Dramatic Drop in Spam?

According to some Internet news reports, McColo Corp., located in downton San Jose, California was shut down a few weeks ago when its two Internet backbone providers finally shut off their Internet backbone connection. McColo is a web hosting provider for many international organizations involved in spamming of everything from pornography to pharmaceuticals. 

The two backbone providers are Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric. It's unclear if the FBI will be pursuing charges against McColo for being partially responsible for the billions of spam messages sent. 

Reports from various Internet security agencies reported varying degrees of a drop in spam. One report showed an immediate 66% drop in unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and another report showed a decline from 40 spam messages/second down to 10/second. 

No matter what the decline actually was, any decline is good news. It's about time. 

To Your Success, 

 Tim

In Case You Were Thinking About a Blackberry

I ran across this article on one of the blogs I frequent. This study tracked specific cell phone models for a year. The results are, well, let's just say I'm glad I didn't get a Blackberry. 

To Your Sucess, 

 Tim

Research group SquareTrade recently released the results of a massive cellphone study. They tracked 15,000 individual handsets over their first year of use, and they found some large discrepancies in reliability. The iPhone malfunction rate sat at a comfortable 5.6%. The Blackberry (in its various incarnations) jumped to 11.9%. But it's all better than the Palm Treo, which malfunctioned 16.2% of the time within the first year.
To be honest, none of these numbers are particularly good, and I have a feeling that there may be a confounding iPhone White Glove Effect—I keep that phone's glass screen in mind every time I put it in the pocket opposite my keys. (Ironically, iPhone users were found 3% more likely to accidentally damage their phones than their Blackberry/Palm counterparts.)
When projected to two years, the iPhone's failure rate jumps to 11% while Blackberries level to 14% and Treos reach a scary 21%. I guess it's a good thing we have those ridiculously binding contracts to bail us out after all. [SquareTrade via CNET]

Don't Forget Your Cell Phone On Your Next Flight

Two weeks ago I flew out to see a client in Nashville for a few days. Houston Intercontinental Airport and Continental Airlines instituted a new test program where you could have your boarding pass displayed on your browser enabled cell phone. I decided to give this a try and it worked like a charm! 

Here's how it works: I logged into Continentals website to print my boarding pass. I saw a new link to have the boarding pass sent to my phone. So I clicked the link, and shortly an email showed up in my phone's email reader with a link to the boarding pass. When I got to the airport to go through security, I showed my driver's license, whipped out my phone, clicked the link, and my boarding pass with the bar code displayed on the screen. The TSA person used a hand scanner to scan the barcode, and I then proceed through security. Then at the gate during boarding, I again showed the same screen to the gate agent. She scanned the screen on my phone again, and I then boarded the plane for the trip to Nashille! 

American Airlines is beginning to test this as well at various airports, and I would expect to see it rolled out pretty quickly to most airports. I intend to use the system again on my next flight. I must admit, I was a little nervous while standing in the security line, without a physical replication of my boarding pass in my hand. But, it worked fine, and helped the environment (albeit a tiny bit) in the process. Give it a try if you get the chance. 

 To Your Success, 

 Tim