So you didn’t stay up until nearly 3:00 am last Friday morning to pre-order your iPhone 4S like I did, huh? Well, you missed out on all the fun! So there you are contemplating if you should go stand in lines Friday at one of the three cellular carriers or at the Apple Store. What to do? If you’re thinking, ‘No way I’m standing for hours only to be told there are none left,’ then you have the online alternative. BUT, which one should you go with? Best Buy? Radio Shack? AT&T? Verizon? Sprint? Take a look at STELLAService found before making your next click below and do it the easy way!
New York City (October 13, 2011) – For consumers seeking to avoid lines by purchasing the iPhone 4S online, a report out today says Apple.com is hands down the best choice over the four other online resellers thanks to its consumer-friendly services and policies, including the superior quality of its customer service phone support and its expansive AppleCare+ warranty program.
“Apple.com outperformed its reseller partners hands down when it comes to customer service, and we found no reason that consumers should look anywhere else,” said STELLAService co-founder and CEO Jordy Leiser. “With pricing for the iPhone 4S uniform across all online sellers, the overall quality of customer service should be the deciding factor in choosing where to buy the iPhone 4S online”
For the report, STELLAService looked at the five retailers and carriers offering the iPhone 4S online – Apple.com, BestBuy.com, VerizonWireless.com, ATT.com, and Sprint.com. In addition to evaluating key policies and features, such as return and warranty policies, STELLAService rated the quality of customer service phone support by placing ten phone calls to each retailer and asking ten questions — from how to buy insurance to how to change a pass code lock.
Dedicated to helping consumers make more informed buying decisions, STELLAService is an independent company that leverages a nationwide network of full-time mystery shoppers to evaluate online retailers across more than 350 customer service metrics, including shipping, returns, and customer support.
Leiser said STELLAService conducted the study to provide consumers with clear guidance in light of unclear policies, misinformation, rumors, and scams relating to online retailers selling Apple products. Leiser points out that Apple.com, which provides a list of authorized online resellers for its popular products, such as the iPod and iPad, does not provide a list of authorized online sellers for the iPhone.
Other findings from the study include
To evaluate the quality of customer service phone support, STELLAService rated each seller based on factors such as product knowledge, issue resolution, and overall tone and attitude of the customer support representatives. Apple.com’s representatives earned the highest score overall (4 out of 5), significantly outpacing others when it came to their ability to address questions (4.4 for Apple vs. 3.6 for AT&T and Verizon). STELLAService said the average customer service quality score for consumer electronics retailers was 3.7.
While BestBuy.com allows customers to purchase the iPhone 4S online, it does not offer shipping and delivery. As of the days leading up to the iPhone 4S release, customers could only pick-up the product in stores.
Apple.com’s AppleCare+ warranty program is by far the most cost-effective. Even though it does not cover loss and theft, the monthly fees and deductions for BestBuy’s Geek Squad and AT&T’s and Verizon’s Asurion warranties come close to the cost of buying a completely a new iPhone.
Apple.com and BestBuy.com offer the most generous return window for a refund (30 days) versus 14 days for AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon
Apple.com and BestBuy.com do not charge customers for returning an iPhone 4S, while AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon each have a $35 restocking fee.
AT&T is only online seller that does not allow customers to trade-in old phones by mail. AT&T customers can only trade-in phones in-store.
About STELLAService
Dedicated to helping consumers make more informed online shopping decisions, STELLAService is the first and only independent provider of customer service ratings for online retailers. The company leverages a nationwide network of full-time mystery shoppers to evaluate each site undercover, ensuring findings that are unbiased and true to the shopping experience. STELLAService has been profiled in Advertising Age (“STELLAService strives to give e-tailers credibility”) and its data has been featured in outlets such as Time, SmartMoney, Consumerist, and CBS Money Watch . Based in New York City, the company also publishes reports and other research to help companies worldwide improve their service operations. For more information, visit http://www.STELLAService.com. Follow us on Twitter at @STELLAService. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/STELLAService
When Steve Jobs showed off iOS 3 (then iPhone OS 3) with its ability to use accessories with the dock connector, one of his examples was a blood pressure monitor. Now, nearly two years after he displayed the example to everyone on the screen behind him, we finally have it in reality. Remember, we complained about the lack of devices supporting the dock connector feature back in October of 2009 but we’re happy to finally see something Jobs showed here in the, um, flesh. Withings today introduced Withings Blood Pressure monitor at CES for all to see. Pricing details along with instructions of use. Read the deets below.
Press Release:
With hypertension affecting almost 25% of the world population , blood pressure measurement can help to save lives. However, until now, taking your blood pressure required the use of complex devices with multiple manipulations, mathematical operations and data recording procedures. Self-measurement has been recommended by the medical profession for many years , but no one had yet found concrete solutions to expand its use.
This is why Withings chose to rethink the blood pressure monitor and turn it into an attractive, user-friendly connected device.
With the Withings Blood Pressure monitor, measuring and understanding your blood pressure couldn’t be easier. All data is recorded and saved to the user’s secure online space for easy measurement access and retrieval through their iPhone, iPad or other screen connected to a user-friendly interface.
Self-measurement is made simple by the Withings Blood Pressure monitor. It improves the reliability of readings and offers the option to share them with relatives, healthcare providers or medical professionals.
Through the Withings API, specialist partners can interface with the platform to offer additional services, as Withings has already proven with its WiFi Body Scale and partners such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and numerous health & sports coaching websites such as DailyBurn.com, RunKeeper.com, FitOrbit.com, gymtechnik.com, aujourdhui.com, Strands.com, Danholt4mac.com, Jogmap.de…and many more.
Says Withings co-founder Cédric Hutchings: “Apple revolutionized the world of smartphones by making them more user-friendly than ever before. By adding connectivity to high-tech devices, we simplify their usage and enrich them with extra services. Our goal is to take the drama out of using devices that can promote healthier lifestyles for all. We have achieved this with our Withings body scale, and are now repeating our success with the Withings Blood Pressure monitor”.
The Withings Blood Pressure monitor works together with an iPhone / iPad / iPod touch. The Withings Blood Pressure monitor, priced 129 euros or $129 US, will be available in January, 2011 on www.withings.com
How to use the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor:
Connect the cuff to the iPhone; the Withings application launches automatically. Simply slide on and tighten the armband around the arm above the elbow, then touch the start button on the iPhone to begin.
The Withings Blood Pressure Monitor automatically averages measurements to produce significant results.
Simply flip the iPhone to access measurement history and averages.
For later retrieval, simply access your secure online space at withings.com or launch the Withings application on your iPhone/iPad/iPod.
Mint.com just made it easier for users to track their cash spending and monitor pending expenses, such as checks. Addressing a top user requests by enabling manual entry of transactions, the new feature makes it easy for users to get an even more accurate accounting of their current financial picture – without having to become accountants themselves.
“People have asked for a way to easily keep track of cash spending and account for expenses before they clear and we’ve worked to help them do that with the level of accuracy and detail they have come to expect from Mint,” said Aaron Patzer, general manager and vice president of Intuit Personal Finance and founder of Mint.com.
“Whether you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck looking to avoid overdrafts or other fees, or simply want to make sure you’re accurately budgeting your cash spending, this new feature will make it easy to get a clearer view of your money.”
Following the Money
After spending cash, users simply enter the amount and merchant: Mint.com will automatically deduct the amount from their most recent ATM withdrawal, unless they choose otherwise. Mint.com will then apply the spending to the appropriate category and budget. For checks, entering the check number and payee means the expenditure will be automatically reconciled when the amount clears.
In addition to helping people to better track spending, Mint.com’s new feature will also account for tips, gifts, bonuses, owed money, or other income paid in cash or personal checks. Cash, checks and pending transactions will sync directly into a user’s account – tied to current budgets, personalized tags, categorized merchants, and linked accounts. Pending expenses will always top the list of transactions, helping people avoid overdrawing an account or exceeding credit limits.
“We developed this to make it as easy and intuitive as possible for users,” said Patzer. “Users no longer need to check online bank statements to correctly categorize checks, or suffer through splitting a big pie piece of uncategorized cash withdrawals to know where they’ve spent. More accurate insight into spending and savings lets people make better financial decisions, and that’s why we’re here.”
Customer feedback and requests help determine upcoming products and features from Mint.com. In the coming months, the Mint team plans to address user requests, adding support for thousands of additional financial institutions and an Android application to expand its mobile presence beyond its award-winning iPhone application.
Customers can offer input through the Facebook fan page, through Twitter, and directly within the product through a recent integration with GetSatisfaction that takes customer support and feedback to a whole new level.
SyncMate is offered at two versions, Free and Expert, and provides all users with even more synchronization possibilities than before. SyncMate Free Edition enables you to sync Address Book and iCal entries in your Mac with their analogues in supported devices and back up these data to Online Storage Account. Google Contacts and Google Calendar synchronization is also available.
Additionally to sync features, SyncMate Free Edition provides you with opportunity to read your SMS right from Mac OS X computer, share Internet between Mac and Windows Mobile devices and visually analyze detailed information of the Windows Mobile devices connected (battery state or memory usage).
SyncMate Expert Edition provides all users with a full access to all synchronization features. Sync iTunes&Video, iPhoto, Safari and Firefox Bookmarks, Entourage and mail Notes, ToDo’s, Mail and even separate folders between your Mac and Windows Mobile devices, create, send or delete SMS right on your Mac computer.
With Expert Edition all users can install any .cab files to Windows Mobile devices right from Mac computer.
SyncMate Expert enables you to analyze Nokia S40 devices Calls history directly on your computer. You can also back up ToDo’s, Safari Bookmarks, Entourage and Mail notes to your Online Storage Account with Expert Edition.
SyncMate Expert allows synchronizing To Do’s, Safari bookmarks, Entourage and Mail notes and separate folders between two or more Mac computers.
And of course all features of SyncMate Free Edition are available at Expert Edition.
SyncMate installation is very easy. There is no need to unlock device in order to install SyncMate. Mac can be connected to Windows Mobile device via USB or Wi-Fi, Mac to Nokia connection is available via Bluetooth, and you can sync your Mac with another Mac via Ethernet.
SyncMate Compatibility.
SyncMate is compatible with Mac OS X platform (Mac OS X 10.4 and higher, Mac OS X 10.5). Device compatibility: Windows Mobile Pocket 5, Windows Mobile Smartphone 5; Windows Mobile 6 Standard, Windows Mobile 6 Classic and Windows Mobile 6 Professional; Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile 6.5; Nokia S40 devices.
Additional information about SyncMate, along with detailed technical documentation, online help, changelog, upgrade policy as well as free installation package can be found at: http://www.sync-mac.com/
You can download SyncMate 2.0 here http://mac.eltima.com/download/syncmate.dmg
Today, LaCie announced a merger with Caleido AG, the creators of the innovative online storage service, Wuala.
Luzius Meisser, Co-Founder of Caleido said, “Wuala is an exciting technology that builds its reliable and secure cloud storage by harnessing idle resources.”
Wuala assembles centralized and distributed storage; the result is a reliable and scalable service. Once files are placed in Wuala, they are securely encrypted before being cut into several redundant fragments disseminated and stored on a cloud of computers.
“Users will gain online storage while trading disk space; that way, they will securely protect their valuable data. They can access it from anywhere and easily share files with selected peers. As privacy tends to be a major issue when talking about digital life and data management, everything is encrypted and a robust rights management system protects files from unauthorized access,” said Dominik Grolimund, Co-creator of Wuala, “We will also bring this technology to enterprises and professional customers, who will soon take advantage of our services with both cloud and data center-based storage.”
LaCie has plans to implement this first real “cloud storage” technology into its ranges of storage devices, offering a powerful and combined solution for storage–local storage on devices for fast access, and secured remote storage on the cloud, for easy sharing and complete data versatility.
“For 20 years, LaCie massively promoted hard drive technologies; today, as a leader on storage market, we will be a first mover in the next leading technologies: flash-based storage, and cloud storage. With this merger, LaCie will morph from a pure hardware manufacturer to a solution provider. These new technologies will be amazing for our customers and will enhance their experience,” Philippe Spruch concluded.
Earlier this week SvenOnTech told you about Tributes.com, the place for obits online. We quoted founder Jeff Taylor to the claim as being the first online obits site. Guess what? It’s not.
Legacy.com is a site that’s been bringing obituaries to the web for over a decade since 1998! The site claims 13 million unique visitors a month making it one of the most popular web sites on the Internet. Teaming up with the largest media sources in the world, ” including more than 700 newspapers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia”, a loved one, friend, or college can easily be found on Legacy.com. In fact, a recent death of a college of mine was found instantly on Legacy.com.
The site also allows users to interact with one another in remembering the lost. “Users also can create interactive Legacy Memorial Websites that allow others to post and share photos, video and other memories of their loved ones,” SvenOnTech was told by Legacy.com.
Take a look at Legacy.com and remember and share with others the life of someone today.
UPDATE: Founder of Tributes.com, Jeff Taylor, was inaccurately quoted and did not make the claim “last man standing” This claim was made by Tributes.com press release.
The demise of print, specifically the newspaper, has been a topic of discussion lately and now that the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are rolling back its home delivery to three days a week, the online community is becoming a more important watering hole than ever before. While many have already adapted to the web, RSS feeds, and social community sites for their daily feed for news, many may have forgotten about obituaries. Where will one go to find more information about a friend, distant relative, or associate?
Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, has put together a new site to bring all of this together at a national level. Tributes.com brings the “last man standing” from the paper to the web as other aspects of print have come to cyberspace sometime ago, helping bring an end to traditional paper, such as Match.com, eHarmony.com, eBay, Craigslist, and Monster.com for example. With 2.5 million deaths in the US alone every year, many will have a need to easily locate obituaries and Tributes.com will aid in that need. Using a unique system, Tributes.com will allow users to stay informed of any deaths related to town, alumni, family name, or military unit via “accurate obit email alerts”. Like all things on the Information Superhighway, Tributes.com will do the work for you and let you know if a neighbor from your old neighborhood has passed or a pal that you served with in Army.
Tributes.com may sound morbid at first, but in the end, loved ones and friends do pass and this site will aid in keeping you informed of those untimely moments.
Don’t you just love those smug Mac users talking about how easy it was for them to create a photobook of their latest vacation and how they did it in like, “2 minutes; that’s it!”? I know, you secretly wished you had a Mac so you too could be sporting on the iPhoto but you’re stuck with a PC. Well, don’t worry, ’cause you don’t have to wait an eternity for Microsoft to make a good iPhone clone because Rocketlife did it for them.
Rocketlife is an online photo processor that lets you make calendars, cups, posters, and, yes, photobooks. With just some of your photos, Internet Explorer, a broadband connection, and some creativity, Rocketlife is going to set you up with one sweet photobook…in just minutes. Now you can be like our reviewer, Rebecca, and take your sweet time to nail down that awesome custom look if you want, but it’s not required. Either way, Rocketlife offers a pretty impressive option to iPhoto-wishing PC users to use. Take a look at Rebecca had to say in her review. You may never look at iPhoto again!
ebrary, a leading provider of eContent services and technology, today announced that it will begin testing its new Java-based Reader in August and is currently seeking beta testers. The new ebrary Reader(TM) will replace its current proprietary plug-in and will provide better functionality and ease-of-use.
Libraries, publishers, and other organizations that participate in the program will receive institution-wide access to a select collection of ebrary’s eBooks and other titles for one year, subsidized by ebrary. Organizations that are interested in participating should email marketing@ebrary.com.
“It has long been ebrary’s belief that the computer can do more to increase user efficiency when interacting with information, and that is why we originally developed the ebrary Reader plug-in with InfoTools,” said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. “With the help of our customers, partners, and end-users who have been providing us with valuable feedback, we have developed this new Reader that will replace our current plug-in to provide an even better and more valuable service. We are very excited to begin beta testing this new technology and encourage libraries and other organizations in all parts of the world to participate.”
ebrary’s new Reader will initially be tested on Linux followed by Windows and Macintosh environments. The new Reader will launch on all platforms simultaneously later this year.
The ebrary Reader enables documents to be viewed online, page-by-page, eliminating the need for cumbersome document downloads. It also gives the ebrary platform all of its rich functionality including ebrary InfoTools(TM), which enables integration between multiple online resources and instant, contextual linking when end-users select words of interest in a document.
Key enhancements and new features include the following: Read the rest of this entry »
I couldn’t begin to tell you how many clients I’ve had that call telling me in near tears that their hard drive just took a dump and begging me to please save the data on it. My first question (even though I already know the answer due to the desperation in their voice,) is if they’ve made back-ups. No is always the answer. Always. After some deep probing using some sweet tools on hand, I usually am able to recover missing data most of the time. After I do return the data on DVD-ROMs, I go into the “make sure you do back-ups regularly” speech and offer my services in this department. I know it falls on deaf ears. (In fact, one client called me three different times with the same problem within a years time. The third time was not the charm. Dead drive that I could not help with.)
I practice what I preach. In fact, I’m paranoid with my data. I have two local archives done on-site and one set of archives online. My mail is also on an Exchange server hosted outside my office, thus that gets the triple-protection stamp. With the online service, I have to be stingy with what I back up since I have hundreds of gigs of data, mostly due to my pictures and music. That is until I found Carbonite.
Carbonite is unlike any other online service I’ve seen before as it makes backing up your data easy and economical. Carbonite is pushing itself heavily during its ramp-up phase and offering a free month of unlimited backup without a credit card using certain promo codes. It’s easy to find that code. Once you’re signed up, backing up is as easy as either accepting the default (My Documents folder) or going the manual route and right clicking folders or files and selecting “Back this up” from the Carbonite menu item. Really, it’s that easy! Depending on your amount of data you’ll be backing up, you’re looking at a few hours (or days) of getting all your files securely archived before real-time back-ups occur which then happens in seconds. After a file changes (or is created within a selected folder for back-up), it’s backed up according to your settings (such as wait until idle Internet usage.) Peace of cake.
Restoring is even easier. Open your new “Carbonite Secure Backup” icon in My Computer and drill down to your file or folder you wish to restore. Right clicking it reveals a menu with options such as Restore and Restore to. Select one and follow the prompts. You can also just drag-and-drop the object as well. That easy!
As for information, Carbonite does not lack here. Dots help paint a picture about your files for you. Little blue dots on your file or folder visually indicate that object is schedule for back-up, yellow defines back-up in progress, and green tells ya that it was successfully backed up. Of course the red dot means trouble was encountered. A colored themed lock icon in the Task Tray also follows the same color code chart of the dots. At any time, you can double click the lock icon by your system clock which will bring up the InfoCenter. Yup, you can guess what this will tell you.
Okay, there are some things Carbonite won’t do. It doesn’t archive data from external drives (such as USB or Firewire drives), flash drives, and mapped network drives. Files 2 GB or larger it won’t touch either. System or executables are not backed up unless you manually add them to your archive list.
Once your free trail is over, you can have all this for only $49.95 for a full year. That’s unlimited space for $50! Incredible, huh?! Now granted, who knows how long Carbonite will be able to last at this price (or last at all) and if your data will there when you need it because Carbonite isn’t, but that’s why you still do local back-ups, too. 
Be paranoid like me and you won’t be like one of my customers at the end of the day.