I’ve long held that Microsoft’s PowerPoint is evil. No, it’s not guilt by association. Yes, Microsoft is evil. PowerPoint makes it too easy to sell complex business plans which, during a PowerPoint presentation, look plausible and viable, but, in reality are not. In 2003 Edward Tufte wrote an essay in Wired—PowerPoint Is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely. Matthew Lasar in Ars:

Government and industry bureaucrats addicted to spewing out mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations, be very afraid; Edward Tufte is coming to Washington, DC. The Obama administration has appointed Tufte to serve on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, which will suggest ways that the $787 billion stimulus program’s watchdog accountability board can do its job.

Worthy reading.

Tom Kaneshige in CIO:

Macs in the enterprise aren’t just cheaper to manage—they’re a lot cheaper, according to a new survey…

Sounds impressive, no? Who did the survey?

(The) Enterprise Desktop Alliance is a group of software developers who’ve bandied together to deploy and manage Macs in the enterprise.

So, a bunch of guys who use Macs surveyed IT administrators and found that Macs are less expensive to manage than PCs. They could’ve just asked me.

In another sign that change is coming to the world of computing, Google’s John Herlihy says:

In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.

Herlihy is based in Europe and obviously has never seen a Japanese PC keyboard. But three years?

The digital world is fundamentally different to the traditional business world. Things happen much faster, websites spring up from nowhere, a video could be a YouTube hit in hours.

I wonder what that has to do with desktop computers? Also, I note that the digital world is merely a subset of the so-called ‘traditional business world.’

At the end of the day it’s the customer who owns the cash. That’s why we construct our organisation to deliver value. The underlying framework is to make it easier for people to do business, solve problems and move on.

Google’s customers are advertisers. Over 99-percent of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. Google, so far, is a one-trick pony. A wealthy one-trick pony with a desire to disrupt the technology landscape.

For example, Microsoft and Apple create and sell mobile operating systems; the former directly to cell phone manufacturers, the latter on Apple products. Google’s Android mobile device operating system is given away free.

That’s disruptive.

Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.

Money quote: “ubiquity first, revenue later.”

That’s easy to say for a company with very deep pockets and a dominant market share on the cash cow product—advertising. In reality, Google remains a one-trick pony, self-annointed king of the internet advertising industry.

Meanwhile, computing—apps, games, utilities, connectivity—is moving from the desktop to mobile devices, but it’s an embrace, a dance of change, rather than a death knell for desktops.

This morning I received an email from American Airlines’ AAdvantage Reward Program:

Welcome to the American Airlines AAdvantage(R) program, the first and largest loyalty program in the world! We are proud to inform you that today, American Airlines launch a new reward program. Please take the 5 questions survey. For your effort you will be rewarded with $50 & 25,000 miles.

The sentences sound funny, don’t they? The phrasing is off. That should raise a red flag. Unfortunately, for many who received the email it might be too late. The message contained a link to an American Airlines phishing scam. Phishing, in this context, isn’t what most people think it is.

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

This particular scam is a web page that looks like an authentic American Airlines web page, complete with a Login section designed to capture the AAdvantage number and Password.

The site looks legitimate, doesn’t it? Caveat emptor. Beware of what seems too good to be true.

Is Google making us stupid? Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

You feel it, too, right? The cause? Google.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after.

Nate Anderson in Ars:

Andreas Kluth, of The Economist, agrees that “people will read more in terms of quantity, but more promiscuously and at shorter intervals and with less dedication. As these habits take root, they corrupt our willingness to commit to long texts, as found in books or essays… This will result in a resurgence of short-form texts and storytelling, in ‘haiku culture’ replacing ‘book culture.’”

The internet may be a watershed moment in human history, the event which triggered the death of literature and ushered in the haiku century.

Shameless self promotion:

The Mac brought massive change to the world of computers. The iPod brought change to how we listen to and manage music. The iPhone changed how we use cell phones. If this trend continues, Apple’s iPad may signal another era of dramatic change. Should we begin to prepare for the day when our Macs and Windows PCs are no longer the center of our computing universe? Yes.

Some people recommend that your computer be restarted every day. Derek Kessler in Pre | Central recommends daily restarts for both Windows PCs and Palm Pre smart phone users. Why?

As I’ve often recommended for my friends sporting Windows-running machines, rebooting every day or so is good for the soul. Well, it’s good for the stability of the operating system, and the same can be said for webOS.

Kessler points to Reboot Scheduler, a Palm Pre app which automatically restarts the Pre according to a schedule.

My MacBook and iPhone run 24/7 and are restarted only when the operating system is updated (every few months). No sluggishness. No slowdown. No problem. Whatever disease Windows has, maybe Palm has it, too.

Quick. Name a few fast foods and desserts that are bad for you. Pizza, cheeseburgers, chocolate ice cream. Guess what? They’re actually good for you. Science to the rescue from Prevention:

Science really has rescued some of our naughtiest foods from the taboo list. New studies suggest that former no-no’s like red meat, ice cream, and cheese may add to better health and longer life. This isn’t an excuse to go out and binge on every burger you see—overdoing calories and saturated fat is an invitation to obesity, clogged arteries, cancer, and diabetes. But indulging in these once-forbidden treats once in a while (and in waistline-friendly 400-calorie portions) may actually boost the health of your diet.

Pizza, beef, cheese, ice cream, and chocolate. Today is a good day.

Frédéric Filloux in The Washington Post worries that the iPad could be used to censor bad news (at least, in France).

Imagine this scenario in a coming iPad era. An iPad newsmagazine publishes an investigative piece that triggers a legal injunction: Remove that from the publication or face a $10,000 penalty per day. No, says the publisher, who has guts and money (proof that this is a fiction): We want to fight in court. The plaintiff then turns to Apple. Same threat: Face a huge fine or remove the offending content. Furthermore, says the plaintiff’s attorney, thanks to the permanent and unique electronic link to your proprietary devices and the fact that the electronic kiosk now resides on the device, you must extend the deletion to each user’s tablet. Just as you keep pushing updates and various content bits to these gizmos, you can push a delete instruction code.

Far fetched? Maybe not.

With the iPad structure, Apple is creating absolute control for product, delivery and even ownership that can be revoked at will. Apple allows or rejects the application (the container); it can remove all or part of any content from its servers; and it can even remotely delete the stuff you purchased. Imagine: You go to a bookstore and spend $25 on a book that a court later finds illicit; a bookstore employee then goes to your place, takes the book from the shelf and leaves some money on your kitchen table. Wouldn’t you be slightly uncomfortable with this?

Interesting, no?