Verizon Shares Your Call Data Unless You Opt-Out (Update!)

Paul

The folks from Skydeck just received a written notice from Verizon Wireless for an opt-out system for sharing your call records to third-party advertisers. Unless you call them and opt-out, Verizon will sell what numbers you called, how often you called, and your call length with “authorized companies,” which includes their “affiliates, agents, and parent companies.” Although it doesn’t include your own name, number or address, something like this should be opt-in, not opt-out. If you’re a Verizon customer, call 1-800-333-9956 and tell them you want to opt-out. Why should you let Verizon get even richer off your data for nothing in return? [Skydeck via Crunchgear]

I hope people realize just how bad this is for you!! Would you like them to know who you called? What if your number is Private, It isn’t no longer!!

Jammie Appeals, Citing “Excessive” Damages

Paul

Peerless writes “Capitol v. Thomas defendant Jammie Thomas has officially appealed the RIAA’s $222,000 copyright infringement award. She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA’s actual damages, arguing that the jury’s award was ‘unconstitutionally excessive’: ‘Thomas would like to see the record companies forced to prove their actual damages due to downloading, a figure that Sony-BMG litigation head Jennifer Pariser testified that her company “had not stopped to calculate.” In her motion, Thomas argues that the labels are contending that their actual damages are in the neighborhood of $20. Barring a new trial over the issue of damages, Thomas would like to see the reward knocked down three significant digits — from $222,000 to $151.20.'”

This should be interesting.

Manage Your Power Consumption with Lights Out

Paul

Mac OS X only: Shareware application Lights Out is your Mac’s default Energy Saver tool on steroids, allowing users to set very specific energy saving settings. From setting the time before your monitor dims to automatic logout or shutdown to hot corners for quick sleeping, this simple application takes control of nearly every energy-related aspect of your Mac. Lights Out is free to try, costs $8.99 for a license. We normally steer clear of shareware apps around here when we can, but in the spirit of living greener, Lights Out looks like a great software. If you know of a free alternative, let’s hear it in the comments.

Lights Out [via MacApper]

This is for the Mac people, I do not know how well this does work but I thought I’d share this little program. Mac OS only!!

DocSyncer Bridges Your Desktop With Google Docs

Paul


One of the biggest drawbacks to working with Webtop productivity applications such as Google Docs or Buzzword is that they force you to work simultaneously in two different worlds: the online world and the desktop world. You can upload your desktop documents one at a time to these services, and they convert them for you into a Web-based document, but there is no easy way to bulk upload your docs. And syncing between the two worlds is more trouble than it is worth.

A new service called DocSyncer hopes to fix all that. DocSyncer is going to launch an invite-only beta in a few weeks (TechCrunch readers can sign up here to get first dibs). It uploads all of your Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) from your desktop to Google Docs and then keeps them in sync. Whenever you make a change on your desktop, the change is automatically reflected in the corresponding file on Google Docs, and on DocSyncer.com. The service will require a small software download, which at first will only work on Windows computers (a Mac version is coming). But you will be able to sync from more than one computer—up to Google Doc’s current limit of 5,000 documents.

This program is for people who like to use the google Docs and want to keep them updated on the server!! 😉 it’s pretty nice and quite useful!! Go check out the full article and remember to keep up to date on all my post you can always subscribe to the feeds.

Halo Blamed For Bad Movie Ticket Sales

Paul


Hollywood studio execs are BLAMING HALO 3, the Microsoft Xbox 360 game, for dismal box office receipts since the game was released September 26. For example, movie ticket sales for the October 5 weekend were down 27% below the same weekend last year. Meanwhile, Halo 3 gamers logged some 40 million hours of play during the first week alone.

I say this is totally ridiculous, I can’t see this stopping people from seeing movies.