Can You Hear Us Now?

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Verizon has waved the white flag on cellular number portability and seems to be making the necessary changes to support it by November 24th. I think this is a big win for them. AT&T used to be the leader in the market by having the most comprehensive cellular coverage along with coast-to-coast service without roaming, but Verizon seems to have picked up while AT&T is flailing by trying to switch over to GSM and GPRS service. Personally, I’m very tired of dropped calls and poor quality AT&T service that the switch for me to something else is almost a given.

Many folks like me won’t change service providers because our cell phones are an important unit of stability (along with our e-mail addresses) and thus I’ve been stuck for several years now. The FCC ruling here will increase the competitive nature of the cellular service providers and really force them to offer great service. It’s about time.

More on this story is on CNet.

Spammers Creating the Viruses?

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CNet reports today that many of the e-mail viruses now infecting systems worldwide may have been created by spammers as a means for creating relays for sending spam. Since the anti-spam software has been pretty effective at stopping spam from specific servers, the next step for spammers is to try and get control of home user systems for sending out more spam. Using a virus to do that is a natural.

Let this be a fair warning to all of you to install anti-virus software. I can tell you from experience that this new Sobig virus is hammering my servers because of the dolts out there who don’t protect their systems.

Even More Shameless Self Promotion (Act V)

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Yes, the fifth Builder.COM article was finally published. It took months of discussion over the content, but I’m pretty pleased with the results. The article is called “Follow these tips to help sales boost revenue” and discusses how software development managers can help the corporate sales team be successful. It’s an important article because I’ve been in too many meetings where a deal was screwed up because someone failed to act appropriately. Sofware technologists like myself often do not receive sales training, yet are expected to perform when called into a sales situation. This article will hopefully begin to smooth those rough edges.

Enjoy and, as always, send me your feedback!