It’s no secret that I really, really, REALLY hate AT&T. In case you have any doubts, feel freed to read AT&T: Possibly the Worst Company Ever. It’s true, I hate them.

That said, I guess it’s very good I happened to catch this in recent news: an AT&T customer recently received a phone call from AT&T’s legal department, warning him that he was on the fast track to receiving a “Cease & Desist” letter from the department. Why? He wrote two emails to Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO, regarding legitimate customer concerns.

I guess this just continues to go to show that AT&T has absolutely no interest in actually addressing its customers’ problems and needs and is solely out to make a profit while irritating as many people like me as possible. Oh well. At least I know not to ever bother writing the CEO.

You can read more at this Endgadget Article.

According to a Daily Mail report, researchers at Cambridge University have discovered a way to duplicate some of the intricate optical signatures found in butterfly wings for use as an encryption method. This complex structure found in butterfly wings allows butterflies to appear one color to other butterflies, but a different color to their predators and other species. By recreating this technology, scientists have been able to produce optical signatures that change color based on how they are viewed.

One practical use of this new technology is to help deter the forgery of documents such as bank notes. Due to its high complexity and difficulty to reproduce, the use of this technology would make it much more challenging for counterfeiters to forge documents that utilize it as an anti-duplication measure.

Essentially, the optical signature would cause marking(s) on the document to change appearance when viewed under different lighting conditions.

For the original article, please visit http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1282621/Butterfly-wings-make-bank-notes-impossible-forge.html.

From Gmail help:

If you’re subscribed to a mailing list, you’ve no doubt been subjected to the ‘thread that just won’t die!’ If you’re part of a long message conversation that isn’t relevant, you can ‘mute’ the conversation to keep all future additions out of your inbox.

Very interesting…

I just noticed a “Mute” option in my Gmail menu. Considering I have no idea how you would mute an email, I’m guessing this is another April Fool’s Day joke. Does anyone have this? Or perhaps know anything about it?

On second thought, maybe this is legit…

If you visit Google.com or drive through Kansas today, you may notice something different. Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. [Source: CNN]

As it turns out, the former Google felt so honored by this that the company decided to change its name to Topeka. If you don’t believe this, simply visit Google.com or take a look at the Official Google Blog and see for yourself!

Unfortunately, most of the times the FCC or other areas of the US Government are mentioned on this blog with regards to the internet, it’s because they’re stirring up some sort of net neutrality outrage or some other problem.

Today, however, I have some interesting and more positive news. While it may be a bit unrealistic of a goal, the FCC has announced a plan to require a minimum speed for residential broadband providers.

Industry analysts estimate the current average residential broadband connection to be under 4 MBPS. However, the FCC’s new proposal could potentially require home internet speeds of 100 MBPS only 10 years from now.

Many broadband providers were quick to push back, claiming the plan is unrealistic, unnecessary, and not affordable. However, larger and more competent internet companies seemed somewhat more receptive.

You can get the whole scoop here: FCC to Propose Faster Broadband Speeds

Blogger is discontinuing its FTP publishing feature in March 2010.

The other day, Blogger sent out an official email to all its users announcing that they will be discontinuing support for FTP publishing quite soon:

…we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

• We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
• We will be providing a dedicated blog[5] and help documentation
• Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

Blogger claims that it is a big drain on resources to provide the functionality, and further, that it would require rewriting all of the feature’s code to accommodate a new system they are moving to.

To confirm all the rumors about Google phasing out Internet Explorer 6, I got this email only a few hours ago:

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

I guess that settles it! By the end of the year, all of Google Apps will no longer support IE6. I like it!

Much to the annoyance of most web developers, IE6 has continued to hold a surprisingly high share of the browser market, even following the releases of Internet Explorer 7 and 8. Consequently, of course, we’ve been forced to spend hours testing and tweaking our designs – fighting with the outdated browser’s horrible incompatibility and lack of standards compliance – to make websites display properly in the archaic browser, often having to break standards to do so.

This is, of course, in addition to the terrible security concerns the horribly out-of-date browser presents.

Well, a recent announcement by Google may finally shed some hope on this situation. Google has announced that as of the first of March, its Google Docs service will “no longer work properly” on IE6. In other words, Google is no longer going to waste its time doing a ton of extra work tweaking its software to make it work on IE6 while it works every other browser just fine.

Hopefully such a substantial move by an authority as big as Google will finally prompt a transition away from support for the old browser on the internet in general. If that’s the case, it would mean a lot of long-overdue relief for web developers everywhere.

You can learn more at this BBC News story: Google phases out support for IE6

This past summer, my friend and I brought our laptops into McDonalds, expecting to get free internet access. Having seen the WiFi sticker on the window, we figured that just like many other restaurants like Panera Bread and Wendy’s, McDonalds offered free internet access as a courtesy to its customers. We were mistaken. Sure, there was WiFi available, but it required a fee as well as authentication through my very much despised AT&T.

According to ComputerWorld, however, that will be changing – and soon. This morning, ComputerWorld released this article stating that McDonald’s has finally decided to offer free wireless internet access at 11,000 of its 14,000 U.S. locations.

In my opinion, McDonald’s will probably profit more having free WiFi than charging for it – and here’s why. First, I have a feeling that not too many people actually paid for their internet, considering I can’t recall ever seeing anyone with a laptop at McDonald’s. Second, I’ve spent entire days at Panera – buying coffee and “munchies” all throughout the day – while sitting around working on my laptop and building up an appetite. By creating an inviting environment that encourages people to stick around, McDonald’s will most likely make a much greater profit on additional food and beverage sales than from charging for internet access that nobody uses.

Are you planning on using the new free WiFi at McDonald’s when it’s available? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment or tweeting about this article below!