I plan on putting this to the test today, and for those who wish to join me, I am including a Word (DOC) version of my own voice command page. This one is designed for a Canon copier, and you can make your own adjustments.

Just be sure to find an inactive button to replace the “ID” on your keypad if you don’t have one, and it helps to print it in color. Download the Printer Voice Command April Fools Prank in Microsoft Word [DOC] or [DOCX] format and give it a try!

One thing that really struck me was the rate at which users upgraded to Firefix 4. Microsoft was bragging not too long ago about its IE9 download figures for the first 24 hours of its release, which Firefox proceeded to destroy in about a quarter of that time.

I am also amused by the steady decline of IE’s market share given Microsoft’s typical greediness and business practices. Don’t get me wrong: of course Microsoft is a for-profit organization whose ultimate responsibility is earning a profit for its shareholders. But I’ve been rubbed the wrong way one too many times by things like broken security tools, monopolistic practices, and modified file extensions. (Remember when Word document extensions were only three letters?)

So to see IE now holding less than 50% market share makes me a little bit happy. Not only because I like seeing Microsoft actually have to try, but also because I know Firefox is a far superior product. This statistic means that web users overall are having a better and safer browsing experience.

I haven’t been using Firefox 4 long enough to comment on its overall stability, but one thing I did immediately notice was the removal of my CTRL+E search shortcut. I don’t use a mouse and have grown accustomed to this as an alternative method of accessing my search bar. Luckily an easy fix can be found in the Change Search Shortcut extension. Very easy to install and does the trick wonderfully.

I’ll write more on the Firefox 4 features later, but for now, please support the cause! If you are tired of slow webpages, frequent crashes, and constant security glitches, make the change to Firefox 4 today. Firefox is compatible with all your favorite websites and will copy all your favorites and personal settings right in from Internet Explorer. Give it a shot.

I’ve been a Sprint customer for close to a decade and it has been quite a roller coaster. I rocked a Samsung SPH-N200, my very first phone, with pride back in 2001. I’ve since seen some of the worst and best customer service imaginable: one employee told me he “didn’t care” whether I was a customer or not, and others have gone to great lengths to keep me as one.

Right now Sprint seems to be in a bit of a lull and I cannot help but wonder how they are going to attract new customers in the coming months. The iPhone is still gaining market share, and yet Sprint is not carrying it. The Palm Pre has gained a loyal following of webOS users, and yet Sprint has announced no plans for carrying the Palm Pre 2, or even making a webOS 2.0 upgrade available for original Pre users.

In fact, the only thing Sprint has succeeded in doing is stringing Palm users along while we were told that a webOS upgrade would be forthcoming. Up until as recently as right now, Sprint has maintained that this would be available during the first quarter of 2011. However, a new update on the Palm website states:

Your device is not able to support the new features of webOS 2.

Therefore, your device will not receive a webOS 2 update. The latest software version for your device is webOS 1.4.5.

We are working on alternative plans with Sprint and will be sharing details in the coming weeks. Please come back to palm.com/webos-info to find out more

Your current device:

Palm Pre on Sprint.

So what I’m basically hearing is we are out of luck. Fine, I’m willing to ditch webOS. Occasionally Sprint has a great release of another product, and I thought the Samsung Epic might be worth my while. I went in for an upgrade.

Instead of happily signing me up for another 2-year contract and letting me pay $150 on top of that for a new phone, the CSR informed me that an additional $10/month fee had been enacted on all smartphones. Assuming I want to upgrade from the Pre, my costs of staying with Sprint are now as follows:

1. The loss of choice that comes with a 2-year service agreement.
2. Either $150 or $199 for the purchase of the new phone.
3. Assuming a 2-year lifecycle, an additional $240 to cover the new “premium data” fee on top of my smartphone plan. (Nevermind the fact that I don’t use very much data at all).

So in short, assuming Sprint’s $70/month plan, about $10/month in taxes, and now factoring in the phone and fee, being a Sprint customer for the next two years will cost me about $1,300/year.

I have yet to run a complete cost analysis on the other carriers, but I would guess that Sprint is losing out on its price competitiveness. The only excuse for their neglect of webOS users would be if they maintained low prices across the board, but given the circumstances I do not understand what they are doing.

Also See: Sprint’s New Smartphone Fee — How ‘Bout a Little Honesty?

How can Microsoft go around trumpeting Bing as being different from or in any way superior to Google when it is literally copying exact results from them?

Bing has, in my experience, seriously lagged behind both Google and Yahoo. I don’t know a lot about the hardware and systems behind search indexing, but I do know that Bing is several weeks behind on some of my sites compared to Google and I would never rely on it to provide current information.

The fact that they blatantly copy results from Google only prove that they cannot compete: and Microsoft knows it.

It is the AAdvantage Re-Engagement program.

The Wiki on FlyerGuide.com has more information and is where I’ve borrowed this information from, but the same was sent to me by an American Airlines staff member in PDF format.

To restore up to 50,000 miles:

1. Subscribe to AAdvantage eSummary and AAdvantage Promotions emails for the duration of the challenge (minimum 3 months)
2. Complete at least one of the following:

   - Become a Citi AAdvantage credit card holder and earn at least 750 base miles using the card

   - Earn at least 5,000 miles using the products and/or services of at least 3 AAdvantage partners

   - Purchase and fly one round-trip ticket on AA of at least 750 miles each way

Call AAdvantage Customer Service upon completion of these requirements to validate activity and restore miles

I don’t think this is particularly difficult to do and will likely use the Citi card or book a round trip in the near future to earn back my expired miles.

Check out the link above to visit FlyerGuide.com and learn more about methods for earning back even more miles.

And lastly, a big kudos to American Airlines for making these options available. As I told a Customer Service Manager, you cannot take away from your customer loyalty program without also taking away from your customer loyalty. The American Airlines Re-Engagement Program is a definite step in the right direction.

During my troubleshooting days, the single most frequent request I had was to optimize office computers and remove unnecessary software. One company told me they’d just spent a substantial amount on McAfee licenses, paid someone to install it on 25 computers, lost hours of productivity from employees whose systems it had ground to a halt, and finally had no choic ebut to pay me to get rid of it. Quite a waste.

Today I experienced something similar with Symantec Antivirus. My computer had been doing strange things, locking up, “System” CPU usage is spiking near 100%, and Firefox would not load at all. I spent two hours going through everything I could think of before I finally disabed Symantec Antivirus. This, of course, fixed everything.

Once more, I want to remind everyone that there are very good antivirus products out there that are free for home users and very good alternatives to paid software.

• Microsoft Security Essentials
• AVira
• AVG
• Avast

On the MSE I am usually the last person to recommend a Microsoft product, but they’ve done a good job here. From what I’ve read it has a pretty good detection rate. AVira is often recommended for low-performance PCs that are more memory sensitive. But I’ve used all four of these with good results.

Expedia.com was a shining example of this today with their most recent email: “Account Update: We deposited your $200 travel coupon.” Since I have already opted out of Expedia marketing emails and the “Please SPAM Me!” box in my Expedia account is definitely unchecked, I assumed what most reasonable individuals would: that “Account Update” means “Account Update.”

I book business trips regularly with Expedia, so it’s not unrealistic to assume they might be doing something special to thank me for my business. “That’s nice,” I thought.

Then I opened it.

Dear Expedia Customer,

We just dropped a Holiday Bonus coupon into your account. You’ll save $200 on any roundtrip package that includes a 5+ night hotel stay. Redeem your coupon for travel by March 31; travel by April 30, 2011.

It’s easy to redeem your travel coupon:

* Sign in to your Expedia Account
* Choose a 5+ night vacation package*
* On the Vacation Package Billing and Delivery page, click “I have a coupon”
* Select “apply and reprice”

Plan your next vacation on Expedia

Sincerely,
Expedia Travel Team

The deal itself isn’t so bad: what bothers me here is what I perceive to be clear deception on the part of Expedia. First of all, the holidays are over, decorations are down, and the holiday-promotions ship has sailed. We are well into the sick-of-this-and-waiting-for-Spring part of the season.

Secondly, I believe this is at its core a marketing email, not an account update, and exactly the type of thing federal legislation has sought to prevent.

Title 15 Chapter 103 §7704 (a)(2): It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission to a protected computer of a commercial electronic mail message if such person has actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that a subject heading of the message would be likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message (consistent with the criteria used in enforcement of section 45 of this title).

I reasonably thought this message was an update about my account, and receiving a real $200 credit/gift might be consistent with that. Being told about a special promotion is, to me, not an account update. Expedia would likely argue that having a new coupon “added to my account” qualifies as an update on which they should keep me apprised. By extension, this would also mean that they could have any special promotion “applied to my account” at any time and consider it an account update. If this is their justification then we will definitely have to agree to disagree.

At the worst, their interpretation is incorrect and they are in violation of federal SPAM legislation. Or more likely, since I’m sure their lawyers are no fools, they are simply finding new ways to disrespect customers’ wishes by exploiting legal loopholes.

To conclude, I will again point back to the special little box in my Expedia preferences that reads: “Please send me Expedia emails with travel deals, special offers, and other information.” It is clearly unchecked, which should be a good indication to Expedia that I don’t want to hear from them with “travel deals,” “special offers,” or “other information.”

So, basically, leave me alone.

Apparently the only way to accomplish this is to cancel my Expedia account, which I will get to later in the week. I have no particular loyalty to them and am quite confident that any of the other Google results for “travel deals” could provide similar service with a little less talk.

Perhaps the most simplified explanation of net neutrality can be found on TheOpenInter.net. It’s a great read.

It seems almost inevitable that ISPs will begin charging extra for certain content. They are, after all, for-profit organizations. Many consumers write this off as impossible and say things like “everyone would revolt, we just wouldn’t pay it.” I am skeptical.

If Facebook began charging $9.95 per year to use its service, would people cry? You bet. But would the millions of regular Facebook users who are completely dependent on the network for their social connectivity and awareness suddenly decide to go without? I doubt it. I believe Facebook has crossed from a luxury to a necessity for many Americans, and has joined the ranks of the cell phone and email as a vital tool for connectivity.

Content surcharges would probably not stop us from doing the things we want, but rather force us to be more selective in how we do them. Maybe it means getting maps from a different website, or opting for Netflix DVDs instead of Hulu.

The question of whether it will actually be prudent for ISPs remains to be seen, and also that of whether it could actually benefit consumers. For example, we might see base internet service become LESS expensive, with surcharges for specific functions

The idea of an ISP charging extra for Facebook access is probably unrealistic as it would create too excellent a marketing tool for its competitors. But it does open the door for other avenues of restriction: what if access to foreign news media has an extra charge? What if ISPs have a list of “black sites” that they charge extra for? WikiLeaks, porn, political speech… any of it could become subject to surcharges.

In any event, the important thing here is to become educated on the issues. Learn about net neutrality and tell your friends and relatives to do the same. What you do from there is your call.

But as we know, there’s more to it than that:

“At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a call back number, press 5.”

So no problem, right? If it bothers you, just press the # key to bypass. Except the carriers differ on the bypass method. For some, a simple # will get you right to the beep. For others, it brings you to the login prompt and you end up having to call again to leave your message.

The reason for this archaic instruction is no big secret. Back when airtime was expensive, it behooved carriers to keep you on the line as long as possible. Often, the time it takes to get through 4-6 rings, hear a short message, and then the post-greeting instructions comes out to just over one minute. This is good news for the carrier as it brings you one minute closer to racking up overage fees.

David Pogue at The New York Times initiated a campaign last year called “Take Back the Beep” with mixed results. AT&T cut its instructions down slightly, while others hardly responded at all. Humorously, Pogue quoted Verizon as responding as follows:

Verizon Wireless has this instructional message in place to ensure that callers who are not familiar with our voice mail system leave a message correctly.

Thanks for having our backs, Verizon. Idiots everywhere truly owe you one.

Like many profitable schemes, however, this will come to an end. As more customers ditch landlines in favor of cell phones, the demand for unlimited airtime increases. Carriers are already moving toward more expensive phones and data plans while gradually dropping the price of standalone airtime. When most plans become unlimited and the carriers cease to profit from keeping people on the phone longer, how will they react in light of their previous statements that it was, essentially, for our own good?

From a public relations standpoint, it might be preferable for them to hold off on any drastic changes just yet. After all, the cost to keep us on the air an extra 8 seconds is nominal compared to the per-minute fee they will charge if they are lucky enough to get overage fees. But it does beg the question of whether we will ever be free of pesky post-greeting instructions.

Personally, I despise wasting time listening to an instructional recording on how to leave a voicemail that is in all probability going to be shorter than the instructions.

If there are truly still people out there who do not know how to leave a voicemail, they may be better off with a couple plastic cups and a piece of string.

Beep.