For years, e-reading enthusiasts have awaited the first commercially available color e-book reader that promises to run for days or even weeks on a charge, just as black-and-white e-readers do. Now the Ectaco JetBook, priced at a whopping $500, has arrived. Our testers checked out its screen, and alas, the long wait hasn’t been rewarded by a fine performer
Telecom giant AT&T is considering a plan to shift the cost of data usage from app users to app developers, according to the Wall Street Journal. The proposed plan would ostensibly free subscribers from worrying about hitting the monthly limit on their data plans when using apps that require heavy data usage, such as streaming audio or video. But the proposed plan has some consumer advocates concerned, as it may also have the effect of stifling innovation on the part of developers.
Today’s electronics deals, courtesy of The Consumerist : Amazon : Certified Refurbished Kindle Fire 7″ Tablet $169.00 with Free Shipping eBay : Refurb Fujifilm FinePix Z90 14MP 5x Digital Camera for $63 + free shipping Entertainment Amazon : Soul Calibur V Xbox 360, PS3 $39.99, free ship Amazon : Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with Music CD Wii $39.99, free ship Neither Consumer Reports nor The Consumerist receive anything in exchange for featuring these deals; the posts are intended to be purely informational. These deals are often fleeting, with prices changing or products becoming unavailable as the day progresses
People want to control how and what they share on social network sites, and the number of users pruning information from our profiles has increased, a new study by the Pew Research Center shows. Some two-thirds of U.S.
The Federal Trade Commission is taking legal action to stop two operations that allegedly enabled hundreds of millions of telemarketing robocalls to consumers across the country, including many registered with the National Do Not Call Registry. The illegal robocalls advertised services such as debt relief, carpet and upholstery cleaning, auto warranties, mortgage loan modification and foreclosure assistance, timeshares, satellite dish broadcasting, and burial insurance. In both cases, defendants offered “self-service” voice broadcasting, making it easy for marketers to make tens of millions of robocalls, according to the FTC.
Super-thin and lightweight laptops could be considered the sexy sport coupes of the computer world. Machines such as the Apple Macbook Air can be pricey and sacrifice some computing functions for their slim and light forms.
LG today leaked specs of the Optimus 4X HD, one of the first smart phones powered by a quad-core processor.
Buried in the 50-page online privacy plan—the “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”—I received at the White house event today, I found an intriguing proposal for government, industry, and consumer groups to develop and implement privacy practices using a decision-making process that’s much like the consensus process famously used by members of Occupy Wall Street. Specifically, the White House says the Commerce Department (and perhaps other Federal agencies) will convene, in the coming months, what it called “open, transparent multistakeholder processes” to develop codes of conduct that, though voluntary, would be legally enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission
Apple has settled a class-action suit over its iPhone 4 smart phone, agreeing to pay $15 or provide a free bumper case to owners of the phone, which Consumer Reports confirmed had reception problems in 2010 lab tests . More than 21 million owners of the phones are eligible for the settlement, according to Ira Rothken, the co-lead counsel for the suit, which brought together 18 different lawsuits in to a single action filed in San Jose, CA
Today’s announcement by the Digital Advertising Alliance that its member advertisers will support the Do Not Track privacy protections now being built into Web browsing is a welcome, if long overdue, move in favor of greater consumer privacy. (Consumer Reports first brought the problem of browser tracking by advertisers to national attention back in 1997.) But there are still ways companies can track your Web-surfing behavior that Do Not Track doesn’t address.
Ectaco Jetbook Color review: The first color E Ink e-book reader could make you blue