Sonic.net is an internet service provider that supplies web access to some areas of California. It was recently revealed that Sonic.net is going to be providing something that not too many ISPs provide to residential customers. The company is going to supply hundreds of homes around Sebastopol, California with internet connection speeds of up to 1Gbps (gigabit per second) this year.

Continuing with its roll out of 4G service in American markets, Sprint has recently flipped on the switch for 4G service in San Francisco, California, making it the seventy-first market to date. 4G service, as you are probably already aware, is approximately ten times faster than 3G service, but only a handful of Sprint devices more »

Facebook co-founders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz have donated substantial sums of money to a campaign dedicated to getting Proposition 19 passed. If passed, the ballot initiative would legalize the use of Marijuana in the state of California. Parker, who went on to co-found Napster, donated $100,000, and Moskovitz kicked in $70,000. “What’s interesting here more »

Amazon affiliates in Colorado were informed yesterday that they were no longer welcome in the e-tailing giants program, which paid them a small fee for referring customers. Why? Blame the states new law which demands Amazon charge sales tax on every purchase made by a Colorado resident. Previously online retailers were only required to collect more »

In an interesting story, the Wall Street Journal covered the homeless population of San Francisco and showed that some of them are almost as connected as someone with a home. This story is similar to how we learned that the homeless population in Washington DC was using cell phones and honestly at the time I more »

At Gadgetell, we’re big into helping out the planet. In Mountain View, California, Sony is running a recycling event. They will be accepting electronics from any brand (not just Sony stuff) on March 28th, 9AM to 4PM at the Shoreline Amphitheater. Not only will they be accepting your junky old electronics, but the first 2,000 more »

Do you consider yourself an environmentally conscious person? Do you recycle your paper, aluminum, cardboard? That’s all well and good, but what about your electronic waste? Last week, Electronic Recyclers International (ERI) and KSEE-TV, Central Valley’s News Station and Fresno, California NBC affiliate organized a free electronic waste recycling program for residents of the Fresno area.

Participants of the “RecyclAthon” were invited to drop off their old electronics at the ERI headquarters: computer monitors, televisions, radios, and other electronics. The program beat expectations and the final tally estimated an astounding 198,000 pounds of waste were dropped off for recycling.

Classmates.com is one of the biggest advertisers on the ‘net. It’s been around since before MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster grew to the popularity they have now. They spend wicked amounts of money on their online advertising; $30 million was spent in 2005 to give you an idea. However, now they just may have to answer for some of their “lure the customer in” tactics.

Anthony Michaels had been a free member of the Classmates.com site since last year. Then, Classmates.com informed Michaels that his old school pals were trying to contact him. He got that familiar to many message “Your former classmates are trying to contact you! Upgrade now to see their messages!” sent to him from Classmates.com. So, curious as to whether it was an old grade school buddy or that girl he was always secretly smitten by, Michaels did what many others are suckered into doing with that message.

Keep reading to find out what could happen to Classmates.com.

The alleged takeover of the City by the Bay may sound totally rare, but, unfortunately, it has happened before that disgruntled employees take to modern technology as a means for revenge.

City tech employee Terry Childs, allegedly modified the city system so that he was the only one with top level clearances. The city is still in a tizzy trying to regain control of their new fiber optic municipal network that handles everything from the mayor’s email to electronic court records. Childs, who was arrested on Sunday, is still being held on $5 million bail, after allegedly refusing to hand over the passwords. He at first did supply some, but they turned out to be bogus.

It isn’t even clear why he did what he did, although it’s been said that in days leading up to his arrest, his behavior towards his colleagues was becoming erratic. A new security chief had been brought in to oversee the group’s security, and over the past few weeks some evidence of tampering had been found. It was escalated to the police, who in turn brought in their own forensics team to investigate their network.

My first reaction was what a waste of time and money, then I remembered that there are more than a few people out there who would not be able to correctly pair a mobile phone and a Bluetooth headset. While it sounds simple for the tech geek, we must remember that some people use technology more »