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Now that we've reached the end of another calendar, in continuing a tradition I started in 2003, below is a review of my 10 predictions for 2009 and an assessment of how accurate I was on each one.

1) Microsoft Launches Windows 7 to Fanfare, Skepticism
Microsoft's two pillars of financial solvency -- Windows and Office -- have been standing on shaky ground recently. Office 2007 was a decent hit, despite it not offering much new and causing significant backward compatibility issues. But Windows Vista, on the other hand, has been an unmitigated disaster. Microsoft even had to resort to tricking users into liking Vista (Mojave, anyone?), it had developed such a bad reputation. Windows 7 will be launched late in 2009 to a general consensus of "it's better," but will not be the "wow" that Microsoft needs to regain the market share it has recently ceded to Apple. But maybe that's a good thing...having strong competitors is usually a good thing for consumer markets.

When Windows 7 was officially launched October 22nd, by any measure, it came out to positive reviews and very good, if not great, sales. Of course, following a dog of a product like Vista will go a long way towards creating pent-up demand, so it wasn't unexpected. However, if you went by the press and hype, you'd think Microsoft was the underdog to Apple instead of still appearing on about 93% of all desktops. Windows 7 has slowed the slight shift towards OS X, but it's not clear yet that any ground is being made up.  Ironically, the best thing to happen to Windows in 2009 may have been the explosion of netbooks (more on that below).

2) Blockbuster Declares Bankruptcy
This may be a bit "out there," but I see exceedingly tough times at Blockbuster. And this isn't vindictiveness...I've been a reasonably happy Blockbuster.com customer for several years, now. I just think that, given the state of its business (poor), the weakness in the economy (near-critical), the nature of its service (luxury), and the rapidity with which that industry is transforming, I think Blockbuster will file for bankruptcy protection to get out of some of its debt, sell off some property (store locations that aren't faring well), and reinvest that into developing newer and more attractive services. So, they aren't going away...yet.

After spending much of 2009 desperately raising capital and refinancing its debt, Blockbuster is trying a variety of tactics to stave off its own demise at the hands of an increasingly varied assortment of competitors.  Netflix and piracy, Blockbuster's perennial nemeses, are joined by Redbox in stressing the company's sweaty grip on life even further.  However, per part of my prediction, Blockbuster announced in early 2009 that it would be closing 128 physical stores.  That number was massively expanded late in 2009 to closer to 1,000 stores.  Additionally, Blockbuster is launching a large kiosk initiative.  It's amazing how consistently the company does exactly what its competitors do, but 2-3 years later.  However, Blockbuster did not enter into any form of bankruptcy during 2009, so I'm declaring this one a failed prediction.

3) Palm Launches New OS to Fanfare, Skepticism
We've all heard the rumors that Palm will be launching "Nova," its replacement for the ancient Palm OS, at CES 2009 in a few days. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen. I'm also pretty sure that Palm will have at least one new device, if not several, running the new OS available by the end of June. While launching phones can take a while, given the carriers' lengthy testing requirements, launching a PDA doesn't, so Palm could certainly come out with two (or more) non-phone PDAs running Nova pretty quickly. And it needs to...the TX is older than my grandmother (at least in technology years). Generally, I predict there will be more nice things said about Nova, and the new devices, than critical, and it will stack up fairly competitively with Android and WM 6.5. What I do not have a lot of faith in is Palm's ability to develop and deliver the ecology of services (e.g., app stores) that customers are now expecting their smartphones to be integrated into. Time will tell on that front.

As we all now know, Nova was introduced as Palm webOS in January, 2009 at CES.  The first device running webOS was the Palm Pre, a nifty portrait QWERTY slider with HVGA multitouch screen.  Also during 2009, a second webOS device, the Palm Pixi, was announced and launched.  However, surprisingly, there were no non-phone webOS devices released.  In hindsight, I guess that makes sense, as Palm just doesn't have the resources (technical or financial) to launch 3+ separate devices in a single year.  Looking back, it's pretty clear that webOS and the Pre were well-received.  In fact, the Pre was the only smartphone to make it onto Twitter's Top-10 Trending Topics list for 2009, something neither the iPhone 3G S nor the Motorola Droid accomplished.  The two frustrating bits for Palm in 2009 have been Sprint's performance as a sole-carrier partner (in the US) for its new devices and the slow growth of the App Catalog.  However, both of these should be resolved in 2010...for Palm's sake, I hope so.

4) Blu-Ray Players Hit $99
During 2009, I think we'll see a raft of Korean and Taiwanese off-brand manufacturers launch budget Blu-Ray players. Just like the 2008 holiday sales saw BD players hit $149 in some stores, 2009 holiday sales will see them hit $99...if not sooner.

As I type this, Wal-Mart is selling a Magnavox NB500MG1F Blu-Ray Player for $98.00.  While it's just a Magnavox, it does meet the minimum criteria for confirming this prediction.

5) Apple Launches a Tablet to Fanfare
This has been a persistent rumor for years, but I think 2009 will see it actually happen. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple is looking to multi-touch as a key differentiator in its product lines, and having a full-screen, large-display MT device would make total sense. Second, it fits perfectly with the needs of the "creative class," Apple's core customer base. And third, it fills out a hole in their mobile product line that netbooks and other devices not running OS X fill nicely, and that's not a good thing for Apple. So, the technology is ready, the market is willing...and now I think Apple will be able to meet the demand.

Ha ha ha ha...um, no.  While many, many individuals would love for that to happen (if only as additional blog fodder), Apple has not announced anything.  However, there is feverish excitement in OS X fanboy camps about the iSlate being launched at an Apple event in January, 2010.  Or not.

6) Consolidation in the Entertainment Industry
2009 will be a strange year on a lot of dimensions. Not only will the stock market be hard to predict, there will be a lot of odd relationships come out of the mess. One industry that is still poised to make things happen is the entertainment industry, where I expect we'll see larger firms (e.g., major movie studios) start to acquire smaller, but very successful, examples from the newer media (e.g., game producers). A good example of the type of transaction I'm imagining would be Vivendi acquiring Ubisoft. I think Time Warner would love to swallow up Electronic Arts, but that might be a bit too big a bite unless something untoward happens to EA's stock price over the next year.

There were a number of major entertainment industry mergers and acquisitions in 2009.  One biggie was Disney scooping up Marvel Entertainment (comic books & movies) for $4 billion. While this deal hasn't been finalized, signs point to it going through. Another deal was the spin-off and merger involving Liberty Media Entertainment and DirecTV.  Is this a baby Time Warner in the making?  Hard to say, but I doubt it.  These two deals pale in comparison to what might turn out to be a merger of tectonic proportions:  Comcast buying 51% of NBC Universal.  If this goes through (in 2010), it will continue the trend of the same companies controlling the pipes and content, which could will cause consumers serious headaches in the years to come.  Or, they'll just continue to ignore the networks more and more and, instead, turn to the Internet for socially constructed content.  In that case, pray for net neutrality...it'll be our only hope.

7) Steve Jobs Announces Transition to New Role
I think concerns over Jobs' health have more merit than most of us want to admit. In 2009, I expect him to announce that he's transitioning into a different role than President and CEO of Apple (and CEO of Pixar). Something that keeps him out of the spotlight while he deals with his health issues will be valuable to keep Apple's stock price up and customer base intact. The move towards reducing his presence in near-term product launches is consistent with this strategy. But, he's far from gone...his influence will still be felt behind the scenes, but we'll see less of him in his traditional role as Apple poster boy.

Despite many people calling me a pessimist, an Apple-hater, and worse, I stood by this prediction.  On January 5, 2009, Sir Jobs sent out this infamous note claiming that his health issues were minor and transient.  But then, just a few days later, he followed up with a bombshell that he was much sicker than that and he'd be leaving until mid-year.  Given his absence at keynotes and overall behavior reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz ("pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"), his role has clearly changed.  And I take no joy in being right; Jobs is clearly a genius and consumer electronics is better off with him at the height of his abilities.  I look forward to him giving the keynote at WWDC in June, 2010.

8) Facebook Membership Growth Flattens; Twitter Surges
Signs are pointing towards Facebook's popularity beginning to peak. Just as with everything social, when moms and dads begin to frequent the coffee shop, the kids need a new place to hang out. Facebook currently has almost 40 million members in the US. While that number has been skyrocketing since it opened up membership to anyone in September 2006, I think 2009 will see a marked deceleration in its growth. The loss of perceived exclusivity and the hassle of the relatively unprotected app space will combine to make it less appealing to many long-time users and new prospects will find fewer people urging them to get on board. Twitter, however, will see continued growth as it continues to tweak and adapt its environment to meet its core users' needs.

While I'm counting this as a miss, it's actually 50% true.  Facebook's growth did not slow significantly as I'd predicted, but Twitter certainly did have the surge I thought was inevitable.

Let's look at some graphs:

You'll notice that Facebook's growth is pretty continuous up until late 2009, where some outages and privacy issues potentially took away from its momentum.  Now, Twitter...

This is a dramatic acceleration in Twitter's reach.  2009 will clearly go down in history as the year of Twitter.  In fact, Google and Microsoft so believed in it that they both inked deals to include Twitter's stream in their search engines as real-time results.

9) App Stores Dominate Mobile Software Delivery
iPhone's app store, Android's market...these types of bazaars, managed by the sponsors/manufacturers of the mobile operating systems, are coming to be the dominant mode for software distribution to mobile users. It marks a significant break from the traditional model, where mobile developers could sell software from their own sites, through 3rd party aggregators, and through carriers. This new approach is more streamlined, making it easier for users, but also more controlled, which can make it harder to accommodate large and complex ecosystems. The fact that each of the existing app stores serves a relatively small market is why we haven't seen these problems emerge to a point where they start driving users away. 2009 will see continued movement towards these controlled markets and away from the free-form/multi-channel models that previous mobile generations (e.g., Palm OS, Windows Mobile) relied on.

Undoubtedly true. Apple paved the way with this new model and, by the end of 2009, the existence of a robust app store is a requirement for any smartphone platform to be considered a contender. Apple's App Store recently passed 100,000 apps while Android's App Market has around 15,000 titles.  Palm's App Catalog just left beta status and is closing in on 1,000 apps.  In 2009, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Symbian app catalogs were all launched as well.  Clearly, this is the dominant mobile app distribution model for the foreseeable future.

10) Line Blurs between "Netbooks" and Notebooks/Laptops
Netbooks are currently a fairly homogeneous, and well-defined, niche of laptop computers. Most of them have an Intel Atom processor, a screen from 8.9" to 10" in size, no optical drive, weigh between 2.2 and 3 lbs, and cost $300-$500. There's a big gap in pricing then between these netbooks and the subnotebooks/ultraportables that often have slightly larger screens, way more RAM and processing power, and cost $1,500 or more. To paraphrase the old adage, markets abhor a vacuum, so I expect we'll start seeing all manner of new small notebooks come into the market in this $500-$1000 range sporting screens in the 9"-12" range with anything from 512MB to 2GB of RAM, a variety of operating systems (XP and Linux will continue to be most popular), and a range of processing and display capabilities. Not everyone needs to play Crysis on their notebook, but not everyone can get by with a 1024x600 screen and do everything inside their browser.

This was evident even early on in 2009, and now, at year's end, the trend is clearly supportive. While initial netbooks were all burdened with screens in the 8"-9" range, recently announced models have 11" and even 12" screens.  Surprisingly, the prices we're willing to pay for netbooks is increasing, too (clear up to $1,500 if you consider the impressively engineered Sony Vaio X).  Sure, it could just be that our definition of "netbook" is expanding.  But, it's hard to argue that the line between netbook and notebook is getting pretty diffused. 

So, looking back, my record for 2009 seems to be 7 right, 3 wrong...about in line with last year. Some of these were hard to determine, as I had packed in several related predictions into a single item, something I'll try not to do when I post my predictions for 2010 in the next day or two. Until then, let me know what you think in the comments below. 

Thanks, and have a great New Year!

Palm and Apple: two icons of the consumer technology industry. Over the past 15 years, they've had a complicated relationship. These firms have both learned from each others' mistakes, emulated each others' successes, and, for the first time, are now competing squarely against each other for mastery of the smartphone market.

In 1993, Apple launched what many consider to be the first serious attempt at a sophisticated PDA (personal digital assistant): the Newton MessagePad. Typically referred to simply as a Newton, it was, by most measures, a disaster in the marketplace. While it seemed like a brilliant concept, its uneven performance -- most notably, its lackluster handwriting recognition -- lead it to become the target of much mockery (e.g., several mentions in Doonesbury).

Watching all this transpire was a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors who wanted a crack at the PDA space. This foundling company lead by Jeff Hawkins was Palm. In 1996, it launched its own take on the PDA: the Palm Pilot. Palm had learned several lessons from Apple's experience with the Newton.

For example, instead of trying to transcribe anyone's handwriting (a feat difficult even for the human brain), Palm decided to require the user to learn Graffiti, a special script specifically developed for better handwriting recognition. And it worked; the Pilot soared to heights of popularity, partly because Graffiti was a much better solution to the input problem.

Apple abandoned the PDA market and, after failing to purchase Palm, their paths crossed only very infrequently over the next several years at the corporate level. However, several Apple employees left to join Palm. That trend continued; in fact, a significant percentage of Palm's employees are today former Apple staffers. Palm's Chairman, Jon Rubenstein, lead development of the original iPod while at Apple; he joined Palm and launched the program that resulted in the new Pre smartphone. That cross-breeding may be part of the reason that Palm and Apple continued to learn from each other.

In 1997, upon Steve Jobs' return to Apple, it decided it would cease this practice (for various reasons that continue to be debated to this day). Around the same time, Palm decided to start licensing its Palm OS to other hardware/device makers. Palm quickly began to understand the complexities associated with trying to run a business that sold devices while licensing the OS that ran those devices to its competitors. Diverging product lines and pressure from licensees to open up the OS beyond what Palm could readily manage eventually lead Palm to split in two; its device (PalmOne) and OS (PalmSource) sides went their separate ways with only a licensing agreement and some lingering animosity to connect them.

A few years later, Palm found that the venerable Palm OS was running out steam and chose to begin developing a Linux-based replacement. That new OS, which has been called webOS, will launch on the Palm Pre June 6, 2009.

This OS replacement situation was similar to one Apple faced about a decade ago. Around the time of Jobs' return, Apple decided to begin phasing out the original proprietary Mac OS and replace it with the new UNIX-based OS X, which launched in 2001.

Another way Palm has learned from Apple is how it handles product launches. Steve Jobs has long been considered master of the product launch. Apple tightly controls pre-launch information leaks, highly engineers new products so as to rely on minimal "patches" after launch, and puts heavy emphasis on industrial design. Palm's latest launch, that of the Palm Pre, has all the trademarks of an Apple event. Information has been, for the most part, carefully managed. Palm has taken extreme care in ensuring that the product that hits the streets on June 6 is as devoid of flaws as possible. And the trade-offs associated with form versus functionality are often skewed towards the former (e.g., the rationale for not including a removable memory card slot in the Pre was to ensure the unit was as sleek and small as possible). While both companies have less-than-perfect track records in product launches (e.g., Apple's MobileMe and Palm's Foleo), Palm is clearly learning from Apple's successes in this regard.

But the learning hasn't been all one-way; Apple has also learned quite a bit from Palm's experiences over the past 13 years. Several design decisions in the iPhone are straight out of Palm's playbook: a touchscreen, icon-based interface; an external "ringer" switch to silence the device; an application-launcher "home" screen; and so forth. While the iPhone is different in many ways from any Treo or Palm device ever made, it is clear that some elements were lifted from Palm's successful line of handhelds and smartphones. Palm returned the favor by including some multitouch gestures similar to those used in the iPhone; Apple was unhappy enough with that to threaten legal action, but nothing came of it (yet).

Apple also learned from one of Palm's main failings, which was how it managed third-party development in order to create value for its user community. While Palm had occasionally encouraged and/or partnered with software sites that catered to Palm OS users (e.g., Stingersoft, PalmGear, and Handango), there was never a centralized, easy-to-access catalog for those new to the platform. And even if the user found one of those sites, he still had to navigate downloading to a PC, sometimes unzipping and/or running an installer application, and then syncing the new app to his device. All told, it was not a thoughtfully engineered user experience suitable for the masses. Apple's App Store greatly improved all that by making the one place with all apps available directly from the device. While some might argue that the lack of an open market ecosystem retards innovation, there's no debate over the improvement the App Store approach has had on users' familiarity and usage of 3rd party software.

One area that both companies have had similarly poor performance is interacting with the fan community. Apple is notorious for suing blogs over rumors and product leaks. Palm has sued websites over naming issues. Both companies have had their share of PR faux pas when it comes to handling contentious issues on the Internet. Apple found itself in hot water over how it addressed pricing changes shortly after the 1st-gen iPhone launch. Palm messed up an opportunity with the PreDevCamp crowd over secrecy/transparency pressures (although that appears to be reconciled, now). While it's easy to make original mistakes, let's hope that both companies improve how they manage their community relations.

While I'm certainly not claiming that either Palm or Apple is beholden to the other company for its success (or failure), it seems clear that both companies have carefully observed each other and tried to learn from their experiences. Not replicating your competitors' mistakes is always helpful.

Going forward, as Palm and Apple find each other squarely in the other company's sights, it will be fascinating to watch how each move is countered and each new product is reacted to. With all the history and common blood linking these two firms, this match-up could be one of the more compelling and interesting over the next few years.

Update: Rene Ritchie pointed me (indirectly) to a list of Apple's product flops over the years, which is interesting reading to reflect on when you start thinking the company can do no wrong.

Update #2: Fortune has an interesting story on the impending rivalry: Palm fights back (against Apple)

PC Magazine posted a list of 10 companies using Twitter in interesting, novel ways. One of the more common uses was as a customer service channel, such as what Palm and some folks from Sprint have been doing.

And it's fairly easy to do. With Twitter's search engine, it's relatively painless to stay abreast of any mention of your company or its branded services. Monitoring this constantly is essential to initiating timely contacts with customers who mention they are having problems.

But, before companies jump into offering customer service via a novel medium like Twitter, some caution should be taken; while the payoff of an innovative move like this can be significant to your customers, there are easy mistakes to be made. So, a quick list of some general lessons:

1) Twitter isn't the best option for most, or even many, of your customers

For part of my PhD dissertation, I worked with customer support of a major ISP researching how they interact with customers over various channels (at the time, it was phone, email, and IM). We found that different problem types and different customer needs were most effectively handled via different media (due to the characteristics of those media)...there was not one medium that did the best under all circumstances.

So what does this mean when using Twitter? Different customers are going to have different needs. Some are going to have very simple problems that can be addressed quickly and are going to be fairly matter-of-fact/rational about the issue. Twitter could be a terrific medium for those kinds of situations.

But, many customers are going to have complex problems, be upset about the problem, or both. In these cases, Twitter is unlikely to be the best choice. In these situations, the 140-character limitation of Twitter makes it really difficult to engage in complex conversations with completeness and clarity. And in cases where the customer is upset or angry, you need to convey empathy and concern. The terseness required in Twitter is just not adequate for mollifying emotional customers.

2) Use Twitter to route customers to better support channels in your firm

Instead of trying (and likely failing) to address customers' issues via interaction on Twitter, use that opportunity to direct customers to those other people/channels in your company who can best handle them. But don't just rely on a message like the following:

You clearly risk losing the customer. Instead, ensure the hand-off happens by getting the customer's contact information (obviously best if done via direct message) and then passing that onto the appropriate channel so a support rep can then join and continue the conversation that was started on Twitter through whatever medium is best suited for the problem at hand (phone, email, etc.).

3) Failures are public spectacles

It's important to remember that Twitter is a social medium. Any failure on your part to soothe an aggravated customer could easily turn into a public shouting match, even if the shouting is only one way. And to make matters worse, that conversation is persistent, there for the customer to reference for any and all friends to view. A happy customer might tell a friend, but an unhappy one will tell the world. And, since that unhappy customer is already sitting there in front of a potentially huge social network, that negative word-of-mouth can spread quickly. This makes it just that much more important to avoid long, public conversations with upset/angry customers on social networks like Twitter. If the customer wants to vent, let them rant over a medium that is isolated away from public scrutiny and where they are guaranteed to have the customer rep's undivided attention.

4) Do it well, or don't do it

As social media are still fairly new to many companies, it's tempting to let an employee or two who are particularly interested in the medium "try it out" informally, perhaps even during off-hours. This approach is unlikely to result in highly satisfied customers for a few reasons. First, the hand-offs mentioned in #1 above are unlikely to happen smoothly and quickly, thus risking further alienating a customer already having problems. Second, these employees who are interested may not be the best people in your company to do this; they may not even be customer support professionals with appropriate training and/or people skills. And third, a lack of formality means that key lessons may not be captured in order to help improve future efforts at using social media for customer service.

No, instead, set up a quick team with appropriate resources. This doesn't have to be, nor should it be, a several-month project to assemble the team and create policies and document processes. But, some level of formality can be helpful, even if it's simply a list of contacts within the company for handing off different types of problems/customers and a regular (e.g., daily) huddle to share insights and set expectations. This will likely be a very new way to engage the customer, so learning is inevitable. You're unlikely to get it perfect from day one, but getting there as quickly as possible is the key to creating an advantage over your competitors.

Sprint sent out a rather innocuous-looking notice dated February 16, which arrived at our house yesterday. Opening it reveals two interesting bits of information:

1) Sprint will be increasing the replacement fees it charges to its Total Equipment Protection (TEP) program customers based on a two-tier system; pricier phones, including all Palm devices (which, strangely, are listed under the old PalmOne brand), Blackberries, and assorted other smartphones are listed as Tier 2, meaning a $100 replacement fee (versus the $50 fee it previously charged). These changes go into effect April 19, 2009.

2) Listed among the PalmOne [sic] devices is a model I've not previously heard of: The "TREO Jones". Anyone have any idea what that is? My guess is that it's the forthcoming Treo Pro.

It's also interesting that they refer to the Palm Centro by its much less common name, the Treo 690p, which seems odd for a document meant to be read by non-technical customers.

Sloppy work, Sprint...and disappointing.

It's been about 8 months since our first Hot/Not List, so I thought I'd post an updated one:

HOT

• Logitech Squeezebox - After Logitech's acquisition of Slim Devices, a lot of fans of the smaller company's products were concerned that innovation would halt and corporate fossilization would set in, as happens in so many of these cases. Well, it couldn't be further from the truth. Slim's innovative products are benefiting from Logitech's branding and distribution muscle and the combined firm is churning out really impressive audio streaming devices. Our home audio ecosystem now consists of a Squeezebox Duet controller, two receivers, and a Boom; these three cover about 80% of the house and it's wonderful to have perfectly synced music streamed throughout without breaking the bank.
  
• Palm - The Pre smartphone was the buzz of CES and is still making strong headlines at MWC. Sprint may have a winner on its hands with this new device.
  
• Sprint - Coming off a really impressive turnaround regarding its customer service and anticipation of its 4G wireless network, Sprint could be poised for strong growth in the next few years.
  
• Aptera - So far, this innovative hypermileage boutique car-maker in California has avoided some of the pitfalls that its performance-oriented sibling Tesla Motors has made, and the 2e vehicle it should be shipping very soon looks like it could be a key evolutionary link in transforming the way we think about cars.
  
• Twitter - Easily the most addictive thing I've tried recently.
  
• Windows 7 - Sure, it's still in beta, but I am SO looking forward to its release. As much as I've panned Vista over the years, I think 7 will be a winner.
  

NOT

• Cloud-Based Contact Management - Even with Google's recent improvements to Gmail Contacts, there are no really excellent cloud-friendly contact management solutions available. The best I've found is ClearSync, and that isn't as widely compatible as most would like.
• Battery Technology - Seriously...scientists and engineers have been working on this for decades and we're still not fundamentally better than we were 20 years ago.
• Obese Netbooks - Almost by definition, a "netbook" should be incredibly lightweight. Why, then, are we seeing netbooks weighing over 3 lbs released to market??
• Winter - by definition. I am quite ready for Spring, thanks very much.
• Digital Transition Delay - We set the date for February 17th, and now Congress is pushing it back to June 12 for those stations that want extra time. Why? Delaying it doesn't solve anything and, in fact, actually increases the costs of the conversion and sows more consumer confusion. Clearly a lose-lose proposition.

In July, 2002, Fujifilm and Olympus horrified digital photography fans by launching an all-new flash memory format, the xD-Picture Card. Why, nobody outside these two companies was sure, but it seems the grand experiment may be coming to an end.

Fujifilm has announced that an upcoming pocket point-and-shoot camera, the F200EXR, will accept both xD and SD/MMC memory formats. At least according to the folks at Crave.

I, for one, will be happy to pare down the ranks of incompatible flash memory formats. Sony, would you like to take your turn and off the noxious Memory Stick? Honestly, nobody will miss it...I promise.

A mere 12 days ago, I posted GearBits' Predictions for 2009. To my surprise, some of them are already coming true:

3) Palm Launches New OS to Fanfare, Skepticism

I predicted that Palm would announce its new OS and show off at least one device at CES, which they did...in spades. While most coverage has been off-the-charts positive, there have been some nattering nabobs of negativism who feel there's just can't be a way for Palm to come back. Palm's next big hurdle is actually getting the Pre through FCC approval and into Sprint's stores.

7) Steve Jobs Announces Transition to New Role

My guess was that Jobs' health concerns were more serious than the public was being led to believe. Today, Jobs announced he was taking some time because his "health-related issues are more complex than [he] originally thought." Given Jobs' recent statement that his weight loss was due merely to an easily treatable hormone imbalance and expected no change from the status quo, this announcement shocked everyone. We hope for his quick recovery and return to doing the job he does so well.

10) Line Blurs between "Netbooks" and Notebooks/Laptops

My prediction stated that we would start seeing new models fill in the gap between the low-end netbooks and traditional (i.e., full-featured, more powerful, and more expensive) subnotes. At CES, there were a variety of netbooks announced. While most played the familiar tune of 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a hard drive, and an 8-10" screen running 1024x600, there were a couple of standouts. The most discussed was the Sony Vaio P, a 1.4-lb netbook (even though they don't want you to call it that) that rocks a 1600x768 screen and runs Vista (albeit slowly). At a price point of $900 (for the low-end unit), it clearly is aimed at the gap between typical netbooks and upscale ultraportables. Another, more obscure one that fills this gap is the Olidata Conte, a very capable machine that, when it comes to market, may cost around $1,000.

Update (1/25/09): Apparently, AMD (via Engadget) agrees with me; CEO Dirk Meyer said in an earnings call that "the distinction between what is a netbook and what is a laptop is going to go away...there will be a continuum of price points and form factors." Good to know the C-suite is listening to me. ;-)

Once again, here are GearBits' prognostications for the coming year. If you're interested, check out how our predictions for 2008 panned out, or previous years' predictions.

1) Microsoft Launches Windows 7 to Fanfare, Skepticism
Microsoft's two pillars of financial solvency -- Windows and Office -- have been standing on shaky ground recently. Office 2007 was a decent hit, despite it not offering much new and causing significant backward compatibility issues. But Windows Vista, on the other hand, has been an unmitigated disaster. Microsoft even had to resort to tricking users into liking Vista (Mojave, anyone?), it had developed such a bad reputation. Windows 7 will be launched late in 2009 to a general consensus of "it's better," but will not be the "wow" that Microsoft needs to regain the market share it has recently ceded to Apple. But maybe that's a good thing...having strong competitors is usually a good thing for consumer markets.

2) Blockbuster Declares Bankruptcy
This may be a bit "out there," but I see exceedingly tough times at Blockbuster. And this isn't vindictiveness...I've been a reasonably happy Blockbuster.com customer for several years, now. I just think that, given the state of its business (poor), the weakness in the economy (near-critical), the nature of its service (luxury), and the rapidity with which that industry is transforming, I think Blockbuster will file for bankruptcy protection to get out of some of its debt, sell off some property (store locations that aren't faring well), and reinvest that into developing newer and more attractive services. So, they aren't going away...yet.

3) Palm Launches New OS to Fanfare, Skepticism
We've all heard the rumors that Palm will be launching "Nova," its replacement for the ancient Palm OS, at CES 2009 in a few days. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen. I'm also pretty sure that Palm will have at least one new device, if not several, running the new OS available by the end of June. While launching phones can take a while, given the carriers' lengthy testing requirements, launching a PDA doesn't, so Palm could certainly come out with two (or more) non-phone PDAs running Nova pretty quickly. And it needs to...the TX is older than my grandmother (at least in technology years). Generally, I predict there will be more nice things said about Nova, and the new devices, than critical, and it will stack up fairly competitively with Android and WM 6.5. What I do not have a lot of faith in is Palm's ability to develop and deliver the ecology of services (e.g., app stores) that customers are now expecting their smartphones to be integrated into. Time will tell on that front.

4) Blu-Ray Players Hit $99
During 2009, I think we'll see a raft of Korean and Taiwanese off-brand manufacturers launch budget Blu-Ray players. Just like the 2008 holiday sales saw BD players hit $149 in some stores, 2009 holiday sales will see them hit $99...if not sooner.

5) Apple Launches a Tablet to Fanfare
This has been a persistent rumor for years, but I think 2009 will see it actually happen. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple is looking to multi-touch as a key differentiator in its product lines, and having a full-screen, large-display MT device would make total sense. Second, it fits perfectly with the needs of the "creative class," Apple's core customer base. And third, it fills out a hole in their mobile product line that netbooks and other devices not running OS X fill nicely, and that's not a good thing for Apple. So, the technology is ready, the market is willing...and now I think Apple will be able to meet the demand.

6) Consolidation in the Entertainment Industry
2009 will be a strange year on a lot of dimensions. Not only will the stock market be hard to predict, there will be a lot of odd relationships come out of the mess. One industry that is still poised to make things happen is the entertainment industry, where I expect we'll see larger firms (e.g., major movie studios) start to acquire smaller, but very successful, examples from the newer media (e.g., game producers). A good example of the type of transaction I'm imagining would be Vivendi acquiring Ubisoft. I think Time Warner would love to swallow up Electronic Arts, but that might be a bit too big a bite unless something untoward happens to EA's stock price over the next year.

7) Steve Jobs Announces Transition to New Role
I think concerns over Jobs' health have more merit than most of us want to admit. In 2009, I expect him to announce that he's transitioning into a different role than President and CEO of Apple (and CEO of Pixar). Something that keeps him out of the spotlight while he deals with his health issues will be valuable to keep Apple's stock price up and customer base intact. The move towards reducing his presence in near-term product launches is consistent with this strategy. But, he's far from gone...his influence will still be felt behind the scenes, but we'll see less of him in his traditional role as Apple poster boy.

8) Facebook Membership Growth Flattens; Twitter Surges
Signs are pointing towards Facebook's popularity beginning to peak. Just as with everything social, when moms and dads begin to frequent the coffee shop, the kids need a new place to hang out. Facebook currently has almost 40 million members in the US. While that number has been skyrocketing since it opened up membership to anyone in September 2006, I think 2009 will see a marked deceleration in its growth. The loss of perceived exclusivity and the hassle of the relatively unprotected app space will combine to make it less appealing to many long-time users and new prospects will find fewer people urging them to get on board. Twitter, however, will see continued growth as it continues to tweak and adapt its environment to meet its core users' needs.

9) App Stores Dominate Mobile Software Delivery
iPhone's app store, Android's market...these types of bazaars, managed by the sponsors/manufacturers of the mobile operating systems, are coming to be the dominant mode for software distribution to mobile users. It marks a significant break from the traditional model, where mobile developers could sell software from their own sites, through 3rd party aggregators, and through carriers. This new approach is more streamlined, making it easier for users, but also more controlled, which can make it harder to accommodate large and complex ecosystems. The fact that each of the existing app stores serves a relatively small market is why we haven't seen these problems emerge to a point where they start driving users away. 2009 will see continued movement towards these controlled markets and away from the free-form/multi-channel models that previous mobile generations (e.g., Palm OS, Windows Mobile) relied on.

10) Line Blurs between "Netbooks" and Notebooks/Laptops
Netbooks are currently a fairly homogeneous, and well-defined, niche of laptop computers. Most of them have an Intel Atom processor, a screen from 8.9" to 10" in size, no optical drive, weigh between 2.2 and 3 lbs, and cost $300-$500. There's a big gap in pricing then between these netbooks and the subnotebooks/ultraportables that often have slightly larger screens, way more RAM and processing power, and cost $1,500 or more. To paraphrase the old adage, markets abhor a vacuum, so I expect we'll start seeing all manner of new small notebooks come into the market in this $500-$1000 range sporting screens in the 9"-12" range with anything from 512MB to 2GB of RAM, a variety of operating systems (XP and Linux will continue to be most popular), and a range of processing and display capabilities. Not everyone needs to play Crysis on their notebook, but not everyone can get by with a 1024x600 screen and do everything inside their browser.

So, there you have it...GearBits' predictions for 2009. Some are probably pretty safe bets, and some are bound to be wrong. What do you think will happen?

Each year, we at GearBits post some predictions for the coming year. And then, in the interest of honesty, fairness, and self-deprecation, we take a look back to see how we did. Each of our predictions for 2008 are listed below, along with an update on what actually happened.

1) Blu-Ray Wins the Format War
Yep, I'm going to pick a winner and it's going to be Blu-Ray. The one-two punch of Warner Brothers's move to Blu-Ray exclusivity (from its Switzerland-like neutrality of supporting both formats) later in 2008 and Apple's announcement that BD will be the only HD format available in its products will cement HD DVD's demise. And none too soon. I don't really care which wins...just make it snappy so that prices on players and media can plummet, thanks.

As of now, the end of 2008, it seems like forever since Blu-Ray trounced HD DVD in the format war. But back in early January, it was anyone's guess. But then, on February 18th, Toshiba officially threw in the towel. Interestingly, the Warner Bros. move I thought would happen eventually was actually announced the day after I posted my predictions. Of course, Apple hasn't yet released any products with any form of HD optical drive, so that bit wasn't exactly spot on. And I'm still waiting for my $99 Blu-Ray player. But, overall, this prediction looks pretty solid.

2) Google's Android Shakes Up Phone Industry
For a while now, the cellphone industry has been fairly static. A few smartphone and mobile OS makers have generally tussled for market share, but the overall industry has been pretty evolutionary. Google's entry will prove to be a watershed moment, with open source finally making a big impact in the handheld space (and no, I don't consider the Zaurus to be a big deal...sorry). Actual handsets running Android will be announced, if not available, before the end of 2008.

Depending on your threshold for "shaking up" the phone industry, I think most people would agree that Android made quite a splash in 2008 when the HTC G1 was launched on T-Mobile in the US on September 23rd. And we've already heard of around a dozen hardware makers signed on to release Android handsets. While handset sales still pale in comparison to the iPhone, 2009 looks like it just might be the year of the Android.

3) Palm Supports Android
This is more of a hope than an actual prediction, as I just don't know whether the egos at Palm will let the company do the right thing and admit that their next-generation OS (which has been under development since 2004!) will be a viable contender against Android (which has essentially the same technical details but scads more developer support). But, if cooler, more rational heads prevail at Palm, they'll announce that they're plans will be to produce at least one Android-based product (probably to come out sometime in 2012 :-/ ).

Ouch...I couldn't have been more wrong. While I still think Palm would have been smart to advance their product refurbishment by a full year (maybe more) by going with Android instead of continuing to pursue Nova, the company stuck to its original, go-it-alone plans. We'll see how well that pans out in 2009.

4) Microsoft's HD Photo Replacement for JPEG Image Standard Goes Nowhere
I'm not saying it's a bad idea technically; I'm just saying that JPEG is so entrenched now that replacing it would be about as reasonable a thing to try as would be replacing MP3 with any of the multitudes of better formats. JPEG, like MP3, isn't great, but it's adequate (at least for consumers) and ubiquitous. We'll still be saving all our photos in JPG (and maybe RAW) at the end of 2008...and likely long after that.

JPEG XR, the official name of Microsoft's HD Photo format, has generated essentially zero traction in the camera industry. Part of that is Microsoft's less-than-swift transition of JPEG XR into its quasi-open licensing portfolio, a move that will have to happen for camera makers and developers to trust that they won't be bitten by huge licensing fees in the future if they move their products away from RAW to JPEG XR.

5) Subnotes Will Explode in Availability (and Maybe Popularity)
I've always been a fan of tiny, sub-3-pound laptops, but I think 2008 will see a huge number of these clamshell devices come out of every corner of the consumer electronics space. The Asus EeePC and the OLPC XO Laptop are two examples. While Microsoft had a good idea in its UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) concept, the hardware was just never executed all that well. Frankly, I think a 7" touchscreen for Windows is just too difficult. But, going with the traditional clamshell design and using cheaper and/or smaller technologies (e.g., flash memory instead of a HDD) will bring us a raft of interesting (and some good) designs at <$500 price points. Bring 'em on! And I think we'll start to see a lot more people toting these things along that traditionally avoided laptops for whatever reason (cost, weight, etc.).

Bingo. If the shelves at Best Buy and Circuit City are any indication, these "netbooks" (the now-favored term...at least by everyone except Psion) have multiplied faster than Tribbles on Cialis. One glance at the huuuge list of netbooks over at small-notebooks.com is enough evidence to suggest that this prediction was spot on.

6) The GPS War Heats Up
TomTom, Nokia, and Garmin will exchange hostile fire over the GPS market due to convuluted agreements regarding mapping data as well as market-share for hardware. Products will continue to decline in price and improve in functionality, and >50% of cellphones will have some form of GPS functionality available on them. I guess that's two predictions in one...oh well.

I'm going to give myself this one. While we haven't heard that much more about the complex licensing agreements involving the big three, you need only walk through a Staples, Radio Shack, or Target to see a vast assortment of portable GPS units now available for under $150, most even having text-to-speech and other advanced functions. That's in direct comparison to late last year, when it was difficult to find a decent unit for under $300.

7) DRM Hits Choppy Water
2007 saw some movement away from DRM (digital rights management), especially in the music industry, but I expect we'll see similar initiatives in all areas of media. DRM has been proven again and again to be little more than an expensive technological boondoggle, and the leading innovators at the consumer media interface (e.g., Apple, Amazon, and Google) will make some headway into reversing the trend of more encumbrance for our media. The RIAA and MPAA will continue to fight it...they know how to do nothing else...but economic results will start to demonstrate that DRM actually hurts profitability.

Nope...we didn't hear much consistent with my prediction. While some markets moved towards offering DRM-free downloads, most are still heavily laden. And the RIAA actually reversed its strategy and is now no longer suing everyone and their mother for alleged downloading. So that's two different ways I was off on this one. Just goes to show that there's no telling what the content owners are thinking.

8) Major Tech Stocks End 2008 Up Significantly
These are bound to be wrong, but what the heck...nobody pays me for stock tips. I think Apple will end 2008 at 235, Google will be at 960, and Microsoft will finish the year at 50. As for other stocks, iRobot will end up at either 46 or 12 (can you tell I'm a cynical shareholder?), IBM will show tepid growth to 112, and RIM, hurt by the continued weak US dollar and facing increasing competition, will struggle to match its 1-year high of 127.

Uh, no. While I doubt many saw the massive downturn in stocks coming, tech stocks are decidedly not even slightly better off than most. Let's see how my specific price predictions held up:
  • Apple (AAPL): Predicted = 235; Actual = 86.29
  • Google (GOOG): Predicted = 960; Actual = 303.11
  • Microsoft (MSFT): Predicted = 50; Actual = 19.34
  • iRobot (IRBT): Predicted = 46 or 12; Actual = 8.95
  • IBM (IBM): Predicted = 112; Actual = 83.55
  • Research in Motion (RIMM): Predicted = 127; Actual = 38.77
In summary, do not ask me to manage your stock portfolio...you would be better served by setting your money on fire, as then you could at least stay warm for a while.

9) I Buy a New Laptop and Am Disappointed
My Panasonic CF-W2 is now three-and-a-half-years-old and I'm starting to cringe every time I turn it on (my luck with hard drives makes me skeptical of many living past their 4th birthday). I've been looking at possible replacements (e.g., Toshiba R500, Panasonic W7, maybe the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 or the rumored Apple subnote) and so far every single one has some significant trade-offs. So, I expect I'll get one and it will turn out to be not significantly better than my aging Toughbook. You'd think in nearly four years that two grand would buy something markedly superior. We'll see...

Unfortunately, I was right on this. The Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 I ended up purchasing in February is a good laptop...don't get me wrong. It's just not a heads-and-shoulders better laptop than my ToughBook was, and that's what I was expecting given the nearly 4 years newer technology and the $2500 it cost. And, given that I've already had to send it in for a repair (the power button broke off), I'm guessing the durability won't even come close to that of the Panasonic (which I still use regularly around the house).

10) Major Changes in Automotive Industry Announced
While the car business makes actual change only very slowly, we'll see some huge announcements in 2008 that will fundamentally change the future of that industry. Things like record oil prices, an increasing attention to sustainable/green technology, and significant ownership changes will substantially change the competitive landscape. Make no mistake; Toyota will continue its ascent and eclipse GM as #1 car-maker in the world. But, we will see several major announcements that will start affecting actual consumers in 2009 and beyond.

While I didn't get the stock predictions exactly right (OK, not even close), I think it's safe to say that the US automotive industry has been shaken up with major changes during 2008. We saw record oil prices (check!), more attention to green tech (check!), and the bottom dropping out of US consumption didn't leave them anywhere to go except to the Congress for help. And Toyota did indeed become the biggest carmaker in the world in 2008, just as predicted. Let's hope the Volt truly is something special...for all our sakes.

So, there you have it: our final score is 7 winners and 3 losers. I'll take it. :-)

In a couple of days, I'll be posting GearBits' predictions for 2009, so make sure you come back and check those out, m'kay?

We get a lot of mail-order catalogs at our house. For whatever reason or past sin, our mailman comes bearing some catalog or another nearly every day. As an experiment, I decided to keep every single catalog we received between the day after Thanksgiving ("Black Friday") and Christmas to see just how many we get during this most joyous of holiday seasons.

And here's the resulting pile:

Yes, that's over 12" of catalogs...121 in total...

...weighing in at a mind-boggling 34 lbs!

This is absurd on several fronts. First, we have never ordered from probably 90% of these companies, and likely never will. Second, several companies sent us multiple copies of the same catalog on the same day. What purpose does that serve, other than to illustrate how bad your marketing department's data-mining efforts are? Third, we received at least five different catalogs from several firms in this one-month period; if the first four catalogs didn't catch our eye, believe me, it's unlikely we're even going to look at the fifth.

In this age of heightened awareness towards ecological and energy concerns, it seems ridiculous that such wasteful physical marketing efforts would not only be tolerated, but be encouraged by discounted postal rates for materials like this. If it cost these companies the same per pound to ship these as it does for you and I to ship something, I guarantee you we'd see fewer of them in our mailboxes.

When you cover up a third of the screen for the first 30 seconds after every commercial break, it makes me want to chuck the remote straight into the screen and go be entertained by the Internet.

In this CNN story -- Poll: Most Americans want offshore drilling -- there are two things I find incredibly troubling.

First, is this quote:

Most Americans favor an increase in offshore oil drilling but the public is split over whether or not it would result in lower gas prices in the next year, according to a just-released CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. (emphasis mine)

It is a cold, indisputable fact that initiating offshore oil drilling today would have no impact on gas prices for several years, certainly not in the next 12 months. Nobody who knows anything about the industry would claim otherwise.

The second thing I find troubling is that this fact was even considered to be something that should appear on a poll. Polls are meant to discern sentiments, not uncover core understanding and comprehension of the facts at hand.

It made me wonder why don't we poll people on some other things, like scientific constants: "Do you believe gravitational acceleration on Earth is approximately (a) 8 m/sec/sec, (b) 9.8 m/sec/sec, or (c) 12 m/sec/sec?"

Or historical facts: "Which country do you feel was more directly responsible for the American Revolution: England or Mexico?"

If the oil poll was intended merely to demonstrate how little the public knows about the topic, it is clearly successful.

If, however, it was supposed to influence policy-makers, it failed miserably to show that any general public will on the matter is based upon anything other than a short-term, myopic desire for lower gas prices regardless of the long-term costs incurred.

Unfortunately, that's neither journalism nor science. In fact, I'm not really sure what it should be called other than a waste of time and effort.

A week-and-a-half ago, I spent all weekend (well, about 34 hours of it) in a habitrail of meeting rooms with about 100 other people trying to do something pretty incredible: invent, build, and launch a new Internet startup in less than three days.

The event, InOneWeekend 2008, was the inaugural entrepreneurial exercise by this new Cincinnati organization, which hopes to jump-start new-venture creation in the technology-based services space (i.e., dot-coms).

After lots of thinking and working and coding and sweating (not to mention eating fast food and swilling highly caffeinated beverages), our concept was outlined and mocked up to a degree that we thought the world should be invited to share in its evolution from beta concept to fully operational service.

I, er, we give you...LifeSpoke.

Go on...click the link and check it out...it won't hurt, I promise.

LifeSpoke is, and soon will be more of, a place to save, organize, and share all your personal memorabilia and life's memories (assuming they come in handy digital format, of course). With an innovative, patent-pending interface (that we're not quite ready to share yet) and a family-oriented content model (that includes loads of privacy, security, and convenience), we're pretty stoked at the idea that moms, dads, kids, grandparents, and close friends will finally have a place to share their intimate memories and most precious media in a rich new environment.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Actually, you're thinking "I'm hungry...I wonder what's in the fridge." Hey, focus...there's just a little more to read here. You were also thinking "But aren't there a bazillion other media-sharing websites out there, like YouTube, most with sharing features?" To that I say of course! But LifeSpoke is different and will be the best solution for families and close-knit groups of friends to share their memories. While those other sites are great for stuff like watching someone's dog ride a skateboard or having anonymous 15-year-olds "friend" you, LifeSpoke focuses on the relationships in your life that mean the most.

So...go sign up for one of the limited beta invitations at LifeSpoke.com and join us as we ride this idea to wherever it takes us. Should be a fun trip.

If you're interested in reading more about the InOneWeekend adventure we had, check out these stories:
• Official LifeSpoke press release (Marketwatch.com)
• Cincinnati Business Courier article (bizjournals.com)

I opened up my Sprint PCS bill to find an $18 charge described as "Handset upgrade fee." Wha?

Sure, last month, a few weeks after our 2-year indentured servitude contract with the carrier ended (we're now month-to-month), my wife needed a new phone. We got her a new Centro and paid full price for it because I didn't want to go back under contract. But nobody said anything about a fee just for buying a new phone.

So I called up Sprint customer service this morning and, after discussing it with both the rep and her manager, they basically told me there was nothing they could do about it (at which point I asked why they were called "customer service") and that I'd have to go back to the store to argue about the charge.

Who in their right minds would insult a customer who isn't under an active contract (i.e., who is free to leave for a competitor at the drop of a hat) by asking for an extra $18 on top of the $300 he just spent in your store, especially given that he's already paying you nearly $100 a month? And why, oh why, would you trust some random clerk in some random store to salvage what is a very profitable, long-term relationship when the customer has already taken the time to call your service department and talk to you?

It all clearly reminded me why Sprint is nearly universally loathed by its customers and former customers alike.

I then dragged myself into the local Sprint store, girding for yet another fruitless battle over $18. At this point, it wasn't so much the money as it was the principle. Surprisingly, after a 30-second explanation, the store rep said, "Oh, no, that's a mistake...I'll take it right off." And that was that. Awesome.

So, while all's well that ends well, this little experience reminded me quite clearly why I didn't renew my contract with Sprint. Any company who makes such poor decisions about how it manages its customer relationships does not adequately desire, or deserve, my patronage. When the new Android devices, or whatever else that satisfies my requirements, come out, I'll be ready, and eager, to switch carriers as needed.

Time.com has positively deviated from the typical "gas prices are awful, aren't they?" approach most journalists take when writing about the fuel situation. Instead of adding to the incessant yammering about how life is going down the crapper because of $4 gas, they decide to highlight 10 positives that might come about because of it:

1. Globalized jobs return home
   
2. Sprawl stalls
   
3. 4-day work weeks
   
4. Less pollution
   
5. More frugal use of transportation
   
6. Fewer traffic deaths
   
7. Cheaper car insurance
   
8. Less traffic
   
9. More cops out of their cars
   
10. Less obesity

Now, I'm not confident all these will happen just because of high gas prices, but you have to give them a nod for at least trying to remind us that some good will likely come out of this.

Read the whole story here.

Mitch, seeing my Hot/Not list from yesterday, compiled his own, so here it is:

HOT

• iPod Touch - I tried the Archos 605 Wi-Fi first and its mediocrity makes the Touch that much more delightful. I really love well done user interfaces and this one is first rate. My only complaint is its picky eating habits when it comes to video formats.
  
• iMac - I waited longer than any other tech purchase to finally go with Apple's all-in-one desktop PC. I opted for the top of the line 3.06 GHz 24" model and have been completely blown away by it. So far I have found no flaws. It is stunning.
  
• High Gas Prices - Innovation rocks and if it takes $5/gallon gasoline to get us out of this oil addiction then I'm more than willing to pay my dues. Fewer SUVs and pickups, electric cars, solar energy, alternative fuels, more big butts on bicycles, less traffic congestion; I'm all for it. Let's drop our consumption by half and let OPEC drink their devalued crude.
  
• Synology - A NAS will soon be as ubiquitous on a home network as the router is today. The clever, feature-filled offerings from Synology are the best of the breed. I'll have a DS508 please!
  
• Subaru - Totally agree with Craig here. I've been
  in Imprezas now going on six years and I still feel like I'm cheating when I share the road with normal cars. Scoobys are fabulous.
  
• Ken Follett's Historical Novels - "The Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End" are two of my favorite books of all time and I just took them in this Spring. I listened to both on my iPod (over 40 hours each) after downloading them from Audible and they made a month of 1000 mile weekly commutes totally enjoyable. Masterful stuff.
  
• CrossFit - I was in good shape 20 years ago and at 44 I can wipe the floor with my 24 year old self (if that was possible). I've been CrossFitting for almost a year now and some of the things I can do now would have seemed outlandish back then.

NOT

• General Motors - If you Google dinosaur, out of touch, lethargic, and unimaginative you should pull up GM's home page. I used to be a fan, but they have been disappointing me for 25 years now and don't seem to be planning any big changes. The sooner they finish themselves off, the better off we'll be.
  
• Labor Unions - Working in the industrial world I cross paths with unions
  of all sorts way more than I would like. I completely understand why our manufacturing sector is fleeing to other countries. I have never seen such a lazy, selfish, destructive, regressive bunch of people in my life. They can't all be like that, but the ones I've met surely are.
  
• Sheeple-Filled Corporate IT Departments - My 26,000 strong corporation is going to switch to Vista because they don't want to be left with no anti-virus support for their XP platform. Goodbye nice warm frying pan and hello fire.
  
• Cable/Satellite TV - I'm SO tired of paying $80 a month for a bunch of
  garbage that I would never watch even if I had the time. It won't be long until I cut that cord and start rolling my own TV. If I could just decide which way I want to do it!
  
• Global Markets - I realize that even the lowliest trader in/on most investment banks/trading floors/commodities exchanges is smarter than I am, but I would really love to see them use those brains rather than run with every emotion that riffles through the world markets. Do investors even pay attention to P/E ratios or supply and demand or is it all about what the hot analyst is saying or the sheeple are doing?

I've been remiss on posting, so I thought I'd assemble a whole mess of opinions in one place. Over the past several weeks or so, I've come to appreciate some things/companies and have come to be disappointed in others. So, here's a quick run-down:

HOT

• Shutterfly - always gets me great-looking prints/books in a timely manner at low prices.
  
• Google - just keeps rolling out the innovative, useful, and well-designed web apps
  
• Subaru - they just make terrific cars...durable, high-performing, and affordable
  
• Amazon.com - with reasonably good, if not great, prices, excellent customer service, and a stellar website, what's not to like?
  
• Subnotes - The sudden rash of low-power, low-weight, cheap laptops coming out (which I predicted would happen back at the beginning of the year) is a joy to behold...portable computing for everyone!
  
• NPR - Always informative, enjoyable, and worth supporting.
  
• Logitech Cordless Presenter - Have had it for two years now, am still on the first set of AAA batteries, it has taken tons of abuse, and it still works perfectly. Amazing!
  
• Private Electric Car Companies - It's as if we're on the cusp of another time like the 1920's, when every town seemed to have a local car manufacturer, except now they're all electric, hybrid, or alterna-fuel vehicles (a very good thing).

NOT

• Archos - if my 605 Wi-Fi completely hangs on me one more time, I swear I'm going to chuck it off an overpass (I'll post more about this later)
  
• Palm - if my Treo 700p resets on me one more time, I swear I'm going to chuck...aw, who am I kidding? It'll probably reset before I finish this post. C'mon Android...fill this void in my gadget-hoarding soul, will you?
  
• Megalomaniacal Corporate IT Departments - I hope the day comes soon when we can definitively show that the TCO actually improves when you let corporate tech users select their own personal devices.
  
• Flash memory format proliferation - I mean, seriously, do we really need SD, MiniSD, and MicroSD? It's getting as bad as the dang Memory Stick (and that's saying something).
  
• Download-only music stores - I may be in the minority, but I just don't like the DRM associated with most online music stores. And even without the DRM, the cost seems too much if I'm not getting permanent physical media, liner notes/art, etc. Call me old school if you like...go ahead, it only hurts a little.
  
• Intel's Marketing department - Seriously, guys, could you make keeping track of your product lines any more difficult and confusing?
  
• Getting older - I am no longer the kid I still think of myself as being.
  

So what are your Hot and Not?

I'm heartened to see stories like this: Windows Mobile to get pumped up on Nvidia (CNET). I've tried Windows Mobile many times and every time two things send me running as fast as I can away from the platform:

1) The god-awful user interface

2) The reliance of WM on Outlook

While the second problem probably won't go away any time soon -- Microsoft likes to link its products even when its customers don't necessarily want them linked -- the first problem will probably be greatly mitigated if we can get high-end graphics to speed up and beautify the UI.

I'm sure, however, that Windows Mobile won't be the only game in town with high-powered graphics hardware on board. Google's Android seems to be designed with that type of experience clearly in mind. This, plus the "open network" push we're seeing, means that the next 12-18 months should be a very interesting time in the smartphone space.

The industriousness and efficiency of humanity is really, really impressive if you stop to think about it. While lesser species sit around and wait for Nature to "happen," we devise new ways of accelerating our ass-over-teakettle tumble through new realities.

One particularly delicious example of this is global warming. "Oh, yes, we know all about that," you say, but wait...there's a cool twist.

For years, scientists have been telling us that the Earth's climate is changing, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels and other of man's activities that result in a hotter planet. And for years, scientists have been predicting the most dire of outcomes: dramatic loss of coastal land (and the cities that sit on them), increasingly violent and unpredictable weather, a huge decrease in biodiversity as scores of plant and animal species fail to adapt to what is essentially overnight change to their ecosystems, and so on.

One prediction that scared the US Defense Department so much that it put global warming on its list of top national security threats was the likelihood of widespread food shortages. Changing weather patterns, including increased drought and flooding, were going to wreck havoc on food production around the globe. This shortage would then lead to instability in parts of the world that weren't terribly stable to begin with and further fuel the anti-Western backlash that began sometime before this decade. This would generate new threats like terrorism, disruptions to our own food and energy supply chains, and increase the uncertainty in global markets. All told, not a very rosy scenario.

And that was all supposed to happen by the middle of this century.

But, humanity's unfailing inability to leave bad enough alone has created a worldwide food shortage well before global warming could directly. No, global warming (which, remember, is our fault) is motivating us to seek out alternative fuel sources, such as corn-based petroleum substitutes. These biofuels are diminishing the availability of food and driving up costs. This, in turn, is starting to generate unease in the world's poorest communities. And that is precisely the type of situation that the Defense Department warned us about...just about 40 years earlier than predicted.

It is indeed ironic that our efforts to stem global warming are resulting in many of the very same problems that global warming was itself going to cause, just sooner. When your best effort to avoid calamity only hastens its arrival, you have to wonder whether there's any hope of steering clear at all.

Why does Steve Ballmer (photo borrowed from Gizmodo)

keep reminding me of Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein?

Seriously...is it just me?

T-Mobile is being a collective asshat. It's threatening to sue Engadget by claiming, ridiculously enough, that the website is infringing on T-Mobile's use of the color magenta.

So, GearBits is painting itself magenta for the day in an act of solidarity against such stupid abuse of intellectual property laws.

You gotta hand it to big companies; they just keep finding new ways to be sociopathic.

The latest example is Wal-Mart. Yes, the big, yellow happy-face is suing a brain-damaged ex-employee. According to CNN (paraphrased):

Eight years ago, Debbie Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan.

Shank suffered severe brain damage after a traffic accident that robbed her of much of her short-term memory and left her in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home.

Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank's long-term care.

Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank's medical expenses, but in 2005, Wal-Mart's health plan sued the Shanks for the same amount.

And then, as if these people need more bad news, their son was killed in Iraq and Jim Shank was diagnosed with colon cancer. He even had to divorce Debbie last year in order to maximize her Medicaid payments.

You have to read the full story to get all the details. But I particularly enjoyed the Wal-Mart spokesman's response to why the Shanks couldn't keep the money they won in the lawsuit against the trucking company:

"Wal-Mart's plan is bound by very specific rules. ... We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank's case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan."

Translation: We'd sell our own mother for a dollar.

This is corporate greed exaggerated to unfathomable proportions. If this had been the plot of a movie, people would be complaining it was too far-fetched. Yet, it's all true.

In an interesting coincidence, Bob sent me a link to a video showing the virus-like spread of Wal-Mart across the US from its 1962 origins in Arkansas.

I'm a techie that spends most of my days in the the software world. I sometimes deal with litigation concerns. So this little news update caught my eye, "Verizon settles open source software lawsuit." It seems that a hardware device manufacturer, Actiontec, supplies a FiOS router to Verizon and the device had shipped with some code that it didn't properly license. The code in question was some software, called BusyBox, which is released under an open source license (in this case, GPLv2.)

I actually have an Actiontec FiOS router in my house.

Microsoft has had some embarrassing setbacks lately across its product range. Based on poor sales, the company has had to reduce prices on a variety of its premier offerings.

Late last year, Microsoft started a fire sale on its Zune line of portable media players. Granted, that was in part due to a new model coming out, but you don't see prices on successful products like iPods cut that dramatically at the end of the product life cycle (a sure sign Microsoft overestimated demand on its first-generation device).

Earlier this month, Microsoft's premier product line, the Windows Vista operating system, had prices reduced by as much as 25% to help spur flagging sales (corporate sales of Vista have been far short of what Microsoft expected). Even Microsoft has been critical of Vista.

And just today, Microsoft announced that prices for the Xbox 360 would be slashed in Europe to undercut the Nintendo Wii. Competing with the steamroller that is the Wii has to be tough...doubly so if your product is more expensive and similarly (now) lacks the capability to play HD media.

It makes you wonder why Redmond is going after Yahoo!, at a cost of almost $45 billion, when so many of its core products seem to be doing so poorly.

My daughter and I decided that we wanted to play cars. She was there in her fairy princess outfit running a Hot Wheels car along the floor and it occurred to me that we didn't have any track! When I was a kid (in the 70s), Hot Wheels track was about as ubiquitous as Lego pieces and army men, so it seemed imperative that we go procure some track immediately.

So, we went out to the store and I was shocked and dismayed at how Hot Wheels has devolved over the years. Sure, they offered several track kits, but none of them actually had much track. They had these complicated, automated moving ramps and claw things that picked up the cars and smacked them into each other. The most track I could find in any set was a mere 14 feet! Plus, they didn't sell just track...the only way to get some was to buy one of these kits.

This pales in comparison to how it used to be, when you were able to buy sets with tons of track AND you were also able to purchase separate "Track Packs" of 10-20 pieces and those little purple connectors.

So, I checked eBay. Of course, tons of people were selling old kits like what I remembered. The problem was (a) they were charging an arm and a leg for them (one guy wanted $40 for 40 feet of track), and (b) the shipping charges were even worse (another $20 for UPS ground?!). I'm sorry, but $60 for some Hot Wheels track is just ridiculous.

So, I had an epiphany. Hot Wheels should harness the power of the web to recapture people's imaginations. Currently, the only interactive feature Hot Wheels has is an online personalized database of all the cars you've collected. Whee. No, what I have in mind is a bit more invigorating:

The Hot Wheels Track Set Online Design Studio

Imagine a browser-based tool that lets you assemble parts of track sets that Hot Wheels sells into your own custom track setup. You could drag and drop all the 2-foot pieces you want, add a couple of 90-degree banked curves, toss in an inline accelerator, put in a full loop, and then reconnect back to where you started. The system would automagically calculate all the connectors you need and give you a price quote. Then, if you decided to purchase it, Hot Wheels would assemble your custom package and ship it straight to you.

An interesting extension of this would be if you could take advantage of some of today's gaming technology and actually test out different configurations by running virtual cars through your newly designed track. Finding out that you need a bit more elevation drop (and thus more track) for your design to work would be quite useful to ensure that people aren't disappointed by what they've designed. Plus, Hot Wheels could give each person a list of cars they own that is compatible with the track they've designed. Furthermore, imagine if you could share the tracks you've designed with other people; think Cafe Press for Hot Wheels.

I don't know about you, but I think this would rock. With all the quality issues Mattel has had recently, they're going to have to differentiate themselves on some other dimension, and offering customized Hot Wheels track sets might be just the ticket. Plus, think how much added press and brand-building could be accomplished by an online tool like this. Seems like a decent idea to me.

Over two years ago, I initiated a general plea for a gPhone. Apparently, PalmSolo has witnessed the answer to my request at MWC08.

Check out his photos and video of HTC's gPhone, an Android test mule, in action (via ZD Net)

I'm fairly certain that my 700p will be my last Treo and that something running Android will be my next smartphone. Now if I can just go another 8-9 months...

Microsoft's recent play for Yahoo!, an effort to advance its online advertising market share and more effectively dominate the entire world compete with Google, got me thinking back a bit to those interesting days in the late 90s when Microsoft was having to defend its monopoly status in the operating system market. A couple of graphs and quotes might be helpful, here.

So, according to Microsoft, the market on the left is just fine and doesn't need any intervention, whereas the market on the right has no compelling "number two competitor" and would benefit from some consolidation.

I think that's called wanting to eat your cake and have it at the same time.

It's pretty safe to say, I think, that the HD format war is over. Two pieces of information reveal just how dire HD DVD's situation is.

First, this article at TWICE describes some recent NPD figures: "Blu-ray Disc player sales accounted for 90 percent of dedicated HD disc player unit sales and dollar volume during the week ending Jan. 12." 90 percent? Wow.

Second, and perhaps this is a bit more subtle, but the marketplace at AVSForum.com, home planet for the A/V obsessed, shows an interesting trend. Over the past two weeks, there have been around 25 HD DVD players offered for sale, but only two stand-alone Blu-Ray players have been put up (and one mentioned wanting to upgrade). That's a far larger margin than player sales have been, suggesting that the early adopter crowd is starting to abandon the HD DVD format rather quickly.

So, I can't say I'm sorry to see one of the formats go. From the beginning of this war, I've said I don't care who wins, just to make it snappy. I'm glad 2008 will be the year one side gives up (Toshiba, that'd be you).

Update: Apparently now, the rumor is that Circuit City is preparing to put all its HD DVD players on clearance, suggesting that it is quitting the format altogether.

As has become customary around the changing of the calendar, here are GearBits' official predictions for 2008.

1) Blu-Ray Wins the Format War
Yep, I'm going to pick a winner and it's going to be Blu-Ray. The one-two punch of Warner Brothers's move to Blu-Ray exclusivity (from its Switzerland-like neutrality of supporting both formats) later in 2008 and Apple's announcement that BD will be the only HD format available in its products will cement HD DVD's demise. And none too soon. I don't really care which wins...just make it snappy so that prices on players and media can plummet, thanks.

2) Google's Android Shakes Up Phone Industry
For a while now, the cellphone industry has been fairly static. A few smartphone and mobile OS makers have generally tussled for market share, but the overall industry has been pretty evolutionary. Google's entry will prove to be a watershed moment, with open source finally making a big impact in the handheld space (and no, I don't consider the Zaurus to be a big deal...sorry). Actual handsets running Android will be announced, if not available, before the end of 2008.

3) Palm Supports Android
This is more of a hope than an actual prediction, as I just don't know whether the egos at Palm will let the company do the right thing and admit that their next-generation OS (which has been under development since 2004!) will be a viable contender against Android (which has essentially the same technical details but scads more developer support). But, if cooler, more rational heads prevail at Palm, they'll announce that they're plans will be to produce at least one Android-based product (probably to come out sometime in 2012 :-/ ).

4) Microsoft's HD Photo Replacement for JPEG Image Standard Goes Nowhere
I'm not saying it's a bad idea technically; I'm just saying that JPEG is so entrenched now that replacing it would be about as reasonable a thing to try as would be replacing MP3 with any of the multitudes of better formats. JPEG, like MP3, isn't great, but it's adequate (at least for consumers) and ubiquitous. We'll still be saving all our photos in JPG (and maybe RAW) at the end of 2008...and likely long after that.

5) Subnotes Will Explode in Availability (and Maybe Popularity)
I've always been a fan of tiny, sub-3-pound laptops, but I think 2008 will see a huge number of these clamshell devices come out of every corner of the consumer electronics space. The Asus EeePC and the OLPC XO Laptop are two examples. While Microsoft had a good idea in its UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) concept, the hardware was just never executed all that well. Frankly, I think a 7" touchscreen for Windows is just too difficult. But, going with the traditional clamshell design and using cheaper and/or smaller technologies (e.g., flash memory instead of a HDD) will bring us a raft of interesting (and some good) designs at <$500 price points. Bring 'em on! And I think we'll start to see a lot more people toting these things along that traditionally avoided laptops for whatever reason (cost, weight, etc.).

6) The GPS War Heats Up
TomTom, Nokia, and Garmin will exchange hostile fire over the GPS market due to convuluted agreements regarding mapping data as well as market-share for hardware. Products will continue to decline in price and improve in functionality, and >50% of cellphones will have some form of GPS functionality available on them. I guess that's two predictions in one...oh well.

7) DRM Hits Choppy Water
2007 saw some movement away from DRM (digital rights management), especially in the music industry, but I expect we'll see similar initiatives in all areas of media. DRM has been proven again and again to be little more than an expensive technological boondoggle, and the leading innovators at the consumer media interface (e.g., Apple, Amazon, and Google) will make some headway into reversing the trend of more encumbrance for our media. The RIAA and MPAA will continue to fight it...they know how to do nothing else...but economic results will start to demonstrate that DRM actually hurts profitability.

8) Major Tech Stocks End 2008 Up Significantly
These are bound to be wrong, but what the heck...nobody pays me for stock tips. I think Apple will end 2008 at 235, Google will be at 960, and Microsoft will finish the year at 50. As for other stocks, iRobot will end up at either 46 or 12 (can you tell I'm a cynical shareholder?), IBM will show tepid growth to 112, and RIM, hurt by the continued weak US dollar and facing increasing competition, will struggle to match its 1-year high of 127.

9) I Buy a New Laptop and Am Disappointed
My Panasonic CF-W2 is now three-and-a-half-years-old and I'm starting to cringe every time I turn it on (my luck with hard drives makes me skeptical of many living past their 4th birthday). I've been looking at possible replacements (e.g., Toshiba R500, Panasonic W7, maybe the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 or the rumored Apple subnote) and so far every single one has some significant trade-offs. So, I expect I'll get one and it will turn out to be not significantly better than my aging Toughbook. You'd think in nearly four years that two grand would buy something markedly superior. We'll see...

10) Major Changes in Automotive Industry Announced
While the car business makes actual change only very slowly, we'll see some huge announcements in 2008 that will fundamentally change the future of that industry. Things like record oil prices, an increasing attention to sustainable/green technology, and significant ownership changes will substantially change the competitive landscape. Make no mistake; Toyota will continue its ascent and eclipse GM as #1 car-maker in the world. But, we will see several major announcements that will start affecting actual consumers in 2009 and beyond.

So, I'll check back in about 12 months to see how I fared. In the meantime, what do you think will happen?

Wired has an interesting article that shows the media (recording artists, TV shows, and movies) most popular on the P2P networks (i.e., BitTorent). I was surprised...surprised by (a) two of my favorite shows were on the list, and (b) I'd heard of nearly nothing on the music list. I guess aging has its consequences, eh?

Anyway, here are the lists (for the full details, check out the Wired story):

Top Songs of 2007
1. Shop Boyz - "Party Like A Rock Star"
2. Akon - "I Wanna Luv U"
3. Sean Kingston - "Beautiful Girls"
4. Mims - "This Is Why I'm Hot"
5. Akon - "Don't Matter"
6. T-Pain - "Bartender"
7. Soulja Boy - "Crank Dat Soulja Boy"
8. Justin Timberlake - "My Love"
9. DJ Unk - "Walk It Out"
10. Jim Jones - "We Fly High"

Top Music Artists of 2007
1. T.I.
2. T-Pain
3. Akon
4. 50 Cent
5. R. Kelly
6. Lil Wayne
7. Justin Timberlake
8. Fergie
9. Ludacris
10. Snoop Dogg

Top Movies of 2007
1. Resident Evil: Extinction
2. Pirates of The Caribbean: At World's End
3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
4. Ratatouille
5. Superbad
6. Beowulf
7. Transformers
8. American Gangster
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10. Stardust

Top TV Shows of 2007
1. Heroes
2. Prison Break
3. Top Gear
4. Smallville
5. Desperate Housewives
6. House, M.D.
7. Lost
8. Grey's Anatomy
9. 24
10. Dexter

I just received a notice that my Blockbuster.com subscription pricing would be increasing at the end of the year. My original plan price was $14.99, then was increased to 17.99 earlier this year, and is now going up to $19.99. So I went to the Blockbuster website to see about alternate plans.

Upon reviewing the currently available plans I noticed that none of them seemed to offer the two monthly "e-coupons" (good for one free movie or game rental each) that I get now. Upon searching their FAQs for clarification, here's what I found:

Question: Why don't I receive e-coupons? My friend receives an e-coupon each month.

Answer: We recently enhanced our plans to provide our subscribers with more options. As part of this effort, e-coupons were eliminated from most of, but not all, our plans. If you have friends who still receive e-coupons, it may be because they are on one of the older plans that still include e-coupons.

Hold the fort. When they "enhanced their plans" to "give more options," they eliminated coupons good for one free anything in the store? What's more flexible than that? How can the elimination of a great feature like this be either an "enhancement" or "give me more options?" This kind of doublespeak makes Blockbuster look silly, if not downright disingenuous.
C'mon, Blockbuster...you can do better by your customers than this.

So, in the interest of honesty, here's what I suggest as an alternate FAQ:

Question: Why don't I receive e-coupons? My friend receives an e-coupon each month.

Answer: We recently changed our plans to better serve more customers in a cost-effective manner. Coupons were confusing to some customers and were not used by most, suggesting that we could do better by focusing on other aspects of our service.* As a result, we eliminated e-coupons from all plans available to new members. If you have friends who still receive e-coupons, it may be because they are on one of the older plans that still include e-coupons.

* I made this sentence up just to give some reasonable justification for their decision. In my experience, customers are much more willing to work with you and accommodate your pricing/terms if the rationale behind them is clearly explained and reasonable (i.e., not overly advantageous to the provider).

And to think that someone once told me I was wasting my time saving Canadian pennies.

Canada's Dollar Reaches Record High on Fed Rate Cut Speculation

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Canada's dollar climbed to a record against its U.S. counterpart on speculation credit market losses will prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates again this year.

The currency rose 0.7 percent to $1.0791 at 8:07 a.m. in Toronto as the U.S. dollar weakened against 15 of the 16 most- traded currencies.

Read the whole story (Bloomberg.com)

At least according to woot!, who is once again offering the much-maligned Zune at its lowest price to date...just $129.99. That's even lower than the very impressive $149.99 they had less than a month ago.

Check out today's woot! entry for a Steve Jobs iPhone rebate parody as well...terrific stuff.

A little less than a year ago, Microsoft launched its iPod competitor, the Zune, for $250.

Within 7 months, the price had fallen under $200. Now, 4 months later, the Zune is $150 and being sold through Woot.com, the online equivalent of the Dollar Store.

I think it's safe to say the Zune wasn't exactly a home run.

Of course, an alternate explanation is that Zune version 2 is on its way and Microsoft is just clearing out the last of its old inventory through a lower-visibility channel. We shall see...

Update: Turns out that Woot had 6300 units and sold all of them over a 21-hour period. Seems demand for Zunes might be fairly elastic.

I recently bought a t-shirt from an online retailer. Their chosen method of shipping the shirt to me is a new service from FedEx called "SmartPost," which uses FedEx facilities/transportation part of the journey and then hands off to the US Postal Service for final in-home delivery.

A large number of this retailer's customers have noticed that SmartPost takes a really long time to get from the origin to the destination and often follows some rather peculiar, if not nonsensical, routes. As an example, here's the route my own package is following:

And just for fun, here's a map showing the rather circuitous path my t-shirt has taken so far (the purple envelope is the origin in Carrollton and the golden house icon is my home in Cincinnati):

Needless to say, I don't think it's going to be making it to my house by the estimated delivery date.

Update (8/2/08): My second item sent SmartPost took only 5 days to get from Texas to my home in Ohio, so maybe they're improving things. One can only hope.

I have an idea. It's pretty crazy and 99% likely never to bear fruit, but I feel compelled to describe it here...just in case. And don't think this is entirely thought out...I'm imagining it literally as I type.

Imagine this: a road race around the 86-mile loop of highway circling Cincinnati, Ohio known as I-275 (map below). I-275 in Cincinnati is a divided highway ranging from 2 to 4 lanes in both directions. It wanders through three different states -- Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky -- and crosses the Ohio river twice.

Who could race in this event? Anyone. It would be a true road race where any road-worthy automobile may enter. Think road rally for the everyman.

But who would race in this event? That's an entirely different question. Since closing I-275 would be impossible for any period of time more than, say, a few hours (if even then), the field of cars would have to be limited to about 180. Here's how I figure that. If one lap is 86 miles and even the pokiest racer should be able to average 100 mph, that's .86 hours, or about 50 minutes around the whole loop. If you want to finish the last car in by noon (to re-open the highway), and you wanted to start each car a minute behind the previous one (so as to limit bunching up), then you could launch cars for three hours straight (e.g., starting at 8am, the last one leaving at 11am and returning just before noon).

But, who would those 180 racers be? Well, we'd need to make sure that they know how to drive, so they would have to show that their cars are road-legal and pass a full race safety inspection (a la SCCA rules). But that would still leave thousands aching for a chance to blast through closed highways at ridiculous speeds.

So, to further pare the field, a $500 entry fee would be required. Maybe make it $1,000...or maybe auction off the spots. Alternately, and this could be done to help offset the costs of hosting the race (more on that later), the organizers could require a $X00 fee to enter a RAFFLE from which participants would be drawn. Then, each participant would have to pay the entry fee to actually race. The motivation would be the thrill, potential prize money, and some local fame.

I also imagine that you'd need a few classes of cars, primarily for sequencing the starts (you should have the fastest cars at the beginning and the slowest at the end in order to minimize overtaking and passing) and based primarily on top speeds (e.g., 180+, 160-180, 140-160, and less than 140). This would be the perfect opportunity for those rich guys with their Porsche Carreras and Mercedes SLRs to really open them up on public roads. It would also make for a really fine exotic car show.

Staging the cars could be done at an on-ramp area near I-75 and adjacent to a large commercial base of restaurants, etc. for helping support the hordes of tourists.

And that brings me to the money part. This could, if managed correctly, be a HUGE money-maker for the region. While you could you sell TV rights to the event, the tourism dollars alone would be enormous. If the race is on a Sunday morning (lightest traffic means the best time to close the highway for a few hours), then the day before, a Saturday, could be a huge parade of all the cars through downtown Cincinnati. It could be like a public Indy 500 for the everyday guy.

My biggest concern would be the ability to negotiate a way to close down a major highway loop that crosses three different states for a period of 4 daylight hours. If that could be done, the rest would be perfectly feasible, I think. And, if it could be pulled off once, the second year would be bigger, better, and easier just because a lot of the complexities would have already been worked out.

So, if anyone from Cincinnati town council or Hamilton County is reading this, please consider this idea; I think it would be at least an interesting thing to attempt. Heck, Cincinnati once proposed to be the site of the summer Olympics. This race wouldn't be one-tenth that much cost or effort, yet might still accomplish many of the same goals for the city and the region.

Over the weekend on a work trip, the headset jack on my 700p started acting up and the unit was going to have to be replaced.

When I went to my local Sprint store Tuesday evening, they told me, sorry...I would have to go to a special Sprint store that had a technician in it. The nearest one was several miles away.

So, today, at 11:30am, I show up at the Sprint store. I wait 20 minutes just to talk to someone. I give him my phone to hand to the tech to verify that it was, indeed, a bad headset jack. 15 minutes later, the tech verifies that as the problem and says he can't fix it. No sweat, I say, since (a) it's still under Palm's 1-year warranty, and (b) I have the phone repair/replacement warranty on top of that. So, I expect them to hand me a replacement 700p.

Nope. Sales dude Jeff tells me that they have no Treo 700p's in stock and they have to get it from the warehouse, which takes 3-5 days. In the meantime, I will just have to use the wired headset whenever I want to make or receive a call or check my voicemail (which is the only way they'll alert me that my replacement phone is available).

However, I get back to my office today and call the store. I talk to sales dude Mike and ask if they have any 700p's in stock. He cheerily tells me that they have several 700p's in the store and to come on in and pick one up (they're open until 9pm!).

So, what's up, Sprint? I'm paying you nearly $100 a month plus a $6 per month replacement service fee just so you can make me wait an extra 3-5 days while you'll give a new customer my phone today? Sprint sucks.

It's really no wonder that a recent MSN-Zogby poll ranked Sprint as having the worst customer service across all industries. It's times like this that I really miss T-Mobile.

Update: I called Sprint's telephone support and they said they weren't sure why the store said what it did, but that I could go back to the store and ask to speak to the manager. Rather than driving clear up there again tonight, I called and was told that the phones in stock in the store were new phones and that they couldn't give out new phones for replacements (only refurbished models are available for existing customers). I asked the girl if she thought that giving better service to a potential Sprint customer (e.g., someone wanting to sign up for service and buy a 700p outright, who would be handed a new phone immediately) than a current Sprint customer (e.g., me) was the right thing to do. She said, "I'm not going to answer that." Yes, welcome to Sprint...ethics optional.

According to TWICE, a recent study suggests that phone-based photo-sharing is declining:

Camera Phone Image Sharing on Decline
By Greg Scoblete -- TWICE, 4/6/2007 9:24:00 AM

Jackson, Mich. -- Despite a sharp uptick in the number of households with camera phones, fewer consumers than ever are sharing their camera phone images, according to a new study from the Photo Marketing Association.

In a January survey canvassing 5,985 families, 35 percent reported owning a camera phone, up from 26 percent in the previous year. Of that figure, only 24 percent reported sharing images via e-mail or wireless transmission, down from 28 percent in 2005 and 36 percent in 2004.

The percent of camera phone owners who print their images was unchanged at 4 percent.

More than 80 percent of camera phones on the market are under 2-megapixels, PMA said.

I see two likely reasons for this trend (if it is, indeed, an actual trend). First, cameras are increasingly found in all manner of phones, from the priciest smartphones to the freebie disposables you get with a new contract. That means a wider variety of individuals are using cameraphones. So, given that a camera in one's phone may be a new feature to many who have it now for the first time, they may be less familiar and less likely to use it. Also, many who now have cameraphones got the phone with no intention of using the camera function -- it just happened to have a camera in it. Both of these user demographics factors would tend to lower the percentage of cameraphone owners who actually share photos with the cameraphones.

Second, and perhaps more sinister, is how difficult, cumbersome, and unpleasant most carriers have made it to actually share photos using their cameraphones. Take Sprint, for example. In order to share a photo from my phone, I have to submit it through the Sprint's proprietary Picture Mail service. Once uploaded, say, via MMS, the recipient gets a text message pointing him to a URL (yes, a website!) at which the photo can be viewed. This requires starting an actual web browser and burning through lots of overhead packets downloading things like menus, background images, etc. Despite having a perfectly good MMS application in my Treo and my wife's Treo, both on Sprint, we can't simply MMS a photo to each other. Instead, it either has to go through Sprint's craptastic Picture Mail service, or we just have to email it as an attachment. Instead of simply using the functions that most phone-makers have already embedded in the handsets themselves, carriers' desire to control every aspect of the usage experience generally tends to harm the user's experience and destroy value for their customers.

While the demographic trend may ultimately push these numbers down fairly low, the carriers could easily help reverse the trend somewhat by opening up picture-messaging the same way that most have done with SMS/text messaging. Open standards promote use and foster innovation, both of which benefit the carriers nearly as much as they benefit their customers.

This from a well-known online electronics merchant (that I don't particularly want to promote), down 20% from the Zune's original price of $249 just a few months ago:

Economics tells us that things in high demand rarely see significant drops in price.

Sometimes a blog entry is written so well and expresses such insight that you know it didn't come from GearBits you just have to pass the word. Daily Kos, that bastion of frothing-at-the-mouth ultra-liberalism, has a short article that offers some pretty solid advice to the old media -- you know, newspapers, network news, etc.

Why do you think blogs are so popular? Because people don't believe they can trust you. They don't believe you're interested in telling them stories that are important. They've seen one too many newscasts lead off with stories of idiot celebrities and their latest sex tape. One too many story screaming 'tune in at 11 or your children may die from a common cleaning agent that's in your home!' One too many editorial explaining why the last 999 editorials have been right -- even when all the evidence shows they were dead wrong.

No one -- and I mean no one -- trusts you.

But it's still not too late. It can be fixed. As with most things worth doing, the rules are simple, though following them is not.

Read the rest...

According to Consumerist, Time Warner Cable was recently fined $25,000 for providing crappy service:

Time Warner has, for a period of time, not lived up to the obligations that are required for the citizens of this community.

Given that Time Warner Cable is notorious for bad service, I'm surprised more cities aren't doing this with TWC and other consistently bad service firms. Well, no, actually I'm not surprised...just reminded how little most governments actually care about their constituents.

CNNMoney.com has an interesting piece on Steve Jobs' recent Apple stock and options dealings. It not only shows that Jobs didn't artificially manipulate or inflate his worth, it shows he did the exact opposite: make financially unenlightened decisions that literally cost him piles of money (over a billion in personal wealth by the article's estimates).

But the thing I thought was most interesting in the article was this insight:

Though Jobs is considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs, which is saying something, he had virtually no faith in his own abilities. When he wrote us that letter, he knew something the rest of the world didn't: that in a few months he would stand on a stage and introduce a new product called the iPod. Yet he not only insisted his options were worthless but put his money where his mouth was two years later and made a trade that will be immortalized as one of the worst ever.

It has been proven time and again that some, if not most, of the most successful and innovative leaders have, ironically, relatively little confidence in their future success. I think it may very well be this same lack of confidence that helps them to be so successful. The overly confident are prone to overlooking significant risks and/or challenges and often fail to adequately plan for contingencies. Intelligent leaders who feel they are on the brink of failure tend to make their plans much more robust, helping to gird up their chances of success even when their chances may already be quite high.

So, to those would-be entrepreneurs and innovators out there, don't ever stop being paranoid about failure. Comfort is a luxury you simply can't afford (at least not until you've exercised those options and diversified your portfolio).

I just checked the Browser Share figures for GearBits (and my personal site, craigfroehle.com, which makes up a teensy fraction of all logged traffic) over the past month and wow! At roughly a quarter of all visitors to GearBits, Firefox's figures are enormous here, especially when combined with Safari, compared to larger averages (some of which, for example, put IE still at 80% or more overall share). GearBits' readers must be a rather intelligent group! :-)

The newly passed royalty rates, some of which are (incredibly) retroactive, for online music broadcasting are patently ridiculous. Wired's coverage outlines many of the ways these new rates will effectively demolish online broadcasting for US-based companies.

The new rates force webcasters to pay for each song streamed to each user, and increase over the next few years as follows:

2006: $0.0008 to stream one song to one listener
2007: $.0011
2008: $.0014
2009: $.0018
2010: $.0019

Those fees will add up quickly for larger webcasters; the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN) calculates that, assuming that the average station plays 16 songs per hour, sites would have to pay "about 1.28 cents" per listener per hour using the 2006 rate, and would owe this retroactively, in addition to licensing fees going forward.

This is very, very bad, especially for small- and medium-sized webcasters like our beloved WOXY.com. Also, you have to realize that these rates don't even include royalties paid to the original writer/composer of the work being broadcast; the rates above are just to the recording artist!

It makes me wonder exactly how much those fogeys on the CRB get paid by the RIAA. Sure, not directly -- they're not that dumb -- but gifts to friends and family and the occasional perk indirectly sponsored by the RIAA are, I'm sure, part and parcel of the assignment. After all, if it's not bribery, how do you explain a ruling so lopsidedly in favor of industry at the expense of consumers and to the detriment of innovation?

The two satellite radio firms will eventually operate as one, but not until the deal has been OK'd by all the necessary agencies and the financials are worked out.

I hate to say I told you so (even two years ago)...

NBC is actively pursuing individuals who use the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network to acquire episodes of TV shows NBC owns. NBC's primary tactic of the moment is to find active torrents of these shows and identify the IP addresses of anyone sharing (uploading) any piece of the "offending" file.

Given that it's relatively easy to associate IP addresses of seeders with the ISPs who are providing that Internet address, NBC likely has a small army of interns and co-op students busily tracking these networks. Once they locate an offense, they issue a boilerplate letter containing the specifics (IP address, date, time, file, etc.) to the ISP, which is then supposed to take preventative measures against the offending IP address user.

There are (at least) two significant problems with this approach.

One reason is attribution; just because an IP address is associated with offending activity, it is not necessarily the account holder, or even someone associated with him, that is engaging in the activity. As we all know, wireless networks are inherently insecure and easily tapped into in most cases by someone with even a modicum of know-how. Beyond that, many types of malware tap into peer-to-peer networks without the PC owner even remotely aware that it's happening. Punishing the account holder in either of these situations seems difficult to justify, indeed.

But that's not even the biggest problem with the tactic NBC is currently taking.

An even more ridiculous problem is that NBC is essentially undermining its own business model. By asking ISPs to terminate the accounts of users who download an episode of, say, Battlestar Galactica, this makes several things happen.

First, it causes ill will with consumers of its programming; swearing off watching any particular show because the studio is making your life difficult (and switching ISPs can be a royal pain-in-the-ass) is not a great stretch, especially when TV watching in general is already on the decline. This reduces its viewer base and reduces potential ad revenues.

Second, canceling the Internet access of those who watch your TV show that way effectively eliminates them from your potential customer base entirely. Instead of coercing them into some more desirable activity, such as paying for and downloading the episodes through iTunes, these individuals now have no Internet access whatsoever, so they won't be getting the content either way (free or paid). This further erodes the potential customer base for any legitimate online offering.

So, through its simple-minded pursuit of file-sharers, NBC is basically undermining its very ability to monetize new programming. Maybe there are enough people watching the episodes of a given show straight through, commercials and all, to support these programs. But for shows appealing to young people and nerds (e.g., Battlestar Galactica), I doubt it. If these watchers aren't viewing directly off a TiVo/DVR (and skipping the ads), they're watching an MPEG-4 copy they ripped from their DVR or downloaded from the Internet. Sure, some might be buying them off iTunes, but given all the DRM attached to that method, the cost there would have to be a lot closer to free to make it worth considering.

NBC, like all the major networks, needs to shed its ideas that a 1980's business model is still viable. The Internet is not going away, no matter how hard they wish it would. Better to embrace the new challenges than resist them altogether and wake up one day to realize that you've joined the buggy-whip manufacturers as an icon of anachronistic industries.

Imagine this scenario:

Amy pays her cable company to deliver television service to the digital video recorder (DVR) she rents from the same company. Amy programs her DVR to record the entire series of a particular TV show. One week, however, the cable goes out (as it's wont to do) and her DVR fails to record an episode.

So, Amy visits the website of the broadcaster and discovers that the company doesn't offer downloads of its episodes. Amy then finds out that she can pay $2 for the right to download and play (for a limited number of times and only under certain circumstances) the episode she missed. Amy also discovers that she could alternately download a copy of the missing episode for free from a peer-to-peer network.

Does Amy have a right to view the content that was delivered to her (but that her DVR failed to capture) without paying for it again? The TV network, as the copyright holder of the show in question, feels that Amy does not have such a right, and it will apparently pursue her through her ISP for copyright infringment if she goes about grabbing the show from a P2P network. However, if the network can get Amy to cough up $2, it's more than happy to let her have a copy of the episode.

But what about the cable company? Shouldn't it be the one to pay the network for Amy's episode? After all, it was a failure with the cable company's network/equipment that lead to this situation in the first place, isn't it? But Amy is smart enough to realize that getting her cable company to reimburse her $2 for an episode download is quite unlikely.

And what about "fair use?" This concept has little relevance to this situation, unfortunately (at least as I understand it; IANAL), so Amy is basically up a creek.

Why has US copyright law allowed such a situation to occur? Lobbyists for the networks (e.g., NBC), their parent companies (GE), and various affiliated organizations (e.g., the RIAA and the MPAA) have simply done an excellent job at buying our publicly elected officials. And guess where the money comes from for these lobbying efforts? Yep...that $2 Amy now needs to pay the network to see her missing episode. How convenient.

Maybe the best solution is, after all, swearing off corporate content altogether. Independent and foreward-thinking artists, be they music acts, filmmakers, or authors, tend to be much more encouraging of free dissemination of their work. Maybe they do it primarily for the joy of creation rather than the money. Maybe they don't need to support an army of lawyers, country club memberships for everyone in the C-level executive suite, and fuel for corporate jets. Maybe, just maybe, they know what the corporations have forgotten: copyrights are meant to foster, rather than inhibit, innovation.

Whatever the cause, the effects are clear: Amy will consume less TV the harder and/or more expensive it becomes. Frankly, TV isn't all that terrific anyway, and the creative power of the networked masses has yet to be fully realized.

It seems that 2007 may be the year eBay's undisputed reign as king of the secondary market begins to crumble.

Until recently, I was a fairly satisfied eBay user. Like many, I found their fees to border on the usurious, but since transactions nearly always went through and the most buyers were found there (as any economist will tell you, the bigger the pool of buyers, the better the seller's price will be), I continued to sell things there. Not a lot...a printer here and an antique something-or-other there...maybe 40 items over 8 years.

But recently, as I've begun documenting in another post, scammers are starting to make it nearly impossible to execute a high-value transaction on eBay. Electronics, especially, seem targeted by scam artists who, once they win an auction, ask you to ship it to Nigeria or some other suspicious destination.

What eBay clearly needs is a better authentication system and a way for sellers to screen their bidders more effectively. But, I seriously doubt eBay will do that. Despite charging sellers a final value fee, which is essentially taking a commission on the sale, eBay is quite clear that it wants nothing to do with the actual transaction that follows the sale. Sure, it will engage its PayPal subsidiary to help transfer funds, but given that PayPal, or PayPal phishing attempts, are now an effective tool for these same scammers, that doesn't help much.

So, I predict that something will arise fairly soon as a viable competitor for eBay. Let's hope it is better at building secure communities.

Update (3/3/07): MSNBC has an interesting article detailing the recent upsurge in eBay scams and how little the company seems to be able to do about it. I think we're witnessing one of the biggest, fastest devastations of an industry leader ever.

As per tradition (OK, for at least the third time), here are my predictions for the upcoming year, 2007:

1) Apple's iPod continues PMP domination
Thought I'd start off with a safe one. Yep, I don't think too many would argue that the iPod is poised to remain the de facto standard in portable media players. Given that the #1 seller in Amazon's electronics category during the 2006 holiday season was the iPod by a significant margin, and given that accessories for all other PMPs combined amount to about 1/100th of what's available for the iPod, there's really no doubt that newcomers will have a hard time challenging the king, despite any technical advantages.

2) 802.11n gets ratified and gear floods to market
802.11n, the next generation of that family of wireless networking standards, has been forever in getting off the ground. 2007 should see its final certification, opening the gates to loads of networking hardware compliant to the new standard.

3) Film cameras all but disappear from electronics stores
While you'll still be able to find cheap disposables, it will become nearly impossible to find any mainstream electronics retailer selling more than one or two token models. $99 digital cameras from recognizable brands will become commonplace.

4) Nintendo tops Sony and Microsoft as gaming overlord
Not a big leap here, but Nintendo, through its Wii and DS lines, will lead all brands in game unit sales in 2007. Sony will retain the crown of technological leader (and work though its Blu-Ray production issues), and Microsoft will continue to play the spoiler in the industry.

5) TiVo is acquired
If this prediction was good enough to be wrong in 2006, then it's good enough for 2007 as well.

6) Google launches the GooglePhone
Google, in partnership with some handheld maker and/or carrier, will launch a branded QWERTY smartphone that natively runs its main offerings (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Talk, etc.). Maybe I'm predicting this purely out of desire -- I so want such a device -- but I do think it will happen eventually.

7) eBay sells Skype
You heard it here first. Or maybe you didn't. Either way, this is a long-shot prediction, but I think Meg Whitman is smart enough to realize that Skype is worth more to eBay when it's owned by somebody else.

8) Palm brings Jeff Hawkins back to reinvent Treo line
The current Treo line is getting a bit long in the tooth (not to mention the now-ancient Palm OS, which Palm just repurchased the permanent rights to) and its sales are likely getting pinched by slimmer, more aesthetically appealing (while not as functional, but a lot of people by phones based on looks...kind of like how they pick boy/girlfriends in college) offerings from Motorola and others. So, since Palm doesn't seem capable of designing anything anyone wants to buy on its own, the company will announce that Jeff Hawkins is coming back to help lead the development of the next-generation Treo. And many will ask, "What took you so long?"

9) HD-DVD and Blu-Ray persist; nobody cares
More devices will be available at cheaper prices, but sales of both players and media will continue to be tepid. Not only is renting becoming the dominant mode of DVD acquisition, but the current quality of standard dual-layer DVDs is perfectly adequate for 99% of the population. Maybe in a few years, the proliferating 1080p sets will drive people to want high-def movies, but it won't be as rapid an adoption rate as the original DVD was.

10) Robots become sentient, destroy all of humanity
On a related note, iRobot's stock price will double in 2007 as a result of strong sales and the announcement that a first-gen AI will take over as President and CEO.

Have a good year, everyone!

Since I made a series of predictions for 2006, I thought I'd go back and see how many actually came true.

1) Google Launches All-in-One Suite
I've been expecting this for some time, as have other folks, I'm sure, but I think 2006 will definitely see this announcement. Google will, I predict, launch a converged, multi-purpose, browser-based work environment -- lord knows what it'll be called, maybe GoogleDesk or something like that. Anyway, it will incorporate and integrate many of the disparate services that Google currently offers plus add a few. GoogleDesk will integrate Google search, Gmail (plus an enhanced contacts management function), Google Maps (auto-mapping of contacts, natch!), Blogger (for publication/hosting of created content), a new mini-suite of document tools based on the OpenOffice standard (so you can create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files), GoogleBase (the use of which will become more obvious with time), and Google News (of course). All these will be wrapped up in a browser-neutral (although I wouldn't be surprised for Google to cozy up to Mozilla to enhance Firefox with some special goodies), Java-based interface. Personally, I eagerly await this.

Kinda, sorta true. Google's offerings did indeed multiply in 2006, with Google Documents and a raft of other new and enhanced online services popping up. Technically, they haven't all been integrated into a single UI, but given they all work in a single browser session, that's pretty close.

2) The HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war ends...Blu-Ray wins
Yes, Sony will finally be able to claim a victory in the format wars. After so many failed attempts at ruling the world (cue Pinkie and the Brain theme) -- Betamax, minidisc, all the various flavors of Memory Stick, etc. -- Sony and friends will edge out the HD-DVD group and Blu-Ray will become the de facto format for HD content. That is, until something better comes along almost immediately, but hey, that's a prediction for next year.

The war ain't over, but I think most people who follow the industry would agree that Blu-Ray, despite Sony's floundering on the PS3, has more behind it than does HD-DVD at this point. It will likely take a few more years for the winner to become obvious -- until then, consumers will just be faced with more options they couldn't really care less about. After all, normal DVD looks pretty good on an HDTV and more people are choosing to take their video with them on the go; high-definition is the least of concerns for the joe wanting to watch Family Guy on his iPod.

3) The Linux-based replacement for Palm OS comes out
To limited acclaim in the West, it is immediately adopted by a significant number of Asian companies for its cheap, flexible architecture. The number of devices (almost entirely phones) running it by the end of 2006 will be around 10 in Asia and zero (maybe 1 or 2) in the West (US + Europe).

Wrong. Well, ALP (Access Linux for Palm) was released, but I've yet to hear of any actual adoption, so I'll just have to chalk this up to pure optimism.

4) Nokia will launch a Linux phone
Following the nascent success of its Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia launches its first phone using a Linux-based OS. It mimics the S60 in look and feel. It does well, but not markedly so, causing much speculation and debate around the web about whether Nokia is abandoning S60 entirely.

Nope, didn't happen.

5) Democrats regain control of US Senate, make gains in HOR
The margin won't be enormous, but the Senate will once again be in the familiar (and, arguably, beneficial to the electorate) position of being led by the party not in control of the White House. More negotiation will result in 2007 and something a wee bit closer to "democracy" will return to the US shortly thereafter. Still a long way from acceptable, but closer.

Pretty much right on the money. In fact, you might say I underestimated their gains. Looking forward to a government much more balanced by checks and balances than it has been lately.

6) Windows Vista will launch, Apple users yawn
Windows Vista (launched in early Q4) will excite few, especially in the corporate ranks, due to the combination of a lack of "must-have" improvements and unattractive licensing structures offered by Microsoft. The 17 or so flavors of Vista will also leave consumers puzzled over which version is best for them and ultimately wait until they replace their hardware to upgrade. Given that processor speeds aren't increasing much and hard drives are getting easier to replace, there will be fewer changing out their PCs. Microsoft faces a tougher year than usual next year regarding financials; Windows Mobile and Xbox divisions still not profitable (but closer).

Sounds like a pretty accurate description of what actually happened.

7) Digital/HDTV makes big inroads
2006 will be the year of the migration to HDTV. Falling HDTV set prices (especially DLP and LCD), plus an exciting bounty of converging digital content, will usher in a period of rapid adoption that will continue into 2007. Content providers will actually start getting significant numbers of complaints when they broadcast non-HD content on their HD channels, leading to fewer programming lapses.

For the most part, yup. The sales of HDTVs were so large this holiday season that they actually affected the profitability of several large electronics retailers. So I guess it's clear that HDTV is taking off as expected. What remains to be seen is whether the broadcasters actually start paying attention now that HD viewership is climbing into significant numbers.

8) Satellite radio subscribership grows, but limited
Sirius and XM will continue to gain subscribers, but neither will top 10 million by the end of 2006. Someone will launch a mySatelliteRadio service that lets users listen to their personal music collections via satellite receiver (think MP3.com's old model applied to satradio). The RIAA will eat it for lunch, with a few hundred new downloading lawsuits for dessert.

XM had less than 8 million subscribers at the end of 2006 and Sirius had about 6 million, with the latter growing more quickly. Both are growing more slowly than the companies had predicted (and promised to investors), so that part of my prediction is absolutely spot on. I haven't heard of anything like the mySatelliteRadio service being launched, but given that many satellite receivers now enable playback of MP3 files, the two music sources are definitely getting closer.

9) TiVo is acquired
I don't know by whom, but I think this will happen within the next 12 months.

Ahem, no.

10) Resurgances of sci-fi/fantasy TV shows
The recent success of Battlestar Galactica and Lost, and the big money that the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises generate cause network television studios to start prepping more science fiction and fantasy content. A friend of mine thinks I'm daft to predict this -- we'll see. If not next year, then 2007. Or not.

Not exactly, at least not on the major networks. They are still heading towards the safe-and-familiar lines of reality/unscripted programming, dramas, and situation comedies. Alas, none of those are in space or in a castle somewhere. Too bad.

So, in the end, I had 5 predictions true or mostly correct, 4 that were mostly or completely wrong, and 1 that was unclear. Stay tuned for my predictions for 2007...

I don't typically attribute enough merit to advertising initiatives to mention them to friends, but Palm's new effort - onTreo.com - is a very clever approach. With some slick use of Flash and a bit of humor, it attempts to show potential customers all the things they can do on a Treo smartphone. Check it out.

With the recent news that US Airways wants to acquire Delta Air Lines, there's suddenly lots of talk about consolidation in that industry.

I hope the #3 and #2 carriers, United and American, get together. They can call the resulting company Unamerican Airlines. That should be easy to market, at least for overseas routes.

After reading a lot of comments on Zune, Microsoft's recent foray into the portable media market, from lots of places, I think it's safe to say that Steve Jobs isn't losing any sleep over his iPod's latest competitor. Why Zune won't make a difference in the portable media market basically comes down to both what it is and what it is not:

What It Is:
• Bigger, chunkier, and less portable than nearly all other 30GB media players on the market.
• A Microsoft product (as those "I'm a PC. I'm a Mac" commercials point out, the Microsoft/Windows/PC side of consumer electronics is not considered very hip).
• Competing against an increasing array of better, faster, smaller, more capable devices every day.

What It Is Not:
• Able to act as a portable storage device (compatible with neither Media Transfer Protocol nor Mass Storage Class).
• Compatible with Microsoft's own Plays For Sure certification or able to play media from any store using that system.
• Able to interact with iTunes or the iTunes store (still the industry leader).
• Capable of using its Wi-Fi for anything actually interesting or useful.

Granted, this is version 1 of Zune. Microsoft tends to need 3 or more iterations to get something to work well and provide a compelling value proposition, so maybe we just need to wait a year or so for it to evolve. Of course, it may not last even that long if its sales this holiday season are as miserable as they just might be.

Interested in iRobot or its robotic products, the Roomba, Scooba, and military Packbot line? Thinking of investing in IRBT? Check out Robot Stock News - All about iRobot, Roomba, Scooba and Packbot.

A new poll out confirms some things that US technophiles have long believed, such as the fact that most people in the US are still slow to grasp the amazing range of capabilities that phones can offer and that older (i.e., wealthier) customers don't generate demand for the advanced features that younger, poorer customers want to use.

Poll: Cell Phones Irritating, Invaluable

By WILL LESTER - Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Even cell phone users get irritated at others who yak on their portables about their personal business in public. An AP-AOL-Pew poll found the offended don't think they are among the callers who get on other people's nerves.

Most cell users find their phones very useful, with half keeping them on all the time.

But almost nine in 10 say they encounter others using those phones in an annoying way. Only 8 percent of cell users acknowledge their own use of cell phones is sometimes rude.

"People tend to talk louder on the phone. That's quite irritating," said Pamela Sorenson, a 57-year-old resident of Bellingham, Wash. "I often hear young people, mostly college age, talking about dating and personal things I don't want to know about."

More than two-thirds of cell phone users say it would be hard to give up their portable, according to the poll, one of the most extensive news surveys of cell phone users yet.

About a fourth of the cell phone users polled, 26 percent, said they can't imagine life without their cell phone. Three-fourths of cell users say they have used it in an emergency.

"My cell phone is pretty much a necessity _ sometimes a pain but a necessity," said Sandra Moore of Colorado Springs, Colo. "I have children and the cell phone gives me the freedom to be places I need to be. It's easier to communicate with people, you can reach them almost any time.

"But that means people can reach me anytime," she grumbled. "Sometimes, I just turn the ringer off."

Almost one-fourth of those polled say too many people try to get in touch with them on their cell phones _ just one of many headaches balanced against the devices' advantages.

The poll also found:

• More than a fourth, 28 percent, said they sometimes don't drive as safely as they should because they are using a cell phone.

• More than a third, 36 percent, said they are sometimes shocked at the size of their service bill.

The bulk of cell users use it traditionally _ as a portable phone. But cell phones increasingly include built-in cameras, MP3 players, games and computers with the Internet and e-mail.

Young adults and minorities are drawn to the multiple uses of a cell phone. They are more likely than older adults and whites to send text messages, take pictures, use the Internet and play music with their cell phones.

If those trends continue, the cell phones' role will change dramatically.

"We've got everything on my phone," said Mark Madsen, a 24-year-old college student from Chattanooga, Tenn. "I use it mostly for the phone, but I also play video games and use the MP3 player. I pretty much use it all the time."

Only one-third of U.S. cell phone owners use text messages _ a practice immensely popular in Europe and Asia. Two-thirds of cell phone owners between ages 18 and 29 send text messages _ one of many areas where young adults have a more versatile approach to the devices.

More than half, 55 percent, of young adults take still pictures with their phones; 47 percent play games and 28 percent use the Internet, according to the poll of more than 1,200 cell phone users.

"We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone and the Internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the Internet in the 1990s," said Howard Rheingold, an author who has taught at Stanford University and written extensively about the effects of technology.

Cell phones have changed the way people organize their time. Nearly half freed said they make most of their cell calls in off-hours when the minutes are free. Almost as many say they make cell phone calls to occupy time when traveling or waiting for someone.

"When I'm driving to my appointments, everybody calls me on my cell phone, said 26-year-old Abel Yanez of San Jose, Calif, who works in a landscaping business. "When I'm in my office, I use my cell phone because if I need to leave, I just leave. I have the office phone so I can dial up on the Internet."

The AP-AOL-Pew poll of 1,503 adults included 1,286 cell phone users and was conducted March 8-26. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. About half of the interviews, 752, were conducted by dialing landlines and 751 were conducted by dialing cell phones.

(c) Associated Press

More information, including the entire survey and a breakdown, question by question, of respondents' answers, can be found here at the Washington Post.

Almost three years ago, I posted some screenshots of what I believed were service concepts for the still-in-development Wheels of Zeus startup being lead by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

According to CNET, Woz has officially shut the doors at the foundling company without ever launching any actual service or, to my knowledge, licensing any new technologies that made it into consumer services or products.

The concept was for cheap GPS- (and possibly RFID-) enabled tags to provide customers with real-time tracking of objects (e.g., luggage, cars, pets) and people. The screenshots I found pictured some pretty compelling concepts, and I'm sorry to see it not come to fruition.

Once again, Woz was likely ahead of his time.

I just cancelled my Chase Visa card. I had carried it since 1995...an 11-year business relationship. Now it lies in pieces in my trash can.

Why?

In general, it was the appallingly bad policies that don't nurture customer loyalty.

More specifically, it was a late fee.

My credit card bill was due on February 27th, five days ago. I forgot to pay it and just this morning remembered, so I sat down at the computer to make an online payment. I was mentally punching myself for having to pay, and rightfully so, the finance charges on last month's balance.

But I was shocked to see a "Late Fee" in the amount of $39.00 tacked on to my new charges. That had to be a mistake. Added onto a finance charge rate of, say, 11%, this would make my first month's effective finance rate OVER 20%! (my purchases last month were just over $400 and there was no carry-over balance).

I called Chase's customer service and spoke to "Victor." I told Victor that I was completely willing to pay the finance charges, but the "late fee" on top of that seemed unreasonable. Victor offered to set me up with monthly auto-payment, but couldn't waive the late fee. I told Victor that I was an 11-year customer and reminded him that the payment I had just made online was only 5 days late. He was still unwilling to waive the late fee.

So I then told Victor that I wanted to cancel the card. Victor didn't even attempt to get me to stay with the company.

Times must be good at Chase.

So, it may seem that I cancelled my credit card because of $39. That's partly true. The real heart of the matter is this: any company who is willing to risk a profitable, 11-year consumer relationship in order to extract an extra $39 based on a slight (5 days!) oversight on the customer's part has no interest in doing "right" by its customers. The mere presence of such a policy speaks volumes about the credit card industry: it places no value on customer relationships beyond what they can contribute to a quarterly P&L statement.

And that is a sad state for an industry upon which so many Americans regularly rely.

So to those credit card companies who have these egregious and short-sighted late fees, I ask you to rethink the wisdom of such a policy. Long-term customers are 5- to 10-times more profitable than new customers, and policies that drive loyal customers into the arms of your competitors serve nobody best.

WOXY.com, the best Internet-based alternative music radio station, has announced that it is seeking contributions from listeners and subscriptions to its premium-quality music streams in order to support continue its existence.

From their website:

We're now into week 3 of our "Just Sign Up" campaign - asking you to show your support for WOXY.com and sign up for our premium members-only service for $9.95 a month. We're happy to say membership is still climbing. A big round of thanks to everyone who has signed up, contributed, and emailed their friends, loved-ones and strangers in the effort to get the word out and get people signed up. We have a ways to go, but if your staggering outpouring of support is indicative, we can get there.

If you're just showing up and wondering what we're making a fuss about, find out what we're doing and why.

What you can do to help:

1. Sign up and become a member
2. Make a contribution
3. Email your friends and tell 'em how great WOXY.com is

Some things about this trouble me greatly.

First, and most obviously, is that Internet-based content is valued in a ridiculously inconsistent and unfathomable way. On one hand, AOL spent $25 million on a cluster of 50 or so established blogs. On the other hand, we have an innovative and industry-leading Internet music provider struggling to scrounge up even a hundredth of that. How is it that a text blog, which can be created (and replicated) with little expertise or capital, is valued so significantly more than a radio station with all its music industry expertise, experience, and capital investment?

Second, I wonder whether someone is potentially asleep at the wheel at WOXY.com. We've all heard how Internet-based advertising is becoming all the rage again. Could it truly be that hard to dig up some advertising contracts to support the station?

One of the comments the WOXY.com folks have made is that advertisers haven't really figured out what they are yet. Is WOXY.com a website? Certainly not just a website, but theirs is integral to the listener community. Is WOXY.com a radio station? Well, kind of, but not in the geographically bounded sense that typifies terrestrial stations. So, according to the station, advertisers don't know what to make of them yet. Well, then it's WOXY's job to tell them. It's called "selling"...something nobody at WOXY these days is apparently very good at (not that I blame the folks there...I, myself, suck at selling). Sounds like they need WKRP's Herb Tarlek to round up some advertising accounts.

Finally, this situation clearly demonstrates that creativity, artistic talent, and good intentions are ultimately dependent upon some business savvy in order to survive in the corporate world. I personally like the folks at WOXY -- they've always been fantastic to their listeners and truly dedicated to the music they play -- but they don't seem interested in understanding how businesses grow and prosper. I'm not saying everyone there needs to know...but at least someone should.

In the interim, between now and when they go off the air (again), go visit their website and give them a listen -- I bet you a dollar that you'll like what you hear...a lot.

I've posted a few times about Time Warner Cable's tendency to tick me off (here and here, for example), and they've gone and done it again.

Today, I got a "delinquent payment" notice. I thought that was kind of odd since I've been in their automatic electronic funds transfer (auto-pay) system for about four years now. So I looked at the past couple of bills and it appears that their auto-payment systems simply forgot to pay my bill due in December. That's despite this message typed in all caps on the bill itself:

THIS STATEMENT WILL BE PAID AUTOMATICALLY VIA ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER ON THE DUE DATE SHOWN ABOVE. PAYMENTS SCHEDULED ON WEEKENDS AND HOLIDAYS WILL BE PROCESSED ON THE FIRST BANKING DAY FOLLOWING THE DUE DATE. THANK YOU

So, given that this delinquency notice threatens to shut-off my cable service and assess me a [gulp] $5 fee, I decided to call tonight to see if I could get it straightened out.

8:56 PM -- I call and, after a few minutes in queue, talk to Amanda, who, after asking for my phone number, verifies that auto-pay is indeed active on my account. Unfortunately, Amanda can't actually do anything about my account status, so she informs me that she'll need to transfer me to a "billing specialist" who will take care of things. I get put on hold.

9:32 PM -- Glenda picks up my call and, after asking for my phone number and verifying that things look OK with my account (other than the missing payment), informs me that she will need to contact "Collections," who aren't in this late (I'm shocked). So, she'll email them and then call me back when (if?) she gets a response from that department. At 9:35 PM, I get put on hold again while Glenda types up her email to Collections.

9:45 PM -- Glenda comes back. Apparently, Glenda is a really slow typist, or she had a lot to say to Collections, or she decided to knit her grandson a sweater while I was on hold.

So tomorrow, she'll try to call me back (at my home number, where I won't be) to let me know what the response from Collections is. Then I'll get to call back, wait in another 35-freaking-minute queue most likely, just to find out that things are fine again.

It's just stunning how poorly a profitable business can be operated when it's a monopoly.

Update (2/1/2006): A rep called me back the next day and explained that everything had been sorted out and that they were even refunding my $5.25 late fee. That's terrific...now how about compensating me for the hour of my life I'll never get back that I had to spend sorting out the mess that TWC's own systems caused?

I think about this and it makes no sense.

I go to the movie theater and every movie playing there is the same price (too high, mind you, but that's a different issue). Why is this so?

Surely the independent/international documentary that cost $7 million to make should be cheaper to see than the latest Hollywood special effects-spectacular with a production budget of $100 million. Surely a ticket to the 8-person cast, 92-minute romantic comedy should be less expensive than one to the 3-hour-plus mega-blockbuster sci-fi-fantasy adventure. Yet they all cost the same. How can this be?

Is it a function of distribution economics? The cheap documentary is only showing in 500 theaters, so it needs to charge more per seat than what would seem to make sense?

Or is it a function of commercialization and franchising? The disposable romantic comedy won't get the added revenue from lunchboxes, action figures, and playing cards, so it needs to charge more per seat than one would otherwise expect?

I don't know the answer...do you?

In case you want to see what all the uproar is about, check out the GoDaddy.com commercials on Google Video.

Too racy for the Super Bowl?

I dunno...the halftime show two years ago was pretty funky.

Microsoft will, of course, want everyone currently running any flavor of Windows on their PCs to upgrade to some form of Windows Vista when it's launched. That much is a given.

However, Microsoft's own support policies, as detailed by Ars Technica may put it in a difficult position.

On one hand, if Microsoft is too lenient about supporting Windows XP users, it may find that its current user base adopts Vista far more slowly than the company needs it to.

On the other hand, if Microsoft pushes people to move to Vista too hard, it risks alienating them -- many consumers might be just as happy to go plunk down $500 and buy a Mac mini or some other OS X machine.

So, the whole migration to Vista looks like it will be an interesting experiment for Redmond. I've yet to see a wholly compelling reason to move away from XP (it's the first version of Windows I'd say is as stable as it is full-featured) in favor of Vista, so Microsoft may find it challenging to motivate users to switch to Vista without resorting to support restrictions or other implied threats. The company may find itself just having to wait out the PC upgrade cycle, which is how most consumers end up with the OS version they have. And that won't sit will with management.

Gazing into my crystal (liquid crystal, of course) ball, the haze clears and 2006 looms large. Here is what the future holds for us in the coming year:

1) Google Launches All-in-One Suite
I've been expecting this for some time, as have other folks, I'm sure, but I think 2006 will definitely see this announcement. Google will, I predict, launch a converged, multi-purpose, browser-based work environment -- lord knows what it'll be called, maybe GoogleDesk or something like that. Anyway, it will incorporate and integrate many of the disparate services that Google currently offers plus add a few. GoogleDesk will integrate Google search, Gmail (plus an enhanced contacts management function), Google Maps (auto-mapping of contacts, natch!), Blogger (for publication/hosting of created content), a new mini-suite of document tools based on the OpenOffice standard (so you can create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files), GoogleBase (the use of which will become more obvious with time), and Google News (of course). All these will be wrapped up in a browser-neutral (although I wouldn't be surprised for Google to cozy up to Mozilla to enhance Firefox with some special goodies), Java-based interface. Personally, I eagerly await this.

2) The HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war ends...Blu-Ray wins
Yes, Sony will finally be able to claim a victory in the format wars. After so many failed attempts at ruling the world (cue Pinkie and the Brain theme) -- Betamax, minidisc, all the various flavors of Memory Stick, etc. -- Sony and friends will edge out the HD-DVD group and Blu-Ray will become the de facto format for HD content. That is, until something better comes along almost immediately, but hey, that's a prediction for next year.

3) The Linux-based replacement for Palm OS comes out
To limited acclaim in the West, it is immediately adopted by a significant number of Asian companies for its cheap, flexible architecture. The number of devices (almost entirely phones) running it by the end of 2006 will be around 10 in Asia and zero (maybe 1 or 2) in the West (US + Europe).

4) Nokia will launch a Linux phone
Following the nascent success of its Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia launches its first phone using a Linux-based OS. It mimics the S60 in look and feel. It does well, but not markedly so, causing much speculation and debate around the web about whether Nokia is abandoning S60 entirely.

5) Democrats regain control of US Senate, make gains in HOR
The margin won't be enormous, but the Senate will once again be in the familiar (and, arguably, beneficial to the electorate) position of being led by the party not in control of the White House. More negotiation will result in 2007 and something a wee bit closer to "democracy" will return to the US shortly thereafter. Still a long way from acceptable, but closer.

6) Windows Vista will launch, Apple users yawn
Windows Vista (launched in early Q4) will excite few, especially in the corporate ranks, due to the combination of a lack of "must-have" improvements and unattractive licensing structures offered by Microsoft. The 17 or so flavors of Vista will also leave consumers puzzled over which version is best for them and ultimately wait until they replace their hardware to upgrade. Given that processor speeds aren't increasing much and hard drives are getting easier to replace, there will be fewer changing out their PCs. Microsoft faces a tougher year than usual next year regarding financials; Windows Mobile and Xbox divisions still not profitable (but closer).

7) Digital/HDTV makes big inroads
2006 will be the year of the migration to HDTV. Falling HDTV set prices (especially DLP and LCD), plus an exciting bounty of converging digital content, will usher in a period of rapid adoption that will continue into 2007. Content providers will actually start getting significant numbers of complaints when they broadcast non-HD content on their HD channels, leading to fewer programming lapses.

8) Satellite radio subscribership grows, but limited
Sirius and XM will continue to gain subscribers, but neither will top 10 million by the end of 2006. Someone will launch a mySatelliteRadio service that lets users listen to their personal music collections via satellite receiver (think MP3.com's old model applied to satradio). The RIAA will eat it for lunch, with a few hundred new downloading lawsuits for dessert.

9) TiVo is acquired
I don't know by whom, but I think this will happen within the next 12 months.

10) Resurgances of sci-fi/fantasy TV shows
The recent success of Battlestar Galactica and Lost, and the big money that the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises generate cause network television studios to start prepping more science fiction and fantasy content. A friend of mine thinks I'm daft to predict this -- we'll see. If not next year, then 2007. Or not.

OK, those are my predictions. I may add some more...come this time in 2006, I'll look back on these and, well, probably LMAO at how poorly I forecast the future. Until then, have a good one!

Yes, there's no nice way to put it. They suck. And in many ways.

First, their customer service representatives are typically the least trained and least motivated service reps I have encountered, and that's saying something (I research customer service quality for a living).

Second, they treat their customers with disdain, abusing them at every opportunity. Take the letter I received today as an example (emphasis theirs):

Dear Valued Customer,

According to our records, you currently enjoy Digital Cable with the Variety Tier as part of one of our old promotional packages. Effective 12/01/05, this package will no longer be supported. In an effort to make sure you continue to receive the best value, we will be moving you into our DIGIPic 1000 package so that you can continue to see savings.

DIGIPic packages simplify digital cable TV with easy-to-understand entertainment packages featuring choice, flexibility, and value in every plan. By transitioning to DIGIPic 1000 package with the Variety Tier, you will continue to enjoy all of your current services with absolutely no interruption.

The DIGIPic 1000 package priced at $52.49/mo* includes:
- Basic Tier
- Standard Tier
- Digital Value Tier
- 45 Music Choice Channels
- On-Screen Program Guide
- Access to Movies on Demand and Free On Demand

You will notice the packaging change on your December statement. In addition, the Variety Tier will now bill as a separate line item.

*Equipment priced separately

Notice that today is November 30th, meaning that they gave me all of ONE DAY'S ADVANCE NOTICE. If they were actually saving me money (per all that talk of "value"), I probably wouldn't care about the timing. But they aren't.

I currently pay $55.95 per month for my "old promotional" package. Their new DIGIPic 1000 package, the one I'm being forced into, costs $52.49, and the Digital Variety Tier (of which I really only care about the Speed Channel) is another $5.95 a month. So my new total will be $58.44, or $2.49 a month (a 4.5% increase) more than I'm currently paying for the exact same services.

"In an effort to make sure you continue to receive the best value..."

It's one thing to have a company raise its prices. It's another to have them lie in your face about it. And it really takes cojones to pretend they're doing you a favor on top of it.

And third, their website sucks. They've had these DIGIPic packages for a long time now, yet nowhere does it say what channels each includes. I had to receive a "change of service" letter to let me know what the DIGIPic 1000 line-up entails. That's just lame. Time Warner Cable's customer service reps are so very awful that I would LOVE to be able to handle everything via their website, but their ineptitude keeps me from being able to do even that.

How I hate Time Warner Cable...let me count the ways...

p.s. I'm taking a bit of vengeful joy in the news yesterday about the FCC's new stance that cable customers should be able to choose their channels a la carte. Even if it's not a good idea and won't happen, some cable executive somewhere is losing some sleep over it. And that makes me happy.

Follow-up: I've tried a half-dozen times now to reach my local TWC office to discuss the change with them, and every time I get a busy signal. No automated answering system, no hold queue, an actual busy signal. Turns out they sent out a bunch of these letters (a co-worker of mine got one as well), and it looks like their customer service capacity just isn't adequate for the flood of angry customers calling in. So, now my account will be changed and I have no way of doing anything about it. Brilliant. This is how lawsuits begin, I swear.

According to InfoWorld, Palm CEO Ed Colligan has publicly reiterated his company's plans to use Palm OS in handhelds and smartphones for the foreseeable future.

"We have a rich product roadmap of Palm OS-based handheld computers, mobile managers and Treo smartphones that we intend to deliver," Colligan wrote. "We have sold more than 30 million Palm OS-based products over the years, and it is not our intent to walk away from such a strong and loyal user base."

There...I told you so.

And when Access' new Linux-based Palm OS yet-to-be-named-revision-of-PalmOS comes out, I'm sure Palm will be jumping on that bandwagon with both feet. They'd be stupid not to. And if there's anything Ed Colligan is not, it's stupid.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, M. Night Shyamalan ('Sixth Sense' and 'The Village') says he'll stop making movies if the industry adopts simultaneous release.

On the other hand, Steven Soderbergh ('Traffic' and 'Ocean's Eleven') is already ramping up production of several films for just such a distribution model.

Some blame it on the theaters (crappy, overpriced experience) while some blame it on the rise of home theater setups (which may be a reaction to the theater's crappy, overpriced experience).

What do you think? Should movies come out in multiple media on a single day, or should the current distribution model (or some variation of it) continue to dominate?

According to SFGate.com, Google is working on a classifieds/promotion system that will effectively combine the concept of Craigslist with the reach of ebay and the scope of the universe. Lost Remote has links to leaked screenshots.

Later, how Google came to control everything...full story at 11.

In a surprise move, Microsoft has revised the terms of the software license for their ubiquitous Microsoft Office productivity suite. The new license is called "Referred Value," and has three paid licensing tiers:

Tier 1 Licensing: You want to use Microsoft Office on a computer that you own.

Tier 2 Licensing: You want to use Microsoft Office on a computer that you do not own.

Tier 3: You want to use content produced by Microsoft Office, such as a Powerpoint slideshow or a print-out of an Excel spreadsheet, even though you yourself may not own Office or even a computer.

A Garttner industry analyst representative explained the logic behind the new pricing structure. "Since Microsoft Office is now the default standard for personal and professional productivity software, it, as a platform, continues to generate value to society far beyond the immediate users of the software itself. It seems only fair and reasonable for Microsoft to want to bring some of that public value creation back to its bottom line. I mean, don't we all benefit from having really sweet-looking Powerpoint presentations?"

Exact licensing fees for the three tiers have not yet been established, but industry experts expect Microsoft's ability to invoice Tier 3 licenses may be limited initially until electronic document tagging becomes fully implemented with forthcoming Vista.

Decisions, decisions.

I'm a greedy, self-centered consumer. I want the best of everything for a reasonable (not necessarily the lowest) price. And you know what, that makes me not even the slightest bit different from the majority of consumers.

As a consumer looking out for my own best interests, I've come to the conclusion that 1 is a sucky number indeed. 1 sucks when there is only 1 company in a market because, more often than not, its products and services start going downhill fast. The firm doesn't have the competition to spur it on to improve and innovate.

For example, I run exclusively Microsoft operating systems on our PCs here at home. Does this suggest that I want Microsoft to be the only supplier of consumer operating systems? Not hardly. In fact, I wish they had less market share than they do now so they'd be motivated to update Windows even faster and better than they have been. Another example is Firefox, the open source browser. When Internet Explorer had like 96% of the browser market, Microsoft essentially stopped improving it (apart from the requisite security hole patching). Now that Firefox has gone from 0% to nearly 10% of the browser market in under 18 months, Microsoft is all of a sudden breaking out Internet Explorer 7. Don't tell me that competition doesn't help us consumers.

ebay is another example. If you want to auction something online, ebay is pretty much the only game in town. ebay knows this and has essentially stopped trying to make significant improvements in their service. Right now, they're just raking in profits and buying other companies (e.g., Paypal). There are lots of things ebay could do to improve their auction services. But, because they basically have no significant competition, they see no reason to spend the money on making these improvements they could otherwise distribute out to shareholders. This doesn't do us consumers any good (unless we also own ebay stock).

1 is a sucky number sometimes even outside consumerism. For example, I'm not devoted to either of the two main parties, Democrats or Republicans. I've voted for both in my life, and may well possibly continue to do so. But, as we see the "balance" of power list dangerously far to the right in this country, we start to see the problems that become even more rampant when there is only one party: corruption, abuse of power, favoritism, nepotism, and a total lack of moderation. Amazingly, the political party starts acting just like the firm with monopoly power and becomes an ineffective, if not outright bad, institution. If the Democrats continue to fall further into disarray and organizational atrophy, we risk becoming a one-party nation. And we know how well those do.

Rooting for the underdog is an American tradition, so I urge my fellow countrymen to go out and support that #2 (or #3 or #4) company/party/organization they've had their eye on. Buy a Mac. Use Firefox. Vote Democrat for a change. Support the underdog and keep potential monopolies from consolidating their power. Do this because, frankly, it's simply in your own best long-term interest.

I remember people saying with great sincerity that the Internet would connect buyers and sellers directly and cut out the middleman (i.e., retailers). Well, apart from ebay and a few wholesale .coms, this couldn't be further from the truth.

In fact, a whole new breed of middlemen has sprung up because of the Internet. PayPal, ebay clearing-houses, and search engines are all examples of new businesses playing the middleman role...and making money at it.

ExtremeTech has an interesting little article about another Internet middleman whose business is booming:

Commmunications clearinghouse NeuStar Inc. reported its first public quarter of revenues, with a roadmap to 36 percent revenue growth for the rest of the year.

The reason? NeuStar is responsible for managing all telephone portability within the U.S., transferring numbers from one carrier to the next. The company also manages the Common Short Codes governing the SMS service, as well as the directories for the .us and .biz Internet domains.

Ah, yes, the middleman is definitely dead. Long live the middleman!

My wife's GSM Treo 600 (yes, a hand-me-down, but a nice one) started acting up a couple weeks ago. 90% of the time when I turned on the cellular radio, it would soft reset. A new SIM card and every kind of Palm OS reset known to man failed to fix it, so I started casting about for options: repair, replace, anything. Her daily glares from not having a working cellphone were strong motivation.

PalmOne wanted a flat $179 to fix it, plus $25 for an advance exchange (I get the new one before sending the old one back, saving my wife ~10 more days without a PDA). Steep. Buying a new one, or even a used on ebay was just as costly, if not more so ($190+ with new ones hovering around $240).

Then I decided to call T-Mobile, just to see if they could help me out. I was skeptical since I hadn't purchased the phone from them in the first place. But lo and behold, they came through! Because the phone was out of warranty (by 5 months..grrr), they offered to charge me just $70 for a replacement Treo 600 via advance exchange (it would have been free had the phone been less than a year old). I was stunned, but the very pleasant and helpful Tier 1 (Treo) support guy on the phone assured me they do this all the time for T-Mobile customers.

So, yesterday a small brown box appeared with the daily mail. In it was a new (I'm sure not refurbished) Treo 600 with a return postage-paid label included. I just swapped the SIM and SD cards, restored the RAM image from the old device to the new device (thanks, BackupMan!), and the phones were effectively switched. The longest part of the whole swap process was removing, washing, and applying the Brando permanent screen protector the old Treo had on it. Tomorrow I'll drop the bundled up old Treo off at the Post Office and that will be that. Could it be any easier? I doubt it.

I gotta say, folks can gripe all they want about T-Mobile, but my personal experience with them so far (2+ years now) has been nothing but highly satisfying. I've always had pleasant, competent people on the phone and in the store, and their rates are among the most reasonable available. What's not to love?

I didn't write this, but I damn well wish I had.

Warnings and Promises by Glenn McDonald

Read it. (Thanks, Mike)

According to this eWeek article from 2004, roughly 700 people attended the 2004 PalmSource Developer's Conference. This year, there were around 1,000 attendees at the conference (which ended yesterday), an increase of nearly 50%. Not bad considering there was no major announcement this year.

Also, LinuxDevices.com has a nifty interview with two PalmSource execs about what the whole "Palm OS for Linux" thing really means. Read it here.

Tales of the demise of Palm, sometimes referring to PalmSource (the OS company) or PalmOne (the hardware maker) or both, seem to crop up in batches every once in a while, yet there's rarely ever any significant reason for the speculation.

One of the persistent rumors that has been hanging around since some comments from a PalmOne exec last year about possibly releasing devices based on operating systems other than Palm OS. My best guess on the situation, based on the latest information and news, is that there won't be a non-Palm OS device from PalmOne for at least three years, if ever.

First, PalmSource has agreed to sell the name "Palm" back to PalmOne for $30 million. That means that PalmOne will go back to being called Palm and PalmSource will be renamed to something that doesn't include "Palm" in the name (in fact, Palm OS will have to be renamed as well). That suggests that PalmOne believes there is huge brand value in the Palm name -- at least $30 million worth -- and a non-Palm OS device being sold under the Palm brand would be incredibly confusing and deleterious to the value of that brand.

Second, PalmOne has renewed its long-term licensing agreement with PalmSource. In that deal, PalmSource will get minimum royalty payments of nearly $150 million over the next four years, including $65 million for 2007 through 2009 if PalmSource meets certain development milestones. That is no trivial agreement, and really cements a commitment to Palm OS on the part of PalmOne. There is no reason they would have bought such a long-term relationship with Palm OS if they were looking around. To make a bad analogy, giving someone a key to your apartment usually doesn't happen if you're thinking at the time "we should see other people."

These two issues suggest to me that PalmOne won't be coming out with devices that don't run Palm OS for a long time, if ever. As Palm OS evolves into Palm OS for Linux, which will be happening over the next 12-18 months, the value proposition for PalmOne (and for PalmOne's customers) becomes even more compelling, so I don't expect significant changes to these reasons any time soon.

Here at the PalmSource DevCon, there's an air of enthusiasm and optimism that, frankly, I haven't sensed since the early days of the PalmPilot (mid-late 1990s). With the recent management changes and the switch to Linux and the increasing success of the Treo smartphone, people generally feel optimistic that Palm OS is well-positioned to be an even bigger and more significant player in the mobile market moving into the future. Before I came to PalmSource and heard all the announcements and saw the demos, I was in a bit of a funk -- I really didn't have a lot of confidence in Palm OS' ability to survive to the end of the decade. Now, I'm not only confident it'll be around, I think that its future is as bright as it could possibly be.

Regardless of your preference of mobile operating system (even if you have one), you have to admit that it's good for everyone to have competition in the market -- this forces innovation and evolution at a far faster pace than if there's just one player (the lack of improvement in Internet Explorer over the past 4 years, and then Firefox's pressure for Microsoft to increase IE's functionality and robustness, is clear evidence of this). So, root for Palm OS (and Palm OS for Linux) even if it's only to make your own preferred mobile OS adapt and improve faster than it otherwise would.

According to PCWorld, PDA sales increased a lot in Q1 of 2005.

The first three months of 2005 were kind to companies that sell PDAs, with demand for wireless e-mail leading to a sharp increase in unit shipments during the period, according to market analyst Gartner.

Worldwide PDA sales during the first quarter totaled 3.4 million units, compared to sales of 2.7 million during the same period last year, Gartner says. The 25-percent gain in shipments was the largest ever percentage gain for PDA sales during the first quarter, it says, noting that it did not count sales of smart phones, such as PalmOne's Treo 650.

Full story here.

CNET News is reporting that a New York State Court of Appeals has granted extended protection to record companies' copyrights well beyond the federal copyright limits.

A New York State Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that protects record companies' copyrights - at least in that state - for works issued before the 1972 federal copyright statute.

EMI had sued to stop rival label Naxos from reissuing 1930s recordings originally recorded by Capitol Records, which have fallen into the public domain overseas.

This is dangerously thin ice. Since most innovation happens as a result of, or incorporates, existing ideas and works, the indefinite extension of copyrights will only serve to inhibit innovation in the long run.

The Associated Press has produced an interesting Flash slideshow that highlights the debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Here's one page that is particularly informative:

If you want to see the rest of the document, it's available for the moment from CNN.com.

Wired has an interesting article suggesting that corporate radio may have learned its lesson that efficiency is not the ultimate objective.

But in the past decade, radio changed from a village of small, independent stations to a bastion of the US media oligopoly, content to deliver sterile, cookie-cutter broadcasts. The transition made sense economically, because Big Radio was able to cut costs by consolidating advertising departments and using the same programming across the country. But alienated listeners fled in droves.

Noting radio's declining audiences, recurring low-level payola scandals, horrendous public image, and competition for drive-time ears from iPods, satellite broadcasting, and cell phones, pundits have been gleefully pronouncing the medium's last rites. But they may well be wrong. Rather than being on life support, radio in fact is on the verge of its boldest technological change since the introduction of FM stereo in the 1960s. Not only that, it may be on the threshold of another golden age, one which could have almost as powerful an impact as the first. And in the vanguard of this movement, bizarrely enough, are many of the same flaccid, reactionary media giants that put radio in a coma to begin with.

I hope it's true, but I'll believe it when I can once again turn on my radio and not run screaming from the room.

Panasonic apparently has decided to wade into the consumer notebook arena with its Toughbook Elite line. To hawk these portables, it's using some fairly alluring photos of buff/hot supermodels holding the notebooks (apparently, Panasonic thinks it seems totally normal for a scantily clad babe wearing football shouldermapads to need a laptop).

Panasonic is also now making the Elite available in four colors -- white, red, black, and silver.

Just as a sidenote, these notebooks are excellent. Last summer, when the Toughbook line was marketed only as a specialty corporate purchase, I purchased the W2 (what Panasonic now calls the "Toughbook Elite") because it was the lightest notebook (2.8 lbs!) with an integrated DVD/CD-RW drive and a 12" screen. My dad was so impressed with it that he went out and bought its big brother, the Toughbook Y2 (14" 1400x1050 screen, 3.4 lbs). So far, we've both been very happy with them.

But whether these laptops, even with the new name and supporting supermodels, will appeal to Joe Consumer or not is yet to be determined. Let's hope they do, as it would be nice to have more devices like them available in the market.

According to CNET News.com, Microsoft has suggested that it will be releasing the update of Internet Explorer before Longhorn comes out in 2006 or 2007. This is important for two reasons:

1) It validates the impact that Firefox, an open-source (and better) alternative to IE, is having.

2) It reminds us that Microsoft's statements (back when it was getting sued by the US government for anti-competitive practices) that Internet Explorer is an inextricably integrated part of the Windows operating system is a stinking load of crap. If you can update IE independently of Windows, and you can update Windows independently of IE, how again are they inseparable?

While I'm glad to see Microsoft improving its products, it's incredibly overdue. How much you wanna bet that IE7 has tabbed browsing??

Apparently, I wasn't the only person to think Dell CEO Kevin Rollins' comments about rival Apple were off-base and suggest a lack of insight (see "Dell CEO Disses iPod/Apple", Jan. 19, 2005).

In his Jan. 31 online article, Business Week writer Nicholas Carr basically says the same thing:

"Rollins dismissed Apple's mega-selling iPod as a 'fad,' calling it a 'one-product wonder,' and he pooh-poohed the eye-catching Mac mini as inconsequential.

Rollins' comments are more than uncharacteristic. They're troubling -- and not just for their snippiness. They raise real questions about how well Dell understands the home market."

There's no doubt that Dell is a world-class institution in many ways, but for a CEO to issue such questionable statements about the market and a competitor, he really must be feeling his oats.

On either side of the copyright-technology war, the claim is that innovation will suffer.

The media companies -- movie studios and music labels for the most part -- claim that innovation by artists will suffer unless we crack down on piracy by outlawing the breaking of copyright protection schemes and restricting technologies that permit copyrighted material to be duplicated and conveyed.

Pretty much everyone else, especially those who understand technology, claim that innovation will suffer more if we limit technology, restrict fair use, and extend copyrights indefinitely.

So, who's right? These two opinions are in direct opposition to each other. Innovation can't suffer equally under both situations.

Personally, I think the arguments made by the entertainment industry are bunk. Innovation flourishes most in open environments, while locking things down to be controlled by a handful of organizations usually has the exact opposite effect.

So, to the RIAA and MPAA I say this: stop stating that "protecting innovation" is your objective -- it only weakens your argument to obfuscate the debate.

Now, I think I'll go photocopy a Grisham novel and mail it to a friend. If we need to stop all technologies and networks that can aid and abet copyright violation, then Xerox machines and the postal service gotta go, too.

Of course, that's today. What happens when we aren't allowed to remember a copyrighted image/movie/song without paying a royalty? After all, aren't we duplicating that protected content in our mind by replaying it for ourselves from memory? It's a slippery slope, this protection of content -- let's not travel too far down it and cede too much control to a small number of increasingly profitable corporate entities.

In reaction to my previous post, "Why Satellite Radio Is a Temporary Fad", Davy Fields sent me the following interesting comments:

"Although, I do think Sirius and XM are going to stick around as the content providers for internet music, I think they're also positioned well to jam themselves in enough cars for a few years they'll stick around: for every wired person like us who has the personal music collection they'd love to access on the road, there's ten people with a cassette deck with one tape in it and an AM/FM radio player in their '92 Taurus... I think the XM/Sirius Box is the Tivo equivalent of car audio... sure, On-demand programing of audio would be better (i.e., the equivalent of pulling up your home music library through your mobile tricorder-box we'll all have in ten years), but a lot of people would love just a little unit to shove in the dash with buttons that can give them a bunch of what's essentially better radio stations from them, which isn't exactly a dramatic change of their business model, and that's why I think they'll be here a while."

I think Davy and I don't fundamentally disagree. While he's a bit more optimistic about the potential market for satellite-based radio (but are all those ambivalent Taurus drivers willing to subscribe to a music source?), we both seem to believe that Sirius and XM will have to expand their business models a bit to become sustainable on a longer-term basis. Of course, if their strategy is just to get bought out by ClearChannel or another mega-conglomerate (i.e., media juggernaut), then maybe what they have now is enough. I still think some form of terrestrial, Internet-compatible wireless will be satellite's biggest competitor...eventually, anyway. Time will tell...

According to CNET News, Dell's CEO calls the iPod a fad and dismisses Apple as quaint:

Dell's take-no-prisoners CEO, Kevin Rollins, has seen fads that come and go--and he thinks Apple Computer's iPod may fall into that category. "It's interesting: The iPod has been out for three years, and it's only this past year it's become a raging success,"he said. "Well, those things that become fads rage, and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman--a rage, everyone had to have one. Well, you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one-product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy. But don't read that as any sort of disparagement of Apple. They've done a nice job."

I'm not a Mac fanatic -- heck, I don't personally even own any Apple products -- but to claim that the iPod is a "fad" like Sony's Walkman is just stupid on several levels. The Walkman revolutionized personal music. Of course you don't hear about it anymore -- Sony retired the brand because it became so widely adopted as a term that it lost usefulness as a marketing tool. Then, new technology came out to replace audio cassettes. But to think that the Walkman had no lasting effect on consumers is incorrect -- without it, portable music would have been much delayed and we may just *now* be seeing portable CD players come out. And, regarding the iPod in particular, how many consumer devices hold a huge majority of the market- and mind-share and are able to extend that gap year after year? Not many...maybe Apple really is doing it right.

And Kevin, Apple's been around about a decade longer than Dell has and Steve Jobs has personally done more for consumer computing than you will likely ever even imagine yourself accomplishing. To imply that Apple doesn't have a sustainable business strategy sells them short and suggests that you, yourself, don't really have much insight into consumer computing and electronics. But that's OK, really, because your job is to hawk overpriced PCs and peripherals to corporate and government purchasing departments, and that really doesn't require you to understand how the typical consumer or, *gasp*, teenager, thinks about and uses technology.

Oh, and if your idea of being insightful is to toss around overused business jargon, consider this: all my 22-year-old students headed for the fry machine at McD's know those words, too.

Unless you've had your head under a rock for the last few years, you've noticed that a large number of technology goods now come with rebates. Everything from rechargeable batteries to home theater equipment to cellphones has some offer for $5 or $20 or $200 back if you submit a refund request.

I'm sure that you, like me, always utter a burdened sigh when facing this dilemma: is it worth my time to complete the rebate materials and mail them in, or am I better off just paying the shelf price and being done with it?

I've figured out that a $10 rebate is the absolute least amount I'm willing to deal with. Considering the time spent filling out the form, photocopying the materials (for backup), and tracking it to make sure I get it, even $10 isn't a very good return on my time. My coupon-crazy wife will even bother to send in $3 rebates, so it really is a matter of personal taste.

So what's YOUR break-even point -- what is the smallest rebate you will bother with, or does it depend on the purchase?

Are we bound to eventually find just two cellular carriers here in the US? Seems like it might be possible. One one side, you'd have the Verizon+Sprint/Nextel (Verisprintel?) CDMA carrier. On the other side, of course, you'd have the GSM carrier, which would be obviously be called AT&T-Mobular.

This kind of makes sense. With this setup, each carrier gets to take advantage of all the infrastructure (towers, hubs, etc.) for that particular technology, yet there's still some competition to keep the gubmint from flagging the play and denying the merger or, more entertainingly, possibly forcing one or both to split up (since we now know how successful that approach is).

Of course, this is all good (for the carriers...not us consumers) until Wi-Max comes along and then it's anyone's guess.

And replaces them with a policy that is both more complex and more expensive for the customer. Way to go!

Read the full story (CNN)

I don't usually just point to someone else's story, but Brighthand's summary of notable lawsuits over the past 10 years or so in the handheld industry is as fascinating as it is disappointing. The legal wranglings involving nearly every major player in that space have threatened to tear it apart from the inside for a good, long while.

Who is Gary Shapiro, you ask? He's the President and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry trade group.

Why am I suddenly so fond of him? Because he wrote (or at least signed) a positively brilliant response to a letter from the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America, a.k.a. the spawn of Satan). The RIAA letter was asking why the CEA didn't want to back its efforts to get the FCC to mandate a copy-protection flag for digital radio transmissions (as it has with digital TV signals and that goes into effect next summer).

In the CEA's response, Shapiro basically cuts off at the knees every claim the RIAA makes and dismisses every hope it expresses. It's just a great letter...here's the last paragraph:

"In closing, let me again reinforce that non-commercial recording of freely broadcast over the air radio programming is a fundamental consumer right, and one that has consistently been given great deference by Congress. Any discussion of curtailing that right, prior to even the most minimal showing of harm, is ill conceived and premature."

If you want to read it yourself, first read the RIAA's letter and then read the CEA's response. And thanks to boingboing for the lead.

As a final thought, let me just say once and for all that I truly, honestly, and with every ounce of my being, hope the RIAA is soon sued into oblivion and every one of its greedy, soulless and foul-smelling executives sent to prison on 317 consecutive life terms for wanton abuse of consumer/citizen rights and its ongoing, wholesale assault on culture.

palmOne today announced that the lawsuit filed against it by Xerox claiming infringement of its 'unistroke' input method has been summarily dismissed. The overly broad patent and the existence of prior art invalidated Xerox's lawsuit.

MILPITAS, Calif., May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- palmOne, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLMO) announced that summary judgment had been issued in its favor dismissing Xerox Corporation's claim that palmOne's former text-entry system, Graffiti(R), infringed a Xerox patent. In a decision released today, Judge Michael A. Telesca of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York held that the Xerox patent was invalid.

The summary judgment ruling will result in the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Xerox in 1997 against Palm, Inc. and its former parent, 3Com Corp. Palm, Inc. has since spun off PalmSource, Inc., maker of the Palm OS(R) platform, and acquired Handspring, Inc. to form palmOne, Inc. palmOne had retained liability for the Xerox matter.

"We firmly believed that the broad interpretation of the patent, as it evolved in this case, would render the patent invalid," said Mary Doyle, senior vice president and general counsel for palmOne. "We are very pleased that this court has agreed."

"This is a terrific outcome," said Todd Bradley, palmOne president and chief executive officer. "We've persevered for years to achieve this result and the vindication palmOne deserves."

The Xerox patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 5,596,656, which covered unistroke symbols. The court held that the patent was invalid because, "The prior art references anticipate and render obvious the claim," or that the unistroke system was not a unique invention.

We're glad that the judicial system seems to have taken the most rational view in this case. It would be nice if some other patents awarded for blatantly obvious "innovations" got invalidated as well.

Now, palmOne, how about offering the original Graffiti on some of your devices for those Palm OS users who can't stand Graffiti 2?

Casio Computer Co has announced that it has developed the world's smallest fuel cell.

Large-scale polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) are already in development for use in automobiles. What Casio has succeeded in doing is to miniaturize a PEFC so that it is similar in size to a conventional lithium-ion battery.

However, the PEFC battery has a capacity nearly four times that of a lithium-ion battery. Laptop computers should be able to run on PEFC power for 8-16 hours.

Casio hopes to introduce its fuel cell to the market after regulators are expected to allow PEFCs on the market, around 2007.

I stopped by the WOXY studio (photo) today to say good-bye and thank the folks there for two decades of awesome music. I got to have a nice chat with Bryan Jay, WOXY's resident tech guru, about the situation facing the online side of the station's operations.

In a nutshell, and an oversimplified nutshell at that, to maintain the current online listenership would require a few hundred thousand dollars a year in bandwidth (they chew through several terabytes each month). Unlike my previous take, which is that the big barrier was royalties, it's these bandwidth expenses that are the largest hurdle. The good news is that there may be a way they can cut some of these expenses down, but that alone isn't enough.

The next hurdle is the fact that an actual online radio station (as opposed to someone just streaming music) would require about 4 full-time staffers. Salaries and benefits for those peeps would come out to just under $300K a year.

The final hurdle is indeed the royalties that an Internet broadcaster of this size would have to pay the artists and composers (unlike terrestrial radio, which only has to pay composers). IIRC what Doug Balogh (former owner) mentioned today, that would be a bit over a $100 grand a year.

Add up those figures and you're talking about $650 thousand or so each year that the station would have to generate through advertising and other revenue streams. And that's just to break even. Obviously, this isn't a trivial business model to make work on a for-profit basis.

97X's tagline is 'The Future of Rock & Roll.' To me, it has always been just that; I could depend on it to show me what's new and on the horizon. Today, 97X still represents the future, but no longer in a positive way. As 97X looks to go off the air this Thursday, the future of rock & roll seems to belong entirely to corporate radio and the RIAA. They are the ones with the lobbyists and the economic/political power. What do we consumers and music lovers have to look forward to? From here, it looks to be the death of independent radio and the ever-increasing homogenization of our culture. Yippee...I can hardly wait.

The lobbyists working for the RIAA and the biggest few radio companies have convinced enough of our elected federal officials that the price of broadcasting a song over the Internet should far exceed the price of broadcasting a song over the airwaves to make it law.

The result is hundreds, if not thousands, of diverse and otherwise viable Internet-based radio stations have been forced out of business because Internet broadcasters have to pay not only higher per-song fees based on listenership, but they are required to pay both the original copyright holder (i.e., the songwriter) and the recording artist (terrestrial stations do not have to pay recording artists royalties if they are not the original songwriter because playing their recorded songs is akin to free advertising for their albums). This effect has hit me personally due to the forthcoming death of 97X, the best alternative rock station ever because, despite it being a profitable terrestrial radio station for well over a decade, it cannot afford to pay the onerous and unfair webcasting royalties.

Why? What is the rationale for this disparity?

Surely there's no benefit to consumers or the public, yet isn't that the primary mission of our government?

So, while I am but one person with a conscience and a blog, I will henceforth make it a personal goal to see the RIAA go down in flames (or at least be so radically changed that it can no longer act out in this despicable and anti-consumer fashion). Please...if you care at all about the evolution of culture in America, or even just about the music you're allowed to hear, read up on the issue. My suggestion is to start with Lawrence Lessig's latest book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. It serves as a good intellectual property law primer, history lesson, and summary of the status quo and why it needs to change.

As the saying goes, "if you aren't outraged, you haven't been paying attention."

Optware Corporation, a Japanese firm specializing in holographic storage media, has demonstrated a practical holographic recording and playback device.

Its system is based on polarized collinear holography, as opposed to conventional holographic recording and playing devices. This system multiplexes the signal and reference beams used for recording and playing of holographic media with just one objective lens.

Conventional technology requires a two-beam axis, a more complex system with precision issues, including positioning the media with each optical axis.

Prototypes shown used a blue-violet semiconductor laser for the signal beam and reference beam, a red semiconductor laser for the servo, and a CMOS image sensor for detection of the playback signals.

Optware says it is on track to introduce a commercial product storing up to 300-GB on a 12 centimeter holographic disc by 2005.

This was in 97X's latest newsletter update (see Mitch's previous GearBits post for background):

INTERNET BROADCAST STATUS UPDATE

We had anticipated that the last day of our terrestrial broadcast at 97.7 FM would be around May 1st, but things sometimes take longer than expected, so it now looks like it will be closer to, but no later than, May 13th.

That’s the good news … the bad news is that it might also be our last day broadcasting on the Internet.

Over the past three months we’ve been looking for sponsors or investors who could help us fund this very expensive venture into the future. We’ve talked with many, many potential partners, but as of now, it’s not looking good. There are still some active conversations, but every day that goes by makes it less and less likely that we will find a funder.

Believe it or not, it would cost more to run this Internet radio station (with half the staff) than it ever did to run our terrestrial radio station. The main reason is the costs of music performance royalties and bandwidth for our audio streaming. Unlike traditional AM and FM radio where the cost of operating the transmitter is fixed no matter how many people listen, on the Internet our costs go up for each additional person that tunes in. With our online audience approaching 50,000 unique listeners and growing every month, the already substantial costs continue to rise with no significant revenue stream to pay for them.

We've researched alternative scenarios including moving to a listener-supported subscription service, but even in best case scenarios, reasonably priced subscriptions would not create enough revenue to cover the costs of creating and delivering 97X. As a commercial business, it would be improper for us to accept listener donations, and even if we did, it would not provide a viable, long term solution.

However, it’s not over ‘til it’s over, and there’s always a chance that someone with a vision of the future will see a way to say yes. We’ll keep you posted.

Damn you RIAA, ClearChannel, and all the other corporate media tyrants and your damnable lobbyists for getting the Congress to adopt prohibitively expensive webcasting royalty rates and damn you legislators for allowing yourselves to be influenced manipulated by these soulless, culture-destroying organizations.

As Microsoft includes more and more things in its Windows operating systems -- the most recent addition is a whole new set of security functions, like firewalls and pop-up blockers -- my mind keeps returning to the same question that I'm not sure has ever been resolved: what exactly should be included in an operating system?

Before I begin, let me make it perfectly clear that I am not, nor likely ever will be, a computer or software engineer. I don't have the slightest idea about the underlying architecture that governs modern operating systems. So, I am basing these comments on a "common sense" perspective, which may be very technically flawed (I'm sure someone out there will be more than happy to correct me);

It seems that there is a lot of junk in contemporary OS's that just doesn't need to be there, and Microsoft isn't the only culprit. Why should a web browser or a multimedia player or an email client or a word processor be necessary for a computer operating system to function? Just try to remove Internet Explorer or Outlook Express from your Windows machine (I know it can be done, but it's anything but trivial). Can I choose to buy Windows without these components for less money? No, at least not that I'm aware of.

Why are addressbook and calendar programs part of the Palm operating system? Can I buy/license Palm OS without these apps for less money than a normal license? I don't believe it's possible.

Heck, was it ever even possible to buy DOS without the "Edit" program? While a text editor certainly isn't required to function as an operating system, I doubt that you could get a discounted copy of DOS that didn't have this feature.

Now, I realize that an OS is a product, much like a car or a couch or a bicycle. In that sense, the manufacturer wants it to have the most appealing mix of features and price that will compel its customers to buy it. But what the software company wants to sell you is a different issue than what the operating system must include for it to function.

I have a hard time accepting the premise that I am required to pay for an unrelated feature that is bundled with an "operating system" that lies outside the core functionality of operating the system (i.e., managing hardware interfaces and what-not). I don't prefer Windows Media Player -- why do I have to pay for it? I don't prefer Internet Explorer -- why does the price of the OS include some portion allocated to Microsoft recouping the cost of developing it?

An operating system is like a car in some ways. Certain parts of it are highly integrated while others are very modular. In cars, and in many other tangible goods, the modular parts are easily replaced and/or optioned so as to not require being purchased in the first place. For example, if I want custom wheels or a custom stereo on my new car, the dealer will usually credit me for the factory wheels or factory head unit that would have come on the car by default. Microsoft, however, does not credit me for Windows Media Player or Outlook Express if I want something else (or nothing) instead -- I have to buy it as a bundle with no options...take it or leave it.

If that were the extent of the impact, I'd have no problems with it. However, when you combine the unwillingness to give customers options for purchasing non-core components with the monopoly power of the Windows operating system, you create a very unfair and damaging situation.

Imagine we were back in the days of a Ma Bell telephone monopoly. Imagine that if you wanted phone service at your house, you had one choice available to you: "phone service 9000." PS9000 is Ma Bell's only service product, and it includes every conceivable option available, such as voicemail, 3-way calling, caller ID, call forwarding, "wirecare," and a whole bunch of other services that you don't really need. But, you're stuck paying $94 a month for this mega-package even if what you want/need is just basic local phone service.

Society has said this is inappropriate on several occasions. For example, US law mandates that cable companies must offer a bare-bones "basic" cable service at a very low price. These local monopolies are not allowed to have just a single gargantuan cable package that costs $100 a month saying "if you want any part of cable service, you have to buy everything we offer." That's not allowed.

So why is Microsoft, a company already established as a similar type of monopoly, allowed to offer only one or two high-priced "mega-package" products? Both Windows XP Home and Pro are stuffed with nearly every possible add-on feature you can imagine. It'd be like the cable company only offering a $94 "Home" package (without HBO) and a $110 "Professional" package that includes HBO. Why is this OK for Microsoft, but not for the phone company or a cable provider?

Olympus Japan today announced the CAMEDIA AZ-1, a 3.2-megapixel ultra-compact camera measuring just 3.7 x 2.6 in x 0.8 in.

The AZ-1 uses a 'folded optics' lens design similar to the Minolta DiMAGE X series and the Sony DSC-T1, T11, to achieve its compact size. It features a 3x optical zoom.

A cradle is also provided for charging the camera, and provide for USB and video out connectivity.

The CAMEDIA AZ-1 also boasts a large 2.5-inch, 210,000-pixel view display - with high contrast and a wide viewing angle - and album and slideshow functions that makes it suitable for use as a photo viewer and portable photo album.

Nokia has just announced the latest addition to their N-Gage series, the N-Gage QD.

The N-Gage QD improves on the original with a number of new features, including a brighter screen, a better user interface and game controls, a hot-swappable multimedia (MMC) slot, better battery life, and new smartphone features.

The new smartphone features include personal information management, email, and an XHTML browser.

In addition, the microphone and speaker in the QD have been reoriented from the original, making for easier handling as a phone.

A new launcher application simplifies connecting the Nokia's mobile network community via the N-Gage Arena, downloading and playing all available titles, as well as taking part in multiplayer gaming via Bluetooth wireless.

Nokia expects pricing to be in the range of $199 at retail, or $99 with a mobile contract. The N-Gage QD game deck is expected to be available in May-June 2004 worldwide.

Dan Gillmor, long time journalist and Linux doubter, feels that Linux may have a shot at being significant on the desktop. Why? One major plus is the fact that Wal-Mart is starting to sell Linux-powered PCs in its stores.

Will Microsoft react the same way that every other consumer good producer has in the face of Wal-Mart's massive pressure, by buckling under and dramatically cutting its price? Or, will Microsoft try to ignore this new development, insisting that Wal-Mart just won't have a significant impact on the situation? Or, will something happen to provoke a feud between the two monolithic corporations?

This is a fight I'm waiting to see materialize, for it has the makings of a very interesting situation. Much like Rodan vs. Mothra or Dracula vs. The Mummy, we don't really have an obvious "good guy" to root for. In one corner, you have a company that enjoys a near monopoly in its industry and which has abused that power through various actions which have drawn many, repeated lawsuits. In the other corner, you have...well...exactly the same. Should be interesting...

I posted this moblog entry earlier today.

US mobile telephone operator Cingular has announced that it will acquire rival AT&T Wireless for $41B. The deal creates the largest US wireless provider, with 46 million customers and sales of over $32B.

Cingular is a joint venture between BellSouth and SBC Communications, with over 24 million customers. AT&T Wireless is the second-largest US wireless carrier, with over 22 million subscribers.

British mobile phone company Vodafone was the other participant in a bidding war for AT&T Wireless, which was up for sale with a deadline of Feb 13, extended to Feb 15.

The acquisition is still subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, but is expected to close by late 2004.

Well, I'm back from the PalmSource Developer Conference in San Jose and, well, I'm bushed (the SJC-ORD-CVG red-eye sequence sucks). Nevertheless, here are some noteworthy comments that you may not find on other sites.

First, the big news is that Palm OS 6.x will be called Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS 5.4 (and beyond) will be called Palm OS Garnet. When I first heard the latter, I thought they said "darn it" and was really confused. Follow that link for more info about the new Palm OS -- while there aren't any Cobalt devices announced yet, the breadboard demos were stunning. I cannot wait to see what the device makers come up with powered by Cobalt -- should be sweet.

Ironies of ironies -- the conference venue, the San Jose Fairmont, had free Wi-Fi Internet throughout the common areas of the hotel. However, to sign on to the service, you had to use an Internet Explorer-compliant web browser -- Mozilla didn't work and neither did any of the Palm OS web browsers. So, all those Tungsten C owners were walking around with slight scowls on their faces.

I got to fondle the most teeny smartphone, the GSPDA Xplore G18 (shown to the right). This GSM/GPRS (class 10) phone is about 2/3 the size of the already small Treo 600 and includes a camera. It has no keypad (on-screen buttons), but at 3.7 oz, I can't see where you'd put them. While there's no SD or other expansion slot on the camera itself, there's a slick little SD/MMC card reader adapter that plugs into the USB port on the bottom of the phone. For those wanting their Palm OS apps in the smallest possible PDA-phone combination (possibly even the smallest Palm OS device overall), this is it.

One thing I noticed while "people-watching" was that there were a LOT of Treo 600s being used by the other 1,100 or so attendees -- my hunch is about 20% of everyone there had one of these. The recent announcement that palmOne is taking pre-orders for T-Mobile-friendly Treo 600s just put me over the edge -- I pre-ordered one yesterday for $399. Now all I need to do is wait till early March when they will supposedly be shipping. For the record, I firmly believe that the rumored Treo 610 is complete hogwash. The current device is obviously so compelling to so many that palmOne is most likely to just keep making more and more of them, thereby bringing costs down so as to improve its profits.

During the multi-PUG (Palm Users Group) meeting Tuesday night, an engineer with Tapwave demonstrated Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 on the Zodiac. I believe this is the first public demo of the game, which has been "coming soon" for a few months now. It's good to see some of the promised game titles finally coming out for the Zodiac (which rocks, BTW).

The Universal Transportable Memory Association (UTMA) has introduced a flash memory card standard requiring no adapters, cables or card readers, called a Flash Internal Semiconductor Harddrive, or FISH. Cards based on the standard plug into any USB port, allowing transfer of information between PCs, PDAs, cameras or other devices.

FISH Memory cards are smaller than SD cards and have transfer rates of 10 Mbps. FISH cards are fast enough to capture streaming video from DVRs and videocams. Standard FISH cards are 1.3" long with width and thickness the size of a USB port. Miniature versions exist, 25% smaller. Current FISH technology allows for 2-GB, with 16-GB expected in 2005.

47 independent industry experts were involved in the development of the UTMA standard. Inputs to the standard came from 34 different companies. This industry consensus is expected to lead to a broad range of devices.

SanDisk Corporation is now shipping the world's first production 1-GB secure digital (SD) card.

At $500, the 1-GB SD card has the capacity to store over 30 hours of digitally compressed music, 1,000 high-res digital images, and over five hours of MPEG-4 compressed video.

This new SD card uses a novel stacking technology, which enables SanDisk to double the previous memory capacity without increasing the size of the card.

SanDisk worked with Sharp's Integrated Circuits Group to devise a way to stack additional layers of NAND MLC die in ultra-thin packages without increasing the card size. In the 1-GB card, two ultra-thin packages are vertically mounted in the same height that currently houses a single package.

The new stacking process also has the potential for application to compact flash (CF) and Sony memory stick (MS) storage media.

Electronics giant Philips has just announced that it would be mass-producing a thin display panel that could be used to display e-newspapers and magazines downloaded from a fixed or mobile Internet link... and then rolled up or folded away.

Philips created the display using E Ink technology, which uses plastics-based monochrome display electronics.

Philips has already demonstrated similar glass-based displays, and estimates that it can produce the flexible 5-inch displays at a rate of one million units per year.

Wired has an amazing story about Fax.com. In a nutshell, Fax.com has flaunted US and state laws against sending junk/spam faxes, going so far as to tell a US District Court of Appeals that it wouldn't be posting a $2.75 million bond. To date, it has been fined tens of millions of dollars and is even facing a billion-dollar lawsuit, yet no government agency or individual plaintiff has recovered a dime. Part of this is due to Fax.com's having split itself into multiple smaller companies and routing its revenue through a maze of US and international bank accounts.

"Fax.com Chief Executive Kevin Katz has denied any knowledge of these companies or any knowledge of where former Fax.com employees now work. In a Dec. 8 deposition for Kirsch's lawsuit, Katz denied working with a former business partner until he was shown a signed contract, said he didn't know who was working at Fax.com anymore, and didn't know he was the CEO until reminded by his lawyer. Katz also denied knowledge of any of the successor companies named in the FCC order. "

How does this happen? Is the US legal system so castrated when it comes to dealing with corporate misbehavior that a company can simply tell the courts to go take a flying leap? Have we not learned anything from debacles over the past decades like the savings & loan disaster, Enron, and the WorldCom/MCI mess? Apparently not.

Having been woken up myself a few times in the past couple months at 3AM by a phone call from a fax machine, my hunch is that my own number was being tried by a Fax.com server. If people like Kevin Katz can invade my privacy, why can't theirs be? Per US law, it would be illegal for me to call upon people to harm Mr. Katz and/or his possessions. It would be illegal for me to suggest that people damage the property of one of Fax.com's children companies, Tech Access Systems Corp, which resides at 521 ½ South Myrtle Avenue, Suite 1 in Monrovia, CA 91016 at the phone number of 626-359-6464*.

In the end, I hope someone in Washington DC wakes up and does something to address the whole unethical gvernance issue. Or, is allowing this type of behavior what our president and the Republican party mean by being "pro-business?"

* That information was gotten from junkfax.com, a consumer advocacy group that is dedicated to defeating Fax.com and spam-faxers like it.

Over the past few quarters, a huge number of computer companies have publicly announced their intentions to bust onto the consumer electronics (CE) scene. For example, Gateway wowed everyone when it announced it would selling (relatively) inexpensive plasma TVs and some other home-oriented non-computer devices. Those CE sales did a lot for Gateway's financial situation in the most recent quarter. Dell has announced that it will aggressively extend its product line into the family room, offering things like LCD TVs and other home electronics. Even Intel has recently announced it will create a business unit focused on consumer electronics.

These are all departures, to varying degrees, from the computing businesses that these companies have existed as so far. CNET News.com has an assessment that this move into CE by traditionally computing-oriented companies is fraught with risks...and I agree. In order to succeed, delivering home and consumer electronics is going to take a very different skillset than is required in the "beige box" and CPU business.

First of all, the majority of the computer industry competes primarily on cost and delivery -- these skills are all related to what you might call "supply chain management." In contrast, many consumer electronics products are as much about quality in some form, such as reliability or aesthetics, as they are about low cost. Granted, APEX has made a niche for itself by offering trailing-edge CE at bargain-basement prices, but they are still very much a marginal player at this point. Understanding what drives consumers to go ga-ga over a piece of electronics is not easy or trivial, and I have my doubts as to Dell or Intel's ability to get it right the first time...or maybe even the third time.

Second of all, you have to think about the distribution problems. Intel and Dell don't have huge presences in retail stores right now. Dell doesn't sell anything in stores, which is where a lot of people want to shop for expensive consumer electronics. Most people won't drop $2000 for a TV sight-unseen...I know I wouldn't. Establishing those relationships (for everyone except Dell) will take time, and Dell may want to rethink the direct-delivery strategy that has served it so well so far. CE is not like computers, and direct-delivery may turn out to be more of a liability than an asset in this new arena.

Sony is a good example of a company that has migrated from CE to computers and it has morphed designs for the two product types very successfully. For intel or Dell to do that, they'll need some serious outside help, for it's unlikely that anyone inside the companies currently has a good handle on designing consumer-oriented devices. Managing the distribution networks and matching them up with consumers' needs will take a lot of rethinking -- if their managers are unable or unwilling to be flexible enough to do that, I suspect these endeavors into the CE world will be albatrosses around these companies' financial necks, and short-lived for that main reason.

Software company Adobe Systems recently opened an online store offering customers digital content in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

The Adobe Digital Media Store offers ebooks from publishers such as Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, and Random House, and includes links to digital publications such as BusinessWeek, Popular Science, the New York Times, and USA Today.

Adobe's move is the latest chapter in the two-steps-forward, one-step-back saga of the ebook industry, which last saw Barnes and Noble exit the ebook market.

Based on Adobe Reader 6.0, digital content from the Digital Media Store uses a digital rights management (DRM) scheme that allows users to view paid-for material on desktop computers and Palm OS-based handheld computers.

ExtremeTech has an interesting article about how marketers often try to claim that a new device is "easy to operate as a TV." Well, that doesn't really mean much any more, and as home A/V electronics resemble PCs more and more, we may be in for a backslide in terms of usability.

"In the past year, I've added two different home theater setups in my house and played around with a lot of home theater equipment of various types -- ranging to entry-level Home Theater In a Box kits to high-end receivers and media recorders. What I'm struck by is just how painful most of these are to install – and how much more of a pain they are to use."

In the late 1980's, an academic researcher named Fred Davis, along with some colleagues, published a simple theory, the "Technology Acceptance Model". That model posits that two factors will greatly influence the propensity of someone to adopt, or begin using regularly, a particular technology.

Those two factors are A) perceived usefulness (i.e., how much benefit does the technology offer to the user), and B) perceived ease of use (i.e., how simple and/or intuitive is the technology). Usability experts like Jakob Nielsen have long decried the ever-complexifying of web and user interfaces in software. The same complaints can obviously be made about hardware, as the ExtremeTech article plainly points out.

So, what can we do? Well, maybe it's time for industry to start listening to researchers a bit more. While it seems perfectly obvious now that usefulness and ease of use should influence someone's decision to adopt a technology, judging from the store shelves and marketing messages, that insight hasn't found its way thoroughly into the world's top consumer electronics makers.

It seems that Microsoft, that behemoth juggernaut of the tech world, may currently be at its most vulnerable in quite some time. While vulnerability is a relative term -- Microsoft still has more in cash than some countries' entire GDP -- some strategic and market threats have combined to possibly create real concern for Microsoft's top management.

• Real Networks' Lawsuit threatens to reinvigorate the antitrust and antimonopoly landslide against the Redmond company here in the US.

• A host of other lawsuits, most related to anticompetitive behavior over the years, have forced the firm to burn up valuable cash and have damaged its reputation, especially in Europe.

• Additionally, some recent judgments, such as the win for Sun regarding Java, have forced Microsoft to abandon support for older products. This may force some enterprise and personal users of Windows 98 and 95 (which account for 39% of corporate users) to look at alternative products rather than simply update to the latest version of Windows.

• Alternatives to Microsoft's monopoly products, Windows OS and its Office suite, continue to gain credibility and technical robustness. Recent adoptions of OpenOffice.org, a competitor to Microsoft Office, Sun's Linux-based Java Desktop System (also just written up in Wired), and Munich, Germany's decision to dump Windows for Linux are all examples that Microsoft's strangle-hold on world IT may be beginning to wane...at least a bit.

• As spam, viruses, and other net-based security threats mount, Microsoft's record as having a rather relaxed attitude towards security in its products makes it potentially vulnerable to competing products.

• Finally, while the world is still very much PC-based, the trend is distinctly away from beige boxes. The growth of specialized computers and converged devices make it harder and harder for a single company to be all things to all people. Dedicated competitors are then able to nip away at the fringe of Microsoft's customer base as those customers' needs change more quickly than Microsoft can adapt its products.

Do I think that "market forces" are correcting what the antitrust lawsuits couldn't (or didn't)? Not really...at least not soon. While I certainly don't want Microsoft to go away entirely, I would like greater diversity and balance in the industries in which it competes. What do you think...is Microsoft more vulnerable right now than it has been in years, or is it just business at usual for Redmond?

In a commentary at CNET, a Forrester "senior analyst" claims that the only viable solution to saving email from spammers is to charge everyone to send any email.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

First, it punishes the masses for the actions of a minority of miscreants. While there are certainly precedents for doing this, why make the same mistake now with email?

Second, spam really doesn't cost that much relative to the benefits of email, or companies would have stopped using email as a means of corporate communication. Spam email just doesn't create as much of a problem as the popular press wants you to believe. If companies were truly worried about their bandwidth usage, they'd stop giving Internet access to every desktop across the company (downloading a single graphics-intensive webpage, such as CNN.com's homepage, is about equivalent to downloading a hundred emails...and don't even start to think about employees streaming video onto their desktops for personal reasons).

Third, the economics of charging for sending email just don't make sense. The cost more to develop, implement, and operate a system that can accurately track and bill email senders is just prohibitive. The concept of micro-payments is attractive, but it has so far eluded even the best attempts at implementing it.

Finally, and most importantly, it would not stop spam. Charging for email would only happen within this country, whereas a lot of spam, if not most spam, comes from outside the realm of the US's legal influence. Moreover, it wouldn't change the fact that spoofing spammers' identities would still be really easy. How do you "bill" some unknown kid in China for sending his 10,000 emails?

This approach would doom email -- it would simply kill it outright. Since spammers would be the only ones motivated enough to circumvent the billing system, spam would only increase as a percentage of all email even faster than if the current system were left in place. Eventually, the only ones sending email would be huge corporations (internal emails only, so they don't get charged) and spammers, making the whole system just worthless to Joe and Jane User.

Forrester, once again, gets it wrong. When will the world stop listening to these guys??

I was perusing this week's copy of TWICE (This Week In Consumer Electronics) and I noticed a few stories that seemed interesting in that they contained info I hadn't heard before. So, I'll summarize.

First, there's a large story about how sales of home audio (components, speakers, etc.) are in a major slump right now -- electronics retailers and custom installers just aren't selling much right now. Why is this? They suspect that the huge emphasis on innovative and large displays (DLP, plasma, LCD, etc.) is partly to blame (after all, consumers don't have endless checkbooks), but they also believe that the lack of innovation regarding compressed/digital audio (to attract younger buyers) and networking (part of integrated solutions) are also to blame. Sounds right to me -- there's just not much innovation going on in home audio right now...it's all in displays.

Second, there's an interesting pair of bar charts. While I can't reproduce them here, they provide the sales of LCD flat-panel TV's and plasma televisions from 1Q02 through 3Q03. I've long thought plasma was a neat, but interim and short-lived, technology -- something that was here for only a brief period until something significantly better came along (e.g., 8-track and DAT). Well, the numbers finally seem to be bearing this prediction out. Quarter-on-quarter growth of LCD sales during 2003 was 30% to 57% -- impressive numbers! On the other hand, during the same period, plasma saw only 2% to 7% growth. Granted, plasma sales last quarter were $438 million, versus $274 million for LCD, but the trend clearly shows LCD trumping plasma in 2004 and beyond. Unless something happens to either displace LCD or greatly improve plasma's performace or value, LCD will be the new king of the flat-panel display. For how long is anyone's guess -- maybe SED will rise up strong.

Finally, there seems to be a huge shortage of DLP- and LCD-powered rear-projection TV's. A Tweeter (retail chain) manager says that Samsung's DLP line is "turning very quickly." The root causes of the shortage appear to be overly conservative ordering by the retail chains as well as higher-than-expected demand by consumers. Could it also be the fact that there's finally enough HD programming on to interest a significant number of folks (e.g., the Super Bowl)?

Interesting stuff.

The folks over at Motley Fool often have some sage advice for investors. Alyce Lomax of MF believes that TiVo, the company, is still quite viable and not in as bad a shape as some pundits would have you believe:

"Competing DVR products from a company like Comcast, easily accessible with service fees bundled onto a bill that already comes every month, could stunt TiVo's growth. However, right now it seems there's no need to panic; TiVo's got a whole lot of people evangelizing it, and the DirecTV deal provides a great deal of comfort. It still brings millions of potential subscribers to the table, who may very well all talk up the power of TiVo."

I really wish the cable operators would adopt TiVo-powered DVRs instead of the clunky devices like the Scientific Atlanta 8000 that some currently offer. While tech junkies are usually pretty fickle since they want the latest and greatest, I've yet to come across someone who had TiVo and then got rid of it for something else. I'm sure it's happened, but it's definitely not very common (yes, TiVo is that good).

Six years ago, researchers from Cornell University built the world's smallest guitar to demonstrate the possibilities of using silicon fab techniques to manufacture micron-sized systems.

Now, Cornell has demonstrated a playable version of the red-blood-cell-sized guitar to show how such devices could be used as cheaper, more energy-efficient electronic circuit components.... by using a laser to strum the strings.

The new nanoguitar is 5 times larger than the original, but still only viewable with a microscope. Its strings are silicon bars, from 6-12 microns in length, and cross sections of 150 x 200 nanometers. The strings vibrate at 17 octaves higher than a real guitar.

You play the nanoguitar by focussing a laser beam on the strings. As the strings vibrate, they create interference patterns, which are detected and electronically converted to audible sound. The device plays simple tones and chords, with pitches determined by string length.

Practical applications? Of course.

Nanoscale objects vibrating at radio frequencies can substitute for quartz oscillators in electronic circuits, using less space and power. Since these vibrations can be tuned to a narrow range of frequencies, they are also usable in filter circuits. The unique light modulation system is also usable in fiber-optic communications systems to replace more expensive light sources.

All this, and the ability to play a wicked Santana...now that's my kind of science!

Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame recognizes excellence in robotics technology, honoring real-world robots and fictional robots that have inspired scientific accomplishments.

Recently, CMU announced the first inductees into the Hall of Fame, chosen by a jury from 32 nominees.

The honorees: Sojourner, NASA's Mars Pathfinder Microrover Flight Experiment (MFEX) robot; Unimate, the first industrial robot; R2-D2, the droid from the Star Wars movie trilogy; and HAL, the ship-board computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Jacob R. Matijevic of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory accepted for the Sojourner rover. Joseph F. Engelberger, whose company Unimation installed the first robots on a General Motors assembly line in 1961, accepted for Unimate. Kathleen Holliday of Lucasfilm, accepted for R2-D2. Arthur C. Clarke sent a special message from Sri Lanka, on behalf of HAL.

Also on hand for the celebration were David Prowse (Darth Vader) and Kenny Baker (R2-D2) from the first Star Wars episode.

The public is invited to nominate robots for the next induction ceremony, to be held in October 2004, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

Barry Doyle and Andrew Baxter from Bargain PDA had a chance to talk with Michael Dell (yes, that Michael Dell) at COMDEX. One of the points he made was that "Michael Dell feels 'it's too late for Palm' so at this time Dell is not planning to offer any Palm OS-based products." I find this curious, especially as we enter the era of the new Dell.

The new Dell is the Dell of widescreen televisions, PDAs, and other consumer electronics. The new Dell is worried about innovation and marketing as much as computer technology and supply chain management. The new Dell is expanding its product line every few hours.

In contrast, the old Dell was the Dell of the desktop PC, the notebook PC, and the server. The old Dell worried about managing its production, its suppliers, and its relationships with large companies and governments. The old Dell rationalized its product line so that it could make whatever it made as cost-effectively and efficiently as possible.

Now, Mr. Dell's comment strikes me as the comment of the CEO of old Dell, not new Dell. The old Dell loved to take other companies' products and cut the cost out of them with an axe, then sell Dell versions at a substantial discount. The old Dell did this successfully with the Pocket PC, which was ripe for commoditization. It took a basic commodity design and made it for less...end of story.

In contrast, devices based on Palm OS compete primarily on their innovativeness and the degree with which they fit a particular customer segment for which they were designed. This requires a lot of marketing prowess and clever and skilled engineers gifted as much in industrial design as in electronics and manufacturing. These are the same skills that Dell now needs to compete with the consumer electronics giants like Sony, Philips, Samsung, etc. -- the consumer electronics industry is somewhat different from the personal computer industry (at least for now).

So, why is Mr. Dell speaking as if he were still king of the old Dell instead of visualizing the path of the new Dell? Considering that there is a lot more innovation going on in Palm OS than there is in Pocket PC (Palm OS 6 is due to be released in a month or two while very little has changed for Pocket PC in 3 years or so), why would Mr. Dell choose to stick with the commodity OS instead of pursuing products based on the innovative OS? Doesn't the latter better fit with the new Dell strategy, where innovation and creativity actually matter just as much as production management? Or, does Michael Dell secretly have doubts about his company's ability to compete in consumer electronics? What do you think?

Update: I just read this editorial at Brighthand, wherein Ed Hardy speculates, with good reason, that Microsoft may not be very enthusiastic about Pocket PC any more. If that is indeed the case, Dell definitely seems to have bet on the wrong horse.

Twice a year, the TOP500 project releases a list of the sites operating the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world. The latest edition of the high-performance computing compilation has just been released.

Retaining its number one position is the Earth Simulator Center, built by NEC in Yokohama, Japan, with a Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 teraflops per second. In second place is the ASCI Q machine at Los Alamos, at 13.88 TFlop/s.

The Earth Simulator System is used to model the atmosphere, ocean and solid earth, producing data useful for the prediction and analysis of natural disasters and environmental trends. When it was completed in early 2002, the Japanese machine was so powerful that it equalled the combined processing power of the 20 fastest American computers at the time.

IBM leads the list in terms of total installed performance, accounting for over 35% of the installed base of 528 TFlop/s, followed by HP at 22.7 % and NEC at 8.7%.

Intel processors power 38% of the listed systems, up from 11% only a year ago.

Fast Company describes why Wal-Mart may be the newest threat to American welfare. Per the magazine, Wal-Mart's massive buying power not only squeezes its suppliers, it also creates huge pressure on US employment in a variety of ways:

Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

The social costs of Wal-Mart's way of doing business, and the attitudes it reinforces in its customers, are threatening even more than just US employment, as the article plainly spells out.

Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost. Its unending focus on price underscores something that Americans are only starting to realize about globalization: Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: "We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions."

Earlier this year, National Public Radio (NPR), of which I'm a huge fan, ran a four-episode piece about Wal-Mart -- it was truly eye-opening. Give it a listen when you get a chance.

Opinion: I am personally mortified by the ongoing homogenization of the US through the increasing expansion of these "big box" stores like Wal-Mart, Target, K-mart, etc. I can honestly say that I've spent less than $100 over the past 3 years in a Wal-Mart. Support your locally owned businesses -- they need your help.

Thanks to boingboing.net for the lead.

While Sam pointed out some studies that suggest that gaming at work makes for happier, more productive workers, a new book suggests that web browsing while on-the-job may have similar benefits.

"According to research, doing personal Web surfing while on the job can lead to better time management, stress reduction, improvement of skill sets and helping to achieve a balance between work and personal life."

The book by Claire Simmers and Murugan Anandarajan was based on an analysis of employees who had Internet access at work. While it's doubtful that one study can resolve this, this and Sam's story point towards an interesting question: are we happier when our work and social lives interact or are we happier when we keep them separate? Common wisdom suggests the latter, but these studies might indicate that co-mingling of these different aspects of our lives makes us better workers.

Companies usually frown on their employees playing games on their computers. However, the BBC is reporting on a study that suggests that gaming at the office improves job satisfaction and even productivity.

In one of the first serious studies of the effects of game playing in the office, researchers from the University of Utrecht focussed on 60 employees from a Dutch insurance firm.

The employees were split into groups, some allowed to play games like Solitaire and Minesweeper for up to an hour a day, and others denied the chance.

The results, documented via logbooks and other performance metrics, showed that the gamers had higher job satisfaction and productivity ratings than the non-gamers. Researchers noted that the effect was similar to that of a "coffee break," which provides the opportunity for workers to recharge.

The findings were presented at the first ever Digital Games Research Association conference. The research team is carrying out further studies with a larger number of participants, and using more complex games.

Confusion over who makes what decisions within Microsoft's mobile division continues. It was reported on Thursday that Juha Christensen is leaving Microsoft.

Christensen is currently the Corporate Vice President in charge of Marketing for the Mobile Devices Division. According to his bio page, his duties at Microsoft include being "responsible for managing strategic partnerships, business development and product marketing for Microsoft’s mobility solutions. Products overseen by Christensen include Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphone 2002." Those who reported to Christensen will report to Pieter Knook, Senior VP of Microsoft's mobile and embedded devices unit.

Back in March, Steve Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer began to personally oversee Microsoft's Mobility group (as it was called then). While the division is making more money than it used to, it remains unprofitable now 7 years after its first products entered the mobile market.

So, was Christensen asked to step down, or did he truly see greener pastures at the unnamed "Silicon Valley-based mobile device start-up?" It seems hard to imagine leaving Microsoft if you're living up to Ballmer's expectations.

According to this story at CNET News, Samsung has big plans -- it wants to usurp Sony as the king of consumer electronics. The interview with Eric Kim, Executive VP of Samsung Electronics, is pretty interesting.

This is all really no surprise, however -- Samsung has stated this intent for a couple of years now in nearly every industry and market it competes in. As the article suggests, overcoming its relatively mediocre brand image will take a bit of work, and so far, I think Samsung's efforts have been working. Geeks who I talk to generally perceive Samsung products as good, if not great.

So, how do you perceive Samsung? Is it just a 2nd rate Korean company with a chip on its shoulder, or does Sony now have something to really worry about?

Flash: Microsoft Corp. is offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the authors of two computer virus programs.

Microsoft is offering $250,000 apiece for the writers of SoBig and MSBlast (aka Blaster or LovSan), which affected millions of computers through August and September.

Law enforcement officials are supporting the move, which would be unprecedented in cyber-crime. These rewards appear to be the first from a fund of $5M that Microsoft has put aside for this purpose.

According to the New York Times, while search company Google prepares for an IPO, it is also entertaining the possibility of a partnership - and even a merger - with Microsoft.

Google has noted that its preference is to take the IPO route, but it has been in talks with Microsoft over the last two months regarding possible alliances, including the possibility of a full acquisition.

Google is considering selling a 10-15% percent stake to the public, expected to raise more than $2 billion.

According to some sources, even if Google completes its IPO, Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing Google at a later date.

According to CNet some of the 1.2 million customers who recently installed a security package from Symantec can't use the software because of new antipiracy measures.

The Norton bundle - which includes Antivirus 2004, Internet Security 2004, Antispam 2004 and SystemWorks 2004 - asks for a product activation code each time the customer reboots the PC. In time, the software informs the customer that he has reached the activation limit, and simply stops functioning.

Del Smith, Symantec senior product manager, noted, "As of last night, our engineers were able to reproduce the problem on one type of machine. This really has been a top priority for our product activation development team."

Symantec estimates that nearly 4 million pirated copies of its programs are sold annually, and so installed technology in its newer products to combat this.

The company hopes to have a solution soon, but in the meantime has recommended that customers who encounter the problem contact them, and not restart their computers.

Trick or treat!

It's official... Shareholders have approved Palm's spinoff of its PalmSource operating system unit, and the acquisition of Handspring by its palmOne hardware unit.

PalmOne will be helmed by Todd Bradley, currently leading the Palm Solutions Group. Its Handheld Computing Solutions group will be led by Ken Wirt, currently a senior VP for Palm Solutions, and its Smart Phone Solutions group will be led by Ed Colligan, currently Handspring President.

Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm and currently Handspring's Chairman and Chief Product Officer, will be Chief Technology Officer for palmOne. Donna Dubinsky, Handspring CEO, joins palmOne's board of directors.

Under the stock swap formula put together earlier this year, Handspring's shareholders would own 32.2 per cent of the new company, and Palm's shareholders would own 67.8 percent.

Officials hope the new focus brought about by the PalmSource spinoff and Handspring acquisition will help it stay ahead of rivals in a shrinking market.

Here's something Ben Franklin missed, while he was flying his kite in the rain.

At the University of Alberta in Canada, engineers have discovered a new way to generate electricity.

Researchers Larry Kostiuk, Daniel Kwok and their team pumped water through tiny microchannels in a glass disk, and found that they could directly generate an electrical current. The research, published recently in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, is revolutionary.

A liquid in contact with a non-conducting solid surface creates a thin layer of charge. If the liquid is forced through a microchannel of about the same dimension, ions charged similarly to the surface are collected, while ions oppositely charged pass through the channel. The result: the channel becomes positive at one end and negative at the other - a battery.

The Canadian researchers used a 2-cm glass disk with 450,000 microchannels, each 10-16 microns across. Hydrostatic pressure was used to provide water flow, and generated a current of 1.5 microamps. The researchers used this electrokinetic effect to power blinking LED lights.

"This is the first new way to produce sustainable electricity in 160 years," says Kostiuk. "It allows for the direct conversion of energy of moving liquid to electricity with no moving parts and no pollution."

The microchannel work is the first new electricity-generation method since William Robert Grove - the father of the fuel cell - developed two electrochemical batteries in 1839.

Work continues to characterize the electrokinetic batteries, but already researchers are talking about applications including power sources for cellphones, calculators and other electronic devices.

In addition, Kostiuk notes: "This discovery could be a new alternative energy source to rival wind and solar power, although this would need huge bodies of water to work on a commercial scale."

In this mobile age characterized by the flavor-of-the-day feature, where the camcorder phone trumps the camera phone, it's refreshing to find a company whose business plan is based on the motto "Less is more."

The Cyclone phone, by New Horizons Technologies International (NHTI), is about as basic as you can get - but it works! It is recyclable and rechargeable, and in its guide as the 911+ emergency cell phone, can be powered by three regular AA batteries!

The five-ounce phone is packaged with nationwide minutes and retails for $39.99 (15 minutes); $49.99 (30 minutes); or $59.99 (60 minutes), and will be available at your local grocery, hardware store, or Kwikee Mart. Duracell, a major partner, will be marketing the phone alongside its battery displays.

The purchaser activates the phone himself by dialling a toll-free number. A live operator asks for his ESN (electronic serial number), and gives the customer his own phone number. Voila!

The low cost and simplicity means the phone will appeal to seniors and to parents with pre-teen children - who may need to phone home, but don't need to SMS. NHTI hopes people will buy the Cyclone like flashlights, and store them throughout the house, car, cottage, school locker or backpack....ready for use in the next emergency.

Some of our elected officials are caving into financially well-endowed lobbyists and waffling on the Number Portability Act that is slated to go into effect in November.

Consumer's Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, has a new website that makes it really easy to email your elected officials to let them know that you expect them to represent your wishes by keeping Number Portability on track.

EscapeCellHell.org is the place to go.

(Thanks, boingboing.net)

I'm still using two graphing calculators -- the Casio FX-7000 (pictured) and FX-8000G -- that I got in high school. If you don't know me personally, that was nearly 20 years ago. Given my obsession with the latest and greatest technology, why do I hang on to these relics? I've been wondering that myself and I've come up with two possible explanations.

First, since I used these calculators in high school and all through college (all 11 years of it), I learned a lot of the advanced math I know using these things. Therefore, I am intimately familiar with every shift-function and special calculation mode that they offer. I would hate to have to re-initiate that learning curve by trading these things in for a newer model, especially one that likely doesn't do all that much more than these do. So, my first hypothesis is that I'd like to stick with what's comfortable.

My second hypothesis is that calculators haven't really advanced all that far in the past 20 years. Sure, they have more memory and higher density displays than they used to (my two calculators have a combined total of 2 KB of RAM). But, given that 80% of my calculations these days involve the four basic operands (+ - x ÷), these tiny enhancements don't really help me that much.

Looking at these two possible reasons, I think the answer to why I don't upgrade is both, actually. What I have is good enough for my use and what is available doesn't provide compelling enhancements. So, what's different between the calculator industry and the consumer computer industry?

Well, I do believe that most of the computer gear I have is good enough -- there are relatively few problems or uses that I face on a regular basis that can't be solved with technology I already have. However, the PC industry is really good at coming up with technology that reflects compelling advances and interesting new capabilities. While the calculator industry is at the mercy of mathematicians to devise new functions (unlikely), the PC industry has basically an unbounded space in which to explore and expand their products' functionality. I think this is what causes me to be constantly intrigued by the latest and greatest consumer tech -- this sense of exploration and creativity that is associated with constant innovation.

An effective system for handling micropayments, or the ability to electronically pay someone really small sums (often in the pennies or fractions of a cent), has so far eluded designers. This has lead to a lot of really bad online revenue models being dreamed up to compensate for, or accommodate, this gap.

MIT Technology Review has a nice article on micropayments, "Selling Online Content—25 Cents at a Time". The piece reviews some new ideas, including a system offered by a company called Bitpass, that might eventually break down this barrier and let the easy flow of tiny sums of money finally happen as fluidly and efficiently as it should...and needs to.

Granted, when a robust micropayment system finally gets developed, you can probably kiss free content on the Internet good-bye. While it will take a while to get widely accepted, paying a 30th of a cent to read an article will likely become second nature and generally assumed. Heck, free content may even become the exception rather than the rule (wow...just like the real world) and advertising-based revenue models might start to seem charmingly anachronistic.

So, how much would you be willing to pay to get a weather forecast? 1 cent? 1/10th of a cent? 1/100th of a cent? Someday, payments like these might be automatically deducted from your "account," although figuring out what that "account" actually looks like will likely take a huge amount of work and coordination across the various financial industries. But, it will happen...sooner or later.

As commented on by TeleRead, the Washington Post has an intriguing article about the potential influence Microsoft wields in our educational institutions.

While some of the research money and gifts that Microsoft has provided to top-tier universities and individual faculty has enabled projects that would otherwise have been financially impossible, a growing number of concerns have been raised about the degree to which these gifts are reducing the range of ideas that students have access to during their education.

"The corporation...has also directly or indirectly influenced curriculums and research priorities, drawing an outcry from critics who say the donations are turning computer science departments into vocational schools where mastery of proprietary computer programs are valued over the study of theory."

As an academic, I'm very aware of the fine line that researchers tread between doing things that benefit their students in the short run (e.g., getting corporate donations) and doing things that potentially harm the pedagogy in the long run (e.g., not exposing students to a variety of ideas and theories). The size of Microsoft's war chest, which it achieved through its monopolistic practices, to pursue these relationships is stunning, as the article goes on to point out:

"Today, more than 2,000 professors from top-tier schools are considered close collaborators with Microsoft, accepting cash, software, hardware or other in-kind donations from the company for specific research projects or classes. ... Microsoft's total research and development budget -- $4.7 billion in 2003, $4.3 billion in 2002 and $4.4 billion in 2001 -- is estimated to be more than all the rest of the software industry spends together. ... In comparison, according to the National Science Foundation, computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was less than $1 billion."

Hmm...makes you wonder if www.microsoft.edu isn't just around the corner.

Why is it that folks are protesting the use of RFID technology by companies like Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and others?

In case you haven't heard of RFID, it stands for Radio Frequency ID. The technology behind RFID is still being tweaked, but the idea is pretty straightforward. RFID tags are simple circuits that have some small amount of information (a few kb at most) embedded in them. These small tags "identify" themselves and broadcast their information when they pass within a few yards or feet of special radio-frequency sensors. The tags are inert until they receive power from the reader's wavefield. These RFID tags could be placed on things (e.g., pallets of shampoo or individual bags of dog food) so that products can be tracked throughout the supply chain and more accurate information can be had about inventory levels, locations of products in stores and warehouses, etc. Additionally, they could possibly be used in metro or rail passes, hotel door keys, etc. -- wherever a unique identifier is needed.

According to stories like "Privacy advocates call for RFID regulation" (CNET News.com), there is an organized and growing opposition to the further development and deployment of this technology (which is already in use by the US military). The opposition claims that RFID offers the significant potential for companies to invade our personal privacy more easily and extensively than they already do.

Even though I fully agree that privacy is something we need to protect, the RFID technology does not pose a more serious threat than anything else out there today for a few reasons.

First, getting a chip to broadcast its coded information requires a sensor. Installing these sensors everywhere is both expensive and troublesome. While a supermarket or department store might be able to recoup this expense, most businesses would not. A restaurant, for example, would be unlikely to be able to tag much of its products because they're eaten on-site. Moreover, the restaurant isn't going to have much interest in RFID tags a patron may already have on his/her person when he/she walks in, so what would be its financial return for installing these sensors?

Second, these sensors don't contain any information about you, just the products you purchase. They don't contain your social security number, your age, your address, or your credit card number. A large number of US shoppers have willingly signed up for discount cards at their neighborhood grocery stores. These cards effectively generate the same information that the RFID system would -- what you buy, when, and where. Obviously, a large number (perhaps a majority?) of US shoppers are willing to trade some privacy for cheaper groceries. While it's true that some tags can be re-written wirelessly (perhaps even using PDA or handheld computers), it's unlikely that tags on standard consumer items like toothpaste would have this capability.

Finally, RFID represents a potentially huge improvement in our ability to reduce prices and improve availability of the goods in our stores. By having better information about when and where products are at any given time, supply chain managers can make better decisions about purchasing, stock levels, renewal policies, etc., etc. Personally, if RFID helps the grocery store improve the likelihood that it has the products I want when I want them on its shelves, then I'm all for giving them some additional information.

Maybe it's just that I don't have anything to hide. Maybe I don't really care that anybody knows what I buy. Or maybe I'm just not paranoid enough for my own good. What do you think?

SCO is still finding it hard to be completely open regarding the portions of Linux code that it says infringe on its Unix copyrights. Some limited parties have been permitted to review what SCO calls the "offending code," but have been required to sign highly restrictive NDAs. However, it seems that the only folks who are swayed by this "evidence" are ardent SCO supporters -- hardly the group that SCO needs to convince at this point in time.

What is perhaps the most troubling is the lame legal tactics that SCO is trying to use to support its claims. By attacking the GPL (GNU General Public License) directly, SCO seems to be both waging a bigger war than it can readily take on (in poker, that's called "bluffing") and making a potentially bigger mess of everything than if it just stuck to claims that it might actually be able to defend. If SCO's counsel is as misguided as it seems, then we may not have to wait much longer for this to all go away.

Also, given IBM's countersuit, and the billions (of both dollars and lawyers) it and other affected entities have to fight SCO, I can't seem to help thinking that this battle isn't going to last much longer. The facades have come down and we now are able to see that SCO's posturing is little more than just that. Hopefully, SCO stockholders will sell while the getting is still good, for once the tide has obviously turned, SCO's stock price will plummet to near zero.

Update: Good discussion at Slashdot.

It appears that a hacker was able to break through security at Crutchfield, the online and catalog electronics dealer. I received the following email just this morning (the ____ contained my new temporary password). It appears that no credit card information was made available to the hacker, but other personal ID info was.

"Dear Craig Froehle:

Crutchfield has discovered a breach of our web site security
and we believe your Crutchfield "Your Account" information may
have been compromised. The "Your Account" information may
include Name, Address, E-mail Address, Phone Number,
Vehicle Type, and Wish List information. We do not store
financial information in "Your Account".

As a precaution, we have temporarily disabled the order history
on our website and have reset your account password.

Your new password is __________.

At your earliest possible convenience, please login to the
site and update your password.

Please accept our apologies.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Crutchfield Corporation"

That's a pretty big-time operation to get hacked, but at least they were smart enough to keep my credit card info out of harm's way. Well, this time, at least. Yeesh.

You know a technology has hit mainstream when big companies want to control it. Such is the state of affairs of RSS, the family of formats used by bloggers and news websites (including GearBits) to syndicate their content. RSS stands for either "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication," depending on who you ask.

This story on CNET News.com describes the current and escalating battle over control of RSS and/or the technology that may replace it. It's certainly telling how popular the RSS concept has become when organizations like IBM, the W3C, and the IETF are all concerned about it.

We'll definitely keep an eye on this, and we'll hope the various entities keep their heads on their shoulders and don't screw up what's turned out to be a really nice and easy-to-implement concept...at least for us hacks.

Acacia Research Corporation has won an early legal victory regarding a patent it holds for streaming compressed media (audio and/or video). If it holds up, this could just gut many online media sources, ranging from cable providers, like Time Warner and Comcast, to established web giants, like AOL and Yahoo!, to other huge corporations that employ the streaming of compressed media signals.

The USPTO (US Patent & Trademark Office) has had its head up its you-know-what for so long regarding patents related to inf