Can You Hear Me Now?

TO SAY THAT SILICON VALLEY is the most "wired area" in the United States is a little like saying Los Angeles leads the nation in plastic surgery or that Florida has the country's largest population of retired New Yorkers. 

Of course it's the most wired -- it's friggin' Silicon Valley!

But if we're so "wired," why do my calls drop near the San Francisco airport? 

Surveys that say Silicon Valley is "wired" hide the fact that -- like the rest of the United States -- we live in a cell phone backwater. We're years behind Europe and Asia (these pictures are as close as we Americans will ever come to these cool European and Japanese cell phones). 

Owning a cell phone in America is a nightmare of limited coverage areas, primitive handsets, hostile or condescending customer service, unusable Internet applications, and text messaging that serves mainly as a conduit for spam you can't turn off. 

If more Americans knew how good cell phones are in Europe and Asia, there would be riots in the streets.

Experts will tell you that consumer apathy coupled with an ungovernable "Wild West" of overlapping, incompatible wireless standards and a high number of huge cities separated by vast distances explain why cell phones suck in America. 

I don't buy it. 

My unsupportable theory is that cell phones and service are bad because when you change carriers, you're forced to change your phone number as well. When you give out your cell phone number for a year to business colleagues, family and friends, it grows in personal value. But the carrier has a monopoly on that number. There's a built-in disincentive to switch. And that's why carriers don't care. 

In other countries, you can switch carriers like it's a bodily function (admittedly because you're probably switching from one GSM service to another -- switching between incompatible networks and retaining the phone number is a major challenge, but it can be done). I stepped off the plane in Germany to attend CeBit , and German carrier representatives in the airport offered me deals on coverage, saying they could change the carrier on my *rented* cell phone in about a minute -- without changing the number. 

Congress should pass a law that requires phone companies to provide cell phone numbers for life. Market Darwinism would take hold, and the arrogant carriers would fail to survive and reproduce. Within a few years, we would catch up with the rest of the world and enjoy modern cell phones and services. 

Then maybe Silicon Valley could become the nation's most wireless city!

Cell Phone Shark Alert

A Cocoa Beach, Florida, entrepreneur has created a shark alert network that can warn surfers and swimmers before they get in the water that Jaws is near the shore and trolling for tourists. People who sign up for the service get near real-time alerts sent to pagers and cell phones by lifeguards. (Instead of broadcasting wireless e-mail across the state of Florida, shouldn't they be clearing the beach?)

Don't Try This At Home

A university senior named Adrian O'Grady transformed his Game Boy Advance into a rudimentary web server as part of a computer science project at the University of Hertfordshire in Southern England. After his paper is turned in next week, he plans to add additional features. Adrian graduates this summer, and one of you Silicon Valley big shots on this list should extend him an offer as a games developer, pronto!

Mike's List Now at Break-Even

Thanks to the ongoing contributions of many faithful Mike's List readers, I'm happy to report that Mike's List is now breaking even (taking in about the same amount of money as it costs to publish). Thanks to all who contributed. And thanks in advance for all who will click here now and support the cause this week! : )

Proof You Can Buy Anything on the Web

The Lara Croft outfit worn by promotional model Nell McAndrew will soon be auctioned off on eBay U.K. Proceeds from the sale of Lara's rubber top, combat shorts, leather gloves, sunglasses, boots and pistols will benefit Unicef. McAndrews wore the outfit to promote the game "Tomb Raider" in major cities around the world. The bidding will start April 26. 

Shameless Self-Promotion

 Craig Crossman's Computer America features Mike's List content on every show (and I join Craig live on the first broadcast Sunday of every month). You can hear Computer America on your local Business TalkRadio station or over the Internet each Sunday from 1pm to 3pm Silicon Valley Time. Don't miss Computer America!

Follow-Up

Two weeks ago, I pointed to a "Wacky Web Site" using the text, "It's not easy being an egg. Fasten your seatbelt and get ready for a wild ride!" Coincidentally, just after I sent the issue, the owners of that site temporarily yanked it to fix a logo, so many of you were greeted to an error message. Well, it's now fixed and back online. 

I wrote last week that the San Francisco Chronicle picked up my story about Intel and the Yoga Inside Foundation. Since then, National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" featured the story as well. Click here to listen. 

Last week, I complained about "obvious" missing product features, and the "oblivious" companies that somehow can't see what's missing. One missing feature was a standard household electrical outlet to replace the obsolete "cigarette lighter" power source. But they're not missing from all cars. A few dozen readers told me about two cars that feature standard American two-prong outlets: The Pontiac Vibe, and the Toyota Matrix. 

Reader Web Site o' the Week

Reader Nick Bolton is a software programmer who has cured the common spam. His cure is shareware called MailWasher. Like many anti-spam programs, MailWasher deletes e-mail based on your criteria. But MailWasher's "secret sauce" is a feature that bounces back a fake error message, telling spammers that your e-mail address is invalid. MailWasher is free to try. 

Wacky Web Sites

I know that for many of you the ultimate car will always be K.I.T.T., the artificial intelligence-laden Pontiac Firebird from the 1982 TV series, Knight Rider. My son Kevin, in fact, is afflicted with this tragic obsession. But now there's help. KnightReplicas.com is a "non-profit organization devoted to the review, education, and creation of replica vehicles for Knight Rider."

ZDnet in the U.K. has a site called IT Anthems, which features the lyrics and audio files of the corporate anthems of various IT giants like KPMG, IBM and Ericsson. 

The Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks chronicles the misuse and abuse of this cherished punctuation mark.

Explore the ruins of bygone civilizations -- or, at least bygone shopping malls -- at Deadmalls.com. 

It's time to rid the world of a dangerous menace once and for all: Ban Screwdrivers!

It's hard to believe that the Silicon Valley PR pissing contests between big-iron vendors Sun and IBM could get any more childish or idiotic, but in fact they have. The latest round is a sarcastic (and wacky) web site built by Sun called BigBlewSmoke.com that features a phony tabloid news piece dissing the IBM xSeries 430 and a game of IBM Tetris that keeps score in terms of money wasted on IBM systems. 

You've come a long way, baby! It's guns for girls!

Here's a web site for reflection. The Mirror Project web site enables people to share pictures of themselves taken in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. 

I've covered plenty of online museums here in the Wacky Web Sites section of Mike's List, but here's the mother of them all: The Museum of Online Museums.  

Last Week's Mystery Pic

No, it's not an aerial photo with a coffee stain on it, a picture taken by Mr. Eaves and his magic camera, nor an aerial view of Mike's House as suggested by some readers. It's a map showing the reach of wireless networks in a Kansas neighborhood. Kansas University researchers Matt Dunbar and Brett Becker map networks to show how "leaks" can open up networks to hackers. Click here for details. 

Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? Send YOUR guess to [email protected]. If you're first with the right answer, I'll print your name in the next issue of Mike's List!

Mike's List User Manual

I get occasional e-mail from HTML subscribers who say the links in Mike's List don't work, or that the issue doesn't look quite right. Sometimes this is caused by restrictions placed on the user by system administrators. Other times it's caused by the specific combination of software used to view e-mail (including "groupmail" applications like GroupWise or Lotus Notes). So I'd like to find out how extensive these problems are. If your links don't work, or your HTML version doesn't look just right, please send me e-mail with brokenhtml in the subject line. Please tell me what e-mail software and version you're using, plus any information you can tell me about the e-mail and server software in use at your work, if that is in fact where you're having the problems.