MONEY: Lose your cell phone; go to bankruptcy?

Saturday, April 28, 2007

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/millionaire/30108

Ten Steps to Cell Phone Security
by David Bach
Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007, 12:00AM

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Americans love their cell phones — most of us can’t live without them. Yet the Better Business Bureau reports that cell phone providers are the No. 1 cause of complaints among consumers. This is mostly due to incorrect billing, confusing fees, unexpected charges, and deceptive contracts. These can certainly add up, but I was shocked to learn that the most significant — even devastating — monetary damage can occur when your cell phone is lost or stolen.

A $26,000 Cell Phone Bill

A recent CBS 5 ConsumerWatch report by Jeanette Pavini profiles the plights of three consumers in California — all of whom had their cell phones stolen and were left stuck with a huge bill for unauthorized charges.

The report told the story of San Francisco resident Wendy Nguyen, who was shocked to receive a bill for $26,000 after her cell phone was unknowingly stolen before she left for an overseas vacation. Cingular held her responsible for charges incurred after the phone was taken, up until the time Wendy discovered the theft and called the carrier.

She was able to prove via airline and passport documents that she was out of the country and couldn’t possibly have made the unauthorized calls from San Francisco during that time, but Cingular still held Wendy accountable for all charges.

Not only that, they advised Wendy that if she couldn’t pay the bill she should consider filing for bankruptcy!

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What a disaster!

If you have a cell phone, then you should read this.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SOFTWARE: DRUPAL a true content management system

Saturday, April 28, 2007

http://drupal.org/about

About Drupal

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Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including

* Community web portals
* Discussion sites
* Corporate web sites
* Intranet applications
* Personal web sites or blogs
* Aficionado sites
* E-commerce applications
* Resource directories
* Social Networking sites

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Maybe I’ve outgrown blogging. It doesn’t wow me like it once did. It hasn’t engendered or created the cooperative conversation I was hoping it would.

I know I am disillusioned with websites. They are static snapshots of the past. They don’t integrate of play nice with other uses.

Wikis are a content system of sorts but hmmm they don’t seem to jump up and create conversations.

Perhaps, I need more?

1 Comment | SOFTWARE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Where do you spend your minutes and what do you have to show for it?

Saturday, April 28, 2007

From The Electronic Recruiting News In Email_070427

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It’s like being thirsty in the middle of the ocean for most people. The explosion of sources of information leaves a bewildering set of problems for disciplined professionals. They boil down to “what is the best way to spend my time?” Certainly, reading 500 blogs is not going to make you a successful recruiter. The right five, however, might.

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Where do you spend your time productively?

That’s a tough question. IMHO, we humans don’t even know where we spend our time. Unless you’re a lawyer with a sophisticated time tracking for billing purposes system, no one has accurate data to work from. Most systems I’ve seen and worked with are “time charging” mechanisms. They are really about charging your time to some project or other. The accuracy of that is suspect at best and a joke at worst.

So how do you measure your time spent?

I have a rut of things that I do on a daily basis so I know those. The rest is in the hands of the Universe.

But, it would be nice to know where one is “spending” their minutes (like a cell phone bill) and it would be nice to know the ROI on those minutes.

Periodically, when I feel I have “lost my way”, I reassess what I am doing. I dump some habits and try to start new ones. I use that aforementioned rut as my friend. Getting in a good rut is productive; a bad one disaster.

It’s a terrible paradigm. But I have no other. Maybe that’s what twitter could be?

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Posted by reinkefj