Service Provider Journal

InfoWorld hangs in there, online

Congratulations to InfoWorld for making a successful transition from print to online. Some of the editorial nowadays strikes me as a little silly (the recent April Fools stuff fell flat for me) but it's great that the InfoWorld editorial brand lives on in this new age.

No more GYM, just GM?

I had a funny thought: Google-Yahoo-Microsoft may become Google-Microsoft, which when shortened is GM, and of course what's good for GM is good for the country. :)

Wiimodeling?

After Thanksgiving dinner tonight at a family friend's house, out came a Nintendo Wii on the big screen, and two guests, teenage brothers, went at it for the first time with gusto. Someone made a comment about needing a room big enough to play these increasingly athletic video games plus the big screen they deserve, and I think I coined a term. Don't thing remodeling, think Wiimodeling.

8GB iPhone out of stock for today at Apple Store Palo Alto

I happened to be in the Apple Store in Palo Alto at around 3 p.m. today when they ran out of 8GB iPhones. I was just there to observe the general frenzy, and there will be more 8GB iPhones there probably tomorrow, but I just wanted to note that not only AT&T stores are running out of iPhones during the day.

Yahoo! privatizes my local park

411sync locates various services in your zip code by texting keywords and the zip code into a Web page or into your mobile phone. But it's not perfect. "Parking 94705" found a bunch of auto parking operators via Yahoo! Local, but one of the results was Willard Park, a public park in Berkeley, California. The fault here appears to be Yahoo's. If you click on "hours of operation" for Willard Park, one ad-selling question it asks on the results page is, "Own this business? Guaranteed top placement." Great, now the local public park has been privatized by Yahoo!

Now THIS is a conference grid

A random piece of e-mail sent to me today directed my attention to the 121st Audio Engineering Society convention. Pretty interesting stuff, but what really rocks are the pop-up session descriptions built into the conference schedule grid on the Web site. I'm guessing this is all straightforward Javascript, but wow!

Hold-music podjacking

There's a new form of podjacking. It happens when the podcaster, during a live recording, invites guests to call in to a conference call, the call starts and is being recorded, and then one of the participants puts the conference call on hold. Hold music commences, and the podcast degrades into unlistenability. Jerry Michalski experienced this on his Jan. 23, 2006 podcast, which you can find on this page. A show two weeks later was "rescheduled as Call 75 due to 'music on hold' issues." There's a business opportunity for the confererencing service that can automatically detect and mute hold music.

Beating the Windows title bar blues

Michelle Johnson has the answer for your Windows title bar blues, when a window's title bar has wandered up past the top of your screen. Bravo! Sometimes, just opening a new browser window was causing these windows to appear. It's great to have a way to drag the windows down as necessary.

In case this link ever breaks, the answer is: Alt-spacebar-M-down arrow.

Upcoming.org should be upcoming.com

Followup to my previous post here: Upcoming.org should be upcoming.com. Especially because Yahoo! owns upcoming.org now. (Upcoming.com is currently parked at a domain squatter.)

How should for-profit .orgs identify themselves?

While reading the S.F. Weekly's profile of Craigslist, I came across this passage from author Ryan Blitstein:

As a private for-profit, Craigslist doesn't have to publicly disclose anything. SF Weekly parent company New Times doesn't release many financial details, either.  Newmark, though, views his creation as something different. "We do a better job as a nominal for-profit," he says, "but we exist in a category that doesn't really exist in the law."

That "category" allows Newmark to keep the domain Craigslist.org, a name that gives the false impression that the site is a nonprofit, by using ".org," an extension almost exclusively used by nonprofit companies and foundations. Craigslist's marketing materials call this "a symbol of our service mission and non-corporate culture." (Craigslist.com, which the company also owns, draws far less traffic.) It permits Newmark to use the word "non-commercial" twice on Craigslist's "Mission and History" page, and to bury the phrase "No charges, except for job postings" in the third line from the bottom. It means establishing a separate nonprofit, the Craigslist Foundation, which trains other nonprofits in marketing, technology, and fundraising skills, but makes no grants, has no endowment, and charges for many of its training events. This year, Craigslist will provide less than half of the foundation's $240,000 budget.

There's at least one other example of a famous for-profit .org. Slashdot.com redirects to Slashdot.org. Alexa currently ranks Slashdot as #849 in traffic rank. (There are only a handful of non-profit .orgs in Alexa's Top 500.)

Should Craigslist and Slashdot be using .org? Probably not. But how many average readers are really influenced unduly by the .org label? Don't look to the caretakers of .org to help.

I, like Blitstein, do find Craigslist's use of the term "non-commercial" to be rather problematic.

Technorati tag: Craigslist

White Sox celebrate!

Congratulations to the Chicago White Sox for winning a World Series for the first time in 88 years. I had a dream the night of Game One that compelled me to watch the rest of the series. My mother's family came from the south side of Chicago and were always White Sox fans.

Second anniversary

Service Provider Journal is two years old today. Here are some of the more popular posts over the past two years:

Viewpoint: AOL's force-installed spyware (33 comments)
Skype license agreement (4 comments)
Naked Netflix envelopes

Electricity is chatty, protection is profitable

Spotted in an Audio Advisor catalog: "Seen on a laboratory oscilliscope, your AC line current carries more signals than a long-distance telephone line." Years ago, when I was at InfoWorld, I was perhaps the only editor who would return calls from folks like American Power Conversion. Not that I ever wrote much about their products. My editors didn't care about uninterruptable power supplies and such. But companies like APC have had the last laugh, profiting greatly from the idiosyncracies of our electrical grid.

Moved by Live 8

This morning, I "tuned into" the Live 8 Webcast, to check out the quality of service of such a massive event, but otherwise expecting a somewhat cynical reaction to all the hype. But then Bob Geldof told the story of a woman who he said was 10 minutes away from starvation back when Live Aid took place. Today, she's just gotten an agricultural degree in Ethiopia. Then he brought her on stage, she said a few words of thanks and encouragement, and Madonna took her hand and sang "Like A Prayer" with full gospel choir. At that point, I wasn't thinking about the excellent 480Kbps video stream I was receiving. I was truly, deeply moved by what Geldof had achieved. (Of course, I'm especially happy I don't have to be parked in front of a television set to be so moved.)

Naked Netflix envelopes

Recently I received two DVDs from Netflix with "naked" return envelope addresses. Instead of a bar-coded sticker containing the return address, these envelopes simply gave a generic return address. Several months earlier, one of my movies never made it back to Netflix, or so I thought. Now, I wondered how Netflix would know it had received my DVD if the usual return address barcode was missing. Maybe I was about to send two more such DVDs into the bin at Netflix? So I sent off a question to Netflix customer support. A few days later, I received the following reply:

We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with comments about our mailers. We are continually testing new designs and materials to find the optimum packaging for our DVDs. We appreciate your continued support.

I scrutininzed the envelopes in question once again. They didn't appear to contain any hidden RFID tags or other secret sauce. So, as a precaution, I wrote my email address on slips of paper and stuck them inside the envelopes. I also scribbled this address on the outside of the envelopes in the usual return address spot. That ought to identify these as being from me, if nothing else will.

Then, today, I received my next DVD. Sure enough, the old barcoded return address sticker was there again. I'm guessing I was prey to poor quality control at Netflix, rather than some R&D experiment.

UPDATE: A month later, all my Netflix envelopes are arriving "naked". I've just gotten used to scribbling my email address where a return address would go. I wonder what's really going on here?

Portable DVD players: Doomed?

Last month I scurried around trying to purchase a portable DVD player for a long plane flight involving my young daughter. The purchase process was a semi-grueling experience under a tight deadline. First I had high ambitions, trying to find a unit that could be configured for Region 0 (in other words, all regions). But after a while it was simply a scramble for the proper form factor. My hopes were raised when I found that there is a standard form factor for some batteries for portable DVD players (addressing a pet peeve of mine about electronic devices). But I found one such unit couldn't reliably keep the battery attached in regular use, so I dismissed that hope. Documentation on these players also was consistently poor. Finally, at Wal-Mart of all places, I found a suitable device: a Magnavox with an 8-inch screen. (Oddly, the firmware seems to support changing the player's region, but this feature doesn't appear to work.)

There are signs that all is not well in portable DVD-land. First bit of evidence: At Target, I bought a really good-looking device, took it home and found I couldn't even charge it. (Most of these require charging before first use.) I took it back to Target and the saleswoman informed me that all the units in stock were similiarly D.O.A. "I don't know why we stock it," she said with a shrug. Second bit of evidence: At a nearby K-Mart, all portable DVD players were sold out on clearance recently. There are no plans to restock them.

My theory: There's a mismatch between the DVD player and portability. The solution is to evolve the iPod and its ilk to provide a hard-drive-based solution, provided the device makers can negotiate the DRM minefield. CES was an early indication that this is happening, but it's always interesting to see an early inflection point. Buggy portable DVD players could be it.

Product of the year: 4th-gen 40GB iPod

I haven't been involved in any Product of the Year hype since my Byte Magazine days. But I'll make an exception for 2004 for the 4th-generation, 40GB iPod. This is one amazing piece of technology. Something tells me that this particular iteration of the iPod is the one that really puts heavy-duty digital media into the mainstream. I cannot believe how much audio it stores. It's unlocked a closetful of audio CDs that I never had the time nor space to sift through. And the Click Wheel is truly a thrilling way to whiz through hundreds or even thousands of listings. And no, Apple didn't pay me a red cent or even send me a loaner. I shelled out hard cash for it.

To me, this iPod represents a pinnacle of one kind of digital media; more than ever, my ears are engaged as my eyes and hands work on book research. Podcasts and my own CD audio collection are available upon a whim, anywhere I want, virtually any time I want, and I control the playlist, not some radio station manager.

I doubt the coming deluge of portable media players will earn such plaudits from me, despite their ability to break broadcast and cable TV's media stranglehold. Probably because I think there's too much TV watching already. At least when it's audio-only, one has time to still write and produce. If life's one constant TiVO-ed video stream, it becomes a constant distraction as well as a new communications medium.

Google Alerts: Best way to track the ill-fated Las Vegas monorail

As CES approaches, I've found a good use for Google Alerts: Tracking the term "Las Vegas Monorail." Every day, I get an email from Google with the day's news stories about this newly-built but ill-fated transit system, shut down for three months due to mechanical problems (parts were falling off!). Officials still have no idea when it will open. They've got less than a month before CES. Boy would it be great to have it running by then.

Watching EULAs change with ChangeNotes

While digging through some old email, I found a followup to my often-visited Skype end-user licensing agreement (EULA) post in September 2003. It turns out there is a free Web service called ChangeNotes that will watch any Web page for changes. EULAs (like Skype's) are subject to change at any time, but who has the time, energy or smarts to try to keep tabs on this? Using ChangeNotes looks like a welcome alternative to waiting for each Web site to implement an RSS feed for the page containing its EULA. I haven't tried ChangeNotes, and I suspect RSS/Atom is a superior solution, where it's implemented, to having a third-party solution. My thanks to a reader I'll refer to as "Robert" for the link to ChangeNotes.

Javoedge skirts a trademark lawsuit?

If I told you there was a Web site called Javoedge that offered accessories for mobile phones and PDAs, would you think it officially had something to do with Java? You'd be wrong, and Javoedge might be flirting with a trademark lawsuit from Sun. Hey, if Lindows was infringing, so's Javoedge.

MoveOn: Treat the voters with kid gloves

I don't like unnecessary phone calls any more than anyone else, so it was with some trepidation over the past week that I volunteered to help out with MoveOn's Leave No Voter Behind initiative, a get-out-the-vote and pursuade-the-undecideds push by the MoveOn PAC.

I was also fascinated to see how the Web could be used to mobilize a volunteer phone-bank army, and indeed the Leave No Voter Behind Web pages do a servicable job of presenting volunteers with names and phone numbers of swing-state voters to call. After having made many of these calls, however, I have some bones to pick, probably with all get-out-the-vote efforts, but certainly this one.

1. Don't badger your loyal base over and over again once you have their support. MoveOn, for example, changed their script to urge volunteers like myself to keep asking for more, such as an email address, what time the voter plans on voting on Tuesday, whether the voter would like to volunteer to help MoveOn, etc. When I signed up for this effort, I expected to spend more time persuading undecideds, not pestering the loyal base.

2. Do ask early if the voter's already voted. The MoveOn script never does. It's a fair, early question in this day of numerous absentee ballots.

3. If the voter indicates that they are supportive and want to be left alone, make sure your Web page has an entry, "Stop bugging them." Otherwise, I fear they'll keep getting called over and over again. The same goes double for any undecided voters who ask not to be called again. I'd be more comfortable with MoveOn's effort if I could assure anyone I call that they will not be contacted again during the duration of the campaign, if that is their wish. One can really hear the exasperation of many swing-state voters at this point, because of the number of phone calls they must be receiving.

I also found that the MoveOn script had me asking some voters if they were still planning on voting for Kerry, based on some previous call from a MoveOn volunteer, yet some of these voters said they had never indicated they supported Kerry. Perhaps the voters were lying, but I'd be inclined to point a finger at the MoveOn database.

All in all, there were enough problems and shortcomings from this system that I'm not inclined to make any more calls for MoveOn before Tuesday. It's a delicate thing, trying to data-mine your way to an election victory. Voters need to be treated with kid gloves. By the way, the same rules hold true for anyone marketing any service or product.

Fan clubs grow up

Someday, everyone and everything may have its own fan club. At some point, being in a fan club has passed from being a sign of social ostracism to a sign of higher-order communal living on the Internet. Need proof? Try this.

1950s-era kitchen computer

The dream of a useful, affordable computer in the kitchen is an old one. We're still waiting.

Eliyon: The ultimate biz alumni finder

Marcus Zillman points to the ultimate business alumni finder, powered by Eliyon Technologies. This is good enough that I could see an Eliyon search box beneath the Google search box that appears on so many Web sites these days.

One-year anniversary

Service Provider Journal is one year old today. I've actually been blogging much longer, but the blogs that used to be hosted at Userland and Stardust.com are long gone from the Web, even from the Internet Archive, so you'll have to take my word for it :)

eICUs: Another challenge/opportunity for health care

How do you think intensive care units (ICUs) are responding to the nationwide shortage of physicians in the U.S.? Some are turning to "eICUs" where a physician at a remote location has access to many patients' vital stats and charts, can see what's going on in their hospital room, and talk as needed with patients or on-site nurses and other staff via a network. This ZDNet video report describes it, and one physician says every doctor who's used it has a story about how eICUs save lives. What the segment doesn't address is whether eICUs allow hospitals to satisfy legal requirements for care without having the needed physicians on-site. Anyone out there familiar with the laws and standards governing ICUs? The segment also doesn't say if these eICUs use the public Internet. The hospitals doing this must already have a fallback plan in place in case of network interruptions.

Digital Living -- for a price

I've been waiting for a broad standards-based push in the home networking space, from a group called the Digital Home Working Group. Now they've renamed themselves the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), reflecting the move of media and IT to an essentially mobile, people-centric future (which Marc Canter would call a digital lifestyle aggregator). Now DLNA has published a set of interoperability guidelines, but press accounts are sketchy. Quoting EE Times: "The requirements, drawn mainly from existing PC and Internet standards, include support for wired or wireless Ethernet, Internet Protocol, universal plug-and-play software and JPEG, LPCM and MPEG-2 as default image, audio and video formats." This requirements document will cost non-members $500. That sort of price ensures that the process by which DLNA builds its design guidelines will be much more closed than anything the IETF does (its RFP drafts are freely available via a mailing list). DLNA better move fast in its cloistered efforts, or the Net will route around it and arrive at standards in usual smart mob fashion. Consumers and the vast majority of service providers will demand nothing less.

Giving away the car, charging for the services

Seth Godin notes that folks are paying $400 for a phone to get a Bluetooth car. That brings to mind last week's revelation that a major carmaker told Sun it could afford to give away a car in exchange for $220 in services.

eBay for a song

Music video of the month goes to On eBay by Chumbawamba.

Moblogs from U.S. soldiers

Here's a form of expression that's probably too new to be fake: "moblogs" from U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq. Their words and pictures carry an immediacy and intimacy missing from the mass media. Let's hope that as governments figure out how to subvert this form of communication, some mechanism emerges to determine which voices are trustworthy. (via Joi Ito)

GPR$

My sympathy to Joi Ito, who ran up a $3500 GPRS bill in a single month. Another sign of just how out of touch the carriers are with the economics of the Internet age. This, too, shall be routed around.

Slashdotted (in comments) regarding Skype

The beta release of Skype for the Pocket PC prompted a Slashdot post and instantly a comment about Skype's potential for adware/spyware hijinks. Just like that, my analysis of Skype's license agreement got Slashdotted. To Skype's credit, I've heard nothing fishy out of Skype in this regard since last September.

Palm Tungsten C Wi-Fi update: Wow!

I read here that Palm had recently updated the Wi-Fi drivers on the Tungsten C. I installed them (collectively known as Tungsten C Update 2.0) this morning, and wow! Compared to what shipped with the unit last July, the Wi-Fi feature has gone from borderline useable to lightning-fast! Highly recommended for all Tungsten C users.

Digiticians? We can do better than that

Slashdot reports that home-computing troubleshooters-for-hire have been dubbed "digiticians" in a story by the Boston Globe. Stewart Alsop used to call these folks (like Dan Seaone, who I used to work with at the InfoWorld Test Center) as "digital gardeners." Whatever you call them, I still see great prospects for ISPs that can recommend or supply them to frustrated homeowners trying to make an increasing array of personal and home gadgets work with the Internet. But c'mon, we can do better than "digiticians."

Thought: Data mining to ferret out online tax evaders?

Wired News: "Officials from several states said they expect few, if any, tax returns to be audited -- even if a taxpayer claims zero liability." I suspect this is because of lack of manpower. My question: Will state taxation agencies employ data mining technology to sift through routine examination of taxpayers' credit card records with the aim of uncovering unpaid taxes? Or are there privacy laws or norms in place that will prevent that? Put another way, why should any law-abiding citizens pay these taxes if such tax-evader-finding methods are not contemplated?

Online sales taxes: What about eBay?

A year ago, e-Commerce Times wasn't all that concerned about online sales taxes: "Once thought to be a monster waiting in the shadows, poised to bludgeon online commerce, Internet sales tax is proving to be more of a nuisance than a threat." But, the story concludes: "With pure-play giants like Amazon and eBay still not on the sales tax bandwagon, the trend's impact on the overall e-commerce sector will remain muted. After all, sales on eBay, where tax collection would be complicated by the nature of the consumer-to-consumer sales model, are expected to generate nearly $2 billion in revenue for the auction giant this year." I sold some items on eBay last year, and as long as eBay doesn't ask me to charge state sales tax during the process, I am going to place the burden for paying that tax on the recipients, many of whom live where the tax isn't collected and therefore have no burden at all.

Unpaid state online sales tax headache reaches NY, CA taxpayers

Here's a tax-time question: Come April 15, how many Americans will be unlawfully not paying state sales tax on items purchased online? (Sometimes also referred to as a "use tax.") Even if you want to do the right thing, it brings a whole new level of headache to preparing your state income taxes, if you're unlucky enough to live in New York or California, which started demanding the sales taxes this year. For instance, I live in California; TurboTax's online help states that taxes must be paid on "items that would have been taxable in a California store." Seems straightforward enough. But tell me, if I purchase software or music that's delivered to me digitally, is that something that could be purchased in a California store? I guess it depends. That's what some e-merchants must think too. For instance, Digital River charges and collects for sales tax if you purchase software on tangible media (i.e. CD-ROM) but they don't if you purchase the exact same software as a downloadable file. But at least in California, there's no distinction made in the state's lengthy Exemptions and Exclusions document. My guess is the state wants the tax regardless. The AP story could be largely bluster. New York State officials are threatening to "potentially face audits that could uncover credit card statements and mounting tax debt." But a credit card statement by itself doesn't help auditors find unpaid sales tax. As I've discovered, you have to check with the individual online, phone or mail-order merchant, and watch your receipts, to find out if they've collected the tax. Many merchants, including Amazon, do not. Mr. and Mrs. Customer, you're on your own, and good luck.

Ode to a rice cooker

My family now owns its first product that uses fuzzy logic (invented right here in Berkeley), and it's a winner. The Micom Fuzzy Rice Cooker and Warmer by Zojirushi is an amazing gadget that produces perfectly-cooked rice. (My family eats a lot of rice.) This is the first product we've purchased in a very long time that's actually made in Japan, with some appropriately cute touches: The cooker plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" at the beginning of the cooking cycle, and a song called "Amaryllis" when the rice is ready. (There are some general guidelines for how long it takes the rice to cook, but the cooker, not you, decides when it's done!) Then it keeps the rice warm and still perfectly edible all day if you want. Cleanup is, as they say, a breeze. If every computing and information service delighted us as much as this rice cooker, Nicholas Carr would have a lot less to write about. (UPDATE: I had previously linked to an older model. This post now points to the newer model that we purchased, which among other things, has "advanced" fuzzy logic, and may cook more kinds of rice than previous models.) (FURTHER UPDATE: I think I found out where the fuzzy logic comes into play. You can program this thing to finish cooking the rice at a particular time, and it figures out what time to start cooking it. Darn, I'm going to have to read the manual to find out more!)

Silas Warner remembered

From the Usenet world comes word of the passing of Silas Warner. I knew Silas in three very different lifetimes. First, when I was just starting to write about technology, I knew him as the creator of Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple II, and co-founder of Muse Software of Baltimore. Certainly this game paved the way for a variety of things to follow, including the cultural touchstone game Doom. Next, when I found myself living in Baltimore and running Microcosm, an early computer game newsletter. By then, Silas had moved on to Microprose Software. I still remember seeing Silas in the crowd on the opening day of Owings Mills Mall, at the time suburban Baltimore's newest indoor shopping terrarium. Finally, most surprisingly, when I moved back to the Bay Area, I found that Silas had preceeded me by two months, and that we both shared a passion for all things concerning public transportation, and I again found myself saying hello in passing. Silas was always a thoughtful individual who had quite a range of interests. His Web page remains online. I can't say I knew Silas well, but the very fact we kept crossing paths certainly compels me to remember him.

See's candy offline

I just tried to use the store locator at www.sees.com and the See's Candy Web site is DOWN. That's gotta hurt two days before the biggest day of the year for the candy company. UPDATE: About two hours later, the site's back up.

Broadband is just too slow

Michael Topic: "Broadband as we know it is a transitional technology, designed to squeeze the last drops out of the investment in the last mile, not to satisfy real consumer needs. And it’s just too slow." But just what is it we know? For instance, how fast is broadband? And how reliable? It's hard to have a real debate if the subject in question is so nebulous. I've been harping on this for a while.

Dialing 911? Beware cell phone busy signals

The SF Chronicle: "The woman called 911 on her cell phone, but since 911 calls from mobile phones are routed to a CHP dispatch center in Vallejo that is often overwhelmed by call volume, she was not able to get through...the woman then drove about a mile to the nearest fire station and reported the blaze, Shew said." While the telcos complain about voice over IP services lacking 911 capability, aren't these cell phone busy signals a bigger problem in the real world?

Mobile video phones: Trouble for liars

Broadband Reports: "According to this Silicon.com editorial (spotted via Techdirt), third generation hand-held video-phones will never take off, because people won't be able to lie about where they're calling from." I wonder if the day will come when a video phone will be able to simulate an "alibi image" behind the caller's head, as well as artificial ambient sound?

US falling further behind in broadband

USA Today: "Despite its economic and political might, the USA is falling behind other nations in arming consumers and small businesses with a key economic tool: high-speed Internet access, also known as broadband. The USA ranks 11th worldwide in broadband use, according to a recent United Nations report, behind such places as South Korea, Hong Kong and Iceland." But once again, don't look in this story for proof that unfettered telcos will be the way we catch up. Instead, look to substantial government investment.

Verizon makes a landslide ten times worse

Like many service providers, Verizon answers to many masters. However, government authorities between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, California had a heck of a time reaching local Verizon officials as they were trying to reopen the vital Highway 17 after a landslide on January 1. "The CHP and Caltrans spent four hours trying to contact Verizon's Los Gatos maintenance office, but were only able to reach the company's Florida office. While that office gave the OK for Caltrans to cut the fiber optic line, Caltrans officials declined, fearing Old San Jose Road area residents would lose their phone service." (via BATN)

Motorola Bluetooth speaker phone

At last, someone has announced a Bluetooth speakerphone. It's Motorola, which offered a sneak peek back in December at the Bluetooth SIG meeting in San Jose. Here's the press release. I've scanned a lot of CES press coverage, and haven't seen anything anywhere about the Motorola announcement so far.

Healthy living is AWOL in CEA New Year's resolution list -- and at CES

Press release: CEA Survey Indicates Americans Will Use Technology to Help Fulfill Their 2004 New Year's Resolutions. Quote: "Consumer electronics empower consumers, helping them improve productivity, organize and communicate better, and enhance their lifestyles." Noticeably lacking in this list of resolutions is anything health-related, such as weight loss or exercise. Later on in the release, a CEA poll even lists "lose weight" as the top consumer resolution. But unlike January 2003, there are no sessions at CES 2004 on using consumer electronics to improve (or even monitor) one's health. CEA and its members need to heavily promote health education as an application, instead of being open to criticism that it has helped turned many Americans into obese couch potatoes.

Returning or exchanging gifts from online Web sites

My latest story for PC World: Tips to Return or Swap Online Purchases, including how to avoid the dreaded "restocking fee."

Smartphone rebates: There may be a catch

Jupiter's Avi Greengart asks how Amazon and AT&T Wireless can afford to give away Motorola Smartphones. Part of the answer is that the customer pays up front for the phone and then each party sends a rebate check. I've heard there are complaints about how long it's taking for some Amazon rebates to reach customers. And even if the lag time is only a few weeks, during that time, you can bet that Amazon and AT&T Wireless are enjoying the use of that money.

Encrypted cell phone calls: A tipping point?

Martin Geddes: "Encrypted telephony being demanded by enterprises will be the bullet in the PSTN’s head. At present, an insider can easily tap into the corporate LAN and see all voice traffic on a converged network." It's not clear to me why the PSTN can't provide this capability, but I'll guess it's because encryption can't be done cost-effectively any way other than via IP.

Where's BoingBoing.net?

What on earth has become of BoingBoing.net?

Keep an eye on Feedster

Scott Rafer, who spoke at several ISPCONs representing WiFinder, became CEO of Feedster last month. (WiFinder is still going strong and Rafer remains its chairman.) Feedster is a company to watch, and Rafer possesses double-doses of insight into what's driving three of the most powerful technology advances this year: Internet search engines, Wi-Fi and Web services. ISPs would be well-advised to add Feedster search boxes next to their Google search boxes.

Consumer group tackles QoS

Enterprises don't agree on a definition of what Quality of Service means, since each has different needs. Thus, it's mostly amusing to see a U.K. consumer group trying to wrestle with the term "broadband" and try to attach specificity to it.

Any Bluetooth speaker phones?

My wife, who's usually ahead of me on the gadget curve, is contemplating buying a Sony/Ericsson mobile phone from AT&T Wireless. The phone sports Bluetooth, but we're disappointed that we haven't found any Bluetooth speakerphone accessories. Our current Motorola V60 phones have a very nice speakerphone which we share between us as needed. Googling "Bluetooth speakerphones" doesn't yield much. I see some noise this morning about Nokia's Bluetooth Car Kit, but no sign of a speakerphone there either. Wasn't Bluetooth going to be the way in-car speakerphones communicated with next-generation cell phones?

Serving up large audio files

The process of hosting the audio from Dewayne's ISPCON keynote has me thinking a lot about how to host large audio or video files. It's possible that I'll find a free home for this sort of audio, but in the meantime, I don't operate my own Web server -- yet. Glob@t.com offers one of the best prices, $7.50 a month for a gigabyte, with a 50-gigabyte data transfer limit. Currently, I've got Dewayne's talk parked at Rawbandwidth.com, which hosts my personal Web site. The quotas are much smaller than Glob@t's -- 75MB of disk space, 1GB of Web/FTP data serving per month -- and I'd have to pay another $10 a month for another 100MB of disk space. Turning to TypePad, which hosts this journal, for $14.95 a month I'm getting another 200MB of disk space, plus 5GB of bandwidth per month, and I'm sure I'll want every bit of that for journal content, including photos. My point in telling you all this is that it's still a challenge for independent content publishers to easily publish large audio files without running their own Web servers. And once you run your own Web server, you also have to be able to roll with the inevitable punches of securing said servers and protecting them from nastiness such as denial-of-service attacks. With the continuing plummeting cost of storage hardware, I'm sure two trends will continue. First, storage hosting costs will continue to fall. In addition, we'll see continuing adoption of peer-to-peer file transfer technologies such as BitTorrent, which Dewayne first alerted me about early this year. The real question is whether bandwidth costs will continue to drop or not. That's where CENIC's 1 gigabit or bust initiative, which Dewayne spoke about, is so important.

ISPCON reflections

ISPCON Fall 2003 was an energized success. The old-timers still remember the "bubble" shows, with car giveaways and extravagant parties, but the real geezers remember before 1998 on back to its origins in 1993 as BBSCON, and they agree the show has returned to sustainable health. After Penton's wrong-headed decision to rename the show virtually anything but ISPCON, and a crew of planners including myself had to settle on the ill-advised Service Networks moniker -- the conference and show have returned to vitality under the original brand, which now incorporates the very important addition of wireless ISPs. An advisory board helps steer content now. The next event is scheduled for April 13-15, 2004, at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Washington, DC, a venue I remember well from my days as InfoWorld bureau chief in those parts. I've got a scrapbook of photos from the Fall 2003 show. Wednesday represented my last day with any official role to play in the conference, from which I took a sabbatical in August to focus on the two books I'm writing. Wednesday was also an interesting day because I purchased a Sony IC Recorder ICD-ST-10 to record interviews next week at the Microsoft PDC conference. This recorder captures 41 minutes of stereo sound, or 125 minutes of high-quality mono sound. As a test, I captured Dewayne Hendricks' closing-day ISPCON keynote with a $10 microphone draped over one of the PA speakers. It sounds quite good. Go get a cup of coffee while the MP3 downloads -- it's 40 megabytes, representing 45 minutes of audio.

ISPCON starts Monday

internet.com: The Feeling Is Back At ISPCON. "'I'm seeing many more ISPs delve into wireless broadband as many dialup customers are leery of relying on the LECs and cable companies as their ISP,' California ISP Association (CISPA) Executive Director Mike Jackman told internetnews.com. 'Remember that two-thirds of Internet users are still using dialup." It's still early days for independent ISPs, but eternal vigilance, as always, will dog their efforts to reach a wider audience. The same forces that can prompt Microsoft's Robert Scoble to crow "tell your mom that she needs to get Mozilla because it's 'standards compliant' and see the stares you get" is at work when you're trying to convince mom to sign up with one of CISPA's member companies instead of SBC. It's up to the independent ISPs, as with the independent browser makers, to sell themselves to a public that, in Howard Pearlmutter's words, often doesn't know what it wants.

Presenting a companion journal

I was inspired this morning to launch a second journal, a companion to this one. TypePad makes it ridiculously easy to do this. I don't yet know how to provide anyone with a unified RSS feed to both journals (as Doug Kaye does via his Blogarithms feed) so if you want the RSS syndicated feed for both, you'll need to subscribe to each one. But you'll see links to both journals at the upper right. Find out why I think service providers and information managers these days are just two sides of the same coin.