Hey, docs: Someone stole your data.

The Blue Cross Blue and Blue Shield Association is warning about 800,000 doctors (nearly every practicing physician in the country) that a laptop containing some of their personal information was stolen, the Chicago Tribune reports.

No patient information was stored on the computer. But the database does include the social security numbers of more than 100,000 of the docs. The database also contains addresses and other information.

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We have covered what you can do if your laptop has been stolen, but with the proliferation of other portable gadgets–cameras, cell phones, e-book readers–theft recovery applies to more than just your computer. An Ars reader recently told us a tale of woe involving the loss of his Kindle DX on a flight home and his subsequent efforts to get it back.

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David Lin is traveling lighter for business lately. Ever since the software marketing exec bought an iPod Touch, he’s often able to leave his notebook computer behind. “My goal is to replace the laptop,” says Lin, vice-president for marketing at Denali Software, makers of electronic design-automation software.

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Is this the year that location-based applications, already popular among mobile users, migrate to desktops and laptops as well?

Ryan Sarver, director of consumer products at Skyhook Wireless, which operates a Wi-Fi-based positioning system, is betting so. “It feels like 2009 is a huge year for location on laptops,” he told the crowd of techies at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco Wednesday.

In a panel entitled “Adding ‘Where’ to Web Applications,” Sarver aimed to convince the audience that even regular old desktop software can be more useful if it’s geo-aware. Take local search. Today computer-users seeking the closest Starbucks (SBUX) might search for locations near their ZIP code, getting dozens of options. But if they search with a service that can detect their location, they can be instantly presented with the closest few locations they’ll actually consider going to.

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In a report combining consumer electronics, semiconductors, and infrastructure software analysis, Pacific Crest Securities equity researchers today write that Microsoft’s (MSFT) forthcoming Windows 7 is “a dramatic improvement over Vista” and that it has “implications for the technology sector” beyond just what it will do for Microsoft. The operating system, which is currently in beta and is rumored to be approaching production release much faster than usual for Microsoft’s OSes, “could be out by the end of June,” which would make the software a material contributor to Microsoft’s fiscal 2010 results, write the authors.

The Pacific Crest test labs have found that in putting the beta of Win 7 through its paces, “the increased speed and stability, relative to previous Windows iterations, are striking […] Everything seems to run faster and more smoothly […] the primary test laptop has not crashed since installation of Windows 7 two weeks ago.”

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The year of hope and change is certainly off to a grim start in the tech world. Last week alone saw layoff announcements from stalwarts like Intel (INTC) and Microsoft (MSFT), as well as Web 2.0 companies like Digg, just to name a few. If you’ve lost your job or had your salary frozen and are seriously tightening your belt, the (slightly) good news is that there are more options than ever to keep yourself entertained during these economic end times.

A few months ago, I defended the value of cable, writing that $70 a month wasn’t a bad deal for what you get. But as your wallet gets lighter, you may not want to spend $840 a year for service. Before you fire off a comment saying “Just watch Hulu!” yes, that is a good idea. Between Hulu and the network sites like ABC.com and CBS.com, you can watch just about any program you like for free. But then you’re watching on a small laptop screen while that big TV sits there, idle. You bought the big TV; you should use it.

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Dell (DELL) called a bunch of reporters to a room at the Palms hotel in Las Vegas and gave them a sneak peek at a widely rumored laptop called Adamo. It was literally just a peek; the stylish, thin notebook PC was held up briefly by a stylish, thin fashion model who goes by the single name Hollis. A small mob of photographers was allowed to snap away for a minute or two, and then the Adamo was hustled out of the room.

The company gave very few details about the device, which it vowed to ship in the first half of the year and appears to be positioned as a Dell equivalent to Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook Air. Adamo will “be the new luxury franchise in the Dell brand lineup,” says Michael Tatelman, vice president and general manager for sales and marketing in the company’s consumer group.

Adamo means “to fall in love with,” Tatelman says, predicting that consumers will do just that when they see the precision craftsmanship of the product. No pricing was given.

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So here I am. In a hotel room in New York. The writing desk and its view of xth Avenue are all but obscured by:

7 x Mini USB cables: 2 of them are the new Micro type that Blackberry has switched to for the Storm only, the rest are standard.

1 x Ethernet cable: into wall-socket of hotel room. 8 bucks a day. But using Ethernet rather than the hotel’s Wi-Fi allows me to share via a wireless network that I create on my laptop. That way all my other toys can be online without separate logging on and billing. Hotels make so much money from “high-speed” Internet these days. Well, they’ve lost their once-juicy phone income I suppose. I remember back in the early nineties, before the world wide Web was so much a glint in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye and the net was all VERONICA, JANET, WAIS, Gopher and FTP, I ran up a Princeton hotel phone bill of three and half thousand dollars in one calendar week. Ach, die schöne Zeit …

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New laptops that boot up in 30 seconds? Too slow for me. Five seconds? Better, but what I want is a machine that’s ready in about a second, just like my smartphone.

I’m fully aware that expressing any impatience with a computer’s boot time invites derision. When the entire globe is engulfed in an economic crisis, measuring the seconds required to start different computers may seem the most trivial of concerns.

Still, I’m not alone. Unhappiness with boot times, which commonly run 45 to 60 seconds, is shared by many computer users, as reflected in much online discussion of the issue.

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In my last article I described what it feels like to have your house struck by lightning. Luckily there were no injuries or structural damage (thanks for your kind words in the comments), but our gadgets and other electronics inside the house weren’t so lucky. This is their tale.

The first thing I noticed was that my computer wouldn’t come on. I thought that was odd, since it’s a laptop that works on battery power. A catalog of all the files I had neglected to back up flashed before my eyes. Materials for a book, family photographs, personal documents. Some of it I could recover, some I couldn’t. Lesson learned. I glanced over at the wireless router. It was completely dead. Cycling the power didn’t help. What else? I was about to find out…

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The One Laptop Per Child project, which developed the low-cost XO education laptop for developing countries, has revealed plans for its next-generation mobile computing device. The new system, which will have a clamshell form-factor with two 16:9 touch-screen displays and no hardware keyboard, is expected to sell for $75 per unit and will be available in 2010. That’s the hope, at least. The reality is likely to be quite different, given the project’s troubled history.

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I was so excited when my new MacBook Air arrived the other day. When I opened the box and examined this laptop, I was amazed by how razor thin and how light it is–just .76 of an inch and only 3 pounds. It has a full-size illuminated keyboard, which is terrific for working in a dimly lit car or on an airplane. And I really love the trackpad, which works in much the same way as the Apple iPhone, giving you many more options by simply moving your fingers. I also use an HP laptop on a regular basis because I like to be well versed on both platforms and be able to multitask. Both computers sit side by side on my desk in my kitchen and having them right there together is very convenient for me.

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Apple is widely regarded as one of the most effective companies at launching products today, but some people chalk this up solely to Steve Jobs’s star power.

As a launch consultant, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing Apple’s product introductions and I have seen that while there is no denying that Jobs is a very powerful element in Apple’s launches, there are plenty of things that Apple does that can be learned and emulated by other companies, small or large.

It all starts with the product

Product launches are not just PR events; they are the last step of a long product-development effort. Start with the product itself. No amount of launch pageantry and flashy presentation can guarantee the success of a seriously flawed product. At the same time, a brilliant product can disappear into obscurity without a carefully conceived launch strategy and a clear marketing message.

Apple is able to generate interest and excitement over even minor product launches because of its reputation for creating innovative, elegant and functional hardware and software. Every facet of the device or code, right down to the industrial design, packaging, accessories and even the product’s Web site, is scrupulously polished to enhance usability, esthetic appeal, and Apple’s overall image as a maker of “insanely great” consumer products. “We make products that we want to use ourselves,” Steve Jobs said at D5.

The obsession with form, fit and finish extends even to the most minor or hidden parts. One of the most time-consuming design tasks of a recent laptop introduction, an Apple hardware manager said, was to make sure that screws on the bottom of the machine did not disrupt the smooth flow of the computer’s aluminum skin–even though most users will never even look at the underside. Compare that to, say, the hulking, mismatched power supply of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console, which looks as if it were originally designed for a Soviet-era tractor.

Even the font choices in Apple’s user documentation and manuals are carefully selected. By crafting a uniform design identity not just for the core product, but also for all ancillary materials, Apple builds a tangible expectation of superior performance and value.

Don’t launch the product until it is ready

Apple rarely launches a product until every aspect is ready for the public; indeed, Jobs has been known to kill a product launch at the last minute because something is not exactly perfect.

A journalist related that he wrote a scathing review of a new non-Apple product and later ran into the product manager at a restaurant. “I’m sorry I had to be so hard on the [product],” he said. “That’s OK,” the product manager said, much to the journalist’s surprise. “We knew we were going to get some knocks.” Then why didn’t they fix the flaws? Too many companies today are willing to accept glitches just to get the product out the door, hoping to patch them in a future version. But will there even be a future version if customers are disappointed?

The “we’ll fix it in version 2.0” attitude at some of its competitors is anathema at Apple. Version 1.0 is as good as it can possibly be; version 2.0 will be even better.

Is your product as good as it can possibly be? If not, perhaps it’s better to delay the launch.

Some companies don’t seem to understand the difference between making technology and making a product. Technology doesn’t become a successful consumer product until a complete, user-friendly experience is built around it. Launch products, not technologies.

Everything is coordinated

When you walk into the Moscone Center for an Apple product launch, the posters outside tout current Apple products. The advertising on passing taxis and buses are familiar Apple themes. The nearby Apple store still promotes the current bestsellers. The Apple Web site is still business as usual.

But as soon as the keynote presentation ends and people file out of the building, everything is new: The advertising on the buses and cabs has miraculously changed to trumpet the new product. The Apple Stores are stocked and ready to sell the New Thing. Apple employees are wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the new message. The Apple Web site is ready with new information and images. New TV ads showing the just-introduced product are already spreading the news.

Everything is coordinated across multiple departments of the company, from factory to marketing to retail to customer support, all for the precise moment of the launch. The achievement is all the more impressive given the simultaneous launches in multiple countries around the globe, and, increasingly, the involvement of partner companies (like AT&T for the iPhone launch).

Such precision and coordination requires a comprehensive launch agenda and clear cross-boundary communications (along with flawless execution) among all key players in the company.

This is the way consumer products should be launched in today’s world of instant communication and nearly instant gratification. As soon as a consumer hears or reads of a cool new product–especially a message reinforced through multiple channels–he wants to be able to buy it and use it. With a few notable exceptions (the iPhone, the Mac OS X Leopard operating system), Apple has products in its stores and well stocked on the day of the announcement. After going to so much trouble to build excitement over a new product, the company rarely wastes the opportunity by telling consumers they have to wait days, weeks or months to buy it. The strategy of announcing a product and shipping it months later is best left to business-to-business products, where long-term budget planning and lengthy evaluation periods are more common.

Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse, because launches are theater

With Apple, preparation for a keynote begins months in advance, and Steve Jobs rehearses relentlessly, right up to show time. Insiders know that if a product does not demo well, even at the last moment, Jobs will pull it from the presentation rather than risk a public flop.

In one keynote in which Apple unveiled a new notebook computer with a built-in accelerometer, to protect the hard drive in the event of a fall off a table, Apple’s head of global marketing, Phil Schiller, had to jump off a 15-foot platform on stage with the computer cradled in his arms. Afterward a reporter noticed a nasty scrape on his arm. Did it happen in the keynote plunge? “No, it was in one of the rehearsals,” Schiller told him. “I can’t remember which one, there were so many.”

Jobs’s predecessor, Gil Amelio, once gave a three-hour Macworld keynote for which he obviously hadn’t prepared sufficiently. His extemporaneous speechifying befuddled, bored and frustrated the audience. The lesson is not about length but about preparation: there’s no substitute for preparation and practice.

The big announcements are important. The little ones aren’t

Apple releases dozens of new products each year, but only a handful of major ones get the full Steve Jobs treatment. Partly this is due to the time constraints on a very busy CEO, but Apple also recognizes that overexposure lessens the impact of even a Steve Jobs presentation.

Everyone remembers the keynotes where Jobs has a blow-out announcement–the “There’s just one more thing” finale has become a signature in his delivery–but there are many other B-level and C-level announcements that are handled with less fanfare by other executives or, in some cases, such as recent updates to the Mac mini, by no formal announcement at all.

Apple saves its biggest announcements for its biggest products. Even when the identity of the new product is top secret, Apple has been known to call major tech journalists to quietly let them know “this is a big one, you should be here.”

In contrast, IBM once flew a reporter to North Carolina for a “major announcement,” accompanied by nearly a dozen PR and executive team members. The announcement? IBM had decided to streamline its PC operations and cut bureaucracy and cost, the better to compete with leaner rivals. The message and the messenger should be congruent. A phone call or press release is appropriate for many announcements. For a new bet-the-company product, however, it’s a safe bet that only the CEO will do. Make the big ones count.

Of course, sometimes there’s pressure to give big treatment to a little announcement because of internal company politics. This may keep a handful of people happy, but in the end it won’t get consumers excited, and could make journalists and the public less receptive to news about a company’s truly important products.

Products have names

There’s a great new restaurant that serves chunks of cold, dead fish mixed with seaweed and artificially green-colored horseradish, on a glop of sticky rice. Sound appealing?
If you’re looking for a lightweight laptop, do you choose the Fujitsu P1610 or the Aspire 9810-6829? (Can you tell by the names that one weighs 2.2 pounds, the other 17.3 pounds?)
Do you already own one of the most popular consumer electronics devices of the 21st century, the M8513LL/A? Perhaps you know it by its name and not its part number: the iPod.

Too many companies find that the product naming processes is not fast or easy so they resort to using model numbers in place of real names.

Apple knows the importance of names that’s why we have iPods, MacBooks and Cinema Displays.

A product isn’t ready for launch until it has a name that customers can understand. DF-20HT is not a name; it’s a part number. The name of a product influences the customer’s response to it. Calling your new device DF-20HT identifies it as a technology, not a product.
This isn’t to say that giving a product a snazzy name like “Vista” or “ROKR” or “Microsoft BOB” will insure its success. But if all the other aspects of a successful product are met, why saddle it with a nerdy moniker that consumers can’t remember or even understand? Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose ?by any other name would smell as sweet.” But for a new consumer product, DF-20HT stinks.

Use secrecy as a marketing weapon

Influential consumer tech journalists, some who typically write fewer than 50 columns a year, often receive that many new product announcements in their email in-boxes every week. Each email gets at most about five to fifteen seconds of attention. If the first paragraph of the email does not say what it is, what it does, why it’s significant and what it costs, the email goes straight to the trash.

Why is it, then, that these same reporters are willing to drop everything and fly cross-country to Cupertino, Calif., based on nothing more than a cryptic note that Apple will be unveiling a secret new product?

The answer: Apple has learned to use secrecy effectively as a marketing tactic.

At one time, when it was struggling, Apple realized that it could use the element of surprise as a competitive advantage against larger rivals. It caught the computing world off-guard by introducing such innovations as the mouse, the graphical user interface, the 3.5-inch diskette, wireless networking, colors, flat-panel LCD screens, Bluetooth, online music sales, touch-controlled iPods and iPhones, and so on.

Today, despite the fact that Apple’s market capitalization is now bigger than Dell’s, secrecy is even more important. Asian competitors knock off Apple designs and even rumored Apple designs.

But secrecy also generates intense interest in Apple’s announcements, as everyone wonders what new marvels Apple has in its plans. The company very rarely pre-briefs reporters and analysts, but when it does, it’s for a big payoff–like promising a major national magazine an exclusive sneak peek in return for a promise of being the cover story.

Even so, very few of its announcements are pure surprises, in part because bloggers, journalists, analysts and investors scrutinize the company so relentlessly, but also in part because Apple is an expert flirt, and a peerless influencer of the media.

Many companies feel that secrecy is not practical because they need to inform the channel, brief partners and create marketing campaigns. These needs do not make secrecy impossible they just make it harder to pull off. Apple weighed the problems associated with secrecy against the benefits it would deliver and decided on the secrecy route–and it’s been paying off. Any company launching a new product needs to go through the same exercise.

Learn from Apple’s imperfections

Nothing’s perfect, not even Apple’s vaunted marketing machine. Even when Apple makes mistakes with a product launch, however, it provides valuable lessons for any company.

Think about Apple products that failed, like the Macintosh Cube. Although it was a triumph of design at the time, at least compared to the boring beige boxes made by other PC makers, the Cube sacrificed usability and performance in order to achieve its form factor, a textbook case of form over function. Customers stayed away in droves.

Even the Apple iPhone product launch was flawed, despite the sale of more than a million units in the first three months. By waiting just 10 weeks to cut the high-end iPhone’s price by one-third, to $399 from the initial $599, Apple angered its loyal consumer base. Customers angry at a price cut? In this case, yes, because early adopters felt they were snookered into paying a $200 penalty for being Apple’s best customers. Everyone knows that technology prices fall over time, but the timing suggests that Apple knew from the beginning that the iPhone was overpriced. Lesson: Don’t alienate your most loyal customers. To mollify them, Apple issued a $100 credit. Another lesson: It’s expensive to attract new customers, but potentially far more expensive to lose the ones you already have.

Watch and compare

Steve Jobs has promised a year of exciting product announcements, so whenever he takes the stage for a keynote or special event, I’ll be watching, taking notes and comparing how other technology companies launch products. If you’re watching and comparing, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Joshua Weinberg is the president of the Digital Life Consulting Group, which advises consumer electronics and consumer technology companies on how to make their product launches strong, effective and successful. He has been helping launch products for 18 years. He has never worked for Apple, but observes the company closely.

Having seen Apple’s MacBook Air notebook computer up close, I’m as dazzled as everyone else who’s had a chance to examine this delicious piece of industrial design.

Dazzled doesn’t translate to handing over a credit card, however–at least not yet, and not solely because it’s almost never a good idea to buy Apple’s (or anyone else’s) hardware immediately after its initial release.

Even if serious flaws didn’t frequently surface in the company’s first batch of new models, I’d hold off on buying one of these, despite my admiration for the genuine accomplishments in this one. Cost isn’t the issue; rather, there are just a few too many feature compromises for my work-style.

My friend and your co-host here, Walt Mossberg, explained them well in his recent review. They include a nonremovable battery; non-expandable RAM; a paucity of ports; lack of an on-board optical drive; and a relatively small 80GB hard disk. (I wouldn’t even consider the flash-memory model for the moment, due to its high price and lower 64GB capacity.)

The somewhat modest central-processing power is a non-issue. Intel’s new Merom-architecture chip, running at up to 1.8GHz, has plenty of muscle for the kinds of duties a machine like this would typically handle. Graphics and media professionals would disagree, no doubt, but this ultra-svelte device isn’t aimed at them in any case.

I certainly can imagine why some folks have already ordered one. A frequent traveler whose computing tasks include little more than email, document-handling, Web browsing and watching a video will have lots to love.

But if she’s one of the increasingly global members of the workforce, and (unlike Steve Jobs) flies coach internationally except when she’s lucky enough to get an upgrade, she’ll discover that the roughly 5-hour battery life is good enough for domestic travel. And if the battery gets flaky or fails on the road, as has happened to me in two laptops, one an Apple, she’ll be up a creek.

Laptop batteries wear down eventually. Apple says it’ll replace batteries for the same price as MacBook batteries, with no labor charge, but there’s a serious inconvenience factor in having to take or send the machine to a repair shop.

Our otherwise happy purchaser will encounter other problems. She’ll arrive at her hotel one day and discover that there’s no Wi-Fi in the room. Out will come a dongle that fits into the single USB port, which is contained in such a tiny space that lots of USB devices will need extender cables, allowing her to use the room’s wired Ethernet connection.

In fact, it’s already clear that anyone doing serious computing will be hauling around a slew of dongles for the MacBook Air. The adapter for video presentations is a fact of life already for Mac notebook users. You’ll need a small USB hub just for starters, plus various adapters for things like an EVDO or other high-speed cellular modems that many serious travelers now rely on for domestic connections.

Apple’s design choices were surely aimed at one goal: creating the thinnest, lightest and most beautiful notebook around. You can find lighter Windows machines, but they have even more compromises, often including dreadful keyboards. (Not that I’m a fan of the Chiclet-y keyboards Apple now includes with everything but the MacBook Pro; some folks love them but I’m distinctly underwhelmed.)

The best keyboards on any notebook computers are in the ThinkPads from Lenovo, which bought the line from IBM a while back and, so far, appears to have maintained high standards. The smaller ThinkPads, especially the X models, are sturdy, reliable, capable and smartly designed in their own right, though not remotely jaw-dropping like the new Macs. But the ThinkPads have been the absolute class of notebook computers for many years.

Which leads to the obvious point–something I and at least a few other people have been publicly advocating for a long time, not that Apple is paying any attention. We keep wishing that Apple would either make a deal with Lenovo to sell ThinkPads with Mac OS X as an option, or make a deal with whatever company actually manufactures the ThinkPads. Then we’d enjoy the best of both worlds. (An upcoming ultra-portable, ultra-capable ThinkPad model would be the perfect machine for the Mac OS.) I would pay a premium, and so would plenty of other folks.

Some day, I predict, Apple will make such a deal. While we wait for Steve Jobs or his successor to realize why it’s a good idea, we can expect a host of improvements to upcoming versions of the MacBook Air. Not incidentally, some of these will also make Apple even more money.

Keep in mind that the relentless pace of technological improvement means that the processing power, memory and storage capacity of the MacBook Air will get dramatically better in coming months and years in any case. So that 80GB drive will be 160GB next year, and the 64GB in the solid-state version will double, too, for the same cost. As always, customer patience solves some issues.

But if I were czar of the MacBook line, I’d do two things right away. First, I’d find a way to make the current model modular, with one additional port that would connect to a dock in the home or office or both; the dock would in turn connect to a monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, Ethernet line, external storage and other typical gear. This would resurrect the still-classic mode of the old Mac Duo notebook systems, which even now are fondly remembered as the best hardware combination of Apple’s portable-machine history. (Of course, the PC-laptop world–and, yes, the ThinkPads–have been doing this for a long time.) The docks would, like other Apple-made peripherals, become a profit center in their own right.

Second, I’d launch another notebook model. Call it the MacBook Air Pro. It would weigh a half-pound more than this one, and it wouldn’t be quite as gorgeous. But it would add back ports such as Ethernet and Firewire, along with a more capacious hard disk, removable battery, MacBook Pro keyboard, built-in EVDO and expandable RAM, among other things.

Meanwhile I’ll count on all you early adopters to find the inevitable bugs in the first batch of MacBook Airs. And I’ll count on Apple, as always, to be a pace-setter in design.

But I suspect I’m in a large class of potential customers. I’d love a computer that’s high art, but I need one that’s right for hard work.