Every weekday, our guide to the Web takes care of business, tackling tech topics that really matter to everybody. From topic definitions to topical rants, Dan Gray\’s pieces inform as much as they entertain.
Overstock.com lost a chunk of change last quarter. On Friday, the company reported a GAAP operating loss of $11.2 million and a GAAP net loss of $14.2 million in Q3 2005. So where did they pin the blame for poor results? It wasn’t overly aggressive pricing, too many coupons or escalating shipping costs. According to […]
Will you be ready when disaster strikes? Do you have first-aid kits in your home, office, and car? If you do, take a moment to check that the supplies have not run low. You wouldn’t want to crack open your first aid kit in an emergency only to find that you’re missing something important. What’s […]
The physical location of your Web host is often not considered… until it’s too late. Take yesterday, for instance, when Hurricane Wilma knocked Verio’s Boca Raton, Florida data center offline for an entire day. Rumor has it that the Verio data center is housed in a bunker-like building built to withstand a CAT 5 storm. […]
Geek is where you find it. Tonight, geek can be found while shopping for washing machines. That’s right, clothes washers. Washing machines are one of those technologies that we totally take for granted… until they break. Like this morning when our not-so-trusty Maytag overflowed all over the laundry room floor (again). So I’m out looking. […]
I wrote a tribute to the unsung heroes of QA yesterday. Unfortunately, those dedicated folks that work so hard late into the night - night-after-night - get too little attention in too many companies. Smart companies, on the other hand, take good care of their testing and support staff. The fridge should be stocked. The […]
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature… or mess with Hewlett-Packard’s patents. It’s safe to say that HP has a huge stake in its printer cartridge business and the patents that support it. You better believe that it defends that intellectual property with mucho gusto. Mega printer cartridge franchise Cartridge World was today’s unhappy recipient […]
Our local cable company needs to get a clue. It’s rolling out a brand new VoIP service… but it’s afraid to call it VoIP. The company’s calling it a “digital phone” service, instead. This sets the bar for stupid marketing tricks. Attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of a sophisticated customer base is […]
Is your home overdue for a set of replacement windows? That’s right… we’re not talking about replacing Windows, we’re talking about replacing windows. Forget those scary thoughts about swapping operating systems for a moment. Give it another month or two and it’ll be the cost of home heating this year that sends chills up and […]
I should have included a stronger warning when I posted the piece about Crazy Contact Lenses earlier this week. Contact lenses aren’t something you want to fool around with. You must be sure that you are fitted with a set of quality lenses. Buying a pair of contacts at the flea market, for instance, is […]
You have lots of files to store and you’re rapidly running out of room. But it’s not just a case of adding another hard drive to your desktop system. You’re way beyond that. Those monstrous files need to be accessible to the entire network. It’s time to take the bull by the horns and […]
Okay, I admit it. It’s been a few months since I wrote about timesheet software. (Hey, I lost track of time!) The feedback from the Legions of Gnomies was nothing less than awesome. It may have taken me awhile, but I’ve finally assembled the best of the real-world, been-there-done-that suggestions for time-tracking software…
Every year, I hope to find a wireless weather station stuffed into my stocking. (Oh no, he’s ranting about the weather again!) Yeah, I know … it’s only the first week of October, but the weekend ahead has put me into a total weather frenzy. Unfortunately, a wireless weather station is but one of the […]
Think back to the last time you had to purchase a new set of tires for your car. By any chance, did you buy those tires online? I had to get a new set of tires for my wife’s car this week, and while I didn’t actually buy the tires online (although I have […]
My mailbox was stuffed with a tremendous response to yesterday’s rant about the laughable farce of the hydrogen economy. E-mail poured in from the around the globe. Read on and soak in the amazing things that the Gnome World has to share…
From Australia, Gnomie Peter wrote:
A good 4 cyl diesel should average over 60 […]
Fuel cell cars … they sound like pure magic, until you think about it. Ponder it long enough and you might come to understand that the whole idea of waiting decades for a hydrogen-economy to develop is pure something else (that I’m not allowed to say). Here’s why …