Flash Drives Continue to Gain Momentum

Flash drives are getting cheaper and gaining increased functionality. With more memory and places to plug into in like your car stereo, gaming consoles, DVD players and TVs, you don't have to be stationed at your computer. But if you are stuck at a public computer or at a friend's place, you can load programs to pass the time such as games, photo editing tools or save your favorite Web settings. Joining the party on Monday was Intel. What would happen if Microsoft joined the party with its proprietary and heavily used Microsoft Office and Outlook suites? It won't said leading industry analysts.

Let's Be Sirius, Modern Day Monopoly is not Satelite Radio

Despite the rumblings of the Sirius and XM radio merger being a monopoly, that's very much irrelevant in my hood. With so many music and audio choices from iPods, MP3 players and all the other online ways of getting your music including music videos on Youtube or MySpace, Yahoo! Music, MLB GameDay Audio and one of my favorite's, Pandora, there is no monopoly in music and talk radio. And now with USB ports available everywhere, you can carry up to 16 GB of music, video, games, pictures and other files on a flash drive key chain and plug it into newer TVs, gaming consoles or your computer. That's way better than taking music that you can only listen to on one device. So who cares, let them merge and go down together in flames.

The real monopoly, at least in Richmond, CA is Comcast. Unless I subscribe to Direct TV, I'm stuck with Comcast as my only cable provider that wishes to charge me $50 for 15 channels I do want and 60 channels that I could care less for. I can't even find another Internet service provider in my area.

Comcast Triple Play? Only for new customers. I called to see how I can take advantage of any packages for being a "loyal" customer and I basically got the big middle finger. Shouldn't current customers get discounts? But if you operate a monopoly in a region, you can screw your existing customers and give discounts to new customers. I was however, offered a discount to upgrade, which would cost me more money. And here I thought I called to save money.