I've just received a call from my friend, Richard Branson, wishing me a happy holiday season--even telling me what gift he hopes I'll receive. (You'd think he could afford to send it himself, wouldn't you?) But, I am not alone, as Sir Richard has been calling thousands of people, though he's not actually working the phones himself.

It turns out that anyone can arrange a call from Sir Richard. On the Virgin Atlantic site--a place called RingMeRichard.com--you can arrange the call by answering a few questions necessary to provide the personalization.

An article in Forbes explains how this works, including how Sir Richard had to record "pages and pages" of first names in order for the system to deliver personalized greetings. Looks like this only works in the U.S., though there may be a U.K. site as well. As for the hacking part, my friend entered a variety of odd names in order to find out that the message is assembled from recorded segments and not synthesized on the fly. Names not previously recorded are simply skipped. Still, this sure beats the phone solicitors who call trying to refinance my mortgage. Maybe next year we could arrange for Bill Gates to make these calls?

Happy Holidays from Gearlog and my pal, Sir Richard!