Ah, Comcast. No company (not even Sprint) is a better poster child for poor customer service. Ask readers for their experiences with the Philadelphia-based cable giant, and they’ll unload tales of technicians incapable of solving problems, clueless call-center representatives who tell you a different story every time you call and a billing system so ridiculous that Comcast charges customers a $2 “convenience fee” to disconnect service it isn’t even providing properly in the first place. (Chutzpah, thy name is Comcast.)

As I discuss in a Mercury News column today, Comcast’s service problems are deep-seated, from low expectations set for technicians to a fundamental failure to hold anyone accountable for solving a customer’s problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rambus won a huge victory Wednesday when a San Jose jury found that the company did nothing wrong when it patented key memory technologies that an industry group was incorporating into the standards for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Since those chips and their successors are in virtually every personal computer and many other electronic devices, Rambus would reap billions of dollars in royalties if it can enforce those patents.

But that’s a very big if.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oops, they did it again: someone who was supposed to guard sensitive personal records messed up and let them get stolen.

This time, the victims were 51,000 current and former employees of Agilent Technologies, whose Social Security numbers and home addresses were on a laptop stolen from an Agilent contractor. A reader tipped me off to the story this evening, and I wrote the basic facts here.

The Agilent episode is just the latest in a long string of similar cases involving companies like Gap and Verisign and government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. Although there’s no evidence that the thieves in this cases used the personal data to commit identity theft on a massive scale, the potential is there.

Read the rest of this entry »

I got a lot of responses, both on the blog and via e-mail, to my Wednesday post asking Comcast customers to share their service (or disservice) experiences. Thanks so much for your responses. (I may contact some of you to see if you want to be interviewed for my column.) 

Comcast’s customer-service czar, Rick Germano, told me this morning that he personally was checking out what you had to say on this blog. And one of his associates just posted a comment on my Wednesday post. 

Germano offered a tip for anyone having persistent problems who wants to get some action — email his office using this special link.

He promises a quick response — let me know if he doesn’t deliver.

And watch this space for more on Comcast next week.

Facebook is finally starting to feel like something grown-ups can use.

In my Sunday column, posted online today, I argue that the company’s new privacy controls finally give users enough control over their information to manage a diverse group of business and personal contacts. The new system is still kinda clunky, and I still want the ability to control access to each individual piece of content, not just entire categories of it.

But it’s progress, and it has the potential to move Facebook well beyond its roots as a plaything for college students.

It’s also great to see Facebook being more proactive about privacy, especially after the Beacon and News Feed fiascos.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Followup post on how to fast-track your Comcast complaint.)

I’m going to be interviewing Rick Germano, Comcast’s new head of customer service, on Friday morning as part of a larger piece I’m doing on the company.

I’d love to hear your tales of Comcast service — good and bad — as well as any feedback that you’d like me to pass on to Rick.

I’m especially interested in your experiences with the super-fast 16 Mbps Blast Internet service that Comcast recently launched in the Bay Area. How was the ordering/installation experience? Is your Web experience notably faster? Do you think it’s worth the money?

Post your comments here or email me at vgoel@mercurynews.com. (Be aware that Comcast employees do sometimes read this blog, so anything you DON’T want them to see should be sent by email. On the flip side, if you’re having trouble with the company and post your complaint here, you might get some more attention.)

After almost nine years at the Mercury News, I’m leaving to join the New York Times as a deputy technology editor. I will be helping the Times expand its coverage of technology, particularly on the Web.

I’ve had a great run at the Merc, first as an editor, and then as an editorial writer, blogger and columnist. I’ve worked with tremendously talented, dedicated people. I’ve learned something new about the world every single day. And I’ve had a lot of fun working on stories great and small.

But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to go play on the news industry’s equivalent of Broadway. If the Merc is the newspaper of Silicon Valley, the Times is the newspaper of the United States. And as the Web increasingly becomes the future of the news business, the Times is striving to establish itself as the most trusted, most thorough, most important source of general news for readers around the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

I want to like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In  January, I even wrote a piece saying I trusted him more than I trusted President Bush and the Democratic Congress to keep us out of a real recession.

But since then, it seems like he’s gone from slow-to-react to panicky overdrive. In a front-page column in Wednesday’s Mercury News, I argue that the Fed runs a real risk of hurting taxpayers and damaging the economy with its recent series of actions: the $30 billion bailout of Bear Stearns, the government’s offer to swap solid Treasury bonds for shaky mortgage bonds and Tuesday’s three-quarter-point cut in interest rates.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who woulda thunk: light sweet crude oil can be made entirely from algae.

Right now, the biocrude is just a proof of concept from the folks at Solazyme in South San Francisco, but Harrison Dillon and Jonathan Wolfson (left and right, respectively, in the photo) are serious about turning algae into biodiesel, jet fuel, food oils and high-end cosmetic oils.

As I discuss in my Sunday column, posted online today, Solazyme is just one of dozens of startups that are chasing the dream of “growing” liquid fuels inside the tiny one-celled plants.

The payoff could be huge: if successful, algal fuels could reduce our dependence on petroleum and help cut the carbon emissions that cause global warming. But as I lay out in the column, the challenges are daunting: Read the rest of this entry »

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the richest guy of all?

Not Bill Gates. He doesn’t even come in second anymore.

After 13 years as the world’s wealthiest person, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, a symbol of the New Economy, has lost the title to a guy who famously said he didn’t understand technology: Warren Buffett, who heads insurance giant Berkshire Hathaway.

Read the rest of this entry »