On iPhones and Clouds

The past week has illustrated all too well the real world problems behind over-buzzed technologies that many take for granted.

It turns out the iPhone and iPad -- respectively the eighth and ninth wonders of the world, according to the hype -- have a real sneaky program to track the whereabouts of the folks toting these gizmos, which until now had a real cool factor.

The same goes for Android phones, the Google tool bar and Chrome browser, all of which, it turns out, also have built in software to spy on folks.

What is so cool about techno-stalking?

Now if all of the above actually improved communications, there might be an upside -- but in my experience, they don't.

Thanks to what some view as advances in technology, instead of making one phone call to a person with an old-fashioned wired phone supplied by Ma Bell, I now have to call the wired and mobile numbers and send an email.

The result: no comm whatsoever, but at least Apple and Google know where the people are who have not responded to my calls and emails.

Now to the cloud thing -- a term which has become so ubiquitous that I expect the famed Charlie's Spic & Span Bakery here in The Original Las Vegas, New Mexico, to soon offer cloud computing services along with donuts and fresh baked tortillas.

But as it turned out last week, the cloud thing evidently has holes: An outage in the Amazon cloud last week took down or shook up a number of federal sites along with a whole mess of commercial outfits.

Maybe it's time for the White House to rethink the whole cloud push.

Meanwhile, I'll stick with my truly stupid mobile phone -- which says hello when I turn it on but does little else. I also plan to avoid any add-ons to my computer proffered by Google, which has already invaded my privacy by taking pictures of my house and putting them on the web.

Progress, it has turned out, comes with a high price.

Update: Apple denies the tracking allegations and an Android representative said the company gets permission from users.