billing

billQ: Good, simple bill tracking, plus extras

Into a sea of online personal financial services wades billQ, a bill management service that promises to store your one-time and scheduled bills and alert you before they're due.

Unlike competitors like Mint, Wesabe, and others, there's no bill pay engine, no money-saving deals, and no hot financial tips. For now, billQ is strictly positioned as information management, and for a lot of folks that's the right load.

Add and manage bills The site is visually appealing in Google-esque minimalism. Adding and viewing bills is intuitive on billQ's clean, user-friendly interface. Tweaking account options and adding from a noble menu of additional tools are also easily done.… Read more

A shield for journalists worth supporting?

I've been tracking the progress of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 for months. Having spent time in a federal prison for protecting my source material, it's natural that I would be interested in a law that would prevent others from enduring this same fate.

The last time I wrote about the bill's status was in August, after it cleared the House Judiciary Committee. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee followed suit, and both houses of Congress are now ready to vote on the law.

While this is very exciting news for many journalists, I'm less than ecstatic, given that neither the version of the bill is ideal, and there is no telling how the two bills will be combined, should it pass both houses.

While the amended version of the House bill seeks to tie journalism to an economic exchange, the Senate's definition is broader in scope and would not only protect professionals but would likely apply to students and many bloggers as well.… Read more

DoCoMo prototype phone could pay the bills

If NTT DoCoMo had its way, one day in the future users might be able to make electronic payments via their mobile phone while the handset remains in their pocket.

The Japanese cell phone operator this week showed off a prototype equipped with a sensor developed by Kaiser Technology that can send electric signals through the human body. Practical uses include opening doors to secure areas without flashing security cards or programmed personal preferences such as drivers' seat and steering wheel angles.

All these are still hanging in the air, though, as the company isn't sure if the technology … Read more

Blue Monster Reserve: It's how Steve Ballmer gets plastered

The more Microsoft events CNET sends me to around New York (the Windows Vista launch weekend, Halo 3's raucous little debutante ball), the more I realize one thing: No matter how much Gates, Ballmer, & Co. seem to always have issues (like that "Zune" debacle), that company knows how to throw one hell of a party. I'm not kidding. It even has its own wine now.

Created by South African winery Stormhoek especially for Microsoft, the "Blue Monster Reserve" sauvignon blanc is accompanied by the tagline "change the world or go home." … Read more

A new use for Speed Dial!

Earlier this month, New York enacted an Air Passenger Bill of Rights. Among other things, it requires that airlines make minimal provisions for passengers stranded on the tarmac for more than three hours. If you've done any traveling with kids, you probably know how difficult it is to both pack light (a key strategy for successful travel generally) and to pack enough stuff so that if there's a delay, you can keep the little ones occupied. The New York law bounds the problem a little bit: if your longest leg is 6 hours, you can be relatively assured that your outbound leg from a New York airport won't add more than 3 hours to that. But as the US Customs and Border Patrol SNAFU at LAX confirms, airport authorities don't seem to get particularly concerned about tarmac waits of 6, 8, or 10 hours, be they outbound or inbound. I think that when traveling with children, that's a bit much. What's a parent to do?… Read more

House OKs energy bill - but where's the beef on energy or climate?

The House of Representatives passed the Energy Bill a few days ago. I was quoted in Red Herring on one area that I think is a huge part of the bill, a federal renewable portfolio standard. Now since the 24 state RPSs have been the main driver behind renewable generation growth like wind - I'd look for this bill to underpin growth in the sector for years.

And anything that drives renewable generation growth will tend to drive a need for more transmission. So chalk up getting our transmission grid in order as a new priority number one (this … Read more

Microsoft: In case you thought we had a clue on open source, surprise! We don't!

This post by Microsoft (disclaiming its need to adhere to GPLv3) has me depressed. Not because of what it portends for open source, but because of how dumb it makes the company look, as Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet points out. Not to mention that it makes Novell look really dumb for trusting Microsoft to play nicely. (But then, that foolishness was never in doubt.)

Still, Novell has just released this response to Microsoft's position:

Shortly after the GPLv3 license was released, Microsoft issued a statement in which they expressed their view that Microsoft is not a party to the GPLv3 and it is therefore not applicable to them. Yesterday, they also articulated that, "to avoid any doubt or legal debate on this issue, Microsoft has decided that the Novell support certificates that we distribute to customers will not entitle the recipient to receive from Novell, or any other party, any subscription for support and updates that includes the receipt of any code licensed under GPLv3."

Microsoft's current position, taken unilaterally, is intended to eliminate any perceived ambiguity about the applicability of GPLv3 to Microsoft. Nonetheless and independent of Microsoft's position, we would like to make clear our commitment to our customers that Novell will continue to distribute SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with its full set of functionality and features, including those components that are licensed under GPLv3.

In other words, we'll carry the water for Microsoft since they really have turned out to be a terrible Linux partner. Who knew?

PJ at Groklaw rightly castigates Microsoft for backing out of its commitment. Stephe Walli goes one step further, chastising Microsoft for foolishly backing out of an entire future (which might well be perfectly rosy for Microsoft):… Read more

Gates to keynote CES, while CeBit rejiggers itself

Though he plans to transition to part-time Microsoft employee next year, Chairman Bill Gates isn't leaving the tech stage. In fact, he will assume his usual place in the tech world, delivering the opening keynote for the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, which takes place in January.

Also on the lineup announced Thursday are Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Toshihiro Sakamoto, president of Panasonic's AVC Networks Company unit. The show runs from Jan 7 to 10, with Gates kicking things off on January 6, the Sunday before the event officially gets under way.

Meanwhile, in other trade show news, … Read more

PlanetOut gets new investors

Struggling PlanetOut said Monday that it has struck a deal to raise $26 million in new funds from private investors.

The publicly traded company, which runs the PlanetOut and Gay.com Web sites, as well as Out and The Advocate magazines, has seen its revenue drop and its losses widen in recent months.

Among those investing, as noted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is Bill Gates' investment arm, Cascade Investment LLC. Other investors include Special Situations Funds, SF Capital Partners, PAR Investment Partners and Allen & Co. The investment is coming from the sale of roughly 22.8 million shares of … Read more