Dislike on Facebook

One of the most requested features on Facebook is a 'dislike' button. Everyone is familiar with the ability to 'like' someone's status updates, but what if you don't like it? While we wait for Facebook to implement this feature, there is an alternative. Did your Aunt Nellie just share with the world that her bunions are killing her? Did the dog down the street post that he just finished peeing on every hydrant in the neighborhood? With the help of this Firefox plug-in you can now share with the world your dislike for whatever anyone posts about. Bring on the hate!

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iPhone, Meet Verizon

A recent posting on Afterdawn.com claims that "Verizon is "tweaking" their network so it can withstand the high data usage of iPhone users." If there is one thing I know, I know not to believe most things I read on the internet. However I'm also one to believe that dreams do come true. I'm eager to see how another carrier network responds to the load placed on it by iPhone users. I'm also eager to see AT&T drown in their own sea of woe if a competitive carrier can successfully support the iPhone traffic. Check it out.

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WikiPedia Needs your Help

If you've used the internet over the past 10 years, then there is a really good chance you've used WikiPedia. Billing itself as "the largest encyclopedia in human history" it has become a vital resource to everyone who uses the internet. Now they need your help. Believe it or not, it costs money to keep WikiPedia running. Jimmy Wales, founder of WikiPedia, is making a public appeal for your financial help. Pitch in and help keep this cornerstone of the information superhighway alive and kicking. Check it out.

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Fake Steve Jobs & Others Hope to Crash AT&T's Network This Friday

If you are an iPhone user, no doubt you have had horrible service issues in the last year. Whether it's dropped calls or just the inability to even make a call, you've seen it. Guess what? You are the problem according to AT&T.

AT&T blames iPhone users for their service issues and have started talks of getting rid of their unlimited data plans. Perfect! Users are using our services too much, so lets get rid of them - that will make them happier and stay with us. We won't lose millions of dollars... nope...

This Friday, a large number of people (you can join in too!) led by the Fake Steve Jobs, are going to try protest AT&T by crashing their network. That's this Friday the 18th, at 11 a.m. mountain time. Dubbed Operation Chokehold, they are encouraging everyone to use their data to use programs/access the web, download stuff from their iPhone (with WIFI turned OFF).

It's an interesting way to get the attention of the big wigs over at AT&T. Whether you partake or not is up to you, but just know that if your service goes down around 11 a.m. this Friday, this could very well be why!

Another option for some may be to drop AT&T all together. Sure, you will lose the iPhone (for now... who knows where it's going next!), but you will gain reliability and a much cheaper phone bill with other options like the Blackberry, or Android, or Windows Mobile, etc. I've had Sprint for three years now and I have not had a single dropped call once and my phone bill is dirt cheap compared to AT&T. Yeah... feel free to read that sentence a few more times ;)

Read up on the full Fake Steve Jobs article, here.

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The Economics of Social Media = Socialnomics

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Facebook More Popular than Twitter; 200 Billion Page Views a Month!

Facebook once started out as a cool way to connect to friends in college. It was much cooler than MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?), but in the past few years Facebook opened it's domain to anyone in the world. Today it's grown to over 350 million users, with over 200 billion page views a month. That is an advertisers dream come true! There are also over 2.5 billion photos uploaded per month... holy cow! I'd love to check out Facebooks servers storing all of that ;)

Congrats Facebook! You may have lost your original coolness factor, but you are still rolling in the dough!

Source

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$300 PS3 Cracks Passwords Better Than $8300 Server

Federal agents get equipment from busts and through warrants all the time. Often that equipment is password protected and those agents can't force someone to tell them their passwords, instead they use $8300 servers to crack the password by trying the almost unlimited number of letter/number combinations using a a technique called "brute force password cracking."

Sony's PS3 has been a gift to Feds, and I suppose in a way, to our tax dollars. What used to cost Federal agents $8300 to do can now be done with a $300 PS3.

The original PS3s let you install Linux, which is what is used to crack the passwords. Sony has taken the Linux feature out of the PS3 in order to save costs and lower the price, so any new PS3 aren't of use to the Feds. They are now turning to eBay to pick up 20 more original PS3s for the use of password cracking.

Who would have thought a gaming system would have so many uses?

Full story, here.

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Firefox Most Vulnerable Browser, Safari Second; World May End

Percent of Web Vulnerabilities

For quite a few years Firefox has been a much safer browser than any other, especially IE, but that is quickly changing. As of this year, IE is actually much less vulnerable than Firefox or Safari! Firefox has been listed as the browser with the most vulnerabilities, followed by Safari. The best browser was Opera.

I have never been fond of Opera on PC (Opera Mobile works awesome on my phone though!), so I guess it's time for me to take a look again at Opera...

Check out the full article, here.

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HTML Email Standardization

Let's face it. Building web sites to work with multiple browsers sucks. Building HTML emails to work with multiple email clients sucks even worse. I found this site today that is working to standardize HTML rendering across all email clients. In the process they have evaluated a list of capabilities for each client from webmail services like Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, and Live to desktop clients like Outlook, Entourage, and Thunderbird. Check it out.

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Google to Acquire AdMob

This is big. I've been eying and tinkering with an analytics service exclusively for mobile device tracking called AdMob for the past year or so. It provides granular detail on the mobile traffic for your site, including things like carrier, device, and OS. Beyond analytics, AdMob's core service is adserving to mobile devices. It's no secret that I'm also a huge fan of Google Analytics, despite what the people at Omniture (recently acquired by Adobe) would like us to think. Today it was announced that Google would be acquiring AdMob to roll in their mobile adserving capabilities, and hopefully their analytics capabilities as well. Read more here.

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Make Your Battery Last Longer!

Slate has an article on debunking some battery myths (for cellphones, laptops, camera's, etc.) as well as a few helpful hints to make yours last longer.

A couple of useful tips from the article are: to have optimum battery efficiency you want to keep your battery charge level between 20% and 80% and if you plan on storing a battery somewhere for extended use, it's recommended you charge it to 40% before storing it. For the most part, you don't need to worry about batteries losing "memory" anymore; that is old technology in Nicad batteries, where almost all high-end electronics use Lithium-ion.

Check out the full article, here.

SRG Integrated Producer Scott Woodrow brought this article to my attention, so thanks Scott!

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Email Marketing Benchmarks

Since we like to measure the effectiveness of the work we do, metrics and benchmarks are critical to this process. Whenever we launch an email campaign, or build analytics reporting, people always ask "How does this measure against industry benchmarks?" or "Is a 3% open rate any good?" In my quest for knowledge, I came across MarketingCharts.com. This site is chock full of every imaginable compilation of industry benchmarks, and much to my pleasure a fairly recent report on email marketing. Check it out.

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Who Wants to Do the Wave?

For the past few weeks it has been really lonely in Google Wave land. I gotta tell ya, Wave may be really cool, but it certainly was not designed to be used alone. I logged in today to find that I have 20 (17 as of this blog post) Google Wave invites. Want one? Let me know in the comments. Wave on!

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10 Ways to Help You Spot Scam E-mails

Over at switched.com, they've posted a guide for 10 ways to help you spot an E-mail scam. Although we've talked about similar things in Outlook training class, like spam prevention, etc. you can never have too much spam training. Switched.com's guide is very handy and even includes pictures and examples.

I encourage everyone to take a look at the guide below to help increase your awareness of scams and your ability to spot them!

10 Ways to Spot an E-Mail Scam

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Tom Joins Facebook

Tom from MySpace finally did it. Like millions of others he has left the mostly irrelevant MySpace in the dust and has hopped on the Facebook train. Take a look at his profile here.

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Windows 7 Launches Today - Who Wants a Windows 7 Whopper?

Huzzah! The official launch of Windows 7 is finally upon us and to celebrate in Japan, Burger King is offering a very special Whopper; the Windows 7 Whopper! 7 patties of delici.... err gross! The first 30 people each day will get to buy them at ¥777... Advertising is a fun business, haha!

Check out the full story, here.

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Anyone Using Google Wave?

So I got my Google Wave Invite a few weeks ago. The person who sent me the invite never uses it, and the only other person I know with an invite also never uses it. Do you use Google Wave? For most people the whole concept of Google Wave is a little foreign, as this 'study' demonstrates. Check it out.

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Free Your Data!

For a few years now everyone has been talking web 2.0 this and social media that, but what does it REALLY mean. At their core, all of these trends do one thing, empower the user. The now has been MySpace was one of the first products to really empower the user to create an online presence. Albeit a kludgy, spam infested presence. Now every web site has some social component, and with that component, that ability to store your data online. But what happens to your data (photos, videos, music, email, files) when your favorite site no longer exists, or the next big things comes alone? I encountered this a few years ago when Yahoo purchased Flickr, and converted all of their Yahoo Photo accounts to Flickr accounts. In that case the transition was automated from one Yahoo site to another. What would you do if you wanted to move your photos to Facebook, or Photobucket, or SnapFish? The Data Liberation Front seeks to solve that very problem. Spearheaded by Google, The DLF site is a guide book for moving your data to or from all of Google's most popular services. Check it out.

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Everything iDon't, Droid Does; New Verizon Android Commercial

Verizon put on it's fighting gloves this weekend as it released an Android commercial for their new Android phone by Motorola called, "Droid." The commercial directly pokes fun at the limitations of the iPhone. The following may sting a little for iPhone users, but trust me - in the name of innovation and pushing standards, it can only help motivate Apple to get into gear with their next iPhone!


Now it's Apple's turn to take a swing!

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Worst Web Site Ever

Few things make for poor web design like zealotry in any form. This site is no exception. Not only is the design and layout atrocious, the site is so content heavy the page load is over 500mb! I clicked on the link to the site about 3 hours ago, and it is still loading!

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50 Most Annoying Things About the Internet

Came across this article this morning. I've got my own list of annoyances but this list is pretty spot on. If you are really looking for a way to vent your digital grievances, don't forget about Internet Annoyance Day.

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Get Your Balloon Boy T-Shirts!

We all remember the Balloon Boy story like it was just yesterday... ahh the memories. Oh wait, that was yesterday! Wow, well not even a day later someone is now selling Balloon Boy T-shirts on the web. For just a mere $17.95 + shipping, you can cherish the memories we all shared together at the office yesterday.

Why wait? Go order yours below, now!!!

http://www.zazzle.com/go_falcon_go_own_a_piece_of_history_tshirt-235529491037592548

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Password Advice from Google

Passwords are the bane of many netizen's existence. Keeping your passwords updated and strong only exacerbates the issue. However it is critical to have an effective personal password policy to keep you web presence safe and secure. Not sure how to do it? Here is what Google has to say. Read more.

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Windows 7 Launches in 1 week; Apple is Ready

Microsoft is getting ready to officially launch Windows 7 to the public on October 22nd. The IT squad here at SRG has been using it for several months now and all agree; it's the best Windows OS to date. Props to Microsoft on this one! Hopefully we will get to have Windows 7 here at work for everyone at some point... no promises yet though!

Apple is ready for the launch as well, as they see it as an opportunity to sell more Macs. Apple is expecting computer sales to be much higher with Windows 7 coming out because so many people skipped Vista. They are going to be ready with commercials and ads that will hopefully draw in more PC users. Unfortunately the Mac ads in the past two or so years have just been terrible. So, unless they have something new up their sleeves, we are going to be tortured with the same old "I'm a smug Mac" and "I am a nerdy PC" ads that try to scare people into thinking viruses only exist on PCs...despite Apple adding malware protection to their newest OS.

Viruses don't infect PCs, people infect PCs :)


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Synchronized IT Bowling

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Flash on the iPhone? Sort of. . .

One of the most elusive features on the iPhone is the ability to view Flash web sites. Adobe has announced they will be releasing flash for most mobile handsets, including, sort of, the iPhone. What they are doing is releasing an SDK (software development kit) that allows you to port (convert) your Flash app to an iPhone app. Think of the YouTube iPhone app. . .this is essentially a conversion of the flash based web site. Rumor is that this is being done so developers can't create rogue apps through flash that bypass the AppStore approval process, and in turn Apple's control over the iPhone user experience.

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iPhone Related stress

If you've been dropping a lot of call lately, don’t be alarmed! You’re not alone! The average dropped call rate for the iPhone is around 30% in some areas. Those of you with scores closer to 20% should consider yourselves lucky according to Apple Geniuses! AT&T has assured its customers that they are working hard to make their service more reliable, but dropping a third of your calls just ain't right.

Don’t jump the iPhone ship just yet, there is a silver lining! Several service related problems have been traced back to the phone itself which means there might be hope for a few of you yet. If you take your phone into the Apple store they can measure your rate of dropped calls and If its higher than “Apple’s magic cutoff point“, you can get yourself a new phone!

We here in IT love the iPhone , well most of us anyways (Tyson). If your iPhone is dropping more than half of your calls, take it in to the Apple store and have them take a look at it. It might save you from cursing and screaming (Tyson).

Happy dialing my fellow iPhone users!

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New Zealand Makes Cell Phone Use Illegal in Vehicles *UPDATE*

New Zealand just made pretty much all cell phone use illegal while driving vehicles. That includes using your phone as an MP3 player or using it as GPS.

Ouch! I don't know what I'd do without being able to use my phone's GPS while driving. That and playing music are the two things I do almost daily. Let's hope the trend doesn't catch on here in the US.

Check out the full article via Engadget, here.

*UPDATE*
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/28/new-zealand-iphone-gps-ban-considered-then-overturned/

Turns out they have decided to allow GPS and music on cellphones as long as they are "mounted in the vehicle and are manipulated infrequently."

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Keep Up With Marketing Trends

Google along with The Wharton School of Business have just launched Fast. Forward. Described as "Quick perspectives on the changing face of marketing," Fast. Forward. is an attempt to facilitate the marketing, advertising, and innovation community in keeping up with a constantly and quickly changing and evolving landscape. At it's heart is a well designed YouTube Channel rich with commentary and thinking from today's most brilliant ad folks and thinkers. Check it out.

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What's the Best Browser for Battery Life? (PC)

Anandtech reviewed the most popular browsers on PC laptops to see which would use the least amount of battery life. Internet Explorer 8 led the pack on your average laptop, with Chrome coming in second. Last place was Safari with almost 40 minutes less battery life.

On netbooks, Chrome led Internet Explorer 8 by 13 minutes. Once again Safari was last with over two hours less of battery life. That is a significant decrease in battery life!

The moral of the story? If you want better battery life, stick to IE 8 or Chrome and stay as far away from Safari on a PC as possible.

Check out the full article, here.

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Sprint's New Any Mobile, Anytime Plan Gets Official

Sprint announced today a new plan that could be game changing in the cell phone world. The best part is, there are no special hoops to jump through. Priced at $70 a month, you get unlimited data, unlimited text/video/picture messaging, unlimited mobile to mobile (on any carrier), and 450 Anytime minutes. You also get the other little Sprint perks like GPS, Sprint TV, Mobile NFL Live, and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile. If you are on Sprint's Everything Data Plan, you will be upgraded to this new plan automatically. If you want the new Any Mobile, Anytime plan, you can switch without renewing your contract agreement.

Better plan, cheaper, no contract renewal agreement? Wow, bravo Sprint! I know some people are bitter about how things use to be at Sprint, but it's clear they have taken a completely new direction the last few years that deserves some attention. Not to mention they have some sweet phones out like the Palm Pre and the Touch Pro2 with more to come like the Android-powered Hero and InstinctQ due out in the next month or two.

Check out the official plan detail's page to switch over or just get more information, here.

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iTunes 9 Released Today

Apple released iTunes 9 today that has quite a few cool improvements. Besides better organization and new store items, the coolest thing is the new and improved Genius playlist maker. Think of it as a computer DJ right in your iTunes program.

It sounds pretty sweet. Check out a full article on what all is new in iTunes 9, here.

Also, you can download the newest iTunes, here.

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Google Sports Calendar

If you use Google Calendar, and follow your favorite sports teams fanatically, then this new Google Calendar feature is for you. I'm not a huge sports fan, but you better believe I added the Gator Football schedule to my Google Calendar.

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Solar Panel Roadways

Popular science just published an article on a startup company that has a vision of replacing all of our current roadways with solar panels. The panels would carry electricity, and also be the route for TV, Internet and any other wires companies needed to run coast to coast. The company is still in the process of getting things started but the gov't just supplied them with $100,000 to test out their idea. If widely adopted it would replace our need for any other source of energy and allow electric vehicle to plug in anywhere they drove, because every road would supply power.

Link to the article: PopSci Article

Link to their homepage: http://www.solarroadways.com/

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Snow Leopard - Don't Do It!

As most of you know, Apple released their latest OS, Snow Leopard, last Friday. I’m as excited as you are to get my hands on it and give a run for its money. Whatever you do, please don’t install Snow Leopard on your SRG computer. Apple is notorious for disregarding backwards compatibility, and Snow Leopard is no exception. Several articles have already been published outlining issues with a variety of software and hardware that worked just fine with Tiger and Leopard. When we build an SRG machine we have a lengthy checklist of steps we take to customize the configuration to your work needs. Simply put, a rogue OS upgrade will screw up our hard work, and create a major headache for you. The last person (who will remain nameless) who attempted a rogue OS upgrade paid dearly for it as they were forced to deal with the rotting fruits of their misguided labor. The IT Team was completely unsympathetic.

We are all about adopting new technologies, once they are proven to work in our environment. Patience pays.

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Stop Common Web Annoyances

As great of a place as the world wide web (AKA The Internet) is, it is also rife with threats, scams, frauds, and a myriad of annoyances in general. This great article shows you how to use Firefox (my favorite web browser) to stop some of those annoyances dead in their tracks. Read more.

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Another Great Way to Send Big Files - s4ve.as

We are always looking for easy ways to transmit large chunks of data across the internet. I was a big fan of Streamfile for a while, but that service proved to be a little buggy (I should probably give it another try). Today I came across s4ve.as (pronounced 'save as') which holds itself to the same promise as Streamfile, "file sharing made easy." I've yet to give it a try, but I encourage you to do so, and let us know what you think.

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MMS Support for iPhones Comes to AT&T in September

September is a big month for AT&T and iPhone users because AT&T will finally be allowing iPhone users to utilize that saucy new MMS feature on their phones. Below is an example of what your first MMS reaction may be like:


Let's hope AT&T beefed up their network enough to handle the millions pictures sent via MMS in September.

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Before you Call Support

This should come as no surprise, but people ask me for tech support all day long. Coworker, friends, family, and even a few arch-enemies have asked me to assist them with vexing technical issues. My dog even asked me to help her sync her ipod last week. Luckily I don't mind, but if I did, I would just ask people to reference the chart below.

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Rhapsody on the iPhone

Realnetworks announced yesterday that it would be submitting a Rhapsody iPhone app to the app store this week. As a long time Rhapsody subscriber, this has been a long time coming. However, I thought it would never happen, as it competed directly with one of the iPhone core services as a music player. Given Apple's stranglehold on app store releases, I'm very interested to see how this plays out.

Rhapsody on iPhone from Rhapsody on Vimeo.

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Zune HD Making Waves in the Media Device World

The Zune HD is Microsoft's newest media player that has a touch screen like the iTouch, wifi, etc. just as expected. The one thing that has been speculated about for ages about is whether it will be powered by NVIDIA's Tegra processor or not. The Tegra processor is a chip that will fuel the future of media players and mobile devices. It packs a punch with graphics quality the iTouch and iPhone could only dream of having. It also utilizes less power, meaning many hours of lovely battery life.

There has been a lot of speculation that Microsoft's next mobile OS Windows 7 will really take flight once these Tegra processors are put into mobile phones. If this can happen in the next year or so, it will really force Apple to step up it's game for their next iPhone. Competition is good, it'd be nice if we had some. Lets face it, MS needs to step up their game A LOT and with NVIDIA's help, it could happen sooner than we think.

Check out the full hands-on preview of the Zune HD powered by Tegra, here.

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Spamhaus RBL

We recently added the Spamhaus Real-Time Block List to our Exchange Server configuration. It has had an incredible impact on the volume of spam hitting our Exchange server. We implemented the Spamcop Block List last year, and it did not have nearly the impact the Spamhaus has. Spamhaus has cut our spam volume by about 90%. That is incredible. Spamhaus, we thank you.

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Server Room Upgrade - Success

We have upgraded our server room configuration with the inclusion of a nice rack for all of our newer servers. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

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Outlook Coming to Mac in 2010

Microsoft has decided to finally beef up their Mac software support with the shocking news that they will be bringing Outlook to Mac's in 2010. Although visually they will still be only visually similar, MS promises they it will have a much more Exchange compatibility.

Any Entourage users will agree that it's needed an overhaul for quite sometime! It's not even possible to view who has accepted a meeting except for the meeting organizer and you. Coming from a company that uses both Mac and PC, I am hoping that they fix the signature disparity on the Mac (Outlook on PC uses Rich text for signatures as default, Entourage for the Mac can't even do rich text meaning signatures look quite a bit different on either platform).

Check out the full article, here.

Bravo MS, it took you long enough... now get back to work!

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Are URL Shorteners Secure?

With the explosion of microblogging through services like Twitter and Facebook Status Updates, there has also been an explosion in the use of URL shorteners like bit.ly, is.gd, and tinyurl.com. As with the growth of anything on the internet, there is a parallel growth of security threats. The one thing that bugs me out about URL shorteners is that you never know what lies beyond the cute little shortened URL. It's a perfect platform for the delivery of malicious links to unsuspecting victims, and I'm surprised there have not been more security issues with short URLs. In the meantime, you can use a great tool like Untiny.me before you click that link.

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Next Gen Smart Phones

I came across an article today that outlines the latest and greatest in Smart Phones. The image below was extremely telling. What I also found telling is the absence of any Windows Mobile or Blackberry devices. However, this is just one man's opinion.

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Which Continent is Fastest?

This article in The New York Times states that Europe holds the title for the continent with the fastest broadband speeds. In an effort to keep things honest I checked this information against Speedtest.net's World Results Page. According to Speedtest.net, Europe only holds the download title, the upload title belonging to Asia. Luckily for us, North America is not far behind either continent.

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Alerts for Free iPhone Apps

I just read a great story on downloadsquad.com about a website that will tell you what apps are free for the iPhone at the currnet time. Many apps that cost money will go free for a short period of time for promotional purposes and the below website will let you know!

The alert website is: http://freeappalert.com/

There you can sign up to be alerted via twitter, facebook, rss feed, or just an e-mail if you'd prefer. The site also tells you how much the application previously was, for bragging rights or to just know how killer of a deal free can be.

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1 Billion Firefox Downloads Surpassed!

Today is a special day for Firefox - it has surpassed over 1 billion downloads of their popular browser.

That is a pretty amazing feat considering they don't force feed you their browser like Microsoft does with Internet Explorer and Apple with Safari. Firefox was chosen to be downloaded a billion times by users like you and I. Cheers Firefox, to infinity... and beyond?

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Software Ad Fails Miserably

It's sad when you are trying to promote something like education and you can't even put the correct word "they're". Next time you see a copy editor here at SRG. Thank her/him because they keep us from embarrassing ourselves!

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Streaming Mobile Radio is Wunderful

I crossed upon a great app for the iPhone and Windows Mobile, soon BlackBerry and Andriod - it's called WunderRadio.

It's certainly not a new concept. Essentially it's radio stations streamed to your cellphone, but what I have found unique about this sweet app is it lets you use your GPS to find local stations wherever you are, instantly. I studied abroad in Scotland for 6 months back in college, so I have a warm fuzzy place for everything UK, so I quickly looked up some Scottish stations and was shocked to see over 100 different ones!

The site says over 36,000 stations and let me tell you, it's very true! Best of all, many of the stations are very high quality at 128+ bit rate for each (some I've seen as high as 320).

If you are like me and hate the 2-3 local stations on your car stereo, try plugging in your phone to your AUX jack and expand your horizons. There is a whole world of radio out there - literally.

Check it out here: http://www.wunderradio.com/

The WM version lets you try it for 15 days and then you can buy it for $15, not sure if it's the same for the iPhone.

Happy listening!

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Power IT Down Day

In today's energy hungry world, we need to do everything we can to conserve energy. Within the world of the corporate enterprise, small changes can add up to make a big difference. That is why I fully support HP's Power IT Down Day. Here is how HP describes it:

"On August 27, power down your computer, monitor, and printer at the end of the day. We’ll calculate the number of people who Power IT Down, and post the results."

It would be really nice if the plan was to power everything down for the entire day. Imagine the potential for impact! Check back on this site for updates on the energy saved.

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Google Kisses 'Beta' Goodbye

After five years of being in 'beta' status, Google has decided Gmail (and all of it's Google Apps - Docs, Talk, etc.) are not longer in beta! Hurray! And for some very pointless reason, if you really loved seeing "BETA" Google put in a setting that lets you toggle it back on... Wow. Thank goodness we can do that!

Check out the full scoop here.

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iPhone 3gs - A Week Later

I've had the new iPhone 3gs for about a week now. Overall I am very pleased with the upgrade. The most notable difference is the speed at which the device functions. The best word to describe this is 'snappy'. The iPhone 3gs performs a lot 'snappier' then it's predecessors. In turn this has a dramatic impact on the user experience. With the increase in snappiness there is a decrease in bugginess, also benefiting the user experience. The video recording capability is excellent. Like all things Apple it is intuitive and easy to use. Check out a sample recording below. The integration of the compass with maps is also a big plus. This enables a basic equivalent of turn by turn directions found in dedicated GPS devices. My favorite feature, which is enabled on all iPhones running the 3.0 OS is the ability to turn of multiple text alerts. That drove me crazy! This article describes what you can expect in the upcoming iPhone 3.1 OS.

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Post Palm Pre Launch Update

It's been a little over a month since the Palm Pre launched on Sprint's Now Network, but how has it been doing? Well, considering that in June alone it sold over 300,000 units and 70,000 units in the last week or so of May, things are looking pretty good for both Palm and Sprint.

Now if we toss out this little tidbit, it gets kind of exciting - the last Palm phone sold only 350,00o-ish phones in its first fiscal quarter. So actually, the Palm Pre is really kicking butt! Nicely done Palm, nicely done. It may not be much compared to the zillion or so iPhones sold, but I do think Apple is a little uneasy about the success of the Pre launch. In the end it's great for all of us, the consumers.

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Spam Trends

As an IT professional, email security, especially spam protection, is one of my biggest bugaboos. As a matter of fact, it is nothing short of a major pain in the ass for administrators and end users alike. Spam protection is very much a cat and mouse game. You optimize you mail server, it reduces spam levels, and a few months later you are getting more spam then before the optimization. In this recent report from Google mail and threat filtering service Postini, my assessment is confirmed. Read more.

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Firefox 3.5 Released!

The next big update from FireFox is officially out. They claim it's significantly faster than previous Firefox versions. There are a few other new features, check them out here.

You can download Firefox 3.5 here.

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Microsoft Bing - 1 Month Later

Last month Microsoft released their latest search product, Bing. Bing is an example of semantic search, meaning you can ask a question, it understands the question (as opposed to matching search terms), and in turn delivers far more relevant search results. I'm noticing it coming up in the top 5 organic traffic sources on almost every web site we are managing. For a search engine that is a month old that is pretty impressive. What does this mean to us as advertisers? We should consider this as an option in our traffic campaigns for both organic and paid search. Because the search results are so much more relevant the subsequent click has that much more value. Check it out.

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iPhone 3GS is Hot

Remember when the MacBook first came out and it had serious heating issues? It's happening all over again, this time with the iPhone 3GS. I started to notice it this weekend when using the map and compass for an extended period of time on a long drive. The screen started to feel really warm. At first I thought it was from the device sitting in sunlight, but this was in my climate controlled car. This morning I found this article on wired.com. Can someone say recall?

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Google Thought Jackson Search Was An Attack

Whoops! Google thought that all of the Michael Jackson searches on Thursday were a large-scale coordinated attack on their servers. Starting around 2 P.M. seaches began to flood Google's servers for 'Michael Jackson' as news spread that he was being taken to the hospital. On Thursday Google's servers were down for about 25 minutes for some users.

Didn't we hear about Google going down a few months back? Maybe it's time they upgrade some of their servers!!

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Wow.

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Happy

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Bargain

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Noblesville, IN

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Dutch Company Creates Coolest Mobile App Ever

A Dutch company has created an application called Layar that uses your phone's camera to give you imformation about your surroundings.

Just hold up your camera with this app open and points of interest will show up on your screen. Touch them for more info. The possibilities for this are really endless! Check out this video of Layar in action below:



Layar is known as the worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser. It's way too cool! As of now, it's only for those Andriod phones and people in the Netherlands, but hey, I think it's safe to say we will see this eventually come to the rest of the mobile world.

More info on Layar here.


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New iPhone 3G S Pre-orders Shipping!

If you pre-ordered the new iPhone 3G S, you will be happy to know that it should be on it's way!

According to this article, pre-orders were shipped today. Apple says they have 200,000 reservations already and expect it to be closer to 400,000 but lunch. Holy cow!

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Nelson - 18 Months In

Our good friend Nelson, AKA The Xerox Phaser 7760DX, has just turned the ripe old age of 18. . .months. To celebrate we are having a contest. In the past 18 months, Nelson has printed over 160,000 pages, and saved over 45,000 pieces of paper (that's over 90 reams) through duplex printing.

Here's the contest:

The first person to answer this question correctly via blog comment will have their srg.com mailbox increased by 50mb. (Members of the SRG Biz-Ops BPT and their families are excluded as well as people who don't work at SRG)

As previously stated, Nelson has printed over 160,000 pages in the past 18 months. How many service calls that have required an on-site technician has Nelson had in that same period of time?

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Do You Send Email?

Do you use Outlook 2007? Do you send email? Do you add attachments to those emails? If you answered yes to those questions, then you need the Outlook 2007 Forgotten Attachment Detector. Quite honestly, I'm unimpressed as this has been a labs feature of Gmail for over a year now. But since we're all Bill Gates' whipping posts in some form or another, I thought a lot of you would find this worthwhile.

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History of Social Media

What people don't realize is that social media has been around for over 30 years, as this article points out. Since the days of my Atari 400 (and then 800, and then Apple IIc) I have been social networking in some form or another. Pirate BBS's, early dialup chat rooms, and even my first BASIC programming class back in first grade, all had elements of social networking. To get a better sense of the history of this trend, check this out.

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Live Phish via Ustream

One thing is for sure, Phish phans LOVE their phavorite band. So much so that since the dawn of the internet phans have used it as a tool to spread the word of Phish. In the very early days of the public internet, there was a predecessor to message boards and social networks, Usenet newsgroups. In 1990 only 4 bands had Usenet groups, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and a small but popular college band from Vermont, Phish. There was so much chatter on The Grateful Dead Usenet group about Phish, that phans started their own Usenet group. Fast forward 20 years and Phish is now a cultural phenomenon whose growth paralleled the growth of the internet. Both the band and their phans have continually pushed the limits of technology to share music, pictures, and stories about the music and the community that surrounds it. Starting with their summer 2009 tour someone in the crowd has been using a jailbroken iphone and the live streaming service Ustream to stream the shows live. The Ustream page has both live video stream as well as a twitter feed of all Phish related tweets and twitpics. Go Phish!

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Semantic Search Revisited - Microsoft Bing

Late last week Microsoft unveiled it's newest search product - Bing. Bing is exactly what I was describing with Wolfram Alpha; a search engine that actually understands your search query, rather than just matching search terms against indexed content.

Here is a perfect example. I searched for the query "who won the first super bowl?"

Here is the Bing response:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=who+won+the+first+super+bowl%3F&go=&form=QBRE

Here is the Google response:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=SAy&q=who+won+the+first+super+bowl%3F&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Right at the top of the Bing search results is the answer:

Green Bay Packers win the first Super Bowl in 1967

Very cool!

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Windows 7 Coming October 22

Thats right! The next Windows OS is coming October 22nd. Some of you may be asking yourself, "Is this another Vista?" No, it is not. It's sleek, it's fast and it's saucy. Many have been beta testing it the last few months, myself included, and I can tell you it's pretty awesome upgrade from XP or Vista.

If you buy a computer in the next year, chances are good that you will receive a free upgrade to Windows 7. That is if it's not already loaded on your machine when you buy it.

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