When Is Your Bank Not Your Bank?

We interrupt this 2010 predictions column to predict trouble ahead, first for mobile banking apps, second for ISPs who stupidly piss-off my readers, and finally for buyers like me of Dell Vostro A90 netbooks. I further predict we’ll return with more prediction columns within hours.

First the mobile app problem. My friend Stephen Schaubach just noticed something about mobile banking apps that is very scary. He wrote about it tonight on Slashdot, but since he’s my friend (Stephen introduced me to my wife — I think that qualifies him as a friend, don’t you?) I feel okay about the duplication.  As for that introduction many years ago, Stephen was just showing her off, […]

Fallon's Getting a Dell!

There were already two computers in our kitchen but that wasn’t enough for Fallon, age three, who needs his daily fix of YouTube Scooby-Doo clips.  So for Christmas Fallon (who refers to himself as “the small boy”) got a Dell Vostro A90 netbook running Ubuntu Linux.  That’s the business version of a Dell Mini9 with a black case and Bluetooth installed.  Fallon would probably have preferred the more colorful Mini9 but he got the Vostro, instead, because I was able to buy a new one from Dell for $199 with free shipping.
Heck of a deal.

Alas the little Dell, with its perfect tiny keyboard for Fallon’s perfect tiny fingers, wouldn’t charge correctly.  The […]