Here is why I am asking. My wife received an email from a nephew who inquired about starting their own blog. They had no specifics on what they wanted to do or how they wanted to go about doing it. They wanted to know if there was a book or something that would help them to get started. So my wife turned to me for answers.

Hmmm….. I didn’t have a clue. So armed only with limited information I ventured out on the Internet and found the Google Blogging For Dummies book, which had fairly good reviews over at Amazon. But before I recommend this book, I wanted to ask if anyone has read this book?

Do you have any other books you would recommend?

Comments welcome.

Amazon source.

She stated:

Mr. Gates and his former lieutenant Nathan Myhrvold were walking out of the morning session when two reporters, including this one, asked Mr. Gates for a comment on the new Google operating system.

“No comment,” Mr. Gates replied, while walking out the door.

From behind the reporters, Mr. Schmidt materialized. “It would be better if you don’t make that comment,” he said as he came forward to shake hands with Mr. Gates.

The two laughed, shook hands and walked into the private lunch area together.

I must say that was a class act by both men in handling an awkward moment. Kudos to both of them. But I  would of liked to have been a fly on the wall during the lunch itself. LOL

Comments welcome.

WJS article here.

According to Softpedia they state the following information:

News Corp CEO and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch made it as clear as possible with a definite “No,” when asked whether he would buy Twitter and an even clearer “Hell no,” when asked about the possibility to sell MySpace, as Reuters reports. Present at the Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference yesterday, he went on to say that buying Twitter at this point would be hard to justify, even with the site’s increasing popularity, as it had no clear business model and little signs it would come up with one anytime soon.

So with My Space in trouble, with newspapers losing advertising and with more advertisers heading to the Internet, it doesn’t appear that News Corp. is in a very good position. But can they bail themselves out?

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

In an article from Silicon Alley Insider they state that:

This deal plugs gaps in both businesses. Best Buy will get visibility outside its stores. TiVo can take advantage of Best Buy’s customer interaction to position itself as more than just a recording device.

TiVo has been struggling to educate customers that they can also use the device to download and stream movies from Amazon and Netflix, watch vidoes on YouTube and buy movie tickets on Fandango.

I went out to the TiVo site to see if I could use their system with DishNetwork. Unfortunately I can’t. But the web site did state that TiVo was in the process of developing their services for Direct TV.

Does anyone reading this use TiVo? What is your opinion of the service?

Comments welcome.

Source.

What companies is Google working with to support Google Chrome OS?
The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

You may recall that it was Acer who called Vista the worst operating system ever. [See article here] So Acer take a ride with Google should be a no brainer. Also Acer is go after Dell to try and knock them off of their perch in the #2 spot. [See article here]

ASUS is heavy into netbooks being one of the companies to first introduce the pint sized laptop computers. Both HP and Lenovo have also entered into the netbook markets, in the hope of maintaining their market share. Toshiba and Abobe? Not a clue what their motivation is. But the remaining companies produce cpu’s and could explain why they are going with Google.

So we have left two noticeable exceptions. Intel and Dell. Both of these companies have traditionally been Microsoft partners, even though they have had their spats in the past. But I am sure Microsoft is going to use its influence to try and to corral Google and limit the partners who join in to help to develop the new operating system.

But does Microsoft really have anything to fear from a Google operating system? What do you think?

Share your thoughts.

Comments welcome.

Source.

FAKE BY THE AUTHOR!

This morning there was a post over at Techmeme which was from a Worldpress site known as chromeosleak. The writer of the posting indicated the need to be secretive since he/she felt their career could be at risk if they were discovered as providing a preview of the Google Chrome operating system. Others in the tech industry have jumped on the band wagon and are also posting what this person is saying.

But as with most secretive postings it makes one wonder if this is fact or purely fiction? Here is some what has been posted thus far:

I was invited by Acer to come and view the demo.

I can say and give only what I  know and have.

The OS installation was performed on a Acer Extensa 4620Z laptop to show it can install quickly on laptops from late 2007 to early 2008. The install from Vista to Google Chrome OS Dev Beta was only 10 minutes and was very elegant. Only one restart required.

A wizard asks you for basic info on the first boot up. Google was still in progress of developing the wizard so we just skipped most of this. Google at the moment installed only the Google Talk application. They did this because the Rep said “At the current time, Google has not completed compatibility tests with some laptops and netbooks.”.

This beta was extremely stripped down. However, it was amazingly fast. They did one reboot and it rebooted from Desktop to Desktop in about 25ish seconds.

In addition the poster states:

The Chrome Bar also auto hides. It can be brought back up by the Windows key and Space (The Rep Mentioned in Google Chrome OS laptops this key will actually be a fully colored and 3D Chrome Logo in some Netbooks)

The rep also mentioned some of the Linux aspects including the option to have a status bar on the Chrome Bar for Devs.

In addition a search bar can be implemented on the Chrome Bar. Programs appear in a Windows 7 Esque icon fashion.

That is all the time I had with the demo and Rep. Soon after some other Acer employees, affiliates, and the Google Rep went to show some of the capabilities of the OS on a projectior for a more elaborate showing of the features to a larger audience.

However, I was the last to leave the room and the Google Rep seemed to forget his privacy. I happened to have my Mini-Cam with me and took these medium quality shots. I am sorry I couldn’t get better. They were all taken in less than 10 seconds. Adrenaline was rushing like crazy.

I hope you enjoy these.

I am putting my career and notability on the line in this!

Hmmm. Interesting if true. But that is for you to decide.  There were also some blurry screen shots posted as well like this one:

Comments as always are welcome.

Source for Chrome OS Is Here.

So last evening I decided to use the free scanner at Norton to check my system. I haven’t used the Norton product for well over six months opting instead to use other online scanners. When I went to the Norton free scanner site, I noticed they now have two options. You can still scan your computer on the web or you can also download the scanner to your system.

I tried the download version. The Norton software needed to update its virus definitions after which I ran the quick scan option. My system was clean so I took no further action. Basically what the Norton scanner does is to find bugs, but won’t fix or remove them. I use online scanners once a month or so just to confirm that my AVG software is not missing anything.

You may wish to give Norton’s online scanner a try.

What do you do yo keep your system protected?

Comments welcome.

Source.

Here are the FAQs as answered by the Google Chrome Team:

Is Google Chrome OS free?

Yes – Google Chrome OS is an open source project and will be available to use at no cost.

What companies is Google working with to support Google Chrome OS?

The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments.

I’m a developer – how can I work with you?

Thanks for your interest. Later this year, the Google Chrome OS code will be open source. We’re looking forward to working with the open source community and making our own small contributions to the great work being done out there. Please stay tuned.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

According to their recent blog posting they state that:

We’re often asked why so many Google applications seem to be perpetually in beta. For example, Gmail has worn the beta tag more than five years. We realize this situation puzzles some people, particularly those who subscribe to the traditional definition of “beta” software as not being yet ready for prime time.

Ever since we launched the Google Apps suite for businesses two years ago, it’s had a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and has met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software. More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps, including Google. We’ve come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn’t fit for large enterprises that aren’t keen to run their business on software that sounds like it’s still in the trial phase. So we’ve focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark.

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk — both enterprise and consumer versions — are now out of beta. “Beta” will be removed from the product logos today, but we’ll continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there’s a small “beta” beneath the logo. Indeed, today we’re also announcing some other Google Apps features that we think will appeal to large enterprises: mail delegation, mail retention and ongoing enhancements to Apps reliability.

Now aren’t excited?

Comments welcome.

Source.

Google states on their blog site the following information:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

First we need to analyze the impact of what the Google Chrome operating system will have on the way we all will compute in the future. This statement:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.

The word initially is a keyword. What this means is that Google is looking at the Netbook computers first, but will eventually port the operating system onto other computers such as laptops and desktop systems.

Next is this statement:

And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

This says it all folks. We have been pounding on Microsoft for years asking for a operating system that just works. An operating system that is impervious to attack by viruses, malware and other stuff that can attack our computers. An operating system that doesn’t need a ton of updates that can and has rendered some computers to not function after an update is applied.

Google also states the following as well:

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

This strikes home, Especially this statement:

They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.

Wouldn’t this be nice. We have all experienced the slow down that happens using Windows. You can blame any number of things that can cause a system to slow. Anti-virus programs from Symantec and McAfee are notorious for bringing systems to a crawl. We throw more and more RAM on our systems trying to keep them from slowing down. But overall, this added weight of Windows and the programs we need to run in order to protect the OS takes its toll.

Having access to your data, not having to worry about backing up your stuff, all of this coupled with all of the above is going to knock Windows for a loop. Our systems will run better, run faster, be immune to attack while offering us the ability to store our stuff in a cloud environment. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The bottom line is this. Thank you Google. I look forward to using your new operating system.

Comments welcome.

Source.

PS There was one other sentence in the Google announcement:

However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.

I wonder who Google is talking about? LOL

According to an article over at Ars Technica is also states that:

The irony of their method is that it relies on two practices adopted by the federal government that were intended to reduce the ability of fraudsters to craft a bogus SSN. The first is that the government now maintains a publicly available database called a Death Master File, which indicates which SSNs were the property of individuals who are now deceased. This record provided the researchers with the raw material to perform a statistical analysis of how SSN assignments related to two other pieces of personal information: date and state of birth.

The second is that the government has centralized its handling of SSN assignments and provided documentation of the procedures. The first three digits are based on the state where the SSN was originally assigned, and the next two are what’s termed a group number. The last four digits are ostensibly assigned at random. Since the late 1980s, the government has promoted an initiative termed “Enumeration at Birth” that seeks to ensure that SSNs are assigned shortly after birth, which should limit the circumstances under which individuals apply for them later in life (and hence, make fraudulent applications easier to detect).

The accuracy of these algorithms is positively disturbing. Using a separate pool of data from the Death Master File, the authors were able to get the first five digits right for seven percent of those with an SSN assigned before 1988; after that, the success rate goes up to a staggering 44 percent. For a smaller state, like Vermont, they could get it right over 90 percent of the time.

Getting the last four digits right was substantially harder. The authors used a standard of getting the whole SSN right within 10 tries, and could only manage that about 0.1 percent of the time even in the later period. Still, small states were somewhat easier—for Delaware in 1996, they had a five percent success rate.

That may still seem moderately secure if it weren’t for some realities of the modern online world. The authors point out that many credit card verification services, recognizing the challenges of data entry from illegible forms, may allow up to two digits of the SSN to be wrong, provided the date and place of birth are accurate. They often allow several failed verification attempts per IP address before blacklisting it. Given these numbers, the authors estimate that even a moderate-sized botnet of 10,000 machines could successfully obtain identity verifications for younger residents of West Virginia at a rate of 47 a minute.

Interesting. There doesn’t appear to be a way to avoid this guessing of SSN. Our only protection is to try to keep our personal information as safe as possible. This is getting harder to do with the advent of the Internet.

Comments welcome.

Source.

Here is what Microsoft has available on their site:

Microsoft has released a Microsoft security advisory about this issue for IT professionals. The security advisory contains additional security-related information. To view the security advisory, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/972890.mspx  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/securit…)

To have us fix this problem for you, go to the “Fix it for me” section. If you’d rather fix this problem yourself, go to the “Let me fix it myself” section.

Source.

According to the Silicon Valley Insider article it states:

Obama’s anti-trust cop Christine Varney is dusting off the Sherman Act and reviewing wireless companies’ exclusive handset deals–most notably AT&T’s monopoly control over Apple’s iPhone.

One suspects that Google lobbyists are somehow involved.

In any event, maybe there’s hope for Sprint and Verizon customers yet:

Amol Sharma of the WSJ: The Department of Justice has begun an initial review to determine whether large U.S. telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communcations Inc. have abused the market power they’ve amassed in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.
The review of potential anti-competitive practices is in its very early stages, and it isn’t a formal investigation of any specific company at this point, the people said. It isn’t clear whether the agency intends to launch an official inquiry.
Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people. In recent weeks lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T’s exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.’s popular iPhone in the U.S.

There you have it. It makes one wonder why there is a need to have governmental regulations.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

So what are the specifications of this netbook:

The Compaq 1040DX is basically a rebadge of HP’s Mini and offers the same specs: 10.1″ display with 1024 x 576 resolution, 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, three-cell battery, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. Although I use too many devices to be locked into an embedded 3G solution, the deal might appeal to some.

What is the real cost of activating through Sprint?

Sprint is fully subsidizing the hardware price in order to gain a two-year service agreement. At $60 a month, the 3G service costs the consumer $1,440, for a rough net gain to Sprint of around $1,050 over two years for a single customer. Voice revenues are taking a back seat to the more lucrative data services, so I think this is a smart play for Sprint. All three carriers have invested billions of dollars in their networks, but you can’t recoup your costs and turn a profit if you can’t get customers on the network.

What do you think? Will you be running down to Best Buy to buy this netbook? I doubt I will.

Comments welcome.

Best Buy Offer

Source

Mark Cuban also states:

For Google, who lives and dies by free, we don’t know who their BlackSwan company will be. But we all know it will happen don’t we? The only question is when. Of course Google knows it as well. Which is exactly why they invest in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future.  They are spending incredible amounts of money in search of the “next big Google thing.”  When their BlackSwan competitor appears, they won’t be in a position to compete with the newly presented model, particularly if it’s free based because their ecosystem has bloated to the point where they can no longer create anything for free.

Google is not unique. The same happens to all companies based on free.

The same will happen to Facebook, Twitter, pick any company who lives off of free.

It’s not that they can’t make money offering free. They can, have, and will. The problem is that they know that it’s literally impossible to be the king of the mountain forever. But that won’t stop them from trying. And that is exactly what will kill them.

I must admit that this is a powerful argument. But then one could also argue that this happens to powerful companies as well that made a ton of cash over the years. Yes, I am thinking of GM. But there are other companies, free and well paid, that have failed and gone out of business. Think dotcom bust and Circuit City

What do you think? Will free companies all fail?

Comments welcome.

Source.

According to an article over at TechCrunch it states:

In just over three months, Internet Explorer has seen its overall market share erode by 11.4 percent. Where did that go? It went to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Nearly 5 percent of that, or about half, went to Firefox 3.0, which currently has 27.6 percent market share. That doesn’t count last week’s upgrade. See the dotted line just below the light blue IE8 line? That is a combined set of “other” browsers and appears to include Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome 2.0.

So there you have it. People are making the change away from Internet Explorer and going with other browser alternatives. Times they are a changing. LOL

Comments welcome.

Source.

This afternoon, several apparent ticket holders posted intentions to sell the tickets on EBay, but Roth warned that the security system in place will prevent anyone from doing so. In addition to the vouchers received via a special code, ticket holders will have to show a valid driver’s license, and those whose IDs do not match the registration information will be eliminated as guests.

In addition, a lockable wristband will be placed on the ticket holder on Monday and if that band is altered or damaged in any way on Tuesday morning, that person will not be allowed inside the memorial, Roth said. Every attendee is being given a second ticket and wristband for a guest. Some attendees will watch the service at a nearby simulcast at Nokia Theatre, but the venues will be randomly selected when they arrive Tuesday.

“It  is true that anyone who has a wristband and receives tickets can invite anyone they want with the second ticket,” Roth said. “So we are hopeful that they have these vouchers because they are a fan and it’s meaningful to them and they would also invite someone who it would also be very meaningful to them.”

Buyer beware!

Source.

Well according to an article over at the L.A. Times it states that:

Buyers are finding that the device, introduced two weeks ago, has trouble making it through a workday without a rest stop at the electrical outlet. It’s proving to be something of an Achilles’ heel on Apple Inc.’s flagship device, more than 1 million of which were sold in the first weekend.

Even the company suggests on its website that users disable some of the phone’s most vaunted features, including the faster 3G network itself, to keep it from shutting down during the day.Industry officials and outside experts sketched a complex picture of the technical and bureaucratic limits that might explain why, after two years and three generations of the device, the newest iPhone has less stamina than the first.

“There’s trouble in the battery field in that there’s only so much energy you can squeeze in a certain space,” said Allen Nogee, a wireless technology analyst at research firm In-Stat. Try to pack in too much juice, he said, and the battery could overheat or even melt.

“There’s not really a solution in sight,” he said.

Repair company IFixit.com, which specializes in Apple products, and other online gadget surgeons dismantled the 3GS on the day it was released and found that the phone’s battery was about 15% smaller than the one in the original iPhone.

The new model is smaller and sleeker, however, and Apple may have sacrificed some battery capacity in favor of a lighter phone, analysts said. The phone’s battery performance has disappointed customers, many of whom waited in lines for hours to buy the latest device. But the battery life is only marginally better than the handset it replaced, and lags well behind the original.

Interesting. It seems that Apple made the new iPhone mean and lean but cut down on the battery capacity. Turn off the 3G network to save battery power? Seems like an odd suggestion to me.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

Here is one persons take on how attacking marketing affiliate’s could cause harm:

Earlier proposed legislation in AB178 was shelved in April. Now the State is getting desperate for money and clutching at straws, this legislation is being resurrected and may be squeezed into another bill.

The estimated additional income to the state is not likely to materialize. Worse than that, it could turn into a net loss for the state. The harm to tens of thousands of small California businesses, and a several large ones, could be irreparable. Collateral damage to other California businesses that support the directly affected businesses is also likely.

At issue is the fact that the legislation would unbalance the playing field, handing California’s advantage over to other states and locking California businesses out of the running.

Affiliate Marketing, also called Performance Marketing has been a real boon to vendors large and small. It allows them to sell their products across the USA and around the world, even if they are based in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

After operating for many years, affiliate marketing has created many jobs. A lot of innovation and many side industries have sprung up around it. These small businesses are not organized as a group and they generally don’t have a lot of money to throw around on lobbying, they just get on with the job of surviving, growing and employing.

So what will happen if California does attack the affiliates? It could be a boon for the remainder of states that are more cognizant that taxing affiliates may cause more harm than good.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.