I wonder how the regulators will justify letting this transaction go through. AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion, so we would be down to just three major carriers in the United States. AT&T will become the largest carrier in the US, surpassing Verizon, but now consumers will have far fewer choices.
Here’s an entertaining video from CNET on 5 doomed technologies, though some of the predictions seem a little off. Blu-ray and e-book readers are doomed? Those predictions seem to be off base.
On Blu-ray, of course streaming poses a big threat, but there’s always room for quality, and Blu-ray seems to offer the best picture quality.
On e-book readers, of course the iPad is more popular, but have you tried to read a long book on the iPad? It’s just not ideal, and given the cheap prices of e-book readers, I think many consumers will want both.
That said, the prediction on 3D TV seems like a winner . . .
Here’s a good video about financial scams, which are now going beyond the Internet to the mobile world as well. Be careful of smishing, which is a new scam where you get a text and a prompt to call. Don’t follow the link!
After years of dealing with the crappy Explorer browser, it was a relief to switch to Firefox several years ago.
Now Firefox is starting to suck as well. I routinely get a notice that says “The URL is not valid and cannot be loaded” when I hit a link ot try to go to a site, even though everything is fine. Close the box and try again (sometimes several times) and the link works fine.
Can somebody please fix this? It’s annoying as hell . . .
With smart phones and now tablet computers like the iPad, students have so much more information at their fingertips, including digital study guides that can make it easier to study, or to avoid real studying.
At this time of year, students are buying textbooks and looking for ways to avoid reading them.
Nothing is new about that. CliffsNotes guides, with their familiar yellow and black covers, have been in book bags since 1958.
What has changed is how many study guides, or cheat sheets, are available online and on mobile phones. Whether you know them as CliffsNotes, SparkNotes or Shmoop, these seemingly ubiquitous guides are now, in many cases, free.
“Two to three years ago, the wisdom was that students do research online, but not study online,” said Emily Sawtell, a founder of McGraw-Hill’s online collaborative study site called GradeGuru. “That has changed in the last 12 months.” Ms. Sawtell said she had tracked a significant increase in the search term “study guide” on Google.
All in all, this is a net plus, as access to information is always a good thing, though it can obviously be abused. The real challenge is to train younger students how to focus on a subject without distractions so real learning takes place.
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