Imagine you and your spouse are having dinner, when they suddenly collapse. Unaware of what is happening, you run to the phone to dial 911 only to find you have no signal. How could this happen? You use an Internet phone, but you paid for a full year and should have service.

This could have been the case for subscribers of SunRocket’s VoIP service when the company went out of business Friday without alerting its 220,000 customers. Customers of SunRocket paid a set $199 for a year of unlimited calls. It is unclear if those that paid will be credited.

The disappearance of SunRocket is a hit to both the independent telecommunications industry as well as progressive Internet technology. Read more…

People often ask me as a single man how will I know when I have found Ms. Right; that perfect woman that I’ll want to spend my life with. Well, there are a couple things a woman could do that would lead me to believe she was the right one:

To start, she could be wearing these earrings when we met.

If we dated for a while and I decided to propose, she could request this for her engagement ring.

On our wedding day, she would want a cake like this one.

It’s tough to live up to the hype…

via Gizmodo

The Simpson’s movie hits theaters on July 27, and like most movies it will be accompanied by a video game release. While most video games that accompany movies tend to be crap, this one looks different. In an interview about the game, Simpson’s creator Matt Groening reveals:

They (game writers Matt Selman and Matt Warburto) did a send-up of videogames. It’s a videogame about videogames; and I’m in the videogame. I’m a boss that you have to fight at the end of the game. It was really fun recording a million ways of dying, going ‘UGGH, ARGGH, EUURGH!

No release date on the video game from EA. Read more at Eurogamer.

What do you call a business model where between a third and a half of your products fail?  While most would say a disaster, Microsoft calls it normal.  Numerous sources are reporting the failure rate for new Xbox 360′s is between 33 – 50 percent.  The numbers are absolutely startling.  Microsoft has stated they will guarantee the 360′s for three years, and plans to spend $1.15 billion on repairs.

So if you are planning on buying a next-generation gaming console, do you take the chance on buying an Xbox 360, knowing you have a one in three chance of it dying on you?  What happens if you buy one and it crashes after the warranty expires?  Does this news prevent you from buying a 360?

So how are the other consoles responding to the news?

Read more…

Backing up your computer before you take it in to have work done by a third party is essential. There are too many horror stories where people take in their computer and bring it back with a blank hard drive. Apparently before taking your computer to Best Buy to have their “Geek Squad” examine it, you should also lock any sensitive documents, including porn. The Consumerist took their computer in to have iTunes installed, and noticed the Geek Squad grabbing their most personal of personal files.

The way The Consumerist has there site setup, I am not able to embed the video on this blog, but you can view it along with the details here.

Last week I commented on NY Times reporter David Pogue’s wonderful review of the iPhone. This week, Pogue take it a step further giving us “iPhone – the Musical”

A recent study by Harris Interactive states that a typical mid-sized business that leaves its computers on overnight wastes more then $165,000 per year in electric costs; more then $1.72 billion wasted in the US alone. The article continues:

Simply by turning off machines during night hours, the report says, the average business could also eliminate 1,381 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, which translates to nearly 15 million tons nationwide.

I recently started shutting my home computer down at night after a friend told me how much he saved on electricity by shutting his down. Unless you are downloading something completely legal, what’s the point of keeping your PC running at night – unless like me you use it as a heater in the cold months.

Read the Register’s article. 

The iPhone, the latest uber-hyped creation by Apple comes out this Friday, but the frenzy over this cell phone started when it was announced in early January. Within the last week the hype has exploded, as this miracle of technology is released Friday. People in NYC and San Francisco are already standing in line, over 100 hours before the phone goes on sale. If you are too important or impatient to stand in line yourself, you can always hire iWait to do it for you.

While the iPhone is defiantly a cool gadget, there is one huge problem and reason people initially should avoid it.

Read more…

Mark Cuban has a great article discussing the future of music on his blog. In it, Cuban discusses making music available everywhere. This is a much better plan then the RIAA’s current “sue-your-customers” theory.

I would find a manufacturer of cash machines, the ones you see in every bar, restaurant, mini-mart and retail outlet and work with them to reconfigure the machines so that they can hold a hard drive that can be updated with new songs via wired or wireless internet access and whose screen can offer a simple interface for people to select music. The consumer plugs in their SD card from their phone, or plugs the USB cable attached to the machine into their IPod or similar device and the music selected, downloaded and debited to the customers credit or debit card. Pay the machine host a commission, or a per transaction and everyone goes home happy.

Read the article here

It’s been a little over a week since Apple released its Safari web browser for Windows. Apple is currently banking its reputation will inspire users to download their browser over the open-source alternative Firefox.

For most people, the addition of another web browser on the market means very little. For geeks like me, it means a third web browser to play with (along with Firefox and Opera). However for small businesses that do design work, the addition of Safari for Windows may equate to a significant cost savings.

Read more…

PC Pitstop has a great video comparing how much “bloatware” come installed on different brands of PC’s. Sony is the king, followed by HP and Dell. All the more reason to do a clean install of Windows after purchasing your new PC.

Watch the video below.

Apple’s World wide Developers Conference keynote address came and went a couple days ago, with little new to show. Notorious for dropping big announcements at the event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs mostly discussed the new Leopard operating system for Macs before informing the world that Safari Web browser would be available for Windows. I believe it is only a matter of time before Apple starts forcing Windows users to download their browser (which pales in comparison to Firefox) when they update their iTunes/Quicktime.

However, the biggest announcement for fanboys didn’t receive much coverage. However, it could be the catalyst that sways more users to make the switch to Apple.
Read more…

Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and co-editor of the website Boing Boing has a great article about urban surveillance. He discusses how cities have incorporated cameras on every street corner, to the point where a resident of London is photographed over 300 times a day. The problem is cameras report what has happened; rather then stop it from happening like a police officer would. A friend of mine who recently returned from London discussed how she was “gently mugged” while in the heart of the city. Cameras create a surveillance state where everyone is viewed as a possible perpetrator of a crime and recorded accordingly. Doctorow states:

The city of the future is shaping up to be a neighborly Panopticon, leeched of the cosmopolitan ability to see, and not be seen, where every nose pick is noted and logged and uploaded to the Internet. You don’t have anything to hide, sure, but there’s a reason we close the door to the bathroom before we drop our drawers. Everyone poops, but it takes a special kind of person to want to do it in public.

The trick now is to contain the creeping cameras of the law. When the city surveils its citizens, it legitimizes our mutual surveillance–what’s the difference between the cops watching your every move, or the mall owners watching you, or you doing it to the guy next door?

Read the entire article.

The Recording Industry Association of America has recently threatened college students that use peer-to-peer file sharing programs to download music illegally.  Since the days of Napster, file-sharing software has been the bane of the music and software industry.  Recent advances in technology and software have made it easier to download movies, much to the chagrin of the Motion Picture Association of America.

In an open letter posted on InsideHigherEd.com, Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America explain their position.  “[T]here is broad understanding of the impact from this activity, including billions of dollars in lost revenue, millions of dollars in lost taxes, thousands of lost jobs, and entire industries struggling to grow viable legitimate online market places that benefit consumers against a backdrop of massive theft.”

Thousands of lost jobs?  Did this mean music companies would be forced to fire bands?
Read more…