Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast #36 - Show Notes for January 29, 2006

Here's the lineup for show #36:

• Letters to the Editor: We've got four brand new reader and listener e-mails this week - somebody wants to find out if SpinRite can provide a list of dead files, somebody else is trying to straighten out some confusion over USB 1.0 USB 1.1 USB 2.0 and USB 2.0 hi-speed, why won't an iPod 30GB video connect properly, and what to do if your MYOB accounting software version has been abandoned - this one will be of interest to the Canadians who are listening;
• Kickstartnews Confab: A somewhat strained, mildly heated discussion about relations with your business partner. Are you bickering? Are the two of you (or the three of you) spending more time trying to assert yourselves and less time actually running the business?
• KSN Interview: Managing Editor Howard Carson talks with Jim Brady, the president of Earthcomber, the company that publishes the wonderful Earthcomber Spot Guides vacation and business travel software.

Here are the rest of the Show Notes . . .

Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast #35 - Show Notes for January 22, 2006

Here's the lineup for show #35:

• Letters to the Editor: We've got four brand new reader and listener e-mails this week - Getting your hands on a Micro2000 Universal Diagnostic Toolkit, somebody is trying to make WinFax Pro 10 work with a DSL Internet connection, managing a massive digital photo collection on a network, and tracking down just the right slide show program for large digital image collections;
• Kickstartnews Confab - You and your best customers or clients sit down in meetings regularly. After some of the meetings are over, I'll bet you sometimes feel absolutely robbed. So the Confab question today is: how many "extras" do your customers or clients get before you have to start charging extra;
• KSN Interview - Managing Editor Howard Carson talks to Kickstartnews UK Editor and graphic designer Mario Georgiou of Georgiou Digital Imaging and Design about what we can all expect from designers, digital imaging technology and the digital design business throughout 2006. Great stuff!

Here are the rest of the Show Notes . . .

Critics of OpenOffice.org 2.0 . . . um . . . whatever . . .

Forrester Research's recent IT View Quick Take (December 16, 2005), by Kyle McNabb, stated that "OpenOffice.org and its commercial counterpart, Sun Microsystem's StarOffice 8, recently introduced new versions of the market's top open source desktop productivity suite. OpenOffice.org 2.0 mimics Microsoft Office in many ways and offers new, interesting file format and macro conversion capabilities. However, a lack of innovation and no real improvement over the market's leading desktop productivity suite makes OpenOffice.org 2.0 little more than a cheap Office imitation and a step back for information workers — exhibited by a potential productivity killer in bumbling collaborative document editing support. Enterprises with information workers entrenched in Office should pass despite the cost savings, while others seeking lower costs — like public sector organizations and organizations that haven't grown up with Microsoft — should not simply write off OpenOffice.org 2.0, but instead, should take a closer look. Just don't expect innovation."
Innovation for its own sake is best left to the physics and chemistry labs, not the small business desktop. Criticizing a terrifically useful product for its lack of innovation is like criticizing something because it's only very good as opposed to state of the art. Ridiculous! More . . .

Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast #34 - Show Notes for January 15, 2006

Here's the lineup for show #34:

• Letters to the Editor: Five brand new reader and listener e-mails—the actual temperature of the Cold Heat soldering iron tip and is it really safe, creating searchable databases easily with HanDBase, Xandros Surfside Linux versus Xandros Linux Desktop 3, using real music to create a ringtone for your Treo 650, and some aggravating USB 2.0 problems with an iPod 60GB;
• Kickstartnews Confab: A serious and hopefully money saving Confab about changing your office over to some open source software. If software licensing costs, particularly for office software, have got you down or maybe looking at, ahem, not-so-legal acquisitions, pay attention to what we've got to say about this particular headache. There are solutions at hand which are surprisingly good;
• Business Online and Technology: Judi Tyabji Wilson joins Howard for a brand new BOAT segment—the first of 2006. Some of those Christmas and holiday sales are coming back. How are you going to handle and how well are you currently handling the returns, exchanges, complaints, and the deliveries which didn't arrive on time (or at all)?

Here are the rest of the Show Notes . . .

Frolic With The Technology Dragons—2006 Will Be An Amazing Year!

Google and Microsoft are about to do battle head-to-head (remember: you heard it here first). Google seems to be advancing its network infrastructure in a way that makes me believe the company is actually constructing what amounts to its own sub-Internet. Google also seems to be repositioning itself as a search and application service. At the same time, Microsoft appears to be positioning itself as the enabling software and content partner on every electronic device you can think of including the PC, Smartphone, PDA, television, multimedia computer and portable multimedia device. More on these two behemoths a bit later.

The first glimmer of hardware aggravations for 2006 are already revealing themselves in the form of the newly joined battle over high capacity DVD playback and recording formats. It's Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD. The usual suspects are arrayed before each other—Sony, Toshiba, Phillips, Pioneer, Hewlett-Packard and on and on—all vying to trump the other. The most hysterically disorganized thing about the whole controversy is that the technical engineering steering and standards development groups for each format have yet to fully nail down the specifications for each format. They're changing every week for Pete's sake. More . . .

Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast #33 - Show Notes for January 8, 2006

Here's the lineup for show #33:

• Letters to the Editor: We've got five reader and listener e-mails this week - a project management challenge for Art of Project Management author Scott Berkun, using the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with dual monitors, problems hooking up online with Aileron for Palm OS, sourcing out and buying a Zigview Digital Angle Viewfinder in the U.S., and somebody is having a tough time deciding whether to buy Xandros Surfside Linux or Xandros Linux Desktop 3;
• Kickstartnews Confab: We're going to talk about annual office reorganization plans. Many businesses are comparatively quiet right now. With staff coming back from vacations and family gatherings and with the new year just beginning, now is the best time to reorganize to find efficiencies and make specific improvements;
• Big City Byte: Howard's take on what business consumers have to watch out for during 2006. As business technology gets more and more complex and as choices increase, you've got to be more careful than ever.

Here are the rest of the Show Notes . . .

Cyber Vandalism—Pointless and Ugly

On December 29, 2005 Anthony Scott Clark, 21, of Oregon, pleaded guilty to using a computer worm to launch attacks against Internet auction site eBay Inc., the U.S. attorney's office handling the case reported. Clark pleaded guilty to intentionally damaging a protected computer, a crime with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to twice any losses incurred, according to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California. According to the U.S. attorney's office, in July and August 2003, Clark and accomplices infected about 20,000 computers with a worm that allowed them to direct the infected machines to visit eBay.com, overwhelming the popular Web site. This folly has landed Clark and his idiotic cronies in a peck of trouble.

Allow me to repeat that the crime carries with it "a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to twice any losses incurred." eBay is now preparing its arguments so that a final statement of financial losses and general damages can be made.

Mr. Clark is in it up to his eyeballs. More . . .