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Jul 03

Verizon to Pay $1 Million for “Unlimited” Internet

Posted in: General, lawsuit, Today's Chili, verizon

This article was written on October 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Back in 2006 we wrote about a consumer who had subscribed to Verizon’s unlimited broadband EVDO service only to get his account canceled for high usage. Unlimited usually means… well, never-ending, unrestricted, or infinite. Verizon marketed this service as such, except that they applied restrictions to the ‘unlimited’ part of it. The man received a letter saying his usage was so high that they were canceling the service. Never in the fine print did they say that their unlimited plan had a limit.

Then in April of this year, we noticed that Verizon had changed their terms (in the fine print of course) which outlined that their unlimited plan could only be used up to 5GB a month, otherwise usage was considered unacceptable and service would be terminated. Shortly after we published our discovery, other sites caught on and this news spread like wildfire. At the time we had several lawyers contact us wanting the contact information for anyone we knew of who were users of the service so that a class-action lawsuit could be filed. We didn’t provide them with any information, but knew it was only going to be a matter of time before Verizon would be in legal trouble for false advertising.

That leads us to today. Just yesterday Verizon agreed to pay $1 million dollars for their “unlimited” but limited EVDO plans. Over 13,000 customers in all were cut-off from the service, and those customers will now be reimbursed for the hardware that they bought to use the service which no longer serves a purpose. To get to this settlement, it took nine months of investigation to look at Verizon’s services and how they market them. Obviously they had been falsely advertising for quite some time.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cumo announced the settlement and said that Verizon was producing “misleading materials and deceptive marketing” for claiming that the plans were unlimited when they really weren’t. He also said they “indirectly contradicted the promise of unlimited service.” Of course Verizon is no longer advertising “Unlimited Broadband Access” (apparently they don’t want another legal battle), they’re just calling it “Broadband Access” which is what it should have been called from the start.

verizon advertisement

It’s nice to see that Verizon had to face the consequences for falsely marketing and selling an unlimited service. Clearly they learned that they can’t say unlimited unless they actually mean it, and they now know that false advertising, while it may give you an increase in customers, eventually just lands you in legal trouble.

Source: Ars

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Jun 30

Partnership

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

Have you got a product or service that you want to market to the whole world? Do you want your business concept to spread virally via word-of-mouth? Well, CoolBusinessIdeas.com is the right platform for you to showcase your products/services to our readers and make available trial offerings to our community. You can do this by sending free samples of your product to our readers and subscribers, or by giving a free trial of your service to enthusiasts on CoolBusinessIdeas.com.

This will be your highly effective opportunity to advertise your business and introduce your product/service to many marketing and business professionals from around the world at no additional cost. Reach your target audience – partner with us to give trial offers to our members!

If you are seeking instead to advertise your company/products via highly effective means, please check out the Advertising page instead.

Why partner with us and let our subscribers try out your product/service for free? Here are some reasons:

– Our weblog and newsletter have a large and rapidly growing audience of business professionals from around the world. Mind you, they’re not any Tom, Dick or Harry; we have a considerable number of entrepreneurs, senior managers, CEOs, executives, directors and consultants among our newsletter subscribers.

– Letting our readers and subscribers sample your product/service for free will certainly help reach out to the right target audience from around the world that you are keen to engage. Your partnership with us will be featured across many platform. We reach out to our audience in many ways: blog posts on CoolBusinessIdeas.com, updates to BIZNESS! newsletter subscribers, community engagement on our CBI Facebook group, tweet updates on Twitter, RSS updates to our subscribers, and more.

– Sustained engagement: besides being sent to subscribers, our blog posts and newsletters are also viewable from our website, hence offering you additional exposure at no additional cost at all.

– Yes, it is definitely a free service; you just have to bear the cost of sending samples of your product or offering a trial of your service to our readers. We merely seek to benefit from this partnership which helps to reward our loyal readers with trial offers from our partners.

– It’s easy and hassle-free; drop us an email stating your business concept and trial offers of products/services you would like to make available to our readers!

Partner with CoolBusinessIdeas.com

For more information or to offer your product/service for free to our readers and subscribers, please email us: contact@coolbusinessideas.com

We are also open to opportunities to partner with you to organize contests/sweepstakes/competition to engage our CBI community. Get in touch with us today!

Jun 30

With Google Apps in Mind, Google Acquires Postini

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Postini Google had Google Apps (among other things) in mind when they went after Postini to acquire them. The acquisition for Postini, a communications security and compliance company was announced today for $625 million.

The announcement mentioned that more than 1,000 small businesses sign up for Google apps daily, (wow!) but that larger businesses and enterprises are often times hesitant or unable to sign-up for the service because they have security needs that need to be met. The Google Blog says that they’re required to support “complex business rules, information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate compliance issues” which Postini will be able to help them with.

Postini over the years has gone from “small and obscure” to a “significant company with international operations and multiple data centers supporting over ten million users across 35,000 businesses” according to Ryan Mcintyre, a Postini investor. Their services will protect email, instant messaging, and other web-based communications.

I think Google has some big plans in mind for Google Apps, and because they were already licensing technology from Postini for Gmail, this purchase makes complete sense. They’re already well-known in the Corporate World as offering great anti-virus and anti-spam solutions, blocking over a billion spam messages every day, and they were just headed for an IPO.

Another smart purchase from Google, and congratulations to Postini!

Thanks for the tip Cory!

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Jun 29

Daily Downloads is Now Cross-Platform

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

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.

Ever since we started doing the Daily Downloads back in September 2007 there have been dozens of requests for us to cover downloads from the various platforms. Well, we thought there couldn’t be a better time to start than the day after announcing that we are the proud owners of MacBook Pro’s.

But we’re not going to do this just for the Daily Downloads either! In every article that we do pertaining to software we’re also going to clearly list the operating systems that they support at the beginning of the article. We wanted to develop something that we could be consistent with, and so this is what you’ll want to look for at the start of the articles:

Windows Windows; Mac Mac; Linux Linux

We’ll of course remove the operating systems that aren’t supported, but generally that is what you’ll want to keep your eyes open for.

But now we need your help! Since there are so many different programs out there for the different operating systems we’ll need help keeping up on them all. If you see a new version of an application get released just drop a comment in the last Daily Downloads that was posted, or use the contact form to shoot us an email. We always appreciate any help that you guys and gals can give us!

[post-it note image via NUS]

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Jun 28

Taxation of Digital Downloads

Posted in: General, itunes, Music, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

One of the benefits of purchasing music online versus a physical CD from the store is that you don’t get taxed, at least here in the United States, in most states. With digital downloads becoming popular, states are trying to push a new “iTax” that would change things. Digital downloads have become a massive industry and states realize this.

There are a few states in the United States already that have put laws into place to collect taxes on digital downloads. States like Nebraska, Tennessee, Indiana, South Dakota, and Utah are already banking on the billions of dollars a year spent on e-commerce purchases and more specifically, digital downloads of music and movies. As you can imagine, with five states that have already enacted new laws in 2008 alone, more states are certain to follow.

Recently News.com reported about this and how states may start taxing iTunes. They say that in addition to the five states who have already put an “iTax” type of law into place, about four other states have considered it. They say, “If you enjoy buying music from iTunes, movies from Amazon.com’s Unbox, or computer software from anywhere, we warned: the halcyon days of tax-free digital purchases may be over.”

After hearing about this, we can’t help but think of the “Amazon Tax Bill” that New York legislators passed. New York wanted to bank on the millions of dollars that the state could make simply off of taxing online retailers. Because the Internet didn’t exist when most tax laws were written, there will probably be some new laws and bills put in place over the next several years so that States can benefit as much financially from the Internet as possible.

As a side note, several people have pointed out that there shouldn’t be taxes on digital downloads as a reward to those who buy them because it is the greenest way to buy music, movies, and software.

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Jun 27

Intel Has Plans To Donate 100,000 PCs To Classrooms

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

Intel Has Plans To Donate 100,000 PCs To Classrooms

It appears that Intel will donate 100,000 PCs to classrooms in developing nations. This is in addition to the 10 million teachers it wants to train in the next five years. In the past 6 years Intel has trained 3 million teachers in 35 different developing countries. They also donate oodles of money, but I am sure it is all worth it to know they are using your products!

News Source: Geekzone

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Jun 23

Netvibes’ Universal Widget API Available (examples included)!

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

People have been anticipating the Netvibes Universal Widget API for quite a while now, and finally it’s been released. Now developers will be able to create Netvibes widgets that can be used as a Vista gadget, Mac Widget, or even used on your Google personalized homepage.This makes it easy to put your favorite widgets anywhere you’d like.

There are just a few widgets as of now, but I can imagine that the selection will grow quickly. According to the Netvibes announcement, Tariq Krim says, “We believe at Netvibes that UWA can really change the way we produce and develop widgets. We’ve been working hard to release it. As you know, the Universal Widget API will replace the Mini-Module API that was used on Netvibes.”

Below is an example of what the Digg module looks like as a Netvibes widget first, then as a Google gadget, and finally as a Dashboard widget:

Digg1 Digg2 Digg3

The video below give you a good idea of how it works universally as well. It shows someone adding the Digg gadget to the Netvibes homepage, then they add it to the Google Personalized Homepage, and finally to the Mac Dashboard.

If you’re a developer, they’ve set up a Developer Network site with forums to help you get started. This UWA is big news, and it’ll be great once developers start releasing their work, and there’s a variety of widgets to choose from.

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Jun 10

CyberNotes: Get Free Music On-Demand

Posted in: CyberNotes, General, Music, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

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. Fast forward to today when we decided to take a look at a music-streaming service called Deezer. To our surprise, we learned that Deezer was formerly known as Blogmusik.net. Today we’ll be taking a look at Deezer, what it is, and everything that it offers.

What is Deezer

deezer 4 Deezer is based in France and is an on-demand music service. If you’re familiar with IMEEM, in some ways, it is similar to that. Part of the service incorporates music news, and a community of users, and of course listening to music of your choosing. One of the things that users seem to like best is that it’s not limited only to the United States like some music services out there. In all, there are 16 different countries where the service can be used. If you’re wondering if your country is one of them, just go to www.deezer.com and in the top right corner, look for your country’s flag or just look in the screenshot below.

Is it legal?

Before we get into the ins and outs of the service, many of you are probably wondering whether it’s legal or not. From what we understand, it is completely legal. They’re based in France and pay fees to the French equivalent of the RIAA and therefore, according to the French Government, they are complying with copyright laws.

Free Registration

Registration is free and will allow you to add songs to a playlist. You can still listen to music without registering, you just won’t be able to access any other areas of the site. Registration requires only a valid email address and general info like name and country.

Creating a Profile

Deezer is as much about socializing as it is about music. Users can create a profile with photos, preferences as well as musical styles. You can add friends, invite friends by importing your contact list, and search for members. Just like Facebook and MySpace, Deezer provides a spot where a user can update their status like “Ashley is ______.” They include a message center so that other users can easily send you messages.

deezer 3

Searching for Music

Deezer is all about finding music that you like, so searching is important. You can search for music that they might have in their database by entering a tile of a song or the artist. I entered the search term “Lifehouse” and received a big long list of songs from the group. You can also browse their catalog by artist.

deezer 2

Playing Songs

After you’ve searched for a song and you click the play button, it will start playing. The player appears in the upper right corner and that’s where you can pause a song or move on to the next track if you’re playing from a play list. In the player section, you’ll see a place where you can rate a song or download it. Clicking download will bring up your two options to either download from iTunes or Amazon. By clicking the “blog” link you’ll be given the code necessary so that you can embed the player on your blog or personal website.

deezer 1

Radio/SMARTRADIO

Not only can you search for songs and listen to them on-demand, you can also listen to a variety of different radio “stations.” They even have a SMARTRADIO which is tailored to your tastes. If they play a song that you don’t like, you’ll just tell them and then the system will learn and improve.

deezer radio

Other Features

Add Your MP3s
Under the “My MP3s” section you will be able to add your MP3s. Deezer will allow you to store as many of them as you would like and then they’ll be accessible once you log in. This could serve as a great back-up solution or give you access to your library of music when you’re away from your home computer.
View the Top Artists and Albums
Under the “Top” section you will be able to find the top artists and songs in four different countries including the UK, France, the United States and Germany. For example, I clicked on the United States and found that Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis is one of the current top songs. In The UK it’s Wow by Kylie Minogue.
View Friends’ Playlists
Once you add friends, you’ll be able to view their playlists
Music fades out…
One song will fade out and the next song on the list fades in which makes for nice transitions between songs
Great Flash interface
View the latest Music related news under the “News” section

Give Deezer a try and let us know what you think. You’ll probably come across a few songs that they won’t have available and at times the load time can be a little on the slow side, but I think you’ll find that it’s a pretty decent service.

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Jun 05

And We’re Back…

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

We have just finished recovering our database. We have all of the content up but you’ll notice that the images from the last week are gone. Those will be up shortly.

If you don’t backup your hard drive and you’d be panicking if it crashed, now might be a good time to do that. Hard drives do crash, as we experienced last night.

This would have been a much quicker process had our host been fully staffed for the weekend! They weren’t able to install a new hard drive and the operating system on our server until late this afternoon.

Learn Firefox will be up shortly.

Anyhow, we’re glad to be back up and running. Thank you for your patience!

Harddrivecrash

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Jun 04

Infamous Harry Potter Photographer Left Evidence

Posted in: General, Photos, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

There’s been a lot of Harry Potter craziness going on, particularly when Harry Potter made it to BitTorrent a few days before its grand release. Then of course there was the hoopla over at The Pirate Bay with their “Torrent on Fire” logo after they were accused that they facilitated in the distribution of pre-released copies of the book. All of this craziness started because someone sat there and photographed each individual page in the book and posted it to the Internet. What the photographer didn’t realize is that they left fingerprints behind, and now there’s a chance they’ll get caught.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, using an open-source tool, anybody who had the images could figure out the serial number of the camera along with other information like the settings that were used, and the date and time the photos were taken. The serial number will be the most important piece of information because if the user registered a warranty, a name and address will go along with it as well.

The camera used was a Canon Rebel 300DE, so you can bet someone has already been in contact with Canon to try and identify the owner of the camera. EFF also points out that many camera manuals explain that they embed this information, so it’s definitely no secret.Just think, when GPS becomes a popular feature on cameras, will photos have a location embedded in them as well?

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Hasta La Gadget!

Verizon to Pay $1 Million for “Unlimited” Internet

Partnership

With Google Apps in Mind, Google Acquires Postini

Daily Downloads is Now Cross-Platform

Taxation of Digital Downloads

Intel Has Plans To Donate 100,000 PCs To Classrooms

Netvibes’ Universal Widget API Available (examples included)!