Josh Eastburn.com

Microsoft announced their new “Windows Live OneCare” product today. For $50 a year, you can protect up to 3 computers from viruses, spam, and data loss. While all of these products were available before from other vendors (often for free), this is the first time Microsoft has thrown its weight into this segment of the software market–certainly to the chagrin of their “business partners” Symantec and McAfee.

This new product release makes me wonder why protecting your operating system isn’t part of the operating system itself, but it will certainly be a lucrative business for Microsoft. It will be an all-inclusive package from a well-known name for people who don’t want to bother assembling their anti-spy, anti-spam solution on their own. Link

Sala, an artist in Zürich, Switzerland is selling 1000 paintings of. . .the numbers 1 through 1000. But you should move fast if you are interested. There is an interesting formula involved that makes the paintings more expensive as fewer become available:

Value = 1000 – number
Initial discount: 90%
Current discount: 80%
The discount will decrease by an absolute 10% for every 100 paintings sold.
Min. price: $40.

So for example, the painting of “755″ is now $49, but after 900 paintings are sold, it will cost you $245. Link

Starting in July, you might find that your phone bill is a little less expensive. Congress recently voted to put an end to the “federal excise tax” on long distance calls. The 3% tax was started in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American War. Glad we got that paid off.

Not only is the tax ending, but the last 3 years of taxes will be refunded as part of your 2006 tax return. However, unless you routinely call Albuquerque for the local time, don’t expect a windfall in 2007.

Send important information from your personal computer to the award-winning Timex Data Link® watch…without wires or cables. In seconds, you can send up to 70 entries from the Timex and Microsoft-developed software that’s included. The watch sensor reads flashing bars of light on the monitor**…that’s the data.

**CRT Monitor required

I had one of these back in 1995–it was the ultimate symbol of cool.

It has also had the honor of receiving a (dis)honorable mention in PC World’s 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time.

I installed a new WordPress plugin that now allows me to display RSS feeds on my site.

Now you can view my stories from Digg.com and my movies at home from Netflix.

More coming soon.

I never thought I would be saying this, but I am now an Ameritech SBC AT&T DSL customer (I think I missed a Yahoo! somewhere in there). I have always been happy with my Comcast Internet service, up until two weeks ago when my connection started dropping about every 10 minutes. After a technician visit and several tech support calls, Comcast said “there is nothing more we can do” and “we hope you are able to get it working.”

To illustrate the problems I was having, here are before/after PingPlotter graphs:

Comcast (red lines are bad)

AT&T DSL

Ahh, much better. Although I am now paying $20 less per month, I only get 3Mbps down and (at best) 512Kbps up. This is especially hard to swallow since I was somehow getting 10-12Mbps with Comcast after “downgrading” from their 8Mb service to 6Mb (oops).

Students in the UK have been caught using a cell phone ringtone in class that can’t be heard by older people, including teachers. Due to the progressive loss of hearing as we age, most people lose the ability to hear this high-pitched sound sometime in their 20’s. Link

The ringtone was adapted from the Mosquito Alarm which is marketed to store owners in order to keep teenagers from congregating nearby.

Can you hear it? If you don’t hear a high-pitched chirping sound and only hear some background noise, consider yourself immune to this “teenager repellant.”

I am in the process of changing my web hosting. More content coming soon.