Obama's Blackberry

Ok, this one has been stewing in my head for a while, and since I've got some downtime as I recover from last night's puke-o-ramma, here's the brain dump.

Everyone was making a big fuss over Obama having a Blackberry. There's issues of record keeping, etc. but I think everyone was missing the point.

The security risk isn't the device, its the SERVICE.

Wireless carriers are notorious for employees snooping into high profile customer's information, and now we have the President with a standard Backberry (albeit running some killer encryption .... we hope) ... a Blackberry that has to use some sort of common carrier for its use.

While the data might be encrypted, even access to what numbers it calls/txt's would be sensitive information and this is where things get touchy.

I don't think its a good idea for the President, or any of his staff to be using handhelds that use common carriers for that reason. National security is pretty damn tight around the POTUS, but this situation has created an open door literally right to the man himself. Sure they can make all sorts of software changes to his account with the carrier, but at the end of the day, it comes down to people, and that's the weakest link in the chain.

I sure hope someone is really on this issue. I mean ON this issue.

The downside is something I'd rather not contemplate.

Happy Birthday!

Do people actually click on ads like this?

Really. Do they??

Go Apple!

In an world dominated by bad economics woes, I was looking forward to the Apple earnings call earlier this week and wasn't disappointed by the news that I knew was forthcoming.

Today, Microsoft is dumping 5,000 employees, mostly in entertainment, and this is a great thing for Microsoft. They need to get back to basics in business that is their core focus and rebuild their products else face continued decline.

Apple on the other hand has really only had one thing that I've been harping about since last fall, and thats the lack of transparency on Job's health issues. I don't care if the SEC investigates their activities here, what I think is at stake is shareholder trust. Damage to this will make any SEC finding insignificant.

Expensive adwords

I was researching some new trade show booth designs tonight, and while cruising booth design websites, I clicked on an adword only to be prompted with an htaccess authorization window.

Whooops!

I'd hate to be the business paying for those clicks, especially in this economy. Yikes!

Let it go

Geeks don't just wear t-shirts for the looks, they wear them to tell the world something about them. At least he wasn't wearing his Newton in a holster at the party, but he did look funny trying to upload photos with his external modem tethered to his flip phone.

Keynotes

Ok, here's my take.

Apple sent a "nobody" to talk about nothing.

If the organizers of MacWorld thought Apple bowing out of any more MacWorld Expo's was bad, Apple's final keynote was a slap in the face to them and all the fanatics in attendance. It was "Hey folks, thanks for coming - but no, we're not gonna show you guys crap." I'll be interested to see what Apple announces in the next 60 days since anything brought to light that close out could have been talked about at the Keynote.

Still, I do appreciate the iLife changes - especially iMovie. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of version '09 and am kinda bummed I just got Final Cut Express. (sigh)

The lamest announcement was the iPhone Keynote presenter. Seriously, if you plunk down for Keynote, forcing you to pay $.99 to get the iPhone remote app is just plain stupid. I can't wait for someone to snoop the 802.11 IP traffic and make their own free version of that app just to screw with Apple.


The other lame "note" was how Apple spread these nerds around the keynote hall to whistle/shout/applaud when Phil was making "big" announcements. These Apple t-shirt clad clones were a fitting touch to the "bleh" that Apple had at the keynote.