GIVmobile & Ptel Mobile Shuttering After 15 Years

There’s no doubt that the competitive marketplace in cellular is claiming quite a few victims. Just recently, the popular social MVNO, Solavei closed it’s doors in December and now we have one of the longest players in the game, Platinum Tel shutting down at the end of January. It’s been a rough time for MVNO’s since carriers began getting more aggressive with their prepaid offerings in house. To think, T-Mobile offers an amazing $40 prepaid plan, Verizon has the same at $45. AT&T’s GoPhone offerings have been solid as well as Sprint’s lower priced prepaid offerings as well. In a statement via chat message, Ptel Mobile gave us the following information.

We regret to inform Ptel Mobile will be discontinuing wireless service as of January 31,2016. We urge subscribers to process their requested Port Outs by January 26, 2016 to ensure successful port outs. Additionally, all wireless accounts will remain active until 1/31/2016 to ensure carrier transfers. At this time we are working to supply details via the site. Currently an SMS has been sent in batches to subscribers to inform of service update. Please note- the next step to take will consist of porting out of Ptel Mobile in order to retain your same number. Here are the following suggested companies for service: Ultra Mobile- 888-777-0446/Simple Mobile-877-878-7908/Metro PCS- 888-863-8768/Ting- 855 846 4389/ LycaMobile- 866-277-3221/T-Mobile- 877-413-5903. To initiate a port request, please contact the new selected service provider. Please supply the new service provider with the phone number as the account number. The 4-digit PIN on the account is 0000. We appreciate your patience and cooperation in this matter. Please visit the link for promotions https://www.ptel.com/pages/options

The information was also sent out to subscribers via text messaging earlier in the month. No additional information was given on the Ptel Mobile or GIVmobile websites, though the link above does offer users some direct replacement offers that are available locally if needed. If you are a Ptel or GIV subscriber, you only have a few days left to initiate your port before your number becomes lost. Also, it is worth noting that users do forfeit any balances left on their accounts and promo codes that they have available.

Source: https://www.ptel.com/pages/options

OneDrive Users: Prepare For Shrinkage!

Late last year, Microsoft announced that beginning this month, OneDrive users will need to begin to find other storage solutions for their files as their OneDrive’s will become signifcantly smaller over the next few months. The official announcements will be coming out soon, with the actual changes coming later in the year. That said, some users will need to begin acting immediately to get their files offline before the rolling dates end. The timeline for the changes that Microsoft published last year look like this:

January – Notices begin to go out about the changes. Office 365 users will be dropped from unlimited storage to 1TB of storage. Free plan users drop from 15GB to 5GB of space. Paid plans include a 1TB offer for $9.99 a month or 50GB for $1.99 a month.
February to April - Users will have 90 days to access their fires after their notification is sent. After that, your OneDrive files will become archived/read only files that you will have to download within 180 days.
May to October – The last chances to download your OneDrive to a local storage solution, or another cloud service will come during this time frame, unless you upgrade to a fully paid account that will handle your file load.

It’s worth noting as well that Microsoft is discontinuing all of their promotional data allotments during this transition as well. The Photo Upload Credit, the 10 GB Google Drive Match and some additional promotional programs will all lose their data allotments during this change. The Bing Rewards credits will stay active though, as will the ‘Lumia purchase’ credit that some users received. Basically, if you spent money or points on a spiff, you will keep it. If it was a free program that you found your way into, it will go away.
Be prepared for the move as time will fly by on this one. If you are currently using OneDrive as a storage solution for your photos or music, you will need to find other ways to access your data via the cloud or be prepared to pay that $120 a year to keep things as is, as long as you are under that full TB of data total.
You can read more on the change that was announced back in November here.

And This Is Why Windows 10 Mobile Is Struggling…

It’s New Year’s Eve and you’re surfing Facebook. You scroll through your feed to see a sponsored post from Microsoft about the Lumia 950. It catches your eye, so you begin to read about the new Lumia 950 available from AT&T. It’s a phone that works like my PC? Amazing! It’s the new Lumia 950 with ANDROID 10???

Yes, this is a promotional advertisement for the AT&T Lumia 950 that appeared in my Facebook feed on New Year’s Eve. At first, I found it funny, but then I realized how horrible this makes Windows look. That Windows 10 is so bad, they subliminally put Android in the ad instead of Windows. Wow…

Anyways, Just thought I would share this one with everyone since it was the last Windows 10, I mean Android 10 ad that I saw in 2015. Have you snagged a Lumia 950 for yourself yet? Is it still running Windows or did they pull a fast one on us and switch it all over to an Android version that won’t be out until this summer (and yes that is a dig at how fast they are releasing Android versions at this point…)

My Best Gift Finds Under $25

Phone storage can always be a problem, especially if your techie friends have a camera that shoots 4K video and they like to take along their entire music collection. If you or someone you know is that person, check out the 64GB Sandisk OTG Flash Drive. The 64GB version is a measly $19.74 with free Amazon Prime shipping. It features a MicroUSB connection on one side and a full size USB connection on the other. Not only is it great for additional storage, but it also works wonders for transferring files back and forth between a PC and your mobile device.

Amazon: 64GB Sandisk OTG Flash Drive

At $19.99, the Jackery Bar External Battery is quite a deal for a 6,000 mAh portable battery solution. It features enough juice to power up your iPhone 6 three times or your larger devices twice. The Jackery is assembled with only top grade Panasonic rechargeable cells, so there is no need to worry about reliability. It also features an 18 month warranty. The Jackery Bar External Battery is $19.99 and ships free with Amazon Prime to arrive in time for getting it under the tree.

Amazon: Jackery Bar External Battery

If you know someone that has been swapping out their old 16GB MicroSD card from phone to phone for the last few years, it might be time to get them something a bit newer for their stocking. Sure, 16GB was big a few years back, but now with the SanDisk 64GB class 10 MIcroSD cards running under $25, it’s a great time to grab one. This item also ships free with Amazon Prime and is just $22.99 for the 64GB model. With a bit less budget restriction, you can jump up to a 128GB for $49 or a 200GB for $99.99. That said, the 64GB should be more than enough upgrade for those looking upward from 16GB or even 32GB.

Amazon: SanDisk Ultra 64GB MicroSD Card

For something a bit more stocking friendly, the Peres Mini 2-in1 OTG adapter and MicroSD reader is a home run. This little guy is under $5 and is shipped free as an Amazon Prime Add-On Item. If you are on a fixed storage phone, or just like to take a ton of media with you, use those old MicroSD cards that you have upgraded from to store some music or movies on and use this to play them back on your device. It’s very similar to the SanDisk OTG drive above, but this one uses the storage cards you already own, and is less than a Lincoln to drop in a stocking. As an added bonus to families, it is available in 4 different highlight colors.

Amazon: Peres Mini 2-in1 OTG adapter and MicroSD reader

Rounding out our top five under $25 gift ideas for the techie that has it all is the JDB 5-Port High Speed USB Charging Hub. The JDB Hub uses IC Technology to detect the optimum charging speed of your device and automatically changes the power given to that port to match the device. The first port offers 5V/2.4A charging to match the USB 2.0 Quick Charging standards used in devices like the iPhone 6s and Samsung Galaxy S6. The other 4 ports offer standard USB charging for any 1-2A device.  The compact size makes it great for nightstands or desktops. The 5 foot removable power cord also makes it easy to take along where ever it is needed. The JDB Hub also ships free with Amazon Prime and will still arrive in time for Christmas if you order soon. If you are an anti-clutter King or Queen, the JDB Hub will really help get rid of quite a few power plugs and wires around those busy areas.

Amazon: JDB 5-Port High Speed USB Charging Hub

Google Sneakily Deals Another Blow To Microsoft Users

I’ve been using Microsoft’s amazing blogging platform, Live Writer, for longer than I can remember. It was always my go to publisher for my Wordpress and Blogger blogs. In fact, almost every post I have made for this blog has been through Live Writer. Unfortunately, Microsoft discontinued the product after the 2012 version, though it continued to work for me well after that point. Last week however, I was struck with the error in the image above. I figured Blogger was down and I would save it and try again later… Boy was I wrong…

As it turns out, Google, the owner of the Blogger services, performed yet another API change to shut down third party “back door” access. This is the type of access which Live Writer and other 3rd party writing Apps used to send the posts to the service. While Google has done this before in the past, it’s all too apparent that this volley was once again aimed squarely at the Live Writer program as it appears to be the only program that I use that was affected by the change.

Call it a security update or a maintenance thing, but I will call it out for what it is, Google is blocking Microsoft’s access to their services one more time. It happened with YouTube and it is happening again with Blogger. It’s only a matter of time before Google really does something terrible and blocks Gmail or something crazy like that from Windows and then we will really see an uproar.

Until then, the open source project version of Live Writer was not affected by this patches that Google put in place this week, which strangely enough is virtually the same coding, but not with Microsoft’s branding. The Open Live Writer program is available at www.openlivewriter.org and is free of charge.

Microsoft Courts iPhone Users With Special Bing Rewards Bonus

Well, Microsoft may be committed to making Windows 10 Mobile work for users, but that isn’t stopping them from wooing other users. In the latest move, Microsoft continues the trend of welcoming iPhone users into their program with a special 10 credit per day bonus for searching using the iPhone Bing Rewards App. This is far from a bad idea, but the fact that Android is left out in the cold, as well as new Windows Phone/Windows Mobile users, might leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

The bonus credit links can be found in the Bing Rewards daily credit list on your Bing search pages. This might finally provide a good excuse to pick up that old iPhone 4 or 4s on GroupOn or something like that. The extra 10 credits will make that Hulu subscription much easier to get.

Source: Bing Rewards

Microsoft To Downgrade OneDrive Plans In 2016

Apparently Microsoft isn’t a big fan of abuse. In fact, they will go as far as changing an entire product offering because of the few users that abuse it to the point of it being something more than abuse. Case in point, yesterday, Microsoft announced that they will be changing their OneDrive storage amounts beginning in 2016 due to the fact that some users have uploaded nearly 75TB (yes that would be TERRABYTES) of data. That works out to 75,000,000 MB or roughly, 25 million songs worth of data. This is the reasoning that Microsoft is using to change up their OneDrive storage options going into next year.

First off, the unlimited plans that are currently included with an Office365 subscription will be dropped to 1TB of data. This should still be plenty of data for anyone that is actually using the service as it was intended. The TB of storage should be enough to back up mobile device photos, store online documents and even keep those backup settings that are used to restore a Windows PC or Windows Mobile device. Next, the free plans will drop from 15GB of storage back to 5GB as they were in the beginning of the program. This is probably the most painful drop of the bunch, but if you aren’t generating revenue for the Redmond giant, you probably don’t get much of a vote. When you compare the 5GB limit to the 2GB limit that DropBox offers, it’s not such a bad deal. DropBox does offer a few ways to quickly earn that additional 3GB of storage, but face it, unless you buy into some promotion, DropBox will run you $10 per TB. Google Drive has much the same going for it. The 15GB starting point is higher, but that might not be enough to put up with the clunky backup experience that Drive offers.

That said, many users will probably skip out on Microsoft’s cloud solution service from here on out simply due to the fact that space they “earned” is being taken away from them. Whether it was the 15GB photo upload bonus or the 10GB additional storage they’ve enjoyed for the last few years to compete with Google’s starting level, losing precious online backup space isn’t something that many will enjoy. It isn’t all bad news though, if you received a promotional balance, like the 100GB loyalty bonus or the 100GB package from Bing Rewards, your storage is safe until the expiration date. For those that don’t have the extra space saved up, Microsoft has said that the notifications will go out in January. You will then continue to have access to your file space for 90 days. The space will then become a read-only drive for the next 180 days. The final 90 days will be your last warning before they are deleted. So even with the 12 month period that Microsoft is giving users to either upgrade or transition, it’s important to develop a transition plan. Also, if you are an affected user, you can sign up for a free one year trial of Office 365 as a “We’re sorry,” offering from Microsoft. This offer will include the 1TB of storage, but is only valid for 1 year. After that the regular subscription price of $9.99 a month will apply. There will also be a 50GB plan available for a $1.99 a month fee as well.

Source: blog.onedrive.com