In the best of times, GoDaddy can be a controversial company. And, by the way, that name has nothing to do with the function, which is Internet related. In fact, founder Bob Parsons once told my radio audience that they were looking for an available name to register, and found that GoDaddy wasn’t being used, even though the synergy with their business plan was questionable.

Indeed, GoDaddy’s controversial TV ads hardly, if ever, convey the company’s actual business. Instead, they parade beautiful women across the screen, or poke fun at that approach. But how does that tell you that GoDaddy is the right place to register your domain, or host your site?

Well, despite the unusual marketing tactics, the approach has worked, as GoDaddy has become, by far, the largest domain registrar on the planet, and, in turn, the largest Web host. Indeed, if you don’t use GoDaddy for a product or service, you probably know someone who does. Sure, GoDaddy advertises really low prices, but they’ve clearly taken a hint or two from the auto industry, where you can get a car real cheap, but you have to pay a lot more for the options that make an average vehicle a great ride. That might include the fancy radio, navigation system, leather seats, sun roof, and other frills that speak of luxury, even on a cheap model.

So, you might see a great offer from GoDaddy for registering your domain. But say you decide you want what’s called WHOIS privacy, meaning that your name and address will be kept private, and the registrar will substitute their own contact info. In practice, it means a reduced potential for email spam, or receiving bogus notices from other registrars that attempt to steal your business at a higher price. Now GoDaddy gives you their private registration service free — for the first year. After that, you pay an annual fee that’s only slightly less than the registration fee for many of their domains. So cheap isn’t so cheap.

But GoDaddy’s upsell schemes go far beyond just adding registration privacy features. Every single product and service they offer is presented the same way. The basic price is cheap, but you may need to buy an option or two to flesh out that package with needed services. A Web host plan, for example, may include 1,000 email addresses, but total storage is 1GB (on the most expensive shared hosting plan), meaning each address may use an average of 1MB. That’s hardly enough to contain more than a few messages. It’s too small for even a single email account. But don’t you worry, there’s a separate email package available. But if you want to use an email forward or alias (meaning one address points to another), you have to spring for an extra package of forwards if your domain isn’t registered at GoDaddy.

If you comb through their list of products and services, you’ll see add-ons for special DNS services, site security, and lots more, with minimal actual value except to inflate GoDaddy’s bank accounts. And, yes, I’ve tried a few, but at least they’ll give you a refund if you’re not satisfied; that is, except for email plans, where there are no refunds.

Yes, I do have some domains registered at GoDaddy, and I’m debating how long that will last. But this takes us to the curious posture company executives expressed in support of something called the Stop Online Privacy Act, or SOPA. The bill, currently being considered in the U.S. Congress, is supposedly meant to give the Justice Department the power to go after sites, primarily overseas, which sell phony goods, such as counterfeit recordings,  fashion items and prescription drugs. If a violation is found, the DOJ could seek a court order against the infringing site, which would be blocked and removed from search engines.

Now the bill has gotten support, as expected, from the entertainment industry, who is most concerned with online privacy. Supporters also include cosmetic companies, sporting leagues, and a whole lot more. The fear, voiced by the likes of Google, Face-book, Twitter and other Internet companies, is that the bill might allow the DOJ to kill sites that actually don’t contain infringing content, or linked to the wrong site in error. I would suspect just posting a link to such a site in an online forum could be regarded as sufficient cause to bring down the wrath of the authorities.

Consider also that a site mistakenly charged might be forced to spend a lot of money to hire a defense team, or just be forced out of business, putting that company’s employees out of work. This isn’t a pretty prospect.

Well, GoDaddy stepped into it by first announcing support for SOPA. But it didn’t take long until owners of high-profile sites, such as Reddit, pulled their domains from GoDaddy and suggested others do as well. Even Wikipedia might join the crowd, and while GoDaddy has tens of millions of domains in their registry, the lost of thousands was sufficient for them to change their tune and announce that they no longer supported SOPA, at least in its present form.

That business-driven turnaround isn’t satisfying many critics, who have proclaimed December 29th as Dump GoDaddy Day. If you go along with the movement, you would be expected to pull your online business from GoDaddy then and there. Now this may not always be possible. If you’ve registered your domains less than 60 days before protest day, you have to wait. That’s how the system works.

There are also reports that GoDaddy may be trying to slow down the domain transfer process, which normally takes from a few hours to about a week to complete. Already Namecheap’s CEO, Richard Kirkendall, has stated that GoDaddy is making it difficult for their customers to move their domains to Namecheap. Supposedly this problem is being addressed, but I would hope that GoDaddy would think carefully about the situation before they play fast and loose with the rules about such transactions. On the other hand, my attempts to move domains from GoDaddy to DreamHost were accomplished in a matter of hours without any problems.

As for my domains, I’m not in a huge rush to change anything beyond what I’ve already changed. I’ll probably wait until the next renewal dates are pending before I decide. Meantime, GoDaddy is entitled to express a point of view, or even change that point of view. On the other hand, perhaps the Dump GoDaddy Day movement is taking matters a little too far. Besides, think of all the free publicity GoDaddy has received as a result, and I’m not about to suggest that was deliberate.

As you might imagine, the last few weeks have been filled with speculation as to what Apple, with Tim Cook at the helm, will do in 2012 to upend the tech industry. But the real question is whether Apple needs to make any deep changes in order to remain hugely successful.

By changes, it’s not just product initiatives but corporate policy. Since Cook has been prospering under Apple’s policy of extreme corporate secrecy, it’s hard to imagine he’d change anything except to a very minor degree. The present corporate posture made Apple amazingly prosperous, and it made Cook very, very rich. So there’d be no incentive to alter any policies.

Some financial pundits are even suggesting Apple ought to return some of their huge cash hoard in the form of dividends to stockholders. But that recommendation is based on the assumption that Apple has too much cash, and they ought to spend some of it now. Besides, it’s not as if Apple is likely to make major acquisitions that cost more than a few hundred million. Apple buys companies with technologies they need rather than companies who just sell products. Still, there’s no reason for anything to change.

When it comes products, you know there will be a new iPad, a new iPhone, some new Macs, and some minor revisions to the iPod lineup. That’s a given, though it’s probably worth speculating on a “one more thing” that’s also been discussed endlessly.

Recently, rumors have arisen that the so-called iPad 3 will debut on February 24th, the birthday of Steve Jobs. But it’s not as if Apple observes anniversaries, birthdays or other special events. After all, there was 25th anniversary Mac. Nonetheless there are unconfirmed reports that Apple is already ramping up production of a line of iPads featuring a higher resolution display, to essentially match the Retina Display on the iPhone. Certainly, when you look at the displays of both, you’ll see text is much sharper on an iPhone when viewed at roughly the same distance.

But building 9.7-inch displays with double the current resolution is not cheap. Apple would have to find a way to keep the costs low enough in order to sell the iPad 3 at the same price as the iPad 2. Some suggest an iPad Pro, at $100 more. This is based on the assumption that if it costs an estimated $127 for the iPhone 2 display, it may be quite a bit more when you add more pixels. That’s a steep climb for Apple, but they are famous for signing sweetheart deals with suppliers for millions and millions of components. It’s also possible they have worked with their LCD display partners to devise new technologies to deliver more pixels at lower prices.

Besides, Apple is making big profits from the iPad so, faced with the competition presented by the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble Nook, they might be able to absorb higher component costs anyway for the same retail price. They might also offer a cheaper iPad with similar specs to the current model at a lower price to enhance the product line and attract customers for whom $499 and up is just too steep a climb.

When it comes to the iPhone 4s, it appears only uninformed tech and financial pundits made a big deal about that alleged disappointing update. But would the iPhone 4s have been any more useful if it was marketed as an iPhone 5 with a new case? Certainly those who build iPhone accessories are glad there were no changes in form factor. But next year there will probably be a new design, a faster processor, and, quite likely, support for LTE, the 4G service that’s getting lots of promotion from the wireless carriers.

Sure you can get LTE phones now, only the chips kill battery life, at least based on reviews of the first products to support the new standard. That, of course, is precisely the reason Tim Cook gave for Apple delaying release of LTE hardware. Assuming that power utilization is brought under control, and the chips are reliable, Apple will jump aboard. Even if there’s a slight battery life reduction from LTE chipsets, maybe Apple will compensate with a somewhat more powerful battery.

The Mac universe may include a 15-inch MacBook Air, perhaps new versions of the MacBook Pro with or without optical drives, and maybe a new Mac Pro. But the latter depends on a new set of Xeon processors from Intel. The iMac and Mac mini will, like the other consumer models, get Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips.

The open question is Apple’s possible solution for a connected TV. There has been a whole lot of speculation as to just what form Steve Jobs solution for the TV dilemma, as quoted in Walter Isaacson’s biography, will take. Will it be a full-blown TV, or a better Apple TV box? Could Apple harness the power of Siri to provide nearly full voice control of your TV, even if you’re using the standard run of set top boxes from your cable or satellite provider? Yes, some tech pundits suggest that Apple wants to replace those services, but that approach may create a whole new can of worms.

Even if Apple crafts the right agreements with content providers, just how will they distribute the content? It’s one thing to stream a one or two movies each week and perhaps a few TV shows, but if Apple is feeding you hundreds of gigabytes a month, the abandoned cable providers are going to want to exact much higher payments for their broadband services. There is not going to be a simple solution to this dilemma.

And maybe, just maybe, next year’s WWDC will pull the wraps off Lion’s successor, which I presume will be Mac OS 10.8. But that discussion is really premature, at least for now. And I’m not going to engage in any discussion about those ongoing intellectual property lawsuits, but it doesn’t seem as if that situation is going to change very much.

When it comes to printing, an all-in-one or multifunction printer is often your best choice. Such a device will incorporate printing, faxing and copying, but will often add faxing, assuming anyone cares anymore.

At one time, an all-in-one represented a huge compromise. By sticking a bunch of separate components into one box, something invariably got lost in the translation. That’s what they used to say about audio receivers too. So print quality would be subpar, not close to that of a standalone. And don’t expect miracles from copying and scanning, although it seems as if the faxing functions would usually be decent enough for home and small business use.

These days, it seems that printer makers have improved things quite a bit. The print function on the all-in-one will often deliver terrific results, even for photos. Copying, though not as swift as on one of those humongous machines you see at the copy or mailing store, will get the job done. As to scanning, a graphic artist will still prefer separates.

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I suppose the move must have made perfect sense to a lot of AT&T’s executives. After all, the company was a survivor in the aftermath of a long-ago antitrust decision to break up “Ma Bell,” and create a bunch of “Baby Bells.” AT&T’s second coming was the result of mergers and acquisitions, and thus, when they decided to invest $39 billion dollars to acquire T-Mobile, they felt it would sail through.

If this decision were made a few years ago, maybe it would have gotten reasonably quick approval after some pro forma evaluation. The U.S. Department of Justice in the Bush years was more apt to allow large corporate mergers. But the Obama administration should have been expected to be more cautious about such things.

Now AT&T’s excuse for acquiring T-Mobile was all about the customer experience. AT&T has been rightly attacked for having subpar networks in many cities, and buying up another company would give them the spectrum and network capacity they needed to deliver fewer dropped calls on a more reliable network.

The skeptics, including Sprint, the number three U.S. carrier, suggested it was all about killing a competitor, and regaining the number one spot in the market. Remember that AT&T was number one until Verizon Wireless acquired a smaller mostly regional carrier, Alltel, for $28 billion. Since Alltel had a fraction of T-Mobile’s customers, getting the whole kit and caboodle for only $11 billion more than Verizon spent must have seemed a bargain. And if Verizon Wireless could buy their way to the number one position, surely AT&T could do the same.

AT&T’s blissful spin about the benefits of the merger collapsed when a document accidentally posted by the legal firm working on the deal revealed that AT&T could deliver much of what it promised with this $39 billion dollar deal — meaning increasing 4G or LTE network coverage from 80% to 97% — for a “mere” $3.8 billion. The document was quickly pulled from AT&T’s site, but not before prying eyes got to see this critical revelation. It threw AT&T’s excuses for the deal out the window, and, no doubt, cost someone in that law firm a job (though I can’t say that for certain).

Regardless, the bad news kept on coming for AT&T. First the Department of Justice decided to take legal action, after which the FCC said that it would oppose the merger. After mulling over their options for a short while, AT&T took the hint, and gave up on the deal. This meant a $4 billion  breakup fee payday for T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, along with a joint roaming agreement that will give the smaller company more coverage in more places.

Having saved all that money, one hopes that AT&T will  do the right thing and invest properly in repairing and expanding their network. If they could afford to spend $39 billion to buy up a competitor, surely they could double that $3.8 investment in network enhancements, spend a bundle on promoting the new service, and maybe return some of the rest in dividends to AT&T’s stockholders.

I suppose the real question is what’s going to happen with T-Mobile. Clearly the owner, Deutsche Telekom, would love to dump it if they can attract a credible offer, but the question is from where would those offers come.

Some suggest Sprint, but the two companies have incompatible networks, and Sprint already ran into serious trouble dealing with that sort of problem when they acquired Nextel some years back. According to Avram Piltch, Online Editorial Director of Laptop magazine, other potential suitors include, believe it or not, such retailers as Radio Shack and Wal-Mart, and, of course, Dish Network.

Did I say Dish Network?

Well, as you know, cable providers have been going after wireless carrier deals so they can offer cell phone service as a bundle to customers. Dish Network recently bought up the shattered remnants of a video rental chain, Blockbuster for a song, so they surely have the cash to make a larger acquisition. Being able to offer wireless phone service might make for a compelling bundle, the better to enhance Dish’s standing as it struggles to compete with the number one satellite provider in the U.S., DirecTV.

But even if Dish Network were to make that offer, that would only represent the beginning of their investment. As it stands, T-Mobile’s network is crippled, because the frequencies they’re saddled with aren’t compatible with AT&T’s GSM network, though that would have been worked out had the merger gone through. But it also reduces the possibility that T-Mobile could get an iPhone. It made sense for Apple to offer CDMA to support Verizon, Sprint, and some other large services around the world. But T-Mobile is not in that position and thus doesn’t offer as compelling a reason to attract Apple.

Even worse, T-Mobile’s churn rate — the number of customers who are leaving the service — is said to be a lot higher than AT&T, even though the latter has had ongoing network problems in some larger U.S. cities.

As for The Night Owl, in Phoenix AT&T delivers decent enough service. Call quality is good, download speeds are decent, and I’ve seen no reason to jump ship even though I have two other options for my next iPhone. But I do hope AT&T, having lost out in their attempt to find a quick route to the number one spot, will hunker down and do it the right way, by building a better service, and maybe even cutting some of the prices here and there.