Technically Incorrect

If you were watching Florida impersonate a headless chicken against Alabama Saturday, you might have been aware that Luke Wilson, AT&T's disarming new pitchman, had also lost his head.

For the game was interrupted by Wilson's need to talk, with his filmic features and without.

The battle between AT&T and Verizon has been peppered by startling doses of objectivity. So to demonstrate the clear, obvious, incontrovertible fact that Verizon's 3G is but a Wendy's-stuffing, cake-loving, 15-beers-a-night slob when compared with AT&T's Usain Bolt, Wilson performs a side-by-side that would put the Pepsi Challenge to shame.

On AT&T's 3G, Wilson, finally not dressed in a painful shade of tree bark, downloads himself with the speed of an unfaithful, burglarizing vicar fleeing from the press.

When he tries using the Verizon 3G, which AT&T declares is very much slower, Wilson is up to his neck in it. There is no time to bring his head into the picture.

Naturally, AT&T's hope is that Wilson's charm will encourage people to use their hearts at least as much as their heads. No one using the latter will really believe he is using Verizon's 3G to materialize his headless self.

So smartphone seekers will be left trying to decide between a network that is allegedly everywhere, but is slow, and one which, according to critics, isn't remotely everywhere, but is faster and, oh, has that supposed digitally clueless pageant queen of an iPhone.

It's not quite George Clooney vs. Brad Pitt, is it? It's more, well, Luke Wilson vs. Owen Wilson.

In its attempt to redress the imbalance created by the latest Verizon ads, AT&T has hurriedly cobbled together not just one Luke Wilson ad, but several.

Curiously, one ad features precisely the same strategy as that of the latest iPhone advertising: reminding those who might still be on the fence, on the phone, or even on the lam that you can't simultaneously enjoy voice and Web surfing on the Verizon 3G network--and hence on the Motorola Droid.

So here we have Luke Wilson, still looking a little peaky and dressed in a difficult brown. Behind Luke, we have a man trying to use two phones (by implication, Verizon phones) to perform a task the iPhone will manage alone.

Some might find it entertaining that as his friend attempts to download something on one of his Verizon phones, he complains that it's all going rather slowly. Others might find this both true and funny.

AT&T hasn't merely paid Wilson a little more than 3G to make this comparison. Someone, somewhere, has, perhaps even wisely, said, "We need a map to counter Verizon's map."

So the writers hit upon the idea of a two-part extravaganza (this already aired during Tuesday's "Dancing with the Stars" finale), in which Wilson produces postcards from all the different American towns that really do--no, really--have AT&T 3G coverage.

Wilson says his job is to set the record straight, with respect to Verizon's vicious besmirching of the AT&T network. He tries his best. He tells us that AT&T covers 97 percent of all Americans--yes, 300 million people.

The AT&T map also seems far more filled-in and far more colorful than it appears in Verizon spots, though one suspects that local word of mouth might be rather stronger, in this instance, than national advertising. If you live in Spokane, Wash., for example, and you know someone there who has spotty 3G service on a particular network, that is far more powerful an influencer than any number of Wilson's postcards or Verizon's barbs.

It's enlightening, however, to discover that Wilson once dated someone in Tulsa, Okla., and it didn't work out. Did she catch him simultaneously calling and Web surfing? Perhaps we will never know.

When you've lost the first round in your case against Verizon's persistent and persuasive mockery, who do you turn to?

Luke Wilson, that's who. After all, he starred in "Legally Blonde" and, well, "Jackass Number Two."

Actually, Wilson is lovable. Truly lovable. Perhaps if he'd dressed down a little and Justin Long had suffered an interminable hiatus hernia, Wilson might have got the part of Mac, the Microsoft Mocker.

Instead, he has the slightly more difficult task of persuading the folks who adored him in "Old School" that AT&T's 3G will serve them well on the 3.10 to Yuma.

The creators didn't give him much of a script, as I suspect they wrote it a couple of lattes and a shot of bourbon before this opus was filmed in what looks like the empty space above Victoria's Secret in Santa Monica, Calif.

Luke is forced to stand before a board and prove that AT&T has the fastest 3G network, lets you talk and surf at the same time, and offers you more apps that feature people making strange noises, half-clothed women, and animals that smile when you touch the screen. (Disclosure: slight exaggeration)

Sadly, it all looks a little analog. Luke looks as if he'd prefer to be surfing, as he really doesn't have the tools to make you believe what he's being paid to say.

His hair looks as if it's been hurriedly greased with Czech lard and his face offers a certain hemorrhoidal mien as it offers a little jape at the end of the spot. Yes, a jape about Verizon beginning with "V" and AT&T not beginning with "V." That rumbling you can hear is the collective guffaw from Verizon Central.

Verizon is hurting AT&T with its clinical, delighted unpleasantness. And I fear that before "Legally Blonde 2: AT&T's Revenge" can possibly be effective, the iPhone carrier needs to dramatize its argument rather better than the gospel according to Luke.

Many of you will, perhaps, remember how Woz was very suspicious (and then suspiciously changed his mind) about the voting on "Dancing with the Stars".

Now we are tormented with cries that local AT&T representatives in Arkansas gave lessons in sending up to 10 simultaneous texts to people at "American Idol" viewing parties. The surprise winner (to some, at least) was Kris Allen from Arkansas.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Fox and the two companies that produce the show, FreemantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment, denied that the "enthusiasm" of local representatives nefariously influenced the result.

After all, the "Idol" rule book states: "A weekly monitoring procedure will be in place to prevent individuals from unfairly influencing the outcome of the voting by generating significant blocks of votes using technical enhancements. The producers reserve the right to remove any identified 'power dialing' votes. Note that this applies to both toll-free and Text Messaging votes."

However, I have plowed through the whole of this rule book and can find no restrictions as to how many times you can actually vote.

The key word, therefore, is the word 'unfairly'.

(Credit: CC JonDissed/Flickr)

One has to assume the technology simply identifies multiple texts sent within nanoseconds of each other. Whereas the hands of normal human beings that would be voting have to at least pause to press send more than once.

Voting is open for a strict two-hour period after the show and only AT&T subscribers can vote by text. Everyone else has to call. There is even a little kink that those who happen to be outside of their phone's area code cannot vote.

So one has to wonder whether the actions of a few enthusiastic AT&T employees could really have swayed the results.

Strong rumors suggest the voting wasn't even close. So even if every single inhabitant of Arkansas voted 10 times, that would still only be around 28 million out of the allegedly 100 million votes cast.

And it's not as if this purported Arkansas cabal won't have been the only voting group out there. There is even a very fine site called "Vote For The Worst" which tries to get people to, indeed, use their cell phones to shoo in the least talented. Vote for the Worst is claiming that it put Allen over the top. Or under the bottom, depending on your perspective.

Naturally, one wonders about the wisdom of allowing people to vote multiple times. Money can be a wicked beast when trying to create reality show rules.

But it is surely far more likely that Arkansas' Allen, who was suitably middle-of-the-road and had never been in the bottom three, simply received far more votes than Adam Lambert, who hails from San Diego.

Lambert is the more original artist by far. But his black fingernails and rock diva personality are not so easily digested in the South.

And just in case none of you has noticed, only one "American Idol" winner has ever not come from the South. Yes, abstinence enthusiast Jordin Sparks from Arizona.

The fix, I fear, is out.

Last November, Wayne Burdick was on a cruise ship docked in Miami when he suddenly said to himself: "I wonder how my beloved, infuriating, ugly-quarterbacked Chicago Bears are doing?"

So he got out his wireless card, opened his laptop, unleashed his Slingbox and began to pray. Surprisingly, the Bears beat the Detroit Lions 27-23.

As his ship sailed to the Caribbean, Wayne Burdick's heart was lighter than Joaquin Phoenix's sense of humor. On his return, his pockets were lighter too.

Because AT&T sent him a bill for $27,788.93. You know why it did that, don't you? Yes, it accused him of truly egregious behavior. No, not watching the Bears, but roaming.

Don't they look as if they're worth $27,000 to you?

(Credit: CC Back Garage)

Mr. Burdick channeled his best Mike Singletary and spent much time roaming around the customer service departments of AT&T. Even though he could prove that he was on that cruise ship and therefore still technically in Miami, he succeeded only in getting the bill down to $6,000.

So he contacted the "Chicago Sun-Times". With the paper's intervention, AT&T decided that Mr. Burdick must have been receiving an errant signal.

Either that, or he must have been pestering them so much and persuaded a newspaper to take on the case that perhaps it would have been an errant signal for the company to pursue the matter further.

How often does a sponsoring company try and ban its own products? Perhaps not as often as it should.

I was persuaded on Saturday to visit the AT&T National Pro-Am golf tournament at Pebble Beach. It didn't take much. Just the offer of a free ticket and the company of the dissolute and deranged.

(For those of you not familiar with this tournament, professional golfers agree to tolerate amateur players like George Lopez, Andy Garcia and Bill Murray for days that seem to turn into weeks. Much of the money goes to charity.)

As I got out of the car in the parking lot, I read the small print on the ticket. I noticed that despite AT&T's sponsorship of the event, cell phones were banned from the course. Which seemed curiously enlightened.

It isn't exactly always that a brand will acknowledge that there are certain places where its products might be as welcome as a cockroach on Top Chef.

And if you'd seen Phil Mickelson's stunningly bored expression by the time he'd reached the 17th tee (playing with amateurs take a long, long time. Even when they're decent golfers like Justin Timberlake), you could only imagine how amused he might have been if a Jonas Brothers ringtone had disrupted his swing.

AT&T's understanding that perhaps you can't always ram your hands into people's trousers in an attempt to separate their last cent from their pocket lint (yes, I am trying to ignore their outrageous international roaming rates here) contrasted rather prettily with the attitude of some of the Pebble Beach residents.

This was taken in 2006. This year, Mr. Murray's hat was far, far sillier.

(Credit: Cc Jurvetson)

Here are people who may, indeed, have earned the vast sums of money it takes to buy a house there legitimately. Yet, it seems, when it comes to the unbridled love of the greenback, they are the Hunchbacks of Give A Damn.

Yes, there were people living in mansions the size of Detroit who displayed large, hand-crafted signs outside their meticulously gated driveways. PARKING $40, said the signs. Because of course, times are tough. And we need to pay Cynthia's anal irrigationist.

Sadly, there were takers. On lawns manicured by the Michelangelos of their art were parked white Escalades and strangely green Mercedes.

While AT&T said: "You know, we sell cell phones. But why piss off Bill Murray?"

I was just wondering whether to finally sacrifice my loyal and beautiful Nokia cell phone for something more contemporary when I discovered that a couple of days ago China experienced its ninth cell phone explosion since 2002.

In the latest, a sales associate in a computer store in Guangzhou apparently charged his new cell phone battery and put the phone into his shirt pocket. It then exploded, severing his neck artery. He bled to death.

Chinese police have not declared the make of the phone or of its battery. But both Nokia and Motorola have denied links to problem batteries in China, declaring them to be the creation of counterfeiters.

Look, I am the ambassador of the normal, slightly tech-skeptic street person on this site. And, because I know clever technological people read this blog, I would be interested to hear how it is that cell phones can blow people to death.

This is from a gas station in Redwood City, Calif. Does this include AT&T cell phones?

(Credit: CC Ten Safe Frogs)

I would very much like to know the chances of such an event occurring in the United States. And I would be very much soothed to have some sense (you know, some odds or at least a semblance of an over/under) whether one brand of cell phone might be more likely to blow up in my face rather than another.

I am extremely sad that an unfortunate employee lost his life because of an apparent cell phone battery malfunction.

And I would like to head to my trusty, if occasionally shifty, AT&T superstore, armed with all the available information that would minimize my chances of being offed while texting sweet nothings and requests for money.

I cannot believe for a moment that any US cell phone might be prone to such a murderous occurrence, but I regularly read the comments left on the blogs of fine writers such as CNET's Matt Asay and Don Reisinger and I have been consistently amazed by some of the information that comes out in these forums.

So please, put my mind at rest. It might, at the very least, make AT&T some money. Unless you tell me to change to Sprint or Verizon, of course.

The statement from AT&T ran for 440 pages. Yes, at least 70 pages longer than the one you usually get.

And it itemized 14,528 texts sent by the newly crowned Queen of Textosterone, 13-year-old Reina Hardesty of Silverado Canyon, Calif. Hardesty's texting habits, in case it's too early for your calculator, averaged 484 texts a day.

Her father, Greg Hardesty, could hardly believe his good fortune when he got the bill.

"First, I laughed. I thought, 'That's insane, that's impossible,'" the 45-year-old dad told the New York Post. "And I immediately whipped out the calculator to see if it was humanly possible."

Isn't this illegal in California?

(Credit: CC Moriza)

I know your heart will be warmed to discover that Mr. Hardesty protected his life savings by having unlimited texting on his daughter's phone for $30 a month. Otherwise, Reina's dexterity with words might have cost him nearly $3,000.

However, he has decided to rein her touchy habit in a little: no texting after dinner.

Perhaps a reader has a daughter suffering from a similar predilection to digital communication. Please share it with Technically Incorrect. And no, I'm not giving you my cell number.

A company run by Hillary Clinton's fine people-knower, Mark Penn, got together with the highly-regarded Landor Associates, an organization that once came to the enlightening conclusion that "green is the color of reading," to research the relationship between presidential candidates and brands.

It makes for very colorful reading. Purple, to my eyes.

It seems that the respondents, who came from all political shades and who intended to vote, were asked to choose which brand best characterized Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Joe Biden.

The brands were from most of the essential categories--cars, coffee, Internet search engine, portable music devices, social networking sites, mobile phone carriers, you know, the essentials.

The survey's results betray a depth of consumer perception that few might have expected.

While Joe Biden and John McCain are both AOL, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are both, apparently, Google.

"I'm a PC. You betcha I am."

(Credit: CC SSKennel)

The authors of this report suggest that the Google association reflects the personable and youthful nature of both candidates. Which might leave some to wonder whether respondents might have thought that AOL stood for An Old Label.

The candidates were also evenly split when it came to cell-phone brands. Senators Biden and McCain were both AT&T, while the Obama-Palin tandem apparently said to people "Verizon."

Where does that warm and fuzzy conclusion leave the iPhone? Ah, now, the survey is quite definite that Barack Obama is the iPhone. While the other three are Blackberries. No, really.

And you may begin to feel a little more queasy, regardless of your political leanings, when you discover that all four candidates were iPods (you don't see a little Zune in Joe Biden?).

I am fairly confident, however, that there will be metaphorical or, in some cases, physical regurgitation at the conclusion that, when it came to social-networking sites, all four of these fine politicians were MySpace, rather than Facebook.

The authors seem to put this down to MySpace's alleged game-changing nature. But some might think this clear bilge, as even a cadaver could tell you that John McCain is, my friends, a quintessential Friendster.

Now I know that the most important questions for readers, far above "Believer vs. Atheist" and "Desperate Housewives vs. the Discovery Channel," is that huge political issue: "Mac vs. PC."

Please put down your weapons, step away from all sharp objects, blunt instruments, potential projectiles and, um, walls.

Alright, here it is.

Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, and John McCain are, so the people say, all PCs. Yes, just like Sanjay Gupta, Eva Longoria, and the men with beards and glasses.

While the 1,002 voters were tied, yes, their heat was dead, when it came to deciding whether Barack Obama really is a Mac or a PC.

Who would have thought that, should he be elected, the first crisis facing Senator Obama would be an identity crisis?