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There was the day when "Blackberry" meant "Email." Then they day when "Blackberry" meant "Phone." Now comes the Blackberry Pearl which means "Phone, Email, Pictures, and Play Music."
Take a look! You might become a convert.
Vista (the next version of Windows) nears its release date. It's near enough that the spin machine is already in full force. The first couple of questions from clients have arrived in my in-box. What should we do? How will it work with my existing hardware? What software will I have to update? Will my old DOS programs still work?
And the answer is...no one knows, really. The release candidates that have come out have enjoyed generally good reviews. The last couple have tuned features and speed items that were sorely needed. For months, we've known that you needed good, speedy hardware to run Vista. Systems as little as 18 to 24 months might need upgrades to run Vista, if they run Vista at all. But the jury is still out. We need to see the actual production version of the code. And load it a few times.
So if you want to be a guinea pig, go ahead and buy the first copies of Vista off the production line. Otherwise, our (my) advice is ... WAIT!
The article below gives you and idea of some of the issues to be addressed before committing to Vista.
There has been a lot in the news lately about RFID as a supply-chain replacement for barcode. As a barcode replacement, RFID has a lot of benefits. There are other uses of RFID, though.
American Express was one of the first to release a credit card (Blue) with an embedded RFID chip. They also offered a free USB port connected reader that could be used to read the info from the card and enter it into eCommerce applications that were ennabled for the card. I actually ordered one. Still have it. Never used it.
Now RFID is rearing its head in international territory. The PASS card will replace the Passport for entry into certain countries. Take a look at the article below for more information.
New Border-Crossing Card Could Boost RFID Demand - Security Technology News by TechWeb
Adobe Acrobat 8 Beta 1 is available. Adobe Acrobat has done as much to move us in the direction of the paperless office, make electronic publishing easier, and ennable document transmission. In addition, the ability to annotate, collect data, and work with forms through Acrobat has evolved through the last several versions.
Acrobat Reader, which you need to read Acrobat documents, is free. Acrobat professional, which creates Acrobat documents, isn't free. In fact, it's quite expensive.
If all you need to do is to make your Microsoft Word report into a PDF, there are cheaper alternatives, such as ScanSoft PDF Converter or Nitro PDF or PrimoPDF.
As the article below says of these cheaper alternatives,
These PDF converters lack many of the features found in Acrobat 8 Professional, such as Web conferencing tie-ins and workflow capabilities, but they can capably create PDF documents.
Be forewarned, I'm probably going to make someone mad with this one...but that's OK. No one ever accused me of lacking an opinion. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago about the latest fad: online networking. In the article, they mentioned two web sites: Ryze (www.ryze.com) and LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). Both of these were to be like mixers...only on-line. You could go to the websites, find people interested in the same things you were, and network.
Well, LinkedIn caters to professionals who want to protect their email from SPAM. So other than allowing the producers of The Bachelor to SPAM their members, the list is pretty protected. Ryze, on the other hand, seems to be inhabited almost exclusively by vocal MLM sales people and "spiritual success" advisors. I spend more time deleting their "flame" wars than sharing useful information.
So look me up on LinkedIn. I'd like to see you there. Until Ryze revises its target audience, I'd stay away...unless you're selling the latest meditation technique guaranteed to earn me $50Million. In that case, just skip Ryze and email me directly. You know the address. Right?
Telephone records obtained by "pretexting"? HP Board members involved? Journalists? Posing as the person whose call phone records you want?
This stuff sounds more like something a jealous spouse would do than an international company. But HP was so worried about where the media leaks were coming from that they did this and contemplated more to discover the names of the guilty.
Although HP blames outside investigators, it's hard to know exactly what happened when. Take a look at the article below for more information.
Apple has upgraded iTunes and announced (sort of) the iTV box (internal code name, not the product name). iTV, according to media reports, will be a 6 x 6 x 1 inch box with WiFi (wireless network) that connects to the television. The idea is that you can download videos from iTunes (the last episode of the TV series you just missed is $1.99) and play them on the TV...or iTV. Take a look at the press release on iTunes 7.
And the iPod Nano (no hard drive, up to 8Gb of memory or 2000 songs) is newly redesigned. The silver (stainless) is really cool...I just bought one.
And Microsoft has announced the Zune, a sweet little mp3 player with a few features that the iPod doesn't have...like WiFi built into the player. You can download without connecting it to a PC. Some of the analysts are claiming that it's 2 years late...since the Apple iPod has about 75% of the market. But for us Gizmodicts...the $299 price tag (estimated) may not be a barrier. It may be an "I'll buy it...I'll try it...if I like it, I might use it...purchase."
Meanwhile, I'm sure the teenagers in your life will be really interested in your Christmas budget. Take a look...
Almost drowned in the flood of press releases was this one about the new 80Gb model of iPod Video. Unless, of course, you're doing lots of video, 80Gb seems like overkill...the first PC I had only had 5Mb (vs 80000Mb on this) of hard drive....my, my, things are a-changin'
You've probably gotten the emails: "Contact 3,000,000 potential customers for only pennies per reach..."
It's generally called SPAM. Some people get enough of it to fill a bucket. Because my email account is set up to receive any email sent to our domain for an email address that doesn't exist, I get tons of it in my mailbox. Some of this has names or addresses on it. Much of it I recognize from my wife's emailbox at home. I get emails with one employee's name on them that hasn't been at Data Guidance Group for 5 years. Another employee must have browsed a lot of sites that marketed products for enlarging certain body parts...most of the email I get for him offers such products.
But I supose it's tempting. With a first-class letter costing $0.39 to mail, the idea that you can reach a prospect for a few cents (or fractions of a cent) per piece is attractive. As I look through my SPAM blocker (which allows me to look at email that the software thinks is SPAM in order to decide whether it really is), I see a certain number of emails that look legitimate. I see others for products that I wouldn't think about buying from an unsolicited email (lose weight, get taller, grow more hair, increase the size of various body parts, buy vicodin, buy viagra, etc.)
SPAM has become a problem. Most businesses that use email eventually wind up blocking SPAM. It's a tradeoff. When the quantity of SPAM in email gets so large that it is hard to delete SPAM without deleting genuine email, it's time to get some type of SPAM detection and elimination software.
If you're thinking about using SPAM to promote your business...don't! You'll earn a bad reputation quick as a wink. Sending email can be a great business tool. But be sure you send it to people who want it.
First, I should say that the link below is to Dan Bricklin's article about Small Business Blogging. If for no other reason than that Dan is the inventor of the program Visicalc (the first electronic spreadsheet, and great-great grandaddy of the current generation of spreadsheets like Microsoft's Excel), you should spend a second on his website.
Anyway...back to the subject...I've been blogging for a while but never really recommended the practice to many clients. That wasn't because I didn't think they could get some benefit from it...there are a lot of benefits...it's mostly because clients in general don't have time to get information together for their main web sites, let alone a blog. So what's the deal?
Since you're reading this, I assume you have some idea of what a blog is. To quote Brickland, "A reverse-chronological list of postings, with a managed archive," is a blog. To put that in English: A blog is two things (a) a list of short (or not so short) things you write, with the most recent one first, and (b) to keep the list from getting intolerably long, some filing system to handle old items.
The items on a blog are called posts. I don't know why. You probably don't want to know anyway.
So why in the world would anyone do a blog? Several reasons:
I'm sure there are more reasons to blog. One of them is...it's fun.
More later. Please comment if you have thoughts.
As of the last time I looked, there wasn't an official list of "compatible with Vista" software. Vista is the soon-to-be-released version of Microsoft's Windows Operating System, and will eventually replace Windows XP.
And as I expected, the list of the software that won't run on Vista has already begun to trickle out...and the first entry into the fray is...Microsoft's premier software development tool...Visual Studio.
You'll have to read the article for the full announcement, including the release of a BETA SERVICE PACK for Visual Studio (I don't think I've ever seen that one before...a BETA service pack!). Here's Microsoft's quote:
"This was a tough decision for us internally, whether to hold the service pack to get all of the [Vista] fixes or get it out there sooner," said Jay Roxe, group product manager for Visual Studio at Microsoft. "The feedback from customers was that they want it sooner."
This is always the dilemma. All software has bugs. If we kept testing until all the bugs were gone, we'd never release the software.
I just hope Microsoft has enough of the bugs worked out.
Some of the bad battery packs made by Sony for Dell may have been shipped during service calls, not with the original notebooks, Dell notes. This means 100,000 more batteries are being recalled.
UPDATE: Dell, Toshiba Recall More Notebook Batteries - Technology News by TechWeb
Your teenager will be interested in Zune, the newest MP3 player from Microsoft, but should you?
I had lunch with a friend on Tuesday. He's into music, and is looking forward to getting an MP3 player for all his 50s and 60s music. But what about business applications?
I'll leave that question hanging for a few more weeks, but you can bet the answer has to do with podcasting.
Zune Pricing Shows Microsoft Waging Market Share Gamble - Mobile Technology News by TechWeb
Ok. Somebody here asked me how the button on the front of the Zune was going to work...and being the techie I am, I googled it. Here's a YouTube video posted into a blog that will give you an idea. Let me know what you think.
Between now and the end of the first quarter, we'll see releases of Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. A lot of words have been spilt in the press over the hardware requirements for Vista. Most of these words have been about Aero Glass, the new 3-d interface that makes overlapping windows on the screen partially transparent, as well as other things.
To see a bit of what Vista will do, visit the Microsoft Vista site. Click on the User Experience link at the top to see print screens of the new interface. In a recent presentation, the presenter referred to these features as "eye candy." Other than the thumbnail images of pages that come up when you press Alt+Tab in the new version, he came up with very little productivity enhancement from the new interface.
Other features in Vista deserve a bit more consideration. The main features I think businesses will be interested in as of now are:
I'm loading Vista RC 1 on a new machine this weekend. I'll let you know how it turns out.
This page contains all entries posted to Thinking Tech in September 2006. They are listed from oldest to newest.
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