Category: News

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AT&T to Kick It Old School with Blackberry Classic

blackberry_classic_946x432Sometimes you just need a good, old-fashioned, nostalgic, throwback. This seems to hold true for cars and football jerseys, and Blackberry is hoping it’ll spark some interest in their phones.

AT&T announced it’ll carry the BB Classic, which pairs their spiffy new BBOS 10 with the classic stylings of older BB handsets. Were you missing that old tic-tac keyboard experience? The Classic should be available early next year on Big Blue, and you can catch the full press release below.

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T-Mobile to Unleash Rollover Data in 2015 – Un-Carrier 8.0 Announcement

T-Mobile LogoI’ve been complaining about this for YEARS. Each month you buy a bucket of data. If you use more than that bucket you pay a penalty, but if you don’t use the whole bucket you don’t get a credit or a benefit. Instead the carrier takes your unused data and throws it away, and you pay full price for a new bucket next month.

Starting in January of 2015, T-Mobile will roll that data over into a special store they’re calling the Data Stash. It will come to all plans including data only Tablet plans. To sweeten the deal, customers will also start off with 10GB of data in their stash.

I’ve been hoping a company would do this since we moved over to data caps on cellphone contracts. I was so goofy happy, I jumped immediately into a Live Hangout and started throwing things.

The full T-Mobile press release is below, and they always put out funny releases.

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Amazon Slashes Pricing on Kindles and Fire TV for the Holidays

amazon holiday kindle saleIf you need that perfect last minute tech gift for the holidays, Amazon is hoping to entice you with some sales on their Kindle and Fire gear.

You can score $20 off Amazon Fire TV or a Kindle E-Reader, $30 off the Kindle Fire HD7 Kid Edition, but the big cuts are on the older Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and Fire Phone.

The Fire HDX tablet is getting a $125 price reduction which puts the 16GB WiFi version at $224, and the Fire Phone is dropping by a whopping $220 unlocked, bringing the price down to $229 OFF contract. I feel like I should repeat a joke about the Amazon FireSALE phone, but that might be in poor taste.

Links below for all the Kindle sales!
Amazon Fire Phone ($229)
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 ($224)
Amazon Fire TV ($79)
Kindle eReader ($59)
Amazon Fire HD Kid Edition ($159)

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Microsoft Updates Office for Android with Dropbox Support

microsoft office android app update somegadgetguyWe wrote about this partnership last month, but it looks like Microsoft and Dropbox are finally moving forward as cloud storage BFF’s.

In an update pushing out to the Office app for Android, one of the new features allows users to connect their Dropbox account to edit any Office compatible files stored there. Microsoft has also improved support for high resolution displays, hopefully making this app a bit more accessible to a variety of phone owners.

Now we’re just waiting on Dropbox’s side of this bargain, which was to release a native app for Windows Phone…

Microsoft Office Mobile for Android (Google Play)

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Google Play Store App Brings Back Purchase History

It’s been a frustrating omission in the Google Play Store app for some time now.

You’ve always been able to see every app you’ve ever had on any phone you’ve used, but for some reason Google removed the ability to track your purchases. An update coming soon to the Play Store will bring back the ability to track purchase history.

Screenshot_2014-12-04-21-24-40Once you get the update head over to “My Apps” then into “My Account”. From there you can see your payment methods, if you have any store credit, and below that HUZZAH! Order History!

Kind of a fun game to scroll back through everything to see my first app purchases. Apparently I started using Android during some kind of freak holiday app sale…

The updated store should be rolling out to phones over the next couple weeks!

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Google Accuses Microsoft of Copying Search Results on Bing

Ok. I’m a fan of Microsoft’s recent moves, but this is hilarious.

Engineers at Google started to suspect that Bing was copying their search results, so they set up a sting, tying nonsensical strings of letters to dummy web pages. Quickly after indexing each page and fake word search, Google Engineers found they could search for the same nonsense and get the dummy page on Bing.

google-hiybbprqag-cropped-1

Microsoft has yet to comment on the matter, but it would appear that not just consumers, but even Bing prefers Google…

Read up on the whole experiment and sting on Google’s blog.

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Communities in Kansas and Colorado Look to Build Their Own Public Broadband Internet

server rack front panelsThe problem companies face when communities lack competition for services like Internet? The community might try to roll their own.

There are laws on the books in twenty states preventing communities from building out their own public high speed and fiber broadband, but communities in Kansas and Colorado are looking to move forward on their own local offerings.

Seven cities and counties in Colorado voted during the last election to exercise an escape clause in their anti-competition legislation. All that was required was allowing a community to take a vote on the matter, and every community that put it up for a vote had it pass by a large margin. Boulder Colorado passed their measure with 84% of the voter turnout supporting it.

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US Government Acountability Office Wants FCC to Examine Home Internet Data Caps

gao-logoThe GAO released their report on Fixed Internet Usage and Usage-Based Pricing. The 41 page report details their testing and offers up their recommendations.

Their conclusion?

That the FCC should work with providers on educating consumers and developing a code of conduct for pricing and service. The FCC has already stated that they will be monitoring complaints to see if a more direct approach is necessary, but there hasn’t been much consumer uproar over capped home internet plans, especially as many groups are trying to influence the FCC’s “Fast Lane” proposal. With more of the focus on Net Neutrality and the upcoming Time Warner + Comcast merger, there’s probably far less noise being made about data caps.

This could become another battle soon however, as caps are another way ISP’s can enforce their policy and services to the detriment of their competitors, and it could have a chilling effect on consumer behavior. We’ve already covered Comcast’s horrifically bad “Flexible” plans, but it’s no surprise that more communities are following Chattanooga’s example and looking to build their own public data networks.

GAO Report: FCC Should Track the Application of Fixed Internet Usage-Based Pricing and Help Improve Consumer Education

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