Come visit us Thursday and Friday at the Festival of Ice in downtown Lewistown.  We will have our event trailer set-up on Monument Square.  Free candy canes and balloons for all those that stop by.

Plus, you take advantage of some of our exclusive Ice Festival discounts:

• $25 off any wireless phone
• 20% off any wireless phone accessories

For more information on the Festival of Ice check out the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau’s Facebook page.  

It’s easy to check your upgrade status with your AT&T wireless phone.  Just dial *NEW# (*639#) from your phone and you will receive a free text message from AT&T with your upgrade status.

With AT&T Upgrade Advantage, you can upgrade your device every 20 months.

You can also call or visit our store and we will be happy to check your upgrade status.

AT&T has doubled the reach of its LTE network since a year ago.

The carrier’s 4G LTE network now covers more than 150 million people across the U.S., double the number at the end of last year. With its roll out ahead of schedule, AT&T aims to reach 250 million people by the end of next year and 300 million by the end of 2014.

Take your cellphone snapshots up a notch with these savvy tricks.

Learn how to check your white balance. (What?) White balance is the process your camera uses to judge what color light emits in different environments. What does this mean to you? It can help you reproduce colors as accurately as possible. If you notice a warm yellowy orange cast from indoor bulbs or/ a bluer tint from daylight outside, your white balance might need to be adjusted. Check for your phone’s manual light settings, like “Sunny,” “Fluorescent” or “Cloudy,” and match them to your environment. If your phone doesn’t let you adjust white balance manually, take photos slowly so your phone can adjust to new light sources. You can always download a camera app that lets you customize your settings.

Don’t be shy. You’re much better off stepping closer to your subject. If you can’t, you can always crop the picture later.

Avoid the washout. Want to avoid making your photos subjects look washed out and ghostly? Soften the LED flash by simply covering it with a piece of tissue.

Use your flash. The secret to great sunny day portraits? Using your flash. On a sunny day, it’s easy for cheeks and bright areas to lose definition. Turn your flash on and stand within a few feet from your subject to add detail by filling in shadows.

Get creative. Rethink your next photo for surprising results. If you’re shooting children, crouch to their level. If your brother just finished a marathon, shoot him from below to make him look larger than life. If you shoot mostly horizontals, try a vertical for fun.

Take more flattering photos. Never photograph a person from below—this will make them look larger. For fun, shoot them from above, perhaps with you standing and them sitting or even with you standing on a chair for a more dramatic effect.

It’s fun to use your phone’s built-in effects, but also limiting. That black and white photo from your vacation looks cool now, but one day you might want a color version. Keep open to possibilities to make the most of every feature available to you.

Be careful. You may not realize it, but you might be sharing more than your photos when you take photos on your phone. Some phones can embed GPS and geolocation data in the photo’s information file. Some software programs can read that information and use it to plot those images onto maps. This might be great for archiving vacation photos, but less ideal if you’ve shared a photo en route to a surprise holiday visit. Check your camera’s settings and make sure that you’re comfortable with the information you’re sharing.

Prevent blur. Blurred photos can be disappointing and frustrating. They’re especially likely in low-light, where the camera will use a slower shutter speed. To stay steady, lean your camera phone against something steadier than your hands: a chair, a wall, or a tree. Look for camera apps that offer anti-shake features that can keep your image still.

Email from mywireless.org date November 13, 2012:

You’re getting squeezed by taxes and fees, but it might be even worse than you think. A new study shows your wireless taxes and fees in Pennsylvania are the 8th highest in the nation at nearly 20%. That’s nearly triple what you pay in general sales tax on other taxable goods and services, and we think that’s outrageous.

You’re not alone, either. The average American now pays more than 17% in monthly wireless taxes and fees (up from an average of 16.26% in 2010, a 5.5% increase in just two years!).

Congress has a solution. It’s currently considering a freeze on any new state and local wireless taxes and fees for five years (the bipartisan ‘Wireless Tax Fairness Act’). The House passed this bill around this time last year, and there are only a few weeks left in this Congress for the Senate to pass its companion bill on behalf of the hundreds of millions of us who are looking for some wireless tax relief. It’s a no-brainer.

We need your help! Please write your Senator today and let them know how important it is to you that they pass the ‘Wireless Tax Fairness Act’ in this Congress!

Visit www.mywireless.org today to take action.

In an effort to help our customers impacted by Hurricane Sandy, AT&T is waiving voice and text overage charges through the end of November for customers in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. AT&T will also extend the late-payment window for wireless customers who are behind and waive late payment fees.

Does this change affect me?
This change applies to customers in affected areas in New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut, in the following Counties:

New York:
Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Orange, Putnam, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk, Sullivan and Westchester.

New Jersey:
Middlesex, Hudson, Essex, Morris, Bergen, Passaic, Union, Somerset, Sussex, Monmouth, Warren, Hunterdon, Ocean, Salem, Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Mercer.

Pennsylvania:
Centre, Clinton, Cumberland, Mifflin, Lebanon, Dauphin, Perry, Juniata, Northumberland, York, Lancaster, Adams, Lycoming, Sullivan, Union, Snyder, Columbia, Montour, Schuylkill, Northampton, Lehigh, Carbon, Bucks, Montgomery, Berks, Monroe, Luzerne, Pike, Lackawanna, Wayne, Susquehanna, Wyoming, Delaware, Philadelphia and Chester.

Delaware:
New Castle, Kent and Sussex.

Connecticut:
Hartford, Litchfield, Tolland, Windham, New London, New Haven, Fairfield and Middlesex.

What about service before today? Am I charged for overages last week?
Usage prior to October 29 or after November 30 will be billed normally.

Will charges be waived through the entire month of November?
Yes – we expect recovery to affect many customers’ regular services for weeks and we want to make sure that we allow for them to make use of service while working to put their lives back in order.

Does this mean I won’t pay anything?
No.  This offer is to waive overage charges for voice and text only.

Will I get a discount on my next bill? How will I know if I went over?
You should see no additional voice or text charges on your bill beyond your monthly plan charges.

What about data overages? Will you waive those?
If a customer has a specific storm-related situation causing data overages we encourage him/her to contact our customer care teams.

AT&T is also supporting customers in the Northeast by offering the following:

• Roaming Agreement: Exercising a special agreement with T-Mobile to enable roaming across both companies’ networks seamlessly and free of charge to customers with compatible devices and where capacity is available.
• Retail Store Charging Stations: People in affected areas are invited to visit any of AT&T’s approximately 400 retail store locations now open through the Northeast, as well as temporary mobile charging stations, to charge their devices. Extra charging strips are in place in many stores and customers of any wireless carrier can come in to charge their devices.
• Late Payment Support: AT&T will extend the late-payment window for wireless customers who are behind, waiving late payment fees.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, AT&T today announced it is offering a promotional discount to tablet customers.  Beginning Friday, Nov. 9, customers will receive $100 off any tablet purchased at selected retailers with a two-year data plan agreement.

Tablet customers can choose from several qualifying data plan options, including adding a tablet to an AT&T Mobile Share plan for just $10 per month.  With Mobile Share, customers share a single bucket of data – from 1GB up to 20GB – with other devices, including smartphones, tablets, gaming devices, and more. 

The full range of tablet data plan options include:

• AT&T Mobile Share: $10 to share between 1 GB and 20GB
• AT&T DataConnect 250MB: $15 for 250MB
• AT&T DataConnect 3GB: $30 for 3GB
• AT&T DataConnect 5GB: $50 for 5GB

“AT&T has the widest variety of tablets and a broad choice of data plans to pick from” said David Christopher, Chief Marketing Officer, AT&T. “With this new promotional discount for any tablet we sell, we’re giving our customers even more reason to stock up on the hottest device of the season, and just in time for the holidays”

AT&T customers have access to the nation’s largest 4G network, covering 285 million people. AT&T’s 4G network combines two fast technologies that work together for customers, LTE and HSPA+ with enhanced backhaul. That means AT&T customers are able to enjoy a widespread, ultra-fast and consistent 4G experience on their compatible device as they move in and out of LTE areas.**  With other carriers, when you travel outside of their LTE coverage area with your smartphone, you may be on a much slower 3G network.

Google’s mobile Android operating system is celebrating it’s 5th birthday.

Google tells us the total number Androids hit a half billion back in mid-September, around the same time Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was quoted as saying there were 1.3 million new activations each day. Doing some quick math on the Android calculator app, we get just over 570 million total activations up to the current day. That’s almost two Android devices per U.S. citizen, and quickly approaching one for every 10 people on Earth.

AT&T announced last Thursday a new service called AT&T Locker that will allow AT&T iPhone and Android smartphone customers to store 5GB worth of videos and photos for free in AT&T’s “cloud.”

The service is available through a free app in the Apple App Store or the Google Play store. And it allows users to store roughly 5,000 average sized photos in the cloud. The app requires subscribers use either an iPhone 3GS or newer device. And Android users must be on version 2.1 or higher of the Android OS. Customers who don’t have devices that meet those requirements can still store photos and video in the Locker, but they must connect via a computer to sideload the video or pictures to the cloud storage.