TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

Spotted this little tidbit on WIND's Twitter account, concerning the Galaxy S III and why ordinary mortals cannot buy it from WIND:

WIND has extended their $200 service credit for new customers buying the Samsung Galaxy S III. I guess I'll have to wait until August to get my SGSIII, since I STILL can't buy one.

Over one month since the 'launch' of the Galaxy S III on WIND, and I still can't buy one. Yes, I'm bitching.  And why not?  Unfortunately, I'm too budget-minded to vote with my wallet and switch away from WIND, as that would entail me paying several hundred dollars more over the life of the phone.  But there is such as thing as goodwill, and mine is being seriously eroded by this whole debacle. I do think WIND could have done a better job of managing expectations.  They cast themselves as all 'social' and connected to their customers, a company who listens.  But in the end it's just a facade; they keep things to themselves for the most part. Part of this may be from a legitimate understanding that they simply cannot make everyone happy.  Certainly that applies to tower construction / coverage zones; that's a purely economic decision, and WIND has to spend the money for the best return on investment. This obviously comes into play for the G...

If you have any combination of multiple Google Apps and Gmail accounts, you're probably sick of signing out and signing in to different accounts to do different things.  Fortunately, Google allows "multiple account sign-in" that can alleviate the pain.  Makes it sooo much easier to manage all that email. The feature is not supported across all Google services (like Blogger, for example).  Not working for you?  Try these other solutions from TechRepublic.

Like many people, I had to do this when setting up a Google Apps account - I needed my personal calendar and Apps calendar to both show up on my phone. You often cannot just add another Google account to an Android.  You typically get a "Can't establish a reliable data connection to the server", which is complete crap.  Essentially, you are stuck, unable to add another Google account to your mobile - dumb, but true. However, if you follow the instructions so helpfully provided by Marc Fonteijn , you can get it working.  No import/export required.  Basically, you share the Calendars between both accounts, and give both sides the ability to edit events on both calendars. If you run into the bug where "Share all information, and outsiders can change calendars" is not shown as an option:  Set up the share email accounts anyway.  Shut down all your Firefox windows, restart Firefox, and clear everything in your history.  Then sign back in to your Apps ...

If you are anything like me, you usually have a lot of crap going on your desktop at once. You know - you are working on something, and then you stop for lunch.  Reading the news or whatever, you find something that you want to explore, so you open up a new Firefox window for that.  After lunch, it's back to work, but you leave the extra FF window open so you can go back to it later. Then you come back the next day and Microsoft has pushed out an update that restarted your computer in the night.  Bye, bye, all your stuff, you have to go find it all again. Yes, OK, I know why they do it.  Doesn't stop it from being a PITA. Yes, you can re-set Windows to try and update during daytime hours.  Doesn't really help that you will probably get endless pop-ups telling you to reboot RIGHT NOW, while you are trying to get crap done. Fortunately, Jon Galloway has written up a little tutorial on how to stop Windows from rebooting after each update .  There ar...

OK, you're stuck in the middle of the pissing match.   What do you do? Maybe try Google Apps. I'm usually pretty wary about this sort of thing.  I don't want to waste time, I'm leery of cloud-based 'stuff', and 'free' services are often anything but.  So I did some homework, and here is what I found: Apps is (supposedly) to custom domains what Gmail is to personal domains.  In fact, it seems that there is no difference between a Gmail account and an Apps account - except Apps email 'comes' from your own domain name. For example, in Gmail, I am "titam@gmail.com".  In Apps, I am 'titam@titam.com'.  Cool. Aside from that, Apps is just Gmail.  Sure, you do get Calendar, Drive, Docs, etc.etc. thrown in for good measure, but for the purposes of getting off GoDaddy email and on to something else, the Apps mail service is what we really need right now. I've used Gmail for a while now to back up my GoDaddy email.  So I kn...

Very recently, my emails to a very good client of mine began to bounce.  Not too much in the way of error messages, except for an obscure code that indicated my email was somehow marked as a spam account. A little more digging on the client side shows that my Godaddy mail server is blacklisted by the Abusive Hosts Black List - AHBL.  As far as I can tell right now, AHBL is the only one blacklisting GoDaddy email. Why?  Well, most of the evidence points to what basically amounts to a pissing match between AHBL and GoDaddy. In the red corner:  ABHL!  AHBL claims that GoDaddy is hosting a website that "uses abuse, harassment, and intimidation to conduct [it's] ‘business’."   They have asked GoDaddy to remove the site; GD refuses, violating their own terms of service.  AHBL claims they are standing up for "a growing trend that seems to indicate GoDaddy is turning a blind eye to abuse and spam".  On the flip side, AHBL states "there is nothing t...

WIND still has not announced squat with regards to the Galaxy S III.  It's in stores, but existing customers are literally prohibited from buying it. At least we're not the only ones.  Verizon is taking a lot of flak too , and T-Mobile seems to be having problems as well.  The T-Mobile version is also $50 more costly - sound familiar ? [Update]:  WIND just released phones for upgrades only.  Still no outright buy...

So much for being first.  He bought it because his Bell contract was up.  He doesn't even really know what it is. Thanks a ton, WIND.  Get off your asses already.

WIND has sent out notifications that Samsung Galaxy S III sales are restricted to new customers only - for the moment.  They have promised a "special offer" to make up for it. I lost the link, but the rumor is the "special offer" is $25 off the cost of the phone.  So it'll be in the low-$600 range, instead of the mid-$600 range. (Or around $500 on a WINDtab with the $25/mo plan, or around $400 on a WINDtab with the $40/mo plan.  Or something like that.) Not that impressive, really.  People are kind of steamed about not being able to purchase the GS III, and $25 is not a lot for the inconvenience. The Tab pay-as-you-go plan is basically just a deferred subsidy.  WIND will end up paying for some of the cost of the handset, but only after you've stuck with them for 3 years.  Sort of an interest-free loan, as it were. The difference between this and a regular contract seems to be that you can pay it off and leave anytime.  No different from buyin...