It seems that AT&T is no longer seeing the value of the pay phone.  The company announced today that its pay phones will be phased out over the next year. They declined to say how much revenue its pay-phone business generated, but the number is small and declining, after all, how can they compete with cell phones at $0.50 per call?

It’s interesting that a service long thought to be impossible to live without could be phased out of service, but it’s happening.

It certainly leaves one to think about what other iconic items once thought to be revolutionary will be a thing of the past in the not too distant future…

From …

A vote today inside the FCC could lead to tighter regulation of the cable industry. The five commissioners from the FCC are set to vote on a proposal to include several issues.

First, they are to consider whether or not it should cut rates charged by cable operators to lease channel access to programmers by as much as 75% in order to encourage more diverse programming. Cable operators are required to offer leased space, but it isn’t used widely — mostly carrying infomercials and programming from religious groups.

Secondly, they are to decide whether cable operators should have to settle disputes with programmers …

It’s that time of year again. Holiday cheer, Christmas shopping in conjunction with raiding the left over Halloween candy isle at the grocery store, and oh yeah, open enrollment for benefits at work. Blehhhh.

That’s probably my least favorite administrative task at work. Pick a health plan. There’s only three, they’re all free, but if you foresee yourself needing this little benefit in fine print, you need the “premier blue” plan, but that comes with an additional $500 deductible, a smaller approved doctors lists…

…and this is where I lose interest.

To its credit, my company spends a lot of time and money …

I read a post by Robert Frank at The Wealth Report blog hosted by The Wall Street Journal Online today that left me scratching my head.

It might be my engineering background that had me thumbing my nose at the post, but generally it’s my propensity to question what they’re not telling you that really had me intrigued.

The author noted that as evidenced in the book “The Millionaire Next Door,” it’s those who pinch their pennies, drive old pickup trucks and make conservative investments that end up getting ahead in the financial game.

The author goes on to …

One of the many tasks at hand over the last couple weeks was to determine whether or not to dump Comcast for AT&T’s new service, U-verse.

After using AT&T’s service for over a month and a half, and having only one problem with it that was adequately resolved, my wife and I sat down and decided that we were tired of Comcast raising cable and internet rates without getting anything in return. It was time for Comcast to go.

Of course, the Comcast representative was not at all happy with our decision. In fact, she tried extensively to keep us as customers, and even …

In a case of what could be over saturation in the online discount brokerage firm field, ex24 has closed up shop.

Back in November of last year, I had a chance to speak with Anthony Link, ex24’s Chief Operating Officer. Bound with excitement, both he and James Lennane, the company’s founder had high expectations for the company.

Perhaps the expectations were too high.

Despite marketing campaigns that included iPod giveaways, free trading periods, guaranteed portfolio performance and access to fractional shares of sought-after stocks such as Google Inc. (GOOG) shortly after its initial public offering, the platform never gained momentum.

“We were looking …

Read more…

A new airline start-up is bringing an interesting business model to our inefficient airline industry.

Skybus is the newest low-cost carrier that is trying to find out what you’ll pay for and what you won’t, when traveling by air. In essence, they make you pay for everything.

Skybus Airlines will make its inaugural flight on Tuesday, jumping into the cash poor industry of low-cost air travel. The company has plans to fly to 25 cities from its Columbus hub, in an effort to compete with Southwest and other no-frills airlines.

What do you mean by low-cost?

Ten bucks for a ticket! Each Skybus flight will offer …

Yesterday, I spent the entire morning and a couple hours into the afternoon organizing our taxes.

I separated everything we have into three groups:

The Oil Company
The Rental Property
Personal Taxes

Note that since the oil company is an S-corp and the rental unit is not held in a corporation, both of them funnel into our own personal tax return.

I organized everything in a “Summary Report” listing all the major activities, and adding up all costs for each possible category.  In effect, there should be no reason for my CPA to even whip out his calculator.

On my first year, I’m showing about a …

The end of 2006 is upon us, and hopefully looking back you’ve had a good year.

The end of the fiscal year marks the deadline for any tax maneuvers you may have had in place, and stocks that you’re planning on for tax purposes must have cleared by the end of business on Friday.

As for me, I wrote myself a check for reimbursements from my oil company, which will hopefully drive down the profit I’ll have to pay taxes on.

On that note, it’s important to start gathering all your receipts, collecting mileage logs and organizing all your financial information for your tax preparer. The more organized you are, …

Back in August I wrote about how shopping a generation behind will save you money. I also listed a link to get a free Schick Titanium razor blade.

Well, about eight weeks after signing up, I got my new four-bladed Schick Quattro in the mail. It came in a neatly packaged box with the Schick brand and logo all over it.

Funny, but just two weeks later, Gillette sent me an unsolicited free Fusion razor in a very similar box, with very similar logo placement. In addtion, they packaged coupons into the box for discounts on refill cartiges. …