12 Days of Deals - Microsoft Style

Starting today through December 20, Microsoft is having a daily Christmas Deal.  Each day starting at 7:00 AM, you can try and get on the site (I tried, Microsoft seemed a bit overwhelmed with the volume, even at 11:00 AM).  Once on, there is a great deal waiting for you, assuming it is for something you actually want.  Today, it was the Dell Venue 8 Pro Tablet for $199. The first 100 customers got it for $99, but as you can imagine that ship has sailed.  The $199 price is all day today until supplies are gone.  You have to visit the site each day to see what the deal is, best to get on around 7:00 AM, to get the fantastic price on whatever the deal is.  Go to the store here.

The 12 Scams of Christmas,..compliments of McAfee.

Amazon wants to use Drones to deliver your purchase

Users Can Now Download Google Calendar, Gmail Data

Google is no stranger to service disruptions. And while it may feel like the end of the world when you're without email access for an hour, things could be worse — your entire six-year Gmail history could be lost forever.

As a preventative measure, the search giant today began rolling out the ability to export a copy of your Gmail and Google Calendar data.

Back up your data by downloading your every saved message and calendar event, or pick a specific subset of labels and agendas you want to move over to another service.

The process is easy: Visit your personal Google account page, then click the "Download your data" option in the left-hand menu bar. The Calendar will appear, with the choice to include all calendars or select certain ones. If you don't see Gmail listed yet, don't worry — the ability to download emails is slowly rolling out to all customers over the next month.

Tap "Create Archive" to generate a .zip file; depending on how many years' worth of events you've saved, the process shouldn't take more than a few seconds. You can create an archive from any computer without concern of making your data public. Google automatically saves your downloadable file to your account, and also emails a copy to the address on file.

Once you have access to a personal computer, download the data and store it on your favorite cloud program or a hard drive, or import it directly into another email service. Or simply leave the file for another time; revisit the "Download your data" option in Google to find saved archives, and to create new ones.

Google currently supports downloadable archives in 15 products, including Google+, YouTube, Contact, Blogger, Drive, Hangouts, and Location History.

For more, see An Unofficial User's Guide to Gmail,

Now Apple can track you in the Apple Store

All 254 of the company's U.S. stores now employ Apple's iBeacon location services technology, Apple confirmed Friday. The iBeacon software was included in Apple's recent iOS 7 update for mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Compatible iBeacon hardware has since been installed throughout Apple's stores, anywhere from the front entrance to a product table sporting the latest iPads, from which it communicates with the software.

New iBeacon integration for the Apple Store app, as pictured on Dec. 6, 2013.

The integration marks Apple's large-scale entrance into the hot, emerging known location- or place-based marketing field. Over the past year or so a range of smaller startups have sprung up offering services designed to gather more information about shoppers in stores to serve them hyper-targeted deals or other product information. The idea is to improve brick-and-mortar stores' ability to compete against e-commerce giants like Amazon, which already know plenty about their users' digital shopping habits.

The Apple rollout affects everyone who has the Apple Store app installed on their iOS device. Bluetooth has to be enabled on the device, because that's the underlying technology powering iBeacon. Users also have to give the app permission for the iBeacon technology to work. Once they do, they could start receiving several different types of notifications as they walk through Apple's stores.

Microsoft quietly ends Windows 7 Retail sales

Microsoft has quietly ended retail sales of Windows 7, according to a notice on its website.

The company's policies for shutting off sales to retailers and shipping licenses to OEMS (original equipment manufacturers) are posted on its site, which was recently updated to show that Windows 7's "retail end of sales" date was Oct. 30.

The next deadline, marked as "End of sales for PCs with Windows preinstalled," will be Oct. 30, 2014, less than a year away.

Microsoft's practice, first defined in 2010, is to stop selling an older operating system in retail one year after the launch of its successor, and halt delivery of the previous Windows edition to OEMs two years after a new version launches. The company shipped Windows 8, Windows 7's replacement, in October 2012.