this with Classmates.com, and I have no one to blame but myself at the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean it stings any less. You should always go to your account settings immediately after joining a site, look at your billing information and make sure there isn’t a checkmark next to something that says something like “this account will automatically renew at the end of your subscription.” Wording can vary quite a bit, so be careful, and read everything multiple times.
It would be nice to see every site adopt an “opt-in” policy, but that seems unlikely. Under that system you have to tell the site that you wish it to auto-renew as opposed to telling it you don’t want it to. It would be the friendlier thing for consumers, hence why it seems unlikely to ever happen.
Sometimes extended warranties may seem like a waste of money, but one my exception to this rule is on laptops.
I originally wrote about are Are Extended Warranties Worth It back in June of 2008, and at that time I said my one exception to not buying them was laptops. Well, this held true when I purchased a new Dell Vostro 1520, and I’m glad I did it.
The new laptop is great except for some odd problem with my ethernet port. For some reason after about 30 minutes of use it stops working, and then the only way to get it to work again is to reboot the system. Unfortunately that doesn’t always work either, so to the Dell service line I go.
While the agent I’ve been working with has been fabulous, and has tried a million things, it just simply isn’t fixing it. So this week they are sending out a technician to my office to replace the ethernert card for me. Barring that working we will be reimaging the entire hard drive in the possibility it is a software issue, but hopefully the new card will fix it.
This is one of the reason I always believe in these warranties for laptops. In my personal opinion it is just too much hardware shoved in to such a small space that it is almost destined to have problems. Repairing laptops for the average person is next to impossible, so the technicians are always the best choice.
Sure it would have been nice to see the computer work flawlessly out of the box, but defective parts can and do happen. The expenditure for the warranty can be a bit daunting, but when it comes to laptops, something more and more of us are coming to depend on, it’s worth it.
Ever gone on a trip and forgotten your charger for some rechargeable item? Thought about asking your hotel front desk to see what they have to help you out?
I’m currently on vacation (my first in 13 years) and I ran in to the most amazing idea at a Springhill Suites the other day. As I walked up to the front desk to check in, the clerk was helping two guests go through a large basket of cell phone chargers. Each was wrapped in a plastic bag and they were trying to find the one that would math the guest’s phone as she had forgotten her charger. I didn’t ask at the time, but I just had to satisfy my curiosity as to what was going on.
I went back up to the desk later to arrange for my airport shuttle the next day, and as the same clerk was working, I asked about the chargers. She said it was a basket full of the chargers people had left in their rooms and never come back to claim. The hotel opted to keep them as a courtesy to guests who forgot their chargers. While there was certainly no guarantee they would have the charger for your specific phone, it is better than running out to a store and having to buy a new one right away.
The clerk didn’t know if this was a chain-wide policy, but either way it certainly would never hurt to ask your front desk if they do such a thing. If more hotels aren’t doing this, they should. Although, hopefully with universal chargers on the way, it will become a whole lot easier for everyone to always find a charger.
