(Dear Readers: I promise to get back to insightful technology punditry very soon — but this was too good to pass up.)

A lot of people have written about the new five-blade razors from Gillette (including one of my new Yahoo! co-workers, Jeffrey), but I haven’t seen anyone ask the obvious question: when will the six-blade arrive? I decided to do some analysis, thinking that there must be a corollary to Moore’s Law, except for shaving.

Let’s look at the facts (thank you Wikipedia for your history of Gillette — and who knew their stock ticker symbol was plain ol’ G? Or that their market cap was $53.9B as of today?):

Time elapsed between key blade-related technologies:

Single blade safety razor (1901) to the double-blade Trac II (1971): 70 years
Trac II (1971) to triple-blade Mach 3 (1998): 27 years
Mach 3 (1998) to quad-blade Schick Quattro (2003): 5 years (note: Schick was sued for patent infringement in the process)
Schick Quattro (2003) to quintuple-blade Gillette Fusion (2005): 2 years

I put a graph together to help me predict the next logical advance: six blades:

My prediction: we’ll have six in late ’06.

Update: Now I realize that I had just gotten behind on my BoingBoing reading. Lots of stuff on this there.

Cell number portability is a beautiful thing, right? (Not really, according to the truly Kafkaesque experience I’m going through right now, which I’ll go into in a moment.) This chirpy page at the FCC lays the number porting process out in a checklist with lots of Pollyanna-ish assurances:

Contact Your New Carrier — Do Not Cancel Existing Service! Your preferred new carrier will handle all the details, and they have every incentive to make this process as easy as possible. Be sure not to call and terminate your existing service-let the new carrier handle the transfer.
. . .
Use your phone during the transition. You will be able to send and receive calls while your number is being transferred, but be aware that certain features may not work

Visuals are the key to making a point, so without further ado, two photos from my number portability experience: 1) my old phone, which I call “The Phone that Can Receive Calls” (on the left), and 2) the new phone, aka “The Phone that Can Make Calls” (on the right).

       

For those of you thinking ahead, yes, if you call my cell number, the phone on the left (“The Phone that Can Receive Calls”) rings. If I miss your call and need to call you back, I have to use the one on the right (“The Phone that Can Make Calls”).

“The Phone that Can Make Calls” can not successfully call “The Phone that Can Receive Calls” (Busy signal. I suspect — and hope — that a computer is crashing somewhere each time I do this).

I am afraid that the checking of voice mail might initiate a chain reaction that could destroy the human race itself, so please, send e-mail for now.

I was enjoying the absurdity of my two-phone situation when “The Phone that Can Receive Calls” rang with a strange number in the caller ID, so I answered, thinking it might be my provider checking on me (true story: once my cable modem connection died several years ago and I looked over at my friend on the couch and said, “hey, the cable modem connection is down,” and — no lie — within seconds, there was a knock at the door, and a smiling @Home technician greeted me with, “Good afternoon, sir, is your cable modem connection down?” I said, “yes” and he fixed it. This will give you faith in people.) It was a telemarketer (a telemarketer! on my cell phone!) telling me that a ticket to Acapulco had been reserved JUST FOR ME.

So, as I was listening to the spiel about Mexican beaches on “The Phone that Can Receive Calls,” I stared longingly at “The Phone that Can Make Calls” and couldn’t resist saying this:

“I’m gonna have to call you back.” Heh heh.

(Hopefully this will work itself out soon. . . Cingular seems to be having serious problems.)

David Berlind’s recent discussion of the merits of LinkedIn versus other services like Plaxo (David thinks LinkedIn is “winning” — and I agree) inspired me to surface a recent experience I had with LinkedIn that illustrates the importance of old-fashioned offline personal relationships — not just the direct personal relationships you are explictly aware of, but the implicit networks that are created by the associations you specify in an online profile. When this kind of information is laid bare and made easily searchable in the context of defined relationships, the brutal efficiency with which personal and professional networks can be navigated by connections outside of your first-degree network can be breathtaking.

In my particular case, I was contacted by someone who shared a trusted mutual connection with me who just happened to be interviewing someone who I had worked with in the past. I’m not even sure if this person is even on LinkedIn. I wasn’t this person’s boss, and I would have never been offered as an actual reference on a resume, but the person who contacted me for a reference noted that we worked for the same company and wanted to know my thoughts. Unfortunately, my comments weren’t positive. I just couldn’t give a positive reference without feeling like I was compromising myself and the trust of our mutual connection (this was kind of an extreme case — not much of a gray area on this one, which is rare in a world where I think almost anyone deserves a second chance and the benefit of the doubt).

Like your parents probably told you (or at least should have), reputation is your most important asset, and what people think about you can make or break opportunities in life. No technology will ever change that — but services like LinkedIn can be a mercilessly efficient means for a bad rep to follow you.

The news of the Opera browser’s tenth anniversary came from two different directions today: via Scott Rosenberg in my news aggregator, and via David Wheeler in IM. You can get a free registration code today from this page. I’ve tried Opera before but never quite switched. Still, it’s a reminder that IE and Firefox aren’t the only browser games in town.

I got the title of this post from one of my old InfoWorld columns. I think the larger point of that column (that Firefox could be the wedge that leads to the open source desktop) was lost by the (mildly) perturbed Opera fans who didn’t like being compared to Amiga, and the slightly more irritated Amiga fans who didn’t like being compared to Opera (see the comments from this post). I’ll admit that it was a superficial comparison, but as an aside within the column, it made a certain point.

The histories of both Amiga and Opera are extensively documented on the continually-amazing Wikipedia — well worth reading.

When you join a new company, if you’re lucky, you can choose whether you want a Mac or PC. Since Yahoo! supports both, I had the choice — and I chose Windows with very little hesitation. I wanted to be where most of the users were, and besides, Macs just aren’t the magic machines they are sometimes made out to be (see Dan Gillmor’s latest struggle, for instance).

Still, there are a few things I do miss about my PowerBook:

• Exposé (oh, how I miss this! The right-mouse-click over the task bar in Windows giving me “Show the Desktop” is a poor, poor substitute for the clean and easily-reversed desktop sweep provided by hitting F11 in OS X) Thanks to Peter Hoven (see comments), I’ve got a nice replacement for this functionality — just press Windows key + D. I wasn’t aware of this. Not as pretty as on the Mac, but it does the job. Thanks, Peter!
• The backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor
• The instant-on when you open the PowerBook from its sleep state (and instant-off when you close it)

I’m sure some Mac zealots will flame me for my choice, but I’ve been on the receiving end of those attacks before. Just search for “under mac attack” on Yahoo! or Google and I’m your #1 hit. I can take it.

Tomorrow is Day 1 in the new job at Yahoo! but I was able to squeeze in quite a bit of leisure over my short vacation. One mildly strange occurrence during my vacation proves that you really can’t escape podcasting.

As part of my super-relaxation escape-from-the-Internet plan before the new job, I went to the Claremont Spa in Berkeley for a Saturday evening massage. As I was changing into my robe in the locker room, there was literally no one else there, and in walks Adam Curry and we made some small talk about some problems with robe availability that I won’t bore you with here. For a second I thought, should I say, “Hey, are you Adam Curry?” which of course I did, and he was gracious in acknowledging that he was indeed Adam Curry. Seeing as how he was there to relax, I just said, “Congratulations on your funding. Enjoy yourself.” I didn’t realize until listening to Saturday’s Daily Source Code that it was the first anniversary of his seminal podcast — perhaps I should have said, “Happy anniversary” instead. Not only that, my somewhat clumsy brush with podcasting fame in the Claremont Spa locker room is now immortalized in the first anniversary edition of the DSC in the 25th minute (starting at 25:45 to be exact). (Adam, if you happen to be reading this, when I checked in on Thursday night, I had the same problem with the Bay View room overlooking the air-conditioning unit on the roof and went through the same hassle you did getting it fixed.) Anyway, it was fun listening to Adam talk about his experience in the flotation tank (starting at 22:25) and the amazing showers (27:35), which he aptly described as a “car wash.” You need a lot of water to wash that. . . I’ll just say that Adam is, well, uh, tall. Listen to the DSC and you’ll see that I’m just playing along with Adam’s joke — I let the man disrobe alone and in peace. (Incidentally, going to spas is not something I do every day — this was my first trip, actually, which makes this all the more strange.)

When I wasn’t loitering in spa locker rooms with podcasting pioneers and former MTV VJ’s, I watched a few movies with a heavy emphasis on documentaries. A quick note on each:

• Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator: Tragic and compelling . . . if you were ever into skateboarding at all, worth watching. Think of it as “Boogie Nights” for skateboarding (though it’s real).
• Dogtown and Z-Boys: I LOVED this — for someone who grew up California dreaming in North Carolina, the precise explanations of the connections between California surfing and modern skateboarding were fascinating. In the end, though, this is really just a great story about DIY youth culture and Punk Rock.
• Ray: Definitely watchable, Jamie Foxx was indeed incredible, and the live music sequences were beautifully conceived and shot — but I thought the movie focused too much on sermonizing about the horrors of heroin addiction at times. It’s a rougher ride, but I recommend Junky for that subject. Still, I think this qualifies as a Great Film.
• End of the Century: The Ramones: Didn’t finish this one yet, but what I saw looked great. Kept falling asleep for some reason . . . was it suburban boredom?
• The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken (American Experience): A must-see for anyone who cares about American music. If you want to understand what it means to be downright lonesome (not just lonely), watch this. I also learned about “border radio,” which made me think of podcasting (a link that Peter Lewis of Fortune already suggested — behind a pay wall, unfortunately).

I also saw the White Stripes at the Greek Theater in Berkeley on Friday night. The White Stripes were barely on my radar beyond Jack White’s collaboration with Loretta Lynn (my mom’s #1 all-time favorite and someone I grew up with), but this was a Great Rock Show (hey Tim, the sound was really good). I go to too many indie rock shows where step-down-to-the-front-and-solo-with-great-virtuosity guitar-playing is generally frowned upon, but Jack White did just that and I liked it. I’m buying the record.

Normally, I would just post a note saying, “I’m on vacation, don’t expect anything here until next week,” but a recent shot of me napping at a weekend retreat captured the essence of vacation so perfectly that I have to include it here, though it is of the slightly embarrassing napping-with-my-mouth-open sort.

Thanks for shooting that one, Mignon, and thank you Flickr for making it possible to share it so easily with the world. Until next week. . . .