This might be a concession to AT&T lose their iPhone exclusivity amongst wireless carriers. In fact, after all the rumors, Verizon is supposedly going to officially early next week that they will be getting the iPhone. Whether that’ll be a CDMA model of the iPhone 4 or a whole new model is to be seen.  There’s enough grumbling amongst customers about AT&T’s cellular network’s failings, especially for iPhone users, and suggestions that Verizon will not only see a shift amongst their own customers to iPhone, but also a switch over from AT&T. So it’s not surprising that AT&T is doing something to entice users. It’s too bad they can’t do that for the iPhone 4. (Note: Image above is of an iPhone 4, not a 3GS.)

Don’t forget that to sweeten things, both Verizon and AT&T not too long ago dropped the minimum monthly rate for data plans. AT&T is charging $15/m for 200 MB of data, or for another $10 (ie., $25/m), you get 2GB/m of data plan. Unfortunately, their unlimited plan is no longer available to new customers.

More people are using Web sites like Mint.com to manage their finances and as a result opening themselves up to privacy and security problems. Jason Owens, a certified security specialist, writes on his site about how he would hack in to your Mint.com account.

If you’re not familiar with Mint.com, it’s an online financial accounts manager that lets you pay your bills, budget, chart your expenses, find ways to save and other features, and can be connected to your banking and credit card accounts. The latter feature is reason alone for protecting your Mint account, keeping it safe.

Owens details how he was interested in the safety levels at Mint for his own use, and found there are security features lacking. Part of his approach, in trying to think like a hacker, is that he might take a social approach to finding whatever information online about you possible and try to find non-brute force ways to break into accounts.

Even if you don’t use Mint, you should still read what Owens writes as some of the issues noted apply to those of use who use our smartphones or other mobile devices (e.g., Apple iPad) to do online banking while on the go. The very least protection, of course, is to never do so on public WiFi networks and to use “strong” passwords. (If you can discipline yourself to change passwords regularly, even better, though this can be a hard to discipline to acquire.) Owens provides numerous tips on how to protect your Mint account, and many of these apply to other financial websites that you might use.

If you’re a fan or shareholder of Apple, Inc., you should check out the interesting little financial table over at Kyle Conroy’s site. Take multi-sourced data, he shows, product by product, what your money would be worth today if instead of buying that Apple computer or consumer electronics gadget (iPod, etc.), you had spent the same money on stock at the same time.

For example, if you had taken the $5700 that a PowerBook G3 250 cost upon its release in Nov 1997 and instead bought Apple shares at the time, the share value would be worth $330,563.38. In fact, Apple shares are worth 40 times what they were seven years ago, Conroy says. Given that some financial experts are saying that Apple shares could be worth $300-500 each later this year, I’m surprised people are selling their stock, completely missing how groundbreaking the company’s new Apple iPad mobile device is, despite several irritating and frustrating limitations that have ensured it is not a full-blown replacement for laptops or even netbooks.

So, before you buy one of the hot new Apple MacBook Pro laptops, pictured below, or the new iPhones rumored to be coming out in June and loaded with new features, you might want to think on share purchases.

Images courtesy of Apple.

Now here’s the weird part. Hall’s wife in real life (i.e., Carpenter) plays his sister on the Dexter series. I always thought there was some weird dynamic between the two. Reminds of musicians Jack White (of the White Stripes and numerous other projects) and his former wife Meg White, who sometimes pretended to be his sister.

Image courtesy of Showtime Networks Inc.