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Looks organic – I like it!

Here is the email I got:

AT&T and Yahoo! have a history of providing our members with award-winning, industry-leading Internet products and services at a great value. For some time now, we’ve supported two photo services: AT&T Yahoo! Photos and Flickr.

But even good things must come to an end. After careful consideration, we’ve decided to close AT&T Yahoo! Photos to focus our efforts on Flickr, the award-winning photo-sharing community that TIME magazine has called “completely addictive.”We will begin closing AT&T Yahoo! Photos in the coming weeks.

But don’t worry — during that time, we’ll move your photos to Flickr, where you will enjoy a Pro account at no cost (valued at $24.95 per year), as long as you keep your AT&T Yahoo! service.

Your AT&T Yahoo! Photos account will continue to be available to you until we begin moving your photos to Flickr. You will receive an email when the move begins, and another one when it is complete.

Are you already a Flickr user? If so, you will now have access to Flickr Pro at no additional charge. Associate your existing Flickr account with your AT&T Yahoo! email address to automatically receive Flickr Pro access.

We look forward to continuing to provide you with industry-leading Internet products. For more details about this change to your service, please visit our frequently asked questions.

AT&T Yahoo! Member Services

I also now work on a similar internal private blog these day to help out my friends – I may copy and paste some articles here for your convenience.

One note – I am very surprised by how many people actually were affected by the Starlogic monitor issue – that’s the # one article read I think.

Anyways, take care, and have a happy (and safe) holidays folks!

On my Logitech mx1000 mouse, the cursor started acting funny whenever I pressed the scroll button. I had to reset it each time. I know computers well, so I tried 2 different Logitech drivers (even tried without the logitech driver), and 2 different Windows machines. I got this from a friend (but is under the 3 year warranty). I called Logitech support. But the rep said that he cannot give me a replacement mouse, b/c the warranty is not transferrable.

The Mx1000 mouse is supposed to be top of the line mouse, around $70 originally purchased.

But now, only after 1.5 years, the rep and the supervisor both refused to reissue a replacement mouse, since the mouse was given to me, and I was not the original purchaser.

But my question is this:

Why do they not stand behind their mouse?

The lame supervisor I ended up speaking with gave me this logic.

“If someone ends up getting a new mouse for their warranty, and they give that defective mouse to someone else, then they can also try to get a new mouse and we don’t want that.”

I almost burst out laughing. I said, “Why don’t you take the defective mouse back?” He didn’t really answer that. But he did repeat that the warranty is not transferrable. I said I know that, but I’m asking WHY it’s not transferrable.

I asked, “Why does it matter who owns it? If the mouse works as it should, it would not matter, and therefore, you should stand behind your mouse, replacing it if it did indeed break due to manufacturing defect, as it was in my case.” He said many companies have non-transferrable warranties.

The supervisor did ask if I wanted to troubleshoot it. I said I tried 2 different drivers, 3 different machines, and I’m very computer saavy. It’s a hardware issue. Then he said I could buy a replacement one at half off, at $50. Yeah, right – I can buy a new mouse for that.

I wonder if anyone will even read this. But if you do, please please never buy another Logitech product, especially if it’s going to be a gift. If it breaks, your only option is to throw it away.

Logitech really really sucks.

There are 3 very fast ways to do this:

1.  Press your Windows key + M for minimize.  The fastest way.  The Windows key is between your Control and Alt keys on the lower left of your keyboard.

2.  Similarly, you can press Windows key + D (D for desktop).  This one is cool in that if you press the hotkey combo again, you’ll see all your windows maximized again.  Option 1 does not do this.

2.  If you insist in the mouse, you can do this – Right click on the toolbar on the bottom of your windows, you know, the one w/ the start button on the bottom left.  Select Toolbars > Quick Launch.  This will add some more icons to your toolbar.  Press the icon w/ the blue and white trapezoid to see your desktop.  You don’t have to do this whole thing every time. Next time, you can just press the icon, b/c it will always be there.

Anyways, I’m doing some spring cleaning, and I’m selling my stuff on ebay.

Right now, I have my koolsink mac powerbook g4 12″ aluminum stand for sale.

I used to have a 12″ powerbook, and I loved this stand. It’s aluminum to match the powerbook, and I used to use it when using my 17″ LCD hooked up to my powerbook g4. It really does cool your powerbook, and you can even check out more details on their site: www.koolsink.com

Anyways, since then I’ve upgraded to my MPB, core 2 duo, which I love – so no more need for this Koolsink stand.

It costs about $60 when including shipping, but I’m starting my bid at $15. Don’t let it get away!

I’m also selling my used video card, 128mb PCI express card. Bidding starts at only $1.

Good luck and happy bidding!

I’ll be posting more stuff later, but in the meantime, I want to give a plug for GarageSale, a mac software for posting ebay items. It’s awesome, and so easy! The templates are great! You should try it out – you can post up to 3 items for free as a trial.

There is even a feature to upload your whole gmail address book, but turns out this is not a good idea.

There seems to be a bug where if you don’t say a name right in the list, then it will keep asking you to choose one of the say 3 on the list.  But if the one you wanted to choose is not on the list, then you’re out of luck.  Need to hang up and call again.

Just keep a few in your Jott address book to minimize confusing Jott’s voice recognition system.

Note:  it’s in beta stage, so their website is a bit slow – hope it gets better.

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile! I’ve been busy over the Christmas season – but anyways, I have time now for about a 10 minute quickie commentary on the new iPhone by Apple.

If you’ve been keeping up w/ the news, there’s a lot of hype surrounding this phone. Believe me, I love macs myself, and I’m typing on one now, but I try to be pretty objective. I saw apple’s site about this iPhone, and the demonstrations are impressive if not mindblowing. I couldn’t help thinking “now this is a true smartphone, what a phone SHOULD be!”

I’m not going to bother you with the tech specs of this phone, b/c a million other websites probably do that by now.

But here are some questions you should ask before you think about if you want to shell out $499 (for the 4gb) or $599 (8gb) for the iPhone. Ask yourself:

1.  What are the features I really need in a smartphone? It looks like to you that you might want to use every feature, but get realistic. Do you really schedule your appts in your Mac now? If not, the calendar feature won’t be of any use, b/c you probably won’t do it on your Mac to sync it over to your iPhone. How does it handle to do lists or memos (both of which exist in Palm)? I didn’t see any presentation on that. I’m a major to-do list guy, I get nothing done without a good to do list with alarms. Can I enter one on the fly into the iPhone? Does it even have a To Do list? What about reading/editting Word docs? Palm does that, so does Windows. But the word is, iPhone will not have it. I mean, will Microsoft make an iPhone version of Office for them? I doubt it. Do you read ebooks? I do – a lot. Will the iPhone have an ebook reader natively installed? I hope so, b/c you can’t download and use one. The word on the street is that it will not support 3rd party apps, at least for now, so don’t count on some company stepping up to the plate to fill some functional gaps. So if having mobile office is important to you, iPhone may not be for you, unless you want to carry a separate PDA with it.

2.  Do you have the money? Did you count the hidden costs? What I mean by this is that just b/c you have $499, it doesn’t mean that you’re set to bring this iPhone home. First of all, how much is Cingular going to charge you? You will probably need to buy a new plan that includes a data plan so that you can access the internet – otherwise, what’s the use of an iPhone? So I guess that will be around an extra $40 per month (just a guess). That will mean an extra $480/year. Also, if you already have a cell plan w/ another mobile carrier, say Verizon, you will have to pay a cancellation fee of $250. Then, on top of that, you will probably want to buy a new nice case to protect your baby. Another $20-30. Then for you really careful guys, you will want maybe insurance? (yes, there are insurance companies out there that cover electronics/computers for accidental coverage – search ‘insurance’ in my blog, I’m too lazy to look it up). That will be more $/year. Total that up, and that’s the real cost of ownership, you do the math.

3.  What if you accidentally drop it and don’t have insurance? or stolen? or plain lose it? Self-explanatory, call me a pessimist… then you’re out loads of cash.

4.  Will another smartphone do the job for me for cheaper? For example, windows smartphones can do pretty much all that the iPhone can do in terms of functionality (minus the easy gestures w/ your fingers on the iPhone). Read about it here. I don’t know much about windows mobile, but I’m not sure if windows mobile can multitask, so that’s something to consider. Palm on the other hand, can’t multitask at all! They are so behind (yes, I own a palm myself) but they are banking on the Linux platform to save them, but no news about them in awhile, so I’m not sure how the development is going on that. I need to stop, I’m geeking out, not helping the average joe.

5.  Will the first edition of iPhone be stable enough? If you’ve followed the MacBook, or any new invention or major release software, you’ll know that the first release is always a bit buggy. MacBook and the MacBook Pro had some heating issues and other minor glitches (just google “macbook problems”). Also, the second edition of the MacBook Pro is much better, and less buggier – problems fixed. Problems that they probably knew about upon the first release. I’m not bashing Apple on this, it’s just expected for the first release of anything.

6.  Can this multifeatured iPhone not fall to early obsolescence? What I mean is, with all its bells and whistles, how long will it last? The rule of thumb for mechanical/electrical devices is that the more features it has, the more it’s prone to break down. For ex., how long will that nifty touch screen last? Will it be just as sensitive and responsive after 2 years? Something to think about. It’s made in China by the way (I heard), but then so are their laptops.

7.  Lastly, how long is the battery life? How long do I need it to be and how will it impact my routine? My guess is about 4-5 hours. But if you plan to use it a lot to watch movies and surf the web, I expect significantly less, perhaps 2 to 3? Is the battery replaceable? (I heard that it’s not, at least not unless you want to take it apart!). What if you don’t have your charger, and you need to make that crucial phone call? Even if you have your charger, uh, what if you are in a place with no outlet? It happens to me and my Palm at times.

I hope this brings you down to earth before it comes out in May/June ’07 so that you don’t just shell out $$ because you just found yourself drooling for it.

Whew, this was long, I think I might take another month long break!