Pleasant surprises Archive for Faster Forward - Technology News, Observations and Occasional Rants by The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro

Metro Opening D.C. Subway to Wireless Choice

Metro knocked down one of the bigger barriers to competition in the D.C. area's wireless-phone market Friday afternoon by announcing that all four nationwide wireless carriers would offer service in its subway stations and tunnels. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's press release led off with words that many Metro...

Friday Follow-Ups: iTunes Plus Upgrades, Circuit City Sales

Two updates about topics recently discussed here: 1. The Help File item I wrote two Sundays ago is now inoperative. Please delete any bookmarks to it. That story -- which noted that Apple was not allowing iTunes customers to upgrade only the songs of their choice to the higher-quality, digital-rights-management-free...

Following Up: a PayPal Payoff, an Evite Error

In any line of work, you have to hold companies to their pledges of future improvements. But it may be more important to do so in the field of technology, where people habitually claim that the next version of a program, an online service or a Web site will cure...

Hidden Leopard Feature: Office Drudgery Made Easy

I run a lot of bad software in this job (including some that my employer makes me use!) and so I'll admit to getting jaded about what can seem to be a prevailing culture of mediocrity in the computer business. But then I discover the occasional new feature that makes...

A New Outlook on Office Software

There's a set way to review Microsoft Office competitors: Open up a bunch of Office files in the competing software to see if they look just like they did in Office, then create a set of files in the competitor and verify that they look identical in Office. Finally, verify...

Signing Off Made Simple

Last week, I had to make one last call to tech support at Presto, the "e-mail for people without computers" service that I recently wrote about. I needed to cancel my Presto account before the conclusion of the 90-day free trial provided by the company's PR department, after which my...