Save Money By Comparing Utility Prices Online

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Right now is not a great time for those of us situated in the middle class.  Costs have risen for most consumer goods and services, so there’s not a lot of room for the average person to set aside money for school, a vacation, or some home improvements.  How can a household of four or five keep up with it all?  Well, to start, you can try to save money on your electric bill.  It’s something you need, but something you don’t need to spend a ton of money on.

The cost of energy isn’t totally controlled by the price of oil on the world market.  In fact, taxation, and government regulation can mean more money out of the consumer’s pocket.  Recently, Australia’s government allowed one of their top electricity suppliers to increase prices because of a new carbon tax.  Residents using that service now pay an extra $150 every month on their bill.

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Verizon, Riding Q1 Profits, Looks to Acquire Spectrum Realty

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Verizon is attempting to cut a deal with the FCC.  If they sell off certain bits of the 700mhz spectrum then the FCC will allow it to buy bits of spectrum from television companies.  Given the lack of spectrum these days, this is looking mighty popular.  Spectrum is highly valuable, and nobody is making any more of it.

Verizon had an excellent first quarter this year, most likely thanks to an influx of wireless and FiOS customers.  The company saw a profit of $1.69 billion, or 59 cents per share, which is an 8 cent increase form last year.  Meanwhile their operating revenues were $28.3 billion, which is up by 4.6%.  The company boasts 93 million subscribers, nearly half of which use smartphones.  This is well ahead of Wall Street’s expectations.

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Samsung Releases Details for the New Exynos Chip for Galaxy S3

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While it’s not the sexiest news we’ve ever heard, Samsung has released its new Exynos chip, which will be used to power the new Galaxy S3.  Tech analyst Charles King believes that the new design will make for an improvement in multimedia and multitasking functions.

Remember when auto makers would unveil engines?  Well, me neither, but Samsung’s announcement is akin to that.  Just recently they opened the curtain on a new 1.4GHz Exynow 4 Quad processor, which will be used in smartphones and tables.

Samsung hasn’t been open about which devices will first get the new ARM Cortex A9-based processor, only that it will be in the next Galaxy device, which we expect will be the Galaxy S3.

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Even With the iPhone, Sprint Posts Disappointing Q1 Numbers

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Sprint Nextel Corp. reported recently a net loss of $863 million, and a diluted net loss of $0.29 per share for the first quarter of this year.  This is following a $439 million net loss and a $0.15 per share loss from the first quarter of 2011, and includes the depreciation of around $550 million resulting from the shutdown of the Nextel platform and the termination of a contract with LightSquared.  Wireless service revenues were around $7.2 billion, which marked an overall increase since last year, and they reported the addition of over 1 million new subscribers, putting their total at 56 million, a record.

Sprint saw a 4% increase in customers, moved 1.5 million iPhones (44% of which went to new customers) and improved their prepaid numbers by about 3%.

Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO, had this to say, “The continuing revenue growth on the Spring platform, which represents the future of our company, drive by record ARPU improvement and strong net subscriber growth, contributed to our adjusted OIBDA performance of $1.2 billion.  The value and simplicity of our unlimited data, talk, and text plans, combined with an unsurpassed customer experience and our increasingly robust device portfolio make for a strong combination.”

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New Mac-borne Malware, SabPub Continues Trend Towards OS X Exploits

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The Flashback rash has started to die down, but new malware has come to takes its place in the Mac world.  SabPub is an advanced persistent threat, with the capability and desire to perpetually and efficiently pursue a particular target.

Recently two more Trojan exploits have been discovered that target Macs.  They’re variations of the SabPub information stealing Trojan, and were discovered by antivirus software vendor Kaspersky.

Michael Sutton, VP of Security Research at Zscaler Threatlabz said, “We’re aware of two versions [of the Trojan].  One version is exploiting an old stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft  Word, while the other’s targeting the same Java vulnerability used by the Flashback Trojan.

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