Gadgetory

it's monday August 8 2011 I'm Wilson Tang on cnet com and it's time to get loaded verizon has announced it wasn't able to secure a contract with its union employees resulting in the company's first strike in 11 years the strike began at 1201 eastern after union leaders representing 45,000 workers in the northeast and mid-atlantic said negotiations we're going nowhere the majority of the workers are field technicians or working call centers the strike could affect customer service or halt the expansion of fios broadband verizon for its part says it expects minimal disruptions as it has trained non-union workers to fill in temporarily the union's claim verizon has taken a Wisconsin style hard line in the bargaining process the HP TouchPad 4G had snuck onto one of amazon.com listing pages according to the site the 32 gigabyte tablet with 4G retails for just seven hundred dollars or hundred dollars more than its Wi-Fi only counterpart there's no word yet on a release date but HP helps to reward consumers by offering a fifty dollar credit in its App Catalog to customers who bought a sleep between july first and August fourth the offer is valid until December 31st according to the Apple news site 9to5 mac apple is preparing to launch a new education oriented imac on August sixteenth the new macs are expected to cost less than a thousand dollars but packs significantly lower specs including a last generation 3.1 gigahertz dual-core cpu 2 gigabytes of ram a 250 gigabyte hard drive and come only in a 21.5 inch display in comparison the lowest end imac currently starts at twelve hundred dollars has a quad-core processor while the previous education ordinate max started nine hundred dollars in retaliation for arrest anti sec or anti security hackers this weekend released a cache of data stolen from law enforcement agencies in the US the data dump contains personal information private emails passwords training files data form informants social security numbers and stolen credit card information the cash was dubbed shooting sheriff's Saturday releases and was done to embarrass discredit and incriminate police officers across the u.s. all sites hacked were inaccessible this morning when comcast purchased NBC last year one condition of the merger was to offer high-speed internet access to low-income areas and now the company looks to make good on its promise comcast is launching its internet essentials package residential internet service will cost just nine dollars and ninety-five cents a month plus taxes there will be no service cost increases or equipment rentals and customers will receive a voucher to purchase a low-end computer for just 149 99 plus tax in addition users will receive free digital literacy training and Norton security suite at no additional cost to qualify customers must be in an area where Comcast offer service have at least one child that receives free school lunch make less than 25 thousand dollars a year for a household look three have not applied for comcast service within the last 90 days and have no outstanding equipment charges finally the FBI is getting into the app business it has just released a new iPhone app that aims to help parents deal with their worst nightmare a missing child it's called child ID and will let parents store photos and identifying information of their children right on their phone in addition users can download I'm 11 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and send an email with their child's information directly from the app the FBI says it will not collect user information without authorization and the app is available for free from the iOS App Store those are your headlines for today I'm Wilson tank for cnet.com and you've just been loaded you