goings on around the web

Some friends are doing some cool stuff this week:

Ben, who runs Virtually Blind and is an expert on legal issues in virtual worlds, has had an op-ed piece about the future of the Internet published in the Wall Street Journal.

Maggie, of Mighty Girl fame and a former colleague at Web Techniques, has launched Mighty Haus a new shopping blog focused on cool stuff for your house. As the tagline says, hooray for stuff!

Jeff, who runs the Digital Camera Resource Page, one of the top digital camera reviews sites, got to play professional sports photographer for a day at the Bank of the West Classic tennis tournament at Stanford. Love the photo of the flying braid.

introducing kinverge

So what have I been doing with my time now that I'm a fancy-pants "Independent Technology Consultant"? In addition to working for some great startups and nonprofits -- and, oh right, that whole procreating thing (which I did in my off hours, I promise) -- I've teamed up with two sharp partners to build Kinverge, a free family intranet service.

In a nutshell, our goal with Kinverge is to make it super easy to set up a private Web site where your family can share and store family photo albums; set up birthday, anniversary, and other event reminders; post announcements and group messages; create gift lists; ...and you get the picture. We built it with the philosophy that photo sharing and blogging and other technologies don't have to be complicated and just for the tech-savvy. We think using a private family Web site can be easy enough to allow everyone in the family to participate.

We're still refining the site and adding new features, but if it sounds like something your family might be interested in or you're just curious, definitely head on over and get yourself set up. It takes all of a minute -- and did I mention it's free? Plus, it'd make me very happy.

(And if you perhaps felt compelled to tell others about it, or post about it on your own blog, I'll tell everyone you're the greatest.)

not quite right

I don't remember when, but at some point I must have signed up to receive emails from Buy.com. The messages show up a couple times a week and are full of offers for all sorts of tech stuff -- hard drives, SD cards, wireless base stations, printers, and the like. But the message I got the other day is, well, a little odd. Here are the top offers:

• Sonic Impact HF1 High Fidelity Earphones
• Gateway M-6308 Notebook
• Kingston 2GB DataTraveler USB 2.0 Flash Drive
• Sonic Impact i-P23 Portable Speakers
• Logitech Cordless Desktop S510
• Trojan Elexa Ultra Sensitive Lubricated Latex Condoms - 24 Pack

boring, but necessary

So there's no sign of the kid yet. In the meantime, we continue to prepare. And that means taking care of all the things you just don't want to have to be dealing with later when you're at the beck and call of a two-week-old child. But I'll tell ya, we're getting down to the bottom of the to-do list, the real dull stuff.

Take, for instance, task #436: Finally setting up a way to regularly back up the files on my laptop. Honestly, I've never gotten around to doing this until now, ever, on any computer -- despite recommending it to every unfortunate friend, relative, and client who has ever called me in panic with complaints of a crashed hard drive.

I get why they -- and I -- don't do what we all know we should: Backing up your hard drive is about as exciting as applying for life insurance. But since we crossed life insurance off the list last week.....

So to all my friends, relatives, and clients, here's the deal: I'm now backing up my computer with Carbonite. It's a subscription-based service that automatically and regularly copies your important files to a remote server (run by Carbonite.) If you accidentally delete a file, or your whole hard drive, you can get back the important stuff.

After you install the Carbonite utility, the software automatically does an initial backup of your My Documents folder. This part takes a few days, but it happens in the background while you're computer's on so you don't really notice. After that, the software only sends copies of new or changed files to the server. (You can set which files get backed up and how often.)

The only problem I had with Carbonite is that I noticed my hard drive seemed to be running all the time, even after the initial backup was done. I think that's because Carbonite was fighting to back up my email files every time I got a new message. My email is already backed up elsewhere, so I ended up removing the "AppData" folder from my backup schedule and that seems to have fixed things.

The whole thing costs $49.95 per year. But here's a secret: Search for "Carbonite coupon" and you'll likely find a $10 discount floating around out there.

So there you go -- no more reason to panic and call me when you lose all those MP3s you ripped from the CDs you "borrowed" from me. And speaking of ripping MP3s, if the kid doesn't show up within a few more days, I'll tell you about boring task #437.

the genius of bureaucracy

Happy Tax Day, U.S. readers. Today's utterly-dumb-Web-site anecdote is brought to you by none other than the U.S. Treasury.

If, like many business owners, you have to make quarterly tax payments, you might at some point decide that filling out paper vouchers and mailing them in along with your checks might not be all that convenient. And so you might go looking for a Web site where maybe you can just make your payments online. If so, you would likely find the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.

Sounds handy, right? Wait 'til you try to set up an account. Here are the steps:

1. Register online for your account.
2. Wait roughly two weeks for a letter via the postal service, supposedly containing further instructions and a PIN number for setting up your account.
3. Receive the letter containing said PIN and attempt to use it to log on to the Web site -- and then realize that, in addition to the PIN, you need an "Internet password".
4. Re-read the letter and realize that you must call a customer service center to receive your Internet password.
5. Call the center and provide the PIN... and a separate 16-digit "enrollment trace number" noted on the PIN letter.
6. Return to the Web site yet again and provide your PIN, and Internet password... and Social Security Number.
7. Make yourself a stiff drink.

It takes fewer steps to launch Russian warheads. Banks, online brokerages, credit card services, and pretty much all other types of financial institution long ago figured out a security model that takes less than 5 minutes to complete -- and doesn't require the triangulation of your Internet, postal, and telephony services. Why can't the IRS follow suit?

Oh, and keep in mind that if you wait until April 14 before logging on and trying to schedule a payment for the next business day, you'll get a peculiar error telling you that you have entered an invalid date. That's right, April 15 -- Tax Day -- is an invalid date, according to the EFTPS. Why? This "24 hours a day" service doesn't accept payments after 8PM Eastern on the day before taxes are due. Silly you.

The best part? For sure, it's the first line of the EFTPS enrollment letter, which states: We have received your enrollment information for EFTPS, the easiest way to pay your federal taxes.

redesign: the post office

As I stood in line at the local post office this afternoon, muttering under my breath at all the people in front of me -- in particular: the guy with the lamp that he decided to wrap only after reaching the counter; the woman with the home business who showed up with three sacks full of badly wrapped t-shirts to ship; and the two aging grandmothers who, separately, wanted the clerk to show them every single stamp design in the catalog -- I was reminded yet again of why I hate the post office so much, and why I only go once or twice a year when I have no other choice.

The only good thing about the experience is that it gives me a chance to daydream about how I'd redesign the place to make it more efficient. Here's my plan:

First, get rid of the one-line-fits-all-needs model. Break it up. When you walk in, you should see several clearly marked areas of the post office. Need stamps? Over here. Need to mail a letter or some documents? Over there. Need to send a package? That counter. Need bubble wrap? The packing table. Don't know what you need? The info desk. Right away, the wait time is reduced because you don't have to stand behind every single person in the building.

Next, rely more on self service. You shouldn't need to stand in line and talk to a clerk just to buy some packing tape. At the packing table, slide your credit card through a slot in a vending machine and pick your own supplies. Likewise, the majority of people don't need to talk to a clerk to send an international, express, or oversized letter. They just need to know what their mailing options are and how much each costs. How about a scale and a quick way to find out how much postage I need? (And no, I don't mean leave a scale on a table in the corner like they do now; the "quick way to find out how much postage I need" is critical.)

Finally, use technology. In the scale example above, why not let me set my letter on a kiosk that automatically measures the weight, scans the address, and gives me all my mailing options on a touch screen? Once I select an option and pay, the kiosk prints out a mailing label and I'm on my way. A similar kiosk system would work just fine for stamp buyers who want to see what else is available besides the American flag booklets. Now, your grandmother can flip through the entire catalog on a touch screen. Want to see more stamps with birds? Easy. Like the kittens? Here's more. What are other grandmas getting? We'll show you.

Of course, change requires incentive. And a postal service that has a $5.4 billion deficit is not about to invest in an overhaul of its customer service centers -- at least, not when it doesn't have to worry about competition. (It's the same problem with the DMV.)

Maybe then the biggest change the postal service can make to become more efficient is to open up standard mail delivery to competitors. Isn't the US long past the point where it needs to nurture the postal communications network? At this point, if a private firm can find a way to get a letter to my relatives' mailboxes faster and cheaper than USPS can, why not let it?

the case against upper case

Is there a reason why computer keyboards still have Caps Lock keys? Is there some powerful lobby of FORTRAN 77 programmers that I don't know about?

At the least, can we move the Caps Lock key somewhere else -- preferably somewhere that's not prime keyboard real estate? I mean, the right pinky finger's got the sensible and quite important Enter key. So why does the left pinky get the one that's only used on accident or else by the crazies who think the best way to warn us all about our impending doom at the hands of aliens is to SHOUT IT ON THE NEAREST MESSAGE BOARD?

diy

Many years ago, I applied for a job at Microsoft, was flown up to the Mountain View campus, and was put through eight hours of infamous Microsoft interview questions. You know the type: brainteasers intended to reveal to the interviewer how I solve problems. Most of the questions were standard riddles, like, How do you match up three light switches in one room to each of the three light bulbs that they control in another room while making as few trips as possible between rooms? (Hint: there's a way to do it in one trip.)

But one question, toward the end of the day, caught me off guard. The interviewer asked, "Why do the drainpipes of sinks have P-traps on them?" (P-traps are that curve in the pipe under the sink.)

At the time, I thought it a pretty strange and irrelevant question. (Yes, more so than the one about the ratio of blue paint to red paint in two buckets where the same spoon has been dipped into the red one and then the blue one and then back into the red one.) After all, why would someone applying for a job at Microsoft need to know how the plumbing under a sink works?

If I remember correctly, I figured that since the trap often gets clogged -- like the time I tried to put a whole colander of old spaghetti down the garbage disposal -- the trap must be for, well, trapping chunks of food before it gets into the sewer system. Not quite, the interviewer explained. Turns out that getting clogged is actually an unwanted side effect of the P-trap. Its real function is to stay full of water so that sewer gases don't come back up into the house.

I didn't get the job -- not just because I didn't know what a P-trap is for, but also because I wasn't much for brainteasers back then, or perhaps because I generally wasn't all that bright at the time. But anyway, for the most part, I soon forgot about the seemingly silly P-trap question.

It wasn't until not too long ago, when G and I bought our house, and when I suddenly realized that I really like do-it-yourself projects -- and suddenly found myself fixing leaking drains and pulling toilets off their bases and rigging washing machines so as not to overflow -- that I remembered the P-trap question again. And it was then that I finally understood what an interviewer could gain from asking such a question.

See, if I were to answer the question incorrectly, as I had, then it would be no big deal: the interviewer could assume that I simply had lived in apartments and dorms for a long time and never had to deal with plumbing. However, if I were to answer correctly, then the interviewer could immediately imply a handful of things about me -- like that I had at some point fixed a sink myself, and therefore had had to teach myself a new skill in a limited amount of time, and that I was the type of person who would do it himself rather than wait for a plumber to show up (and that I probably could have waited for that plumber but was just too cheap to want to pay one.)

In other words, the interviewer could find out if I was a do-it-yourselfer. And in doing so, they'd find out quite a bit about my personality.

It's clear to me now why I like meeting other do-it-yourselfers so much. Sure, we share a hobby in common. But also, I can be pretty sure that they're self-reliant people. They believe they can learn new things. They like to learn new things. They like to solve problems. They like to make things better. Sounds like the perfect qualities to look for in a new hire.

If I'm ever interviewing you and you want to impress me, find a way to tell me about how you spent the past weekend tiling your kitchen floor.

brainstorming gone bad

Marc Andreessen blogged recently about brainstorming, pointing to research quoted in the The Medici Effect that states that groups that get together to brainstorm consistently underperform groups that split up and brainstorm ideas individually and then come back together later to share those ideas.

It's an interesting insight, and I've certainly had my share of meetings where I've just wanted to go away and think quietly for a while. But I'd say the bigger problem facing most companies is not generating ideas, but rather knowing when to stop brainstorming and start doing.

I think this is especially a problem in the tech industry, where it's easy to talk about all the cool things you could do with a product. Over and over again, I've seen teams come together to solve a problem and walk away with a half dozen other projects to think about, each with their own problems.

One organization I worked for called a meeting to discuss what should have been a fairly simple request to modify a checkbox on its Web site. They wanted the box to be pre-checked when users first saw it, in hopes that it might raise subscription rates to their e-newsletter. Sounds like something that probably could have been handled over email or in a phone call? Nope. The meeting lasted an hour, with six people representing a variety of different departments and levels in attendance. By the end of the meeting, the original reason for "checking the checkbox" had long been forgotten and replaced with eight new "wouldn't it be great if" ideas. And the associate who had initially been asked to make the change was left sitting at the table wondering aloud if she was still supposed to make the change or not. Awesome.

Organizations like these aren't stagnant behemoths in need of new processes to tease out the next brilliant idea. They're teeming with ideas -- and no ability to focus on just some of them. What they need is not someone to say, "Hey, let's change the way we brainstorm" but rather "Hey, we're past the brainstorming phase on this one and into the decision-making phase."

about time

I'm pretty tough on products that have bad user interfaces, especially technical products. For instance, within three weeks of getting a Comcast (Motorola) DVR, I gave everyone who spent more than two minutes with me a treatise on just how much more I preferred TiVo's interface. All I'm trying to do is watch TV for crying out loud, so why does Comcast think my remote control needs to look like a graphing calculator?

But the one interface I've always hated doesn't have much to do with technology -- or high technology, at least. It's the Dewey Decimal System. While it's great to have industry standards, there's no reason to force end users to know the ins and outs of those standards to benefit from them -- which is exactly what librarians have done for over a century. Looking for books about technology? Look for the 600 on the spine!

So I have to say it's about time a library bucked tradition and started organizing books under plain-English headings and printing plain-English subjects on the spines.

It reminds me of one of my favorite stories about another type of usable "interface": that of the footpaths at the University of Oregon, which were paved after paths naturally appeared in the grass where student and faculty walked the most.

the law in second life

I've been meaning to post this for quite a while: In January, my friend Ben launched Virtually Blind, a blog covering the "justice, law, and politics of virtual worlds." You might not think there'd be a whole lot to say here, or that it'd tend to be a pretty dry topic, but Ben's been on a roll since he started, posting all sorts of well-thought out (and witty) insights into how the law affects technology and vice versa.

where to put your money

UniversalGiving looks interesting: It's a charity site that lets you select exactly what project or gift package you want your money to go toward.

For instance, if healthcare in developing nations is a cause you're particularly interested in funding, you can donate $50 to "provide a birth kit to a Tibetan woman and her unborn child." And UniversalGiving says they don't take a cut of your donation.

Reminds me of Kiva, but with a focus on helping you find and fund the what instead of the who.

the kind spammer

I've started moderating the incoming comments on this blog -- yes, yes, all three that I get each year, I get it, you're funny -- because I wasn't able to delete all the comment spam fast enough. So this means I now have to scan through a long list of recently posted comments whenever I get a spare moment every few days and look for comments that I want to approve. And in doing so, I've noticed something kind of odd: Apparently, I've got a spammer who feels bad about filling up my blog with comments that link to all sorts of shady Web sites that sell questionable pharmaceuticals.

How do I know he (or she) feels bad about spamming my site? Check out the sort of notes he's leaving next to all the shady links:

• "Sorry that I did that"
• "Deeply sorry for that"
• "Really sorry for this"
• "Please don't be angry"
• "Please forgive me"

loans so small

I just helped finance two small businesses in Uganda and Kenya. I say this not to brag, but rather to point out what an incredible idea Kiva is. The organization uses the Web to connect individuals who would like to put their spare cash to good use with business owners in developing nations who need "microloans" -- loans so small that most banks won't bother.

In reality, the system is connecting you to a microfinance institution that vets and works with the business owners. But by taking care of that behind the scenes and bringing the business owners themselves to the forefront, Kiva's rewriting the way microfinance works. After all, when you decide to put some money toward a good cause, wouldn't you rather know exacly who it's helping, as opposed to seeing it go into some large, nameless account somewhere?

Oh, and another great thing about Kiva: they encourage participants to tell others about their loans. (Forget the days of giving silently -- the more people who contribute, the better chance these businesses have of getting off the ground.)

And Kiva makes it stupid simple, too. When you make a loan, they give you a single snippet of HTML code that you can plug into your own blog or Web site. The result? The promo box you see at the beginning of this post.

now what the f---?

By itself, this story -- about a 74-year-old woman whose personalized license plate (NWTF) was rejected because some DMV employees think NWTF refers to a bit of Internet shorthand (wtf) -- is already perfect.

But the fact that it also includes the following quote takes the story to a level where it quite possibly will win the award for being the defining story of the Internet era:

"Apparently, the young people use it on the computer," she said.

Yes, apparently they do.

That's the sort of line a reporter could spend his entire life just waiting to hear.

ohmy or oh my

The latest issue of the New Yorker has an article about citizen journalism and discusses, in part, OhmyNews -- the organization that hosted me at the International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul last month. I haven't quite yet decided what I think about the article, except that:

1. it was surprisingly unfocused and dull for a New Yorker piece; and
2. I can't figure out why the copy editors decided to refer to the organization as "Oh My News" when its official name is clearly OhmyNews.

The "Oh" in OhmyNews, by the way, is a reference to the founder's name, Oh Yeon Ho, and not to the English expression "Oh My". (In case you were wondering.)

you're so web 1.0

Sorry to get all techie-pedantic on you, dear readers, but I've just got to get this off my chest: People, a podcast is not synonymous with any old audio file you put up on your Web site. A podcast is what you get when you actually distribute your audio file automatically to subscribers using RSS or some other syndication method.

Phew. Thanks. Geek levels falling back to normal levels now.

digitizing tragedy

At Tuesday night's NetTuesday event here in San Francisco, I learned that there's a "virtual Darfur" in Second Life -- and the fact that the project even exists is very controversial, as you might imagine.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I see it for myself. However, I will say that the screenshot of the busty redhead wearing a "Camp Darfur" T-shirt that the Camp Darfur folks have on their Web site isn't doing them any favors.

censorship in india

Good lord. I've just returned from the conference on international citizen journalism -- at which many of the discussions focused on overcoming government and corporate censorship (both explicit and implicit) -- and the news today is uncannily about government censorship of new media. In particular, Indian Internet service providers are blocking access to blogs at the request of the Indian government.

So the story so far is that the government only asked the ISPs to block a handful of sites, but that the ISPs had no way of blocking select blogspot and typepad sites, so they just banned them all.

In response, a group of Indian bloggers have set up a "Bloggers Against Censorship" wiki to collect and share news about the ban (and ways to get around it.)

So, two wrongs and a right:

• Crackdown on freedom of speech (by a country often referred to as the "world's largest democracy.")
• Terrible, half-assed application of technology to filter content.
• Affected group using the Web to organize, draw attention to the issue, and overcome the ban.

I'm curious to know: Why now? Is there any relation to the recent train bombings?

the panel went well

Greetings from the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul. The conference so far has been quite interesting: a good mix of stories from the people building publications based on user-contributed content; and from the people who are actually creating and submitting that content to these publications -- mainly because it allows them to feel as if they finally have a chance to be heard in an environment where most media outlets tend to ignore their stories.

I thought our panel on the technology underlying the citizen journalism movement went well. You can check out the video online: Citizen Participation and Technology - OhmyNews International.

If you're interested in seeing first-hand what this rise in citizen journalism is all about, check out:

• OhmyNews International (International; in English)
• OhmyNews (Korea; in Korean/Hangul)
• Flix.dk (Denmark; in Danish)
• Scoop.co.il (Israel; in Hebrew)

mr. amit goes to korea

I'll be at the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul this week, moderating a panel featuring Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Ourmedia.org's J.D. Lasica, and Witness's Bryan Nunez. We'll be talking about the technologies that are enabling (or could enable) people all around the world to contribute news, opinions, and stories to media organizations large and small.

I'm only there for about three days, mostly at the conference, but if anyone's got tips on what I absolutely must see or do in Seoul, let me know.

when brains, biology, and copyright meet

At tonight's NetSquared event in San Francisco, I listened to Creative Commons CTO Mike Linksvayer tell the story of how a group of environmentalists is working to subvert Monsanto's claim that it owns the copyright to the DNA of its genetically modified crops.

According to Mike, this group is working on cultivating related crops nearby whose DNA is licensed more openly, under the "free" Gnu Public License (GPL) scheme.

This is interesting because, according to the terms of the GPL, any work that is based on (derived from) another GPL-licensed work must also be released under a GPL license. So, if the Monsanto crops and the GPL-licensed crops were to cross-polinate and yield a hybrid crop, that would -- theoretically -- mean the hybrid was freely available.

Regardless of where you stand on Monsanto's policies or politics, or whether this would hold up in a court of law, you have to admit that this is an incredibly clever tactic.

call me old fashioned

So it seems like everyone -- er, everyone in San Francisco -- okay, everyone in San Francisco tech circles -- ah, okay, fine, just a handful of very smart people -- is talking about Web 2.0 technologies these days. And while I do think the tools in this category have the potential to be used to accomplish a lot of great things, I'm a little frightened at what seems like an overbearing willingness to overlook the need to gradually integrate the new tools with the old, tried-and-true ones that we're all comfortable with.

Case in point: I recently said "aw, what the heck" and set up a wiki so that a group of friends could collaboratively plan a camping trip we're taking soon. While the wiki -- basically a shared whiteboard -- worked suprisingly well in that it reduced the number of emails and phone calls that we all had to send back and forth to plan the trip, I found it a bit of a pain to have to remember to check the wiki every evening to find out whether anyone had added anything new to the page.

So, I figured I'd just subscribe to the wiki and automatically get emailed each time someone updates the page. Not so easy. Wikispaces, the wiki provider that we're using, only lets you get notified of updates via an RSS feed -- another Web 2.0 technology.

The thing is: I don't always keep my RSS feed reader open and running. Plus, I like to check my email from multiple computers and multiple programs depending on where I am. So why can't I just get a simple email notification? What up, Wikispaces? Is email too old-fashioned to be cool?

come see me

I'm going to be giving a real brief talk at the Creative Commons Salon next Wednesday about how Creative Commons licensing is helping nonprofits get information about technology.

There will be other speakers, too, giving much more interesting talks and demos. Plus, it's at a bar (Shine) and there'll be "drinks and discussion." So if you'll be in San Francisco on Wed, June 14, from 6-9pm, drop on by and say hello.

affordable style

So here's a question for the techies in the audience to ponder: Why don't Web sites share style sheets? While it's not terribly difficult to set up a style sheet, it does take a lot of practice and a sharp eye for design to create a good one -- and the truth is, a lot of sites could use the help.

Not that you'd want to see a bunch of Web sites all looking the exact same. But, at the least, you could have a style sheet that sets up some accessible fonts, fine-tunes the leading, cleans up the look of blockquotes and bulleted lists, and so on. For nonprofits, where tech resources are often hard to come by, something like this could help them get professional-looking sites up and running quickly.

The World Wide Web Consortium tried doing a Core Styles project a few years back, but that seems to be dead at this point. And in my 12 years of being on the Web and involved in the development of Web sites, I can't remember a single time anyone ever used the Core Styles. I'm curious as to why not.

space magician

From an article about magician -- er, endurance masochist -- David Blaine and his little accident last night:

As early as on the second day of his challenge, Gunel said, there was evidence that Blaine was suffering liver failure; the medical team consulted with medical experts at NASA before stabilizing his condition.

It's so nice to see NASA being put to good use.

Originally, I was supposed to have written about the space shuttle launch on location at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The article would have been part of a series of pieces I'd been working on for Wired News for the past four months.

But then the launch got delayed and so my photographer and I came home.

Eventually, the launch was rescheduled for today, and I was supposed to have watched it live on NASA TV and written about it from the office. It wouldn't have been an ideal scenario, but it would have been something.

But then, yesterday, Wired News laid off its writing staff.

So instead, I watched the launch on the Today Show (because the online version of NASA TV was bogged down). Matt and Katie chatted for a couple minutes about the problems that NASA has been having and then went on to a segment where they patted themselves on the back for arranging to get a scholarship for a young amputee. This was followed by an interview with an actress who's appearing in a new movie about online dating.

As of an hour-and-a-half after the launch, the Wired News page that advertises my series of launch-related articles still claims that NASA may attempt to launch the shuttle on Tuesday, July 26. Stay tuned for further updates.

Right. Good luck. I'm going to go make myself a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats.

Progress

My first cellphone was a Qualcomm QCP 2760. It was a slim little thing, dressed in classy black plastic, with a big round face that you wouldn't mind pressing up against your cheek for a good half-an-hour or more if you were so called upon.

The phone had a solid heft, without feeling like a brick, and it had this decisive ring that didn't make you feel like you were fourteen. Rather, you felt like you were getting a real, honest-to-goodness phone call. Plus, you could take about three days worth of these sorts of calls without having to recharge the thing.

Sure, it didn't have a vibrate function, or an address book that could group multiple phone numbers under one name. But, by all means, the 2760 was a good phone -- and nothing but a phone.

Sadly, I put the 2760 in my bag one day. And then put my bag behind the seat of my car. And then slid the seat so far back that it cracked the phone's green LCD display.

That was a bad day.

My second cellphone was a silver clamshell flip-phone sort of thing, inherited from my sister-in-law and sent off to recycling heaven a few weeks later.

(Hey, it was a flip-phone. I'll be damned if I'm going to "open" my phone every time I want to answer it.)

My third cellphone was again silver. But this time it had a big, high-resolution display and a polyphonic speaker -- both of which were, apparently, perfect for playing games. And that would have been great, I suppose, except that I really wasn't in need of a $120 game of Asteroids.

Besides, the closest thing that that phone had to a regular ring was some retro-futurist version of the William Tell Overture. I suppose I could have downloaded and installed new ringtones, or even made my own. But I have a job, and a life, and I'm not fourteen. So I took it back.

My fourth cellphone, a Kyocera 2001-Or-2010-Or-1984 (or something like that), was somewhat more demure in its stylings. Sure, it weighed a good ounce or two more than my first cellphone, and the 5-line LCD glowed blue whenever you pressed any keys. But those were things that I learned to overlook after a couple months.

After all, the phone didn't insist on butchering Beethoven whenever someone tried to call me. It didn't inform me that I was about to connect to the website for the Kremlin whenever I pressed the wrong button. It didn't have a built-in speakerphone, or a camera, or a can of mace. It simply made calls and received calls. The Asteroids I could deal with.

Of course, this phone didn't get any reception in our new house.

My fifth phone was another Kyocera -- the most basic model I could find in the store. But times have changed, and so have phones.

I'm not sure exactly what the version number of this fifth phone was, but I think it included the letters HAL in there somewhere. Even though HAL was a highly advanced creature, containing enough intelligence to charge me for accessing the list of games that it would gladly download at my behest, it would only play the Kyocera "Phantom" ringtone whenever someone called -- even after I changed the ringer setting to something slightly less likely to make me look like a dork.

So I took it back. Or I tried to. The problem was that I had waited too long and the period for returns had ended.

So they replaced it. For the same model.

My sixth and current cellphone -- which I would otherwise refer to as HAL II, except that I would rather call it Piece of Junk -- will now let me choose something other than the Kyocera Phantom ringtone as my default ringer. But it still runs out of batteries after just one day.

And did I mention that it's much thicker than that QCP 2760 that used to fit so nicely into my pocket? And that you can barely see the text on the screen? And that the stubby antenna nub doesn't retract into the body of the phone when I'm not using it, leaving it primed for poking me in the thigh?

Yes, I imagine that I did.

New and Old

It's weird, isn't it, how we like new things that look old?

On the Phone

Why, oh why does it take SBC two hours on the phone just to input the order to transfer your phone service from one house to another? And why, oh why does it take them a whole 10 business days to get around to setting up DSL access at the new place?

Having to use the modem all day for work is a bit like getting on the freeway and realizing that the speed limit has been lowered to 20 mph.

Here's a shameless plug:

Here's a shameless plug: If you tune in to Public Radio International's The World on your local public radio station sometime this afternoon, you may hear me talking to host Lisa Mullins about how activists are using technology to aid their protests against the current World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun. I wrote an article on the topic for Wired News recently and the show's producers thought it would make for an interesting segment.

Now, mind you that I was probably speaking too fast and slurring my words, so don't tease me too much if I end up sounding a little nervous. Likewise, comments about any dumb statements I may make should be kept to yourself. Please.

The World airs at 2:00pm on KQED (88.5 FM) here in San Francisco. You can look up times and stations in other regions by going to the PRI Web site. I'm not 100 percent positive that the segment will air today, but we'll find out soon enough.

PS: When I told Lisa Mullins that I had had a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast, she laughed and told me that she used to peel the sugar frosting off the top of the mini wheats and just eat that. I do expect this part to be edited out of the segment.

Update: The audio stream of the interview is now online.

Before You Start

Here's an important lesson for you technical types out there: Back up your database before you start adding new "features." This will save you some hair.

stop feeling guilty

Wow, Bank of America now lets you view your cancelled checks online. Now I can stop feeling guilty about forgetting to record checks in my checkbook. (Not that I write a whole lot of checks these days with this whole online banking thing and all.)