Posted 10/02/09 at 09:26:43 PM by Paul Lilly

Out with the old and in with the new appears to be the theme for September. It doesn't even matter that Windows 7 hasn't been officially released yet, the Release Candidate has been solid enough for Vista users to leave their old OS behind and rock out with Microsoft's newest darling, according to market share data by web metrics firm Net Applications.

Vista's market share dipped by 0.18 percent in September, which isn't earth shattering, but it is the first time the OS has back tracked since January 2008. Windows 7, on the other hand, climbed 0.34 percent and now claims 1.52 percent of the market. Not bad for a pre-release OS.

On the browser front, Internet Explorer fared a little worse, losing 1.26 percent of its market share. The continued backwards slide has to be troubling for Microsoft, especially considering IE's market share set a new low of 65.7 percent. That's good news for Firefox and Chrome, whose market share jumped by 0.77 percent and 0.33 percent, respectively.

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Posted 07/16/09 at 05:23:09 PM by Paul Lilly

It can be irritating going through the process of getting a disputed charge removed from your credit card bill, but have you ever been overcharged to the tune of $23,138,855,308,184,500? That's exactly what some Visa card holders recently saw on their statement, which as CNN points out, is 2,007 times the size of the national debt. We suppose that's one way boost the economy.

We can't even fathom spending over $23 quadrillion in a single month, and neither could Josh Muszynski, a 22-year-old from New Hampshire who was panicked after discovering the 17-digit charge. After being put on hold for what he claims was two hours, Bank of America, the issuer of his Visa prepaid debit card, removed the exorbitant charge along with a $15 overdraft fee.

Visa blamed the glitch on a "temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services, which caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts." That "small number" includes fewer than 13,000 prepaid transactions, Visa said.

We wonder if anyone just sent in a check for the full amount.

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