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just me. my current interests and stories for the interwebs.
Nows the time to take advantage of the Halo 2.0 with only a few days left is a VERY successful Kickstarter campaign. I wouldn’t be posting this if I didn’t back it!
Goes great on kids too especially around Disneyland at night!
Specifically for my motorcycle friends and enthusiasts, this is a tremendous product!
http://youtu.be/kpYClk58iR0
AT&T up to their usual antics again. Scamming, promising and under delivering. I'm just glad to have gotten off their internet and television service. Can't wait to disconnect my mobile phone service from their crappy "unlimited" LTE plan.
Before you get too excited, you need to understand that this is a bluff of immense proportion. It's what I affectionately refer to as "fiber to the press release."
Ever since Google Fiber came on the scene, AT&T's response has been highly theatrical in nature. What AT&T would have the press and public believe is that they're engaged in a massive new deployment of fiber to the home service. What's actually happening is that AT&T is upgrading a few high-end developments where fiber was already in the ground (these users were previously capped at DSL speeds) and pretending it's a serious expansion of fixed-line broadband.
via DSLReports
T-Mobile has been truly living up to its latest marketing campaign of being the "Un-carrier" launching Operation Tablet Freedom today. In part 2 of 3 in a barrage of promotions, you can now head on over to T-Mobile and expect to save the $100 to $130 for an LTE enabled tablet. Now, you don't have to decided whether or not it's worth it to go for the cellular enabled tablet because WiFi or LTE, they're the same price!
Beginning April 12th, customers can get nearly 1.2 GB of free 4G LTE data every month through 2014 on America's fastest nationwide LTE network.
Have a T-Mobile voice plan? Bring, buy or trade in a tablet and get:
- Up to 1GB FREE 4G LTE data per month through 2014
- PLUS up to 200 MB FREE monthly 4G LTE data for as long as you own your tablet
- Existing T-Mobile voice plan customers: Get our 1GB plan FREE after a $10 credit
And for further clarification, you'll still have the ability to take advantage of their 100% free 200MB data plan on the LTE enabled tablet that is owned and registered with T-Mobile once the calendar turns 2015. And you're still unsure about your T-Mobile coverage, head on over to their awesome map!
With the recent security flaw in OpenSSL, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, every major website is alerting you the change your passwords. Just this morning alone, I'm sure that most of you will have to go about and I advise that you do so now, change your Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Tumblr, GoDaddy, Dropbox and Soundcloud passwords just to name a few. Do it now and make sure that no two are alike! Lucky for me, I use AgileBits's 1Password which, by the way, is now multiple platform, so generating that 8-16 or even 24 character password is automatic. If you haven't read the various sites that are listing the vulnerable web services, I suggest your head over to either here, here or the master list and start working!
3 things you can do to protect yourself Wait for an official announcement from any secure website or service that you normally use regarding a security update.
After you've confirmed that the site or service has installed a security update, change your passwords.
For at least the next week, keep an eye on any of your sensitive online accounts (banking, webmail) for suspicious activity.
In the meantime, while websites are installing the latest version of OpenSSL to fix the bug, it would be a good idea to wait for confirmed updates on your favorite websites and services and then change your password, just to be as safe as possible.
Hundreds of episodes of Sesame Street and Pinky Dinky Doo that can be instantly accessed from your PC, Mac, smartphone, or tablet.
Awesome timing now that my daughter is almost two! Pair it with Levar Burton's Reading Rainbow and she'll have access to my entire childhood! Wait, where's Today's Special?
via SesameGo
The Anker 40W 5-port Family Sized USB Charger is by far the best charging station to carry with you on layovers, or have available at home when entertaining guests. More often than not, I've been finding myself in either the crew lounge, a hotel room bunking it up (read: saving money) or even around the airport scrambling to find a wall socket. Everyone needs to plug in usually via USB and charge their device so why not share a port? It's also the best way to become the most popular guy sitting at that lonely corner charging up your phone and / or tablet.
At the same time, why not grab a 3-foot USB Lightning Cable that's Apple Certified for only $14.99 so you don't find yourself standing too close to everyone! I grabbed two back in December and it's saved us that claustrophobic feeling. The only issue that I've had is that sometimes the Lightning Connector portion is too thick to bypass some cases but it's awesome nonetheless.
This is not one of those "Turn off every useful feature of iOS" posts that grinds my gears. My goal is to deliver practical steps to truly solve your iOS battery woes.
One quick thing before we start — 99.9% of the time it is not actually iOS that is causing your battery to drain quickly. I guarantee you that if you erased your phone and there were no apps or email on it, it would last for ages. But, no one uses their device like that, nor should they. Hopefully with these steps you will be living in iOS battery bliss while still using all the apps and features you love.
I will be reformatting my iPhone 5 again and start fresh with iOS 7.1. A few weeks ago, I installed iOS 7 which did posses amazing battery life, but after I started installing a few of the hundreds of apps that I use, my battery would eventually only last half a day! I'm going to have to start deducing what's really going on.
via OverThought by Scotty Loveless
You have 30-days from February 24th to opt out of Dropbox's new Legal terms which will benefit you in the long run. Trust me, do it now!
If you’re like me, you probably glossed over this update because gah, legalese.
Allow me to summarize what it means when a company wants to handle all disputes in arbitration:
No matter what they do (delete your data, privacy breach, overcharging, whatever), you don’t get to sue. Instead, THEY get to choose the arbitrator according to whatever criteria they want, and thus any dispute is decided by someone they’re paying.
via Quibbling.net
If you want to read in full the new terms of service that take Ito effect on March 24, click here.
At this time, my Early Termination Fees (ETFs) with AT&T are $155 for a line thats due in September of this year. Thats a prorated amount down from $350 in case you're wondering. Let me back up. If you've been following me on twitter, I've been fed up with AT&T's false advertising that sold me a few years ago for a service that CLEARLY said "Unlimited Data" for $30. I use FaceTime quite a bit,1 stream my baby monitor from hundreds of miles away, and sometimes just soak up youtube so yea, I'll easily go over 5GBs a month and trust me, hotel WiFi is horrific! I hate that they expect me to use it in place of a service that I pay for! So back to the story.
If I sell my Apple iPhone 5 64GB White to T-Mobile for $300 and they pay my ETF at $155, that's "$455" in my pocket. The only way they will "Unleash" you is if you trade in your phone, no exceptions. Then I have to buy a FULL priced mobile phone, desirably an iPhone 5s 64GB, for $799. That means, I still have to shell out $344 so that's not that bad of a deal right? That's actually incorrect. Let me explain. I'd be shelling out $499 for my new phone after the trade-in credit followed by a Mastercard Gift Card in the credit amount of $155 in approximately 8 weeks. So I'm out half a grand to "unleash."
If I can wait, and probably will, for just six more months, I can unlock my iPhone 5, sell it on the market for maybe $400 or more, then buy a full priced iPhone 6. So yes, I'm still out $399 but, here's where I could save. I could then bring it along with me to T-Mobile, and pay nothing leaving me with just the $70 Unlimited 4G Everything Plan plus a $10 SIM kit. When it comes down to it, I'll be out money obviously later in the year with me upgrading my phone but ideally, I'd rather T-Mobile just pay my ETF now and I bring my current iPhone 5 with me. That's what the deal should have been in the first place.
disclaimer: I signed a 2 year contract with AT&T for a subsidized iPhone 5 so ultimately, with the "Unleash" deal, you still end up paying full price for the device. I could save a bunch of money and purchase Google's Nexus 5 for $349 unlocked online instead but that's a whole other story of iOS vs. Android, etc. I'm not going to go there just yet.
And yes, it's pretty awesome that with the unlimited 4G Data you get an additional 2.5GB of tethering capability.
The Tesla Gigafactory announcement is here! I can't wait till the economies of this scale trickle down to everyone. One of the bigger questions is whether this awesome factory will be built in either Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona or Texas. I'm thinking that maybe Texas or Arizona might win this contract especially with how nice both states have been playing with other Silicon Valley companies. This about it. This Gigafactory will actually manufacture more batteries than the entire world does today!
As we at Tesla reach for our goal of producing a mass market electric car in approximately three years, we have an opportunity to leverage our projected demand for lithium ion batteries to reduce their cost faster than previously thought possible. In cooperation with strategic battery manufacturing partners, we’re planning to build a large scale factory that will allow us to achieve economies of scale and minimize costs through innovative manufacturing, reduction of logistics waste, optimization of co-located processes and reduced overhead.
The Gigafactory is designed to reduce cell costs much faster than the status quo and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013. By the end of the first year of volume production of our mass market vehicle, we expect the Gigafactory will have driven down the per kWh cost of our battery pack by more than 30 percent. Here are some details about what the Gigafactory will look like.
via Tesla
"We're doing this because it will generate sales, absolutely," Eagle told GameSpot. "I think it's a great deal for people in the UK to get a next-gen machine for £399 including Kinect, including Titanfall, in the box. Yeah, it's a great deal and hopefully lots of people will take up the offer."
So they're not having trouble outpacing Sony's still hard to find PS4? I'm thinking that although this deal is for the U.K. only, we'll see it soon here in the U.S. closer to Titanfall's release. Hell, I'm honestly contemplating it too but after seeing my 360 collect dust, I'm not holding my breath.
update: looks like its official that Microsoft is releasing a digital download version Titanfall bundle for $499.99 ultimately saving $59.99 for the game.
The Galaxy S5’s design is a minor evolution of the Galaxy S4 — in fact, the two are almost indistinguishable from the front. The S5’s display is ever so slightly larger at 5.1 inches, but it’s still a 1080p, Super AMOLED panel that doesn’t look very different from the S4’s screen. Below the display is a new home key with integrated fingerprint scanner and capacitive keys for multitasking and Android’s back button.
If they really just wanted to copy Apple again, I guess they could have just added a fingerprint scanner and updated health programs. Oh wait...
via The Verge
Selfiecity analyzes Instagram data for visual cues like head position, emotional expression, gender and age, in order to get a clearer picture of how (and how often) people actually take selfies in different cultures. “The idea was to confront the generalizations about selfies, which are not based on data, with actual data,” says Manovich. “We wanted to look at what the actual patterns are.”
It's not surprising that people from São Paulo are the happiest.