When I questioned this I received the following:

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, our bank requires us to mail the stickers with a plastic prepaid card which are on back-order. As soon as they are in, we will mail both to you.

In the meantime, you can use 90% of the Blaze Wallet without the sticker including the following just to name a few:

• You can get your account balance and receipts from over 8,000 financial institutions
• You can load your reward cards for hotels, airlines, rental cards and get your point balances
• You can purchase movie tickets
• You can search for restaurants and other points of interest and get turn-by-turn directions
• You can create expense reports (iPhone version only)

Last I checked, there’s nothing unique or beneficial about doing any of this stuff with Blaze.  I would not even consider Blaze the source for any of this activity … The only semi-interesting bit is the expense report though it’s highly unlikely that it would work with our corporate system and most importantly what would I be expensing without a way to pay??

I get that NFC payments are still largely considered new and mainly in tests outside of a few cases like retail and transit cases  - at least in NYC.  What I don’t like though is how a product is openly marketed as real and prevalent with little to no “customer” communication about where things really stand.  When I signed up there was no mention of a backlog on pre-paid cards … and come on really?  Is it that hard for whatever bank is backing this to issue a card?

It is doubtful consumers will find the offer particularly attractive: At $24.95 for a 24-hour rental, it is more than many movies cost to buy on DVD. Still, the offer demonstrates how Sony, like its hardware rival Apple, has more incentive to promote Internet video than other media companies. via WSJ.com.

Sony is apparently offering this solely through their connected TVs which is totally ridiculous. No PS3? Oh right different department. Fail. I’m curious what percentage of consumers with a new connected set, actually have it configured and working for anything … It should be interesting to hear how Sony reports back on the results of this test.

When I got home it was time to go through the restore process to hopefully be back where I was data-wise and hopefully things would be as they were. My experience was largely positive though a few notes.

1. The single connection through iTunes remains an amazingly strong point for Apple. The way a device backs up and restores is unparalled. Not perfect, but solid.

2. If you dont use iPhoto or Aperture for imaging you need to manually back up your pictures but the restore process does bring them back a well as all that data is stored together.

3. iTunes installed every app I had ever downloaded which was not what I wanted at all but it has been easier to remove things again than trying to hunt down apps again.

4. The application restration process sets up apps in alphabetical order which is seriosly annoying. I have more apps than can be displayed now and even using iTunes to slide things around, it will take a while and some patience to rebuild my prior setup.

5. I have 3 email accounts and both my work exchange account as well as my .me account needed to have their passwords entered to connect. My voicemail password also needed to be entered though that happened before I had a chance to sync and seemed more related to visual voicemail wanting to connect.

The process of restoring the iPhone, updating the software to the latest version and then resyncing all my media took a few hours. I only had to click ok a few times and spent most of the time cycling so I hardly noticed.

Replacing a device because you need to too is consderably less fun than when you choose to buy a new one. Even with the few hitches Ive menioned Apple is leading the customer experience in an area that is always frustrating.

A while back Sprint was running a relatively smart ad about belt tightening and featured this ad which I snapped a pic of during my commute:

Tonight was just browsing some RSS and see that once again Sprint has decided that regardless of how someone might actually be using the device being shown they will show it in a way that better suits someone’s creative eye:

Of course Sprint has bigger issues … like preventing tethering!

Navigation market leader, Telmap, has used its unique navigation technology and NAVTEQ’s superior global map data, to bring a comprehensive mobile search, mapping and navigation solution for the iPhone, thus enabling mass adoption of mobile navigation. via Realwire

Since Nokia owns Navteq is does also immediately bring back my first thought on Ovi Maps…. How much longer can Nokia even consider charging for navigation services? nbsp;The PND category took a huge hit yesterday … Garmin alone lost 1.2 Billion off their market cap.

Once again the rules have changed. Will Nokia continue to play the same hand?