Here's some stuff Raoul has liked. To find more cool stuff, check out Explore »

garry says...
May 05, 2009

Turning an apple logo into a monitor, and how Microsoft tried to do it five years ago.

via edsjunk.net and Zee M. Kane at thenextweb.com

This is purely ornamental, and looks cool. Someone decided it would be cool to mod the apple logo into its own monitor. Be the coolest guy in the cafe, you know.

It reminds me of back when I worked at Microsoft. There was a big initiative among the mobile computing teams -- getting these mini monitors working so that you could check your next appointment / read your email without ever opening your laptop.

That's because standby mode sucked so much on Windows (kind of still sucks today, compared to OS X) -- rather than fix standby, it was decided that lets make ANOTHER device that you could tell OEMs to make and built into the outside of the laptop so people don't even have to open their laptops anymore.

This approach reminds me of the millions spent on designing a pen that would work in space by NASA. What did the Russians do? Use a pencil.

What did Apple do? Make standby mode actually work.

Loading mentions Retweet
Comment (10) »

sachin says...
May 04, 2009

Bank of America stole money from Posterous, but I got it back from them

My whole life I've been the type of person who who keeps receipts and balances my checkbook to the penny. I verify all credit card statements and bank statements, and examine all bills. No one slips anything by me.

A few days ago I was balancing the Posterous checking account and noticed there was some money missing. There were a few extra charges on the statement that I didn't have record of. They were fairly vague, to the point where I wasn't even sure if they were debits by Bank of America or by a third party.

I called Bank of America, and first of all had to deal with being passed around a few times. In particular, they have this issue where accounts created in California accounts are separate from others. They have never been able to combine these systems.

Long story short, the person I ultimately spoke to tried to make up many excuses as to why I had been charged these fees (something about a flag being removed from my account) and then proceeded to *sell* me on these additional services that I was billed for.

I was irate. DO NOT TRY TO SELL ME ON ANYTHING. Just refund the money you STOLE from me, and let me get back to running a company.

The worst part about this situation, and I've blogged about this before, is the fact that most people probably don't check their statements (it's a pain in the ass) and therefore unknowingly pay these fees.

I don't know if other bank are any better wrt hidden fees, but if there is a better way to go, I'm ready to switch. Banks like BofA don't deserve my money.

Filed under: Bank of America, scams
Loading mentions Retweet
Comment (24) »