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I've been away on vacation this last week, so I'm just getting back into the swing of things. I wanted to take a minute to thank my sponsors for July, they help keep this site up and running, and they help to keep me motivated....

Thanks to:

• Azavar, DengSoftware, Pexagontech, Superwarehouse, New Horizons Computer Training, Dorian, Network Insight, breathe2media
• Mozy Remote Backup

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I get requests to review and/or promote products on a fairly regular basis, like everyone else with a technology-based website. My typical response is "OK, I'll look at the product, and if I like it and think that it's something my readers will be interested in I'll write something up on it". Usually these items are things that I don't believe are really relevant for my readers, or aren't very far along in the development cycle, or are just bad products. For whatever reason, I usually don't feel that I should waste your valuable time with them. However, every once in a while I'll bump into something that I get genuinely excited about. This service, Mozy Remote Backup, is one of those products. And while on-line backup services are nothing new, free ones can be pretty hard to find.

Details:

• It's in beta, so expect some bumps (although I have to say I didn't have any real problems)
• Windows XP only, 1.5 MB client download (Mac client in development)
• NTFS required to backup open or locked files
• Broadband connection required (may be self evident, but uploading gigabytes of data over dialup is not feasable)
• 2 GB storage is free, 30 GB available for $4.95USD per month
• Referral program, 1 GB additional storage for every 4 people referred
• Limited to 5 restores per month
• Local drives only

Rumors about our death have been greatly exaggerated....

Yes, updates have been conspicuously absent for the last few weeks, but it's not because we've been slacking off. If you're a regular visitor to this site you'll notice a few changes around here. We've upgraded the website software to the latest and greatest, spanken new, spiffy and shiny, fresh off the press version. There's also been a change to the site design, we've cleaned up around the edges and dusted things off here and there. Hopefully this will hold for awhile, so that we can get back to brass tacks.

They're calling it quits. A notice from Blue Security:

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Blue Security Ceases Anti-Spam Operations


When we founded Blue Security in 2004, we believed that if we automated a way for users to rise up and exercise their rights under the CAN-SPAM Act, we could reduce the amount of spam on the Internet.

Over the past few months we were able to leverage the power of the Blue Community and convince top spammers responsible for sending over 25% of the world's spam to comply with our users' opt-out list. We were making real progress in eliminating spam from the lives of our users.

From the MSN Shopping Insider Blog:

Today we launch the brand new Windows Live Shopping site!
What is it? It is the beta launch of Microsoft’s Web 2.0 shopping experience, featuring one of the world’s largest product catalogs, user-created content and an easier-to-use interface built on 100% AJAX technology. It uses a unified shopping engine to search or browse almost 40 million products from 7,000 stores ranging from many of the country’s leading retailers to eBay. Results are displayed in an order that is not affected by advertising; merchants cannot pay to have their items show up closer to the top. Users will be able to drag-and-drop items to a shopping list and share lists with friends; see user reviews of products and sellers; and read and create public shopping guides on any subject.

OK, sounds like it's worth checking out. So I go to shopping.live.com and this is what I get:

We're sorry. Windows Live Shopping Beta does not yet support Firefox.
We're working to correct this as soon as possible.

You see them wherever you turn, hear about them everyday. Images and stories about people doing insane things, things beyond comprehension. Gang members killing people just to show they can, people robbing and killing for a few dollars, riots in the streets, martyrs strapping bombs on themselves and willingly, even happily, killing themselves and as many people around them as they can. Have you ever stopped to wonder why? I mean really thought about it? Experts continue to postulate profusely about geo-political instability, religious fanaticism, ethnic unrest, and a plethora of other very reasonable explanations. I'm going to propose that the root cause of all of these problems is actually much simpler than that, and that we have within our grasp the ability to all but eliminate it. Unfortunately, we also have within our grasp the ability to let it grow like a cancer and totally consume us.

It looks like Microsoft doesn't wants to be left out of the social computing game. From the Wallop website:

Microsoft Spins Out A Wallop
Microsoft IP Ventures program teams up with Silicon Valley entrepreneur to create a new social networking company

...The company aims to solve the problems plaguing current social networks and introduce an entirely new way for consumers to express their individuality online...

Ah, the fresh scent of marketing double-talk, I love it. Interestingly, the entire site (what there is of it) is Macromedia (Adobe) Flash. Can't wait to see what this is all about.

So I happen to be looking around over at eLearningSource (another great learning resource on the web) the other day and come across a little article with information about a plug-in for PowerPoint 2003 called Producer, which allows you to add multi-media (video and audio) to your Powerpoint presentations, then post that information on the web. I have to confess I got very excited when I first looked at this, it is certainly something for which we have a tremendous need at my real job. We have hundreds, if not thousands of presentations locked away in our internal servers, containing a wealth of technical, sales and corporate information, information that we should be sharing with our customers, partners and even ourselves. What we really need is a simple way to get that information into something that is easily viewed in a web browser.

Unfortunately, after downloading and looking at this package I can see that we're not going to be doing it using Microsoft Producer.

For me? It was today. In this case SOB may not be what you would normally think, it stands for 'Successful and Outstanding Bloggers', and is an award that is handed out by someone that is very much an SOB in her own right. ME “Liz” Strauss, the proprietor over at Successful Blog recognizes blog writers that somehow contribute to the community. I'm not really sure what I did to be granted the honor, and to me it is an honor, especially coming from someone for which I have a tremendous amount of respect. I'm a regular over at Liz's blog, and she's a great writer with a good heart. Thanks Liz, I appreciate the nod.

Sorry about not posting any articles for awhile, but I've been a little preoccupied with making some design changes to the website. Graphic design doesn't come naturally to me, I envy those creative folks that can see a picture in their mind and then simply build it. I enjoy working on the graphics end of things, but it is very much an iterative process for me (tech speak for trial and error). It's much easier for me to design a database than it is to create the graphic layout of a website, although I would actually prefer to work on the latter. The old design was a hacked-at Drupal theme which was completely broken in some areas and was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. This theme was more of a whiteboard, from-the-ground-up undertaking, which should make it easier for me in the long run. It still needs a little tweaking here and there, but I would love to hear what you think about it.