Just received this announcement concerning Windows Phone 7 and Sprint. As of March 20th you will be able to get the HTC Arrive on the Sprint network.
Software: Internet Explorer 9 – Is now available
After a year of previews, beta’s, and release candidates, Microsoft has now released the latest version of Internet Explorer 9. Internet Explorer 9 includes the following (From Microsoft – LINK: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/help/ie-9/whats-new-in-internet-explorer-9 (http://windows NULL.microsoft NULL.com/en-US/internet-explorer/help/ie-9/whats-new-in-internet-explorer-9) )
Notification Bar
The Notification Bar that appears at the bottom of Internet Explorer gives you important status information when you need it, but it won’t force you to click a series of messages to continue browsing.
Search in the address bar
You can now search directly from the address bar. If you enter a website’s address, you’ll go directly to the website. If you enter a search term or incomplete address, you will launch a search using the currently selected search engine. Click the address bar to select your search engine from the listed icons or to add new ones.
New Tab page
The redesigned New Tab page displays the sites you visit most often and color codes them for quick navigation. A site indicator bar also shows how often you visit each site, and you can remove or hide the displayed sites anytime you like.
Enhanced tabs
Tabbed browsing allows you to move easily between multiple open webpages in a single window, but there might be times when you want to look at two tabbed pages at the same time. Tear-off tabs allow you to drag a tab out of Internet Explorer to open the tab’s webpage in a new window, and Snap it for side-by-side viewing.
Download Manager
Download Manager is a powerful new feature that keeps a running list of the files you download from the Internet and notifies you when a file could be malicious. It also lets you pause and restart a download—if you have a slow internet connection—and shows you where to find downloaded files on your computer. You can clear the list at any time
Pinned Sites
If you visit certain webpages regularly, Pinned Sites allows you access them directly from the taskbar on your Windows 7 desktop.
Streamlined design
The first thing you’ll notice when you open Internet Explorer 9 is the compact user interface. Most command bar functions, like Print or Zoom, can now be accessed by clicking the Tools button, and your favorites appear when you click the Favorites button. Otherwise, Internet Explorer gives you the basic controls you need, and lets the web take center stage.
Download links for Internet Explorer 9 leaked a few hours early, as spotted by Winrumors.com (http://www NULL.winrumors NULL.com/internet-explorer-9-rtm-download-links-now-live/):
Windows 7 (x86 version (http://download NULL.microsoft NULL.com/download/C/3/B/C3BF2EF4-E764-430C-BDCE-479F2142FC81/IE9-Windows7-x86-enu NULL.exe))
Windows 7 (x64 version (http://download NULL.microsoft NULL.com/download/C/1/6/C167B427-722E-4665-9A40-A37BC5222B0A/IE9-Windows7-x64-enu NULL.exe))
Windows Vista (x86 version (http://download NULL.microsoft NULL.com/download/0/8/7/08768091-35BC-48E0-9F7F-B9802A0EE2D6/IE9-WindowsVista-x86-enu NULL.exe))
Windows Vista (x64 version (http://download NULL.microsoft NULL.com/download/7/C/3/7C3BA535-1D8C-4A87-9F1D-163BBA971CA9/IE9-WindowsVista-x64-enu NULL.exe))
*NOTE – Internet Explorer 9 is NOT supported on Windows XP.
Alert: AT&T Offers Wireless, Wireline Billing Relief for Consumers Calling and Texting Family, Friends in Japan
AT&T’s taking a strong initiative in making sure their customers can reach their family in Japan without effort or worry. Effective immediately, all calls to the land of the rising sun that was just hit with a major tsunami caused by a major earthquake are free. It’s not unlike what other telecoms did when Haiti was hit with a similar natural disaster. Read below for the full details courtesy of AT&T. [Engadget]
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AT&T Press Release from PRNewswire (LINK) http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/att-offers-wireless-wireline-billing-relief-for-consumers-calling-and-texting-family-friends-in-japan-117921489.html (http://www NULL.prnewswire NULL.com/news-releases/att-offers-wireless-wireline-billing-relief-for-consumers-calling-and-texting-family-friends-in-japan-117921489 NULL.html)
DALLAS, March 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — AT&T (http://www NULL.att NULL.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=3309)* today announced it has implemented international calling and texting support efforts for U.S. residential wireless and wireline consumers trying to connect with loved ones in Japan, following last week’s tragic earthquake and tsunami.
Effective beginning last week, March 11, and continuing through March 31, AT&T wireless postpaid customers will not be charged for:
- International long distance usage from the United States and Puerto Rico to Japan
- Text messages to Japan, originated from a U.S. wireless number
In addition, and also effective March 11 through March 31, residential wireline customers can seek credits for up to 60 minutes of direct dial calling to Japan:
- Upon receiving their wireline bill, customers may call AT&T to receive adjusted calling for up to 60 minutes. In other words, no charges for up to 60 minutes of call time from the United States to Japan between March 11 and March 31.
For any of the above activity, customers will either see no charges reflected on their monthly statement, or they will see a full credit applied to their statement for activity between March 11 and March 31.
“We want to help our customers connect with loved ones in Japan in anyway we can,” said Mark Collins, senior vice president, Voice and Data Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Connecting with family and friends is most important at times like this— we want to make it as easy and worry free as possible for our customers.”
Still available, AT&T wireless customers can text “redcross” to 90999 to give a $10 donation to help the Red Cross with disaster support efforts in the area. No text message fees apply.
And, TV Japan – the 24 hour Japanese news channel – is available for free through March 17 to all U-verse® TV subscribers, allowing viewers to follow the news and recovery efforts. TV Japan can be found on channel 3680.
*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.
Internet: (ALERT) AT&T to impose a cap on internet usage starting on May 2nd. (From DSL Reports)
The following information comes this morning from DSL Reports (LINK) http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Exclusive-ATT-To-Impose-150GB-DSL-Cap-Overages-113149 (http://www NULL.dslreports NULL.com/shownews/Exclusive-ATT-To-Impose-150GB-DSL-Cap-Overages-113149). If you are an AT&T DSL user, and you are a power user (Someone who downloads regularly, or uses services like Netflix) you may want to consider getting a new service provider.
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(From DSL Reports)
Broadband Reports was the first to learn, and has confirmed with AT&T, that the company will be implementing a new 150GB monthly usage cap for all DSL customers and a new 250 GB cap on all U-Verse users starting on May 2. From March 18 to March 31, AT&T users are going to be receiving notices informing them of the change in the company’s terms of service. AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom confirmed the news to Broadband Reports after we initially contacted him last Friday concerning a leaked copy of the upcoming user notification. According to Bloom, the cap will involve overage charges. However, only users who consistently exceed the new caps will have to deal with these charges.
This is how it will work: only users who exceed the new usage cap three times — across the life of your account, not per month — will be forced to pay these new per byte overages. Overages will be $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit they travel.
AT&T claims their average DSL customer uses around 18GB a month, and these changes will only impact about 2% of all DSL customers — who the company states consume "a disproportionate amount of bandwidth."
"Using a notification structure similar to our new wireless data plans, we’ll proactively notify customers when they exceed 65%, 90% and 100% of the monthly usage allowance," AT&T tells us. The company also says they’ll provide users with a number of different usage tools, including a usage monitor that tracks historical usage over time, and a number of different usage tools aimed at identifying bandwidth-hungry services.
Regular readers will recall that this isn’t AT&T’s first experimentation with usage-based-billing. The company conducted trials of capped services and overages in Reno, Nevada and Beaumont, Texas in 2008 (http://www NULL.dslreports NULL.com/shownews/ATT-Metered-Billing-Trial-Hits-Second-Market-99389). Those trials involved users facing caps ranging from 20GB to 150GB — and per gigabyte overages up to $1 per gigabyte. The efforts were discontinued in early 2010 (http://www NULL.dslreports NULL.com/shownews/107012). In contrast to those trials, which involved capturing nearly all users in an overage net — this effort is aimed squarely at what AT&T considers consistently heavy users.
Misc.: It’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament 2011 – Bracket Time
Its time for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (2011). If you need a printable bracket for your office pool, CBS Sports has you covered. You can visit (LINK) http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/ncaa-tournament/brackets/printable_men (http://www NULL.cbssports NULL.com/collegebasketball/ncaa-tournament/brackets/printable_men) to print out a full bracket of this years tournament.
Android: Best Buy correction on HTC Thunderbolt
Seems that the new HTC Thunderbolt delay caught a few off guard. Here is a notice from my local Best Buy
(Publish from my Sprint EVO while at the Best Buy)
Facebook: Another scam alert – Fake Charlie Sheen Video scam
(From the register)
(http://www NULL.theregister NULL.co NULL.uk/2011/03/07/charlie_sheen_facebook_scam/)
Charlie Sheen fake filth flick powers Facebook survey scam • The Register (http://www NULL.theregister NULL.co NULL.uk/2011/03/07/charlie_sheen_facebook_scam/)
www.theregister.co.uk (http://www NULL.theregister NULL.co NULL.uk)
Scammers have exploited actor Charlie Sheen’s increasingly bizarre antics as a lure for the latest in a long line of survey scams on Facebook.
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Tech Geek and More Note
As always scammers are looking to use human curiosity against you. The want for the “latest train wreak” is now and has always been one of the best ways for a bad guy to be trick you into falling for his/her trap.
Remember -
- Keep your AV updated
- Make sure you have a Spyware program or 2 installed on your pc. I recommend having both superantispyware and malwarebytes installed on your pc. You can find both at www.ninite.com (http://www NULL.ninite NULL.com) (Listed about mid-page, and both are free, even though both may ask you if you want to upgrade to pay versions. The free versions are more than enough)
- Always make sure they you update not only your Windows Install and Office install by going to Windows update in Control Panel (Vista and Win 7) or by Going to (LINK) http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us which is the Microsoft Updates page (Win XP and earlier) (http://update NULL.microsoft NULL.com/windowsupdate/v6/default NULL.aspx?ln=en-us)
- DO NOT CLICK ON ANY link that you were not expecting, even if it appears to come from someone you know. (This is the Red Riding Hood theory. )
Android: Analysis of the DroidDream malware found this week (3/5/11)
The big news this week was the discovery of over 50 app’s on the Official Android Marketplace found to have a “rogue” malware included with the software. The applications with the DroidDream malware are copies of actual legit app’s, that the bad guys have modified to include the malware, then reposted back on the Marketplace, with the hope that people would just see the name of the app and not check on the publisher or date information. Considering how many downloads had this malware payload included, it does seem most people do not bother looking at the app’s info (Publisher, Date Published, Reviews, etc.) prior to downloading.
According to Symantec (http://www NULL.symantec NULL.com/connect/blogs/new-android-threat-gives-phone-root-canal), there were 52 total infected apps published to the Android Market: 21 by kingmall2010, 21 by myournet, and 10 by we20090202. They also claim that there were anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 downloads of infected apps before they were pulled from the Android market.
Cautions you should take
Security conscious consumers should be wary of the apps they install on their phone and only install apps from reputable publishers though the official Android Market. Here are some things to look for to identify an app from a reputable publisher:
- The publisher has a website with contact information
- The app is from the official and original publisher (i.e., if you are installing Angry Birds, ensure it’s from Rovio Mobile Ltd)
- App has a high number of downloads, ratings, and positive reviews
For those interested in the how this specific malware (DroidDream) works, there is an excellent analysis on the iss.net blog posted by Jon Larimer. (I will warn the non-geeks, that the information posted by Jon Larimer is very much at a Geek level) (LINK) http://blogs.iss.net/archive/Examining%20the%20recent.html (http://blogs NULL.iss NULL.net/archive/Examining%20the%20recent NULL.html)
Hardware: How to resolve SD Card issues (In Windows)
I ran into an issue this week when I attempted to format an 8 GB High Capacity SD Card inside of a camera and it failed to format. I then put the SD card in a pc and attempted the format from the pc only to receive and error and be unable to format the SD card.
The pc would report that the SD card was not formatted and needed to be. When I attempted to format on the pc, I would get an error that said “Failed to format the device”
In doing some research on this issue I discovered that there is an SD Association (Link: http://www.sdcard.org (http://www NULL.sdcard NULL.org)) and they have a free Program specially designed to format SD/SDHC/SDXC cards. The program called SD Formatter has the following advantage (From the SD Association Page)
This software formats all SD memory cards, SDHC memory cards and SDXC memory cards that comply with the SD File System Specification. SD Formatter provides quick and easy access to your SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards.
The SD Formatter was created specifically for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards. It is strongly recommended to use the SD Formatter instead of formatting utilities provided with operating systems which format various types of storage media. These generic utilities may result in less than optimal performance for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards.
So I downloaded the program called SD Formatter 3 and tried it on ,my SD card. Here are the steps for using SD Formatter -
- The application initializes with just one small screen.
- First, select the drive containing the card you wish to format. Likely, this will be E or F for most Windows users. Notice that when you select the drive, the size of the SD disk appears just below the selection. For the 4GB card used in this example, the size is recognized as 3.68 GB. (No Matter what size SD card you use, the size will report just a little bit smaller due to formatting requirements).
- Next, click Option to select how you want the SD card formatted. A dialogue box appears with a dropdown menu listing three “format type” options.
- The first, Quick, is simply a standard wipe of the disk—all data currently on the disk will be erased.
- The second, Full (Erase), will put the disk into a proper SD format, be aware that even though this lists as Erase because it does a simple delete vs. overwrite, it may still be possible (Its not easy but could be done) to recover the files that were on the drive.
- The third option, Full (OverWrite),—is the option you will want to use most often, as it formats the card properly, while giving it a fresh start with no old data left on the disk at all. Not all cards support this, but if you choose this and the card does not support the option, the formatter automatically reverts to the second “erase off” option during the formatting process. (NOTE: With this option, when its gone, its gone!)
- Under the Format Type dropdown menu is a second menu called “format size adjustment” that asks if you want to try to increase the amount of space on your SD card or not. Turning this option on will allow you to use the maximum space possible on your SD card. Once you have made your selection, click OK.
- You will be brought back to the original formatter screen where it should display the options you just selected:
- Click Format. If you select Quick you will be informed that “Data may be retrieved after quick format. Meaning that it will not completely overwrite what is on the card. (However, you will need special recovery software to retrieve files from the card as all the pointers that would show you the files when you look at the drive will be removed, so the card will appear blank) Click OK
- Finally after that you will be asked one last time if you are sure you want to do this. If you are sure, click OK.
- A new dialogue box then displays the status of your formatting efforts. For the options selected above, it first erases all files from the disk, then formats it. If you are using a larger disk, as in this example, this process will take a few minutes. Do not turn off your computer or remove the disk until the entire process is complete.
When complete, a dialogue box appears telling you the results of the formatting process.
With that you should now have a very usable SD card.
Software: Live Mesh Beta closing on March 31, 2011
Microsoft has announced that they are closing Live Mesh beta. For those who has used it, you have until March 31st to download and save any files you have posted your Mesh. Here is the email from Microsoft making the announcement.
