I'm not the best in the world at counting. And I'm definitely not the best in the world at counting on damp, cloudy days.
But during a passionately meaningless bowl game Friday, Luke Wilson interrupted my soporifia with a new ad and what I thought was a new fact: AT&T's network, I thought he said, covers "over 230 million Americans".
The ad then wafted off to a dreamland as Wilson persuades someone in a diner to friend request all of these people. My mind, on the other hand, wafted back to November when Wilson began AT&T's fightback against Verizon's taunts.
In one of the first ads, the one about the postcards, there is Wilson, in a sad brown jacket and equally depressed brown shirt, saying these words: "AT&T covers 97 percent of all Americans, that's over 300 million people."
For one uncomfortable moment, I feared that in the last few days 70 million people, so upset that AT&T was severing its ties with Tiger Woods, had moved to some dark part of South Dakota (or New York) to ensure that they could not be reached by AT&T.
Realizing this was quite absurd, I wondered whether there had been an acerbic exchange of missives between lawyers for AT&T and Verizon, in which brows were furrowed and numbers were parsed. Or whether someone had embedded copious amounts of candle wax in my earholes, so much that the wax was now affecting my brain.
Trying to get past the fact that Wilson still looks rather pasty, I listened again and again. I realized that in the new ad Wilson actually says: "AT&T's 3G network covers more than 230 million people."
Yes, the "3G network" is the vital nuance. It doesn't cover 97 percent of Americans, but it does still cover a large number. One that is, more or less, around 70 million smaller than the number that AT&T's total network covers.
I suppose one might presume this to be a coded message to more than 230 million Americans that, despite Verizon's aggressive besmirchments, they should not worry. Their personal self worth can still be uplifted by obtaining an iPhone that will definitely make calls and download gossip Web sites and farting apps.
However, do we now wait for the Verizon ad that says its own 3G network covers, oh, say, 70 million more Americans than, say, AT&T's? That couldn't be the case, could it?
I'm only asking because John Stratton, Verizon's chief marketing officer, said at a conference a few weeks ago that the difference between Verizon's coverage and AT&T's was "almost astounding."
It's a new year and I'd like to be astounded by how astounding "almost astounding" really is. Wouldn't you?
Some people celebrated the coming of 2010 with crystal glasses of fizzy yellow liquid. Others used the opportunity to stare into their crystal glasses and see what we have and will become.
Perhaps the most pulsating and sad suggestion is that we no longer have any privacy. You burp in Bellingham and someone quickly hears about it in Sydney. You decide you dislike your wife, so you tweet about it, tell your Facebook friends and then get around to telling her. If you can remember to do that.
Even more bilious is the early-in-2009 suggestion of Laurent Haug, CEO of the Lift Conference, that if we want privacy we have to create it. You know, make your public self the publicly palatable version and keep the insidious pervert you for your special friends.
Where the depressed and dissatisfied used to tell their shrinks that they were miserable because they felt like there was a camera on them all the time, now they seem to rejoice in being the stars of their own Truman Show. "Clarissa is having coffee, a croissant and second thoughts." Wow, you go there, Clarissa. Let us know what happens next.
Strangely, some people seem rather keen to blame technology for their own increasingly public behavior. There are those who, when confronted with their own public proclamations of their everyday lives, say it was the technology that made them do it. It was there, everyone was doing it, and, no, no, they had no idea that everyone would see it.
Though it's entirely believable that Facebook and Twitter are full of touchingly heartless engineers who would dearly love for everyone to live as publicly as possible so that they can sell their information to as many advertisers as possible, there might be a little more to it than that.
Haven't Facebook and Twitter merely lucked into people's overwhelming desire for, well, fame? Once broadcast media-- you know the old-fashioned stuff like radio and TV-- proved that fame was a powerful, far-reaching and tangentially tangible currency, we all thought it might be nice to taste a piece of it.
How many of your Facebook friends seem to want their updates to be more interesting, more involving and more amusing those of anyone else in their group? How many of your Twitter community want to prove that they are reading something more important, more current, more intellectual than anyone else?
It's easy, and partly true, to declare that those creepily bright engineers have found ways to follow our every move and to tabulate our every preference. It's tempting to say they offer us tools that appear to help us communicate, but actually encourage us to expose more of ourselves than we might realize.
But somehow we asked for it. We wanted it, even if couldn't quite articulate what it was we wanted. And we didn't pay enough heed to Confucius or Eminem or whoever it was that warned us to be careful what we wished for.
We've got it now. The question for 2010 is: What are we really going to do with it? Perhaps you could ask your Facebook friends.
May I take this cheery opportunity to wish everyone a very happy New Year and thank everyone for their amusing, confusing and occasionally even touchingly insulting notes and comments in that Old Year that is happily behind us.
One assumes it didn't happen by text.
But, according to The New York Times, AT&T has announced, in a very brief statement, that it will no longer associate its fine name with Tiger Woods.
Accenture, Tag Heuer, and Procter and Gamble have already distanced themselves from the world's greatest golfer after he crashed his car and became associated with as many alleged extra-marital affairs as there are clubs in his bag.
Yet it's interesting that AT&T should choose New Year's Eve as the time to announce its decision. It has been a tough year for the carrier, with Verizon deriding its coverage and a survey showing that more than half of iPhone users are unhappy with AT&T's service.
It's almost as if AT&T would dearly love to slap 2009 with a 9 iron, in the hope that it will have a better relationship with 2010.
In truth, the sponsorship of Woods was not a mainstay of the company's commercial thrust. It involved him hosting tournaments, carrying the AT&T logo on his vast golf bag, and AT&T's involvement in some of Woods' charitable work.
However, AT&T is not in and of sports and Woods was never a central figure in its communications. Though it might have been slightly interesting had the company chosen to have Woods lead its fightback against Verizon instead of the scandal-free Luke Wilson.
Wouldn't it have been lovely to see Woods bouncing a Droid up and down on his 5 iron before smashing it somewhere down a distant fairway? A case of Droid Does meeting Just Do It.
The tech company that has perhaps the most problematic dilemma where Woods is concerned is Electronic Arts. Its Tiger Woods PGA Tour series of games is a strong part of its business. Currently, Woods' image still retains pride of place on the EA site.
Although perhaps the wording might need a little revision. Right now, EA chooses to have some interesting words beneath Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10: Feel The Drama. Indeed.
For all those who believe the apocalypse is close at hand, I have a video that will surely save you from such dire imaginings.
This little delight from YouTube shows that we are, indeed, bringing up our children to believe in a better tomorrow, one in which human beings will finally place their priorities in the correct order.
Please enjoy the sight of a child (Is he eight? Nine?) expressing his sheer at-oneness with his firmament when he espies that his Christmas gift is an Xbox 360.
No one can possibly tell me that this is anything other than sheer, untrammeled joy at the thought of being able to block out the world and enter into the Kingdom of Video Games from which so many children rarely emerge. This child knows that all ancient, outdated concepts such as parents, school, and even Santa can be happily left behind now that he has the key to extraterrestrial escape: Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Who among us could not be moved by such elevated, primal emotions, ones that signal the escape from the normal to the paranormal?
This is the modern world. We are finally saved. Hallelujah.
Because excitement has now reached beyond the red area on the dial, it is important to emit every single possibility about the alleged Apple tablet for instant world examination.
So I am delighted to report that the diligent sleuths at MacRumors have discovered a possible new name for the Apple product that is about to sweep all before it, should it ever actually materialize.
Please now tuck your hands beneath your hamstrings, move slightly further from your screens, and remove all items of sharp jewelry. For the name that, like iSlate, has apparently also been trademarked by a mysterious Delaware company with links to Apple is iGuide.
iGuide.
Please just digest this for a moment. Do you want to clutch your iGuide? Do you want to stroke your iGuide like a fine, fresh painting? Will you quickly want to slip that word into a sentence? ("Hey! I got Playboy on my iGuide!") Will you even want to create little slogans for your own use? ("I nearly died when I got my iGuide!") Now, as MacRumors itself points out, it is also possible that iGuide will turn out to be the name of the service or software used by Apple's new device, not the name of the device itself.
I know that there has been some increasing of pulse rates at the idea of iSlate, a trademarked name that was also unearthed by MacRumors. However, I have a small feeling, a kind of friendly, slightly slobbery nibbling at my ear, that real people out there aren't all that instantly comfortable with the words "tablet" and "slate."
iGuide might remind some of, for example, TV Guide and it does feel just the slightest jot more human than "tablet" or "slate".
This doesn't mean that iGuide is any more likely than any other name that has been posited so far for this product that might not actually ever exist. But if there's one thing that Apple does so very, very well, it's being human.
Birds do it. Bees do it. It's just that these days in India it may be a little harder to watch online images of human beings doing it.
Sex is often a slightly thorny subject (well, maybe except in France). However, varying attitudes around the world to varying sexual practices mean search engines must adjust their positions accordingly.
So it may sadden some to hear of a Guardian special investigation that appears to have unearthed evidence of Microsoft and Yahoo search engines complying with a new Indian law offering severe punishment for the display of "lascivious" content.
I know one man's lascivious is another man's oblivious. But this law, based on a 150-year-old statute (section 292, if you have your Indian penal code tucked about your person) specifically targets access to obscenity.
A picture from Ramoji Film City in Andhra Pradesh. It is the world's largest integrated film studio complex.
(Credit: CC Shashi Bellamkonda/Flickr)It helpfully defines obscenity as "any content that is lascivious and that will appeal to prurient interest or the effect of which is to tend to deprave or corrupt the minds of those who are likely to see, read or hear the same."
It's a nice word, corruption. One that often seems to have the words "government" and "politician" wrapped around it. Still, we're talking about sex here. Specifically, the vaguely pornographic kind.
The Guardian investigation suggests Microsoft and Yahoo have already taken steps to avoid the rather stiff punishments. If a search engine (or, indeed, Internet cafe) isn't careful about what sites it makes available, its officers might face three years in jail and a fine of up to 500,000 rupees (just over $10,000).
Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo's search engine, and even the Yahoo-owned Flickr have reportedly ensured that the safe search facilities on their sites cannot be disabled, something they also do in the pristine territories of Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
I do not intend to suggest this new law will encourage more Indian professionals to seek employment in Silicon Valley. And I cannot imagine that Indian moral fiber is anything other than sturdy and cleansing. I just sometimes worry when politicians seem to have nothing better to do than to interfere in people's most private affairs.
The Indian media is, according to London's Times, sometimes a little slow in reporting the sexual peccadilloes of, well, politicians--even when their indiscretions are widely known.
Perhaps that will change in reaction to this law.
This week, for example, an Indian television news channel ran footage, allegedly of the 86-year-old governor of the Andhra Pradesh state in bed with several women to whom he was not betrothed. While the governor immediately resigned, you might wonder how it is that this footage was not deemed "lascivious."
Some of you might wish to suggest that the "law is an ass." But perhaps it's best to first search Bing and check whether "ass" might have lascivious overtones in certain parts of the world.
Are you submissive? Do you do what others or other machines tell you to do?
Well, according to the Associated Press, John and Starry Rhoads took a high road that almost turned into a very low road indeed, all because they did what their Toyota Sequoia's GPS told them to.
Apparently, the high desert of Eastern Oregon is a lovely place. Until you ask your GPS for the shortest route to your destination and it sends you down a remote forest road, without actually saying: "Yo, people. You go that way and it's really remote and foresty."
Thompson Reservoir, where the Rhoads were reportedly stuck in 18 inches of snow for three days.
(Credit: Google Maps)Once they had gone where they were told, the Rhoads were on the road to no return. They ended up stuck in 18 inches of snow near a place called the Thompson Reservoir.
The Rhoads, from Nevada, are not dilettantes in a dilemma. They had plenty of warm clothing and food. And they had cell phones equipped with, yes, GPS. There was only one slight, delicate problem. They had no service.
I know there will be some of you who will hasten to hiss that they must have been AT&T customers. I can find no evidence of this. But I can find evidence that they were stuck for three days before one of their cell phones sprang to life and GPSed their co-ordinates to 911.
You will, I hope, enjoy the words of Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, when the AP attracted his attention: "GPS almost did 'em in and GPS saved 'em."
There's another side to such words of bravado, though. It's as well to remember that in 2006, an Oregon forest took the life of CNET Reviews editor James Kim.
One of the things that came out of his death was the revelation that Oregon authorities at the time knew very little about how to even trace a cell phone. In cases such as that of Kim, the understanding of how a tragedy occurred can lead to a better understanding of how technology might help, as well as, sometimes, hinder.
For example, you might feel like a stiff conversation with some of your own technology when I tell you that the Rhoads' happy ending coincided with news that some British psychologists are to direct the world's attention to their view that GPS is, in fact, "potentially dangerous".
The Telegraph helpfully disseminated news of impending research to be conducted by brains from Lancaster University and Royal Holloway College, London. These professors have been moved by other research that indicates 78 percent of accidents are caused by drivers not paying attention.
They will therefore analyze how much GPS contributes to that inattention. Polly Dalton, one of the researchers on the project, told the Telegraph: "By the end of these experiments, we will be able to provide clear measurements of the ways in which the use of in-car navigation systems might interfere with attention and memory performance."
This is definitely a question reeking of our delightful modernity: if you were an escaped convict, would you regularly update your Facebook status?
This question is significant because Craig "Lazie" Lynch has, according to CBSNews.com, been on the run from a British prison since September. However, his Facebook page, updated with a plethora of bons mots Sunday, has stirred so many who admire freedom and, um, crime.
Lynch's musings are enjoying the attention of more than 3,000, um, friends. They have been regaled with Lynch's dilemmas, thoughts and wishes. This, for example, from Sunday: "Trying to figure out my plans for New Years. I know what I want to do but its not that easy."
Who can but sympathize with his plight? It's tough to get a reservation for dinner at a Gordon Ramsay establishment at such late notice. And if he wanted to take a lover for, say, a night at the Ritz, well, there might be problem with the credit card confirmation.
Lynch was serving a 7-year sentence for aggravated burglary before he slipped out of Hollesey Bay Prison, which is in the rather sleepy and flat part of England to the north-east of London.
An aerial view of the prison and its surroundings. Plenty of fields to hide in, no?
(Credit: CC Babylon Angel/Flickr)The police are, naturally, not well-disposed toward Lynch's updates.
"We have spoken to Facebook and we are trying to trace him from the information we have, but it's one of those things that we're also asking for help from members of the public," police spokesperson Anne-Marie Breach told CNN.
It seems, though, that late Sunday, Lynch began experiencing a little emotional pain. In what must have been an almost teary update, he posted: "right i'm coming off this page as i have better things to do."
Who might have imagined that, in his mysterious hideaway, Lynch had something better to do than continue his run as a Facebook attraction?
Still, he continued: "In fact due to the nature of some of these comments and the racist remarks that keep frequently poppin up have a dig at me by all means but why be abusive to others due to their colour or race it is petty minded fools who have ruined this site."
Petty-minded, indeed. Some of the world's great artists have suffered when their works have been ruined by unscrupulous, jealous critics, so Lynch's pain is entirely understandable.
However, he wants his supporters to know that he is grateful. For he posted: "Thank you to...all of you serious supporters out there and to my admin staff. To all you haters and hitlers out there i hope you slowly choke in your sleep."
By the way, if you ever wondered about the definition of aggravated burglary it is this: at the time of the burglary, the criminal: "has with him a firearm, imitation firearm, weapon of offense, or any explosive."
You might imagine, therefore, that Lynch is someone who might not always turn the other cheek. This might affect the level of sympathy you have for his Facebook critics.
How do you react, for example, to this update from he Saturday evening?: "Its freezing outside. Another lonely night. So far away from my family and friend. Yet I have so many supporters and haters on here. Thx for your support everyone cause this is a FAN PAGE."
One might conceive that, with the help of the large brains at Facebook, Lynch's Facebook fame might shortly come to an abrupt logout.
But here's the thing that seems a little peculiar. Lynch, according to the BBC, was serving time near the end of his sentence and escaped while he was on day release.
For some, the lure of Facebook fame is clearly uncontrollable.
Ever since someone tried to sell me on the curious notion that Houston was the Manhattan of Texas, I have become fascinated with the place.
So I am blissfully excited that PCWorld has caused my blood to turn my arteries into a NASCAR track with the revelation that police in the Houston-area county of Montgomery have decided to shame drunk drivers in a very modern way.
Yes, if you are caught driving while the special eggnog concoctions are making your nerve endings feel like Christmas lights, you will have your name on an especially festive Twitter page.
This seasonal offer only applies to those arrested between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. And the Twitter page in question will not be one newly set up for the occasion, but rather that of Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon.
Naturally, some are wondering whether this little Twittering experiment might be flying the wrong way down a lane currently occupied by the concept of "innocent until proved guilty."
As Houston attorney Paul B. Kennedy says, on his own blog, with a sarcasm that not even a sliver of cabernet sauvignon could dampen: "Of course the police never make wrongful arrests."
However, in Texas they do seem to be quite keen on humiliation as a palliative. No, I am not referring to the bedroom predilections of Texan lawmakers, but rather to Denton, Texas (near the slightly less Manhattanesque city of Dallas), where every arrest gets Twittered.
It has to be said, though, that the Denton Twitter page was originally conceived by an enthusiastic layperson, rather than a zealous arresting officer.
While the Montgomery County drunk-driving information that is being Twittered is not legally confidential, you might wonder whether Twittering humiliation is a reasonable method of enacting the law.
Montgomery County Vehicular Crimes Prosecutor Warren Diepraam told PCWorld: "I sincerely doubt that the fact that I've put someone's name on a Twitter page is going to affect their right to a fair trial."
And I sincerely doubt that Diepraam believes that social networking is anything other than a vehicle for honest and legal communication. However, could he be the same Warren Diepraam from Houston, Texas who, on his Facebook page, wants people to think he looks like the moon? Surely not.
"Sherlock Holmes" is not a wonderful movie. Despite the fact that so many ditheringly unstable people in the movie theater I wandered into on Christmas Day applauded when the final scene slithered away.
However, if you were to ask Robert Downey Jr.'s violently amusing Holmes to tell you discern the truth about the new Apple tablet, he would surely repeat his words from the movie: "Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay!"
So because there are many who are still groggy after the week's festivities, I thought I'd scour around for data that will separate the rumor from the definitive fact.
Apple's new tablet will be called the iTablet. And it will be launched last September. Yes, last September.
But wait, last September was a few months ago. So perhaps that information wasn't quite correct.
... Read more
