Update February 4: Well, CenturyLink was true to their word. The numbers were ported on January 31, a tech came out to confirm the lines worked (they did), and I am now back in POTS-ville temporarily until I settle on a more modern telephony solution. Thanks for all the suggestions in the comments below!

Update January 24: After a morning spent on the phone with CenturyLink support (via Skype, ironically), I finally managed to reach people with problem-solving capabilities at CenturyLink. Phone service is back online, numbers will be ported to landline effective January 31, where they will basically be parked, and I will have the opportunity to research the best replacement. Whew!

Update: As of Monday morning, January 23, less than two days after getting the “final notice” call I describe below, my existing numbers have gone dead. If you try to call my home or business number, you will get a message that says the number is out of service. I have dial tone, but if I try to make a call I am told that my service has been suspended. Thanks, CenturyLink!

The company that has been supplying me with phone service for the past five years or so is dumping me.

Well, technically, CenturyLink (the company formerly known as Qwest) has decided to stop offering its residential VOIP service and is shutting it down completely as of January 31. Yeah, that’s less than two weeks from now.

Did I mention that they forgot to actually tell me they were doing this? I didn’t find out until yesterday afternoon, when both my home and office lines rang simultaneously. Each was getting the same robocall from CenturyLink, with a professional announcer’s voice telling me this is a  “final notice your my broadband phone service.”

My reaction: What? Is this a collection call?

The caller went on: “This matter requires your immediate attention. If you have already contacted us regarding the discontinuation of your broadband phone service, pleases disregard this message.”

Me: “Discontinuation”? What?!

The caller continued:

“This is your final notice that service will be discontinued in the next week.”

Me: [unprintable]

Needless, to say, I stopped working on the project that I had hoped to work on for the rest of the day and dove headfirst down the CenturyLink support rabbit hole.

The support rep I spoke with was very polite, profusely apologetic, and completely unhelpful. The service is going away, and the only option they are willing to offer me is to switch my VOIP numbers over to landlines. Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS.

Me: Oh, hello, 1999! So nice to see you again.

Oh, and did I mention that that option will raise my monthly phone bill by 90%? And it will require a visit from a CenturyLink tech? And I’ll have to fiddle with the structured wiring in my house, which hasn’t had a POTS jack in years?

Gee, thanks, CenturyLink.

The unhelpful people who staff the apparently ironically named @CenturyLinkHelp on Twitter told me it’s not their fault:

@edbott Sorry you didn’t get your notification we started informing customers on 11/14 via  direct mail,bill messages and voice message

You know, as someone who writes about tech for a living and relies on phone service, I would remember a message like that. I never received a single notification of any kind. No paper (my bill is paid automatically each month via direct deposit, and I signed up for the paperless billing option long ago), no e-mail, no phone message until yesterday’s “final notice.” And they obviously know how to reach me.

I do have options, of course. I asked my Twitter community for suggestions and they came through with some excellent suggestions. Here’s my list of options:

• Switch to an alternative independent VOIP service like Vonage. That would actually save me some money.
• Switch to MagicJack Plus. The Plus version doesn’t require a direct PC connection (which would have been a  deal-breaker). Reviews are mixed.
• Switch my VOIP service to Comcast, from which I currently get Internet and cable service. A promotional rate would save me money for the first 6-12 months, but after that the costs would be nearly double what I’m now paying. At least based on my reading of Comcast’s confusing website.
• Attach an OBi device to my network and use Google Voice or another free service.
• Attach an Ooma Telo device to my network and then use their free service (there are some taxes and service charges to be paid). My Twitter community seems to love this option.

But there’s a complication in most of those scenarios. Anything that involves moving my service away from CenturyLink also involves porting my telephone numbers. Everything I’ve read says that process takes a minimum of 10 working days and can take even longer, depending on how quick the new service is and how cooperative the old one is. The robocaller made it very clear the clock is ticking:

“As a reminder, if you wish to retain your existing VOIP telephone number for an alternate service, you will need to call us. Otherwise, this number will no longer be available to you.”

After doing some research yesterday afternoon, I called CenturyLink this morning as soon as they opened. This time I insisted on talking to someone with actual technical knowledge of what the company is doing with this service. What he told me is even worse than I heard yesterday: “As of the 23rd [that’s Monday, one business day from now], they are taking down the platform. If you want to port these numbers, you gotta do it quick.”

He made it clear that if the numbers go out of service before the porting is completed, I lose them for good. Family, friends, businesses that have those numbers in their contact lists will get a “this number is disconnected” message.

So my only viable option at this point is to grit my teeth and allow CenturyLink to switch me back to their landline service. I just got off the phone with the company and got the ball rolling. But even they can’t guarantee they can get the work done in time.

If they do come through (fingers crossed, knock on wood, chant to every deity I’ve ever heard of), that will buy me a month or two to research my options and choose one based on something other than panic.

My favorite part? The robocaller voice signed off with this cheery message:

“We value you as a customer, and thank you for allowing CenturyLink to serve you.”

No, thank you, CenturyLink. As customer service goes, this is about as bad as it gets.

[Post updated]

On January 18, 2012, Wikipedia blacked out its website to protest some truly frightening legislation that is working its way through the U.S. Congress.

If you tried to visit a Wikipedia page that day, you would have seen this image:

But what if you get it already and you’ve contacted your lawmakers and you just really, really need to look something up? The Wikipedia protest was really just a snippet of JavaScript. All you had to do to work around it was to disable JavaScript. The technique comes in handy in other situations as well, when a site’s script is causing it to behave in unintended ways.

For that type of situation, there’s a workaround available via Internet Explorer.

1. Open the Internet Options menu. In IE8, click Tools, Internet Options. In IE9, click the gear icon and then click Internet Options.
2. Click the Security tab and then click the Restricted Sites icon, as shown here:
3. Click the Sitesbutton and add the main address for your region’s Wikipedia page in the box at the top, as I’ve done here for the English-language site:
4. Click Add, and then click Close.

You have now added Wikipedia to the Restricted Sites zone, where script is not allowed. And because the blackout is based on JavaScript, this trick effectively gives you access to the full site.

To remove a site from the Restricted list so it works normally, repeat the steps, but this time select the entry you added and click Remove.

For more details on SOPA and why it’s a bad thing, see this article at Wired. The good news is that it looks like the bill is dead … for now.

Sorry, the discount offer mentioned in this post has expired.

At CES, I had a chance to spend some time with a few key members of the Windows 8 team, and I looked at some recent builds that are very close to what Microsoft will release as a beta in about a month.

Many of the details I heard and saw were off the record, but I can say this with confidence: If you use Windows, you will want to try the Windows 8 beta.

And what better way to prepare for the beta then with my latest book, Windows 8 Head Start? It’s based on the Windows 8 Developer Preview, and in its 100 pages you’ll get a through overview of the new user interface and learn what you need to know to prepare. When the beta arrives, I’ll be updating the book (and doubling it in length). And here’s the best part:

Anyone who has purchased the current edition will get the next edition for free.

Oh, and I have a coupon code you can use to get 30% off your order total when you check out. That means you’ll pay $7 instead of the list price of $9.95.

The book is available in a single download package that contains full-color editions suitable for reading on any device. Use the PDF file on your PC or Mac, copy the MOBI file to your Amazon Kindle, or use the EPUB file on a Nook or other Android device.

Interested? Here are the details:

• Go to the book page at the Fair Trade DX bookstore.
• Add the book to your cart.
• When you check out, include the code friendofed. Your 30% discount will be reflected in the checkout price.

You can purchase the book at the Amazon or B&N store, but the checkout discount is only available from FairTrade DX directly. (Copies purchased from any source are eligible for the free update to the next edition.)

Why am I doing this? Because I want your feedback. Tell me what needs to be in the next edition and you’ll see that feedback reflected in the update.

Thanks for your support.

OK, I now have both a Nook and a Kindle Fire, and I ‘ve used both (along with an iPad 2) long enough to form some opinions.

I’m working on a post to share my thoughts about the pros and cons of each platform. Any questions you want me to answer? If you’ve used either or both, feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

On its surface, this partnership between Facebook and the news/commentary site Politico sounds like a good idea.

Facebook Gives Politico Deep Access to Users’ Political Sentiments

[T]he Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users’ private status messages and comments. While that may alarm some people, Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts.

Rather, every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population.

I’m actually not all that worried by the privacy issues. I am more concerned that this is crappy data, easily gamed. Let some well-funded Astroturf organization create thousands of phony personas all trading private status messages with one another about how they love candidate A or staunchly oppose issue X, and watch as the numbers creep up.

Seriously, statistically valid polling is hard work. Facebook data mining is no substitute.

There’s another round of fussing among Linux users over Microsoft’s decision to require a feature called Secure Boot in Windows 8. I break down the details over at ZDNet. Here’s an excerpt from Linux won’t be locked out of Windows 8 PCs, but FUD continues

Let’s talk about Windows 8 PCs. The new specifications make it very clear:

• All versions of Windows 8 shall be UEFI-compatible …
• All client systems must support UEFI Secure boot …
• MANDATORY: Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv [the private key that supports Secure Boot].

“Non-ARM systems” means the classic x86 PC design. Roughly 400 million of these devices will be sold this year, and probably an equivalent number will be sold in the first year that Windows 8 is available. Every single one of those PCs will have the ability to run older versions of Windows, Linux, or a new operating system you create yourself. To do so, you will simply have to flip a bit in the system’s setup screen.

Sorry, conspiracy theorists. This does not represent “Microsoft’s latest attempt to abuse their PC monopoly power .” Quite the opposite. In the general-purpose PC segment, where small vestiges of Microsoft’s one-time monopoly still exist, this new security feature will be enabled by default, but the option to disable it will be mandatory. No lock-out for Linux.

General-purpose PCs are awesome. I don’t believe they will ever go away. I do not want them to go away.

But I do think we’ll see many more specialized devices that are engineered as part of end-to-end experiences, not easily hackable, with limitations imposed by app stores and digital signatures.

I want to have the choice to buy those devices as well as general-purpose PCs. iPads are arguably highly locked down. One can chafe at the limitations and restrictions, but there is no doubt that the end result is a very secure, very usable, very supportable combination of device and software.

The reason that the full system is “locked down” and the app store is curated is to keep out malware. And I would bet the number of people who are affected every year by malware is an order of magnitude larger than the people who want to buy a PC with one OS installed and hack it so they can install something else.

For many people, especially nontechnical users, the availability of that type of device is a good thing. Between Apple, Google, and Microsoft, we are heading toward a world where we will have at least three different hardware/OS and app ecosystems, all of them designed around very different experiences. I hope that all three of those platforms are able to coexist. I’d rather not return to the days of monopoly, thanks very much.

Ironically, the “open hardware” movement wants to restrict my choice. I want the ability to buy a device that can’t be easily hacked, even by me. We both want “open” PCs to continue to exist. But by insisting that every device be “open,” they’re taking away my option to freely, with eyes wide open, choose “closed.”

Farhad Majoo at Slate predicts that 2012 will be "The Year of Microsoft":

I’ll say it: I’m bullish on Microsoft in 2012. This could be the year that it shakes its malaise and takes its place alongside Apple, Google, and Amazon as a dominant innovator of the mobile age. For the first time in forever, Microsoft has a couple major products that are not merely good enough. They’re just plain great.

Many of the pieces are there, and right now Microsoft is as focused as a company as I’ve ever seen them.

The big question mark is whether customers will be willing to forgive Microsoft for its flailing in the mid-2000s and recognize that this is a different, more tightly run organization. That’s especially true for any business that is still on XP.

Microsoft also has an uphill climb with journalists and reviewers who switched to Apple hardware and Google services in recent years. In the Silicon Valley echo chamber, many opinions of Microsoft products are based on pre-switch experiences and on groupthink. In that environment, it’s difficult to get more than a glance and a shrug from the so-called opinion leaders.

Microsoft 2012 is a different animal from Microsoft 2006, especially in terms of its ability to execute. Let’s see if anyone notices.

A few weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch discovered Twitter. The resulting stream of … well, let’s call it semi-consciousness, from @rupertmurdoch has been revelatory.

The man can turn on a dime. Here is the best example I’ve seen yet.

Rupert tweeting from CES on Wednesday, on Day 2 of CES:

The admiration lasted about 72 hours.

Three days later, after the show is over, Rupert’s opinion of Google has changed …

The piracy leader? It takes a lot of I-don’t-know-what-you-call-it-but-you-can’t-say-it-in-polite-company for the guy whose highly paid executives stole the voicemails of a murdered child and of soldiers who lost their lives in Iran and Afghanistan to complain about piracy.

And as for the "pouring millions into lobbying"? Again, this is Rupert Murdoch we’re talking about. Who spends millions of dollars a year on lobbying.

But there you are.

This post by an Android developer on TechCrunch very adroitly describes the mess that Google has made of Android:

Android’s fragmentation has become a giant millstone for Android app development, leaving it worryingly behind its iOS equivalent. It’s not the panoply of screen sizes and formats; the Android layout engine is actually quite good at minimizing that annoyance. It’s not the frequent instances of completely different visual behavior on two phones running exactly the same version of Android; again, annoying, but relatively minor. Device fragmentation is just an irritation.

OS fragmentation, though, is an utter disaster. Ice Cream Sandwich is by all accounts very nice; but what good does that do app developers, when according to Google’s own stats, 30% of all Android devices are still running an OS that is 20 months old? I sure would have liked to stop caring about Android 2.2 bugs fixed in 2.3.

And it’s not like those devices are going to magically stop working anytime soon. They could be out on the network for three or four years, maybe more, without security updates and with core components that can’t run current apps.

Android’s phenomenal market-share grab has come at a price. This is a real problem, and as I wrote a few weeks ago, it is inherent in the Android business model.

I ran across this free Microsoft Office Labs add-in a while back, but it’s worth sharing again:

Search Commands

You know there’s a button for it, but you don’t know or remember where it is. If this ever happens to you, check out Search Commands. You can use this concept test today to quickly find the commands you need in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just search with your own words and click on the command you need.

Here’s an example. You want to change the default font used for new Word documents but you’re not sure where the command is located? Type in the search box and the command appears immediately, like this:

Click that result to go directly to the dialog box tab that contains the command you’re looking for.

This is ostensibly a power user’s tool, but it also works nicely for anyone who is having trouble making the transition from menus to the ribbon and tabs.