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GrandCentral Outage

Today was apparently a bad one for GrandCentral customers as many report the service was out for hours. As mentioned by TechCrunch, if you want to be phone company you can't go dead.

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Why Mac Users Pay More for OS X

There is no question Microsoft could charge more for its OS if it worked as well as products from Apple. This is the feeling of ZDnet's Robin Harris and it is difficult to agree with the many lucid points made in his article.

Still, it should be noted Microsoft now has to deal with many products which they don't necessarily control. Apple has kept a much tighter reign on the products you could get working with a Mac.

For example, Apple makes the computers that work with their OS while Microsoft does not. When you consider all the manufacturers and various types of hardware challenges, BIOS revisions, etc you see Microsoft has become a victim of its own success.

Of course all of this is known and has been happening for years.

The reason things have changed as of late is that Apple is actually the market-share leader at something again which makes people more comfortable switching over to the Cupertino-based company's products and services.

In addition, the cool factor of Apple and the look of the company's product has only improved over the years.

No company seems to be able to match Apple in design except perhaps Bang and Olufsen.

Oh yeah... Why specifically do Mac users pay twice as much for OS X according to Harris? Because people are willing to pay more for products that work correctly with little penalty for being an early adopter.

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The Economy Will Improve Your Next Flight

It seems at least one person has been thinking of all the ways a slower economy will contribute to better air travel for the rest of us. In fact this Slate.com article describes in detail what the pros are of an economy where there are less mergers, more airline bankruptcies and less of a need for executives to take up runway room with their private jets.

I have noticed my last few flights have had a few extra seats on them and the security lines have gotten shorter as well.

Few people want a slower economy of course but seems many clouds do indeed have silver linings.

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NY to Tax Amazon Purchases

There is just something so mind-boggling about our nation's tax collection system. I was reading this MSNBC article about how New York State is looking to and likely will tax Amazon.com purchases and it goes on about how New Yorkers are supposed to be paying sales tax on these purchases already.

In fact most states require you to pay sales tax on your out-of-state purchases today.

Obviously most people do not do this and the article further describes just how confusing it would be to figure out what you owe.

In case you aren't aware, currently if a company does not have operations in your state, they generally do not charge you sales tax. It is interesting to note that if a company exhibits at a trade show in a state, the state feels the company should subsequently pay sales tax there.

In one instance, my company TMC actually had an idea to get a major internet retailer involved in a  really interesting promotional idea that our ITEXPO attendees would have really benefited from. Guess what... The e-commerce company backed out because if they did anything at a trade show in Los Angeles... California would have pressured them to pay sales tax.

But I digress. We can thank Eliott Spitzer for passing a  bill that will require Amazon.com to collect sales tax on shipments sent to the Empire State.

On the one hand it is extremely fair to have all retailers pay state sales tax as currently shopping online hurts local merchants who do have to collect this tax.

The flipside to this argument of course is that the federal government has passed laws against taxing the internet and this New York State Law is probably in conflict with the federal law.

There is a lot more to this issue and our entire tax code has always fascinated me as it is so complex that it requires armies of lawyers and accountants to keep track of it all. One wonders if it wouldn't be better to just have all the states work together with the federal government to simplify the mess of a tax code we currently deal with.

[Internet News]

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TiVo On the Offensive

It seems TiVo is on a roll as Dish Network has failed to to convince an appeals court to overturn a previous patent win. Dish Network could end up paying from about $100 to $200 million as a result of this lawsuit.

Expect TiVo to go after service providers and also expect Dish Network to try to convince courts that they have upgraded their DVR systems in a way that no longer infringes TiVo's patents.

[Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection]

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