20. Wowed by IE 9 for Windows, and to tick off shared rival Google, Apple abandons Safari in exchange for promised browser development by Microsoft.

19. Apple products deemed security risk to carry on planes by TSA, must be placed with checked baggage for all flights.

18. Apple abandons USB and 802.11 and forges their own standards body, reporting to themselves.

17. Apple actually acquires Facebook for $40 billion. Mark Zuckerberg said to ascend to CEO position by 2012.

16. John Gruber of Daring Fireball is to be added to the company's board of directors.

15. MobileMe to be replaced by a new messaging system built on Apple's social network, Ping, accessible only through iTunes.

14. Riding a wave of over-confidence, thanks to the recent string of successes, Steve Jobs reintroduces the G4 Cube, the Dalmatian and Tutti Frutti iMacs, and yes, the hockey puck mouse.

13. During a company board meeting, Al Gore asserts that he did, indeed, invent the Internet. The other board members, swayed by his amazing charisma, agree Apple will backpay Gore royalties for each machine, dating back to the early 1990s, which had Web connectivity.

12. International trade strife between China and the United States flares up, and Apple's subcontractors discontinue making new iPhones, Macs, iPads, and more. Suicides actually increase.

11. After so many MacBook Air owners realize their hinges break shortly after their warranty expires, a class-action suit bankrupts the company.

10. HP bundles next generation Palm devices with every desktop, laptop and server sold. Palm becomes new mobile standard.

9. Windows Phone 7 is Really Really Really Good. No wait, Really.

8. Apple retail store insulation found to contain asbestos. Even worse, Steve Jobs demanded it be included.

7. Adobe copyrights the word Flash and extends the word to contain all Flash drives. A settlement mandates all flash drives come preinstalled with Flash.

6. With the introduction of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, Outlook becomes the standard Mac client and Apple Mail is retired.

5. Entertainment industry colludes to deny Apple access to music and films on iTunes store. Only Disney/Pixar and indy offerings left.

4. Tim Cook leaves Apple to take the CEO position at Dell.

3. SCO rolls back to life, and somehow obtains an injunction against Apple's Mac OS X, due to its UNIX underpinnings, stopping all Mac sales.

2. AT&T announces contract to extend iPhone network exclusivity through the end of the decade.

1. News breaks that Steve Jobs actually perished during liver surgery in Tennessee in 2009. What you have seen in the last year-plus has been a zombie.

Wednesday night, as the Giants and Rangers were battling in game one of the World Series, BlogTalkRadio's Joe Hackman and I sat down to see if we could cancel out the jocks and reaffirm our position as geeks, participating in a podcast to discuss how bloggers can gain visibility through access and insight. We discussed my personal decisions to join my6sense as VP of Marketing, my conversion process from iPhone to Android, and how I try to juggle having three kids under 2 1/2 with all the other tasks that compete with my time.

Among the key discussion points, which might be fun for you to check out:

1) Defending one's turf, rather than being pragmatic & investigating alternatives.
2) Google's innovative moves versus struggles they have had in other areas.
3) A next generation of bloggers in their teens you should start watching now.
4) Microsoft's challenges in mobile a parallel for search.
5) The history of louisgray.com.

For those of you who have read louisgray.com for some time, or heard some of my previous podcasts, some stories may be familiar to you, but there's always something new.

Joe posted the discussion on his site here, and I have embedded it below. You can find Joe on Twitter at @hackmanj.

Listen to internet radio with Joe Hackman on Blog Talk Radio

Just as Mint.com greatly simplified people's ability to get their entire financial picture in one page, complete with trends, potential savings, and the option to see how they measured up to people across the country, Credit Karma brings the same level of transparency to one of the more opaque statistics out there - the personal credit score. And, unlike other gimmicky "free credit report" businesses out there, this one has its Karma in the good column, for it truly is free.

One's credit score can impact a person's ability to make purchases with debt, or to achieve a desired interest rate. But the factors that can impact one's score are often seen as something of a black box. Consumers know that it is good to not have late payments, and that having some amount of open credit lines available is better than none, but how one goes up and down the credit score scale can be mysterious.


This confusion has given rise to multiple "credit report" businesses like FreeCreditReport.com and FreeScore.com. Even the FTC has a dedicated site to the practice, discussing annual credit reports. (See their dedicated site or the official annualcreditreport.com for more) Most of the time, users find they may get an initial score free, and start receiving bills in later months, which can often be hard to cancel. I dealt with this myself, and was pleased to see Credit Karma skip that annoyance.

When you sign up for Credit Karma, it is important they determine it's really you. Answer a few questions about your housing history, who may own your mortgage, or your car payment, and enter your social security number (just once), and they will hit up TransUnion for your score. But the fun doesn't end when you get your three-digit number.



The number (mine came in at 767) is just the beginning, not the end result. Credit Karma lets you know how your score places you against your peers by age, by e-mail account domain, or how that compares to the national average. Much has been made about the fact that Yahoo.com e-mail holders have the lowest credit scores on average, so if you want to look great against your supposed peers, then use one of those free e-mail accounts. Could be fun.

Beyond the sizing up, Credit Karma shows you how you got your score. I scored very well on percent of on-time payments with 100%. It's how I was raised, I guess. But I got D's on the age of open credit lines (thanks to the recent purchases of a home and minivan, no doubt) and total number of accounts. Turns out if I had twice the number of open accounts, I would have scored better. Go figure. I also got a C for my 4 "Hard Credit Inquiries".


As with many things financial, you can have a disconnect between what you feel is good practice and what others say is actually great use of your credit. Keeping a small number of credit cards and paying off each month sounds great, but a full third of Credit Karma users have more than 20 credit accounts on file (open or closed). 60 percent of users have an average age of credit lines of less than 4 years, with only 10 percent having more than 8 years.

Also like Mint.com, Credit Karma lays on potential savings thick. I have offers to reduce my credit card costs, my mortgage costs, auto loan costs or even bank costs. I haven't yet looked into any of them, and to be honest, probably won't, as these accounts are pretty new with the recent move and upgrades, so I'm a little fatigued by playing financial Tetris. But I am glad Credit Karma is out there to keep tabs for these options on my behalf.

The site is free and open for business at http://www.creditkarma.com.

On Tuesday morning, an anonymous tipster e-mailed a number of top tech bloggers about potential talks between Apple and the fast-rising digital music challenger, Spotify. One tech reporter I talked to said the e-mail he received was routed and rerouted to be fully anonymized, and even went so far as to mention Apple's ticker symbol ($AAPL), complete with $ signs often associated with stock tickers.

Whatever the idea the tipster had in his or her head, after a mid-day rumor popped, it was dashed by afternoon, with the company releasing a rare outright denial.

Coincidentally, I assure you, around this same time, I was meeting in person with Shakil Khan, head of special projects of Spotify. We met as friends, and spoke candidly. I did not take notes, and promised not to write about much of what we discussed. I will keep that promise.

But given today's near-news and much of the uncertainty that has been bandied about regarding Spotify's future, when it may officially hit the United States market, and whether it can be a viable company, providing a service people will pay for, I am more confident than ever that they have a significant and disruptive offering, thanks partly to the discussion. I feel assured that making a bet with Spotify for my music future is a good one - which may find some interesting competition with Apple's promised iTunes in the cloud and whatever becomes of Google Music, but that the company is preparing not for a short-term sale, but a long-term evolution of the way we discover and consume music.

Spotify has both free and premium offerings. The premium offerings are attractive. When the time comes that I can pay for an account here in the US, rest assured I will. If forced to choose between Sirius XM or Spotify for my roughly $10 to $12 a month, I would get Spotify those dollars. And for those who choose the free option, advertising will still be pushing revenue into the service.

Apple seems to be reacting to Spotify in an intriguing way, one which I have not seen them react to any other player on the music front before. As someone who has largely switched away from iTunes and to Spotify, I can see why. When I heard of the tipster's rumors, that Apple was looking to buy Spotify, it didn't sound right to me, and it didn't sound like anything the company has told me. So without violating any of my promises to Shak to keep numbers and dates out of the discussion, I am glad the rumor was spiked. False tips can distract from what is a fantastic music experience which can't officially arrive here on these shores too soon.