Back to basics on this show and, I tighten up the timeline. Lots of tech as always and a huge number of comments have come in pre-show… Today I try pulling unique articles from Google+. Hope you like the new sources.

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Listener Links:
Tele-Coils
Netflix -800k
Ive versus Jobs
Jobs top Seller Amazon 2011.
Tsunami Debris & Hawaii.
Hard Drive Shortage.
Really See Through Walls.

Show Links:
Sprint to Apple we have a Problem.
Sprint to Users Screw You!
Have a Moon Rock?
Apple product prices cheaper?
Google Antitrust Actions?
Ten Themes on Jobs Book.
FOIA no we don’t have that
Solar Panel War.
WiFi Saturation.
7 Billion!
AT&T asks to Kick Sprint.
Siri + iPad = No one Home.
Google eyes Europe Fiber.
iTunes Dev Building iTV?
Google Reader Change.
Jobs gets Last Word?
Origins of Podcasting.
Macbook Pro Upgrades.
Cool Video.
Prison Tech.
Mosquitoes Genetically Modified.
10 Million iPhones in China.
Best Post It Note Yet.
iPad 2 Security.
Shelby.TV
Find Software.
MonoPrice.com #1
Happy B’day iPod.
Cloud Storage Concerns.
35,000 Windows Phone 7 Apps.
Amped Wireless.
Supernote cool App.
Android Tablets 27%.
Printed Chip.
Congrats Arianespace.
Extreme Pi.
95,085 Record.
Hacker Things.
Divided Brain RSA Animation.
Pen Star Video.
60 Minutes Steve Jobs.

Credits:
Jack Ellis – Executive Producer
Mike Baine – Associate Producer

You will love the rack overheat alarm going off in the middle of the show. Adds for some comedy and bewilderment by me as I have never heard that alarm coming out of the rack. Lots of great tech news and the show goes way long tonight. Will get that back in check as I do not have to report on “All the News”

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Show Hotline 24/7 1-619-342-7365 or e-mail geeknews@gmail.com

Listener Links:
SteamPunk Synth.
iris versus Siri?
Magnet Magic.
Wow How about this one.
Big Brother E-Toll watching us.

Show Links:
Privacy in College.
No Privacy on Mobile.
Baby Play Staged?
RIM new whipping boy.
Sony Style?
Amazon Lockers.
Bill Shock Notices?
Einstein still right.
GE Solar.
Mobile Camera Showdown.
Playbook Plea?
Traffic Stats during RIM Blackout.
Battle for Public Domain.
Warner Brothers Clueless.
ICANN says bring it on.
Happy Birthday Email.
Cyborgs are Us.
QR Code Test.
iPad and iOS 5
Chime.in Launch.
Apple to show us the Money.
SOFIA!
Jobs Memorial.
Ceglia Tells Lawyer to Tell Judge NO!
T-Mobile 4g Unlimited.
Green Macbooks?
Amazon cleaning House.
500px App Rocks.
Did we get lucky?
Find My Friends = 1st Divorce.
Caffeine Express.
Magnet Madness (MUST WATCH).
Radical Moog Synth on iPad.
Instapaper App.
Mark Cuban on OWS.
Asteroids are Coming.
Our Last Transit of Venus!
Virgin Atlantic in Images.
Virgin Atlantic Signs NASA Contract.
Siri Then and Now.
H.265 Spec due in Feb.
iPad replace Playbook.
100 Year Space Mission?
Fake Voice.
Vdio can it Deliver?
Android Fragmentation.
iCloud or Google??
Siri Fix.
iPad Case Comments.
Black Friday PS3 Package.
Your Kidding Correct?

Credits:
Jack Ellis – Executive Producer
Mike Baine – Associate Producer

iPhone

When the folks at Sonic Alert reached out about a month ago and asked me if I would like to review the Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock and Bed Shaker I did so under one condition. That condition was that if it could get my  14 yr old out of bed in the morning, then I would declare it the best alarm clock ever made.

I am here to report that the Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock & Bed Shaker is the best Alarm Clock ever made! My 14 yr old daughter is a night owl like me, and she could sleep through anything to include being an absolute bear to get moving in the morning. I have half a box full of so-called alarm clocks that even if taped to her eardrum would not wake her up. Here is what Sonic Bomb does different. The Alarm while loud 113 db comes with the “bed shaker module” thus the alarm clock is the two piece combination. On the first night I strategically placed the shaker in the middle of her double sized bed, one part touching the mattress the other touching the wood base that supports the mattress. I placed the Sonic Bomb out of reaching distance for maximum effect.

The first time it rang she took about 10 seconds to get up cussing the thing out confusion factor on here part on how to shut it off made it the comedy event of the week. The true test was three weeks in, if it could still wake her up then we would have a winner.  She has developed some strategies to try to defeat it but overall she is still getting up on her own. The folks at Sonic Bomb could improve the design just a little. Make the cable that plugs into the alarm from the shaker one that attaches via a locking knurled knob versus a plug . It is way to easy to unplug the shaker. Make the shaker cable about 5 ft longer would help as well, getting the alarm clock out of slap distance is important with a 14 yr old.

But overall this thing is better than any Big Ben any day of the week. The $42.00 price tag may scare some, but I have an annoying Seiko alarm clock that cost $50.00 that I was given as a gift in Japan 30 years ago that still is annoying enough to get me to roll out of bed.

We are getting double duty out of the Sonic Bomb because my boy’s room is next door to their sisters, and it usually motivates them to get moving as well. One thing for sure a lot less yelling to wake up is going on here in the morning. Believe me I have done everything in the arsenal and then some in the past to get the kids to roll out on their own. Someday I will talk about the bucket of water I used on my podcast sometime.

So if you have a person in your home that sleeps through anything, and hates to get up in the morning check out the Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock & Bed Shaker. If nothing else you will get some good vibrations from the 113 db alarm and the pulsing of the bed shaker to start your day off with..

Disclaimer: Sonic Alert provided a free review unit to test and tested it we did over the course of 30 days!

Guest Rob Greenlee from Zune and Jeffrey Powers from Geekazine and dig into what has been happening in tech and trends that we are seeing develop along with the popular memes. Subscribe to The Saturday Morning Tech show. This show is recorded every Saturday that I am home, it is currently advertiser free, we hope that you will support the show by becoming an insider.

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Well the 64,000 question is, will my voice hold out through the 24hr Podcast. It is going to be touch and go… Doc loaded me up with meds yesterday and hopefully they start doing there magic. Back here in Hawaii, I have a monster show for you hope you enjoy it. I will see all of you here at 11am EST on Saturday for the 24hr Podcast. Spread the word on the net we want you here.

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Listener Links
3G/4G Review
AT&T Blocks Linux Configuration.

Show Notes:
Opportunity Making History.
Pressure Check to be Accomplished.
Supernova Relic.
Where in the Universe.
Massive Storm on Saturn.
Linked In App for Android.
Nexus S Jail Broken.
Playstation iPhone and Android App.
Wi-Fi Analysis Tool for your Phone.
Flipboard Updated for Google Reader.
Google Maps Updated for 3d.
Monitor Accessories.
Google Fiber Announcement Next Year.
Rim doing better than Expected.
New Years Eve resolutions assistant Sites.
HTML5 Tool from Microsoft for Firefox.
Amazon Top 20 Christmas Songs.
Vimeo Video Tutorials.
Facebook your next Social TV Guide?
Nice Xbox Headsets.
Personal Accessories.
Quiet Cars to be made Noisy!
AltaVista and Delicious RIP.
More Site Take Downs.
Chumby Phone App.
Soyuz to ISS.
California Carbon Trading?
CR48 Review.
Bing Making Ground.
T-Mobile says they will compete on Data Speeds.
New UFO.
Twitter 200 Million more!
Cyber War?
TPN Weekly.
Online Video Trends.
Opera 11 Now Available.
Stuxnet like Military Strike.
More Record Label crying.
UK 1.2 Billion illegal Media Downloads?
FCC Net Neutrality Issues.
Broadband Pricing Down Worldwide up US.
Virgin Galactic to ISS?
Nike Sues Customer.

In GNC #539, Todd related the problems that brick’n'mortar stores were having competing against the online retailers and I agree entirely with Todd’s sentiments. While I’m happy to use Amazon et al for specialised purchases or gifts to faraway relatives, I now regularly buy from local stores to try and keep them in business.

And do you know what?  Although it started out as a point of principle, I’m actually discovering that I can sometimes get things cheaper or else I get some freebies thrown in.

To illustrate, while shopping this Christmas, I would price goods on Amazon and then go into town to see what I could get in the real world.

1) In a local toy shop, K’Nex was being sold 2-for-1 at a price only 10% more expensive than Amazon.  Gift just went twice as far.

2) In a sports shop, a “brand name” golfing jumper was being sold with a free box of six golf balls, again at a price very similar to online golfing retailers.  The recipient is always in the water with his shots anyway….

3) The main bookstore was offering best-sellers on three for the price of two, basically a third off, pretty much matching Amazon.  Great for stocking fillers.

So I encourage you to get off your backside and at least see if your local stores can come close to matching the online retailers.  Sure, if they’re wildly uncompetitive, walk away, but at least try to keep some of your money in local circulation.  Local businesses support other local business and we need them to keep our communities thriving.

When eBay was fresh and shiny and new, I spent a lot of time there. I bought things that I needed, sold things that I didn’t need, and had good experiences. It was like going garage saling without having to get in the car, with a few perks like the ability to search for something I wanted, and to compare prices on comparable items. When I got married ten years ago, I paid for my wedding dress with proceeds from eBay sales of things I didn’t need anymore. eBay was the first place I looked when I was looking for a specific item.

Ah, those were the days. Now, when I head over to eBay, it’s mostly “power sellers” that are really just big warehouses of closeouts, lots of over-priced Chinese knock-offs, and plenty of businesses in the business of buying crap at flea markets and reselling it on eBay. It’s not the first place I go to anymore when I’m looking for something. Searches I’ve done recently for simple items like netbook cases or sewing patterns have brought up mixed results at best. One of the things I dislike about the eBay search model is that it doesn’t allow you to search within your search results to narrow down your choices. And what I really dislike is how overpriced things seem to be. In my search for a netbook for my daughter for Christmas, I of course took a look over there, but found that the prices were higher than purchasing the same item through a more traditional online retailer (I ended up with an HP Mini 10.1 from OfficeMax for an unbelievable price, for those that are interested). I haven’t seen a reasonably priced computer on eBay in years.

I don’t doubt that eBay still has its value. If I’m looking for a particular thing, like extra-long jeans of a certain brand, or a collectible teapot, eBay is still a great resource. But that is so specialized, and I don’t believe that that is where eBay is making its money in sales fees. A $400 netbook when I can get the same one for $250 delivered from a big-name retailer is not a bargain, and dilutes the value of the eBay brand, in my opinion. Yes, everyone wants to make a dollar or two, I understand that, of course, but when making a dollar borders on gouging, I have to wonder about the business practices of the organization running the show.

What does eBay want to be? Is it ready to devolve into a place full of out-dated closeouts and overpriced Chinese knock-offs? Because that appears to be where it’s headed. And how do they fix what is broken to clean up their act (or the act of their sellers)? I wouldn’t know where to start, but if they want to be Amazon (their main competitor at the moment) then they need to find a way to fix what is going downhill in a hurry.

Ah, eBay. I knew you when…

I had so much content tonight that I could not cover it all, here the shock in my voice at 1:03 . Listen to the show for the promo code tonight to enter to win at PodcastMadness.com you cannot win unless you listen. Special prize next Tuesday for one listener that enters to win.

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Podcast Madness Shows to listen to Week 2
Bwana.org Radio
Geekazine
Jesus Geek

Listener Links:
Satellite to cut cell phone dead areas
Jet Powered F150
New Class of Black Hole
Inflatable Tower to reach Space!

Show Topic Notes:
The Decline of IE have you Quit Using it?
Is Free going to cause massive company failures?
Ultimate iPhone Case
.99 cent Netbook Computer
Does your iPhone look like this?
New Project Clock!
McDonalds to Offer Car Charging Stations
Nokia Android Phone?
Podcast Publishing Refined
Wireless Video Cameras
Nokia N97 Swiss Army Knife Included!
Technology and Sailing a Rich Mans Sport
RozSavage.com
Clear 80 Cities 18 Months or Bust!
Time Lapse Video from iPhone spectacular!
Automated Ramen Maker
Compuserve RIP
Immigrate us out of a Recession?
SSD Hard Drives and Moore’s Law
Auto Building Linux Machines on Massive Scale
Professional White Label Video Sites
Adult Material hurting Japan Mobile Companies
Justice Department to look at AT&T & Verizon?
Goldman Sachs Grand Theft Code?
Auto Calculating SSN’s?
Jaime Davis Ask for New Trial?
IE has huge Active X Vulnerability
Windows 7 Family Pack Correction
Buy your Twitter Followers for $87.00
1 Million download Sirius iPhone Application
iPod Touch Camera Coming?
Microsoft Warning on IE Vulnerabilities
Battery Measurement App for iPhone
Five Major Data Center Disruptions
Gaming community and death threats
RIAA tells Federal Judge to remove illegal Audio Recordings?
Get you smile scanned before you go to work!
Plasma Rocket Engine Full Power Test
iPhone 3GS Hacked

I have been very outspoken in recent past about AT&T’s growth, primarily the BellSouth merger. While I cannot do anything about that merger except grumble internally, I can keep my eye on the anti-competitive actions of large companies. If the Internet had not evolved the way it has I would almost be willing to call AT&T a monopoly again. But in the true definition of the word I don’t think they can be classified as that.

But they are big and they own a heck of a lot of real estate both in the hard wired world and in the wireless world so an announcement today to allow customers of AT&T Long Distance that also have Cingular wireless service to talk free is what I would consider a major first strike against the VOIP operators such as Vonage.

If Vonage was smart they would start inking deals with companies like Verizon and Sprint to stay competitive. This move by AT&T is a smart one and how would not want to eliminate all of there Long Distance charges. The question is which of the remaining land line carriers will be the first to broker deals with companies like Vonage and cellular carriers to swing the entire marketplace so that all land line long distance is free so long as you are connected with partner companies. thevoipgirl.com

Well my Sprint Novatel USB Ovation U720 arrived yesterday and after three tries with Sprint was able to get the ESN from my old card swapped to this new one. Overall the performance is great but I was surprised to see that the you have to use a Dual USB Port Dongle with the unit. Thus running the device on your laptop requires the utilisation of two USB ports.

The antenna access for the device is under the flip-up antenna and I am already concerned about the longevity of the card as looking down into the antenna port hole I do not see a lot of supporting material in and around the connection. Only time will tell if the external port will hold up or not.

This card is Rev A. capable but seeing Hawaii does not get Rev A. till the first of the year I will not be able to report on speeds. In download speed test the unit is comparable in transfer speeds of the PCMCIA version of this card.

I think the folks at Novatel would have been smart of they would have provided a power port for the USB card so as to allowed those that were using it in a permanent location to not have to use two USB ports to run the device.

I paid full retail for this card as I had existing service so I am hoping that in the long run this card works out ok. Meanwhile I have a Sprint PC-5740 card for sale if anyone wants to purchase it.

Update: The Novatel U720 does work with the Kyocera KR-1, I was concerned about this, but my testing here validates the KR1 works with the U720!

For the first time in a long time a decision by the FTC may actually have a positive effect to some bad things that have been happening on the Internet. Primarily that word of mouth marketers may soon be forced to disclose when they have a financial relationship with a vendor.

Some bloggers, podcasters and others have been criticised in recent times for not disclosing when they have been paid an incentive to talk about a product. For example I do reviews on products from time to time here. While I never guarantee a favourable review I always try to put a disclaimer on the review the company has sent me a loaner unit.

This action if enforced will cause sites like PayPerPost to enforce disclosure among those that have been promoting products they have been paid to review.

As many of you remember several years ago I was involved in the Marqui pay to blog program. That promotion was a terrific success not only for Marqui but it also set a standard in which bloggers were asked to disclose the relationship and bloggers were told to say what they wanted to say positive or negative. [Washington Post]

Well the free ride to make Skype calls to regular land line phones ends Dec 31st, but through the end of the year you can sign up for their half price plan at $14.95 for a year of unlimited long distance calling to the United States and Canada.

This is  great deal for those that use the SkypeOut function to call land line phones. [Skype.com]

No not really but the linked article will make you laugh, and give you somehing to think about. In this crazy world of desperate attempts by organizations like the MPAA to control what you do with content you own. I would have not been at all surprised if this had been a real news story instead of being satire [www.bbspot.com]

As I have been ramping up production for the Videos Andy McCaskey and I will be creating at the Consumer Electronics Show I have been looking for a service that I cannot believe does not exist. With the proliferation of video sites out why is there not a service that will submit a video to multiple sites at once?

Seems like that would make a pretty good service. Submit your Video to one site and then have it pushed to other sites that you have accounts on. This would save you a lot of time and is a service I would pay a reasonable fee for.

There is more information surfacing in the Zune – Rocketboom promo proposal that made headlines yesterday when Andrew from Rocketboom publicly responded to Microsoft on his turning the deal down. From what I have gathered the following quote in the deal was what turned the deal sour.

“You may not display the Logo(s) on any site that disparages Microsoft or its products or services, infringes any Microsoft intellectual property or other rights, or violates any state, federal or international law.”

Part of the deal was putting the Zune logo on his website and by doing so he would have been bound by what he could say about the product in this lawyer heavy handed license agreement.

The question I ask is this, did some lawyer wreck the intent of this deal, or did the Zune management want to be assured that nothing negative could be said on sites that have signed a promo deal? I understand Microsoft’s likely reasoning, but at the same time Microsoft obviously is displaying that they really do not know the new media space when they ask Rocketboom or any new media Podcast/Videocaster to agree to such terms that go against the very grain of what the new media evolution is all about. [Yahoo]

I really went off last night when I saw the linked article on Engadget. I think I ranted about this for about 10 minutes on my show last night. The corresponding 42 screen shots made me realize that the Zune team and Microsoft learned nothing from Apples Success!

Whoever was the brain child that decided to make people convert money into Microsoft Points to use in their online Zune store needs to be fired or transfered to a outpost in Siberia.

I am going against my better judgment today and will buy a unit not based upon what I am seeing so far, but based on the hope that Microsoft will try to listen to the community. But when I see a review that required a person to click through 42 windows during setup it is obvious the Zune team thought very little about the user experience. [Engadget]

TiVo has made what I consider a strategic blunder in announcing their new subscription plans. If new subscribers are not willing to sign a three year subscription fee the monthly charge for the service is going to be $19.95 per month. Let me see I have a HD-DVR from my cable provider that cost me $9.95 per month why would I want to pay $19.95 per month on a device that will likely be obsolete in two years. Someone at TiVo did not in my opinion think this through; no educated consumer would sign a three year contract that has a $150.00 early cancellation fee.

Sorry No TiVo for me. [www.zatznotfunny.com]

If you have registered more than a couple of domain names you will likely know what to watch out for from fly by night registrars. This is a good refresher list none the less. [www.domainwarning.com]

I know a lot of the hard core Mac users have been waiting for the Intel Core 2 Duo to be released and that wait will be well rewarded as the notebook will now be up to 39% faster which is a significant increase.

Released in a 2.16Ghz or a 2.33Ghz you available in both 15 and 17 Inch Models [Apple]

I am pretty excited that Sprint is launching EV-DO Rev A. in San Diego but was disappointed to see that Honolulu did not make there 2006 market roll-outs. If you live in a big mainland city you will be getting Revision A very shortly.

I have noticed here in Hawaii over the past two weeks that connectivity has been terrible and I actually went on dial-up this afternoon because it was slow. I am not sure what the issue is but the connection speed has really slowed down.

I have been very tempted to try a new wireless carrier here in Hawaii as they are advertising some impressive speeds and with no Revision A rolling out here soon. I may have to look into it.

I know that some Sprint Reps read this Blog so I am wondering if they can let me know when Honolulu is scheduled for roll-out and can you tell someone to check the tower that is close to Kanehoe because my connection has been really bad. [Sprint]

I was at a local big box yesterday and as I was walking around I overheard a very heated Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD discussion going on between two employees, directly in front of some very confused looking customers.  Finally one of the customers said this is all to confusing let’s go!

The customers left and these two store employees who turned out to be representatives from Sony and Toshiba continued this almost heated discussion. I did not have much more time so I had to get moving. I am sure many of us have been sitting on the sidelines watching history repeat itself. This is the Beta – VHS Battle all over again. What’s funny is everyone with a geek brain knew Beta had better video quality but VHS obviously won the day.

Folks this is all going to boil down to marketing and who has the cheapest equipment and can get more products on store shelves. But are you as a consumer still confused and are you going to sit the battle out and see who wins?

Ohh how fast people forget about the problems that where the root cause of the Bell Break ups in the early 80′s. Now we have AT&T that is working like mad dogs to make the BellSouth merger happen. Someone needs to go and give the FCC commissioners a history lesson. Sure it’s a different world than it was 20 years ago but it makes me shiver to think about how it used to be.

Not surprising how easy people forget about the reasons the bells were broken up before. Heck when I spent several years selling long distance (MCI) back in the early 80′s most people thought the words “Long Distance” and “AT&T” were the same I bet many of you have forgotten about the dial 1 selections you had to make then.

But it is funny how the AntiTrust suit of 1982 that broke away AT&T and the broke up the Bells has resulted in a Stronger AT&T that is now verged on buying one of them. Simply and utterly amazing! [News.com]

If you happen to use Windows Media Player, own a Windows Media Center edition PC, and or you run any software players based on DirectShow. Be prepared to be dumbfounded.

A company by the name of ProtectDisc has created a form of copy protection that prevent these disc from playing on Windows! 

Yes you heard me correctly a standard DVD with the Protect-DVD-Video anti copying technology will not run on a standard Windows or Windows Media Center PC. This company has taken things way to far. I am as dumbfounded as the reviewer at [ZDNet]

I cannot wait to find out what companies start using this technology!

As many of you know that listen to my show you have been hearing me complain about the amount of Spam I have been getting. I have been looking all over the net for a solution and those that I found where either too expensive or they were made for people with small volumes of mail.

As I was talking to Angelo he and I decided to try a Google Service that has been around for a while in beta testing. We both have used Gmail quite a bit and I know it is as good or better than the Spam checker we have been running on our own servers. Up to this point we have been using Qmail with Spamd and several others utilities to filter the mail and scan for viruses.

I decided to take the plunge and applied for a couple of domains tonight and within about 20 minutes I had the mail moved over to Google and was down-loading it into outlook like I always do. I logged into the very familiar Gmail interface and instead of a Gmail.com domain I was not on my very own geeknewscentral.com domain.

So I have been watching the filtering here for a couple of hours, and can tell you so far I am very happy, the true test will come in the morning when I down-load my mail as normal, and then cross check on the Google site to see how much Spam it has caught that I have not had to deal with it. If it works out we are going to see if we can move over a few more domains.

What amazed me was how easy it was to setup, Google has done a really good job here, I am sure that some people would be very worried about having Google host their e-mail and I am not a 100% sure how I feel about it yet. One thing for sure,  I feel pretty good that none of it will go missing. [Google.com]

Seems everyday that their is a new article on on Google Adsense Policy, a new article out today calls into question some of the advertisers that are clearly abusing the system. Personally I have been battling companies targeting this site as well.

With the thousands of companies advertising on Google I cannot even imagine the administrative nightmare it is to keep up with all the scammers out there. But the linked article tells a telling tale of some of the issues that Google is facing. [www.benedelman.org]

My good friends 1.65 Billion is an amazing amount of money? Talk about the venture firms and creators of the site cashing in this is defnitley the deal of the year. We all know Video has been hot but wow. It will be interesting to see how they get their money back on this one. [CNN]

I received a IM from a member of our team at RawVoice. He was pretty upset. It seems a month or so ago he was having trouble with his hosting company HostForWeb.com so he asked me about virtual dedicated hosting servers over at GoDaddy. He was at a breaking point with HostForWeb.comfor what he thought was excessive unreliability so he decided he would buy a Virtual Dedicated over at GoDaddy and started moving his domains to that new server.

In the process of setting up the new VDS over at GoDaddy he port scanned the VDS to see what ports were open. Apparently during that process he may have accidentally scanned the server he was on at HostForWeb.com as well, although that was not realized until this afternoon.

Well it has been 30 plus days since he was doing the transfers of those domains to his new box at Godaddy. So you caught my point on it being over 30 days right? Well today 30+ days after all of this Time Warner shuts down his modem because the folks at HostForWeb.com reported that his IP was scanning ports.

Turns out Level 3 service at Time Warner was able to determine that the machine HostForWeb.com reported as being scanned was the same machine that my buddy hosted on. Luckily one domain was still active on HostForWeb.com host and the Level 3 Tech at Time Warner was able to figure out that this was not a deliberate hacking attempt. Not that port scanning is a hacking attempt in itself.

So it turns out that HostForWeb.com not only had some server issues which caused the customer to leave the service, they also had his ISP shut his modem off. Talk about showing a leaving customer some love. So my advice is to stay away from this hosting company with a 10 foot pole, and real hackers have nothing to worry about as it will take more than 30 days for their activities to be detected.

The hosting company should have known what was up, customers login and their IP’s are logged everytime there should have been some due dillegence done by the hosting company instead of taking 10 minutes to do some cross checking they now get some love back at them.

We have been using all of the regular stuff you use on ones own dedicated server but I will be honest the Junk mail is killing me. I have started to hunt for a solution out there that will help with the situations. What I would like to use is a service like JunkMailFilter.com but there site design is such I cannot even figure out how to sign up with them. Pretty sad when the site is not intuitive enough to figure out how to setup an account.

I also don’t care for how their pricing is tiered I will need more than a thousand inbounds a month but I need a lot less than there next level of service. If you have a good solution that you are using I really would like to here from you as I am about to get a solution that will help me deal with all the junk coming in.

Well the subject of Click Fraud is on the increase and very interesting article in Business Week leads me to believe that a lot of people are making a lot of cash illegally through click fraud. I have been running some adwords campaigns with Google and they resulted in positive results on the targeted sites we ran them on. But my small budget is nothing compared to what some of these companies are spending. Very interesting read. [Business Week]

Ever since I got my Sprint EV-DO card back in January I have been a pretty happy camper. Then sometime after the first of the year Sprint sent me a cell phone to test as part of their Ambassador program it was their top of the line Samsung model with all of the bells and whistles. I loved some features of the phone. The one I liked the most was the camcorder, along with some of the media stuff. I started watching Fox News in the car while waiting for my wife to run errands time to time. But there were a few things I did not care about and blogged both pro and con here, and also sent in some pretty heavy feedback on the cost of some of the additional services.

My 16 year old daughter acquired the phone once for about a week. She loves it but she also liked the idea that she could check all those channels out for free. The price of some of the services did cause her concern as well.

This week Sprint sent out a new series of phones to some bloggers, and one of them just beat them up pretty bad. The experience I have had with my Samsung has been overall pretty good. But I am a media junky and find myself pulling it out in places that I would not have my laptop out just to get a news fix.

Overall though Sprint has won me back as a customer. My current plan with T-Mobile will expire at the end of the year and I will be moving all of my mobile services to Sprint. T-Mobile has some old data network that probably will never support high speed connectivity it’s to bad really as T-Mobile does have a great family plan. But hey I am a customer they will probably be glad to see leave as I burn all of my 2000 minutes a month now as it is. [JoelOnSoftware.com]