When I go to dinner parties and tell people what I do for a living, they sometimes say, “Oh, I should call you next time I have a problem with my computer.” My standard reply is, “Sure. Let me give you my 900 number.” We all laugh. Ha ha ha.

So imagine my surprise when I got this message:

Dear Ed,

My Name is [deleted to protect the clueless] and I represent BitWine.com, a website that links advice seekers with experts in a wide variety of fields.

We have recently launched a Voice and Video “Talk to/Ask an Expert” service which is included as plug-in software in Skype 3.0 version.

After doing much internet research, I found you to be an excellent potential candidate as an advisor in your field of expertise. This service is a tool to connect you with your audience (via voice/video) and will enable you to earn a consulting fee per minute.

For more details about how this free of charge and commission free service works, please take a look at www.bitwine.com. Feel free to address me with any question you have.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope to discuss the various possibilities for partnership. Join us in starting a new era in Expert-Viewer relationships as the Web2.0 continues to evolve.

Hey, maybe I don’t need that 900 number after all!

Two problems with this offer:

1. It was posted as a comment on my weblog, in response to a completely unrelated post. Yep, this company’s PR representative thinks comment spam is an effective way to reach potential partners. Bad idea.
2. When I went to the company’s website and clicked the About Us link, I found nothing but a bunch of psychobabble. Not a single name of an actual person behind this company. “BitWine is a privately-held company operated by a team of professionals who believe deeply that each one of us possesses talents that can be shared beyond our own immediate boundaries.” No bios. No address. Nothing to indicate that this is a legitimate organization that I should trust. In fact, this looks like a scam site. Seriously, what kind of company doesn’t include a listing of its founders, officers, and backers on its website? Especially when that company’s tagline is “Trusted advice from real people”?

When I did a little research, I found that the founders of the company do indeed have a track record and that the company might indeed be legitimate. At least they’ve convinced the Silicon Valley echo chamber to take them seriously. But in their initial fumbling contacts with me they look like complete amateurs.

Guess I’ll have to stick with that 900 number.

Apparently, the Zune folks have now released an updated version of their software that is compatible with Windows Vista. I learn this from Dwight, who leads off his item with “From the It’s-About-Time Dept.“

Well, all righty, then. About time?

Just to put this in perspective: This upgrade would be six weeks before Vista is released for the retail customers who are presumably the Zune’s target market. And about 30 days after it was released.

Tough crowd. Apparently in the 21st Century you have 29 days to get a product perfect or it’s written off as a miserable failure. Unless you’re in politics, that is.

But what do I care? I refuse to even think about buying one of these things until Om Malik finishes his review.

(Oh, and congrats on the book deal, Dwight. Remind me to tell you how many times I tried to resign from my first book writing gig.)

… In the comments, Dwight says the new Zune software doesn’t work. I’m still waiting for Om to weigh in.

… Another update. I wrote this in the comments but figure it’s worth repeating here:

The last thing I want to do is defend the Zune. I haven’t seen one or used one. My point is twofold:

1. Microsoft is not a monolith. It’s really a collection of companies. So, should they have delayed releasing the Zune until they had Vista software?
Or delayed releasing Vista until the Zune software was ready? That’s a marketing decision which one can critique. It truly sounds like the Zune was released too early, but the absence of software for Vista isn’t the problem.

2. The comparison to iTunes isn’t accurate at all. iTunes is included with the operating system, just as Windows Media Player is. Zune is really being treated as if it were a third-party product from a completely different company. I honestly don’t get that strategy, but that’s what it is.

For the past couple days, I’ve been receiving e-mail announcements from companies alerting me that Windows Vista Ultimate is now available for download. And for a mere $79.95! What’s more, if I click the link and visit the site it leads to, I can download all sorts of other great software for equally insane prices.

Each message has a different domain in the link, although the text is the same. And the sites are identical templates. Here’s what one looks like:

And here’s a closeup of the Vista Ultimate offer:

I used my red pen and my yellow highlighter to flag the two most interesting parts of the screen. Now, can you really expect to get a legitimate copy of the software for $80 when the estimated retail price is $399? No.

Predictably, these domains are typically shut down within a few hours, but they pop right back up under a new name for the next round of spam.

So, who’s crazy enough to give a credit card number to these people? And how foolish do you have to be to actually install this stuff? I expect that most of these are garden-variety hacked copies that will work for a few weeks until they’re disabled by Vista’s antipiracy checks. But still, don’t you think at least some of these copies are going to contain a little something extra?

It just dawned on me that I attended my first Consumer Electronics Show in 1979. I think I went in 1980 and 1981 as well, then didn’t go back until January 2006. For years, Comdex was the place to go if you wanted to see new stuff in the computer industry. Today, Comdex is gone and CES has taken its place and then some.

So, I’ll be in Las Vegas next month. My CES 2007 folder in Outlook currently has 310 messages, and there are probably another 100 or so scattered in other folders that I haven’t rounded up yet.

This week I’ll be answering all those meeting requests (mostly with “no, thank you very much”) but I do expect to schedule 4-6 meetings a day for the show’s four days, in addition to attending two mini-tradeshows where I’ll have the chance to spend some time with 100 or so exhibitors in a more relaxed setting.

I’ll be spending a fair amount of time in the Microsoft booth to see what sort of messages they’re delivering about Windows Vista and which partners are there. I’ve also got visits scheduled with some big PC makers, starting with Dell and Toshiba. I’m going to be taking a long look at any Media Center-related hardware, of course.

So what else should I be looking at? What sort of coverage would you like to read about CES here?

No more page proofs. We’ve read every word and have nothing left to fix.

Next stop, the printer.

And I’m off to sleep.

Carl and Craig and I have burned through a pretty big pile of pages so far, but we’re still less than halfway home. So while I read proofs, maybe someone wants to tackle this puzzle.

I have a folder full of 13 files. In Windows Explorer, every file has a date and time stamp of 12/31/1994 5:00 PM and is exactly 44 bytes in length.

What do I need to do to copy these files?

… Oh, and a major shout-out to The Dixie Chicks for their five Grammy nominations. I am really, really looking forward to seeing Shut Up and Sing.

I was thinking of hanging a big banner and making a speech to announce that at 11:54PM last night we delivered the last piece of Windows Vista Inside Out to the hard-working production team at Microsoft Press. But that approach didn’t work out too well for the last guy who tried it, so I think I’ll just stick with this simple announcement instead.

It’s finished.

We’ve got a two-foot-high stack of page proofs to read over the next week, and when that’s all done it goes to the printer. If all goes well it should be on shelves before the official release of Windows Vista at the end of January.

You can pre-order a copy from Amazon.com if you don’t want to stand in line at your local Borders or B&N. And for some inexplicable reason Amazon left my co-authors’ names off the page. (Update: It appears to be fixed now. Thank goodness, or I would have had to read al these page proofs myself.) For the record, Carl Siechert and Craig Stinson and I did this project as a team. It’s amazing to think we’ve been working on this book since early 2003!