Get For Free !!!: 10/13 L.A. Times Tech Blog

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T-Mobile to give $100 credit to Sidekick phone users who lost data and contacts
October 12, 2009 at 10:33 pm

Students at Boston Arts Academy in Boston use their T-Mobile Sidekicks in February. On Monday, T-Mobile said owners of Sidekick phones may have lost all the personal data they stored on the phone, including contact numbers, because of a failure of servers operated by Microsoft. Credit: Charles Krupa / Associated Press.

T-Mobile said today that Sidekick cellphone owners who experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content will receive a $100 customer appreciation card. The card can be used toward T-Mobile products and services, or a customer's T-Mobile bill. This will be in addition to the $50 credit that's been given to all Sidekick data customers, the company said.

A server failure last week resulted in a loss of contact numbers, calender entries, to-do lists and photos for some Sidekick users. The outage affected customers who were enrolled in the Sidekick's data service provided by Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.

"A subset of Sidekick customers appear to have lost data," the company said in a statement. "We do not have an exact number, but we believe it is a minority of customers."

T-Mobile voice and text services were not affected during the Oct. 2 outage.

Krista Berlincourt, a T-Mobile spokeswoman, said the company told customers last week that there was a temporary data outage and advised them not to reset their phones, remove their battery or let their battery drain completely. If they did, they were at risk of losing their data, she said.

Sales of Sidekicks were temporarily put on hold, Berlincourt said, even though "virtually all data services are operational," the company said.

"We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer," T-Mobile said in today's statement. "Microsoft/Danger has teams of experts in place who are working around-the-clock to ensure this stability is maintained."

Customers who are looking for updates and more information on the outage are encouraged by T-Mobile to visit the Sidekick Forums online.

-- W.J. Hennigan

Lufthansa to relaunch on-board broadband service
October 12, 2009 at 8:50 pm

Lufthansa, one of the world's largest airlines, will bring back in-flight broadband Internet service. Credit: Lufthansa.

After an unsuccessful first bid, Deutsche Lufthansa announced Monday that customers would once again be able to communicate mid-flight using broadband Internet.

The German airline said it would reintroduce FlyNet, its satellite-based Internet service, by mid-2010. In addition to wireless Internet access, the service will enable Lufthansa passengers to send text messages and transfer data on smartphones.

Lufthansa is partnering in the venture with Japanese electronics giant Panasonic Corp. Lufthansa said it planned to equip a major part of its long-range fleet with FlyNet within the first year of operation.

If FlyNet works as planned, Lufthansa will be the first airline to carry high-speed connections that cover various handheld and Wi-Fi devices. Other airlines' Internet capabilities aren't as extensive or as fast. Lufthansa Chief Executive and Chairman Wolfgang Mayrhuber said passengers could look forward to superior in-flight service.

"On long-haul routes, we offer business travelers, in particular, a range of communication options on par with those available at land-based hot spots or premium hotels," he said in a statement.

Passengers can choose to be billed through a mobile service provider or pay by credit card, the company said. Travelers should also be able to redeem award miles for use of the Wi-Fi Internet connections, Lufthansa said. The prices for specific services will be announced at a later date.

This is not Lufthansa's first step into the broadband arena. In 2004, the carrier was one of 10 international airlines that installed Boeing Co.'s Internet broadband service called Connexion. Lufthansa outfitted 63 of its 80 long-haul aircraft with the service -- at about $1 million per plane.

When Boeing ended the service in 2006, it was embarrassing for Lufthansa, which had poured millions into promoting and installing Connexion. But Paul Margis, chief executive of Panasonic Avionics Corp., said previous experience makes the company an ideal launch customer for the new broadband service.

"Lufthansa was a true pioneer with their FlyNet branded service," he said in a statement. "We are proud to bring FlyNet back to their passengers."

-- W.J. Hennigan

Huffington Post wants to help
October 12, 2009 at 8:00 am

anna Huffington. Credit: Huffington Post.

You've got to love the left. Even when they're running capitalist enterprises, they want to find some way to help the downtrodden.

Arianna Huffington is adding a new section to her eponymous A-list blog site the Huffington Post, and calling it Impact. She's partnered with Causecast, a Santa Monica venture that has both nonprofit and for-profit arms, and which will provide both articles and, more important, technology to make the section work.

The section will go live at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, and will feature stories on a variety of subjects, including gay issues, helping the homeless, stopping bullying in schools and flooding in the Philippines. Each story will come with a Causecast "widget" that will help a reader plot a course of action.

"We want to document the hardships and to provide the means and the tools for direct action, money and service," Huffington said.

Ultimately, every article -- not just those in the Impact section -- could feature a Causecast widget. A sample of the widget, seen at right, shows how it could be used with a story on this past weekend's National Equality March in Washington, D.C., for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. The widget is just a small box that runs with the stories containing buttons a reader could click to take them to a Causecast page that promotes other websites, such as the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that helps prevent LGBT youth suicide.

"Every article has a cause behind it," said Ryan Scott, the founder and CEO of Causecast. "We're going to show the actions that people can take to effect change on whatever that is. Say it's a flood or a tsunami. Can they donate? Volunteer? Make calls? Make personal fundraising pages?"

Huffington said ads will run on the site, and the Huffington Post and Causecast will split the ad revenue. Any money donated to any cause goes directly to the cause, with nothing coming out of it.

Her site continues to expand, reinvesting its proceeds in the product. "We've had a very, very good advertising year," she said. "We would be in the black if we were not expanding. Whether you are profitable or not depends whether you're standing still or expanding. This is a window we need to take advantage of."

In addition to Impact, the HuffPost started a Technology section and regional coverage in Denver in September, a Books section earlier this month, and new sections on Sports and Giving planned for November and December. Local news in Los Angeles is also planned for November, and a San Francisco Bay Area section could start before the end of the year, although it's more likely to hold off until early 2010.

Huffington said her audience is highly engaged, with 27 million people visiting the site each month and leaving 2 million comments. "We want to tap into that longing out there to give back," she said. "That was a big part of the success of the Obama campaign, when Obama promised to make service central. That has been slightly derailed with all the problems in the economy but we want to make it central. This is not the icing on the cake. It has to be baked into the cake."

-- Dan Fost