The news about devices for reading books just doesn’t stop these days, from the good (Sony’s Reader is going wireless and is supporting the ePub format) to the bizarre and troubling (Amazon yanking back books people have already bought).
So today’s T-Poll takes your temperature on the whole notion of electronic readers. Are you an owner, a potential fan, or a naysayer?
Advertising Age is reporting that a Delaware company is suing Microsoft’s ad agency over ads for Bing that were integrated into the TV show The Philanthropist. I’m not a big prime-time watcher, so this is the first I’ve heard of this:
Commercials for Bing were filmed on-set using actors from the show, which made its debut this summer and stars James Purefoy and Neve Campbell. The Bing-themed ads appeared between the TV programming and regular commercial breaks.
Still unclear: Why this idea is patentable in the first place, or how it’s fundamentally different from the ads that were deeply embedded into old radio shows–I mean, Jack Benny and pals not only discussed Jello every week, but the Benny program was named after the stuff.
[Full discloure: Bing is a Technologizer advertiser.]
I had a great time conducting a Webinar on small-business security over at Verizon’s Small Business Center last week. If you wanted to attend but missed it, you can check out the one-hour archived version here.
Folks who attended the event asked some smart questions, but time constraints prevented us from responding to all of them. Here are quick answers to a few more of the questions that attendees submitted.
What are your thoughts on Web-based servers such as https: sites vs traditional servers in terms of security? I’d worry less about the fundamental safety of the two approaches and more about the specifics of particular implementations–a Web service provider who does a great job of protecting your data will keep it safer than it would be on a not-very-well-protected traditional server in your company. Of course, there are plenty of horror stories involving companies doing a crummy job of protecting data on the Web. Bottom line: Don’t trust vital data to a Web service provider without asking tough questions about what it does to safeguard data. Also, remember that the fact a service uses https: to log you in doesn’t mean that it’s doing anything to protect your documents once you’re logged in. (Here’s a Google blog post on that issue.)
Is a single firewall sufficient? i.e. Windows, router, virus provider etc? First of all, you definitely shouldn’t run more than one software firewall at a time on a PC; multiple firewalls can conflict with each other. If your router’s the sole source of Internet connectivity for the machines on your network, and it has a solid built-in firewall, and you’ve configured it well, it should be your primary source of protection. It’s a good idea to make sure it’s monitoring outbound communications as well as inbound ones, to defend against malware which sends data from PCs on your network back out over the Internet. And you still might want to run firewalls on local PCs just in case (I do, including on Macs).
Securitywise, what do you think of remote access solutions such as GoToMyPC or LogMeIn? I’ve certainly known IT managers who wince at the very idea of remote control, since it opens up the possibility of users on a network putting their computers on the Internet without permission. Both of the services you mention offer plentiful security features (here’s info on GoToMyPC’s and here are details on LogMeIn’s); I’d fret less about hackers penetrating them and more about staffers getting sloppy with their passwords. And I’d fret less about that than I would about malware that lets hackers install their own pernicious remote-access software on your PCs.
What can we do if we have already blocked Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. and employees use backdoor sites that allow them to get through? You can block access to social networks. You can block the anonymous proxies that lets people get to social networks even if you’ve blocked them. But if you’ve got a smart enough geek on your staff, I’m not sure if it’s possible to use technology to absolutely, positively prevent that person from doing stuff on the Web which you don’t want him or her to do. Which is why a significant component of small-business security ultimately boils down to setting policies, making clear what will happen if they’re violated, and finding employees who you can trust.
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Nokia’s Linux-based tablety thingie.
Facebook pacifies Canada on privacy.
Cybersquatters: Don’t mess with Verizon.
Sony releases three new DSLRs.
Dome screen provides wraparound games.
The most interesting company in Web-based office suites isn’t Google. It won’t be Microsoft, even after the Web-based version of Office shows up next year. It’s the much smaller company Zoho. Its productivity tools aren’t always best of breed, but they’re always inventive, and Zoho keeps showing its willingness to try new things at a fast clip.
At the moment, Zoho offers nineteen apps, all of which are available in free versions, and all of which are worth checking out:
The newest thing Zoho is trying is letting users of Google Apps sign into Zoho apps using their Google credentials. Which certainly makes it easier to mix and match services from Google and Zoho to create a custom online suite of your own…which is something that I was doing already. Along with a lot of other Zoho fans, I’ll bet. (You could already sign into Zoho with a standard Google or Yahoo account.)
The New York Times’ Steve Lohr has a nice blog post up on Zoho, saying that the company is doing well despite being a fairly small outfit engaged in intense competition with Google. When Microsoft does release its online Office, Zoho will be up against two giants–but I hope it’ll continue to flourish, and I have a feeling it will.
Apple’s OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard isn’t arriving until Friday, but a bunch of reviews hit today. More than with most evaluations of an operating system, they’re consistent–most critics say that it’s no earthshaker, but worth the $29 it’ll cost folks who already have Leopard.
I haven’t tried Snow Leopard yet–I’ll pick it up on Friday–and while I’m looking forward to getting it and will tell you what I think, I believe that waiting a bit before you install a new OS is always a defensible move. Snow Leopard isn’t going to work perfectly out of the box on every Mac it’s theoretically compatible with. Walt Mossberg found hiccups with VMWare Fusion and his Verizon EVDO adapter; Engadget’s Josh Topolsky (who apparently tried the OS on a lot of Macs) encountered glitches with installation, Safari, Spotlight, and Wi-Fi.
Both Apple and third-party developers are going to identify and fix problems over the next few weeks; a lot of sensible people will let early adopters do the suffering. That said, none of the reviews report any catastrophic problems.
As usual, checking out the last paragraphs of reviews is the fastest way to get bottom-line advice–here, I’ll help…
Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal:
Apple already had the best computer operating system in Leopard, and Snow Leopard makes it a little better. But it isn’t a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn’t a typical Apple lust-provoking product.
David Pogue, The New York Times:
Either way, the big story here isn’t really Snow Leopard. It’s the radical concept of a software update that’s smaller, faster and better — instead of bigger, slower and more bloated. May the rest of the industry take the hint.
Snow Leopard is Apple’s lowest-priced OS update in eight years. Granted, it’s a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately. But the price of upgrading is so low that I’ve really got to recommend it for all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users. If you’ve got a 32-bit Intel Mac (that is, one powered by a Core Solo or Core Duo processor), the benefit of this upgrade will be a little less. But for most Mac users, especially the kind of person who reads a Web site devoted to the subject, the assorted benefits of Snow Leopard outweigh the price tag. I’d pay $30 just for the improved volume ejection, the ability to create services with Automator, and the improvements to the Dock and Exposé—though I admit I’d pay slightly more to not have the misguided QuickTime Player X as a part of the package. If you’re a user who connects to an Exchange server every day, upgrading to Snow Leopard really is a no-brainer. For everyone else, maybe it’s not quite a no-brainer—but it’s awfully close. Snow Leopard is a great value, and any serious Mac user should upgrade now.
In my experience, Mac OS X was already a superior operating system to Windows. With Exchange and other technologies, Snow Leopard adds bite, especially for business. But as upgrades go, this one is relatively tame.
Here’s the thing about Snow Leopard, the single inescapable fact that hung over our heads as we ran our tests and took our screenshots and made our graphs: it’s $30. $30! If you’re a Leopard user you have virtually no reason to skip over 10.6, unless you’ve somehow built a mission-critical production workflow around an InputManager hack (in which case, well, have fun with 10.5 for the rest of your life). Sure, maybe wait a few weeks for things like Growl and MenuMeters to be updated, and if your livelihood depends on QuickTime you might want to hold off, but for everyone else the sheer amount of little tweaks and added functionality in 10.6 more than justifies skipping that last round of drinks at the bar — hell, we’re guessing Exchange support alone has made the sale for a lot of people. If you’re still on Tiger, well, you’ll have to decide whether or not you want to drop $130 on what’s essentially a spit-shined Leopard, but if you do decide to spend the cash you’ll find that the experience of using a Mac has changed dramatically for the better since you last upgraded.
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times:
But just $29? To make your Mac this much faster? It’s a gimme.
The changes here are modest, and the performance gains look promising but beyond the built in apps, just a promise. If you’re looking for more bells and whistles, you can hold off on this upgrade for at least awhile. But my thought is that Snow Leopard’s biggest feature is that it doesn’t have any new features, but that what is already there has been refined, one step closer to perfection. They just better roll out some new features next time, because the invisible refinement upgrade only works once every few decades.
This upgrade won’t deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away (not that we would want it to), but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers.
Overall, we think that Snow Leopard did almost everything Apple says it set out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to make it easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday use, many of our tests indicate it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support.
Once you’ve tried Snow Leopard, let us know what you think.
Interested in a couple of terabytes of networked storage? How about 4TB, or 8TB? Iomega has announced the StorCenter ix4-200D, its newest NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. It’s packed with features and aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, but I think it’ll find its way into some home-based businesses as well.
The StorCenter contains four SATA hard drives and sports two Gigabit Ethernet ports. It’s got three USB 2.0 ports for adding external drives and/or a printer, all of which are then available from the network; a feature called QuikTransfer lets you use an LCD to move files back and forth between the NAS and external drives without using a PC.
It works with Windows, OS X, and Linux PCs, comes with Retrospect backup software from parent company EMC, and is Iomega’s first business-oriented network storage device to support Apple’s Time Machine backups. It can even talk to Axis network cameras and record video from them without a PC in the equation. There are also some industrial-strength features that smallish companies are less likely to care about, including iSCSCI support and certification by VMWare for virtualization use. And even though it’s aimed at businessy use, it supports DLNA for streaming of video and audio across a network directly from its drives.
The 2TB version of the StorCenter is competitively priced at $699.99; the 4TB provides double the disk space for $899.99; the 8TB uses still-costly 2TB drives and is $1899.99. (Unlike some storage products with multiple bays, it doesn’t offer any free bays in any of its configurations.) All three versions come with a three-year warranty, and Iomega says they’re shipping now.
Back in June, satellite-radio provider Sirius XM released an iPhone application. It was missing much of the service’s signature content, was difficult to sign up for, and was dauntingly pricey compared to the bevy of free Internet radio services available on the iPhone. And other than that, it was swell.
Today, the company announced another iPhone product that’s potentially cooler: XM SkyDock, an iPhone peripheral that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a fancy color-screen satellite radio for your car. Unlike the iPhone app on its own, the dock delivers real satellite radio, so it includes the full complement of programming–everything from Howard Stern to old-time radio–and won’t suffer from the spottiness of AT&T’s 3G network. (I canceled my XM service in July and switched to listening to stuff like Slacker and Pandora on my iPhone; I’m happy with the music, but the signal keeps conking out on the road.)
The new dock will sell for $120 when it premieres this fall, and pipes audio to your car’s stereo via a new technology called PowerConnect that uses your car’s wiring harness to improve sound quality. (If PowerConnect works well, that’s news in itself–I’ve lost countless hours of my life to trying to coax acceptable audio out of FM transmitters from a bunch of manufacturers.)
One question mark that remains: How many folks who own iPhones or iPods Touch and find the SkyDock intriguing will think that satellite radio is worth the monthly cost? The standard plan is $12.95 a month (but there’s an additional $1.98 music royalty fee which the pricing info page mysteriously doesn’t mention). In the world of iPhone economics, in which nearly everything except the phone and 3G service are cheap or free, that’s a lot of dough.
The cheapest way to get Sirius XM seems to be get rid of Sirius XM: In the weeks since I ditched the service, I’ve gotten repeated offers to renew for a year for $77, or half off the standard rate. Which is cheap enough to make it at least mildly tempting, although I still think that an iPhone equipped only with free and low-cost apps beats a satellite radio with a paid subscription when it comes to overall variety…
I’ve been having fun asking you guys daily questions in the form of T-Polls, and judging from the results, you’ve been having fun answering them. For the sake of posterity, I’ve closed voting on most of ’em to date. After the jump, your final verdict on tech topics of all sorts, from whether browsers should have ad-blockers (the majority say yes) to the state of the U.S. patent system (bad!)…
I recently had a minor epiphany: I’m probably never going to buy another desktop PC. It shouldn’t have come as a revelation given that the last one I got (in January of 2007) sits largely unused, except when I need to grab a particular old file off its hard drive. Laptops give me everything I need from a computer, and their downsides–smaller screens, lower-capacity hard drives–are far outweighed by their multiple virtues.
Market share figures show that the world’s made the leap to laptops, too–they’re the planet’s default personal computer, and it’s desktops that are now the variant device.
Which leads to today’s two-part T-Poll..
