Mike's List: ISSUE 40 * JULY 23, 2002

ISSUE 40 * JULY 23, 2002

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FCC: Let My People Go

FCC HAS CONSPIRED ONCE AGAIN with the big cell phone service providers to keep us in that cell phone stone age I'm always complaining about.

For the third time, the FCC (The American Federal Communications Commission, which is headed up by Secretary of State Colin Powel's kid, Michael) has extended a deadline that would have required mobile phone service companies to let us keep our cell phone numbers when we switch to another provider. Their deadline was November 24, 2002. The FCC extension gives them yet another year to hold us hostage.

Right now, if you switch from AT&T Wireless to another carrier, AT&T keeps the phone number that your friends, colleagues and family members have memorized or entered into their PIMs. You have to start over with a new number.

The big companies -- AT&T, Sprint, Cingular and Verizon -- are afraid that their bad customer service, "creative" billing and anti-customer policies will drive you to smaller, nimbler and more aggressive carriers unless they can leverage their "ownership" of your phone number to force you to stay.

Of course, the small carriers are all in favor of number portability because it levels the playing field.

Congress and the FCC ordered cell service companies way back in 1996 to let people keep their cell phone numbers when they switch carriers. The commission set a deadline of 1999, which was delayed twice.

Last week, Verizon pressed the FCC for a third delay, whining about technological hurdles and cost. The FCC buckled.

Literally adding insult to injury, the carriers argue that people don't really want number portability anyway. Studies show people want good service and lower prices more than a cell phone number for life. Conveniently those studies favor the millions of teens and other consumers who dominate cell phone ownership in the U.S. If they were to do a study looking just at business people and other professionals, I'm sure they'd find out that number portability is extremely important. And we want good service and low prices as well.

Cell phone customers in Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and elsewhere have long enjoyed number portability. It can be done.

In an unrelated move, the FCC adopted rules that enable phone companies to share your personal data without your permission -- or even your knowledge. That information includes who you call, when you call them, and where you called from, as well as the kinds of services you use and how often you use them. They have to ask your permission only if the buyer of your private data has nothing to do with telecommunications.

You'll have the option to tell phone companies that you don't want your personal information shared, but everyone knows that the majority of people won't do that. The FCC expressly rejected a requirement that would have forced the phone companies to ask your permission first before selling you out.

If you're tired of being held captive by the big cell phone carriers and don't want the phone companies to sell your personal info without your permission, let Chairman Powell hear about it. Click here to write him a nasty note.

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Creating Brands the Old Fashioned Way

By stealing them! A company called e.Digital Corporation seems to have trouble coming up with original ideas. Their Odyssey 1000 Digital Jukebox, which was launched yesterday, looks alarmingly similar to Apple's iPod MP3 player (the Odyssey is on the right and the Apple is on the Left). The company sells another MP3 player called the Treo 15. Hmmmm. Treo. Where have I heard THAT before?

Unanticipated Convergence

Here's the world's first ever keyboard with a built-in keyboard. The Creative Prodikeys, from Singapore's Creative Technology Ltd., comes with a mini piano keyboard in the from of a standard PC QWERTY keyboard. Bundled software lets you can simulate grandma's old Hammond organ, right from the comfort of your own PC. The product costs about $100 and is currently marketed exclusively to children in Japan, China and Singapore -- which I think is a huge mistake. Adult sound hackers and other musical geeks would love using this as their main PC keyboard.

Keeping Mike's List Ad-Free

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Proof You Can Buy Anything on the Web

Here's a web site I discovered called Plans and Kits Unlimited that sells kits for building strange, geeky and quasi-illegal gadgets. The site offers a box for your car that turns traffic signals green, and even a popular ultra high-energy plasma radiation generator kit for knocking out computers at a distance.

It's fun to build elaborate, sophisticated sand castles and other sand sculptures when you're at the beach. But if you're light on talent, patience or both -- and heavy on cash -- you can hire the professionals at Team Sandtastic to build them for you.

Shameless Self-Promotion

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Craig Crossman's Computer America features Mike's List content on every show (and I join Craig live on the first broadcast Sunday of every month). You can hear Computer America on your local Business TalkRadio station or over the Internet each Sunday from 1pm to 3pm Silicon Valley Time. Don't miss Computer America!

Gotta-Get-It Gadget

Hitachi officially launched its water-cooled laptop, called the Flora 270W Silent Model. It became available to corporate customers in Japan starting on July 17. Using Hitachi's patented system, water-based fluid passes through a tube that picks up heat over its 1.8-GHz Pentium 4 chip, then carries behind the LCD display where the heat is passed through the back of the case. It's a cool idea, but the heat-dissipation system adds thickness to the top of the laptop, weight and price ($2,941), according to reports. The company has not announced consumer or International distribution plans.

Have you seen an amazing new toy? Let me know!

Wacky Web Sites

Here's a how-to guide to making your own crop circles. Please note that in order to make crop circles you must be a member of an advanced alien civilization from a distant world -- or a mischievous Goober with a tractor.

Web developer and part-time blogger Will Chatham collects the clippings of his own fingernails and toenails and -- wouldn't you know it? -- keeps a gallery of the whole affair online. Don't visit the site before lunch.

Comic book collector Tom Zjaba has captured the glory days of comic book ads from the 1970s. Welcome back to the fantastic world of Sea Monkeys, Charles Atlas, X-Ray Glasses and Grit.

Speaking of Charles Atlas, did you know the World's Most Perfectly Developed Man (actually, he's dead) has his own web site?

Speaking of comic book web sites, check out this one. Someone scanned every page of the first-ever Superman comic book for your reading pleasure.

The Gallery of Huge Beings chronicles "fiberglass and concrete giants standing tirelessly along our highways and by-ways" built by commercial enterprises across the U.S., Canada and Australia. (The site is not to be confused with "The Muffler Men Home Page" on Roadside America.)

If you see a really crazy web site: Let me know!

Last Week's Mystery Pic

No, it's not "RoboCujo," a time machine, or even a "prototype Imperial Walker for the Army" as suggested by some readers. It's a walking forest machine, made by Plustech Oy, a division of John Deere. The vehicle, which walks on six legs, is designed to minimize damage to the environment as it stomps through the forest mowing down trees. A sophisticated computer system controls the walking. Congratulations to Brad Griffin for being first with the right answer.

Have you seen an amazing, hard-to-identify picture? Let me know!

Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? Send YOUR guess to mysterypic@mikeslist.com. If you're first with the right answer, I'll print your name in the next issue of Mike's List!

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