The new year is nearly a month old, but I’m still hammering out my 2006 resolutions. Top of the list: Come up with a moneymaking
scheme as clever as the Million Dollar Home Page. The cheeky British college student who sold a million pixels at a buck apiece has spawned a swarm of imitators, as well
as DDoS attacks from jealous Netizens. The only problem: I don’t own anything that’s actually worth a dollar.
Whatever Makes You HP: One fine day last fall, Scott G.’s Pavilion desktop stopped displaying video, so he shipped it to Hewlett-Packard for repair.
Two weeks later he received a package containing somebody else’s old video card, but no PC. Three weeks after that, his PC
came back, but without a video card. Many chat and phone sessions with HP support ensued, to little effect. But after he spilled
the whole ugly story on his Web site -- and it was read by thousands at Digg.com -- HP scrambled to send him a brand-new machine. A company spokesdude admits making mistakes but says the vast majority of
HP users are happy as clams. Then again, maybe they’re just waiting to be steamed.
Off Their ROKRs: Is an Apple cell phone in the offing? Those are the rumors swirling out of Cupertino after the company filed for a trademark on the phrase “Mobile Me.” Anything smaller than a pay phone would be an improvement on Motorola’s iTunes-enabled ROKR. In
other McNews, Microsoft recently announced that, despite killing off Mac versions of IE and Windows Media Player, it will
support Office for Mac for at least another five years. I understand that with good behavior Apple can get it reduced to three.
Pro Bono: Thanks to the many readers who caught an apparent error in a recent column, where I confused Bono (aka Paul Hewson of U2) and the late Congressman Sonny Bono (who suffered an unfortunate encounter with a tree back in 1998). In the writing biz, that’s what’s technically known as
a “joke,” though not a very good one. So here’s another New Year’s resolution: better jokes.
Got hot tips or chowder recipes? Send them to cringe@infoworld.com and you may get a tasty Cringe bag(uette) for dipping.
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