I just read over on Bloomberg that Microsoft has made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo. This is clearly in an attempt to compete with Google in Internet Search, something Microsoft hasn’t been able to do well yet. The offer is for $44.6 billion in cash and Microsoft stock. This is, according to Bloomberg, 62% more than Yahoo’s closing price yesterday. Quite a good deal for Yahoo shareholders who have probably been waiting years to make some money on their investment. Neither Yahoo or Microsoft has been able to get up to the level Google is at with search, though both have tried admirably.

My take is, this probably makes sense for Yahoo and to a degree Microsoft. I’m not sure about the heafty price tag though. Yahoo was already starting to cut jobs, so its probably a smart move. Only time will tell if Microsoft will be able to successfully meld the Yahoo culture into its own and share technology successfully. This will be the biggest technology merger ever and they don’t always work. Should be interesting.

I was reading on TechCrunch today that Yahoo has implemented OpenID, effectively tripling the number of OpenID accounts. They’ll be going into Beta at the end of the month. This is a huge win for the project, but it got me to thinking.

Remember way back when Microsoft Passport (Microsoft calls it Live ID now I believe and its used mostly on just their sites) came out it was supposed to be the answer to all our password woes? Create a Passport account and log in with the same username and password on any site that implemented it. Well, how far did it get? Nowhere. At least nowhere fast. Reason being I think implementation wasn’t all that easy and there was no real need for it without the abundance of internet users that we have today.

So what will make OpenID different? Well, first, the amount of social networking and information sites, not to mention the sheer number of people online, will make the adoption of some single account interface more appealing at some point. Second, with huge names like Yahoo, Google, Verisign, and IBM getting into the mix, something cool like this will have a shot at gaining some traction. I know I’d love to have one log in for all the sites I use daily. Remembering usernames and passwords is a pain.

Take this one step further. I’m in the e-commerce industry. I started thinking that I’d love to use something like this in all of the e-commerce sites we run. I would basically have one central spot to store authentication and account information instead of separate databases. So what if major brands started getting in on this? Think about it. Amazon, Gap, Target, WalMart, Best Buy, etc. etc. etc. are all on OpenID. You can effectively shop with the same authentication everywhere. No more forgot password reminders because you use this ID every day. You’d never forget! How cool would that be?

I awoke this morning at 7am (I usually get up around 8:00 or 8:30 for work) to Shannan telling me she couldn’t get in her car (a 2005 Honda Accord). It wouldn’t unlock. I’m thinking, great, you left the lights on and the battery is dead. Time to call AAA. But, I decided to go out and take a look. Turns out, the lock was just frozen. We received about a foot of snow yesterday, so my guess is some of it got in there and shut her out.

The FOB wouldn’t unlock it. I couldn’t unlock it with the key either. I ended up gaining entry by opening the rear window and getting in that way.

This got me thinking. Why don’t cars have heated locks? We have heated seats. We have heated mirrors. I’m sure some car has some other “heated” feature I don’t know about. So why is it locks aren’t heated? I think this would be a great feature you could activate from the keychain FOB for your car. Can’t get in ’cause the lock is frozen? Heat ‘er up and you’re set!

Note to car manufacturers, if you do this, I want credit! You heard it here first!

By the way, something else I just noticed today. Newer cars seem to only have one key port and its on the drivers door? No more passenger door lock? That cut my chances of unlocking it the “traditional” way in half. Thanks guys.

I had to run some errands for work today and needed to stop for some gasoline. I pull up around the gas pump at a local Exxon/Mobile gas station and get ready to “fill ‘er up”. Typically I pay at the pump since I hardly ever need anything inside a convenience store, so I look at the screen on the pump and it says please pay inside. Arrgh, ok, no problem.

I walk up to the door to see a hand written sign that says “System is down. Registers too.”

Ok, I’ll go around the other side where I can see the attendant to see what’s up. He points at the sign.

I look back at him puzzled (the door is locked).

I pull my wallet out and flash some cash.

He shakes his head no.

No? No?!?! In this day and age of technology, we can no longer accept the almighty dollar bill in its original form? We’ve become so dependent on credit and computer driven register systems that we can’t accept a $20.00 bill? You’ve got to be kidding me. As I walked away, I felt bad for the guy as I heard some lady scream at him through the door. Lady, its not his fault. He’s probably under instructions from the proprietor to do what he did.

Anyway, my business went down the street to another, competing gas station station (where I did go in and buy a Coke, shame on me). I knew a lot of people can’t calculate change without a register, but actually take cash in hand? Come on now!

There is an interesting article over on CNET about Google and Apple outsmarting all of the cell phone companies over the next 5 years. Google is coming out with the “gPhone” (either a phone OS or an actual phone) and Apple has its iPhone. Now, when the iPhone was first coming out Kyle and I talked about how cool it would be to just run Skype on the iPhone over WiFi and just circumvent the cell company. Basically VoIP, but mobile. Super neat!

Well, this now gets more interesting. With Google aimed to bid on the 700MHz spectrum in January, the cell phone landscape could change dramatically. Now we have wide spread WiFi, available at a low cost. You can use your “gPhone” or iPhone to talk to anyone and everyone over this WiFi network. What does this mean? No more traditional cell companies. No more crazy cell phone charges and taxes (granted, there will probably be government WiFi taxes). No more 2 year term agreements that bind you to crappy devices on an even crappier network.

At the end of they day, I think this article has pretty much hit the nail on the head in saying that in the next 5 years, Google and Apple will have snookered the cell business really good. They’ll be the ones left out in the cold.

I’m sure most people are aware of NBC pulling its content from Apple’s iTunes store a few months back. A new article on Apple Insider sheds some more light on NBC’s “position”. Jeff Zucker, Chief Executive of NBC, claims that they wanted to increase download prices for its shows to $2.99 from $1.99. The reason being that they had ONLY earned about $15 million from the service last year. ONLY?!?! ONLY?!?! Jeff, that’s $15 million you wouldn’t have earned on T.V. episodes without iTunes. I’d love to make $15 million without lifting a finger on the back of someone ELSES platform.

You sound like the RIAA claiming that downloadable music is killing the recording industry. Uh, no. Its just killing your profits, so you’re going to take your ball and go home, no matter how much it could affect what you COULD make in the future.

Jeff goes on to claim that Apple made millions by selling its hardware on the back of NBC’s content, money NBC never saw. Uh, yeah, right. Jeff, Apple makes a superior product that people see value in, hence they buy it. Show me some numbers on that claim and I’ll listen. Reading comments such as these only get me more excited that recording artists (and I’m sure we’ll see something similar with film in the future) are taking control of their own content and controlling how its distributed. Tell me Jeff, when NBC can’t make money on commercials anymore, will you take your bat home too and take my DVR away from me?

I generally like to use my MacBook for my computing needs, but I do  need to use Windows XP for my job since I predominantly develop .NET applications.  A great annoyance is Windows Update.  When you update your system it continuously prompts you to reboot, even if you don’t want to.  I found this great article via Reddit about disabling Windows Update Reboot notifications.  This is something that has driven me nuts for years.  Glad I finally found a way to customize how often they pop up or disable them altogether.  The only thing that didn’t work for me in the article was executing gpedit.msc.  To get around that, I just typed mmc at the run prompt and opened the Snap-In for the Group Policy for the local computer and followed the rest of the instructions.

I found this one via Reddit today and found it quite fascinating. Karen Lodrick, a native of San Francisco, was a victim of identity theft and had been trying to get herself out of the mess for nearly six months. A regular visit to Starbucks, where she ordered a Latte, saw a familiar light-brown suede coat from a security camera photo she had seen at her bank identifying the person who had stolen identity as not being herself. After a call to 911, a lengthy chase, and finally the police finding her in a Walgreens parking garage, she was caught. I have to give Karen credit for taking advantage of the situation and chasing her down so she could get her life back. Makes you think twice about throwing those credit card applications away in the trash before shredding them or ripping them up.

Typically you can find pretty good deals on computer hardware online. Usually I check Newegg and ZipZoomfly for what I’m looking for and figure out where the best deal is. This time around, I decided I’d just try ZipZoomfly out since I found what I was looking for at a reasonable price. Both items were marked as in stock and for twenty dollars for overnight shipping and I’d have my new hardware the next day. Yay! When the package arrived, I wasn’t happy. Only one item had arrived.

I call their customer service to ask what is going on. I was told after being put on hold that the second item was no longer in stock. So I ask why I wasn’t notified. She didn’t know. Needing the replacement now, I asked what they were going to do to get me the part. She didn’t offer anything and just said they didn’t have it. So I started to get a little more irate about the whole thing saying I had a hardware failure and this was the replacement I was expecting for my overnight delivery cost. She puts me on hold for 5 minutes then comes back to say there going to swap it out for the next model up. I check the specs, tell her I’m happy with that, and she puts the order through telling me it’ll be put in immediately and I’ll have it the next day (today).

Today rolls around. No email with an order number or tracking number. I call them again. A new rep checks on my order (putting me on hold again for 5 minutes) then tells me they didn’t put the order in due to a “technical” issue and that it was really being put in today. I ask why I wasn’t notified of this and she said she didn’t know. So I tell her I think this is pretty lousy customer service and all she has to say is I’m sorry. I had to basically tell her I wanted a phone call when the order went through so I could have a tracking number. I wasn’t calling them back.

Customer service is all about the customer. Zipzoomfly doesn’t seem to realize that or really care. That’s why I’ll take my business to Newegg or another e-tailer in the future.

Kyle emailed me about this earlier today. I’m not sure I like this and I hope that Yahoo declines, though I have no solid reason for not liking it. To me, it just seems wrong and not a good business choice for Yahoo. What will Microsoft bring to the Yahoo brand that Yahoo either hasn’t done already or can’t do on their own. I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.