The iPhone 2

The new iPhone has not been released yet, but I have a lot of people asking me about them. Since Waidet supports all of the technology our clients utilize, including all types of handheld's, anytime something new comes along, we check it out and get a lot of questions as to whether it would be a good business tool or not.

There are quite a few business users that want an iPhone but didn't pick one up since it didn't do Exchange syncing and the overall lack of security. The new iPhone 2 now has Exchange Activesync (should work like any other Windows Mobile device giving you full Outlook syncing - e-mail, calendar, Contacts, and tasks), 3G for much faster data connectivity, and GPS. Oh, and it is less expensive than the original iPhone was.

If it works like it is supposed to, I might consider picking one up. I still think I need a "real" keyboard though since I draft and reply to a lot of emails on my device so the virtual keyboard might not work for me, but I want to check it out anyway. With GPS and 3G on the device, that pushes it up toward the top of good features all devices should have but many do not. A Blackberry is still more secure than Exchange Activesync. So, if you are concerned with your device getting in the wrong hands, then you might want to get a Blackberry.


So for all of the people who asked me about whether they should get one I say go for it as long as you can handle the virtual keyboard. The first step is to wait until it hits the streets and then let's try to get a demo unit to see if it works the way you need it to.

Need a new videocamera? Get a Sony HDR-TG1

It was time to get a new videocamera. Not just because the new one I picked up has cool new technology, but more importantly, my old one uses a now defunct recording method called Micro MV (Sony stopped selling Micro MV videocamera's and cassettes years ago). I bought my earlier one 6 years ago and it was on the bleeding edge of technology then since it was small and light for the day.


The last thing I wanted was to have the camera die and be stuck with a bunch of tapes that I cannot do anything with. Additionally, the editing software does not handle this format any longer and when I copy the videos from the cassette to my PC, the audio is delayed a few seconds for the entire tape. Not a good place to be, hence the want/need for a new videocamera.


Since I've had the new camera for only about a week, I will write a full review next month. So far I love it. It is small and light enough (at only 10 oz.) to put in your pocket and takes beautiful HD video on a memory stick. There are a host of additional features that make it well worth buying, but I will go in to that detail later when I review the unit fully.

If you are looking for a new videocamera, check this one out. Feel free to give me a call or email me if you have any questions.

Add wireless to almost any digital camera

Although I have not tried one of these, I want one since it has some very intriguing uses. A company called Eye-fi has an offering that is a 2 gig SD card (the same SD memory cards like you use now to store pictures on your digital camera) but this one includes a built-in wifi card all in a normal sized SD memory card. You pop the eye-fi card in your camera and you have 2 gigs of storage and your camera can access your home wireless network to automatically upload your pictures to your PC or even online services like Flickr, Shutterfly, or even Costco (there are 20 services available currently). This card even does geotagging which is the ability to automatically tag each photo with a location of where you are when the picture is taken. Systems like Google's Picasa, Flickr, and others can use this information.


So why would I want one?

• Immediate transfer of your photo's. I can't tell you how many times I take pictures and then forget to plug my camera in to a PC to upload. Then when I do, I need to compare what has been uploaded already so I get the recent ones uploaded. With the Eye-fi card, you can just turn on the camera and it will automatically upload them, never needing to plug the camera in to a PC. Amazingly, the battery overhead is supposed to be only about 5%.


• Geotagging. Although I do not do geotagging currently, I can see this being a valuable feature. Finding historical pictures can be difficult. I store mine for the most part by date range, but it could be real advantageous to be able to also pull up a map and zoom in the locations of where the pictures were taken to find the appropriate ones. You can check this out to see how this works http://www.flickr.com/help/screencasts/vol2

You can even use this card for security if you get lucky like one person did when their camera was stolen. Check out the article here.

You can check them out here http://www.eye.fi/

You cannot buy Windows XP after June 30th....

Starting June 30th 2008, you will no longer be able to purchase Windows XP or get XP on a new machine. Things are going to get interesting to say the least. We rarely purchase new machines for clients that have Vista since everyone, rightfully so, wants to stick with XP.

We all knew it was going to happen at some point. Microsoft was pushing to retire XP the day Vista was released. There are still a lot of problems with Vista, especially if your computer is not brand new.

Microsoft will be supporting XP until 2014 so no need to worry about your current machines and having to upgrade them to Vista unless you want to.

You do have downgrade rights though. You can purchase Vista and then downgrade to the appropriate version of XP if needed. Details below for Microsoft's rules of the road. At least you do have an option to get the XP licensing, but now you need to re-image every computer you get to re-install XP on it. This is not a big deal for larger organizations since usually each new machine is wiped with a new corporate standard image, but for smaller organizations, this will be painful and expensive to have your technology team do this each time. If you do not have imaging software to do this, you might want to get some to make your life a lot easier.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4f4b3cfd-7f4e-46cb-8117-8275f7683d3f&DisplayLang=en

It looks like we will all be enjoying Vista soon enough so get ready!

Time to Upgrade to Vista? - Doubt it....

Vista, Vista, Vista. If you used it, I'm sure you have an opinion - some stronger and louder than others. I cant help but chuckle at the Mac commercials pointing out the problems with Vista. We support many users that are using Vista and I would have to say that most of them have a host of odd issues and some of them have chronic problems and are considering going back to XP. For example, my Thinkpad tablet laptop has been running Vista for over a year (I had "issues" so I did a complete rebuild about 9 months ago) and just a few weeks ago, my VPN connection seemed to barely work only giving me access to email, but no corporate drives. Rebooting didn't help, service packs didn't help, even spending a lot of time tweaking the network config provided no relief. I work from home nearly every night so this became a big deal.

So what did I do to fix it? Well, nothing actually. After about a week it just started working normally again. I like to have answers as to why things work or do not work so it can be managed for in the future. With Vista, there just seems to be way too many "ghosts in the machine" so my liking.

XP seems to have it good nowadays and is relatively stable and predicable. If you've got XP, then you might want to install SP3 which came out earlier this month.
https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=68c48dad-bc34-40be-8d85-6bb4f56f5110&displaylang=en.

Like I've said before, Vista ain't all that bad, but it does have its long list of issues. I went to a Microsoft event that was discussing some new server applications, but it pretty quickly focused on people experience with Vista. The Microsoft employee that was giving the presentation had an interesting correlation to XP saying that when XP first came out, the hardware was barely capable of handling it, but now the hardware outpaces the operating system so XP works great. Given enough time, the same will (may?) with Vista. His comment did have some merit, so time will tell, that is unless Microsoft pulls the plug and comes out with a Vista R2 and calls it something else.

If you are thinking about rolling out Vista, check out this article on CIO.com since it has some good advice to consider.

http://www.cio.com/article/343469?source=nlt_cioinsider

R2D2 Projector or webcam - decisions, decisions

If you are reading this, then you must be some sort of Star Wars fan. I would not say I'm a huge fan, but I did love the movies and cool technology when I was a kid. Heck, who didn't want a R2D2 running about the house. Well now you can, sort of.

If you have the disposable income and need a projector or Skype webcam, then maybe you should pick one of these up. Believe it or not, you can have your very own R2D2 projector unit that looks and sounds just like the one in the movies to shuttle about your home or office to project games, video, or PowerPoint on the walls or ceiling. The webcam could be worth getting if it could produce a higher quality video signal and be used for more than just Skype.

You can go here and check it out. http://www.nikkor2d2.com/

Hum, it could make a good edition to the office for those long meetings to keep everyone awake...

Multiparty videoconferencing on the cheap

We work with many of our clients to help determine the best communication platform to align with their business needs. Whether it be videoconferencing, web collaboration, conference calling bridges, IP phones, desktop video, or anything that helps people and/or teams communicate more effectively. We guide the process and support the end user after implementation.

To that end, I'm always looking for new platforms, such as ooVoo. This offering provides group desktop videoconferencing for up to 6 people in a single call. And it does it for free (for now at least). All you need is a webcam and download the ooVoo client, and you are good to go. Setup is a breeze and it even allows you to record meetings and do free audio calls, among some other interesting things. It even works with the MAC!

For me, videoconferencing needs to fit the following "rules" to be worth using:

• Quality - Good picture quality and perfect audio. Everyone can handle some choppy video, but bad audio kills the communication.
• Easy - For conference room systems it has to be something that allows you to walk in the room and just work. For desktop systems, it simple one/two clicks and it just works.
• Cost - Depends on the need, but there are a lot of conference room systems that are price affective and some desktop options that play nice with the pocket book as well.
• Reliability - It has to be reliable and work all of the time.

ooVoo
The advantage ooVoo has over options like Skype and other instant messaging software that do video like AIM and MSN, is that ooVoo does a really good job at providing high quality video and audio. My experience has been that Skype and the others do a mediocre job, at best, with a small often choppy postage stamp size video image. However with ooVoo, you get a pretty good sized image along with amazingly smooth video and really good audio. I wish it also had desktop sharing for more collaboration, but then again this is not specifically a platform geared towards business. Seems like it would work fine for small businesses or groups to use instead of more expensive, but more robust, offerings like Adobe Connect.

So how do I use it?
This is a new system for me so I have not had the time to use it much yet. At first glance, it looks a lot like the normal instant message tools. The big difference is that it does a much better job at video collaboration for one to one or a group or people over the other options out there. I've tried some of our professional tools to get my family, who are scattered across the country, doing videoconferencing, with little success. Mainly, firewall issues and installation needs have been the hindrance (not to mention my sisters family in Helena Montana that who's ISP blocks video traffic). Using ooVoo should work like a charm for everyone so we can do group family calls allowing grandma to see the grand kids. There is no reason it will not work for the corporate world as well. I've just not had the chance to give it a try.

The beauty of the system is in the simplicity and the results. I did a test call with someone who has tried Skype, and the others, with such poor results, that she does not really use it any longer. I had her download ooVoo and make a test call and immediately she proclaimed that it was so much better than anything else she has tried and is eager to start using it. People who have tried the free video options before will get it immediately - ooVoo is easy and it actually works well.

Just be sure and go to Settings and adjust the video for 30 frames per second and higher quality if you have the Internet bandwidth.

You can check out ooVoo your self by going here http://www.ooVoo.com and let me know what you think.

Get your computer to run like it is new again

I think everyone remembers the day they get a new computer. It boots up almost immediately, rarely crashes, programs open quickly, and you are in the world of no pop-ups, viruses, or spyware. It seems that after less than a year, your technology utopia degrades to more of a reluctant acceptance of a mediocre computer experience.

So why does this happen?

Simply put, no one is managing your computers. When was the last time any general maintenance was done to your computer (defragging your hard drive, running scandisk, deleting temp files, etc.)? Do you have all of the latest Windows and Office updates? Do you run spyware and virus scans on a regular basis? Most people do not do the basics on their computer and over time, it will degrade the performance.

So what can you do?

• For starters, you can hire Waident to manage your technology. A core part of our technology managed plan is doing general proactive maintenance on all of your equipment so everyone has a computer that is in optimal working condition. We monitor, report, run routine maintenance after hours, and provide end users with people to call for anything they need, among a host of other services that are a part of the managed plan. Enough of the sales pitch for now : )


• Or you can rebuild your PC's on a regular basis. This is actually not a terribly bad idea if you have the polices in place to accomplish this. You can create an image of a standard fully configured computer and push that out. Many large companies do this. The downside is that the end users go through some suffering if they customized their computer in any way. I do not recommend doing this overall since it does impact the end users, but I like to enforce the ability to do this if someones PC is so inoperable that it will take a long time to manually fix.


• Or you can run the maintenance routines yourself. Easy enough to do, but if you are doing it manually it can be time consuming. There is also no easy way to globally report off of who has done what to their computer so what ends up happening is that if someone complains that their PC is acting up, you end up doing the general maintenance first anyway which just takes more time away from the user being productive.

Do you want to know how well your PC's are doing?

Give me a call or email for a free technology audit and review. We can invisibly scan all of your computers to check for missing Microsoft updates, needed maintenance routines, and other key criteria to then hand you a health report on existing computer infrastructure. The results may surprise you.

Thanks
John

How to save a bunch of dough with your cell phone carrier

Verizon, and now Sprint, are starting to offer unlimited usage plans for their cell phones and PDA devices. This in itself, can end up saving a lot of money if you have some heavy users (read the fine print though since the dollars for these plans start to go up quite a bit as you add services). But even without this, there are ways to save a lot of money on your company wireless bill that could add up to thousands of dollars a year.

For most of our clients, we recommend reviewing their cell phone bills and go over the below to determine if there is any money that can be saved by make a few changes to their policy and accounts.

• Get all of your users on a company wide plan. All to often, companies allow their employees to maintain personal plans and then expense the charges. Nowadays it is easy to move cell phone numbers between carriers so there are not big roadblocks to putting people on your plan or moving them off if ever needed.


• Get everyone on a shared pool of cell phone minutes plan. Most peoples usages varies from month to month so why not leverage the ability for carriers to handle this wile saving you money but globally reducing all of the devices in the plan to a lower monthly minute plan. In the end, everyone can still make the calls they did before, but now the pool handles the ups and downs.


• Worry about your users needs - Not very many people need text messaging for business use since corporate users have Blackberry's and Windows Mobile devices that do email, but most people today have one device and do not want to carry around two phones. Text messaging is often the norm for communicating with friends and family so think about allowing an allotment of text messages for users rather than restricting it all together. Trust me, it is a pain to review the bill every month and then have accounting chase down the text message users. This is not a win/win situation and you will quickly realize that nearly all of your users are doing some text messaging and it will be cheaper (and a level of good will) to just make it a part of the plan.


• Choose the best carrier for your needs - All of the national carriers have their good and bad sides. Verizon seems to be tops in not dropping calls and fast data connectivity, but they are expensive compared to T-Mobile. T-Mobile seems to be the least expensive carrier, but has the slowest data network. But there is also Sprint, AT&T and others in the mix to look at. Moving to a different carrier usually means getting a new device so be prepared for the capital expenditure for that if you decide to make the move. Relating to that, if your users move from a personal plan to a business plan, often there can be termination charge for that as well. Even with these extra charges, doing the ROI for this will often still make sense so it is worth the exercise.

Now, go out and get your wireless bills and start doing the math to see how much money you can save!

Got Office 2007? - If so, you may need this...

Office 2007 is a mixed bag or tricks. Some of the system is great and other area's are just too different for people to want to figure out and use. I love Outlook 2007 and cannot live without the real time searching, but there are still simple things I used to do in Word, that I have no clue how to do in Word 2007. Oh well that is my problem to figure out, but above and beyond the usability issues of the programs themselves, a bigger issue is that Office 2007 uses a new file format structure and something saved in Office 2007 will not work in the older versions of Office. This can be very frustrating having worked on a document and saving it just to have another use not be able to open the document at all. Then you need to re-open your doc and save it as the older version of Word and worse, remember to do that each time you create a document.

Luckily, Microsoft has learned throughout the years that nearly no one converts all of their users to a new version of Office at the same time so they create software updates for older versions of Office that can deal with the new versions of Office. If you have any users on Office 2007, it might be a good idea to install the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack on the users who are not working in the Office 2007 programs. This could alleviate a lot of future headaches when it comes time to sharing files.


Give it a try!

SPAM - What the heck can be done to make it go away!

No one likes SPAM. I used to tolerate it, but now that I get over 100 a day, it is really beginning to get on my nerves. I'm not sure who actually buys anything from those incessant emails for replica OmegaRoexWatches, VIP Casino, V1agra!, and all of the other crap that is being pitched, but the reality is that people do buy things which is why we all get them.

The amount of SPAM most companies get is obscene. Over a 1 week period our SPAM software flagged 75% of all email as spam adding up to over 5,000 messages. We have client with about 100 users that was at 74% SPAM and over 24,000 messages. Things do look bleak when it comes to dealing with SPAM.

So what can be done to stop or at least reduce, spam besides educating everyone on the Internet to not buy anything from a spam message? Below are some of the general options out there to help. My take on this is that nothing is perfect since I want system will block spam before it ever hits my server, allow me to review my spam message easily from within Outlook, allow me to easily flag messages as spam or not as spam, and do an exceptional job at catching what needs to be caught while letting the real messages through.

• Server based - This setup has you buy and install software on your email server to then filter spam. It normally works well with little server overhead or management needed and allows you to see all of the messages that have been flagged as spam in your account in order to grab the false positives, but the downside is that all of the spam is still making it to your server and taking up you server and Internet resources. GFI is an example of this kind of service.


• Hosted - This option is becoming more and more popular since the hosted provider deals with the spam and only send along the "real" emails to your email account. The upside is that Postini is an example of this kind of service.


• Intermediary - This is another hosted service, but the way it works is a bit different from the above. With this system, if someone sends you an email, the send gets an auto reply for them to go to a website and authenticate themselves before the message makes it to you. It is an easy enough process of clicking on a link and filling in a field with some pass code info that is on the page, and then you are done. The problem I have with this kind of service is that it impacts the people who are trying to email me, along with the spammers. I really do not want to bother the real people sending me emails even if it is a one time thing. This is however a very affective option for almost completely reducing spam. ChoiceMail is an example of this kind of service.


• Built in to Exchange server and Outlook - This works, but it is VERY basic for options. The standard setup rejects anything that it determines is spam thus rejecting any false positives that may come along. You do have the option to have anything it finds as spam sent to another mailbox or public folder for review, but just imagine the pain involved with looking for a false positive in the pool of EVERYONE's spam message. for the life of me I cannot figure out why the Exchange server spam engine cannot just work in conjunction with the Outlook spam filter. This would deliver a very affective solution since the Outlook spam filter does a pretty good job and allows users to very easily flag messages as spam or safe.

So why do you get spam in the first place? The frustrating part is that most spam happens by you just doing your normal course of business. For example, if you put your email address on your website, spammers will search the web for these and add it to the database. Once it hits a spam database, it can end up on a lot of other ones so it can spiral out of control. A lot of website make people use an email address for their own marketing needs, but often these get sold to spammers as well.

Any other ideas for reducing spam? I know people that have multiple email address which allow them to use specific emails address for specific needs. So if you need to use an email address for a website, you use one of the bogus ones that you do not care about getting spam. This works well, but then you need to remember and think about which email address to use and then manage multiple mailboxes.

If anyone out there has the perfect service or tool, please create a comment to this blog entry. I would love to know what others are using to see if there is something better out there for our clients to use.

More Apple

Is Apple becoming the new technology leader over Microsoft? I guess that is like comparing, well, Apples and Oranges, but the world of Apple is invading all of our lives more and more everyday. I'm not saying that is a bad thing at all to have Apple push Microsoft out of the way a bit. This is more of an observation.

I am not a huge Apple devote, but I am feeling the Appleness coming in to my world. The other day my Apple update software popped up and asked it if could install Safari. What the heck is up with that? I do have iTunes but I'm not sure what that has to do with getting Safari pushed to me because. Sounds a bit like a Microsoft tactic to me, but then again it worked and I did download it. Looks like pretty cool software, but still, can apple push anything to my PC as long as I have something else Apple on it?

Another Appleness adventure in my world is that my office adopted its first Apple computer. We picked up an Apple Mac Mini to check and start learning since more and more of our clients are picking up Apple's and asking us for support. If you have never seen a Mac Mini you should check it out. It is about the size of an external hard drive (6 inches by 6 inches, by 3 inches or thereabouts), very quite, and peppy. We have it plugged in to our videoconferencing flat screen and it looks amazing on the screen and is so small you do not even notice it. way better than a clunky PC.

Our technology management platform now works with Mac's so we can help our client's Mac users and manage them just like we do with Windows devices. Of course it took us quite a while just to figure out how to eject the CD from our Mac Mini's drive and do other simple things, but we finally figured it out. The amazing thing was that we pretty much plugged it in and while searching for the network setting to configure it, by the time we found the area it was already configured and downloading updates. Pretty cool.

Now if I could just figure out how to install a program on the thing I might actually start using it for myself.

Apple iPhone works with Outlook like a Blackberry

Not yet, but it is coming, and not exactly like a Blackberry. It should working like any other Windows mobile device using the Exchange server Active Sync though which ain't too bad. At least you will get pretty much real time syncing and access to your e-mail, calendar, and contacts, as well as, a bit of built in security.

This will not be as nearly as robust as the Blackberry Server setup, but the advantage of Exchange Active Sync is that it is included in the server and does not use Rim's servers in the middle. If you have a Blackberry you probably know about the recent Rim server outages which kept a lot of Blackberry users from syncing.

More details can be found here or by doing a Google search for iPhone Exchange
http://www.cio.com/article/193400/

Most IT departments have not needed to deal with the iPhone since it could not sync with the corporate email system. The best you could do was get pop3 working; that is if your IT department had pop3 working on the server and on your account. I'm sure many a bribe of free lunch was made for some users to get their email working on their iPhone since they were released.

Get ready to start supporting the iPhone if you are already supporting Windows mobile devices....

DST - Is it worse than Y2K on your technology?

Daylight Savings Time. In my world it does not save much daylight, makes it difficult to get out of bed those mornings when it is dark again, and also causes some technology headaches. I made a comment last week that I've seen more recent technology disruptions caused by last years DST change that I did with the Y2K scare. Last year when the change went in to affect, everyone went out and did some DST update on their computers, servers, Blackberry's, and anything that may be affected. What we are seeing is that with our new clients, many of the systems were never updated and with our existing clients some systems that couldn't be updated are now pitching a fit.

• Outlook Calendar - There is a DST patch for Windows and Outlook, but it seems to have mixed results. Old recurring appointments seem to be the biggest items affected. Not optimal, but the best results come from deleting the old recurring meeting and recreating it.
• Blackberry's - You should push out the DST patch to all devices to help eliminate the calendar appointments from being off an hour. If the Outlook calendar recurring appointment issue is also happening, things can get real messy fast.
• Older systems - If you can do the DST update, then give it a try. But be prepared for some future strange behaviour around the DST time change and be careful if you make any changes since it cause some server crashing.

And then there was our system that wouldn't open due to the leap year - but don't get me started on that....

HDTV - A Buyers Story

Everybody wants one. OK, maybe just the guys want one. We cannot help but want to get a big flat screen TV after watching so many commercials and hearing about them. Remember just a few years ago when picking out a TV was pretty much just an exercise about the size of screen you could afford and would fit in your TV cabinet? Unfortunately those days are gone, and when you walk in to your local Best Buy, you see hundreds of flat panel's and a handful of the old CRT types to choose from. But with so many options, choices, brands, and moving parts to the whole experience, what do you do when it is time to actually buy one? Maybe the below will help with your purchasing adventure.

I'm not really an audiophile/videophile. I just like good quality equipment with a host of features and functions. That being said, I'll tell you what I've learned, but claim no expertise in the field by any means.

The Story
While recently watching my aging 27" Sony tube TV, I said to my wife - "I'm thinking about getting a flat screen TV" and without missing a beat, she answered with "We do not need a new TV, but we do need a new couch...". If you are married, you know where the story goes from there. In the end, I got my new $1,200 HDTV along with a new couch, new chair, new ottoman, new TV cabinet, new end table, and new paint for the room (I found out that you cannot have all of this new stuff in a room with old paint - go figure). Oh, and we are also looking at a new hutch for the dining room and of course we need a new couch for the living room. Be prepared to have your new HDTV cost about 5 times or more than the unit itself.

The Lingo

• Plasma v. LCD v. DLP - Plasma sets still produce a better overall picture, but not by a large margin. Plasma's are quite a bit heavier than LCD's and there is a strong chance of screen burn-in with them, along with a shorter life expectancy since they will get progressively dimmer over the years. LCD's do not have these problems with burn-in or dimming, but you do need to worry about contrast ratios and viewing angle. DLP sets are your best option for a large size for the money, but they tend to have a more pronounced viewing angle issue, are quite a bit thicker (18" compared to 4"), and they will need aligning and tweaking of the lenses to get maintain the best picture. Overall any of these types of TV's will give you a great HD experience for the most part.
  
• 720p, 1080i, 1080p - This is basically the resolution of the TV. The latest and greatest is 1080p. Blu-Ray and HD TV uses 1080p (the "p" is for progressive giving you a slightly better picture than "i" which is for interlaced) and HD TV signals are 1080i. Standard TV runs are 480 and DVD's at 720. The reality to it all is that having a 1080p resolution TV only makes sense if the size is above 46". Anything smaller, you don’t really need 1080p at all since the signals will be converted down/up to fit the TV's resolution and your eye at a normal viewing distance will not see the loss of detail. Most new LCD and DLP sets on the market are now 1080p with more plasma sets being 1080p.
  
• Contrast ratio - the higher the better for the most part. This aspect mainly applies for LCD screens. You need back lighting with the LCD technology so the higher the contrast ratio, the deeper the blacks will be on your image. A higher ration does not always mean a better overall image though. The Vizio I was looking at was 1,600:1 and the Samsung I ordered is 10,000:1 so the Samsung will produce better contrast, but not 8 times better overall picture quality. The best sets on the market will do dynamic contrast with number of 40:000:1 or higher.
  
• HD DVD versus Blu-ray DVD - These are competing high def formats for DVD's much akin to the VCR and Beta max days. Read below in the future section for details.

The Content
Now that you have a HDTV, what are you going to do for HD content? Your current DVD's should look good and the standard definition television should look OK, but not great depending on the signal strength. For the TV to shine, you need HD content. For this you can use a set of rabbit ears to get over the air HD signals of local stations (it works amazingly well if you can get a good signal), have a service like digital cable or satellite and get the HD channels, get a gaming machine that produces HD, or pick up a Blu-ray DVD player. Direct TV seems to have some good deals and HD channels. I have not played games in years, but am considering a Sony Playstation 3 since it is also a good upgradable Blu-ray DVD player and a gaming machine for less money than picking up a standard Blu-ray player.

Do you want to get the HDTV without having to get the furniture? We there may be a way. When I first plugged in our TV, I had the unit do the typical channel scan and it found some HD channels, even though we have basic analogue cable TV. Why would this keep me from buying furniture you say? Well, after the comments from my wife that the TV is too big, I turned on the HD Food Network channel and almost instantly, she was hooked. It was pretty amazing seeing all of the detail and could even see every grain of salt and pepper in the recipe while even catching the crystal clear reflection of the camera man in the mixing bowl. So if you can, bring home the TV and turn on your spouse’s favorite channel in HD and see how it goes.

The Gear
I don't watch that much TV (depending on who you ask that is) so I didn't want to spend a lot of dough and wanted to stay close to a $1,000 budget for a 42" or larger HDTV.

Samsung 1080p LCD 46" HDTV (model # LNT4661F) - this is the unit I picked up on Amazon. Why this unit? After a ton of research on different models and learning about 720p versus 1080p, contrast ratios, screen size, and the host of other features, this unit came out to be the best bang for the buck. Consumer Reports rated it #2 amongst similar sized LCD offerings, it had a good contrast ratio, and the price was right compared to a lot of the other models on the market. I didn't want a plasma due to burn in issues. I was going to get a 47" Vizio model that I found on sale at some point, but that deal ended by the time I was ready to purchase (and it had lower specs and a lower Consumer Reports rating). The Vizio and Olevia models have found a niche today since you can get a larger screen for your money. Do you buy a higher end smaller Sony or get a much larger Vizio for the money? They do not directly compare in picture quality per se, but when you get a big Vizio in your house and plug in your Direct TV and watch an HD program, and you will be surprised by the great picture quality (I've got a 37" Vizio in my office for videoconferencing and we plugged in a set of rabbit ears and can tune in over the air HD signals and it looks great).

The Future
If you read this far along, you really must be interested so I'll tell you what the future holds for HDTV. First off, the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD is over and Blu-ray won. Be sure and don't buy a HD DVD player/movies, even if you see a good sale. Being an early adopter of a Blu-ray player might be a bit risky since most cannot be upgraded and there is a new standard coming out so it might be best to wait a bit before picking one up.

As far as the HD TV's go, the new technology that will be taking over will be OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode). This will provide the best overall experience with a very thin screen (probably less than an inch thick), perfect contrast ratio's (1,000,000:1) so you end up with true blacks, no screen burn-in which plague the plasma's, no restricted viewing angle which affects the LCD's, all in a much lighter and lower power consuming device. LCD panel's need to be grown in a lab and have a fairly high failure rate which makes them expensive. OLED technology, on the other hand, can be sprayed on to the substrate, similar to using an inkjet printer, so the expectation is a much cheaper production cost and a much lower failure rate. The challenge today is that the organic part of the technology does have a shelf life so the early units will get dim after a period of years like a plasma screen do. This is changing rapidly though so I expect that in the next couple of years or less, this will be a non-issue.

OLED screens are just starting to hit the market with Sony only having a 11" model on the street and a 27" prototype currently, but this technology is moving faster for cell phones and even laptop screens. In several years, don't be surprised to see people getting a 70" or larger OLED screen for the current price of a 46" LCD TV.

Go get yourself a new HDTV!

Is Outlook 2007 slow for you?

This seems to be the month of Outlook tips. This one found by Mark in my office. Definitely worth doing if your Outlook is having problems and is running slower than you think it should. Essentially a lot of programs, especially Microsoft ones, add components of software to Outlook. This is great when you need them to work together more effectively, but not so much if they are programs that you do not care about using at all let alone within Outlook.

All you need to do is the below and it is quick and easy and worth the effort.

• Open Outlook
• Click on Tools then Trust Center
• Click on the Add-in's option on the right hand side. Now you will see all of the add-in's under the Active, Inactive, and Disabled sections
• You should see a long list of items in the Active section to the right with most of them not being needed to be Active at all
• At the bottom of the screen, click on the Go button which will pull up a list and allow you to uncheck the ones you do not want to be Active.
• Click OK and you are done.

So which ones do you care about and which one can be Inactive? Well it depends on what programs you have installed. I pretty much made them all Inactive except for the MS CRM, OneNote, and Windows Search since I use all of those programs within Outlook. I made more than 10 Inactive - like iTunes, MS Office Groove, MS Outlook Mobile, MS VBA, MS Exchange Unified Messaging, Send to Bluetooth, and the list goes on.

Your mileage may vary so give it a whirl and start making them Inactive and see if it helps. So far it has worked for me with no ill affects.

Need help getting this setup? Give us a call and we can do it for you in no time at all and since we bill to the minute, it may be the best few bucks you spend all year.

Use Verizon Wireless? You should be dialing *22899

If you have a phone or PDA using the Verizon wireless service, you might not know that they recommend dialing *22899 every month, or when you travel, to update your devices Verizon code. Doing this routine also helps if you notice anything "odd" happening connectivity wise with your device.

When you dial the number you will hear some hold type music and you may see on your screen some text about the phone being upgraded. The entire process takes about a minute and you will not lose any data. This just updates the phone code and does not affect any of your data on your phone or PDA.

If you have never done this, give it a try!

Best BlackBerry Shortcuts

We could all use a helpful trick or two for our Blackberry so check out the article below on CIO.com by Aflac's Technology Concierge. I love the fact that Aflac provides a service to its employees like this since we provide much of the same to our clients. We regularly get calls from Blackberry users, and all too often, we end up telling them to pull the battery and reboot their device when they are having "odd" problems. Looks like we are not the only ones who know this trick since the Technology Concierge at Aflac has found that 95 percent of her problems are fixed buy simply pulling the battery for a reboot.

Here is a complete list of the shortcut that you can review or print out. Click here

And don't forget the basics listed below:

When in a list of messages, or when reading a message:
T- Top
B- Bottom
Space bar- next page
Num shift + Space bar - previous page

When in a list of messages:
N- go to Next day
P- go to Prev day

Definitely worth the read if you have a Blackberry and want to save some time doing daily tasks on the device.

Best BlackBerry Shortcuts: Aflac's Mobile Guru Shares Tips
http://www.cio.com/article/174250/?source=nlt_cioinsider_top5


Enjoy!

Hot Tech Toys from the Past

It always amazes me that technology often changes so rapidly and we become quickly accustomed to it. Whenever I run into articles like the below, it is fun to see what I thought was cutting edge just 10 years ago, looks rather ridiculous today.

If you have a few minutes give the article a read for some fun.

http://www.cio.com/special/slideshows/the90s/index?source=nlt_cioinsider

Microsoft SharePoint - Why you may need it

SharePoint. Many people have heard of it, many people have not, but what the heck is it and why do you care? Simply put - SharePoint allows organizations to collaborate, manage disparate applications and information in a single view, manage documents, and securely share information outside of the organization - and this is the short list of what it can do. If your business is growing and you are feeling the demands for better business intelligence and end user data integration, you might want to talk to someone about SharePoint. It is not for everyone, but well worth the time to check out since it might be right for your organization.

I wish I was an expert in the program, but alas, I am not, which is why I rely on our strategic partners to consult, design, and implement SharePoint. Since they work with this day in and day out, you deserve the highest level of expertise for this type of enterprise project. Waident can help support SharePoint after it is in place, along with all of your firms technology, but if you need SharePoint advice, give us a ring and we will point you in the right direction

There is a great article on CIO.com that details what SharePoint can do for you. It is worth spending a few minutes on the topic.

SharePoint 2007 Demystified: How to Cash in on Collaboration Tools
http://www.cio.com/article/169750?source=nlt_ciohowto

Worlds thinnest laptop - do you want one?

The Apple MacBook Air - 0.16 to 0.76 inch thin (that is VERY thin), a light 3 pounds, 13.3 inch screen (quite large for that size laptop), a peppy Core duo processor, 2 gigs or RAM, 802.11N wireless (the latest and greatest soon to be standard), and a 5 hour battery. Oh, and it runs the latest Mac operating system Leopard.

Details here - http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html

But is it worth checking out? Just by looking at the specs, I would say yes. They look great but can you afford it? Actually, yes, if you are looking for an ultra portable laptop that is. This one retails for about $1,700 when it hits the streets. Not bad at all for that breed of machine. Most other manufactures pushing their ultra portable laptops will be at least that amount and can be multiples of that price. But you will need to wait until they release it which should be in less than a month.

So why would I want one? Well if you want a Mac than you might definitely want one of these. If you want a Windows laptop, you might want one of these - it runs Leopard so you can install Windows on it and boot up in to Windows any time you want (and yes it works just like Windows should with nearly no gotchas at all). The specs are great and the visual styling is very appealing. More importantly, it is fast, has good battery life, and has a fairly large screen for that type of laptop (most have a 12.1 inch screen) and is light. All great combinations for a laptop.

So why would I not want one? Depending on how you want to use it, it is lacking in some areas. For one, it only has 1 USB port. I normally need only one, but will often want 2 or more ports, but OK I can pick up a small 4 port USB hub for $10 so maybe this is a moot point (if you do not mind carrying around another device). There is no built in optical drive. I don't have that know and rarely use them anyway. It also does not have an Ethernet port. I know that is strange since all laptop and PC's have these nowadays, but maybe they figure with the high speed 802.11N wireless, you do not need it. Maybe, but you can get yet another adaptor for Ethernet if you want. The hard drive is a bit slower than "normal" as well. Oh, and it does not have a removable battery. Then again, when was the last time you swapped batteries anyway.

Well am I getting one? Probably not, but I am very tempted. I use a tablet laptop that is light and small since I take it almost everywhere. It is about a year old and I'm not ready to give it up yet and I want the ability to write on the screen. If I had an older non-tablet laptop, I would probably go for it. I can be just as productive since I can still use Windows if/when needed and I would then have all of the upsides of the Mac and this appealing form factor.

This laptop is not for everyone, but like I said before, depending on how you work, this might be a great fit for you.

Want the holidays in your Outlook Calendar?

A new year brings in a new set of holidays that need to be in your calendar. Adding holidays for Outlook 2003 and 2007 is VERY easy to do by following the below directions. For Outlook 2000 or 2002 it is a bit more challenging, but can be done by using a file that has the holidays in it and doing an import of that information. The holiday file can be found on the Internet be searching for "outlook.hol" but make sure the file has the latest holidays in it since it could be stale or incorrect (Microsoft's earlier version had wrong information for some holidays).


For Outlook 2003 and 2007

• Open Outlook
• Click on Tools then Options
• Click on the Calendar Options button
• Click on the Add Holidays button which is half way down on that window

Have a great holiday!

Why would I want to write on my laptop??

The tablet PC has been around for years for Windows, but now there is a Mac version. This can be a very good thing for many Mac users that need this type of functionality.

What exactly is a tablet you may ask? The simple answer is that a tablet allows you to write on the screen. Why would anyone care about this? There are many reasons depending on how you work and what you want your laptop to do for you. The ability to write on the screen opens up a whole new world of opportunities to interact with your laptop. Take notes at meetings, use the pen as a mouse, perfect for doing work in a cramped space like a plane, drawing diagrams, signing documents, editing documents, and the list goes on.

We have several clients that use tablet style laptops since many of their employees edit documents on a regular basis. In the past they would print out the document, mark it up, scan the document into a PDF file to email to their administrative assistant to update, the AA would then print out the document and make the changes. Now they just mark up the Word document, save it, email it to their AA and they in turn make the edits on the fly. This often saves a lot of time and makes life easier for everyone involved.

I use an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad convertible tablet which has the normal keyboard but allows me to swivel the screen and lay it flat so I can write on it like a thick piece of paper. This is great for meetings since there is no need to take notes on paper then transcribe them into digital later.

Mac Tablet info here http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook and there may be an Apple version on the horizon.

Nearly all laptop manufacturers are making tablet style laptops so you can check out your vendor to see what they may offer. I expect more and more laptops on the market will incorporate the ability to write on the screen. Ultimately all laptops may have this functionality.

Now go out and write on your laptop! It could change the way you work.

Did you know.....

Did you know that the there is a Microsoft Office 2007 SP1 now available? Definitely worth doing the install. I'm running Office 2007 which was working well, but had some odd crashing issues and Outlook freezing. The SP1 seemed to help and things are more stable now. If you are a client of ours, we can push this out to your computer if we already have not done so. Feel free to give us a call to setup a time to get this rolled out.

So what about a Vista SP1? That has been rumored to be released in 2007, but never happened. Should be soon though since the release candidate has come out so I would expect to see it for download in January/February 2008. Let others install if for testing first to see how how much pain it causes and what it fixes. I've had so many Vista issues that I will be the tester on this end. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Blackberry Touch - Will it be an iPhone killer?

Yes it seems that RIM is keeping up with their handset model with a touchscreen version dubbed the 9000. Just do a Google search for "blackberry 9000" and you will get more information that you need on the device. Looks like it may be worth checking out mid next year if the rumors are accurate. Will it have a keyboard? Will it have as good of a screen as the iPhone? No one knows at this point. Since it is a Blackberry, it will have the ability to wirelessly sync your Outlook account.

So what is my take? We'll Blackberry's are great business tools, but their weakness lies with their operating system and usability. They work great and reliably for the core functions (email, contacts, calendar), but are fairly utilitarian, at best, for the overall "feel" of the device. Definitely a step forward, but it will be a while before someone comes out with a iPhone like device that matches all of the good things about the iPhone with the corporate needs of syncing with Exchange (and a keyboard for me).

Once I get my hands on a demo unit, I'll do an update to see how it really works.

Surfing the net while in the air....

Finally, it looks like Internet connectivity has come around to the airlines. If you are like me, and do business travel throughout the year, one of the frustrating things about getting on the plane is loosing communications for duration of the flight. Having the ability to stay connected and do emails and such would be well worth the cost.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten on a plane while on a phone call and needing to send someone an email or urgently needing Internet connectivity, just to be told to shut everything down and then be radio silent for X hours.

Yes, I may be mildly (depending on who you ask) addicted to my PDA and addressing emails whenever and wherever I happen to be. I can kick the habit, but why bother if I do not need to while on a plane : )

The article below will give you some details on what is to come.

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In-flight Internet service starts next week
By Susan Stellin New York Times
12:19 PM CST, December 7, 2007

Passengers may soon hear a new in-flight announcement: "You can now log on."Starting next week and over the next few months, several American airlines will begin testing Internet service on their planes.

On Tuesday, JetBlue Airways will begin offering a free e-mail and instant messaging service on one aircraft, while American Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Airlines plan to offer a broader Web experience in the coming months, probably at a cost of around $10 a flight.

"I think 2008 is the year when we will finally start to see in-flight Internet access become available, but I suspect the rollout domestically will take place in a very measured way," said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research.

The airlines' goal is to turn their planes into the equivalent of a wireless hotspot once the aircraft reaches its cruising altitude. Virgin America even plans to link the technology to its seat-back entertainment system, enabling passengers who are not traveling with laptops or smartphones to send messages on a flight. The network can also potentially be used for communications within the plane, like food and drink orders -- something Virgin America already does with its seat-back system.

While the technology could allow travelers to make phone calls over the Internet, most carriers say they have no plans to allow voice communications.

But if a test flight on Wednesday is any indication of the challenges airlines and their technology partners face in trying to offer connectivity at 35,000 feet and 500 miles an hour, travelers can initially expect an experience reminiscent of the days of dial-up access -- slower and more prone to problems than a typical connection on the ground.

"Sometimes you just have to put things out there and see what happens when people try to use it," said Nate Quigley, chief executive of LiveTV, a JetBlue subsidiary responsible for the airline's Internet service as well as its in-flight entertainment system. "We'll find the bugs and eventually get them worked out."

LiveTV is one of several companies aiming to introduce in-flight Internet access in 2008.

A recent survey by Forrester Research that found that 26 percent of leisure travelers would pay $10 for Internet access on a two- to four-hour flight and 45 percent would pay that amount for a flight longer than four hours.

"I think that the airlines will see that the demand is there," Harteveldt said, adding that besides sharing the revenue from these fees, airlines could potentially earn money from advertising on these services or use the cabin's Wi-Fi network to enhance their operations.

Home life - Backup your files! - Revisited

After my initial article on this topic, one of the readers said to check out Mozy as a good vendor and value for backing up files on your home PC. Well I took a look and signed up. for only $60 a year, I can back up unlimited data, which at the moment, comprises of about 20 gigs of pictures, video files, mp3's, and documents. It seems to work very well and automatically scans and finds the best files on your computer to back up (pictures, Outlook email file, documents, etc.). The only additional step that I needed to do was to tell the program to backup my Windows shared documents folder since that was not picked up in the original scan.

Overall it is well worth the money and easy to use.

The only thing to make this better would be a faster up speed connection, but that is my cheapo DSL connection that is causing that bottleneck. It did take about 6 days for all of my data to get backed up, but now everything is up to date and being backed up every week. I did notice that my Internet connection slowed to a crawl during this time and changing the bandwidth limiter in the Mozy program seemed to have no affect. I'm not sure if this was an issue of the program or my DSL account though.

Check them out here: http://mozy.com/


Now go backup your files!


Original post below

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Do you really want to loose years of digital pictures and other files?? You don't need to....

Loosing data does not have to happen and there are easy ways to backup your files over a broadband connection. And it is usually cheap or even free to boot.Waident support small to mid sized business, but with todays technologies, people inevitably work from home and on the road. Because we support the users rather than just the technology, we often end up helping people outside of the office and their home machines. We see over and over again people at home (and yes even at the office...) having computer problems that end up trashing their hard drive, loosing years of files. It is VERY expensive to send the hard drive off site to recover data, so make your life easier, and sign up for a service to do this.

The Google directory below lists many vendors that provide an Internet file backup service.http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Backup/

• If you don't want to use a service, minimally, purchase a USB hard drive and use Windows Backup to copy your files to the USB drive on a weekly or monthly basis. Just set a calendar reminder to get it done. This is inexpensive, easy, and will save a lot of grief when your hard drive fails and you want to get back the years of digital pictures you had.
• Use a hosted service. The advantage to this is that the files reside outside of the house. If there is ever a fire or flood, you still have your data available. This can be free only about $5 per month depending on how much data you are looking to backup.

There are many vendors providing a hosted backup service and more coming online daily, including Microsoft and Google. I've never used any of these services, but am considering it for my home computer. I have years worth of video and pictures of the kids that I don't want to loose if something ever happens to my house.

For businesses, we have used Intronis eSureIt (http://www.intronis.com/) and were impressed with the functionality and price point. Give me us call if you have you have any questions or comments about your backup needs.

September 2007