Oh! Gizmo

By Chris Scott Barr

Here’s a funny story to brighten up your Monday morning. A 15-year-old girl was walking down a sidewalk on Staten Island and fell into an open manhole. While that would normally not make for an amusing story, the girl also happened to be texting at the time, thus she was completely oblivious to the fact that there was a gaping hole in the ground. She didn’t get seriously injured, so we’re all free to laugh a bit.

In the girl’s defense, there weren’t any cones or markers around the hole, which doesn’t look good on the city. The girl fell down 4 or 5 feet into a mostly drained sewer, got a few scrapes and lost a shoe. The family is planning on suing the city for an undisclosed amount due the physical and mental anguish that the girl has endured. No, not the mental anguish for being stupid enough to not look where you’re walking, but the fact that the sewer was “putrid.”

Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

I’d hoped that I was done writing about Time Warner Cable for a little while. Unfortunately it seems that they are already back up to their same old antics, only this time they’re being a little more sneaky about it. At least before they were up-front and honest about their decision to screw their customers. When too many people raised a stink about it, they backed off, or at least they pretended to.

One TWC customer in Austin hopped on his computer to do a little surfing only to find that his internet connection was down. A quick call to the ISP revealed that his service had been intentionally disconnected due to excessive bandwidth use. Apparently this guy had the audacity to use 44GB in a week’s time on his unlimited internet plan. What a jerk.

The next logical step was for the guy to ask just how much bandwidth was “acceptable” so that he didn’t get his service shut off again. The lovely rep at Time Warner couldn’t give him any exact numbers, but said that it would be somewhere between a quarter and half of the bandwidth he was currently using.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

There’s something wonderful about the power of the internet. Not only do we have a vast supply of knowledge at our fingertips, but we the ability to change things. No, I’m not talking about Wikipedia entries, but rather our ability to directly influence the decisions of people and companies. The latest victory for the internet masses comes from Time Warner Cable. Yes, the very same Time Warner that’s been spreading the disease of metered bandwidth.

We’ve been following the story for the last couple of weeks since Time Warner expanded their plans to bring metered bandwidth to the masses. Like almost everyone else out there, I was completely against these plans. Well apparently Time Warner has actually been listening to the uproar and decided to cancel its trial of metered bandwidth plans. You can pat yourselves on the backs peoples of the interweb, this victory is yours.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

I think enough people have gotten fired over the stupid crap they post online that you know someone’s always watching what you say. So what do you think happened when a girl complains about a lack of torrents for a movie that’s still in theaters? You guessed it, someone at the movie studio found her tweet and took action. Of course the actions of the studio weren’t what you would expect.

It seems the Miramax Films has been keeping an eye out for people tweeting about piracy. In this particular case, a girl (we’ll call her Amanda, mostly because thats her name) posted on Twitter that there weren’t any Adventureland torrents up. Miramax saw the tweet and offered her a pair of tickets to go watch the movie in theaters. That’s right, they didn’t scold her for trying to watch their new movie for free. Instead they made sure that she had no problems viewing it without paying. Wow.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

Last week I brought you the news of Time Warner’s outrageous price gouging with metered bandwidth. Well it seems that there has been a bit of an update to the situation. No, they haven’t backed down, but rather given us some details on precisely how they are planning to screw their customers out of money.

Apparently the COO over at Time Warner has been listening to the outcry from the vast internet community, and decided to respond to our concerns. First, they know that some users out there spend only a few measly minutes a day checking their email, so there is now a plan for such people. They’ve also decided that they will be kindly putting a cap on overage charges. If you’re really worried about that bill at the end of the month, rest easy that you won’t see more than $75 in overage fees. Hit the jump for the full breakdown from COO Landel Hobbs.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

I remember a time long ago when I used to visit these very strange stores. I guess you would call them stores, but they were really more of a rental shop. Anyway, you would walk in and find the walls lined with movies that you could take home for a few days in exchange for several dollars. Of course if you didn’t bring them back by the designated time, you would be charged a fee. I hated those fees. Eventually technology advanced and no one needed to visit these stores anymore. You could either watch what I wanted by streaming it online, or with a few clicks have the movies sent to you via snail mail. Those companies that didn’t evolve to embrace the new technologies eventually died out, leaving only empty buildings in their wake.

It’s stories like that which I’m going to be able to tell my kids not long from now. Blockbuster, the largest movie rental store looks like it will be closing up in short order. They really don’t have much to offer the tech-savvy customers anymore, and rely on those that either haven’t hopped on the streaming bandwagon or are too impatient to wait a few days for their movie to arrive. Even if Blockbuster manages to find some more funding, I don’t suspect that they (or other movie rental shops) will survive more than a few years.

[ AP ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I get my lifeline to the interwebs through Comcast, which isn’t something I’m always happy with. The first year that I had them was filled with random 8-10 hour periods of downtime that they would try to tell me was “scheduled maintenance”. This was something that occurred once every week or two for several months, and despite the fact that it was scheduled, they didn’t ever actually bother to inform me, despite me updating my contact info every single time I called in. Oh, and I still can’t access my account online. They have to send me a PIN, which despite requesting it on no less than seven occasions, I still have not received. Are you ready for the shocker? Today I’m glad to have Comcast as my ISP.

Last year Comcast instituted a 250GB per month bandwidth cap. Believe me, that was not something that made me happy at the time. I watch most of my TV and movies online these days, and I figure that one of these days I’ll end up hitting that limit. Hopefully it will be a while before that happens. However, the reason I’m happy to be with Comcast is that Time Warner Cable has decided to infect several cities with their 40GB per month cap. Yes, that’s a whopping 40GB maximum usage per month.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Luke Anderson

Have you ever been browsing Flickr and thought that some of the pictures are just incredible? It’s true that there are a lot of great pieces up on there, which have been taken by amateur photographers. It seems that Getty Images has taken notice, and wants to pay some of those people for their excellent works.

Getty has entered into a partnership with Flickr to comb their database of images in search for pieces to license. The photographers would then be asked to participate in their program, which would compensate them (the same rates as Getty pays contracted photographers) for using their images. They would take the necessary steps to make sure the images are released and licensed legally.

I think this is a great idea for the amateur photographer that might want their work a little more recognized. Sure, if Getty purchases a pic from you, you aren’t technically amateur anymore, but you also don’t need a fancy studio or business to get your work purchased.

[via NYT]

By Luke Anderson

If you’re having a really bad day, doesn’t it help for someone to stop by your desk and tell them how fabulous and wonderful their life is? I know that I enjoy having someone else’s good day rubbed in my face makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If you’re needing that special pick-me-up, you can be sure that Blizzard will be more than happy to let you know that they’ve just hit over 10 million paying subscribers for World of Warcraft.

If you imagine that each one of those people are paying $15 per month, that would be $150 million dollars coming in each and every month. If that doesn’t make you feel great, I don’t know what will. For those wondering, yes, I would be one of those 10 million and no I’m not proud of the amount of time I’ve spent in Azeroth that I’ll never get back.

[ WoW ] VIA [ ReadWriteWeb ]