By Greg Mills
The FCC voted 2 to 3 to make the new rules regarding wired "Net Neutrality" official. It won't be know for some time if they even had the authority, since the radio waves are not in use for wired Internet, but the principles of the rules may be adopted by Congress, anyway. The Internet wants to be free of censorship by ISPs and not be controlled by carriers of broadband service.
NetFlix and others big in the downloadable content business are likely very glad to see the cable companies throttled back. Apple stands as much as any company to benefit from the rules, despite the potential for people claiming they are trying to manage the internet by allowing or not allowing iOS apps in the Apple App Store.
The Windows Stuxnet worm continues to frighten US experts due to the potential that it can be converted into malware that might attack our infrastructure and cause an unknown amount of damage. While Microsoft finally closed the remaining holes in the Windows OS that allowed the original infection of Iran's computers, heaven only knows how many more "holes" there are in Windows that can be exploited in the future. Knowing Microsoft Windows has more holes that Swiss cheese makes potential future problems very likely. As I always tell people I see struggling with a PC, "get a Mac!" Our infrastructure will be much more secure diversifying the computers that run it.
Investment opportunity: If anyone is interested in investing with me in a private label brand of thumb drives; I am launching the "Windows Stuxnet" brand of thumb drives soon. I have exclusive rights to sell them in Iran .and hope for the best. Since my fresh frozen perch-on-a-stick franchise went belly up, I have been working on some new ventures. I also lost money on my patent pending "reversible disposable diaper" due to rather smelly technical difficulties.
My editor has agreed to use his home in Tennessee as our US shipping address, to be used in international shipping paperwork. We plan to put a commemorative copy of the historic Windows Stuxnet worm on all the thumb drives and hope to get the endorsement of Steve Ballmer for our project. We plan to ship free samples to Iranian colleges and universities as a promotional effort. Does anyone know how to write Stuxnet in Farsi? Perhaps English will do. The thumb drives are recommended for use with Macs, since they are immune to Stuxnet.
Microsoft Vista 7 phones: Microsoft, eager to see their "make it or break it, last ditch stand" smartphone a success have announced that in six weeks, their partners making the various Vista phones, have in combination, shipped 1.5 million Vista 7 phones total, so far. When you consider they gave 90,000 away to employees and it takes hundreds of thousands of any cell phone product just to fill the pipelines the numbers are very disappointing. Stocking even a few at the hundreds of thousands of cell phone stores and mall kiosks around the country would require a lot of phones. Also, shipped phones are not sold phones and who knows how many will be returned by disappointed buyers? Keep in mind Apple sold 1.7 million phones the first three days with the iPhone 4. Apple actually sold 600,000 iPhone4s the very first day. It took Microsoft six weeks to ship 1.5 million.
A recent survey shows that of iPad owners indicates that there are at least two iPads in 17% of the families responding. This is amazing when you understand that we are just a few months out from the iPad 2 arriving. My brother Ron is an art professor and is waiting, like a lot of people, for the iPad with a camera to come out. This Christmas iPads are the adult version of Tickle me Elmo. Everyone wants one. I am personally aware of at least four iPads people are buying directly related to seeing mine. I deserve a commission, but doubt Apple will pay up. See http://www.9to5mac.com/43762/yougov-survey-shows-rise-of-the-two-ipad-ho... .
Apple has sold one million AppleTV devices so far. As Apple is able to ramp up video content streaming that product will continue to sell. As it is now, it could be relabeled NetFlixTV. There is certainly more to come with this product and the download infrastructure Apple is building.
I checked my AT&T upgrade situation and still have to wait till summer to upgrade my iPhone G3s, so I will skip iPhone4 completely and wait for the G4 iPhone 5. I may also jump ship and go with Verizon.I expect AT&T to offer early upgrades when Apple starts selling the Verizon 4G iPhone 5, but I plan to wait it out.
Apple has just launched an iOS developer tool called iAd Producer. This application is designed to make it easy for iOS developers to build cool iADs and combines HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript to create drag and drop ads. Apple hopes speeding up ad creation will help them battle Google for ad revenue.
That's Greg's bite for today.
(Greg Mills, is a Faux Artist in Kansas City. Formerly a new product R&D man for the paint sundry market, he holds 11 US patents. He's working on a solar energy startup, www.CottageIndustrySolar.com using a patent pending process of turning waste dual pane glass into thermal solar panels used to heat water. Greg writes for intellectual web sites and Mac related issues. See Greg's art web site at www.gregmills.info ; His email is gregmills@mac.com )
