This classic motivational image has been floating around the Internet for a while. Wish I knew the artist to attribute it to.

Click the picture to see it larger.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

However much this company is paying for its press relations advice… it’s too much. This is the start of a release that a company put onto the wire last week:

Jedi Mind to Receive Media Coverage at CES in Las Vegas

CARDIFF, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Jedi Mind, Inc. (Pink Sheets: JEDM) (www.jedimindinc.com) will be conducting interviews with several major media organizations at this year’s CES trade show in Las Vegas, January 7th – 10th. Through the efforts of our recently hired PR firm, “SS PR”, Jedi Mind has received numerous enquiries from newspaper, television and online media organizations interested in featuring The Company in their respective publications.

Oooh. Ahh. Stop the presses, everyone. The boilerplate in this press release about SS PR was longer than the entire coverage of the client, Jedi Mind. Makes you wonder: Is this a press release for Jedi Mind or self-promotion for SS PR?

Read the entire release here.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Over the past few weeks, my son’s cell phone has been receiving dozens of unwanted phone calls — sometimes three, four or five calls daily. If he answers the phone, a recorded message tells him to contact Wells Fargo Bank about his overdrawn account. However, he doesn’t bank at Wells Fargo. If he doesn’t answer the phone, the caller doesn’t leave a message.

When I found out about this, I checked his iPhone’s log. All these calls were coming from two separate numbers, 503-403-2697 and 503-403-2686. Googling indicated that both belonged to Wells Fargo Bank.

This morning, I called back the first number. A human answered and asked me to provide my account number. When I explained that I didn’t have one, and that I was trying to find out why our number was being called, the young man asked for the mobile number. “Are you Mr. Alvarez?” he asked. “No,” I replied. He curtly said, “We’ll take your number off the list” — and hung up.

That should solve that problem, eh? Just for the heck of it, I called the second number. An automated attendant asked for my account number and then paused. I pressed 0, and that got me to a human. I explained the story to him, he looked up the cell number, and asked, “Are you Mr. Diamond?” — odd that it was a different name. I replied no, and the young man politely apologized, volunteered that perhaps Mr. Diamond had provided our number by mistake, but that he would make sure the calls stopped.

Let’s see if they actually do.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

The Enterprise Software Development Conference kicks off in less than two months, with an all-star faculty led by keynote speakers Kent Beck and Ken Pugh.

The three-day conference will take place at the San Mateo Marriott, San Mateo, Calif., from Mar. 1-3, 2010. A Full Event Passport for ESDC costs $1,795, but this rate is discounted to $1,295 through Jan. 15, and to $1,395 through Feb. 15. Group rates are also available.

The opening keynote at ESDC will be given by Kent Beck (pictured), founder and director of the Three River Institute and creator of the Extreme Programming agile methodology. Kent’s keynote, entitled, “Responsive Design: Efficiency Through Safety,” will be delivered on Tuesday, Mar. 2, at 5:00 PM.

Ken Pugh, author of “Prefactoring” and “Interface-Oriented Design,” will deliver the second conference keynote. His keynote, “Snowboarding, Windsurfing, Backpacking, and the Art of Software Development,” will be on Wednesday, Mar. 3, at 9:45 AM.

The keynote speakers are joined at ESDC by 30 additional instructors: Andres Almiray, Andrew Binstock, John Clifford, Kathleen Dollard, Neal Ford, Jeffrey Fredrick, Andrew Glover, Ellen Gottesdiener, Jeff Haynie, Jim Hobart, Allen Holub, Tim Huckaby, David Hussman, David Intersimone, Paul King, Timothy Korson, Ramnivas Laddad, Julie Lerman, Robert C. Martin, Miko Matsumura, Mario Moreira, JP Morgenthal, Ted Neward, Larry O’Brien, Damon Poole, Terry Quatrani, Mike Rozlog, Dan Saks, Hubert Smits and Glenn Vanderburg.

As conference chair, I’m delighted that ESDC has attracted the interest of, quite literally, the finest speakers and instructors in the software development industry.

The Enterprise Software Development Conference fills a void left by the cancellation of TechWeb’s SD West conference. Produced annually each spring for many years, TechWeb announced after its March 2009 conference in Santa Clara that the event would not be continued.

I’m looking forward to seeing you at ESDC!

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

The frenzy around Apple’s assumed-to-be-forthcoming tablet computer is reaching a feverish pitch, with major news outlets, from the New York Times to the British Broadcasting Corp., covering and feeding the speculation. I haven’t seen this much hyperbole since, oh, the run-up to James Cameron’s new movie, Avatar.

The latest hints are that Apple will launch the tablet at the end of January. The rumor mill also says that Apple will show significant upgrades to its iPhone software stack and relevant revisions to the Apple App Store.

A common thread to the rumors is that the tablet will be a cross between the iPhone and the MacBook Air notebook computer. That means built-in wireless connectivity on a cellular data network (like the iPhone or Amazon’s Kindle book reader), that it will be sold along with a service plan (again, like the iPhone), and that Apple will create a distribution channel for it (like the music and software offered through the App Store).

The company is expected to unveil a developer program for the iTablet (or whatever it’s called). This will be an extension of the iPhone developer program, and will in fact rely upon many of the same tools, SDKs and APIs. The biggest code changes would be in the user interface: a tablet’s screen is much larger than the iPhone display. App developers would need to rework their software not only to leverage the larger screen, but also accommodate the larger format’s user-experience models.

How much truth is in those rumors? It’s hard to be certain. Apple is notorious for its secrecy. In fact, carefully controlled secrecy is one of the main reasons why Apple’s marketing prowess is unparalleled.

The other area where Apple currently excels is in developer relations. That’s a change in its historic behavior, which was hostile to third-party developers.

To digress for a moment, this reminds me of the OS/2 Wars, back in the mid-1990s. IBM’s OS/2 operating system was far superior to DOS, and was poised for large-scale growth. However, Microsoft’s technologically inferior Windows 95 took over the market, totally destroying OS/2.

Why did Microsoft win, and mighty IBM lose? For the same two reasons why the iPhone has succeeded beyond all expectations. First, Microsoft was infinitely better at consumer marketing than Big Blue. (Remember how people stood in line at midnight to get their copies of Windows 95? Does that remind you of anything?)

Microsoft also lavished its developers with tender loving care. Top executives, from Bill Gates on down, worked hard to create opportunities for its ISVs to make money. IBM, by contrast, never saw any value in supporting ISVs. Therefore, independent developers embraced Windows 95, and that’s why we use Windows PCs today instead of IBM PC Compatibles.

Over the past decade, Microsoft forgot how to appeal to small entrepreneurial developers creating consumer applications. That’s one reason why its own Windows XP Tablet PC initiative never caught on. There just weren’t enough compelling applications.

By stark contrast, Apple has learned from its mistakes. Steve Jobs never figured out how to inspire developers to create consumer applications for the Macintosh, but he succeeded – in spades – in bringing thousands of app developers to the iPhone platform. Maybe it’s the marketing, maybe it’s the SDK, maybe it’s the App Store distribution channel, but Apple has overcome its past failures. While the iPhone hardware is cool, it’s the third-party apps that truly enable the platform.

And that’s where the iTablet (or whatever it’s called) will live or die – by the strength of Apple’s developer relationships. If Apple replicates what it did with iPhone ISVs, its tablet computer will, indeed, live up to the hype.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

It’s traditional to make resolutions to celebrate the New Year. Often those resolutions involve battles with personal demons, such as losing weight, stopping smoking or going to the gym.

In fact, according to USA.gov, popular New Years resolutions include those above, plus getting a better job, reducing stress and volunteering to help other people.

Those are general resolutions. What sort of resolutions should we make as technologists and as software developers? Here are some ideas:

• Resolve not to engage in zero-sum ideological wars of any sort. It’s not about Mac vs. Windows, Java vs. .NET, open-source vs. proprietary, iPhone vs. Droid, XP vs. Scrum.

• Resolve to make sure that the entire team understands the importance of software testing, and that it’s harmful to take shortcuts.

• Resolve to embrace those aspects of agile software development which add value to team efforts, while resisting those efforts that don’t appear to offer tangible benefits.

• Resolve to study emerging technologies, paradigms and methodologies, and urge pilots and adoption where it makes sense.

• Resolve not to be railroaded into jumping onto any bandwagons, whether it’s about mobile, agile or cloud computing.

• Resolve to embrace open standards, and to resist being seduced onto proprietary platforms that have a high exit cost.

• Resolve to educate ourselves by reading books and trusted news sources, attending conferences and staying up on emerging trends.

• Resolve to fight groupthink by challenging the status quo and by hanging out with people who have different ideas about computing.

• Resolve to spend less time on Twitter and Facebook, and spend more quality in-person time with friends and family.

Do you have ideas for New Year’s resolutions for folks in the software-development industry?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

It’s been ten years since the first digit of the calendar changed from a “1” to a “2.” For those of us in the computer industry, change happened at a dizzying pace over the past decade – as it has for every decade since the 1950s.

Think about the technologies that you rely upon today, you may be astonished to realize how few of them existed a mere ten years ago – and those that existed were substantially different.

• Check your pocket, belt or pocketbook. Do you see a smartphone? Ten years ago, if you had a mobile phone, it was pretty dumb. The current incarnation of the RIM BlackBerry came out in 2002 and Apple’s iPhone was announced in 2007. Even the Motorola RAZR, a very popular non-smart phone, only came out in 2004. In 2000, I owned a Nokia stickphone.

A decade ago, open source software looked very different. No Eclipse, no NetBeans. While the Apache Software Foundation was formed in 1999, the Apache HTTP server project started 15 years ago, in 1994. If you were a software developer using open source software ten years ago, chances are that it came from the Free Software Foundation.

• Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE was pretty new. It appeared in 1997 as a combination of Visual Basic 5.0, Visual C++ 5.0 and Visual J++ 1.1. Until that time, few people used a a multi-language integrated development environment.

• Speaking of Microsoft, if you had a desktop computer it was probably running Windows 98 or Windows 2000. If you were targeting Microsoft with your apps, COM was your friend and you were writing in C++ or Visual Basic. The .NET system, including C#, didn’t appear until 2002 or later.

• Or would you like some Java? The project began at Sun in 1990, and a decade ago we were using Java 2 Standard Edition 1.2 and the brand-new HotSpot JVM. The Java Community Process only started two years earlier, in 1998.

• If you’re an Apple fan, the Macintosh choices in 2000 were a Bondi Blue iMac G3, an iBook G3 or a PowerMac G4. The first incarnation of Mac OS X didn’t appear until late 2000. Intel processors didn’t show up on Macintosh until 2006.

• The Internet looked very different in 2000. No Facebook or Twitter, of course. No Cloud. Google, founded in 1998, was an up-and-coming search engine. The big worry was that Microsoft would dominate the Internet through its Internet Explorer 5 browser, which had pretty much destroyed Netscape Navigator. The Mozilla project had just launched, but Firefox didn’t appear until 2004.

• Also new was XML, which was started in 1996 by Tim Bray and a host of others. We had no Web services, no SOAP, no REST, no RSS. If you were grabbing data from the World Wide Web, you were screen-scraping.

• Scripting languages were JavaScript, Perl, Python, PHP and a few others. Mainstream developers saw scripting languages as a way to add some automation to Web pages, and also to simplify some back-end development. Real programmers, though, still programmed in C++ (or maybe Java).

What a decade, eh?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

My favorite New Years story goes back exactly 10 years. I was here in San Francisco, and my wife was visiting friends and family in Scotland.

It was wonderful when Carole called just after midnight, her time, to wish me a Happy New Year. Even though, of course, it was only 4:00 PM here in California.

But it was also freakish to talk to someone who was in a different millennium than I was. It was a “Back to the Future” or “Fifth Element” moment. (Yes, I know that purists insist that the new millennium began in 2001. That not the point. Go away.)

Carole looked out the window in response to my query and said that, no, she didn’t see any flying cars, people using jetpacks or anything else obviously futuristic. So much for the predictive powers of science fiction.

Happy New Year, my friends! May your 2010 be filled with peace, health and happiness.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Spammers understand the business benefits of tailoring a marketing message to fit current events.

I checked my Postini spam trap this morning — it’s been over a week since last time it was cleaned out. There were several spam messages with the subject line, “Learn to score like Tiger Woods” — for male enhancement products.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

We receive many wonderful reader comments on sdtimes.com. Most are thoughtful and add genuine value to our news and analysis of the software development industry.

And then there are spam comments which try to drive links to external scam websites. We squelch those comments before they are posted.

Spam comments are easy to spot in our comment-review portal. They’re entirely unrelated to the context of the site or of the story they’re associated with.

Sometimes the spam comments are enjoyable in a beat-poet kind of way. Here’s one that just came in, trying to drive traffic to a shady electronics discounter. Isn’t it great?

Hey where you from? I’m from Toronto and … I like hockey. I live near a park with lots of dogs. the sky is blue over here what’s your weather like?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Pigs are flying all around my office today. According to The Weather Channel, the temperature in Hades is a nippy -40 degrees. Oh, and Microsoft has created an iPhone app available through the Apple App Store.

The application is called Bing, and as the name suggests, it’s a native front end to Microsoft’s search engine. I’ll give Microsoft credit here: the new app is beautifully done, lightning fast and delivers decent search results of both websites and images. (You can download Bing from the Apple App Store here.)

I’m not a huge fan of the Bing search engine because it seems to always assume that if you’re searching for something, it’s because you want to buy it. Thus, Bing loves to steer you to shopping sites – particularly those of its retail partners. The company’s Bing Cashback program is a blatant attempt to purchase market share and mindshare – but given Google’s utter dominance of the search world, it’s hard to blame Microsoft for going all-out to gain a toehold.

Creating an iPhone app for Bing makes total 100% sense for Microsoft to do. Why should Redmond cede the fastest-growing smartphone platform to archenemy Google?

Still, when you see a Microsoft app running on your iPhone, you know the world has turned upside down. Cue the flying porkers!

Microsoft, Google and Apple are an interesting troika of frenemies. Apple and Google used to be Best Friends Forever, but that all changed when Google announced its Android phone platform and Chrome browser, which are direct challengers to Apple’s iPhone and Safari browser. Now Google and Apple don’t get along at all.

Now we’ve got Microsoft developing cool apps for the iPhone, while Google is reportedly preparing to launch its own mobile phone, called Nexus One. That would bring the software giant into the consumer hardware business. (Google has long offered enterprise hardware like the Google Search Appliance.)

Funny world. Next thing you know, Oracle will buy Sun Microsystems, or something crazy like that.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Gosh, isn’t this the cutest Aston Martin ever?

The Aston Martin Cygnet concept vehicle is described as a luxury commuter car. That’s quite a change from the company’s usual mantra, “Aston Martin is a name that needs little introduction. It has always stood for fine, civilized high performance sports cars, designed and produced by skilled craftsmen.”

According to The Telegragh, the three-cylinder Cygnet will be offered only to existing Aston Martin customers, “who, it is envisaged, will use it as a ‘green’ run-around while reserving their supercars, such as the DB9 or Vantage, for longer journeys.”

It’s so adorable!

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

A scam just arrived in my Facebook inbox. It was apparently sent from a Facebook account named Tofa Maxwell. It’s unclear how to report such messages to Facebook in any meaningful way. My advice is to simply delete such messages without responding. If you know of a better way to react, let me know.

Subject: Attention,

Attention,

We act as solicitors and our services were retained by late Alan C. Zeichick, a foreigner who used to work with Shell International Republic of Togo, here in after referred to as our client. We write to notify you that my late client made you a Beneficiary to the bequest sum of FIFTEEN Million one Hundred United States Dollars in the codicil to his will and last testament.

He died at the age of 65. This bequest is to support your activities, humanitarian services, help to the less-privileged and research work.

We are perfecting arrangements to complete the transfer of this inheritance to you. You are required to forward the following details of yours:

1. Full Name:
2. Telephone number:
3. Age:
4. Contact address/Country
5. Occupation:
6. Identification:
7: Email address:

For verification and re-confirmation. Please acknowledge the receipt of this letter immediately. For further clarification you can always reach me on my direct phone number.

I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. Upon your acceptance to this proposal, I expect your urgent response indicating your full interest in this great transaction to our both mutual trust.

Congratulations! Reply to email hidden; JavaScript is required

Yours sincerely,
TOFA MAXWELL ESQ.
Tel: 00228-922-4588.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Oh, to have worked or studied at SAIL, back in the day. Of course, “in the day” was in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory was in its prime – long before AI became shorthand for “any technology that’s 20 years in the future – and always will be.”

When SAIL was at the cusp of computer science, as detailed in a recent essay in the New York Times, many researchers truly believed that artificial intelligence was solvable. Creating computers that would think – not merely follow algorithms – was a hard problem, to be sure. But not an impossible dream. The idea that you’d have a computer that would learn how to play chess, and be able to converse with humans well enough to pass the Turing Test, seemed to be a matter of just a few more transistors, a little more memory, choosing the right programming language and writing some better algorithms.

Hard, but solvable.

Optimism as Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Reunite,” written by John Markoff, talks about those glory days when John McCarthy and his team thought that a thinking machine would only take a decade to build. However, as the essay describes, by the mid-1980s, AI seemed farther from creating artificial intelligence than ever before.

My own involvement in artificial intelligence comes from about that time. I studied AI a little, but from 1990-1992 served as editor of AI Expert Magazine. (The publication is now gone, alas, but Google found my old writer’s guidelines squirreled away at Carnegie-Mellon Univ. Talk about a flashback!)

Editing AI Expert was a dream job – getting to hang out with the best and brightest in the AI community, and working with many brilliant computer science researchers as authors, attending conferences, and learning from a blue-ribbon advisory board. Ahh, nirvana.

What’s interesting is that many so-called “technologies” that we covered in AI Expert never became part of machine intelligence or artificial intelligence – but instead became part of the mainstream. Expert systems, for example, are a core part of many search engines and data mining systems. Object-oriented programming evolved out of AI. Virtual reality was part of AI. Natural language processing. Object databases. Vision processing and image recognition. Those are all just software development today.

Of course, not everything we covered in AI Expert hit the jackpot. While neural networks, genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic still live, they’re also quite esoteric.

Older computer scientists (heavens, do I now fall into that category?) remember AI’s history and accomplishments. We know that although we don’t have true artificial intelligence systems, those investments and research in SAIL and other similar projects paid off handsomely, and appear in products and technologies we use every day. I hope that younger generations of developers appreciate where we started – and how far we’ve come.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

“Use the chopsticks, Luke!”

My son found these delightful lightsaber chopsticks. Coming right after we completed a Star Wars movie marathon, we’ve got to have them. The link shows someone holding them.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

A good friend — a computer expert — just sent me this account of a strange experience this afternoon. It’s scary, especially for those whose “skeptic flag” is turned off. Be alert!

Got a weird phone call just now. Guy with Indian accent who said he was calling to help me with my Windows problems — I don’t have any, but he said they were calling ‘all’ Windows owners to fix problems causing computer to run slowly. He rattled off the name of his company, and after I asked several times I finally got: “Support On Click.” The number on my phone readout was 05-247-9749 — and it said “Out of Area.” Odd number.

Cautiously, I let him continue. He had me click Start-Run and type in eventvwr, and then click on Applications and tell him how many Error flags I had — well, there were hundreds, just from this past month. He asked for a little info about them, and started a spiel about how many people were having these kinds of problems. It sounded like the canned beginning of a sales pitch.

I finally said I wasn’t interested and hung up on him. He called back a minute later but I let it go to voicemail, whereupon he hung up.

Was it a sales pitch to get my credit card? A scammer planning to get me to read him something fatal off my screen? Hacker wanting me to enter some command that would give control to a virus or something? I would have hung on to find out where he was going with this, but he was taking too long. Clearly, he was prepped for inexperienced computer users, so he took forever with his instructions, and I lost patience.

Again: If you get a call like this, at home or at work… don’t do what the caller wants. It’s undoubtedly not good for you.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Touch may be the next mass-market computing innovation. It’s very interesting – but not surprising – that Microsoft appears to be leading the charge with functionality based on its Surface technology and built into Windows 7.

Despite its reputation for being a follower, not a leader, Microsoft has championed many hardware innovations, and have driven them into the mainstream. One example was the CD-ROM drive. With MSCDEX (The Microsoft CD Extensions), and investment in early CD-ROM products, we have Microsoft to thank for the ubiquity of the computer-based CD player.

While we can live very well without CDs today, bear in mind that in the beginning of the PC era, most computers had one or two floppy-disk drives at best. A few expensive models had 10MB or 20MB hard drives. Corporate networks were scarce, and there was no broadband Internet. The ISO 9660 standard for CD-ROMs gave us 650MB of easily distributable data. Thanks to Microsoft’s consistent support for the technology, DOS learned to read CD-ROMs – and CD-ROM drives became a de facto standard on nearly all desktop and portable computers.

Microsoft didn’t invent the CD-ROM drive, of course, and nor did it invent the two-button mouse, the Ethernet connector, WiFi networks or Universal Serial Bus. The company’s market clout, evangelization through conferences like WinHEC, and pressure on computer makers brought wired and wireless networking and USB to the masses.

The company faltered when it came to pen computing. There were many efforts, beginning with pen extensions to DOS (I own an IBM ThinkPad 750P convertible pen notebook made in 1993). Microsoft rebooted its pen efforts with the Tablet PC and a special version of Windows XP in 2001. Response from consumers and hardware makers was tepid, and the hardware didn’t become ubiquitous on Windows notebooks. Thus, the Tablet PC remained a niche device.

At Microsoft PDC 2009, Microsoft began a new push toward touch-screen computing. While Windows Vista supported touch-screens – and some computer makers like HP offered models that had such screens – it remained a curiosity. With Windows 7, however, Microsoft is signaling that it sees touch as strategic. The company gave special touch-equipped notebooks running Windows 7 to PCD attendees, and appealed to developers to begin creating applications that would recognize – and exploit – the new user interface paradigm.

This is another instance, I believe, where Microsoft is truly being visionary. While mobile products like Apple’s iPhone use a touch interface, only Microsoft has talked about touch-screens as a broad capability. I, for one, would love to see a touch-screen become a standard feature of notebook computers and desktop monitors.

I also hope that Microsoft maintains an open mind – and adheres to open hardware standards. Microsoft helped make CD-ROMs successful – based on ISO 9660. Ethernet, WiFi and USB are also open standards. I’d love to see mainstream Windows notebooks and desktops have touch-screens – but not in a way that precludes innovation by Linux, Unix and Mac OS X. Although I’m generally a Mac user (and am writing this on a MacBook Pro), it would be fun watching Apple play catch-up for a change.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

I received this verbatim identical message about 15 times from a variety of recipients over the past few days. Gosh, this makes me really want to shop there. Not!

Subject: Dear friend…! 1

Dear friend,

How are you doing recently? I found a good website last week: www.mobliec.com.

They do internationa business and they sell different kinds of electronic products. Such as laptops, digital cameras, phones, notebooks and so on. Their products are new and original and have 3 years international warranty, so we can fix the product in our own country for free. Now , the Cristmas day is coming,they are promoting their products. So the prices are very competitive. I am sure it will be a good choice for us.

Greetings! p

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

The perfect stocking stuffer, the Breguet 5347PT/11/9ZU.

It’s described in the most recent Tourneau catalog as “Classique Grand Complication, 950 platinum with twin rotating tourbillons, ring-shaped dial forming a flange in 18K silvered gold, back of the movement bears a hand-engraved drawing representing the solar system, hand-wound movement, $402,800.”

Sheesh. For four hundred grand you don’t even get a self-winding watch?

The Breguet website goes into more detail about all the moving parts:

Classique « Grande Complication » wristwatch in 950 platinum. Hand-wound movement. Ring-shaped dial forming a flange in 18-carat silvered gold. Chapter ring with Roman numerals. The hour hand is an extension of the bridge supporting the two tourbillon carriages. Engine-turned by hand, a center plate featuring two apertures for the tourbillons rotates in step with the passing hours. Breguet overcoils. Sapphire caseback. Water-resistant.The back of the movement bears a hand-engraved drawing representing the solar system, inspired by the 60-second rotation of the tourbillons on themselves and their rotation in tandem around a center axis over a 12-hour period.

Okay, I like watches, and own several nice ones… but I can’t imagine spending that much money a timepiece. Even if it does have twin rotating tourbillons.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Is Ted Bahr, co-founder of BZ Media, the Last Samurai of print advertising?

Folio Magazine’s Tony Silber thinks so, as you can read in his blog post, aptly titled “The Last Samurai.” There, Tony questions Ted’s unwillingness to write off print advertising as a profitable, sustainable business for publishing companies.

However, as Ted explains in his rebuttal post, “The Samurai Responds,” he’s not giving an inch. He’s getting the BZ Media sales team fired up about print and suggests that instead of blithely accepting talk of print’s demise, that other publishers should do the same.

As you should expect, Ted and I see eye-to-eye here. Ted’s blog describes our strategy for 2010 and beyond. Given that we’ve out-survived and out-thrived nearly every one of our many competitors, perhaps there’s still honor (and profit) in pursuing the noble publishing traditions.

Read Ted’s post, tell me what you think about our business bushido.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Using FasTrak seemed like such a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.

The central parking garage at San Francisco International Airport now accepts FasTrak, the RFID-based system that lets you pay bridge tolls without stopping. FasTrak is a wonderful thing when crossing the Bay Area’s bridges. It’s clearly not ready for broader deployment.

Last night, we were picking someone up at SFO. I pulled into the short-term central parking garage at SFO, and stopped at the entry gate. There were big signs urging use of FasTrak to pay. We have FasTrak, so it sounded like a good idea. I held the FasTrak RFID device up to the windshield. The device beeped. The gate opened. Into the parking lot we drove.

About an hour later, we were ready to leave. Alas, it was a Hotel California moment.

I drove up to the first-level parking lot exit, and selected the FasTrak lane. I held the FasTrak device up to the windshield. The device beeped. The gate stayed closed.

Waved the FasTrak around. It beeped again. The gate stayed closed. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The gate stayed closed.

Meanwhile, there’s a long line of cars behind me… some honking. I noticed that there was a car next to me in another exit lane — and the driver was also waving around a FasTrak device. The driver and I looked at each. We sighed.

I pushed the “call” button at the exit gate. After five minutes of “ringing” sounds, a guy answered. “The sensor is having trouble reading your FasTrak,” he said. “Back up and pull forward again.” “But it beeped,” I said. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Back up and pull forward again.”

I backed up — slowly — as the line of cars behind me also backed up. Then pulled forward again. The FasTrak device beeped. The gate stayed closed.

Pushed the call button again. The guy answered after a few minutes. “FasTrak is down,” he said. “Come up to the attendant at the second-floor exit.”

I backed up again (as cars scatter to let me out), and then drove up to the second floor. Went to the one exit lane that had a human attendant. It was the same guy I talked to — he was apparently the only human on duty. It took him several minutes to override the system to let me out.

Total time to leave the parking lot was more than 20 minutes from when we first pulled up to the first-level exit. What a complete and utter nuisance.

Here’s the FasTrak announcement of the SFO parking-lot service. Good luck with that. From now on, I’m sticking to cash or credit cards.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Intel’s 64-bit Itanium processor never got much respect from the mainstream enterprise server buyer. A set of more established 64-bit chips based on the RISC architecture, the rapid evolution of the 32-bit x86 architecture – and then the 64-bit x86 extensions pioneered by AMD – kept the VLIW-based Itanium in a money-losing niche for ten years. But now it’s profitable. Maybe.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a decade since Intel and Hewlett-Packard partnered to evolve HP’s PA-RISC technology into Intel’s Itanium processor. The goal was always to reach a broad market that wanted an advanced parallel-processing chip.

However, volume buyers never saw the benefit of Itanium’s 64-bit VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) architecture. Instead, they mainly kept purchasing commodity 32-bit CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) chips like the Intel Xeon. If there was a need for something more scalable than the 32-bit CISC chips, server buyers went for RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) processors like Sun’s SPARC or IBM’s POWER chips.

Indeed, the only significant reseller of Itanium processors was HP, in some of its high-end systems.

In part, Itanium’s problems were technological. The first chips, which shipped in 2001, didn’t deliver the performance that HP and Intel had promised. A scarcity of development tools was also a problem – it was particularly hard to create optimizing compilers that would leverage Itanium VLIW design.

While those problems were transitory – the second-generation chips, dubbed Itanium 2, were quite impressive – Itanium never stood a chance, particularly in the face of strong competition from the 64-bit extensions to the classic x86 architecture. The so-called x64 chips from AMD and Intel were a lot less expensive than Itanium 2, and had the advantage that they would run both 64-bit and existing 32-bit x86 applications.

The numbers speak clearly. Accordingly to a May 2008 story in ComputerWorld,

In fact Itanium holds only a sliver of the overall server market. Vendors sold about 55,000 Itanium servers in 2007, compared to 417,000 RISC servers and 8.4 million x86 servers, according to Gartner Inc. Intel estimates that 184,000 Itanium-based systems had been sold altogether by the end of last year.

Imagine my surprise when I read a blog post from Ashlee Vance in the New York times, “A Decade Later, Intel’s Itanium Chip Makes a Profit.” (He also notes that Intel won’t confirm this.) Will wonders never cease?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Trying to figure out this email. Is it spam? Is it business correspondence? It came to an obsolescent personal email address. The name of the sender doesn’t appear to match the name on the email address. Needless to say, there’s nothing in my fax machine.

Here’s the message:

From: “Mr. bobe”
Date: November 18, 2009 11:35:21 PM PST
Subject: Immediate Check

Hi Sir,

Please check you fax machine there is my RESIGNATION LETTER PLEASE ACCEPT IT.

Thanks

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Adorable blog today posting today, by Christoph Niemann in the New York Times: Bio-Diversity.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

My brain is trying to wrap itself around two of today’s news items.

The first is by SD Times reporter David Worthington, reporting from the Microsoft Professional Development Conference. His story, “Azure shines over Microsoft PDC,” covered the announcement on Windows Azure, now set to ship on Jan. 1, 2010. Windows Azure represents Microsoft’s extension of Windows into the Cloud, which means that more and more companies will be outsourcing their enterprise applications and data beyond their own data centers.

The second story was in Computer Reseller News. In “Microsoft Warns on Windows 7 Zero Day,” Kevin McLaughlin wrote about advisories on both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft says that there’s a vulnerability in the Server Message Block protocol stack, and a detailed exploit code has already been published.

I don’t know about you, but given the continuous stream of Patch Tuesday fixes that we’re seeing on product after product, I’m not sure that Windows is ready for the Cloud. Windows Vista, remember, was marketed as the most secure version of Windows ever. After years of complaints by customers, Windows 7 debuted to be the most secure version of Windows ever. And yet, Microsoft can’t seem to stamp out the security issues.

It should be enough to give the industry pause.

Alas, Apple – often worshipped as the anti-Microsoft – has its troubles too. Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard,” which came out in August, was downplayed as a mere tuneup of the previous Leopard operating system release. Yet Snow Leopard has also been plagued by bugs and security glitches.

On Nov 9, Apple released its second major update to Snow Leopard, which addressed major flaws and security issues. It also published Security Update 2009-06 for Leopard, the company’s sixth big security patch of the year.

Can’t anyone get this right?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

“Dirt. Noise. Crowds. Delays. Scary smells. Even scarier fluids swirling on the floor. There are lots of reasons to loathe the New York City subway, but one very good reason to love it — Helvetica, the typeface that’s used on its signage.”

So begins “Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists,” an excellent essay in the Nov. 15, 2009, New York Times. Alice Rawsthorn has captured the wonderful world of typeface fanaticism.

Seeing the clean, crisp shapes of those letters and numbers at station entrances, on the platforms and inside the trains is always a treat, at least it is until I spot the “Do not lean …” sign on the train doors. Ugh! There’s something not quite right about the “e” and the “a” in the word “lean.” Somehow they seem too small and too cramped. Once I’ve noticed them, the memory of the clean, crisp letters fades, and all I remember are the “off” ones.

Read and enjoy. Just try not to notice the lousy on-screen kerning.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

The irony is ironic: Amazon.co.uk won’t accept payment from a U.S.-based Amazon credit card. But the online retailing service will accept other U.S.-based credit cards.

Our family possesses an Amazon.com Visa card, used mainly to buy things on Amazon.com. We like the cash-back rewards on Amazon purchases. The Amazon card is offered through Chase.

This morning, I went to purchase something for my wife’s parents, who live in the United Kingdom. To shop locally, I used the site Amazon.co.uk and picked out the item. At the checkout, Amazon.co.uk already knew about my Amazon Chase credit card because it’s in my user profile. Yay!

After the purchase, I received an email from Amazon.co.uk: “We’re writing to let you know that we are having difficulty processing your Visa for the above transaction.” No further details about the problem — just that the company is having difficulty.

Following the message’s instructions, I opened up the order and carefully re-entered the Amazon credit card number, my name, and the card’s billing address. While the card appeared to be accepted, a few moments later Amazon.co.uk wrote me again: “We’re writing to let you know that we are having difficulty processing your Visa for the above transaction.”

Frustrated, I went back into Amazon.co.uk and entered a different, non-Amazon Visa card issued through a different U.S. bank. I received confirmation a few minutes later that the payment cleared.

I know that my Amazon credit card is good, as I purchased something from Amazon.com yesterday, with no difficulties.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

The box-office draw of the lawsuit between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices has been small but consistent. The companies have been embroiled in legal claims and counterclaims for many years. Now, the suits are apparently over, with Intel agreeing to pay US$1.25 billion to shut up its competitor. Talk about a letdown!

AMD has done a consistently good job of playing the role of the underdog.
It has accused Intel of abusing its dominant position by paying computer manufacturers to be exclusively “Intel Inside.” AMD also made claims of intellectual property violations.

To settle those claims, Intel is writing AMD a check.
In return, AMD is dropping its lawsuits, and the companies are entering into a five-year cross-licensing agreement.

We’ve seen this happen before. AMD sued Intel in the early 1990s on essentially the same grounds. Intel settled the lawsuit shortly thereafter.

What makes this latest settlement unfortunate, in my opinion, is that AMD claimed that Intel was harming consumers by suppressing competition in the microprocessor market. “On behalf of ourselves, our customers and partners, and consumers worldwide, we have been forced to take action,” wrote AMD chairman Hector Ruiz in 2005, when it launched its latest antitrust complaint.

It looked like AMD had a solid case. There was a lot of evidence provided showing how Intel allegedly intimidated computer manufacturers who strayed from an Intel-only product strategy, and that Intel’s actions indeed suppressed competition.

In what way does Intel’s payment of $1.25 billion to AMD provide relief to consumers?
It doesn’t. What the settlement shows is that AMD’s motivation was greed, pure and simple.

This is the end of the line for AMD vs. Intel — for today. But next time AMD finds itself short on cash, we’ll undoubtedly see them back in the courtroom for a box-office sequel.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

“Welcome to Toronto!” said the cheerful flight attendant. “Voice rate is $.79/min; data is $15.36/MB. Unlimited domestic plans do NOT apply,” said the happy text message from AT&T Wireless.

Not wanting to purchase a data plan for over a hundred dollars, and being unwilling to pay $15 per megabyte without a plan, I decided to try spending a week using my smartphone as a dumb phone. No e-mail. No live maps. No Facebook, no Twitter. No calendar sync, no streaming radio, no World Series scores, no restaurant locator—except when I could find a free WiFi hot spot.

That’s not to say that my iPhone 3GS became truly stupid when offline. It still could act as a phone (albeit at $.79 per minute), and I could text (cost unknown). Plus, of course, there was no limitation on running local-only applications, like listening to stored music or using the calendar app with pre-synced (and increasingly out-of-date) data.

There was a human toll to this experience. Withdrawal from the constant pinging (or buzzing) signaling the arrival of new mail was painful. So, too, was the inability to use Google Maps to find my location at any time. Looking for free WiFi hot spots became a real drag.

For many of us in the technology trade, it’s far, far too easy to believe that everyone is like us: always connected, always on, all the time. We read stories and tell anecdotes about the mobile Internet. A week without a smartphone taught me that it’s less ubiquitous than we think.

Many people, including employees of our company, our business partners and our customers, are not connected 24×7. Not everyone has a smartphone. Not everyone who has a smartphone has access to an “all-you-can-eat” broadband plan. Data transmission isn’t free, and it’s not everywhere.

What can you do?

First, if you’re an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android or Treo user, wipe that smug look off your face. Sure, you’re in broadband heaven today, but wait until you’re someplace without a clear signal, or someplace that’s not covered by your standard data plan.

Second, when you build applications or set up mobile application access to your data, don’t waste bits. Provide options for low-bandwidth connections and for expensive bandwidth. When you’re paying $15 per megabyte, every bit counts.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Jolt Cola may be gone forever from supermarket shelves. Fortunately, I’ve got quite a few hypercaffeinated bottles stashed away.

Jolt Cola is the mascot of the Jolt Awards, which originated at Miller Freeman’s Computer Language Magazine in 1990. (I was one of the founders of the awards, and served as a Jolt Judge for many years.) Sadly, the Jolt Awards are currently adrift without a publication or a conference to anchor them, and I’m worried that the 2009 Jolt Awards may be the last.

You can read the history of the Jolt Awards, as written by J.D. Hildebrand. There’s even a sidebar by yours truly about the award’s namesake soft drink.

But now, as Matthew Daneman wrote on Oct. 29 for the Democrat & Chronicle, a web-based newspaper covering the Rochester, N.Y., area, “Fizzling Jolt Cola may close“:

The heavily caffeinated cola introduced 24 years ago became a popular culture phenomenon and still was available at thousands of retailers in North America and Europe until earlier this year. But Pittsford-based Jolt Co. Inc. now seems likely to close, according to an attorney for the company, after a contentious attempt at reorganizing fell apart earlier this week.

The demise of Jolt would be a shame. While I rarely drink Jolt Cola any more (too much sugar, too much caffeine for my tastes these days), the drink will always have a special place in my too-rapidly pounding heart.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick