It’s the perfect gift for Dads and Grads! Pricing for a DNA portrait starts at $390, but now you can identify the gene that puts butterflies in your tummy for just a few dollars more, according to this press release.

DNA 11’s DNA Art Portraits Now Offer More Insight into Your Genes

NEW YORK, NY. – June 3, 2008 – DNA 11, originators of DNA art and pioneers in the industry, are excited to announce that they have created the GenePak that allows customers to identify specific genetic traits in their custom DNA-portraits.

As the leader in the industry, DNA 11 continually works to create new and innovative options and services for their clients. They are constantly working to add even more life to their client’s DNA art images.

With the advent of companies such as 23andMe and deCODEme that offer gene analysis services to reveal predispositions for certain diseases or health risks, DNA 11 thought it would be exciting to offer added consumer genomics products, but with a different outcome – one that provides more entertainment value.

“Our clients have been so happy with their unique DNA art portraits that we wanted to add even more insightful and exciting options for them,” Nazim Ahmed, co-founder, DNA 11 says.” This new GenePak option allows clients to analyze their genes in an interesting way that creates great entertainment value for friends and family.”

GenePak isolates specific genes during the lab process which identify and represent four different areas of human characteristics:

• Sport: Show off your muscles without having to flex. This gene called ACTN2 is expressed in all muscle cells.
• Brain: This gene — IGF-2 — is associated with intelligence. It is not the only gene whose expression correlates with IQ, but one of them that is involved in development of the brain.
• Love: This gene — NGF2 — is one of the genes responsible for those butterflies in your stomach when you meet that special someone.
• Gender: This gene — Amelogenin — is often used to determine whether someone is male or female.

“Just as an artist points out and explains specific aspects of an art piece, our clients can do the same,” Nazim adds. “For example, they can point to certain areas that represent their brain or gender; it’s a great conversation piece.”

The GenePak upgrade option costs $99 and includes a detailed booklet that describes the lab process.

Every year since 2003, we’ve published the SD Times 100. And every year, many companies that weren’t named to the list have asked us to explain why they weren’t on the list.

For weeks after the awards come out, company executives call and e-mail SD Times to politely request (or angrily demand) an explanation. Those queries ultimately come to me.

I’ve just finished replying to one of them, and thought I’d share an expanded, generic version of my response here.

Dear xxx,

You asked why your company wasn’t listed in the 2008 SD Times 100. You said that you should have been included because you’re more worthy than one of your competitors who is on the list, or because your company had specific accomplishments that make it stand out, or because you have a significant and growing market share, or because you were on the list last year.

We don’t have a specific explanation of why you didn’t make the list.

The reason — and this is all we can say — is that after months of hard work, when the judges compiled the final list of the 100 most influential, most innovative leaders in the software development industry, your company’s name wasn’t on that list.

That doesn’t say that your company isn’t influential or innovative. We’re sure that it’s both. We acknowledge you have many genuinely loyal customers and satisfied business partners. We know that your unique products and services employ great technology and solve real-world problems for software developers.

But no, your company didn’t make the top list this year. There were a lot of worthy companies and organizations being considered — many more than 100. However, no matter how we recalculated the math, only 100 can be in the top 100.

There are no specific reasons we can offer why your company wasn’t named to the SD Times 100. (It’s like there’s no specific reason why a catchy hit song didn’t win a Grammy, or why your favorite movie didn’t win the Oscar, or why your friend didn’t win last week’s local talent competition.)

During the judging, we don’t keep notes about your company. We don’t record plus-signs for what you did right and minus-signs for what you did wrong.

We have nothing that documents, “If only they’d supported this extra protocol, or sold 50 more licenses, or won another patent, or had five more partners, they’d have been in the SD Times 100. But they didn’t, so they’re off the list.” That’s not how the discussion goes. Likewise, we don’t record, “If only they hadn’t done x, y or z, they’d have been on the list.”

Judging the SD Times 100 isn’t easy. The decisions aren’t made lightly. Many, many factors went into the discussion, which spanned literally months of research and rigorous and sometimes headed debate by the editors of SD Times.

The process is laborious, challenging and worthwhile. The internal debate gives our editors the opportunity to collectively review the movers-and-shakers in our industry. It lets us examine the state of the art. Judging the SD Times 100 is a time of shared learning, as well as compiling a final listing. However, those wide-ranging conversations must stay behind tightly closed doors — and couldn’t be condensed to a soundbite in any case.

After the awards come out, some companies try to put us onto the defensive to justify (to their satisfaction) why they didn’t get named to the list. Others argue that they are more deserving than someone else who did win (and demand that we ‘correct’ the list). A few say that once they’re on the list one year, they should stay on the list. Still others want us to coach them: ‘Tell us what we must do to ensure being named to the list next year.’

I know that you’re disappointed, but we’re not going to debate, defend or coach. Please accept my apologies, as that’s all the explanation we have to offer.

Today, the editors of SD Times unveiled the 2008 SD Times 100, the newspaper’s annual listing of the most innovative companies and organizations in the software development industry.

First appearing in 2003, the SD Times 100 has had its share of controversy. The biggest kerfluffle was when the editors named the SCO Group to the 2004 list for its role in spreading fear, uncertainly and doubt about open-source software in general and Linux specifically. Many readers wrote to SD Times to protest. SCO itself, not realizing that the award’s wording was not complimentary, issued a self-congratulatory press release.

This year’s awards may not be quite as controversial. At least we hope not. But as we recognize the best and brightest in our industry, let us bear in the mind the sage words of the great Indiana Jones: “Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.”

Huntington, N.Y., is the World Headquarters of BZ Media LLC. The Long Island suburb also has the Inter-Media Art Center, a terrific non-profit performing art theatre. It’s only a block away from our offices.

I’m impressed with the quality of the performers appearing at the IMAC Theater. Last night, for example, Suzanne Vega was there launching her new road tour (read all about it on her blog). Wish I’d been there!

According to today’s edition of Windows Secrets, the well-regarded newsletter from Brian Livingston, there are issues with Windows XP Service Pack 3.

In particular, his Patch Watch columnist, Susan Bradley, cites registry fixes needed to make SP3 work with Norton AntiVirus, and never-ending reboots when you install SP3 onto PCs with AMD processors.

Susan’s column explains that this latter problem has to do with SP3 installing Intel drivers onto AMD machines (oops), and she tells you how to fix it.

Here’s the latest in the flood of domain scams (see my comments from earlier this month here and here). Unlike the earlier ones I’ve posted, these guys admit that there will be “relevant costs.”

I post these, by the way, so that if people get them and search for them, they’ll find out that these are scams.

Dear manager:

We are Century Net Group Stocks Limited in China, which is a domain registration organization authorised by Chinese Industrial and Commercial Department.We engage in chinese and international domain names registration as well as settling the international disputes for domains registration.We also offer English and Chinese web solution.

Last week,we received an application from a company asking to register “bzmedia” their internet keyword and domain names.We have confirmed that it belong to you via our registration system.It is our duty to inform you of this issue.You know that this will confuse and mislead consumers.

You have the preferential right to register and protect.If you wanna register them by yourself,please contact us asap.We will communicate with each other about the protection procedure and relevant cost.

If we did not receive any response from you in our examination and verification period,we would take the formal registration process for that applicant according to chinese and international domain registration regulations.

Anyway,this is an urgent email.We hope you can pay much attention to this issue.We will appreciate that you response for us by phone or email asap no matter you want to register them or not.

sincerely yours,

Sinna
Registration Dept
Century Net Group Stock Limited

One never fails to get a laugh from incoming phishing attempts. Here’s one that came to one of our info@ email addresses today. It looks like they forgot to ask for my bank routing and account numbers, but surely that will come along soon, along with instructions to wire some “fees” to expedite delivery of the passport and the million-dollar grant.

United Nations Humanitarian Assistance & Services.
National Secretariat
P.O.BOX TN 2014,
Teshie – Nungua
Accra Ghana

Dear Friend.

YOUR GENEROUS BENEFITS AND AWARD FROM UNITED NATIONS SERVICES

Please be informed that your continues interest in helping helpless families all over the world is now going to produce other International benefit to you. We indeed expect appreciations and thanks from you on these benefits from the United Nations humanitarian assistance and services.

As a recognition of this great Humanitarian Assistance and Services. The United Nations has decided that we should obtain individuals data who is interested to receive the bellow benefits. Should we be contacted back by you. This generous benefits package of issuing you a diplomatic passport which we co-ordinate with additional (USD$1000.000.00) one million United States dollars credit will be issued to you immediately.

However, we wish more on this as initiatives for creating and extending opportunities to ordinary people in the world.

The benefit of this diplomatic passport has great advantages as you can use it to enter any country of your choice and do any transaction without restrictions. And be informed that this credit of $1000.000.00 to you through our nominated bank, The International Commercial Bank Ltd for your convenience.

Send the below information to us through email together with your bellow required data.

Recent passport photo:-
Full names:-
Nationality: –
Date of birth:-
Place of birth: –
Residence: –
Profession:-
Phone/fax #

In your reply do send to us your address where we shall post your diplomatic passport to you via any available Currier services as soon as it is done.

Thank you once again,

Regards

Dr. FASANI GEORGE.
Managing Director
United Nations Humanitarian
Assistance and Services.
Accra Ghana .

My son just returned from two weeks in southern Japan, and brought home hundreds of beautiful photos. We’re enjoying looking at them and sharing his trip memories.

However, we got the biggest laugh out of this unlikely juxtaposition on the shrine island of Miyajima: a Medtronic Lifepak defibrillator next to a cigarette vending machine.

Intentional, do you think, or coincidental? (click the picture to enlarge)

In the domain scam, someone claims to be a domain registrar, warning you that someone is trying to register one of your trademarks overseas, and giving you the “opportunity” to contest it.

If you respond, the scammer will either register the domain and then try to sell it to you, or will tell you that there’s a fee of some sort to protect your domain and brand name. I wrote about one version of this scam last week.

In another version, you’re warned that a guy named Karl Fischer is trying to register your trademarks. I’ve received this identical scam about several unrelated domains a few times this past week. That Fischer guy gets around! Here’s one of them. Don’t fall for it.

Dear Manager,

Asia Network is the company of internet services that the domain registration is one of the major online style of our service range. Now we have something need to confirm with you. We hope you to cooperate with us. On May/22 2008, we received an application from one person named “Karl Fischer” who wants to register some domains(list of domains)and internet brand(brand). According to our investigation, we found that domain names have relevance to your company’s name and trademark, so we send this email for you to confirm it. We are dealing with this affair in these days, so we wish to get the confirmation and the assent of your company. If Karl Fischer doesn’t belong to your company and you don’t authorize him to register these domains, Pls contact with me asap in order to prevent some guy from abusing your trademarks and the company names. In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn’t resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorized the application of Karl Fischer. Thank you for your cooperate.

Earlier this week, I wrote that United is experimenting with credit-card-only services on their flights between San Francisco and New York.

My colleague Andrew Binstock commented that American Airlines plays that game too. “American Airlines did the credit-card only thing last month, as a trial. This month, I noticed, they took cash and credit cards. So, it’s not a United-only thing. I suspect it has to do with the expense and hassle of dealing with cash,” he wrote.

Today, American Airlines started charging customers to check baggage. Forget “one bag free,” like United now offers — American will ding budget travelers for checking even a single suitcase. Today, $15. Tomorrow… $25? $50?

At least American is honest, and calls it an “additional revenue growth effort” in their news release:

Today, American introduced a $15 fee for the first checked bag, given the increasing costs of transporting checked baggage. This fee, which is effective for tickets purchased on or after June 15, does not apply to: American’s AAdvantage program members who have achieved AAdvantage Gold, AAdvantage Platinum and AAdvantage Executive Platinum level; those who have purchased full-fare tickets in the Economy, Business and First Class cabins; and those with international itineraries (except to and from Canada and U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

American also said today that it has increased its fees for certain other services, ranging from reservation service fees to pet and oversized bag fees. The increases mostly range from $5 to $50 per service. The company estimates that new and increased fees announced this month will generate several hundred million dollars in incremental annual revenue.

Check out the American release. The details are fascinating, and for those of us not in the air transportation business, it’s a glance inside a different world.

Yesterday afternoon, we received word from Agitar’s Jerry Rudisin. Although he’s still listed on the company’s management-team page as CEO and president, he identified himself as the former CEO. He told us,

The management team decided in March not to pursue additional venture financing, and as a result decided with the Board to wind down the company and sell the assets… we had some great successes worthy of celebration but ultimately concluded that the market we served was just not big enough to support the kind of valuable business we wanted to build.

We reported that Agitar is winding down its operations last Monday, May 12, on SDTimes.com.

A few posts ago, I commented that United stopped using the slogan, “Fly the friendly skies,” which first appeared in 1965.

The new slogan, “It’s time to fly,” was introduced in 2004. According to the company, it “alludes to the obstacles business travelers face and United’s commitment to helping in the pursuit of personal and work-life success.”

That’s reminiscent of beer commercials that you see during the World Series or Superbowl. When you discuss them with your friends, nobody recalls which beer was being advertised. “It’s time to fly” is so bland, so vague, that there’s no particular reason to associate it with United Airlines or any other carrier.

With “Fly the friendly skies,” the marketers were claiming that United Airlines is friendly, and perhaps implying that its competitors aren’t. Wouldn’t you prefer to fly with a friend? Of course. But what does “It’s time to fly” mean? Is United saying that if you’re on American or British Airways, it isn’t time to fly? I don’t get it.

Like the other big carriers, United periodically changes its brand identity, including logos and aircraft livery. Aerosite has an interesting page about United’s brand evolution.

I was asked, “How can I get the Time Machine volume off my Leopard desktop?” Since it’s recommended to dedicate that external hard drive to Time Machine, there’s no good reason to keep it on your desktop. It’s a distraction.

I don’t know of any way to remove only the Time Machine volume from your desktop, but you can easily tell the Mac to hide all external hard drives.

1. From the Finder, select Finder -> Preferences…
2. Under the General tab, uncheck “External disks”

On my own Macs, I have unchecked all four items, “Hard disks,” “External disks,” “CDs, DVDs, and iPods” and “Connected servers.” Since I usually mount quite a few hard disks, external drives and network shares, this keeps the desktop less cluttered.

How can you access those items if you need them, if they’re not on your desktop? Through a Finder window’s Sidebar. Get to the sidebar by clicking on the smiley-faced Finder icon in the Dock (by default, the left-most item), or by opening any Finder folder. The Sidebar is on the left.

You can control what information appears in the Sidebar by opening Finder Preferences, and selecting the Sidebar tab. I perfer to show the hard disks, external disk, iDisk and CDs in the Sidebar. You can see all of my Sidebar preferences in the graphic.

A story came from WebMD explains that “Too many choices exhaust the brain.” According to the story,

Study author Kathleen D. Vohs, PhD, of the University of Minnesota’s marketing department, and researchers from several other universities have determined that making choices, as opposed to just thinking about options, can be mentally draining. Those with too many choices — good or bad — have trouble remembering to take their medicine and staying focused on everyday tasks.

I can attest to the frustration of having too many choices. My family knows that shopping is difficult for me. If there are just a few choices, all goes well: the purchase is quick, and there’s little buyer’s remorse. But if there are too many, the fear that “I’m going to make the wrong choice and regret it later” becomes overwhelming.

Once upon a time, shopping decisions would be so stressful that I’d frequently walk out of stores empty-handed. Today, my strategy is to intentionally (and sometimes arbitrarily) limit my choices to make the process manageable. Two personal examples:

1. In January, my son wanted to buy a buffed-up Windows PC for gaming. After browsing several manufacturers’ sites, we arbitrarily decided to shop only for a Dell PC, and not try to do comparisons against multiple companies. Even there, however, the number of Dell desktop models was overwhelming, and we both found it hard to know whether we should get a Dell XPS or a Dell Inspiron. The company’s textual description doesn’t help:

XPS: Dell’s premier consumer desktops feature the latest technology and incredible value. Sleek and distinctive styling sets XPS PCs apart. Every XPS PC is designed to perform and built to last with premium components and materials. XPS Owners receive first class service and support.

Inspiron: Matching technology to your needs, powering your lifestyle today and tomorrow. These customizable desktops are a smart choice, balancing rich functionality, contemporary style, reliability and the value you’ve come to expect from Dell.

Gosh, do I want “latest technology and incredible value” or “matching technology to my needs”? Tough choice!

Even within those lines, there are so many choices. Do I want the XPS 210? 420? 630? 720? 730? Inspiron 530? 530S? And to balance value against great gaming, do we want the Intel Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual-Core or Celeron? Argh!

We ended up with a Dell XPS 420, with a Core 2 Quad processor, because it sounded good.

2. For a recent trip, we needed a new suitcase, slightly larger than a 22-inch rollaboard. I went to the Macy’s store at Union Square in San Francisco, which had a good selection… a too-good selection, in fact. So, again, the decision was made to arbitrarily limit my choices to one particular brand with a good reputation (Tumi), vs. trying to compare hundreds of bags from dozens of brands. But even there, there were so many choices and sizes, making a decision took ages. The final choice was the 24″ Tumi T-Tech Pulse.

To quote from the WebMD story again,

The study provides evidence that it is the act of making a choice, not weighing your options, that is mentally exhausting. “There is a significant shift in the mental programming that is made at the time of choosing, whether the person acts on it at that time or sometime in the future. Therefore, simply the act of choosing can cause mental fatigue,” Vohs says in a news release. “Making choices can be difficult and taxing, and there is a personal price to choosing.”

Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” has really helped me handle choices better. I now realize that the cost of attempting to make the absolute best decisions is often too great. Better to relax and settle for making “good enough” choices (like get a fine desktop PC or a nice piece of luggage), instead of agonizing over making an optimal decision. It’s a wonderful book, and is highly recommended.

The state of New York now says that if an Internet retailer has an affiliate in New York, the Internet retailer must pay New York sales tax on all its sales in that state.

By “affiliate,” New York means having anyone who is able to sell products through your Web site. Companies like Amazon, eBay and Overstock have lots of local affiliates throughout the country, and indeed the world.

Legal and technology analyst Lisa Morgan (pictured), blogs that “New York Tax Law Angers Retailers, Hurts Affiliates.” She says that,

New York’s recent action is already resulting in a chain reaction on both business and legal fronts, and quite frankly the debate is necessary. It’s not the broad federal tax Internet purists have been fighting for years; however, it is a bold step in a very controversial direction.

This type of unilateral action by New York is exactly why the Federal government is constitutionally mandated to regulate interstate commerce. Let’s hope the Feds manage to overturn this New York law… and do so quickly.