It's Memorial Day today here in the United States, so we just wanted to stop for a minute to honor the men and women of the military who died serving this country. Additionally, to those members of the military, both past, and those currently serving, we thank you!
On August 4, 2007 the $325 million Phoenix spacecraft departed earth on a 422 million mile journey to Mars. Just yesterday the journey came to a head as Phoenix made its descent onto Mars.
Back in mid-April, we wrote about a new Bill that was signed in New York called the "Amazon Tax Bill." It forces retailers to charge sales tax to customers who live in the state of New York which then provides the state with an extra $50 million in revenue. We mentioned at the time that if ever there was a way to kill online retailers, this could be it.
One of the big complaints many people have always had with cell-phone providers over the years is that they like to charge on both ends, meaning they charge you for outgoing and incoming calls. Now we know not all providers do this because some do offer free incoming calls, but a majority of the providers out there, at least the ones we know of, still do this.
This is just a quick note to all of our readers to let you know that today and tomorrow will be a little bit different in terms of a writing schedule. We're heading off this morning to Delaware to attend Ryan's sister's wedding. As you noticed, a CyberNotes did post today and will post tomorrow as usual. Other writing will be light and there won't be a Daily Downloads.
We're not quite sure how many of you out there are iPhone owners, but our guess is that there's at least a good handful of you who will be able to benefit from free Wi-Fi for your phone.
Those of you who were checking up on the Daily Downloads today might have noticed something new. For each download that we listed there's a section stating which platforms they are compatible with: Windows, Mac, and/or Linux. We were going to do just a text-based system for listing the platforms, but we wanted to make it easier for those wanting to glance through real quick.
Geeks are sometimes given the stereotype as being big spenders on gadgetry, from computers to video game systems. You, yourself, may be a spender. While some do always have to have the latest and greatest of anything electronic, not all geeks are frequently forking out the cash.
Do you remember back in the late 80's and early 90's when Circuit City was place to go for consumer electronics? Do you also remember the days when a parking spot was hard to come by in the Blockbuster Video parking lot on a Friday night? At one point both companies, Circuit City and Blockbuster Video were at the top of their game and were doing very well for themselves.
After installing the new WordPress update on Sunday, for some reason it became more apparent how many posts have been published on CyberNet.
Way back in September of 2006, we wrote about a site called Blogmusik.net. The service used an iPod-like interface which acted as your own personal jukebox to stream music that you selected over the Internet. It was simple and provided decent music for free. That was the last that we mentioned it though, and to be honest, we had forgotten about it.
The searching capabilities in Vista are one of its best features and one of the most useful, and now it's about to get even better. Just yesterday Microsoft launched the first preview of Windows Search 4.0. It is the successor to the Windows Search Platform which means it replaces Instant Search on Vista and Windows Desktop Search 3.0 on XP.
Sirius and XM have had a rough time over the last year trying to convince the Department of Justice to approve their merge. Over a year later and they've finally gotten approval. The rumor that they were working on a deal first became public back in February of 2007 and it's taken this long for them to get the thumbs-up from the DOJ to move ahead.
To those of you who celebrate Easter, we hope you have a great one! I don't know about where you live, but where we live, there certainly won't be an Easter Egg Hunt outside, unless it's in the snow. We've had some crazy weather this year in Chicago as I'm sure some of you have experienced elsewhere. In all this Winter, we received around 80 inches of snow and about 8 inches of that came on Friday.
We've mentioned Diigo a handful of times on CyberNet already because it's a pretty popular tool for taking notes with your browser. Just this morning the company launched Diigo version 3.0, their first big update since 2006.
Some of you may have noticed that we were down for about the last hour and a half. No, our server didn't crash. In fact it still hasn't been rebooted in 245 days. Without getting into too many details we'll just say that the hamster fell asleep at the wheel.
Yesterday we watched as Google Stock hit a new 52 week low of $413.04. It was just on February 8th when they closed below $500 and now they're coming way too close to that below $400 mark. Luckily for Google, the European Union just approved the buyout of DoubleClick (the U.S. already gave their stamp of approval) and Google stock was headed back up this morning on that news.
The last time I was in a Circuit City store, it seemed a little empty and cold compared to the Best Buy up the street that had all kinds of people bustling about.
One of the features on Microsoft's Zune that users have praised is the capability to wirelessly sync files and share music. Up until this point, that's really all that the wireless was used for but now news is starting to unfold that Microsoft will be utilizing the wireless for games.
Verizon Wireless just launched their unlimited calling plans in the United States starting at $99.99 where subscribers pay one flat rate to place and receive unlimited calls. All in all, it's not THAT great of a deal, but there are some benefits to what they are offering. Below is the graph which outlines the three unlimited plans available and the prices for each:
