…Nokia would have kicked Apple’s ass long ago.

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Do you have a Nokia story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

It’s all about profit, and I understand where the silence is coming from, but they are missing the long-term picture. [Chinese leaders’] end game is to extract as much technology out of American companies as they can, transfer that to their own companies and, when they feel those companies have reached a level of technical maturity, show the American companies the door.

—Dan Slane, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,speaking to Bloomberg about Google’s plan to offer uncensored search data in China and why the information giant stands alone.

Do you have story about China or Google that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

• Apple and Microsoft beware: Google will be an unstoppable force in mobility
• iPhone cannot win the smartphone wars
• iPhone’s global business is more marketing myth than reality

I’m a big fan of iPhone as a platform concept, but it’s going nowhere as a closed system—not unless that much-rumored Apple tablet is mass-market groundbreaking. Android is cued as the operating system that everybody else will license to compete with iPhone, just like PC manufacturers did with Windows in the 1980s and 1990s.

The problem with analysts like Munster: They don’t think globally. Their perspective is ethnocentric United States—or at best North America. Globally, mobile priorities in many emerging markets are more basic than 110,000 mobile applications. The iPhone may have revolutionized the market for smartphones, but it’s a boutique brand. Android will rule the day.

But what is Munster going to say? The disclosure information released by SAI makes clear that Piper Jaffray will “buy and sell the securities of these companies on a principal basis,” with Apple first on the alphabetical list. Can you say, “Conflict of interest?” Analysts investing in companies that write, or talk, about going oddly—and that’s badly—together.

Do you have an iPhone story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

There’s a collective scorn for the way that NBC has so openly pooped on its audience like Triumph the Insult Dog: replacing its 10 p.m. lineup with five nights of cheap, clunky Jay Leno shows because they’re easier than, I don’t know, creating something new that doesn’t suck? Well, fuck you, too. There’s nothing like swaggering around in your ‘too big to fail’ pants to summon the gods of ironic punishment, now, is there, Jeff Zucker? So excuse us if we’re Googling the German word for that derisive pleasure gained by watching a network’s lazy contempt for the American public fail spectacularly.

Conan is funny and Leno is, well, “What?”

Do you have a Conan O`Brien story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Here’s the basic story: Last year, Conan O’Brien replaced Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show as planned. But then NBC gave Leno his own show at 10 p.m., preempting Conan by 95 minutes, five nights a week. NBC figured Leno could carry the timeslot, saving boatloads of money otherwise spent on producing dramatic programming. Whoops, Leno couldn’t deliver the ratings, and NBC affiliates complained they were losing local news viewers at 11 p.m. The solution isn’t rocket science: Can Leno.

But n-o-o-o-o-o. Over the weekend NBC announced that in February Leno would return to the 11:35 p.m. timeslot, pushing Conan to 12:05 a.m. If Leno was no good at 10 p.m., why give him back 11:35 p.m.? Conan is w-a-a-a-y funnier, and the Tonight Show is so much more entertaining with him as host.

Day before NBC’s official announcement, when rumors were thicker than Leno’s chin, Wall Street Journal reported that “Conan O’Brien and his advisers were mulling career options Friday, including jumping to a rival television network” and that “one suitor is News Corp.’s Fox network.” Hell, yes, what a brilliant counter-programming response.

Fox affiliates run local news at 10 p.m. Conan’s Fox show could run at 11 p.m., competing with NBC affiliate’s local news casts and preempting Leno by 35 minutes. The downsides:

• Some people would switch channels from Conan to Leno
• Many Fox affiliates fill late night with lucrative reruns of shows like “Seinfeld”

Conan would be yet another reason to love Fox, which airs most of the TV programming I watch.

Do you have a Conan O`Brien story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Evidently, AT&T thought it best not to mention the iconic super-smartphone too much lest its executives be driven offstage by a mob of iPhone users complaining of dropped calls, lousy service, delayed text and voice messages and testudine download speeds.

—John Paczkowski on AT&T’s Consumer Electronics Show event earlier today.

Do you have a mobile phone story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

On Black Friday weekend, I totaled my family’s 1992 Toyota Corolla, and our only motor powered vehicle. I was driving my 15 year-old daughter back from the Y in the pouring rain—the first in San Diego in about five months. I entered highway 163 from Friar’s Road and had just started to accelerate from the ramp when I saw brake lights about four car lengths ahead. A Nissan Sentra slowed (and then stopped) well ahead of bumper-to-bumper traffic about a quarter-mile ahead. I applied the brakes, which grabbed at first. Then the car slid like moving across black ice. This wasn’t hydroplaning but sliding (apparently from oil and other fluids brought to the road surface by the rain).

My mistake: Given the distance to the other car and my modest speed, I expected the Corolla would stop. I turned to the right too late and the driver’s side front bumper impacted the other vehicle’s passenger rear bumper. The Sentra sustained little damage, while the Corolla had a bent hood, demolished bumper (pushed into the wheel so I couldn’t drive) and crumpled side panel that rubbed the tire and driver’s door. The engine continued to run smoothly, but the body had sustained damage the insurance company would later determine not worth repairing. The insurer wrote off the car as a loss and issued a generous check for the value.

The accident brought new focus to my life—not for fear of dying, because there was never any risk of that—but from desperate need. California is car culture (dog culture, too, but that’s a different post), and we needed wheels. I started looking for a used vehicle, planning to use the insurance payout and what other money I could put together. But thanks to the generosity of my father-in-law, the family bought a new car—a Toyota Yaris.

Following the accident, I also ramped up my blogging for Betanews, making commitment to write three stories a day during December. For months, my writing had been stop and go for Betanews, because:

• I searched for a full-time job
• If no job, I would rather work for myself
• My early posts didn’t click with the Betanews audience

I kept to the 3-stories-a-day pace for about half the month, experimenting with different lengths and styles along the way. As Christmas approached, I started writing more provocative commentaries that generated lots of comments and increasing number of pageviews. I gave up focusing on the existing Betanews audience and made writing original content the priority. Original content will be my priority at Oddly Together, where blogging restarts stutteringly. My main tech blogging will continue at Betanews.

The car accident and Betanews blogging commitment helped to get me out of a funk. December 30 marked eight months of unemployment. Since I chose to work full time, in January 1990, I was continuously employed—well, at least until the April 30 layoff. I was always the survivor before—the valued employee not laid off. I’ve never been prone to depression, but my mood soured as the months passed. Now I’ve got focus again, and my analysis writing is returning to form.

But the commitment of time necessary to Betanews meant stopping blogging here, which is why I have yet to post the Microsoft lay-off stories (They were planned for same weekend as the accident). They are coming. Very soon. Microsoft’s fiscal 2010 third quarter earnings announcement is coming, and that will be good context for the lay-off stories, which together tell another story that will be a news analysis at Betanews.

Oddly Together will slowly take shape over several months. The focus will eventually be telling stories and producing original content about things that, well, go oddly together. I have retired joewilcox.com for the time being. The posts once there are here, and I have edited the htaccess file to send traffic to Oddly Together. Provocative tech writing will continue at Betanews.

Do you have a personal disaster story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

The story of my good friend Andy begins on a sunny Southern California afternoon. Andy is a small business guy who runs bookstores and Halloween costume shops in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas. He’s a boisterous, happy fellow who walks around with a bluetooth earpiece that might as well be surgically attached to his head. Andy’s a talker. Constantly. If it’s not someone present, it’s to someone on the phone.

Andy got his first iPhone in summer 2008, at my recommendation. He upgraded to iPhone 3GS a few months ago. For Andy, iPhone is more than just talk. He uses it for email, texting and running applications that support his business, including built-in photo and video capabilities and others downloaded from Apple’s App Store. “My iPhone is my life,” I’ve heard him say.

Perhaps he is too free with his life. Andy received a phone call while sitting in the car dealer showroom. He had an appointment elsewhere and got up to leave. All the while, Andy chattered away into the Bluetooth headset. It was only after he got in his SUV that Andy realized, “Oh my gosh, I left my iPhone inside!” So, still talking to someone via Bluetooth, Andy mosied back to the dealership for his iPhone. It was gone.

Andy interrupted the caller to ask if anyone had seen his iPhone. Surely it was nearby, because he still had a connection to the caller. No one seemed to know where the phone could be. Andy again felt reassured because he still had an active connection, so the phone had to be close by. Somewhere. Andy’s good nature worked against him. Yes, the phone probably was nearby—in somebody’s desk drawer, pocket, briefcase or purse. I would have disconnected the caller, picked up a land line and called the phone to hear it ring. But Andy didn’t think to do this right away. Later, when it was too late to make that important call, he realized that someone stole the phone.

CLIQ is Snipped
My daughter’s story is different, but worth switching to now so as to tie together lessons from both tales later. On November 2nd, launch day, my daughter got a brand, new Motorola CLIQ from T-Mobile. A few weeks earlier I moved the whole family from AT&T to T-Mobile. That’s right, no more iPhones for us. The number of dropped calls and failed connections had finally led me to abandon AT&T, after six years a customer. I’ll blog switch experience later, but for now will say T-Mobile hasn’t dropped one call yet.

The switch meant buying new phones, because our Nokia handsets used AT&T 3G frequencies. I sold three Nokias: two N95s and N97 to pay for new phones. My daughter asked that I hold onto the Nokia E71.

The CLIQ features a social media interface that Motorola calls MOTOBLUR, which keeps a pretty much persistent connection to services like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. MOTOBLUR updates status messages, user photos and other information. While my daughter fancied MOTOBLUR, CLIQ’s keyboard mattered more for her in the first few days using the smartphone.

She had taken the E71 or CLIQ to the local high school for more than two months without problems. Perhaps that’s why she let down her guard and put her belongings into an unlocked locker during physical education class yesterday. When my daughter checked the phone after class, but it was gone from the case. At first, “I thought it was loose in my bag,” she said. Sometimes when rushed between classes, my daughter tosses the phone in her tote bag, rather than put it in the case.

The phone was gone. Stolen. But nothing else. Either the thief was novice and afraid or experienced and crafty. By leaving the phone case—and lunch money—the thief increased the likelihood the CLIQ wouldn’t be noticed missing until after school hours. But my daughter most certainly noticed and called me on a school phone around Noon PT.

Find and Wipe
Here’s where the two stories intersect. Both smartphones contained personal information, including IDs and active passwords for accessing various online accounts. Neither my friend nor my daughter realized the risk. But I sure did. Both phones come with location and remote data wiping services, which could greatly diminish the risk. But there were complications.

The iPhone data wiping and location service (“Find My iPhone“) requires a MobileMe account, which costs an extra $99 a year. Andy hadn’t signed up for MobileMe. I believe, but I am not certain, that Find My iPhone is enabled via Web service. If so, Andy could have signed up for MobileMe and activated the feature anyway, since the stolen iPhone synced to the cloud via push services. By the time he and I spoke about the theft, he had already purchased a new iPhone 3GS and activated a new AT&T SIM card. Not until we talked did Andy understand that he should change all account passwords.

My daughter’s data situation is more complicated. CLIQ comes with GPS location and data wipe services for free. But I needed access to my daughter’s MOTOBLUR account, which was created during initial phone setup. MOTOBLUR can be managed from a Web browser. Problem: I didn’t have her username or password. So I called the school and pulled her out of class for the information. But information was deficient. MOTOBLUR login failed, and there was no record of the email address she gave me for the account. So I called T-Mobile, which temporarily disabled the SIM card.

Hours later I called back T-Mobile customer service, which connected me to Android support. The tech support rep was extremely helpful. He eventually located my daughter’s account. Turns out she made a mistake during account setup and created a non-existent email address. Using an admin password, he accessed the MOTOBLUR account and also reactivated the SIM card. I wanted to locate the stolen phone.

But that turned out to be impossible. During initial CLIQ setup two weeks ago, my daughter was asked to activate GPS services. I said no because we both had concerns about battery life. As such, with GPS services disabled, the phone couldn’t be located. But the CLIQ could be remote wiped, which is what the Android tech did before disabling the SIM once more. Later, I obtained a new SIM from my local T-Mobile store.

But the story doesn’t end there. Android phones like the CLIQ are designed to solely sync to the cloud, even though photos and pics can be pulled from the device when connected to a PC. By comparison, iPhone can sync to both cloud and desktop. Andy easily synced the new iPhone 3GS to his PC, restoring photos, videos and other data.

When my daughter gets a new CLIQ (the phone was insured but with deductible), she will be able to sync accounts and contacts from the cloud. However, she has lost photos and videos taken on Friday for an English class homework assignment. Near as I can tell from MOTOBLUR information site, only contacts, social network accounts, messages and email are backed up to the cloud. Well, this might be the best “the dog ate my homework” story my daughter’s English teacher will ever hear.

Smarter Than the Smartphone
It’s commendable that Apple and Motorola/T-Mobile offer mechanisms by which consumers can find or wipe their smartphones. These kinds of capabilities shouldn’t be just for businesses. But should consumers have to pay Apple $99 to get such features? I don’t think so. Location finding and data wiping services should be standard for all smartphones. There is simply too much risk to individuals’ identities.

According to Gartner, manufacturers sold 41 million smartphones during third quarter, for a 12.8 percent year-over-year increase. Smartphones accounted for about 13 percent of worldwide handset sales. Nokia (39.3 percent), Research in Motion (20.8 percent) and Apple (17.1 percent) are the smartphone marketshare leaders.

During fourth quarter, smartphone sales could dramatically surge, given the number of new and interesting models, including the Motorola DROID and HTC DROID ERIS, among others. More people will be buying these smarter phones , but their user attitudes will carry forward from dumber handsets. Many new smartphone users won’t understand the data risks coming with convenience.

The risk and convenience intertwine with the cloud, where services are consumed and personal data and account information sync. In the case of CLIQ, MOTOBLUR consolidates access to multiple social networking accounts. The benefit carries great risk in the event the device is lost or stolen. Motorola’s failsafe mechanisms greatly mitigate the risk.

HTC uses “You” as part of its smartphone marketing campaign. It aptly describes exactly what’s going on with these device. You are the phone. Your life is in your backpack, briefcase, pocket or purse. If you lose the phone, do you lose your life? The answer may depend on whether you or someone else has access to your accounts and data.

Do you have a mobile phone story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

What’s missing, unless I missed it in the reform proposal, is so glaringly obvious it’s hard to understand how the Obama Administration could let it slip by:  Accountability, and rewards for it. My bad, I’m not following politics enough since leaving Washington two years ago, so this opinion is way too late. I should have followed healthcare reform much sooner, certainly before the House vote came so close.

I’m looking at accountability as reward, and absolutely not a penalty. Example: My auto insurer provides a discount for good driving record; it’s not positioned as penalty for when there are tickets or accidents. The discount is a reward. Similarly, shouldn’t people be rewarded with lower health insurance premiums for healthy behavior?

People who don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes (that’s me) should pay lower premiums. People with body weight appropriate to their height (that’s, ah, not me) should pay less, too. Companies offering employees onsite weight rooms, physical trainters or gym memberships should receive discounts, and employees going to the gym should receive yet additionally lower premium payments (That’s double discount for good behavior). Healthcare, whether as political policy or business enterprise, should make encouraging healthiness the top priority.

That said, people shouldn’t be penalized for bad health or their genes. Penalization is fundamentally what’s wrong with US health care today. People are punished for being sick. Some people can’t help being fat or getting cancer. It’s genetic. They shouldn’t be denied coverage or charged extra for it. But a hefty person regularly going to the gym should receive a discount like someone much thinner.

I’m politically agnostic. I don’t believe in either the Democratic or Republican agendas. That as preface, I’m stunned by Republican resistance to healthcare reform. Doesn’t accountability nicely fit with Republican politics and longstanding socioeconomic goals? Why aren’t the Republicans out in front with a bill that encourages Americans to be healthier? The cost savings for having more healthy people are seemingly immeasurable, as they go much further than actual healthcare costs, such as improved worker productivity as one small example.

Conflicting agendas surrounding healthcare reform, whether they be government or industry, go oddly together. Good healthcare should be a right, not privilege, whether government or industry delivers it.

After starting to write this post, I Googled “health care reform, personal accountability.” There is plenty of commentary asking about accountability, too. Some examples:

• “Health reform idea: Put down the Doughnut“—MSNBC (about penalty accountability)
• “New Survey Measures Consumer Perceptions of Personal Accountability in Healthcare“—Reuters (from May 2009; Americans divided)
• “Personal Accountability“—The Washington Post (about encouraging wellness)
• “Personal accountability key to lower costs“—San Diego North County Times (demanding accountability not taxation)
• “Health reform must begin with personal accountability“—National Center for Policy Analysis (from 2005!!!)

My feelings are otherwise mixed about the current healthcare proposal(s) sleeking through Capitol Hill. My biggest concern: President Obama has expended political capital on healthcare reform he really needed for economic reform. With US unemployment now above 10 percent nationwide, the number of newly uninsured individuals and families increases daily. Wouldn’t a more prudent healthcare policy seek to keep people insured in jobs where employers provide coverage? But that’s topic for future post.

Do you have a healthcare story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Fast forward five years, people are what make the social Web work so well, and why my profession, journalism, is in state of chaos. Why read something filtered by a reporter/editor when the single, or even crowd, source is available? Interaction is more personal and direct.

Among my favorite follows is Carl Rytterfalk, who tells great stories using a camera. I tell stories with words. Others do better with photos or movies. Carl might not define himself as storyteller, but he is one through the people photographed.

Carl is from the town of Älvängen in Sweden. His breathtaking Flickr and informative YouTube galleries are stories in stills and motion. As he learns more about digital photographic and video technology Carl explains—teaches—it to others. His sharing is in the true spirit of the Internet, or my vision of it when I got online in 1994.

Today, Carl posted an 8:44-minute movie that he made using the Canon EOS 5D mark II digital SLR and Canon 24-70mm L lens. Maybe he should be a filmmaker, too. The intro is creative and fun and the entire video, while seemingly random, has real flavor. Pack my bags and move me to Sweden!

Here’s a surprise: For most photographic situations, Carl favors (so far) his Sigma digicams to Canon’s mega dSLR. He blogs: “But, as a still camera even in good light I don’t like the output as much. I can’t get ‘that’ from it—and I’m not impressed with the 21mp resolution.” Carl uses a Sigma SD14 dSLR and Sigma DP1 and DP2 compacts.

The three Sigma cameras use the same Foveon sensor, which captures colors in separate red, green and blue layers rather than side by side in disparate proportions. Foveon delivers exceptionally realistic color reproduction compared to sensors used in most other dSLRs.

Carl takes amazing photos—eh, tells intriguing stories—with his Sigma cameras. Will he adjust to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II or stay solely Sigma? That’s a story yet to be told.

Do you have a photography story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.