Apr
25
The deal announced in February wherein AT&T Wi-Fi will replace T-Mobile Hot Spots in 7,000 Starbucks locations is going ahead. Like many T-Mobile users who already have been long using Starbucks as an office away from home, I’ve kept my head in the sand and each time I’ve passed a Starbucks, I’ve taken comfort in continuing to see the T-Mobile logo in the window. I had hoped the deal had just gone away.
But no, AT & T has started their rollout in San Antonio, TX area Starbucks stores making the Texas city the first “to deliver the complete AT&T Wi-Fi
experience in the U.S”, a possibly dubious honor.
As of May 1, “qualifying” AT&T customers can connect to the Internet from Wi-Fi enabled company-operated Starbucks locations nationwide. “Free AT&T Wi-Fi service is currently offered with AT&T’s three higher-speed residential broadband
packages, all small business broadband packages and with all AT&T U-verse(SM) offerings with high speed Internet service.”
For the rest of us shlemiels, “AT&T Wi-Fi service will reach company-operated Starbucks locations on a market-by-market basis throughout the year.”
How will we buy the service? “The experience will include a mix of free and paid connection options for both frequent and occasional Wi-Fi users and qualifying Starbucks customers.”
Stay tune, This deal will probably be good for all those annoying iPhone users.
Apr
25
He drinks urine, of course.
Shown being demonstrated at the Kyota Airport, he can clean a urinal in 10 seconds and save 8 liters of water.
Want one for home? He weighs 220 lbs. and costs about $1000, but would look cute sitting next to your refrigerator.
Why an elephant? Why not? Probably the trunk metaphor.
Via Gizmodo
Apr
24
Virtualization Giant Reports Strong Quarter
Filed Under Tech, Virtualization | Comments
VMware, the Microsoft of virtualization, just reported first quarter results. As if one needed other evidence, virtualization is a very healthy industry. Revenues were $438 million, an increase of 69% compared to the same quarter last year.
If you want to know where virtualization is going — international revenues increased 74% driven by “triple-digit business growth across Australia and emerging markets including Brazil, China, India and Russia.”
And the state of the market is good - VMware expects 2008 growth of approximately 50% compared to 2007.
Apr
24
Interesting idea here. Tell Cookthink.com what ingredients and cuisines you’d like in a recipe and a set of recipes that match your criteria is suggested (in theory).
We entered noodles + broccoli + Asian and got a decent list of Asian noodle recipes, unfortunately not many included broccoli, though we guess we could always have our broccoli on the side.
We liked that when we mis-spelled broccoli it corrected us (two cc’s and one i, evidentially). There’s also a cooking blog and a cooking reference.
If there was a little more explanation for the cognitive dissonance between the ingredients entered and the recipes offered this site would be a star.
Technorati Tags: cooking, web 2.0
Apr
23
New Investment Opportunities in the Flesh
Filed Under Chaos, Entrepreneurware, Oddness, Sex | Comments
Looking for new investments?
They call themselves the World’s Oldest Bull Market, AdultVest is an investment organization for the adult industry. AdultVest has just made its first investment in iPorn.com a company that creates “adult” content for mobile devices such as phones and ipods.
AdultVest was founded by Frank Koenig, a former New York hedge fund manager and Merrill Lynch staffer.
Links from the company’s website allow you to pitch your adult business idea or if you are “talent”, pitch your project to be funded.
Porn Factoids from the AdultVest site:
- “Adult” search requests - 68 Million Daily
- 25% of all search requests are “adult” in nature
- $57 Billion Annual Revenue for Adult Industry
- 72 Million Adult Website Visitors Daily
Apr
22
This 5.8 lb Everex gbook VA1500V laptop is priced at $399. It comes complete with a 15.4″ screen 1.5 GHZ processor, 512MB RAM, a 60GB hard disk, 802.11b/g wireless and a Linux-based distribution for an operating system and all the software that Linux makes available.
This a pretty cool laptop for the entrepreneur on a limited budget. Software has become a commodity why pay for Windows and Windows apps? There are no productivity apps that isn’t available either open source or online from Google or Zoho.
The Fremont, CA-based Everex calls themselves The Alternative PC Company. They have a nice line of reasonably-priced computers based on open source software.
We found this laptop as low as $349 being resold by newegg.com.
Apr
22
Computer Crime Charges to Entrepreneur
Filed Under Computer Crime | Comments
A Connecticut woman was charged with selling pirated computer software on eBay. It seems Julie Pollowitz was charged with first-degree computer crime, second-degree forgery and sixth-degree larceny. A Louisiana man said that he paid her $87 for software that was pirated and unworkable.
When police searched her home they found 54 CDs with illegally copied software. Police say she copied about $10k of software and sold copies to unsuspecting buyers.
Pollowitz told police that she didn’t know copying software was illegal and that “everybody does it.”
A few comments here
- what if the software had worked? What the buyers objection to “pirated” or unworkable?
- Was it a customer support problem? If Julie had made things right with her buyer would he have filed charges?
- Surely everyone past elementary school knows the “everybody does it” defense doesn’t work
- Does she get any credit for starting a low-margin home business?
Computer Crime Charges — Courant.com:
Apr
21
Infosecurity Europe did a “survey” where members of the public in the UK were asked to fill in a survey that included sharing their password — 45% of women gave up their password — the reward for filling out the survey was a bar of chocolate. The big store was that only 10% of men gave it up for chocolate, of course it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a reward that would make men give up a password pretty quickly.
The story seemed to have legs because it was the usual fluff that showed the silliness of women and dependence on mood altering substances like chocolate. No mention was made as to whether the passwords given were real or just a way of getting free chocolate.
CBR carried the story with a straight face
The Inquirer, at least, thought it was funny
Apr
21
AmazonMP3, launched in September, is second to Apple’s iTunes Store in selling downloaded tracks of music, but the difference between number 1 and 2 is a huge one — Apple iTunes sales were 10x that of Amazon according to market research firm NPD.
Other interesting factoids are that the iTunes store has now beat out Walmart as the top music retailer.
The NPD study shows no evidence that Apple customers are leaving iTunes for the DRM-free environment of AmazonMP3. Not surprising really — most people are going to put the music on their iPod anyway so who cares about DRM, the only real concern is how easy is it to take the song and put it somewhere I can play it. DRM or not DRM is a theoretical and boring argument for most people. When they copy music, it’s to put it on an iPod.
Apr
14
Clinton’s pandering for votes in Pennsylvania has her becoming the down home candidate. We’re waiting of the pictures of the gun rack that she and Bill must have had in the White House limousines.
Her new-populism should please John Edwards and Willie Stark. Odd to make the first African-American candidate into a white elitist.