You'll be looking at a new Kindle owner

Well, after reading about the new updates to the Kindle 2 this morning I decided that it was about time to get back into the game and " git me one of those..."

It is kind of funny that I have held off so long when I think about how leading edge I used be, first with the eRocket units and later using palm pilots and computer screens to read books. Finally the technology has come around that makes all this so much easier to read, easy to acquire and gives you some extra capabilities to help make your business life so much richer and maybe a little more functional.

Has the Kindle reached it's highest peak. No, it is still missing some key components that would make it the perfect device in its category. Many of the new systems are now communicating with your local libraries allowing you to access books that they have in their virtual shelves without any additional cost. This is one item that is now on my new wish list.

The ability to loan a book to a friend or family member, much like you would do with a traditional physical book, is now a limited feature of some of the other eBook competition. Hopefully Amazon will continue to respond to competition as they add more features to their product.

It is going to be interesting to see where this all progresses to. So next week I will begin this new adventure using by new eBook reader and I will let you know how it goes.

New iPhone App for publishing to your SquareSpace Blog

This is my first posting made from my iPhone to my SquareSpace blog. Of course, I can't possibly type as fast on this keyboard as I do on my PC, but if you are on the road and you want to put something up, this seems pretty simple to do.

It provides a rolling list of all your categories, you can adjust the publishing date and time, and you can add pictures on the fly either from your stored images or you can take one on the fly. One drawback on the photos, I don't see any formatting capabilities like I have with LiveWriter. I know, picky, picky.

You can save your post as a works-in-progress or post it up very simply. And, if you have multiple sites you can set them all up and have them handy. I'll work up some screen shots when I do my follow up.

CCI FaceBook Page

I am testing out FaceBook’s ability to have separate pages attached to an account. I have setup a FaceBook page for Computer Connections and I am trying out different things to begin fleshing it out. I still prefer a blog approach which gives me more control over the site, but this provides another conduit for getting our message out there. I will post more information as I figure all of this out.

I have submitted two one day campaigns. Hopefully, they will be accepted.

Technology Benefits to be gained from the Government Stimulus Package

Most of the benefits that you will see from the Government’s Economic Stimulus Package will come in the form of tax cuts. The government view is to have you spend money to improve your company infrastructure and hopefully your bottom line. That way they can get more taxes from you with your new and improved performance. Here are some of the benefits you can gain this year by spending some money on your company for those improvements that you have been holding back on.

Equipment Expensing and Valuing. Purchasing computers, machinery, and off the shelf software may result in substantial write-offs.

A provision buried within the Obama administration’s nearly $800 billion stimulus package will
extend a piece of the earlier Bush administration plan designed to aid small businesses that
purchase new equipment.

Section 1201 of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) allows additional
first-year depreciation of 50% of the purchase cost of new equipment by extending for one year
Section 179 of the 2008 Economic Stimulus Act.
Last year, finance experts applauded the provision, saying Section 179 had led to increased
sales among equipment manufacturers as customers reaped the benefits of the new tax
deduction.

Like the original provision, businesses can write off twice as much equipment acquisition costs as
an expense rather than depreciating the purchase over several years, with qualification extending
to almost all tangible personal property. If the company exceeds the $250,000 cap, the law
features a provisional depreciation bonus that lets it write off up to half of the purchase in the first
year, on top of the regular depreciation allowance.

A laundry list of state-sponsored opportunities, many boosted by the ARRA, can be found  at www.business.gov. Included on the site is state or industry specific information pertaining to the R&D, training and implementation incentives outline in the ARRA.

The thing to remember is that the government is providing the incentive to purchase the products that will enhance your company’s ability to support your clients better. Make the changes you have been hesitating on and advantage of these extra tax benefits while doing so. As always, talk to you tax advisor to make sure you qualify and determine the best way you can take advantage of these tax savings.

Windows 7 Upgrade Options from HP

HP has a site to guide you through the eligibility and upgrade process for you to upgrade your HP computer that you purchased (June 26,2009 – Jan 31, 2009). Check your model eligibility, and if you qualify you can order the Win7 Upgrade Kit. If you don’t meet HP’s eligibility requirements, you may be able to upgrade to Windows 7 upon public availability. Click on the more info link to see what will be involved.

Read Before you Order

HP has contracted with a third party company to fulfill the Windows® 7 Upgrade Option Program from HP. Orders will be accepted June 26, 2009 until February 15, 2010. Proof of purchase must be submitted and postmarked no later than March 1, 2010. You will receive your Windows ® 7 Upgrade Kit after Windows ® 7 becomes publicly available October 22, 2009. For additional information, please read Know Before You Upgrade

If eligibility requirements are not met, you may be able to upgrade to Windows ® 7 upon public availability.

Digsby-You may have seen several messages come through saying that I am using this now

I have put the Digsby App onto both my main desktop at home and work to see if it gives me any new and hopefully faster access to all of my communication sources at the desktop. I even went so far as to put a Digsby Gadget on the website to allow IM communication directly from my blog to me if I am online. In a way this gives the ability to online support commenting a run as well. We’ll see how it works.

The Digsby desktop program reminds me a lot of Messenger and other Instant Messaging Apps that provide a buddy list display. You will notice that it lets you set several different types of accounts to track as well as your standard instant messaging. It only support eight different types of IM accounts as you see in the image to the right. Noticeably missing are instant messaging to Skype, which is an app I have up and running on most of my computers all of the time. It does allow reading your messages in Facebook and any email account that you would like to program in. If you have multiple accounts in any of these Social Networks you can put them all in as you have seen me do with Twitter.  Standard support for the three primary Social Networks is in place plus LinkedIn. That one surprised me.

Besides the standard online big name free email account providers, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and AOL/AIM Mail, there is support for any POP or IMAP email service as well. So you can easily keep up with all your different accounts with one application.

For a complete list of features take a look at their features page.

If you want to download the application, click on the image to the left and it will take you to the download page.

Boswell Lumber – 100th Anniversary Celebration

This is  a company that is interesting enough to me that I am going to publish this on both of my blog sites. I was graciously invited to Boswell Lumber Company’s celebration of their 100th year anniversary. I am so happy that I took the time to visit with them during this special time.

The company began as a sawmill in 1909 and has today evolved into a full service planing mill located on the original mill site. They stock over 140 moulds in Oak and Poplar with half a million board feet of raw lumber in many different species, ready to be worked for you.

They can ship stock moulds, or produce custom moulds. They have the equipment to fill you needs. See an example of their products by clicking here.  Beside the clean and spacious environment for their 23 employees to work in, I was amazed at the racks of prepared product that they supply the surrounding lumber and home supply companies with. On show was a door that they carved using their equipment to show just what they are capable of doing for you and your specialized project.

You can contact their sales department by calling 814-629-5625 or by emailing them at sales@hortreeproducts.com.

On Demand Online coming to Comcast

Comcast sent me a letter today inviting me to test their (Beta) of On Demand Online. I don’t know how exclusive this list is but it will be interesting to compare their online experience with some of the others that are available currently like Hulu and others. They have the technology for streaming and the ability to do on demand with their digital boxes so this shouldn’t be a big stretch. I’ll let you know what I think once I have tried it out for a few weeks

Installing Windows 7 Using a USB Flash Drive – Part 1 – Prepping the Flash Drive

I decided to document the process that I need to go through to install Windows 7 onto a new Netbook that I am prepping for my father. I decided to try to do this without using an external USB DVD drive.I needed a 4GB drive which I didn’t have one free so I decided to use one of my SD Flash cards I use with my camera. I have previously reviewed the Mizco SD Reader that I use to read my SD Flash Memory Cards. It turns any SD Flash Memory Card into a USB Flash Drive.

So the first thing that you need to do is to set the memory card as a bootable USB Drive. I am doing this from my Windows 7 Desktop and the procedure is as follows:

Step #1: Format the Drive

The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]

1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
   diskpart
   list disk
   The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step.  I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 2.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “2” with the number of your disk below.
   select disk 2
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.

Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable 
Next we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable. I am using an ISO file formatted file for my Win7 install disk and since I have the new version of WINZIP that can access an ISO file directly I am accessing the files in that manner. However, you will probably have a Win7 install CD and I will document accessing in that manner as well. I dropped the contents of my ISO file into a folder on my desktop and that’s how I gained access to the files the same way that you would to your CD.

(Turns out that WinZip was missing files when I performed the above procedure. I eventually burned a DVD and copied the files across as stated below. That worked like a charm. I have had great success running WinZip on ISO files and installing directly from there. That seems to work just fine.)

In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:

1. Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
   d:
   cd d:\boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
   bootsect /nt60 G:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.

Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive.  After you’ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.

Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you’re on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS’s allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option. On most Acer notebooks/Netbooks you will be pressing F2 to jump into the Bios setup when booting your system. Go to the Bios page that controls the boot device order and make your USB device the topmost choice in the boot sequence.

Note: As it turned out, I wasn’t able to complete the install of Windows 7 on this machine this past weekend because the controller couldn’t take being loaded from a USB Flash Drive. Whoops. So we stuck a USB DVD drive on the Netbook and installation went just fine. So much for trying to be inventive to work around not having a portable USB DVD drive.

Laurel Mountain Post September-October Issue

I have a great article in the LMP this month discussing the upcoming release of Windows 7 and the differences between each of the versions. This issue is the LMP’s final FREE distribution. They are moving to a paid subscription model with the next issue. There is so much good local information in the magazine that I hope they will be able to sustain it with this new venue.

This is obviously the Halloween issue but I didn’t keep with that theme. Next issue I will again approach with gadget gift buying for the upcoming Holiday Season. It’s September and I am thinking of Christmas already!

Hope you all enjoy the article and find it useful in making your decision to move into Windows 7 or not and which version would be best for you. If you are still confused don’t hesitate stopping buy and talking to us about it.

Product Research has just gotten easier…

We have committed ourselves with a company that is helping us to provide information on a large number of products that we are able to provide our customers. We draw upon over 25 different distributors and many manufacturers directly to provide you, our customer, with just the right product to fit your needs.

With this research tool you can easily compare different products and request pricing from our support staff in a quick and easy manner. This system also allows us to provide you with feature products that we think might be useful to you. We also will be providing you with bi-weekly newsletters to keep you informed of different things happening in the technology industry that might be of interest to you. And don’t forget our technical blogs for more useful information that we are providing you on a daily basis. Remember Computer Connections for all of your technology needs.

Think Microsoft Home Server…

Ken was trying to tell me that many of the features that I was describing in the Cisco Network Magic article are also in the Microsoft Home Server. I will have to install one of these at the house and see what my limitations are. We have been quite successful using removable media and the Home Server software to create a great backup solution. We even have it being used as the key part of our off-site storage as well. I’ll be getting into more detail on this in the next couple of weeks.

AVG Anti-virus Product Promotion

You have heard of the term BOGO, well AVG is offering a third year upgrade to your purchase of a new Business Class Business Product, either new or a renewal to your contract. You will qualify for a third year free if you purchase two years of any of AVG’s Business Internet Security Products. When you buy the second year you get 50% off of the 1 year price for the second year now the discount is even better!

This promotion is lasting until the end of the year, 2009.

Have you encountered issues with your clients becoming infected due to missing Windows Updates or social engineering tricks that infect their workstations?  AVG Internet Security products have several unique innovative features that prevent this from happening.  They protect not only against virus attack but also poisoned web pages and threats not included in the definitions via behavioral analysis.  So they not only block users from downloading threats they also scan web links in Search Engines for the poisoned content.

Two key features that differentiate AVG Internet Security Network products from other products:

• Linkscanner Technology:  Protects you against poisoned web pages before you visit them
• Identity Theft Protection: Intelligent real-time protection that looks for new threats based on unusual patterns of behavior, complementing the signature - based protection afforded by the AV/AS engine.

Other features include:

Webshield technology:  Looks for threats while you browse in real-time.

• FREE upgrades to the latest major version releases of AVG during the license period, including version 9.0 due this year.
• Unlimited domestic technical support
• Easy install and deployment – Install it stand-alone or managed, your choice.
• Anti-spam component at no cost in the Email Server Editions and SBS products

To order, be sure to contact Computer Connections by dialing 800-640-7506 or by emailing us at: sales@paconnect.com.

To see more information about AVG for Business Users visit: http://bobstechtalk.squarespace.com/solutions/2009/8/25/avg-for-business-users.html

Your Kindle can't do this, local library ebooks now available on the Sony Reader | The Mobile Gadgeteer | ZDNet.com

I love reading but I do so either with an electronic book or I listen to them from my downloads from Audible. Here is a listing of libraries that have registered themselves with Sony Library Finder that carry both audio and electronic books.

I wonder if we are truly headed towards the ability to get all our literature from our local libraries or is this just a part of my very long wish list. The big news this week was Google’s announcement of their making available over 1 million books in the ePub format. EPUB is an open-source format that is readable on a slew of devices, including Sony and Plastic Logic readers, the iPhone, and Google Android. Prior to this news release they were only available in PDF format. Take a look at Google books.

Many people still like the touch and feel of a real book and that is their favorite method of reading a book. But there is something to being able to pick up you SmartPhone, or Ebook Reader and begin reading a book where you left off. This is definitely something to think about. I have been playing with Stanza on my iPhone and the interface is very nice and with the flick of finger I am turning pages with a graphic response that is enjoyable to watch.

So my question that I pose is whether this a way for our local Libraries to maintain patronage, along with their brick and mortar and books in paper formats or is this something that is going to go to centralized storage repositories that can maintain the traffic for downloading requests that might someday be required?

I do love my local libraries, the helpfulness of the library personnel, and the beauty of the physical books on the shelves. I would hate to see this disappear into the ether(net) totally.

Your Kindle can't do this, local library ebooks now available on the Sony Reader | The Mobile Gadgeteer | ZDNet.com

ETI Advisory Board Meeting

I spent my morning with members of the Education and Technology Institute (ETI) advisory board, for their annual meeting of the minds to discuss the past period’s new programs and internal milestone progress. I was very happy to see the progress in their support for their students and additional financial programs they are bringing to bear. They are working very hard getting the word out about their programs and daily/weekly updates through their blog and primary websites. They are discussing ways to bring some of the social networking sites into the mix as well. I hope that some of my suggestions will give them some more ideas to spur that forward. It is always great to see so many friendly and helpful community business people wanting to contribute to the betterment of our local workforce. Well done everyone!

New AVG Solution Page Postings…

I have posted two new pages to our solutions products list today. AVG Anti-Virus Software has been a great product for us and our customers for quite awhile now. If you haven’t been using it now may be the time to take a look at this product. If you are interested in a solution for your Home PC’s Click Here, otherwise, Click Here to go to an overview of the Business Products Page.

Be sure to call one of our security specialists to help you decide on the right product and product licensing path for your business.

New Solution Posting – Malwarebytes

We haven’t been talking much about anti-malware applications but this is one that really works well. Our Tech Staff all swear by it and it is an essential part of their toolkit. You can download this product for use for free or unlock the rest of its features by purchasing for your home machine for $24.95. If you are purchasing it for your household it is a onetime fee but if your are a corporate end-user you will need to purchase an annual subscription fee. You can see more information on this product by clicking on the icon to the right.

It is totally amazing how a simple little electronic device can become such a central part or your life…

Three weeks ago we, meaning Computer Connections, finally bit the bullet and moved everyone over to AT&T (yeah I know) and finally got us into the smart phone race. Some of us got Samsung units running MS Mobile OS and a couple of us got the Apple iPhone 3GS’s. Being one of the lucky ones I began taking a look at what this Apple device could do for me.

First, I don’t know how I lived without the connectivity to all of my mail accounts. I guess I just ignored them and every so often visited to clean up the outdated things that were sitting there. Well they have never been so clean as they are now. One of the benefits (or if my wife is talking to you, one of the problems), of having access to so much is that you can keep up with and react sooner to the things that come across your table, so to speak. I have five fairly active accounts that I use for different purposes and now they are really doing what I set them up for. It sure makes managing the data a lot more easy than it ever was before.

The unexpected difference is that I now actually use the phone. The big joke in the company was how little I used the phone function of the my old Nextel. I used it more as a walky-talky then any of its phone functions. Now, I tend to use it more to even talk to customers because the phone list from my Outlook contacts is right there on the phone. It makes it so easy to call, email and text to whomever I need to.

It didn’t take long to get used to the keyboard, and even though my old arthritic thumbs can’t do the job, like my young counterparts do typing away, my one finger peck is getting pretty fast and furious. All I can say is thank goodness for spell check.

Another feature I just can’t do without is the iTunes podcast functions. Almost everyone is publishing to iTunes so it's easy to pick up on someone you are interested in. This feature became so important early on that I switched the radio in my car to a Sony that supports Bluetooth so I can broadcast both audio and my phone through the radio connection. While my Garmin’s microphone had better noise cancellation then the Sony mike does, it still does pretty good when the top is up on the convertible.

The last feature that I want to talk about is something I am using as I sit hear on the back porch hammering this article out. The Apps that are available for free and at small prices gives so much more value from your phone. I am listening to one of my Pandora channels right now and am totally enjoying this extra thing that the iPhone brings to the total experience.

If you have been reading my articles lately you may have seen some of the reviews of products that I have been testing and begun using in my daily life. I am amazed at how integral this little pocket size electronic wonder has become in my life. Having the world that I work always at my finger tips gives me a little more edge in the things that I try to keep on track with. Hopefully I won’t become like the much laughed crackberry users with this, but I’m sure that I will be working may way there all too quickly.

New Tech Tool!

It seems that a new tech tool has become an indispensable part of my gear. With all the shiny surfaces, screens and touch screens I find myself constantly cleaning the smudges that occur. Oh for the days of the textured surfaces that didn’t show every single fingerprint and smudge that occurs.

Technology Podcasts that I Love…

We here the question a great deal about how on earth we keep up on all the new products, techniques and other gadget related things that we do on a daily basis. Most of us hear at Computer Connections fill our free time by listening to podcasts that are free to download to your computer or media player, like and iPod, iPhone or Zune. I like the Zune to listen collect and listen to podcasts because of the ease of setting up subscriptions for downloading to the device and the menuing system on it as well. However, I do like the iPhone interface as well.

AppJudgement – A Revision3 property, I just found this podcast this week and I am thoroughly enjoying the comparisons of the different applications available for our smart phones. If you have just acquired a smart phone or you are a long time owner, I think that you will find these shows very informative and help you decide the best applications for your phone for the way that you use it.

Buzz Out Loud – I have been listening to this podcast for years and find it a great way to keep up on daily news. They are part of CNet and CBS News and provide a very good discussion of current technology news topics that are informative and easy to listen to. They have gone to a new format now that has several of their personalities sharing reporting responsibilities on different days of the week.

Diggnation – These guys are real goofs but they can be a lot of fun. If strong language turns you off then don’t watch, it is not kind on your ears. But if you can get past that, then they do present some interesting technical and non-technical news each week.

The Real Deal – This is another CNet property and is a great source for tech products, gadgets and how to’s on fixing and using your machines.

Security Now – Leo Laporte is considered one of the godfathers of podcasting and he hosts quite a few shows that you might be interested in. This one he hosts with Steve Gibson and discusses security issues that could affect your equipment. A good technology  filled show not real good for beginners.

Tech Stuff – This is a great show that discusses how things work in the technology world. Titles like How MP3 files work, How Cloud Computer Works are examples of the type of topics that are presented.

Tekzilla – Another Revision3 product another technology show that runs the gamut of How To and What is new in the technology world. They have a long list of subjects that they discuss that I am sure you will find something that will interest you. Hosted by Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont.

This Week in Google (TWIG) – Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis. Brand new and only on its third episode as I am writing this, this podcast is again hosted by Leo and has two other hosts on that discuss the things going on in the “Internet Cloud”. Likes and dislikes, news and some hints on how to do things on the internet and with internet applications. If you are into computers you are starting to see the trend towards internet hosted applications and this show tries to makes some sense of it all.

This Week In Tech (TWIT) – Another Leo Laporte/TWITTV broadcast that has Leo hosting with different sub hosts each week. The people that he has on the show with him are all of the different reporters and developers from the technology world. Great info and very enjoyable to listen to.

Windows Weekly – Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott get together weekly to talk about Microsoft related products. Whether it software (operating systems, office applications and programming), web based applications and services (Live, MSDN) or hardware (Zune, Xbox) there is a lot going on here that you can find useful if Microsoft touches your world.

These are just a few of the Programs that I use to keep myself informed. Of course there are so many other media sources that we use as well that are too numerous to talk about here. But if ever gave a thought about wanting to find a source for leaning more about your computers and other things, here is a great place to start.