AT&T rep takes the whole Deathstar thing a little too seriously [Humor]

If this is a repeat visit for you, I’m sure you’ve at least seen one or two articles of my not to favorable outlook on AT&T. To the tech crowd, AT&T is also commonly referred to as “The Deathstar”. Perhaps the particular employee that was helping Consumerist reader Robert was taking it a tad too far? Psh, if anything AT&T should promote this gal to the top of the food chain. Blunt humor and more casual, consumer friendly mood. AT&T could use a lot more of that up top don’t you think?

For as cold and business-like as AT&T portrays itself, this rare showing of raw humor shows that at least 0.01% of AT&T is still consumer friendly. The blunt yet hilarious joke has me liking this Darlene chick. But after we get over the initial ha ha moment, we have to ask ourselves just how bad is it working inside of the company if the employees are (even jokingly) bringing up killing themselves….?

Funniest thing I’ve ever seen? God no. But it is the funniest tech thing I’ve seen this month.

Consumerist

NTT DoCoMo jumping 2G ship a little early. Set to abandon in March 2011. [Update]

Update: Got a couple dates mixed up. Sorry ’bout that.

Living in Japan presents itself with several pros and cons. On one hand, because the land of Japan is so small, the ever growing population is finding itself having to cram into tighter and tighter spaces. On the other hand, if you happen to care about mobile technology, Japan is a hot bed of activity. Part of that success is due in part to the close quarters. Further increasing in mobile technology is that a majority of the population lives on a small part of the overall land meaning cellular networks can upgrade large swaths of coverage area relatively quickly and cheaply when compared to U.S. counterparts.

Examples of this speedy rollout can be highlighted by detailing how Japan started their 3G rollout years before the U.S. and are planning to have a fairly extensive 4G network in place by December of 2010. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about 4G efforts stateside — they’re coming, but not near the speed or coverage area that Japanese 4G networks will be enjoying come this time next year.

This move to 4G and quick rollout of wireless technologies over all combined with rather swift uptake by the public meant Japan could flip the switch on 2G cellular networks as soon as December March 2011 — much sooner than the U.S. Perhaps they’re just sick and tired of 2G’s god awful everything and/or enough peoples have abandoned 2G use all together as NTT DoCoMo has announced that instead of December 2011, they will be killing 2G network support several months earlier with 2G network shut down coming as early as in March 2011. But what good is a 4G network without devices to take advantage of it? Check. DoCoMo is planning on releasing 4G data cards in late 2010 with 4G handsets to follow in early 2011.

Living in a country with considerably more land to cover, it’s hard to imagine a world without 2G here in the states as driving an hour or so from your house (in many instances even much less than that) results in your 3G coverage giving way to the antiquated 2G networks. Keep driving and you’ll eventually find a big, nasty network hole. Current U.S. network troubles aside, living in a more technologically advanced city and society is a tech lovers dream. How’s your stomach for sushi and your ability to decipher Japanese? I’ll be needing a roommate…

PhoneScoop > Yahoo

Restaurant forced to unplug live music nights because of licensing woes.

Many people wouldn’t make it through life if it weren’t for music. It feeds the soul. Why am I rambling about music again? Because I like music and the laws that govern music, licensing, copyrights, etc. are so backwards in this country it’s disgusting. Maybe, just maybe my voice along with many others will show the world how truly corrupt these types of organizations are.

Case in point: Bo Diddley’s restaurant in St. Cloud, Florida. The big stink simply deals with your usual greedy licensing company thinking they own everything with a musical note in it. The real kick in the pants is that unlike many other bars and karaoke joints, Bo Diddley’s doesn’t cover much licensed/popular music at all. Aside from a few songs here and there, most of the artists and songs performed at the venue are original creations. So you can understand the surprise and frustration the owner of not only Bo Diddley’s, but also several other local live music restaurants felt when they received several letters from one of the three, big North American licensing companies all demanding several years of back payment on live music licenses for covering licensed music…

• The three companies: Broadcast Music Inc. ( The American Society of Composers), Authors and Publishers, and SESAC

The final kick-in-the-back-of-the-head-when-you’re-alread-down moment is that there is no legitimate or fair way for any of the licensing companies to track or even know how much each establishment plays licensed music so that an appropriate fee can be negotiated. For all anyone knows, they could be paying roughly hundreds to thousands of dollars to a company that has absolutely no right or claim over it.

It’s really sad how backwards, unimaginative, and “crabby because artists are realizing they don’t need some washed up middleman” middleman are destroying music.

It’s a very compelling and thought provoking article. For it’s entirety, head on over to The SC Times

Fark

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GreenTech theme by HedoneDesign [BlackBerry Theme]

HedoneDesign is somewhat famous you could say. They are one of the top premium BlackBerry theme designer sites, often pumping out great theme after great theme. Today, Hedone is adding another notch to their belt. Their new theme “GreenTech” however is more than just another notch. GreenTech is the first official BlackBerry theme to be relesaed using BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0!

The overall design of GreenTech is — well, green — and easily read, crisp and clear icons. The text is easy to read. And best of all, those two big custom meters for both battery and signal status are top notch. Because of the newness of Theme Studio, the added features that can now be built into themes, and the overall higher quality that BlackBerry themes will now present means we’ll all have to pay ever so slightly more: $7.99 instead of the old $6.99 price. But there are ways to save. Purchase GreenTech before November 23rd and walk away with a brand spanking new 5.0 theme for only $3.99. Ya, that wet your whistle didn’t it?

• Purchase GreenTech

Going to CES!

Just a helpful reminder to anyone seeking all kinds of gadget/electronic news come early January: Gadgetsteria is going to CES 2010! We’ll flood the site with so much digital euphoria it’ll make your eyes puke. Make sure to bookmark us and stay glued to GS Jan 7th-10th.

Free Xbox Live Gold service for Silver members.

If you own an Xbox 360, chances are you more than likely have an Xbox Live gold account giving you free reign on Xbox Live. Without Live, the 360 is still good machine though significantly less desirable in my opinion. Whether the sinking economy stole your Xbox Live money or you simply haven’t ponied up the $50/year entrance fee because you’re “just not sure” it’s worth it, we can all agree that when someone offers you anything for free, you should generally take it.

For European Xbox owners, starting at 5pm GMT on November 25th and lasting through 5pm GMT November 25th, Xbox Silver members will be able to game in all of the online glory that Xbox Live Gold service allows. For those not in Europe, the dates of free game time will be 12am EST November 20th – 12am EST November 23. Why the date discrepancy? I’m not sure if that’s an error or not? (Anyone care to specify — I’m stuck behind a proxy at the moment unable to really confirm or deny any dates at the moment.)

The move is intended to showcase Live’s new additions of Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and Netflix in hopes that more people become yearly subscribers. Even though it isn’t the first time Microsoft has done this, it’s nice to see they still care. Will you be taking advantage of the free goods? See you on Live…

TechDigest

Email to be extinct in 10 years? Eh, probably not.

While looking forward to the future, it’s always fun to think about what is “hot” now and how it will undergo the usual tech transformation into old, outdated, and dead technology. The telephone used to be an amazing wonderment of scientific engineering. Now it’s nothing special. Much the same, email was at one point the pinnacle of technological achievement. Today everyone including their grandma and maybe even her dog have at least one email address. So what type of lifespan or useful timeline can we place on email?

10 more years is all we’ve got with the electronic mail service if TalkTalk’s claims are to be followed. 10 years. That isn’t very long from now at all. Look how far we’ve come sense the first email was sent way back in the 60′s. Email hasn’t changed really. It’s still a simple file transfer service. Can it really be going the way of the dodo in as little as 10 years? I doubt that. In fact I guarantee email will be around for decades to come. TalkTalk bases their response on how snail mail has become less valuable over time as well as taken into consideration the how quickly technology advances and that ever exciting technology doubling rule — technology doubles every 9 months. At that rate, will email really be extinct in as little as one decade?