I work mostly from a home office, and I've often wondered about applications on my work laptop. In particular, I've wondered if it's cool with the company that I install some of my own favorite software, from music players to picture editors.

Is my IT department OK with those additions, I've often thought? What's the policy? On the other hand, I don't want to know. Our overworked IT staff shouldn't be bothered with such drivel, I reason. I bug them enough about my VPN not working.

The subject was on my mind when I read an excellent piece by Andreas M. Antonopoulos at Network World, "Can you keep users from importing their own applications?"

Antonopoulos takes a mature view of the issue, which he calls Shadow IT. Just saying no to employees doesn't work, he writes. He argues that "outright bans only serve to further ossify corporate IT by removing competition and allowing mediocre applications to survive. But clearly you don't want a free -for-all."

Sometimes it's frustrating working from a home office with no IT support in the building (except me). Wireless networks that go out. Laptops that take forever to boot up and you don't know why. Printers that won't print, etc. etc. And if you've ever tried to use cumbersome, slow, corporate-approved applications and felt like tearing your hair out, this Network World column provides some comfort: 

In most companies, users will quite comfortably sidestep any IT system that isn't working for them and find their own. Worse, users will seek out externally hosted offerings that they use as consumers and adapt them to business use. What about all the security controls you carefully deployed to protect the business? There's a good chance that users see security controls as bugs and seek external solutions precisely because they are unencumbered by security.

Enterprise users will inevitably make comparisons between the applications that IT serves up and the stuff they use as consumers. Nowadays, for every enterprise application provided by corporate IT there seem to be a dozen Web-based alternatives that are cooler, better designed and can be mashed-up, shared and extended.

Part of the reason for all the hype behind enterprise Web 2.0 is that run-of-the-mill enterprise applications look so bad by comparison! Sure, they have better controls, audit capabilities, backup, security, reporting and workflow. But for most employees these are not "features," they are encumbrances. How do you make sure your employees use approved applications and don't go shopping for their own application infrastructure?

Antonopoulos ends his piece with a well-reasoned point that all IT departments should listen to.

IT should be open to examining external applications. Perhaps you can securely integrate and enable that new application. If you let employees ask for new applications and soberly evaluate them in comparison to internally developed applications, you create the opportunity for innovation and security. The alternative is the head-in-sand approach: mandate, prohibit, control, penalize and be sidestepped by users who see corporate IT and security as dinosaurs impeding the flow of business.

 

From an article in the New York Times' Technology section on text messaging:

A separate study of teenagers with cellphones by Harris Interactive found that 42 percent of them claim that they can write text messages while blindfolded.

And I hear that 17 percent claimed they can write text messages while driving blindfolded, which, safety aside, is a good multitasking drill.

The larger point of the Times article is the phenomenal increase in text messaging among mobile phone users.

In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber's volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.

According to this blog post in Wired, the trend has favorable implications for advertisers:

A major inhibitor to mobile advertising campaigns in the American market has been cellphone users' slow adoption of texting and non-voice related activities. With texting now getting close to outpacing voice calls two to one, it can't be long until phone users adapt to more SMS-based advertising and marketing techniques as well.

"Adapt," as in forced to endure. And no, it can't be long.

 Something strange happened at a smallish trade show in San Jose, California, this week. This is the type of show that really flies under the radar, but this time it wasn't just 98 percent lonely male geek. You can tell this particular technology is on the uptick, because the show featured only 96 percent lonely male geek ... plus the return of the booth babe.

It's either the technology getting hotter, or the economy cooling so much that more attractive women are returning to PR.

By booth babe, I mean a public relations or marketing professional, often in a skirt, standing at the front of a booth in a trade show, or cruising the carpet between booths.  They're usually holding cards or something about the product they're pitching, and they usually look incredibly bored or annoyed by all the propeller heads checking them out.

Now, this week's trade show (it was actually a perfect storm of four trade shows/conferences in two buildings) was approximately one-billionth the size of granddaddy shows like the Consumer Electronics Show, Comdex, or E3. But the booth babe factor was undeniable in San Jose.

The four trade shows or conferences in the San Jose Convention Center and an adjacent hotel were: Streaming Media West (the most glamorous of the four), KM World and Intranets, Enterprise Search West, and West Coast Green.

In the KM World section, Google had the biggest booth, and they made several smallish announcement regarding enterprise search and Google Apps. Streaming Media West was definitely the most glam show of the four, with the most foot traffic.
 
The streaming media crowd is definitely in its own world. In addition to the hushed discussions about the U.S. economic mess, I heard all kinds of discussions I understood little about, regarding video delivery, the sharing of servers, packets, partnershisps, etc.

The online video from this summer's Olympics, which some thought was not a success, was a popular theme. A blogger from Wired filed an excellent report on that angle, "Frustration Runs High at Streaming Media West."

Judging by the buzz at the show, and the length of the skirts, this is clearly a technology I need to pay more attention to.

All of us at one time or another have experienced the frustration of not being able to ask an important question at a large meeting. Google has just released a free Web-based service designed to ensure that the questions deemed most important by the group are asked.

The service is called Moderator, and as IDG News Service explains:

Moderator lets event participants both submit questions to meeting leaders and vote in favor or against the questions they like or dislike.

In theory, meeting leaders will be able to ask speakers the questions that the group democratically chose as the best ones.

The goal is to improve on the random, ad-hoc selection via the raised-hands method and thus make better use of the often limited question-and-answer periods.

Perhaps even more important, in this era of telecommuting, remote users also can have a say in the selection of questions to be asked.

I haven't tried the service, but I'm curious to hear from people who have. I did go the the Moderator Beta site and found an example of how it works. In something it calls a Featured Series, Google asks users to propose and vote on questions regarding several topics. One of these is "U.S. Presidential Debates 2008." At the time I looked, 360 people had submitted 122 questions for either Barack Obama or John McCain, while casting a total of 4,079 votes.

Here's the question that had the most votes (96) in its favor:

"As President, what will you do with the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001? Will you seek to change it? If so, how? If not, why not?"

I know, I know. There's an economic meltdown going on in real-time, we're facing a permanent energy crisis, we're in a war, yet that's the most popular question. So much for the wisdom of the mob.

As a trust-busting kind of guy, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of the American Antitrust Institute until today. But there it is, weighing in on the Google-Yahoo advertisement and its implications for competition in the online ad market.

Here's AAI senior fellow Norman Hawker, talking to Sci-TechToday:

"The risk harm to competition in this case is exceptionally great because the agreement has the potential to increase Google's market share to over 90 percent. At that point Google would have the power to dictate prices and other terms to advertisers. Yahoo provides the most significant source of competition to Google in paid search, and the agreement has some potential to strengthen Yahoo as a competitor, but it also poses an enormous risk of either weakening Yahoo's ability to compete or causing Yahoo to exit the market entirely."

Mismanagement and poor corporate strategy also haven't done much to strengthen Yahoo's ability to compete, if you think about it. But since the company is merely a troubled Internet pioneer, and not a failed, criminally greedy Wall Street financial institution, it's not in line for any multibillion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Be that as it may, Hawker says Yahoo should be eager to avail itself of some government TLC in the form of antitrust measures:

"Anytime you have a market with only three competitors and the two largest firms enter into an agreement to share resources, the government has a strong case. If Yahoo is sincere about its desire to become a more vigorous competitor, then it should welcome the creation of safeguards that will help prevent it from entering a death spiral where use of Google ads only saps Yahoo's strength in advertising."

An observation: As a rule of thumb, you never want to see your company's name as the subject in a sentence that contains the phrase "death spiral." Bad for morale.

The AAI isn't the only one opposed to the Google-Yahoo deal. From CNBC:

On Monday the World Federation of Advertisers, which represents 55 national advertiser associations, said it asked the European Union to block the partnership, which is expected to launch next month. The deal will only affect North American websites, but the EU is investigating its impact on global competition.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says they're planning to move forward with the deal in October, even if they haven't yet received DOJ approval. And tomorrow is one of the companies' big deadlines: under the Google-Yahoo agreement submitted to the SEC, the companies gave the DOJ 105 days from June 12th to complete their antitrust review. That would be tomorrow.

Which doesn't mean we'll hear anything tomorrow. Either way, I'd be surprised if Google makes good on Schmidt's vow to move the deal along without some kind of go-ahead from the DoJ. Of course, maybe the feds will be too busy to notice, what with nationalizing our financial industry and all. 

The hack last week of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's personal email has sparked a ton of commentary, but the best I've read so far is a column on Datamation.com.

The column, "The Security Lesson in the Sarah Palin Email Hack," by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, points out what the biggest security problem is in such hacking cases -- it's the ubiquitous "Forgot Your Password" link.

Now, I don't know about you, but I detest all the passwords I have to keep in my grey matter. Lately, with the emphasis on social networking sites, I now have 10 more accounts I have to manage, in addition to the passwords I have to remember for my system, my work email, my personal email, my banking, my work applications, AT&T.com, Netflix, and on and on. You know the drill. One of my nightmares is this: I wake up, and I've forgotten all my passwords AND my ATM PIN.  

I've tried many different ways of remembering passwords, short of tattooing them on my arm. I write them in my daytimer. Then I can't find my daytimer when I need a password. Or I create a folder on my desktop with certain passwords. That's great, unless I use a different laptop. I've tried writing them on my whiteboard, but that's no good when I'm at an Internet cafe.

Anyway, Kingsley-Hughes makes 8 strong points about how to protect and save your passwords. Numbers 3 and 8 are the ones I need to heed the most. They might be a good refresher for you too:

3.) Store all your passwords in a safe, secure location. I use a program called PasswordSafe which is free (open source), easy to use, secure, and allows you to make easy backups of the password database and even migrate the databases onto multiple systems. PasswordSafe will also generate secure passwords. Since you'll have all your passwords stored safely (and backed up), you'll never need to use the "Forgot Your Password" feature to get into your account.

8.) If you still want to use the "Forgot Your Password" features ... then consider using information that very few people would know. Your favorite color or the name of your first pet might not be known to many people, but be careful that you don't inadvertently post this information onto your Facebook profile, on MySpace or in a blog! Also, try to have a disconnect between your username and your real identity ... so timmyboy773@somethingorother.com is more anonymous than timothy_j_boyman@ somethingorother.com.

 

While Republicans no doubt will labor diligently to portray the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account as a vast Democratic conspiracy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation raises an interesting point:

[T]he Department of Justice may be hamstrung in any prosecution of this invasion of privacy by its restrictive view of "electronic storage." The [Stored Communications Act] prohibits unauthorized "access to a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage." ...Under Ninth Circuit precedent, both received and unreceived emails are in electronic storage.

But the DOJ disagrees with that interpretation, arguing:

"If the recipient chooses to retain a copy of the communication on the service provider's system, the retained copy is no longer in 'electronic storage' because it is no longer in 'temporary, intermediate storage ... incidental to ... electronic transmission,' and neither is it a backup of such a communication."

Leaving the EFF to conclude:

The DOJ's interpretation of the SCA means that any emails that Gov. Palin had already opened (but left on the Yahoo! Mail servers) would not be protected under this email privacy law.

This could lead to one of those ugly situations where the DOJ has to sue itself! To me, though, there's a larger issue: Why isn't the fact that Gov. Palin eagerly set up an ridiculously hackable personal email account with which to conduct official state business being discussed? Besides being arguably illegal, it reveals anything from incredible naivete to poor judgment on the part of the GOP vice presidential nominee. Fortunately, these glaring deficiencies are more than offset by Gov. Palin's confidence, her readiness and her unblinking readiness in that confidence! 

Who ever thought that the Internet expert on the Republican ticket would be John McCain?

As this wild and wacky Wall Street week comes to a close, I wanted to give a nod to one of the best columns on open source software I've ever read. It's Bruce Byfield's piece on Datamation.com, "Twelve Myths about Free and Open Source Software."

The column is particularly relevant to me. I write (and edit stories) about open source software, but I've tried very little of it. I do love my AVG software protection, my Firefox, and my Divx media player. I'm sure I've used other open source tools without even knowing they were open source.

But I'm too chicken to go the full Unbuntu route. I don't know if "chicken" is the right word, but I know I just want my stuff to work, and I don't want to go full-geek. I really don't want to mess with my operating system. (The late great Peter Drucker said that people don't care about technology. They care about what technology can do for them. That's me to a "T.").

Meanwhile, many of my friends are loading Linux like madmen and loving it. A guy I used to work with, Larry Cafiero, is even trying to get the whole town of Felton, California, to use Linux. (See his story, "Linux devotee tries to spread the word" in the San Jose Mercury News.)

But I've held back. That's why I need columns like Byfields. See if the debunking of these 12 myths gets you sorted out, too:

1) If software costs nothing, it's no good

2) FOSS is inferior to proprietary software

3) FOSS is piracy (or at least encourages it)

4) FOSS has no support

5) FOSS is only for developers

6) Using FOSS means working from the command line

7) FOSS is only good for small projects

8) FOSS is unable to develop games

9) Having the code freely available makes it less secure than proprietary code                                     

10) FOSS is unable to innovate

11) Since the license places restrictions on the users, FOSS isn't really free

12) FOSS is all about price

 

Some entertainment bigwigs are finally getting the picture, it appears.

Some of the honchos have formed a consortium, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, that will, according to the Associated Press, "come up with technical specifications that content distributors and manufacturers can follow to ensure compatibility. The idea is to let people know that content and devices carrying a special logo will play nicely with one another."

The AP does a nice job explaining this long-standing problem. In a nutshell, think of the problem like this. What if, back in the 1970s, you bought an album. But that album would only play on a turntable from the company that sold you that album. If that happened, you would not be feelin' groovy, man. It would've been enough to throw your Frampton Comes Alive! album across the room at your Farrah Fawcett poster.

This is the way the AP explains it.

Buy a CD or DVD, and it should work on a variety of devices and personal computers.

Buy the same music or movie online, and you're on your own: Songs bought at Apple Inc.'s iTunes will generally work only with Apple products like the iPod, while many movies sold in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media format will require a Windows computer or device. Leading entertainment and consumer-electronics companies -- including Microsoft -- are trying to change that.

... By reducing confusion, consortium members are hoping to see the digital marketplace grow, said Mitch Singer, president of the consortium and chief technology officer of one of its members, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Consumers will be able to use digital products they buy on cell phones, set-top boxes, computers and other devices made by a slew of manufacturers. A virtual locker will store those digital products remotely, and the system will permit some copying onto physical media like DVDs.

It'll be quite a while before this comes to fruition, maybe even as late as 2010. And I'm not crazy about the name "virtual locker" (makes me think of smelly high school gym lockers), but forming the consortium and creating technical specs are definitely steps in the right direction for those, like me, who believe in fair use of their digital media.

My colleague at Datamation, James Maguire, wrote an excellent article yesterday offering 10 tips on "how to not get an IT job." It's a clever twist on the old job-hunting advice genre.

It also got me thinking about the other side of the coin, for just as thousands of IT pros on any given day are looking for jobs, thousands of organizations out there are desperate to fill positions. Indeed, attracting (and retaining) top-flight tech talent is more critical than ever, yet many organizations are unable to close the deal because of hiring-process blunders. So here are my 10 tips on how to not hire an IT job applicant (some of which are based on personal experience):

1. Make sure the job's responsibilities are unclear. There are plenty of ways to do this. Some good phrases to use:

"We like people who can do a little bit of everything."
"I can give you some idea now, but things change fast around here."
"Once you're on board we can figure it out."

2. Bait and switch. The applicant comes in to talk about the job he or she applied for, but you talk instead about this other job that's available. Not one, of course, that pays more than the job the applicant was interviewing for. This has happened to me.

3. Trash the person who previously held the available position. This communicates clearly to the applicant that, if hired, he or she also may be slimed at some point in the future.

4. Make the applicant wait at least a half-hour past the appointed interview time. This ensures that the applicant knows that you are either disorganized, rude or consider the position to be filled a low priority.

5. Eat at your desk during the interview. This also happened to me, about 10 years ago at Computerworld. (That's right, I'll name names.) It's best if it's a messy sandwich, reeks (tuna is effective here) and you chew with your mouth open.

6. Make it clear in the interview that you're reading the applicant's resume for the first time. Nothing squashes an interviewee's excitement more than the feeling that he or she is just some anonymous schmuck to you, as opposed to someone you're really excited about interviewing. Well, except for No. 5.

7. Take personal calls during the interview. The longer and more trivial, the better. Make sure you turn your back to the applicant. Also personal experience.

8. Have only an HR person do the interview. No explanation needed.

9. Be absolutely inflexible about benefits. Sure, some organizations will negotiate with applicants over things like vacation time, telecommuting, etc. You can avoid that Pandora's box by just saying no. Here's an excellent  deal-killer: No vacation time for the first six months, or even the first year. This is a newspaper industry staple that easily could be adapted to the world of IT.

10. Be evasive about your company's financial health and market strategy. Nosy job-seekers don't need to know everything. Besides, it's not like you can predict the future.

I hope this guide will help your organization in its efforts to not hire the very best IT professionals.
 

That headline is from a poem by Rod McKuen. (McKuen can be sappy, and he is a much-maligned poet ... but why do some of his lines stick in my head? Maybe it's time we look at his work again.)

Anyway, I thought of that line when I read about Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his latest idea, which I saw on  Slashdot.org:

While introducing the new World Wide Web Foundation, Tim Berners-Lee also asked for a system of ratings to help people distinguish truth and untruth online. "On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly," he said, saying that "there needed to be new systems that would give web sites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources."

Berner's-Lee suggestion sparked a huge outpouring of responses at Slashdot. I'm sure Sir Tim's heart is in the right place, but this is a lousy idea. This country is so polarized right now, it would be a time-sucking disaster. And who would do the judging?

Trying to implement such a rating system would create such vicious arguments, it'd make the Wikipedia editing battles look like a little skirmish in South Ossetia.

I agree with this passionate (and funny) Slashdot poster. I'll let him have the last word, and I'll resist the urge to edit him. Or her:

I can see it from here: TRUTHINESS WARS!

Forget about the Usenet flame wars, the Slashdot flame wars, even the Wikipedia editing wars, people... This is the Real Deal! Years after the Truthiness Wars, the Intertubes will still have that scarred, scorched look that faintly glows in the dark due to the irradiated remains of a thousand web sites.

Decades after the commotion, survivors and veterans will trade horrible, traumatic war stories...

Remember when the Vatican webmaster was allowed to rate Jack Chick [chick.com]?
And Disney allowed to rate Warner Brothers?
And Fox News allowed to rate Barack Obama's web site?
Oh, come on, what about when Theo de Raadt was allowed to rate Linus Torvalds? And Linus counter-attacked?
And ... wait for it... RMS and the FSF rating Microsoft? Now, THAT is what I call a nice truthiness battle, baby! The mother of all such battles, in fact. Thousands of web sites went down in that one with the infamous 0% truthiness rating. Ugly, my man, but it had to be done.

OK, does anybody else think this is a Bad Idea, or am I the only one?

And here is the proof: don't trust anything I ever posted on Slashdot.

 

A recent Associated Press article explores how Apple fans remain doggedly loyal even when there are problems with the company's products.

The article also covered the issues that outside software programmers have with Apple:

The new iPhone marked an important shift in the company's relationship with software programmers. The first iPhone didn't let outsiders write legitimate software for the device, though hackers did so anyway. Apple reversed course with the 3G and gave outside programmers tools to build iPhone applications and sell them on iTunes.

But developers, too, are irked by Apple's secrecy and limits on the kind of programs they can design. ...Apple has kept developers in the dark as to why some applications are rejected or, in rare cases, removed from the iTunes store without warning or explanation.

Here's the part I love:

DoApp, a small mobile-software company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said it took two months for Apple to review and ultimately reject its 99-cent whoopie cushion application. Wade Beavers, DoApp's vice president of strategy, said Apple had never hinted that a program that mimics bodily functions would be considered inappropriate.

First, while news of Apple's rejection of the whoopie cushion no doubt will disappoint 12-year-old boys everywhere, I'm struck by the fact that it took two months for Apple's review. My guess is this app was at the bottom of huge pile and the actual decision took about five seconds, but who knows?

As an ink-stained wretch (i.e. journalist) for more than 21 years, I've certainly seen my profession change.

When I left newspapers in 1996 and joined the Internet explosion at CMP's NetGuide Live in San Francisco, I started to see the changes. Most of them have revolutionized journalism, in a hundred different ways. Some of the changes have been scarily bad. (It'll all be in my next book.)

I was reminiscing on this after reading a column at Datamation.com, Mike Elgan's piece titled, "How the Blogosphere Killed the Press Conference: The Internet -- including the Twitosphere -- has made announcing information to groups of reporters gathered in a room an obsolete process."
 
His column reminded me of a frustrating experience, related to what Elgan describes. Earlier this year, my site, Intranet Journal, announced our products of the year. During the vetting process for the awards, I went to the web site of one of the hip, young startup companies that was being nominated. I needed to research the company, find when it had launched products, etc. It's a time-honored tradition. It's one of the great things about the Net -- easy access to press releases and other company information.

Now, I've been to enough sites over the past 12 years to crack just about any silly code and find press releases buried anywhere, no matter how hard the company tries to hide them within their bizarre (but oh so hip) web labyrinth. But on this startup, I spent more than an hour clicking every link, using all my tricks, but I could not find any releases.

So I called the company, asked where they were. "Oh, we don't post press releases. We put them in our blog," she said. 

I was stunned. And this is what I'm talking about regarding the Elgan column. Companies -- especially startups seeking publicity -- need to make it easy for journos, customers, analysts, venture capitalists, etc. to actually learn something about their wares. The startup should not be burying press releases at the bottom of a long, pretentious, windbag blog.

And as I write that, I'll wrap this up, so as to cut down on the windbag factor of my own blog post. So if you're listening startups, do us all a favor: Read the Elgan column and do not bend to this latest press release trend.

I'm not saying there is a Sarah Palin sex video, I just think that's the next logical scam from the spammers who currently are spreading spyware across the Internet via a malicious email whose subject line promises an "Obama sex video!!!"

It's hard to believe there still are people who would click on such a link in an unsolicited email, but as enticements go, "nude," "naked," "sex" and "free" are tough to beat. Still, you've got to have an extra gullible gene to plunge ahead after reading this:

Sensation!!! United States Senator for Illinois Barack Obama in 2007 was travel to Ukraine and have sex action with many ukrainian girls! You may view this private porno in a flash video. Download and view now. Please send this news to your friends!

Obama it's not right choice!!!

Now, I give pretty low marks to our national media covering this election, but I have to believe it wouldn't have escaped the attention of the many journalists who have been following Obama around almost every day since the beginning of last year that, at some point, he had slipped off to the Ukraine to "have sex action with many ukrainian girls!" Certainly Bill O'Reilly would have noted it.

So right away there's a credibility issue. And while I wouldn't argue that those who took the bait deserve the potential theft of their passwords and banking data, I will say that anyone who downloaded and viewed the porn clip (yes, there is one, but it does not feature Obama) and then followed the instructions to "Please send this news to your friends!"...well, that's when I start talking about licenses to use the Internet.

And as to the email's assertion that "Obama it's not right choice!!!", I'd prefer to see the video before making up my mind, thank you very much. Oh, that's right, there is no video.

Finally, a helpful suggestion to our non-English-speaking spammers: You really should consider off-shoring the editorial work for your product to an English-speaking market. Your copy targeting the American audience generally is riddled with clumsy phrasing, grammatical errors and poor punctuation, not to mention an excessive use of exclamation points. It lacks polish, and that hurts your credibility. Also, too many of your premises aren't believable: "Paris Hilton Nominated For Nobel Prize," etc. Verisimilitude, people.

I must join the chorus of critics slamming the debut Microsoft commercial featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. But I do so reluctantly, for whatever else he does, Seinfeld has my eternal props for his truly groundbreaking work in Bee Movie. Plus he was pretty good in that '90s sitcom, whatever it was called.

The commercial, which debuted last Thursday on national TV, is a meandering affair, running nearly a minute and a half, or about 50% longer than the average viewer's attention span. It might as well have been a congressional subcommittee hearing on C-SPAN. Plus it has the dramatic arc of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry and his friends wait interminably for a table at a Chinese restaurant.

And that, I think, is where Microsoft and the commercial makers went wrong. Why merely use Jerry Seinfeld, the present-day actor, in some made-from-scratch TV pitch when you can tap directly into a long-standing cultural icon? It's not too late to re-tool the campaign. By digitally inserting the company co-founder into classic Seinfeld episodes, Microsoft not only could reinvigorate its brand, it could rewrite television history so that viewers forever more will remember not Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer, but Jerry, Elaine, George, Kramer -- and their zany friend, Bill the Nerdy Computer Guy Who Loves Microsoft Products! Imagine the possibilities...

The Wi-Fi Nazi -- The gang falls in love with the soup at a new soup stand, but runs afoul of the temperamental owner when they complain about the establishment's poor wireless connection. "No wi-fi for you!" he exclaims as he kicks them to the curb. Later, Bill returns to the soup stand and shows the owner how to download a new network adapter driver using Microsoft Update, thus making the customers happier and better aligning technology with the business.

The Fusilli Bill -- Kramer gets new license plates from the DMV, but due to a humorous mix-up ends up instead with the license plates of Steve Jobs, which say "APPLEMAN." Naturally, this infuriates Bill, who scuffles with Kramer in his apartment, only to fall backwards and become impaled on a fusilli-shaped gaming stick. To make matters worse, in the emergency room Bill finds out that the operating doctor is a Mac user.

The Contest -- In this episode our five friends make a $100 bet to see who truly is "master of their domain." But instead of Kramer being "out" first because he spies a naked woman in an apartment across the street, the first one out is Bill the Nerdy Computer Guy because of his smokin' broadband connection and easy-to-use Vista operating system, which together make surfing those secret places on the Internet a breeze! No wonder Bill never goes out on dates! Even better, with IE's new privacy feature, Bill's nosy roommate, Newman, will never know what he's been up to.

My concerns about Google gaining too much power are long-standing and well-documented, as will be made clear in my first planned feature-length documentary -- OK, a 30-second podcast -- to be called, "My Longstanding Concerns About Google (Gaining Too Much Power)".

Until its premiere, you can marvel at my prescience here and here. But I must say that, on the Google Fear-o-meter, I am a rank amateur compared to tech writer Michael Malone. Writing for ABC News' web site, Malone explores the potential reasons behind Google's soft rollout of its new Chrome browser:

Why would a company that knows it has a solid and newsworthy product on its hands intentionally dampen media coverage of it?

The answer, I think, was that it was a long-term strategic decision to make Chrome look almost like an afterthought. And I think that decision was made at the highest levels of Google, perhaps by CEO Eric Schmidt.

Why? Because Google's ambitions are bigger than most of us have ever imagined, and the company is now rich enough, and powerful enough, to execute them -- even if it means the short-term sacrifice of a major new revenue source.

One more thing: If Google pulls off this strategy, it will be the most valuable company on the planet. It will also be the scariest … and we should start worrying about that right now.

This would be where, if this were on TV, ABC News would cut to a commercial. Instead, Malone embarks on a history of "Silicon Valley philosophical streams," the main point of which is that techno-geek culture "has absolutist (some would even say totalitarian) tendencies, in that it also believes that the empiricism of science and technology supersedes messy human institutions." I think you know where this is leading...

[N]owhere is the power to apply technology for its own sake more available than at Google. And despite the company's motto, and childlike logo and home page, this is the real driving force behind the company. And the long-term goal of this applied technology? Google has already said it: to manage all of the world's information.

Five years ago, this seemed harmless enough, even welcome. The Web is a huge, messy place -- so what's wrong with having some help navigating through it? But as Google has grown larger, and after it has taken over the big, general stuff (the Web) and begun focusing on the smaller, more specialized stuff (libraries, personal records, search patterns) that we begin to understand what "all" means ... and what Google is willing to do to get it.

One more message from our sponsor, and then back to Malone explaining what this has to do with Google's new browser:

Only a few people have noticed that, until recently, in the Terms of Service for signing up for Chrome, Google demands "perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive" license to any materials users create with the browser. (Google on Thursday announced that it was rescinding the clause.)

Granted, Google dropped the clause, but what if there hadn't been so much pushback? Even floating this kind of outrageous power grab indicates a certain arrogance that should raise real concerns. I'm glad Malone (and others) are raising them.

Thank God I don't have to do big software installations on my meager system -- a new operating system, for instance. Sure, I'm curious, but I fear I'd go even more crazy if I tried to download and install Unbuntu (or pronounce it correctly). Or Vista. 

Luckily, Intranet Journal has Linux expert Matt Hartley to do that sort of dirty work, and then write about it. In his latest piece, he ponders giving up his beloved Linux for Apple OS X.

In the process, he outlines 10 things that companies like Apple and Microsoft need to do if they want to lure back those who've been won over by the open source hordes.

Here are a few of my favorite things that he writes about, in edited form:

-- No activation keys or serial numbers. Treat me like a person. The only time I should be asked for a key or a set of numbers is if I am subscribing to a support service …

-- Provide me with a simple, safe, accessible software portal. Whether this software portal be online or off, allow me easy access to both free and paid applications. Application installation  or removal should be as easy as checking a box --  not add/remove or dragging what you hope to be the right icon to a trash can. Those methods make mass uninstallation of software cumbersome and is totally unacceptable.

-- Do not force OS updates that only serve to protect your assets. I am speaking to you, Microsoft. I have heard horror stories of users who have gone so far as to actually disable their automatic updates only to find select patches were installed regardless of this setting. This type of behavior is unacceptable.

-- Support interoperability with others. I am so tired of seeing the latest browser or music management software designed to further lock the user into the world that the software creator envisions that user should be stuck with. My music should be DRM free and available on all platforms. I should not need to resort to paying the software patent trolls just for the honor of enjoying a DVD I legally purchased. And lastly, I refuse to utilize email and browser applications that make migrating to alternatives a painful experience. I need an OS that provides all of these things.

Check out his column, "Kick Linux to the Curb?," on Intranetjournal.com.

Whenever Google makes a major move I'm interested, so the company has my attention with their brand new browser, dubbed Chrome, launched this week.

I'm always curious what the Google geeks are up to, both because it's usually technically advanced stuff, but also because I'm waiting for the moment when Google jumps the shark. When they get too big and try to do too many things and start to fall off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. (Some think Google is already there.) 

But my anticipation for Chrome has been dampened by a lukewarm review in the San Jose Mercury News today. Chrome needs some polishing, the Merc's Troy Wolverton, writes.

The big difference you notice with Chrome right away is that it doesn't look like Firefox -- or any other Web browser. It doesn't have a menu bar, and there's no way to add one to it.

Instead, at the top of the Chrome program window, you'll find the browser "tabs" for each Web page you have open. In order to change Chrome's settings, print the page you're on or clear your cache, you have to click on one of two icons located near the location bar.

As Google developers describe it, their idea was to emphasize the "content" that you'd access through Chrome, not the browser program or its features. They thought the best way to do that was to keep Chrome's interface -- the buttons, options and icons -- to a minimum.

The problem is that a minimal interface makes it difficult to figure out how get the browser to do what you want it to.

On the other hand, there's one part of Chrome that sounds brilliant. I'm a fan of Firefox's tabbed browsing. But sometimes a problem in one tabbed window crashes the whole browser. As Wolverton writes,

With Firefox, you generally have to guess which tab is causing the problems. Not so with Chrome. It has a "task manager" similar to the one for Windows that allows you to see how much memory or processor capacity each tab or plug-in is consuming and to shut down the ones gobbling up too much of your computer's resources.

I haven't downloaded Chrome yet. I may take the plunge soon, and yet I'm also thinking I may wait for a new version. If you're already using Chrome, drop me a line and tell me what you like about it, and if Chrome's quirks are worth the time and hassle of switching browsers.

 

They were heady days while they lasted...

The era of the American Internet is ending.

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network's first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States. ...

And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States...

Then John Markoff's article delves into the military and intelligence implications of this trend, which clearly threatens the Bush Administration's fervent desire solemn responsibility spy on whomever it wants to protect our freedoms from those freedom-haters who hate us for our freedoms.

The real long-term issue, though, is economic:

Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. "It's no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs," said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. "You wouldn't want someone owning your roads either." ...

Internet technologists say that the global data network that was once a competitive advantage for the United States is now increasingly outside the control of American companies. They decided not to invest in lower-cost optical fiber lines, which have rapidly become a commodity business.

Which gets to the heart of the matter: American companies haven't been willing to spend the money to keep up.

"The U.S. telecommunications firms haven't invested," said Earl Zmijewski, vice president and general manager for Internet data services at Renesys. "The rest of the world has caught up. I don't see the AT&T's and Sprints making the investments because they see Internet service as a commodity."

Sometimes competition can be so un-American.