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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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?

“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.