Today is my last day at the Mercury News.  My farewell column appeared in this morning’s paper.

As I mentioned earlier, I am leaving the Merc to join the New York Times as a deputy technology editor.

I’ve truly enjoyed the conversations we’ve had here for the past year or so, and I will miss them dearly. Whether you agreed with my views or not, whether you thought I was an idiot or a savant, the discussions always made this space more lively and more useful — and that, ultimately, is what blogging is all about.

Some of you have asked if I will continue blogging elsewhere. I’m not sure yet. I’m considering starting a personal blog about the adventures of a Californian transplanted to New York. And I will probably contribute to the Times’ blogs. If you want to see what I’m up to, check www.vindugoel.com to be linked to my latest projects.

Please stay in touch. I will be back in Silicon Valley regularly, and you can always reach me at vindugoel@gmail.com.

One final note: I hate to do this, but I am turning off the commenting feature on this blog. No more comments will be allowed on any post. I don’t want to stifle discussion, but with no one actively maintaining this blog, spammers would descend and lard up the comments section with their trash. That reduces the blog’s usefulness for anyone perusing it in the future.

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 »

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 »

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 »

In my Sunday column, which we’ve already posted online, I discuss President Bush’s controversial crusade to convince Congress to give him essentially unfettered power to snoop on Americans suspected of consorting with terrorists.

Like many civil libertarians, I’m upset that the Bush administration wants to eliminate the already minimal justification that the intelligence agencies must make to a secret court to  eavesdrop on Americans. (Under current law, the feds can start wiretapping anyone, but must quickly get permission from a secret court — a court that has almost never said no — to continue.)

And I’m also angry that he wants to give telecom companies immunity against lawsuits for cooperating with illegal wiretap requests in the past and future. AT&T, the worst offender, gave the National Security Agency access to the email of millions of Americans without any legal justification. You bet the company should be sued (and has been). Since when are companies supposed to turn over private information just because some government official wants it? Heck, Congress ripped into Yahoo for giving the Chinese government e-mail information about dissidents there, so why do they want to condone such police tactics in the U.S.? 

To me, this is just an extension of Bush’s systematic trampling of civil rights in the name of fighting terrorism. We’ve got the Patriot Act (which the bright-as-a-bullet Bush confused with his new proposal, the “Protect America Act,” during his news conference Thursday). We have the establishment of indefinite detention without charges and military-only trials for aliens held at Guantanamo. And of course, there’s the waterboarding, extraordinary rendition and Abu Ghraib nastiness.

Sadly, Congress, despite all its posturing and pontificating, has gone along with all of it. That just hands victory to the terrorists: fear of them is making us abandon core American values.

In a place like the Bay Area, where people work hard and think they can do anything, it’s not surprising that a lot of people believe they could make an awesome bottle of wine if they only had the chance.

San Francisco-based Crushpad makes a smart powerful appeal to that instinct — especially to the crowd that isn’t rich enough to buy a vineyard in Napa or the Santa Cruz Mountains.

In my Wednesday column, I take a look at Crushpad’s business model and talk about my own experiences making a Rhone-style red there with the Basic Juice Crew, a group of wine-loving strangers brought together by Salt Lake City wine blogger Beau Jarvis. (I found Jarvis through Silicon Valley wine blogger Russ Beebe, who goes by the nom de Web Winehiker.)

Read the rest of this entry »

In a special election edition of my column in Sunday’s paper, I review the Web sites of the four leading presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and John McCain. (There is also a related Mercury News story by Frank Davies about the candidates’ Web operations.)

I didn’t look at the sites the way each candidate’s supporters would, but instead tried to take the perspective of an undecided but politically engaged person trying to learn more about my choices.

I found all four of the sites somewhat lacking, although they all had some unique strengths. Huckabee’s was the quirkiest (I especially enjoyed the homemade videos from his fans). Clinton’s was the most polished and professional-looking. Obama’s was the hippest, but I was put off by the blatant appeal to donate money and “own” a piece of him. McCain’s site projected toughness and strength, but not a whole lot of humanity beyond the warrior.

You can read my capsule reviews here. And I’d love to hear what you think about the sites.

The struggling Wireless Silicon Valley project has gotten a new lease on life.

As I discuss in detail in a column today, Covad Communications, in partnership with Cisco Systems, has agreed to build a test site for the civic project in downtown San Carlos.

If it works, Covad could take over the two-year-old effort, which has suffered from a leadership vacuum, financing problems and the changing economics of the municipal wireless industry.

I’m an unabashed fan of California’s parks – national, state and regional. Every weekend, I go hiking in one of them. And it never ceases to amaze me that I can climb a mountain, walk along the beach or trek through ancient redwoods, all within an hour’s drive of my house.

But it’s easy to take the parks for granted. Indeed, the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks we won’t mind if the state closes 48 state parks — 17 percent of the total — and halves the number of lifeguards on state beaches to save a few million dollars as part of the budget crisis. (Full details about the proposal in this story by the Merc’s Paul Rogers. Links also include a full list of parks targeted for closure.)

As I discuss in my Sunday column, which we’ve already posted online, the public has shown a declining interest in nature for a long time. And a lot of the blame lies with our obsession with technology.

Read the rest of this entry »