early

Daylight saving: Waste of time?

Perhaps it's because we're often doing a rapid scan of a bajillion or so headlines before the sun comes up, but we missed a story in last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal about what happened when some laggard counties in Indiana finally got around to adopting daylight-saving time. As it turned out, flipping the switch to DST actually added to the state's collective electric bill by about $8.6 million, contrary to conventional wisdom and the exhortations of politicians. (Tip o' the nightcap to Slashdot for bringing the story to our belated attention.)

Enlighten yourself at WSJ.… Read more

Sprint, T-Mobile to prorate early-termination fees

Verizon Wireless came to its senses last year, AT&T did so just last month, and now T-Mobile and Sprint have grown a little nicer, as well. Both carriers announced this week that they would begin prorating their early-termination fees (ETF) in the first half of next year. You'll still have a to pay a fee for ending your contract early, but the amount will decrease the closer you get to your contract end date. Specific details of the new policies weren't released--those will come next year, as well--but the dual announcements mean that all four major … Read more

Leopard early adopters suffer for the rest of us

I can't decide whether early adopters are saints or fools.

Mac OS X Leopard, the latest version of Apple's operating system, turns one week old today. An estimated 9 percent of the Mac OS X installed base had already signaled their intention to upgrade last weekend, and those numbers presumably grew by some degree over the last few days.

Most Leopard users seem satisfied. But there have been a fair amount of complaints from those who were first down the road to Leopard. Most are relatively minor, some were quite annoying, and a few raise questions about how … Read more

AT&T to prorate cancellation fees

AT&T wants to be more consumer-friendly.

On Tuesday the company said that it will prorate the $175 early termination fee it charges wireless customers who cancel their contracts based upon how much time they have left in their contract. This means that someone who cancels their service 23 months into a two-year contract will pay considerably less than someone who cancels the service after only six months. (All new customers are able to cancel their service with no penalty for up to 30 days after service begins.)

The company also said it will no longer require customers to … Read more

Inilex one-ups LoJack for GPS car security [Video]

Announced today at Demo 07, security company Inilex is launching its own GPS car security system. Like competitor Lo Jack's early warning system, Inilex has a GPS hardware unit that's installed in your vehicle and alerts you if your car is moving when you're not in it. The unit also lets you know how fast your car is going. You can secure your vehicle via phone or a Web-based interface. What's really cool is that Inilex has created a way to make your own perimeters called "geo fences." Going outside of or (in some … Read more

RFID lock won't help our memory

We've never been fond of keys. Like so many other things, their primary mission in life is to be misplaced.

We thought ThinkGeek had come up with an invention that would banish these little pests from our lives for good, with its "RFID Digital Door Lock," as posted by SlashGear. But then we read the product literature, which says the $300 device comes with four cards, two fobs and two tags that it describes as "smart keys"--which means, of course, that all we'd be doing is replacing metal keys with other items that … Read more