Fortune Magazine is out with their America's Most Admired Companies 2007 report and you-know-who made it in the list at #7 overall. They were bested by: GE, Starbucks, Toyota, Berkshire Hathaway, Southwest, and FedEx and managed to squeek by Google for the top tech/computer spot in the overall competition. Amusingly, they still finished (just barely) behind IBM in the most admired computer category and substantially above Xerox and Canon. Interesting to note that Canon, Xerox, and IBM don't make personal computers for sale in the US.

Check out the lunar eclipse picture by Ed Parsons (former CTO of Ordnance Survey) shot in England. Similar shots available all over the net (thanks to digital cameras), but here are a few others I found:

• Austin, TX via Weather Underground
• Enid, OK via Weather Underground
• Minneapolis, MN via Weather Underground
• San Francisco, CA via Weather Underground

Those of us who have had to either give or receive customer support, here's a posting by Manton Reece (author of a Mac software package called "Wii Transfer") about how to provide good support (and at least one example of how not to). None of this is rocket science, but I think we all need to be reminded from time to time the frustration and aloneness felt by users with a problem and what we can all do to make that better. In this world where far too much communication is done in a dark room with a phone or computer instead of meeting people face to face, making connections with those you support is paramount. Check out his other posts about Mac software development in general.

The US patent system is under fire again this week (this time by an article in Wired) for putting the rights of patent holders above the research and security implications thereof. In this particular case, the issue is HID Global (ironically self-tagged as "The Trusted Brand") going after a security researcher who has come up with a way to clone RFID proximity cards. This follows on the heels (actually, it precedes in time by 4 days) an NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday program about gene patents and the effect that they have on research into disease.

Not surprising, and not necessarily for a "good" reason, the US Department of Transportation and the FAA have issued "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrade to Microsoft's Vista OS , Internet Explorer version 7, and Microsoft Office 2007, according to an article from Information Week.

After all the complaining about the power used by the nation's computers, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a study(admittedly commissioned by a computer chip manufacturer, AMD) indicates that the use is close to 1.2%. Not small, but nowhere near the 13% touted by some sources. It is true that computers are using more power per square foot than originally expected in many data centers, but apparently it's not the leading cause of global warming that it's been made out to be by some.

Based on this press release from United Airlines, the company will be requiring that you fly on their airline (or a partner airline, but use your United FFN) every 18 months to keep your account active, instead of the 36 months it was prior to the release. There are other ways to keep your account active, such as signing up for a credit card from United, giving away miles, or using miles, but it's something to keep in mind.

For a much more thorough description of the intricacies, check out this post on CNet about the issue.

As some have pointed out in private correspondence, there is, in fact, no requirement that this be done exactly the way Apple is doing it. However, it is a requirement that the revenue recognition be defensible. As such, the other choices they could have made were not very appealing, such as deferring revenue.

It appears that Sarbanes-Oxley is having some more unintended side-effects. This time, you'll be paying $5 for 802.11n to be enabled on your Core 2 iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, because this was not a stated feature of the system before it shipped and therefore would need to be accounted for. That's right, adding features via software appears to be something else that Sarbanes-Oxley is here to deny you the ability to do.

Everyone's favorite computer company (pardon me, after the removal of the word "Computer" from Apple Computer Corp's name, it should read "everyone's favorite company") has announced their FY1Q numbers (4th quarter 2006 calendar year) and they're huge. $1B in profit, $7.1B in revenues, 21M iPods sold, and 1.6M Macintoshes.