Cell Phone Service Review - T-Mobile's Epic Failure

Guest Blogger: Kooop
While traveling in Indiana I thought I was just in an area where my T-Mobile Sidekick was without coverage and went days without data/internet access, chalking it up to the small town's lack of signal.

Only when friends came to town from Chicago did they inform me that T-Mobile was having a system-wide outage on all Sidekick data! For some reason I was never informed about it (later they sent vague texts about hopeful progress on restoring the data, but never anything useful).

The old adage used to be "if you have a problem, take out the battery" and I basically stopped calling customer support because that's their end-all trick to solving problems. Except NOT THIS TIME. This time, if you removed your battery you lost your address book and pictures and anything else stored in the cloud, which meant the phone/address book for all of the people I was trying to meet up with on my travels was suddenly nonexistent.

Since I didn't have data, I called the one number I knew by heart and asked for assistance on my route. I normally use Google Maps to find my way, but was suddenly rendered directionless. My 300 minute plan was basically exhausted instantaneously because instead of Googling things on my own, I had to call to get any relevant information necessary along my way. You never know how much you rely on Google until it's not on hand in the middle of a state where you've never been and you just need to find the highway that will take you to Turkey Run State Park so you can get a photo of the ladders that looked so neat on flickr.

On top of all that, my battery is dying. I've had the phone for probably a year and my usage (if you couldn't tell by the previous paragraphs) is outlandishly often. I schlepped into the T-Mobile store to ask for assistance with both my bill (because I knew I'd gone over my allotted 300 minutes due to the data outage) and my battery dilemma, but after I waited in line for 20 minutes, they declared that their system was down and actually couldn't help any of us right then. I forged forth, stating I just needed a battery, so the employee searched their inventory as well as the online inventory and neither had a battery in stock, but I could try Radio Shack OR upgrade to a new phone... !! I'm like yeah, NO and left, figuring I'd find my own battery and fix the billing issues online.

Came home and logged into t-mobile.com to change the billing and/or my plan and everything keeps coming back NO, try again later. WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS BROKEN? The data outage, the in-store system outage, and now an online outage!!!!!

So I called Customer Service - will their phone system work?? - that is the question! The cocky representative told me "Uh, didn't you try logging out and back in?" Like that's what everybody does and have I ever even used the internet before? I said I hadn't tried that, I will, and he's like "That's how websites work. We make changes and sometimes the servers on one page aren't updated yet when you log in." I'm like "Or you can make the changes and then update the page from the previous rendition?" And he's all "Ma'am we serve 30,000 customers!" In the end I weaseled a $20 credit for the overages but to solve the battery issue I need to call back on another phone line, since everybody has another phone line waiting around for these instances. WTF I HATE T-MOBILE SO HARD.

This cell phone service review was originally published on beingkooop.blogspot.com and is used here by permission of the author. All opinions expressed are those of the original author.

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AdSense Ads To Include Ad Networks

The Google AdSense program may be getting much better, or worse, thanks to the mega corp's announcement that the AdSense program will include advertising bids and creatives from outside, or so-called third party ad networks.

The upside is that this could mean more bids and higher prices for indie publisher's inventory, and thus more revenue to small bloggers and site publishers. The bad news is that quality control of ad inventory is always tricky, and never one of the AdSense program's strong suits in my opinion.

Now there are new networks to police and manage, but, Google is giving you tools, blunt tools, to deal with it.

You can block all third party ad networks (very blunt, could hurt your revenue big time), specific networks, or all future networks but those that you have already approved. No creative or ad by ad approval is on offer.

For those with family friendly sites this lack of granularity is VERY RISKY if you allow any networks to run. It is also unclear if the code invoked on page will call elements from outside of the doubleclick or google domains. Some company, government and school systems block websites based on such criteria. If you depend on such traffic think hard about these new options.

Another issue is malware. These other networks are possible sources, like many very legit ad networks, of malware or malicous software (trojans, viruses, etc.) running in ad units. Search online and you can find examples of even major websites and ad networks that have unknowingly infected innocent users. Google's AdSense program has historically been pretty safe. Hopefully (but they are so far silent on this) they will have safety systems in place to be certain all creatives they serve are malware-free.

The bottom line: be careful and monitor your sites. I hope for all of our sakes that this competition for our AdSense impressions brings more revenue in these challenging times.

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Pet Business Advertising

Oh these are interesting times for everyone trying to operate a small business, let alone a pet business.

Most folks are looking for an ideal way to cost-effectively boost marketing and promotion efforts, with limited resources. Or are you one of the few with unlimited resources? Yah, didn't think so. Me either. Where is that long lost and non-too healthy very rich uncle who put me in his will?

Well the pack at DogExplorer.com have several options in the Pet Business Advertising realm.

What kind of dog business have you got and what type of marketing support do you need? Pet grooming advertising promotions, free pet groomer advertising, pet sitter advertising, advertise dog sitting service, advertise dog sitting, organic dog food, natural pet treats, a veterinary clinic, internet marketing, search engine marketing, online marketing, website marketing, dog advertising, or say, mobile dog grooming? Some list, yes? Yes.

In these challenging times it is very important that every marketing
dollar perform. They understand that, which is why advertising online with
DogExplorer.com makes so much sense.

See when you run banner ads on their website (starting at just $750.00 for
30,000 displays of your ad), you get your advertisement (banner) shown
to their readers all 30,000 times!

It is not dependent on time like an edition of a traditional magazine.
It is about the number of displays. You start with some number (like
30,000) and their ad "server" shows your ad and subtracts from your total
until they are gone - or you renew because it worked so well!

They also provide you a way to login, see your daily statistics (how many
displays and clicks) or they can have them e-mailed to you at daily
intervals. No magazine sold in stores or sent through the mail can offer
that level of auditing and detail.

Amazingly enough they even allow you to change your ads during your campaign so you can test and tweak to achieve the best results. Once you send the artwork to
a normal magazine - that's it - it is gone.

Also, the banners can be geo-targeted, which in English means if you only want them to show to Seattle folks (or any city), or to a specific area code, they can do that for you too!

There is another option that will bring benefits of a different kind all year long:

The DogExplorer.com supplier directory is an ideal way to cost-effectively boost your marketing and promotion efforts.

The benefits are:

1) Having a listing that is optimized for your business keywords that
will actually "rank" and get you found by customers searching the major
search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now called Bing.com).

2) Links from that listing to your site that will send you eager customers.

Reality check time: what rank do the listings in the directory have today?

DISCLAIMER: This changes every day so results when you look will no doubt be very different.

Keyword example 1: pet portrait photographer los angeles

Out of over one million three hundred thousand results, the directory
listing on DogExplorer is number 3 on Google of all natural results (non-ads on
the side or top of the page or local map listings).

That is an outstanding result.

Keyword example 2: pet portrait artist oregon

On Google, from the one hundred sixty-seven thousand results DogExplorer's
directory listing is number 2!

Keyword example 3: Camarillo mobile dog grooming

With over five thousand results DogExplorer's page is number 4 on Google of all natural results (non-ads on the side or top of the page or local map listings).

That sure is not hype - results month after month after month. And for a fraction of
what it costs to advertise in most other media, especially Yellow pages,
which few people read these days.

You search for goods and services online, yes? Your sure customers do. So to get
found and keep your business going get listed in their credible and
powerful directory today.

Just visit this link and purchase an annual listing for an unbelievable cost of less than $40/month - which includes up to 100 words - a really great deal:

Dog Supplier Directory Advertising Listing Purchase.

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