Champagne Velvet

This is incredible.  The idea (one phone number to reach you no matter where you are, including temporary numbers like hotel rooms) is fairly simple but it sounds difficult to implement so I hope they did it right.  Great article in the Times.

One Number That Will Ring All Your Phones - New York Times

anyone who spends some time contemplating GrandCentral’s possibilities will soon see the bigger picture: this service removes your location as a consideration in phone calling, much the same way that the TiVo makes a TV show’s broadcast time unimportant. In other words, GrandCentral has rewritten the rules in the game of telephone.

This is a great article.  Read it.

Apple Matters | A Legitimate Reason to Hate the Zune (And Microsoft Too)

if one went into a store and bought a bag of Apples and a big box of razor blades on October 30* would a reasonable person expect to pay an up charge because those razor blades might go into the apples which could then be distributed to trick or treaters? Oddly enough, that is precisely what is happening with the Zune

Microsoft planning WiFi-enabled portable media player, working on MVNO for next year

To attract current iPod users Microsoft is going to let you download for free any songs you’ve already bought from the iTunes Music Store. They’ll actually scan iTunes for purchased tracks and then automatically add those to your account.

Competition is always good.

This comes as no surprise.  I’m also reading elsewhere that GWB has said recently that there’s nothing he can or is willing to do to reduce prices at the pump.  Combine this with his stance on stem cell research, going to war in Iraq without an exit plan, etc., and this has to be the most shortsighted administration to ever run this country.

Dark Days For Energy Efficiency

Across the board, federal funding for energy efficiency is taking a major hit

This reminds me of the time one of my computer science professors said that he thought we were all good programmers but there wasn’t a chance in hell he would trust us to do the software on his mom’s pacemaker. It’s pretty hard to think of everything, but I think this one should have been caught.

Who’s Reading Your Cell’s Text Messages?

Bubrouski said he was just being clever when he signed up for a Verizon vText account with the user name ‘null,’ after his parents bought him his first mobile phone during his freshman year at Northeastern, in 2001.

“I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

I hope he has unlimited text messages.