In July 2000, I met Jobs at the Macworld Expo NY 2000 at the Javits Center in New York City.

He was on stage in front of an audience of hundreds, introducing a lineup of candy-colored iMacs. Colorful computers were a novel idea then, because before the iMac, computers were beige and boxy. The iMac G3 looked like a TV you’d see in an alien cartoon. In classic Jobs fashion, he talked up the iMac, told us why it was so great, using exorbitant language, revealed the new brightly-colored iMacs, waited for the “oohs” and “ahhs” to quiet down, told us more reasons why it was great, and ended with his “one more thing,” which was the G4 Cube.

After his presentation, Jobs went to a large room to do one-on-one interviews with reporters. I was reporting on Apple for Bloomberg News and one of the the last reporters in line. We were cued up outside of the room. Ahead of me in line was a reporter from the USA Today. He asked if it was my first time interviewing Jobs. I said yes. He then explained how it would go. “Be careful, he said. “If he doesn’t like a question you ask, he’ll get up and leave. If he doesn’t like your tone of voice, he may leave the room. He might lie and say he’s going to the bathroom, and then not come back. Or he may just leave without a word.”

Soon it was my turn to interview Jobs. As we shook hands I noticed his short-facial hair and John Lennon-like glasses. He was still, quiet and aloof as we began to talk. I explained how I first used a Macintosh in college, which prompted me to later borrow money from my folks to buy a PowerBook. He relaxed once he knew I was familiar with his products. He stood up and walked me over to a table lined with the new iMacs and the soon-to-flop G4 Cube.

He began gushing about these products like a man showing off his new babies. His eyes lit up as he walked and talked excitedly about the new iMac colors: Indigo, Ruby, Sage, Graphite and Snow. I asked what would become of the colors introduced in 1999: Strawberry, Blueberry, Lime, Grape and Tangerine? He paused, raised his right hand to his chin, and stared at me for what seemed like a long time, Then, with a bemused look on his face, he finally said, “You know, you’re the first person to ask, and because you asked, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to mention this today. Those colors will be retired.”

The idea of computer exterior colors being retired was odd, but I knew it was news. He said he had not mentioned it because he wanted the spotlight to be on the new iMac lineup, not the outgoing line. He then spoke about the G4 Cube and the other Apple products introduced that day. I was itching to get out of there so I could call the Bloomberg headlines desk to tell them about the colors being retired. I didn’t want to get scooped by our competition. At Bloomberg, because so many traders watch the headlines, if you were first with a headline, it was often better than being first with a story. The editor who answered the breaking news phone was convinced it wasn’t news and almost hung up. Quickly, I talked him into sending the headline about the iMac colors being discontinued.

I collected more information about when the retiring iMacs would officially be pulled from stores and whether Apple was worried about customers being upset about no longer being able to buy a Blueberry iMac. I was sitting outside of the room where folks were carrying out the iMacs that had been on display, and then out Jobs came, still talking excitedly about the new products.

He looked at me and a wide-smile came across his face.

“Nice job on the colorful story,” he said.

I was impressed that he knew about the headline, but not surprised.
Jobs never missed a detail.

He’ll be missed at Apple for that, and by the rest of us, for his genius, vision and thoughtfulness. Those qualities will continue to be felt for years.

Last week, 10 privacy organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the complaint says Facebook’s privacy policies “violate federal consumer protection law.” Inadvertently sharing your list of friends with outside companies, and your profile information with users beyond your circle of friends, are among the issues EPIC disputes.

This all has a familiarly creepy ring to it. Remember when you loaned your high school yearbook to a friend for them to sign? Sometimes you’d get the yearbook back with that person’s well wishes — plus signatures from other folks who’d borrowed your book and signed, too. That wasn’t cool: Your non-pals had read your actual pals’ messages to you. That’s a more simplistic version of what Facebook is doing, or hoping to get you to do: opening up your account to non-pals to read.

Short-Term Gains

Most users view Facebook as a safe place to share information with other users whom they select: a closed network of friends and family who have been invited to see their information. By quietly pushing its users beyond that privacy comfort zones, the company may indeed profit — in the short term.

But if Facebook loses the trust of its users, the mounting scorn will cost the company its reputation. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook officers are taking advantage of their trusting customers who don’t see their information getting sold off to salivating advertisers. And they’ll ultimately have the same reputation as the kid who signs your yearbook without your permission.

Facebook’s privacy page notes that the site has changed “a lot” in the past five years, and that “people are generally sharing more information, and” — wishful thinking, perhaps — “they are becoming more comfortable sharing more information.” The recent privacy changes, it says, are meant to “address these shifting social norms” — although some critics suggest that the real goal here is to better compete with Twitter, where most users open their updates to all.

Legal Challenges

Whatever their motives, the company clearly wants users to share more information with “everyone,” because such information has value to potential advertisers. DailyFinance’s Tom Johansmeyer wrote that it was only a matter of time until someone decided to challenge Facebook legally. A Facebook spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that it “discussed the privacy program with many regulators, including the FTC, prior to launch and expect[ed] to continue to work with them in the future.”

What would be most useful and honest, though, would be for Facebook to bonk users over the head with the message that their updates are being made public. That may not best serve the company’s needs, but users should not be duped into opening up their information. Because while getting 350 million users to share their personal information publicly may attract advertisers, it erodes the trust of those who use Facebook and make it an increasingly powerful network.

It’s Apple’s comeback to Verizon’s latest attack on the iPhone which runs on AT&T’s wireless networks.

Verizon started this ad war by picking on AT&T. AT&T then sued Verizon earlier this month, saying Verizon was misleading viewers by suggesting customers not connected to AT&T’s 3G network will not be able to use their mobile phones at all. A judge ruled in Verizon’s favor and the ads continue to run. Verizon then took aim at Apple’s iPhone in its TV ads, which sucked Apple into this war. My view: Verizon can beat AT&T, but won’t win this fight with Apple.

“Everyone is chasing Apple at this point,” says Ryan Jacob, who manages the Jacob Internet Fund, which owns Apple shares. “Apple does spend a lot on advertising and probably felt it was appropriate to respond.”

Apple’s ads, which began airing this week, are considerably more subtle than AT&T’s, which accuse Verizon of false advertising, wrote Fortune‘s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Jared Newman of PC World wrote that Apple’s new iPhone ads, aimed at Verizon, are “actually good,” and the computer-maker takes the high-road in the battle. “Instead of flinging mud at Verizon, they demonstrate how the iPhone takes advantage of AT&T’s ability to place calls and use data at the same time,” he wrote. It’s the show, don’t tell, tactic. Rather than calling Verizon names, they simply show what their product can do.

AT&T continues to point left, hoping that folks won’t look right. I saw an AT&T ad Monday night on TV featuring actor Luke Wilson walking on a large map colored with areas with AT&T’s wireless coverage in the U.S. He’s throwing postcards around aimed at different U.S. cities in an effort to show all the places where AT&T has wireless coverage. I believe viewers understand they can make and receive AT&T wireless calls almost everywhere. No matter how often AT&T tries to distract us in their new ads, iPhone owners are fully aware of the limits of their 3G network.

Whether it’s Verizon’s Droid phone or Palm’s (PALM) Pre phone, sold by Sprint (S), Jacob, who manages $40 million, says, “They don’t reach the variety of what you get on an iPhone.” When the real iPhone killer phone goes on sale, there will be overwhelming buzz on tech blogs and by worried Apple fans. The phone company selling that handset won’t need to throw mud or spend many ad dollars to spread the word.

I have applauded AT&T telling us how it is improving its 3G network. The company should continue to beat that drum. Verizon, on the other hand, is clever to play to its strength of its more reliable 3G network, but not smart to think it can outfox Apple’s unlimited marketing budget.

Here’s a young man, all of 35, who runs a company that makes no money, telling an old man, 78, who runs companies that have made billions, that he is wrong. But while it’s easy to dismiss Stone’s comments as youthful bravado, I think he’s giving Murdoch some valuable advice.

With gadgets like the Apple (AAPL) iPhone becoming more common, media content is increasingly ubiquitous. And as much as readers may value a good story written by a Wall Street Journal reporter, only a minority is willing to pay for it. That’s the new media reality and the basis of Stone’s criticism.

Murdoch may be counting on people adopting new technology platforms — like newspapers on pocket-sized, flexible plastic that refresh in real-time — slowly, giving him more time to milk existing audiences and infrastructure. But while there will likely always be some readers willing to pay for content, what Stone is saying is that so much information will be available for free that Murdoch will ultimately lose the battle between his pay-for-news and free, advertiser-supported news.

Instead, News Corp. (NWS) “should be looking at this as an opportunity to try something radically different and find out a way to make a ton of money from being radically open rather than some money from being ridiculously closed,” Stone told an audience at an event organized by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in London, the BBC reported Thursday.

It’s solid advice from Stone, who is figuring out how to turn Twitter into a money-making platform. Murdoch has now admitted some anxiety about the changing media landscape, saying, “We find ourselves in the midst of an information revolution that is both exciting and unsettling.” His comments, reported by Dow Jones Newswires, came in videotaped remarks Thursday.

Maybe Murdoch is right to charge for what he can and make money where he can get it from his news content. But I don’t think so. Demand for free content will eventually overwhelm the supply of people willing to pay for it.

Now, that seems to be exactly what is happening. AT&T (T) reported on Tuesday that it had spent $65 million upgrading its wireless network in San Francisco since 2008. The phone company said it upgraded about 850 cell sites because of the rising demand put on its network since the iPhone started selling two years ago. That’s good news to many iPhone users, whose phone has become synonymous with “dropped calls.”

Asif Suria, a software consultant for CleanFish in San Francisco, for example, says “There’s a spot just north of the San Francisco airport where the service goes dead.” A colleague of Suria’s, who has a 10-minute commute in the area, also has problems with her iPhone and laments how Verizon’s wireless service is better than AT&T’s. “I’m hoping it will get better,” Suria said. “I don’t think $65 million is a whole lot to spend on improvements. We’ll see.”

The news from AT&T is good in at least two ways. First, since the company started improving its network over the past two years, third generation (3G) data traffic in AT&T’s network in the San Francisco area has jumped 2000 percent, according to a company press release. That has generally given a service boost to people who live in places such as San Mateo and South San Francisco.

Second, AT&T’s efforts to communicate the steps it is taking helps shine a better light on the company, which is often criticized for being out of touch with its customers.

Axel Merk, president and chief investment officer at Merk Mutual Funds in Palo Alto, Calif., says he appreciates that AT&T is investing in its coverage in his area. “You should be able to be on a conference call for an hour without having the call dropped,” says Merk. “This is 2009, not 1987.” He’s amazed at the poor quality of cell phone service in the U.S. and mostly uses his mobile phone for email. Merk says he prefers using land-lines because call quality is better.

What about other parts of the country? I have similar experiences in New York City using my iPhone and can name specific blocks where calls not only drop, but coverage fails completely. AT&T is aware of these complaints. By telling customers that it is addressing the problems and working on the solutions, AT&T has a chance to save, or at least improve, its reputation.

The stock closed 18 percent higher Tuesday, rising $30.49 to $202.22, the highest close in nine years. Count Priceline.com among the Internet companies that rallied in 2009. In the past year, Priceline has outperformed Amazon.com (AMZN) shares, which are up 168 percent and shares of Google (GOOG), which has gained 78 percent in the past 12 months. I decided to find out what’s going on at the company, which is known for its business model of letting customers name their price for travel services and then seeing what they get at the price.

Priceline benefited from a stronger-than-expected summer travel season as more customers used Priceline’s booking.com web site to reserve hotel rooms in Europe. Unlike many of us here in the U.S., Europeans aren’t as willing to give up their vacations during difficult economic times. They take longer vacations and much of August off and Priceline benefited.

“Many of us went into the summer assuming there would be a severe travel slump,” said Benchmark analyst Fred Moran. “While there was a bit of softness in the U.S., Priceline saw strength from a very strong summer travel season in Europe for leisure travelers.”

Jeffery Boyd, CEO of Priceline, said on the company’s earnings conference call on Nov. 9 that “Overall industry growth rates improved in the third quarter (this year) due to weakening economic conditions in the third quarter of 2008.” Moran and Boyd said the company also benefited from charging fewer online booking fees, leading to price-conscious consumers booking more trips. Travel isn’t making a comeback, Moran explained. What is surging are the number of travelers looking to save money.

James Cakmak, an analyst at Sidoti & Co. in New York, said Priceline has been expanding its presence across Europe and Asia. Booking.com is Priceline’s main destination for European customers and agoda.com is its primary Web site in Asia.

“Priceline dominates the European market and will benefit as more customers use travel sites,” Cakmak said. “As economies recover in the U.S. and around the world, fewer travelers may take the time to hunt for discounts before booking their trips,” Cakmak cautioned investors. That said, Priceline’s international growth should outweigh any slowdown in name-your-own-price travel when the U.S. economy improves.

Cakmak raised his price target to $229 on Priceline’s shares, from $221, while Moran, who has a buy rating on Priceline shares, raised his price target to $253, from $200 a share, because he expects higher earnings for the online travel company.

Priceline benefits when extra sales are booked, Moran said, because its websites and infrastructure are already built. “As much as anyone on the Internet, as the economic environment gets better, Priceline will reap the rewards,” he said. Priceline offers lower-than-retail-prices on hotel rooms, rental cars and flights and cruises.

My sister, who travels often for work, recommended I give Priceline a try this past summer. Who knew it was a trend among travelers? I thought the company was growing old, like its aging spokesman William Shatner. (He’s 78. Trekkies, that’s old.) Furthermore, who knew that the trend would point investors to an Internet stock that was beating shares of Internet giants Google and Amazon?

Futch, 23, who couldn’t be immediately reached by DailyFinance, works in customer service for the Grand Ole Opry and will receive $50,000 a year for the next 20 years. It may not be enough to retire on, especially after taxes, but it’s enough to take care of most of her needs.

“I’m still in shock,” Futch was quoted saying in a McDonald’s (MCD) press release. “I haven’t decided what I’ll do with the money I’ve won, but I know that a new house and car are on my list.” Even with her $1 million prize, Futch said she plans to keep playing the game.

McDonald’s Monopoly is a decades-long tradition (it wasn’t played in 2002, though), says Douglas Freeland, a director of marketing who has run the program for several years. Although people of all ages play, Freeland says the game specifically targets folks between the ages of 18 and 29.

Ever since I collected Frosted Flakes box tops to get a Tony the Tiger cereal bowl in the mail at age seven, I’ve been a sucker for marketing campaigns like McDonald’s Monopoly. Although I’d rather save the calories and buy a lottery ticket, few things match the unexpected thrill of sitting down to eat and finding out you have won $1 million.

While McDonald’s doesn’t have a monopoly on giving away big prizes, it does have a big winner and now another face to put forward to help promote McDonald’s Monopoly in the future. Futch will be collecting her million from McDonald’s into her early 40s and, I’d imagine, singing its praises a million times over the next 20 years.

While I believe McDonald’s Monopoly has grown a little too complicated over the years, news that someone has won will certainly help ignite interest in the game. Lauren Velasquez, a customer at a New York City McDonald’s, who is four years younger than the Monopoly winner, says hearing about Futch’s victory makes her more likely to play the fast-food giant’s game next year. “I totally thought that never happened,” she says.

“I thought it was a scam for McDonald’s to make you buy more food and get fat,” says Velasquez’s friend Jocelyn Milligan, also 19, of Brooklyn. The two don’t eat at McDonald’s often, they say, but they like the idea of winning if they’re going to buy the food anyway.

Greg Dalesandre, Google Wave product manager, in an online video, describes Wave as a “shared space,” where users can communicate using text, videos, photos and maps. So you can have a conversation while working on a document with a group of people in another city — or in another part of the planet. You can both work together in real time using richly formatted text, photos, videos and more. The wave is the shared experience that you are involved with. So you could be working with 10 people and everything you do — from the conversations you have to the changes you make to a document, will be inside a wave. What’s really cool about this is that the wave allows you to rewind, allowing you to see who said what when. Since everything is in real-time — it’s fast.

For now, Google Wave, which launched Oct. 1 from Sydney, Australia, doesn’t show off its potential because it is being tested by a limited group of users. But Aaron Baldwin-Simon, who’s using Google Wave in Port Charlotte, Florida, said he sees massive potential for the product. “Once Google irons out any bugs and invites more people, this will explode,” says Baldwin-Simon. “It will be an indispensable tool.”

Google is seeking feedback from initial users like Baldwin-Simon and me, in an effort to improve the service before rolling it out to millions. “It has the potential to be great for instantly connecting and exchanging ideas with friends and co-workers,” says Sukhjit Ghag, social media evangelist at Sony Electronics. She had the benefit of having friends on Google Wave who gave her tips on how to use it after she received her invite and joined.

Google Wave is the brainchild of the two brothers, Lars and Jens Rasmussen, who also created Google Maps. Now, the hope is that Google Wave will leap far ahead of other email-like services, perhaps emulating the success of products such as Google Maps. It could happen — it will likely take years for other email services to be able to incorporate the features that Wave now has.

But there are risks. Google needs to be able to maintain a certain excitement for this new product, even before it is available to everyone. By rolling it out in a slow-drip fashion, the company risks that some will feel snubbed and write it off because they weren’t initially invited to the party. I predict that those folks will join the Wave, because the rewards of what Google Wave has to offer as email for the next generation far outweigh the risks. Once millions join, others will join the Wave as easily as they signed up for an email account. Folks will wonder how they ever emailed the old-fashioned way, as we do today. The change will be significant, akin to telling your kids how you used to have to get up to change the channel or turn off the television. When they hear such things, kids look at you and wonder why you’d ever buy such a product in the first place. Google Wave will have that same eye-opening impact on email in the future.

That may irk AT&T, but the company does not dispute Verizon’s larger 3G coverage. But it is suing Verizon for highlighting its spotty coverage in a misleading manner. In Verizon’s ads, the maps display blank space in AT&T’s coverage area. The intent, according to Verizon, is to show where AT&T lacks 3G coverage. But AT&T claims the ads imply that AT&T provides no coverage at all in those areas.

I would argue that viewers are intelligent enough to know what Verizon means. I would further argue that by suing Verizon, the damage to AT&T is greater than the effects of any negative Verizon advertisement. Not only does the lawsuit draw attention to AT&T’s lack of 3G coverage, but its lack of a backbone too. Instead of trying to do damage control and prevent others from pointing out its flaws, AT&T should just solve the problem.

Walking home last night in New York City, I stopped at AT&T and Verizon stores to ask if the “There’s a map for that,” ads were having much impact. I spoke with a Verizon store manager, who wished to remain anonymous. He said the in-store map illustrating Verizon’s larger coverage is quite effective when selling phones, but no customers had mentioned the Verizon’s TV ads. At AT&T, the store owner, who also didn’t want to be identified, said he was aware of the TV ads, but said “it’s just a commercial.” No customers have talked about it. “The iPhone is the iPhone,” he said. “It sells itself.”

Mark Siegel, AT&T spokesman in Atlanta, said consumers don’t understand the blank space in the ads. “They don’t see it as no 3G coverage, they see it as no coverage at all,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s misleading and that’s why we’ve take the action we have.” Consumers are used to being told that blank areas on wireless maps mean no coverage, he said. Verizon spokesman Jim Gerace countered Siegel’s remarks telling DailyFinance, “This suit that AT&T filed is goofy. We clearly state in the ad that voice and data service is available outside of the 3G coverage area, which is their concern.”

By tackling Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon and Britain’s Vodafone, AT&T is sacking its rival when it should be beefing up its 3G network. If AT&T could fill those blank-map-gaps with wider 3G coverage, then Verizon would have little argument. AT&T is drawing more attention to its smaller-than-Verizon’s 3G network and more people are hearing that it’s slower too, from folks who use iPhones.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, in an interview with DailyFinance on July 23, told me that AT&T’s “data network behaves differently with the load of demand [from iPhone users] that’s being put on the network.” IPhone users have complained about the lack of 3G coverage and the slow speed while surfing the Web on their phones, not to mention dropped calls. In July, I asked Stephenson about the anger from iPhone users about AT&T’s poor network quality. He said he puts the network to the most drastic tests possible when he travels to large cities like New York and Los Angeles. He “abuses” his phone as much as he can, with Web surfing, app using, and e-mailing — “I beat those phones up,” he said. When there’s a problem, he calls his service-support team and gets them to fix it. “I’m on it like a hawk,” he told DailyFinance.

If he’s on it like a hawk, then AT&T should be telling us three-plus months later about solutions and improvements it has made to its network, not trotting out some half-baked lawsuit that ironically draws attention to the company’s still-sparse 3G coverage.

How about an announcement telling customers how AT&T has been working with Apple to help boost the quality of iPhone service? Heck, if Stephenson would say, “We’re still working on it, sorry we have nothing new to report,” that would be welcome news to many iPhone users, who are loyal to their phones in spite of being tethered to AT&T’s slow service. Simply telling folks they haven’t lost their focus on the problem, would be enough for many.

Instead, AT&T insults its customers with this third-grade-level lawsuit of “Verizon hit me first.” Please.

Back in July, I told Stephenson that I owned an iPhone and that I don’t recommend it to friends because the network quality can to often be poor. Add this silly lawsuit to the list of reasons I’d tell people to stay away from the iPhone until it works on a network besides AT&T’s.

But the decision could open the door to a litany of problems. Among the potential issues: Who has the right to determine if a site is memorialized? What if the husband memorializes his wife on Facebook but the wife’s parents think that such a move is in poor taste — can the page then be taken down?

Facebook’s Chimene Stewart said in an email, “We defer to the wishes of the family member who requested the account be memorialized.” That means as long as one person wants it, Facebook will memorialize the deceased person’s page. Down the road, I wouldn’t be surprised if that leads to lawsuits to have a memorialized page removed.

There could be other problems as well. Facebook’s Max Kelly, a close friend of the Facebook employee who was killed, explained in a note to users on October 26 that “When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search.”

Confirmed friends means those who were Facebook friends with the Facebook user before he died. Facebook says it will prevent anyone from logging onto a deceased person’s account after the user’s death but it will allow friends and family to leave posts on the profile wall in remembrance.

But what happens if, for example, a Chicago firefighter dies after saving lives and folks want to show their respects by posting on the firefighter’s Facebook page? Only those linked to him before his death could leave a note. In the future, will people leave instructions in their wills about whether they wish to be remembered on Facebook?

Another problem the company faces is advertising. Currently, besides memories of the deceased’s life, the memorial pages also contain advertisements. That could easily be considered in poor taste. But what if Facebook were to yank the ads on those pages? Then the company would take a financial hit and would be left with memorial pages that generate little to no revenue.

Perhaps Facebook would do better to stick with the living. “There are already sites that memorialize people,” says Andrew Hazen, founder and CEO of Prime Visibility, which helps boost online exposure for individuals or companies. “What’s intriguing to me is that Facebook is memorializing what people have built themselves. But who will contact Facebook? People will die and Facebook will have no idea, because it won’t be a priority to contact Facebook. God forbid my spouse passes on, the last thing I’m doing is notifying Facebook that she is no longer alive. I suspect this won’t be policed or executed very well.”

Facebook, for its part, believes that providing the memorial pages of its users outweighs any potential problems. But if the company ends up pulling ads and dealing with lawsuits from irate relatives, it may soon be lamenting not the death of its users, but the demise of its memorial pages.