Another PC maker is jumping in on the all-in-one bandwagon.

Behold, I give you Gateway’s new Mac, er uh, I mean desktop.

Debuting today at the consumer electronic trade show DigitalLife in New York, its Gateway’s new all-in-one PC that looks suspiciously like the new all-in-one iMac. See for yourself: Gateway One versus iMac.

So far, the reviewing gods are smiling favorably on the Gateway One noting it has quite a bit of power under the hood. It’s not all style and no substance. You can check out the specs here. Pricing starts around $1500.

A note on practicality:

Ok, it's pretty. As is the iMac, HP's Touchsmart IQ770 (catchy name) and Sony's Vaio LT 19U (even catchier, as in my tongue catches everytime to I try to say it).

Are these sleek, all-in-one, let's pretend we are hip urban worker-bees practical for the average office?

Yes and no!

Yes, for the front desk and the boss who receive clients and colleagues in his or her office. In those two cases, style may outweigh substance.

But no for everyone else from cubicle land to home office land. These all-in-ones don't look hearty enough to endure the daily mayhem that happens at a desk: spilled coffee, bumping the screen while reaching for a file folder, fingerprints all over the screen, etc.

I do have something sleek and light on my desktop. It's called a laptop.

Why would I want a sleek and light desktop PC that I can't fold up and take on the road?

The all-in-one iMacs from 10 years ago were built to be hearty little suckers (with a splash of color) that would appeal to everyone from the cubicle crowd to college students. It even had a handle on top.

That was style.. and substance!

Year to year GDP growth volatility for America has dropped from 3.5% in the early 80’s to .5% today in a slow steady progression. What this means is that back then you couldn’t predict from one year to the next very much about how fast the economy would grow. Back then, recessions were harder and booms were boomier.

Today things are more stable. Economists call this the “Great Moderation”. That this Great Moderation has occurred at this point is relatively undeniable. But why has the economy gotten less bumpy? What changed?

I'll give you a hint. It's not a failure in code, or sending out patches and updates as fast as hackers can invent new hacks. I actually give the major security vendors a lot of credit for jumping on threats as fast and as efficiently as they do.

The hole I'm talking about is communication. I'm not a former IT person turned journalist. But, I have been covering this industry off and on for two decades. I've produced instructional computer help shows for network television. I personallly spend a lot of time with technology and have self-taught myself many programs over the years. Compared to Joe Q. Public, I like to think of myself as, ahem, ahead of the curve.

And yet when it comes to navigating my security software, I am completely and utterly lost. I can't imagine what it's like for Joe Q.

Long overdue, here is my public plea to those software companies that sell security and maintenence applications.

1. Hire some real writers who speak human to overhaul every word written into your interface with the user. All that gobbeldy gook in the control menu is just that - gobbeldy gook. All the verbage in setting up the program, managing popup windows identifying a possible problem, etc. makes no sense! You are presuming us users are way more literate with your jargon than we actually are. What good is your software if the user can't understand it well enough to navigate through it and maximize it's use?

2. Classifying risks into small, medium and large tell me nothing. It's both vague and over generalized. Pop up windows warning me of a "medium risk" and asking me whether to block an attempt to contact my computer don't help me. What's a medium risk? That sounds like a dodge. If there's no real threat and the user ends up blocking out something that was really important, it's better safe than sorry. If the user does nothing and gets attacked, well there was sort of a warning. Medium = luke warm. I need to know: am I under attack or not? Should I block what's coming in or not. And the popup window of information provided doesn't offer me any valuable information to make an informed decision.

3. Make navigation through the program more user friendly. Once in awhile, a site that I'm trying to access gets blocked (no it wasn't porn!). I never can remember how to dig into the program and find the software blocking feature where I can unblock specific sites.

4. Give me some real context of incoming threats, threats thwarted and potential threats. What part of my computer is being threatened and how severe is the potential damage. How do I tell an intrusion attempt from a bot loooking for personal information for identiy theft versus my printer manufactorer wanting to update my software?

5. Yes, yes your programs are vital. Every comptuer in the word needs anti-virus protection, spyware and anti-spam filters. Yes, yes, we should all have a firewall. But tell me again what it's keeping out and not letting in? Sometimes, I can't even tell if its enabled or disabled. And when everything is enabled, my computer moves at glacial speeds. Coincidence, I think not.

My parting advice to the security software folks: As unfriendly as you are to cyber ne'er do wells, could you please be as friendly to your users.

Just something to think about security pros.

In case you aren't familiar with Google Alerts, let me get you up to speed. With Google Alerts, you can set up your account (free, of course) to send an email alert on specific subjects you've selected. Google Alerts can comb through web sites, blogs, etc for information on, say, Longhorn footballm for example.

I find it handy for that, but I also use it as a way to keep track of me on the Internet. I get an alert everytime one of my stories gets posted. Google Alerts is a great way to gather clips on your company on the cheap. It's also a great way to get notified every time one of your key competitors gets mentioned or a way to keep current on a certain topic.

This week Google announced on its company blog that it is adding video alerts.

I can think of a couple of ways right off the bat how this can help businesses.

- Set up an alert for professional training or tutorials in your particular field.

- Set up an alert for demos or reviews of products you need for your business.

Here's why you should add video to your site, in light of Google Alerts adding video.

Let's say you're from a consulting firm that specializes in project management. If you were to post a short training video once in awhile, think about the people out there who may have set up a video alert for project management. Voila! They found you, when otherwise they may not have.

Think about posting a video version of your podcast. Think about what keywords would lead to you. Think about what keywords would lead to a new audience.

Your ideas are brilliant. Your emails are eloquent.

And yet, all you ever hear is crickets.

The problem is all they ever hear is white noise.

So what can you do to make sure your emails stand out enough to at least be read?

1. Always use the same font in all your emails. Pick something other than Arial or Times Roman, but a font that is clean and easy to read. It needs to be just different enough to stick out. It's a subliminal way of conveying your emails are unique.

2. Speaking of emails: keep 'em short, of course. But also use a slightly larger font, 12-14 points should do it. It's easier to read and looks cleaner. Don't go to big or it starts looking like a PTA flier from your kid's school.

3. Spend more time crafting a good subject line. You don't want to look like spam. You don't want to undersell or oversell the importance of your email. You're building and maintaining your credibility for future emails. In three words or less, stick to the subject and any action required (i.e. urgent meeting tomorrow, looking for feedback, need your timesheet, etc.) What three words will make them open the email?

4. If the subject line doesn't work, most people have their email set up to see the first line or two in a window at the bottom. Think of that first sentence as your elevator pitch to get them to open the email and read on.

5. You'd be surprised how many people in the business world still struggle with attachments. When possible, cut and paste the document at the bottom of the email as a backup (text only, that is).

6. Keep your emails light. If you are sending big moosey attachments like pictures, large pdf files, etc., send them one at a time. Fat, hard- to- download emails tick people off. If you're sending four pdf files, note 1 of 4, 2 of 4, etc on the subject line, so the recepient knows whether they got it all.

7. For the colleagues you email back and forth with all day long, save up your messages when deadlines allow and put them all into one email. Consider a "Daily Update" email with bullet points of information. The recepient will appreciate the consistency and your efforts to streamline the number of emails.

8. Know when to pick up the phone instead. If it's a sensitive subject and you want to make sure your tone and intentions are clear, don't rely on email. Pick up the phone.

9. Are you emailing the person in the next cubicle? It may be appropriate to say it in an email if it's really meaty information that requires time and care to process through. If the email is an invitation to go to lunch or a meeting reminder, get out of your chair and go say it in person.

10. If you need confirmation that your email has been read, ask for it. Don't bother with those automated features. There are too many ways around it and anything that involves a popup window for the recepient is obnoxious.

Wifi HotSpots offer a lot of convenience to the business traveler, but they can be a nightmare for security professionals. The advice to use a VPN is good, however it is important not to fall into a false sense of security. In many cases a corporate VPN will only funnel traffic between the user and the company through the VPN. This means that if I am connected to my VPN, but I open up my browser and go to my bank’s web site, my data between my computer and my bank is not encrypted by the VPN. My bank uses a different encryption technology, however many web sites do not encrypt information.

As a rule of thumb, if the URL does not start with https:, don’t enter important information such as passwords.

Randy Abrams is the Director of Technical Education for ESET LLC

1. If you don't like change, make your peace with it. It's going to happen. A lot!!

2. Working with a new program or piece of technology? Ask for formal training (a workshop, course, seminar, whatever makes sense). If the answer is "no", go buy the appropriate Dummies book and read it. If you're the boss, invest in formal training. It's pennies on the dollar compared to what can happen without it.

3. Let other businesses be the early adopters of a new technology. You don't need to deal with the bugs or get stuck with an overpriced flash in the pan product. Stick with mature applications and hardware.

4. Don't buy into the hype of the tech industry. Just because PC makers want you to upgrade all your desktops every two to three years, doesn't mean you have to and doesn't necessarily make good business sense.

5. Do buy into solid technologies that will make your business run better. The only way to be aware of new solutions is to keep an eye on the tech trades.

6. Do give your IT department feedback. If you're working with an application, for example, that is buggy or lacks critical features you need, don't suffer in silence. They can't help you if you don't ask.

7. Don't call IT with a problem unless you've tried to solve it yourself first. Have you tried rebooting or exploring the toolbar for what you need? I can't remember the last time that I used a piece of software that didn't have a help feature. I'm guessing your IT department has enough to do without making a special trip to your desk to show you how to change the font color in Microsoft Word.

8. Before you invest in a new solution, talk to another business already using it. Don't just go by the word of the account executive making the sale or, for that matter, people like me who write about this stuff for a living. Nothing beats honest customer feedback and referrals.

9. Try before you buy whenever you can.

10. Do a slow, cautious rollout whenever possible. Try out new technologies with a limited number of staff. If it works, expand it out to other departments.

Network Access Control, or NAC, is a hot technology in the IT sector. Fundamentally it is an intuitive approach - limit network access. In reality this is an important technology that is rather complex. The idea goes well beyond the concept of only allowing authorized users in to the network. A complex NAC product can be configured to allow specific people to access specific things on the network. The granularity can be to the point that if the user is connecting from the corporate LAN they get access, but if they are connecting from a wireless device or from outside of the physical network they are not allowed access.

I've been writing about WiFi a lot for this web site in recent months. Good thing! Apparantly, business users such as yourself are flockiing to them in droves. Much more so than even a year ago.

A new study put out by iPass, a mobile technology software and consulting firm, shows hotspot usage is up 68 percent among the business set during the first six months of this year compared to the last six months of 2006.

The survey is pretty meaty and worth the read. See so for yourself here. It has far too much detail for me to pass on in one blog posting.

However, I can't resist sharing my favorite nuggets.

- The United States leads the rest of the world, by far, in the number of WiFi sessions.

- However, the city logging the most WiFi sessions is not in the United States. It's London, with New York City trailing at a very distant second.

- Airports are the most popular place for business users to drop in to log in.

Duh, you say to that last one! Right, but what I found interesting was the average lenth of those sessions. Airport WiFi sessions range, on average, about 30-40 minutes. Hmmm. Lessee. 40 minutes online, 10 minutes to go to the bathroom and check out the departure screen for your connecting flight, 10 minutes browsing through Hudson News for a couple of magazines and some chewing gum for the plane, 20 minutes to grab a bite to eat, 10 minutes to get to the gate and another 20 minutes for boarding. Total time: one hour and 50 minutes. Yup, that sounds about right.

If you're lucky.

That's right, 25 years ago this week a Carnegie Mellon professor by the name Scott E.Fahlman gave the world its very first emoticon - the happy face :)

It would be some 15 or so years later before it would be discovered by school girls with a weakness towards dotting their "I's" with hearts in script and other overly cheerful emailers and IM'ers.

Sometimes, it takes a long time for innovation to hit critical mass. I guess if there is anything we can learn from the emoticon it is to be patient. If you build it, they will eventually come.

For the record, my favorite emoticon (and the only one I use) is this:

\m/

(hook 'em Horns!)

You can attack someone by giving them money. This is what has happened to CastleCops, a group of volunteer spam fighters who organized crime has been harassing for quite some time. This time the attack involves stealing PayPal accounts and then donating money to CastleCops to make it look like CastleCops is stealing the money. The victims include CastleCops, PayPal, and the people whose PayPal credentials were stolen.

CastleCops is an outstanding organization worthy of support. It will be the ultimate irony if this attack brings more positive recognition to CastleCops and results in a higher legitimate donation rate than before the attack.

Randy Abrams is the Director of Technical Education for ESET LLC

A few people had wanted pointers to the 4 part series I wrote, "How to Create Effective Pay Structures", so here they are...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Curt has a new book that just came out.

First off, as expected, Google has launched its highly anticipated PowerPoint knock - oops, was that my outside voice. I mean Google has launched its highly anticipated presentation software application and added it to its Docs & Spreadsheets feature (which is nothing like Word and Excel - wink!)

It's free. It's web-based making it optimal for collaboration and convenient access. And, you can upload your old Office docs to mix and mingle with your account.

If you want to read the ra-ra version of what's going on, here's the press release from Google. If you want to watch the ra-ra version of what's going on, here's Google's video tour of their now rounded out office application suite.

But wait there's more!

Also this week, for those of you as long in the tooth as I, remember Lotus 1 2 3 which begat Lotus Symphony from IBM? Like the VW bug and hip huggers, it too is back. IBM has launched a new open source version of Lotus Symphony that will also give Microsoft major headaches.

Lotus Symphony is a suite of office tools to create, you guessed it, documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It supports Windows and Linux and, it too, is free. Help yourself at their download page.

Because it is open source, developers will love integrating it with existing systems. If you want to read more about open source, check out my open source primer recently published on this site.

Written by Richard MacManus, this article about IT fear of Web2.0 is based on a Forrester Research report.

It's a great article, and interestingly timed given where I was last night.

Last night I was at a CEO dinner thing here in Austin and the FBI was there telling us about all the foreign government backed companies (read China) that are conducting economic espionage in the U.S.

Anyway while I think the concern at a national level is overblown (and the solution probably overpriced), it is reasonable as a leader of a company to be cognizant of how you might minimize (reasonably) the risk of trade secret loss to other entities (wherever they are). Web2.0 technologies - any new communication technologies - exacerbate the problem. They just do. That doesn't mean they're bad per se, or that you should ditch the baby with the bathwater, but IT's job is security and you shouldn't prevent them from doing their job.

The article points out that 78% of IT decision makers are concerned about unsanctioned employee web2.0 usage but that big companies have only a few employees using these technologies today.

For a contrary view, take a look at this.

Curt Finch is the author of a book about time tracking and CEO of a timesheet software company

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Remember the cell phone ad with the roving guy in the trench coat forever trying to get a better signal? Who among us hasn't staked out special corner, outside balcony or certain chair in the lobby where we can get the bars we need to make our calls?

Femtocells may soon make that a dilemma of the past. A femtocell is a small device, about the size of an alarm clock, that plugs into your Internet connection (DSL or Cable Modem). It enables your nearby cell phone to switch seamlessly back and forth between it's cell connection and wi-fi when the signal cell starts dropping out. What you get is a smooth, clear signal without interuption.

Sprint announced this week it's adding femtocell service for a flat fee of about $15 a month. T-Mobile already offers femtocell for about $20 a month. Both are only availabe in a few markets at this time, but nationwide deployment is expected as early as next year.

Other advantages of femtocell:

- Switch your cell to call through wi-fi whenever possible. It'll keep the minutes down, since connecting through the Internet is a flat fee service. Double check with your carrier on the particulars.

- T-mobile users can take advantage of the 8000 T-mobile hotspots around the country and use femtocell at those locations.

- The eventual deployment of femtocells over the next couple of years in public places could be especially helpful to cell phone users who often lose their signal on subways and other spotty areas.

- Most airports, shopping malls, large buildings of any kind, even airplanes currently bolster cell phone coverage with microcells and picocells. Both, however, are much more expensive than femtocells. For that reason, femtocells are expected to really take off in the near future benefiting not only the personal consumer, but smaller businesses.

File this under technology to watch.

Intel never runs short of new innovations. But their latest innovation has nothing to do with technology, yet it's something that could help make all of our businesses more efficient.

Quiet Time

Recognizing the latest research on the effects of constant interuptions (like email, phone calls, etc.) and how it impacts workers (poorly), Intel is running a pilot program with 300 of it's engineers and managers instituting a couple of blocks of interuption-free time to do "thinking work" each week. The experiment also includes expanding the expected response time to all emails to 24 hours.

I find this fascinating on many levels.

First, I just hope it works and bet it well be helpful. I believe multi-tasking is a scourge upon our culture and living with a constant barage of communications coming at us from all directions is scrambling our brains.

Cell phones, handhelds, remote access and email are all tools that could free us up to do other things - like spend time with our families. Sadly, most work cultures now impose them as a way to shackle employees to the job 24/7.

Of all the kinds of companies in the world, I love the fact it's a technology company reconsidering the proliferation of technology in the work place and questioning whether that's a good thing.

I guess you have an idea of how I feel on the subject. What do you think?

I have 2 favorite magazines. One is The Economist and the other is The Week.

A recent article in The Week by Arika Okrent entitled "Yes, I speak Klingon" made me laugh.

In it she describes her descent into linguistic hell while off learning Klingon with a bunch of geeks. She states "Klingon speakers ... inhabit the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder."

I love Star Trek. I'm one of those geeks. But I don't speak Klingon. Yet.
And so I was wondering if her statement was true and where I live on that ladder - (pretty low down I'm afraid.)

So I went out and found the geek ladder on the internet. And here it is -> Geek Ladder

See where you are.

After 20 years of being the killer application for producing presentations, it looks like Microsoft PowerPoint is going to have some significant competition any day now.

After months of hints, rumors and buzz, well, I have more hints, rumors and buzz to report today. I'll give you a hint, it involves Google and the rumor creating a lot of buzz is that their new web-based presentation software will be unveiled as early as next week at TechCrunch40 in San Francisco.

So the rumors go, the new application will be called Presently. Earlier this year, Google bought not one, but two small software companies that specialize in presentation creation applications.

Back to PowerPoint, however. Don't expect it to go anywhere anytime soon. Yes, it's expensive (especially compared to what Google will charge - nothing!). But over the past 20 years, PowerPoint has become synonymous with the word presentation. Corporate culture here and abroad know and support PowerPoint, as do schools, the government, even the army. In fact, there is a whole layer of military bureaucracy jokingly referred to as PowerPoint rangers.

Never underestimate the power of habit and the resistance to change. And never underestimate Microsoft.

Total non-sequitur, btw. Did anyone notice my weeklong homage to the Rolling Stones?

Have a good weekend. We'll get back to business on Monday.

- Renee Oricchio

Try Jott. Just try it.

It lets you speak into your cellphone, turns this into a textual email (via speech to text technology from Nuance or whoever), and sends that email to whoever you said to. For example:

You call Jott's number and hear:

Who would you like to Jott?

Mom

Beep

Mom, sorry I'm a loser and forgot your birthday, but I really do love you. Bye!

Then you just hang up.

Mom gets an email (and probably gets madder.)

It's particularly cool. Really. In addition to turning your voice into text, it also attaches the voice recording to the email so you can actually hear what the person said.

Curt runs a timesheet company in Texas.

Instead of pontificating, this time I have a question.

Does anybody out there have any experience with WiFi signal boosters? Sometimes when I'm in a coffee shop or whatever with my laptop I see other people getting signal but I don't get much. I have a Mac laptop if that matters. I've seen that there are devices that you can hook on to your box that will boost the signal and improve your reception.

Does anyone know if they work? Are they only for PCs? Anyone?

I confess. There have been times I've had over 2000 emails in my inbox. I'm a piker compared to some like Lawrence Lessig, a nationally renowned copyright attorney who made a name for himself a few years ago for his very public email bankruptcy declaration.

It's not as uncommon as you might think. Sometimes the box just gets so full, you have to say uncle and clean it out unread, unfiled and unanswered.

So what do you think? Have you ever fantasized about just deleting the whole thing and starting over? If you could start from scratch, would you stick to a more thoughtful way to organize and file incoming email in the future? Or would you just work your way into a massive email hole allover again?

What's not helping? Spam, of course. A new study estimates spam makes up 83% of all emails.

On a recent flight I sat next to a lawyer who was working on a confidential document concerning the acquisition of an insurance company by another insurance company. I know that’s what it was because it was very clear to see on his laptop. The big word “CONFIDENTIAL” could not be missed even by peripheral vision. I’ve seen sales plans, advertising campaigns in the making, and a couple of movies too!

Laptop screens are attention magnets. I use and recommend a privacy filter. Privacy filters are not at all the same thing as an anti-glare filter. If you go into a major computer store and ask about privacy filters, most of the time the clerk will look for an anti-glare filter. It’s like asking for a glass of cabernet and being shown a bottle of chardonnay. Unfortunately it is a bit difficult to find the privacy filters in stores, but they are readily available online.

The 3M privacy filter I use is very effective – at least that’s what one guy sitting next to me on a flight said! The filter makes the screen unreadable by anyone who is not sitting almost directly in front of it. I haven’t tried the filters made by other companies, but I like the way the 3M filter works.

If protection of proprietary information, legal compliance, or other privacy issues are of importance to you the filter is a must have.

My core laptop travel gear includes a Kensington-style lock, a privacy filter, and a high gain wi-fi network adapter. The adapter isn’t for security though, it helps pull in weak signals when the wireless access point is a bit too far from my hotel room.

Randy Abrams is the Director of Technical Education for ESET LLC

Then you have gotta get you one of these:

A fake sunroof.

Clearly created by someone from the people with too much time on their hands department.

Have you ever had a difficult time getting your web designs off the ground because the mockups were, ahem, a little flat?

Great ideas, but can't get the suits to visualize what you mean ("I click where and what happens?")!

Maureen Kelly from Boxes and Arrows makes a great case for using PowerPoint as your mockup tool. She's written a wonderful tutorial of how to use PowerPoint in ways you probably didn't know you could. For instance, how about using hyperlinks to other PowerPoint slides to demonstrate navigation features?

Check it out. Sometimes the best solutions are right under our noses.

In tip #1 I advised that you keep track of your laptop when you go through airport security, but what about now that you are on the other side?

I highly recommend the use of a “Kensington” lock .

When I have to leave my laptop in a hotel room it is always locked to a table or other object that will not be easily moved. Even at the office I lock my laptop to the desk. It isn’t that I don’t trust the people in the office, but in most offices it is quite easy for someone posing as a delivery person, inspector, or using some other ruse to get in and out in a very short amount of time. Locking the laptop means that nobody is getting away my laptop very quickly I also try to make security a habit, so I lock it up virtually anywhere I go. At a conference, in a meeting room, an airport lounge (if I’m lucky), I don’t sweat stepping away for a moment with the laptop being locked up.

A determined thief can steal my laptop, but your unlocked laptop will be a much more attractive target. I strongly recommend that when employees are given laptops they also be given a security lock and have a policy that the lock is to be used.

One note: If you get the type of lock that uses a combination, get in the habit of twisting the dial as soon as you unlock the laptop. If the lock is left with the combination showing it will be an easy target. Additionally, how many other locks do you have with the combination?

The subject deserves more discussion than I have room in this blog. While looking for stats on laptop theft I came across this article that is well worth reading even though it is several years old now.

Randy Abrams is the Director of Technical Education for ESET LLC

In the last 2 parts of this series we talked about how to build bonus plans around key performance indicators (KPIs), and used a random consultancy as an example.

If you don't want people awarding themselves their own bonuses (obviously a bad idea) you need a system of checks and balances to prevent this.

But, if you try real hard you get what you need. And in Dell's case, it just might be better.

As widely reported earlier this year, Dell has lost its crown as top dog in PC sales (HP now reigns supreme). No doubt Dell would like the title back and recent moves like selling computers at Wal Mart is a clear sign they're willing to fight for it. However, the folks in Round Rock, TX appear to be setting their sights on something more specific - you! Yes, you, the small to midsize business owner.

In recent months, Dell has launched a slew of new products just for the SMB market. In July, it was Vostro: a line of laptops and desktops designed for business level systems, but simple enough not to require an IT department.

This week, Dell is rolling out PowerVault MD3000i. The PowerVault is a storage consolidation system for companies that need a storage area network (SAN), but typically can't afford the enterprise level pricing that goes with it. The PowerVault costs about $13,000 and can serve up to 16 hosts. The other advantage for SMBs: it doesn't require an IT department to keep it running.

In addition to digital security physical security is paramount. When traveling through airports laptops can be stolen at the screening line. Variations on the scam involve two people working together. Both people are in front of you. The first one goes through, the second one fumbles around to allow time for your laptop to go through before you can get through the x-ray machine yourself. The first person takes the laptop and is gone. Another scenario involves a person waiting behind and grabbing your laptop off the line after you go through the x-ray machine.

Always put your laptop on the conveyer belt when you are ready to go through the x-ray machine. Make sure it is on the belt. Sometimes they back the belt up, so make sure it is far enough that it will not be back off.

I always put any bags on first, the laptop is the next to the last item to go through. My shoes are always last as I figure I’ll never get distracted and forget anything if my shoes are the last thing to come out! The laptop is never sent through until there is nobody in front of me in the line.

Randy Abrams is the Director of Technical Education for ESET LLC

Sound good? A company here in Austin, called EEStor has developed technology that is getting as hyped as the Segway was before it came out.

Apparently this supercapacitor can be charged in just a few minutes and power your car for hundreds of miles. If it works as they say the internal combustion engine will be about as popular in a few years as horses are today. The patent is very explicit and pretty much tells you how to build one of these suckers. (Now where did I put my trusty bottle of neodymium titrate?)

In the short term however, here in Austin, we could avoid alot of smog produced at traffic lights by just sequencing the darn things so they behaved less randomly. You should be able to drive down highway 360 without having to stop at any lights if you go the right speed right?

But clearly I am a silly dreamer on this issue. I guess I'll have to wait for the magic supercapacitor. Maybe it works like the flux capacitor from Back to the Future.

Curt's company provides an ondemand time tracking solution for IT consultancies, among other things.

USB flash drives or "thumb drives" have become insanely popular over the past couple of years. The little guys are just so darn handy. In fact, techies allover the blogosphere swap their favorite ways to use their thumb drive like a gaggle of Donna Reeds swapping casserole recipes at a neighborhood potluck.

Here are a couple of my favorite creative uses for a thumb drive:

1. From PC World, create a cleaning kit for spyware infected PC's.

2. From LifeHacker, quick launch your workspace.

3. From IT Drive's "Life on a Stick", Ditch your laptop and just take a flash drive on vacation.

The possiblities are endless. Unfortunately, so are the opportunities for a security breach. If you read my posts with any regularity, you know I get really queasy when it comes to a whole lot of data on a small portable gizmo of any kind.

USB flash drives are, quite frankly, pretty easy to hack. It's what the security pro's call a "soft target". A company called Ironkey just might have the answer to all of that. They sell what is billed as "the world's most secure thumb drive".

It just might be true.

Ironkey was developed by a handpicked "dream team" of security experts from Visa, RSA Security, PayPal, Apple, Authenix, even the Department of Homeland Security, among many others.

How secure is it? Let's put it this way. The encryption feature is always on. The components inside are embedded in epoxy, so they can't be dismembered from the unit intact and hacked. After ten wrong guesses at the password, all the data self-destructs. It includes a bundled in copy of the Firefox web browser that allows you tunnel through any network and surf the web anonymously.Unlike many thumb drives encased in plastic, this puppy is housed in a heavy metal. You can run over it with your car and it should still work. Soldiers in Afghanastan are already using it. If it's good enough to throw off the Taliban, it's probably good enough to protect your budget spreadsheets and employee reviews.

If you're like me, you haven't spent too much time digging into audio blogs on the net.
I didn't really know much about them or understand how they worked. But yesterday
I had the pleasure of speaking with Wayne Hurlbert, who runs an internet business show live once a week.

You can call into the show and ask questions and participate, or just listen to the recording later on your computer or your iPod. Many shows exist with other hosts but Wayne is clearly one of the best and has won awards. Really nice guy too. I recommend his show. Several of the recorded archived shows are interesting takes on various areas of technology and how they apply to businesses today.

So go take a look at Wayne's internet business show.

Here's a mashup of two common beliefs:

We live in a time of information overload.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Put those two things together and you have an ironclad case of why data visualization is so important. The web, like television, is a visual medium. But, even richer. Television specializes in eye candy. The web specializes in eye, how can I compare this, eye nutritional pyramids.

What are the best ways to aggregate lots of dense data into one digestible visual image? Heady stuff, you say! If you have a corporate site, you need to think more about data visualization. If you're using or thinking about using dashboard software to monitor your business in real-time, you need to think more about data visualization. If you give a lot of powerpoints, you need to think about data visualization.

Here's a great article with lots and lots of examples of innovative ways to visually present data. It's from Smashing Magazine.

Zango, a purveyor of things many people call adware, unwanted programs, or just plain garbage, decided to sue antivirus vendor Kaspersky in an effort to stop them from detecting Zango programs as anything at all. The judge in the case ruled in favor of the entire anti-malware industry citing the following portion of the Communications Decency Act:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected, or any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to [such] material.”

This is an important ruling in that it sets precedence which should curb the ongoing legal threats faced by the anti-malware industry when companies don’t want their software to be accurately identified.

For more information see:
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/08/antispyware_ven.htm
http://www.net-security.org/virus_news.php?id=857

Randy Abrams is the Director of Technical Education for ESET LLC

Your company only sends out marketing emails to people who have given you prior permission to do so. You always offer an "unsubscribe" option at the bottom of each message. You use your own legitimate IP address. You have a privacy policy that your guarantee and secure.

You are not a spammer.

However, your legitimate email campaigns may be getting tanked by ISPs like AOL and MSN regardless. Your company may even be blacklisted by those companies and you don't even know it.

It happens all the time. Here's a great explainer on the how it all works.

The best defense is to get your company "white listed". A white list is a running list of legitimate marketeers who honor a code of conduct online as verified by organizations like Sender Score Certified.

Most of the major ISP's are now using white lists. It could be the best way to make sure your company doesn't fall into that gray area between marketing and spamming.

You've seen them a scrillion times online. But have you ever heard this term: captcha?

A captcha is that random string of letters and numbers that pops up in some oddly scripted graphic box when you're completing a transaction online. It's a layer of security to ensure you are actually a real human and not an evil bot automatically signing up accounts or conducting other sorts of transactions en masse to stir up trouble.

Still confused? It's the thing that looks like this when you shop?

If you're interested in all the geeky explanations of how a captcha works or the history of the captcha, knock yourself out.

At the very least, do consider incorporating a captcha into your ecommerce site. You can download the software for free at reCaptcha.net.

In part 1 we talked about base pay, in part 2 about incentive pay. Now we'll go into the specific example of how a consulting company, such as this Austin software partnership consultancy, might approach this problem of creating a vision, a strategy, and key performance indicators (KPIs) and then how to automate the measurement of them.

Trying to keep your employees off porn sites and high bandwidth slacker spots like youtube? If you believe your software blocker is keeping them in line when they're online, than you probably also believe they never take a few extra pencils and scotch tape home to the kids especially this time of year.

Blocking sites is a legitimate need in most, if not all, businesses. Unlimited use of the Internet at work is an invitation for lost productivity, inappropriate behavior that is a company liability, a security breach for the company network, not to mention hogging all the bandwidth for things like streaming video and online gaming.

Blocking software sounds like a good idea. Just put in the web address or the category of site you want blocked and Voila! End of story. Back to business. The truth is there are lots o ways to get around those blockers. I recently ran across a top ten list of ways to circumvent blocked sites on Web Stuff Scan.

No, I'm not passing this on to help your employees work around you. I advise you take a look at the list and pass it on to your IT director. It's a great way to identify the most likely holes and plug them up. If you have concerns that the company network is being abused by staff, it may help you figure out how it's happening so you can make a case for disciplinary action.

Most Americans are spending their day off today catching their last rays of summer, perhaps taking in a ball game or having friends over for a backyard BBQ. I promise you very few are reflecting on what Labor Day is all about.

Labor Day dates back to the 1880's, when labor unions decided to set aside an extra day off for the working man to rest. Congress made it official in 1892 (can you imagine Congress doing that today?).

From where I sit, there are very few places left in Corporate America where the needs of the average worker are a priority. Rest? Respect? I don't think so. Try layoffs, unpaid overtime, shrinking benefits and vulnerable pension plans.

I would like to take a moment and sing the praises of perhaps the last bastion of humanity in the corporate world: High Tech. It's not perfect, by far. Technies typically come under tremendous pressure to work ungodly hours. But, they are more likely to get something for it in the end - like making a killing off the IPO, fast track promotions, etc.

Labor Day always makes me think of Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Those guys had a heart when it came to the people who worked for them. In shorthand,they called it "The HP Way". What it meant was a code of congeniality and respect for workers. Eschewing the button down image of places like IBM, HP back in the sixties all but invented business casual, right down to jeans on Fridays. Packard and Hewlett also believed in a true "open door" policy. As long as they worked on site, even the janitor could walk right into their offices to discuss the need for a different brand of floor wax or switching a shift around. It was The HP Way that tore down office walls between managers and non-managers alike and put them all in cubicles in hopes of fostering more collaboration and egalitarianism in the workplace.

Over the past 40-50 years, The HP Way has found its way in some form or fashion into most companies. However, most companies have lost sight of the point. Workers sit in cubicles because they're cheaper and easier to monitor, for example.

Bosses around the country could learn a lot from the tech industry's relationship with its workers. I lived in Silicon Valley for 13 years. It is a place that is just as innovative in finding new ways to create an attractive workplace, as innovate in technology. The average tech campus is likely to feature game rooms with ping pong tables and rock climbing walls to blow off steam, free snacks and soft drinks, the occasional on site chair massage set up in a conference room, as well as a staff concierge that will assist with everything from wedding planning to picking up your dry cleaning. Google provides its employees with free shuttle bus service to spare them the expense and stress of commuting.

That's just crazy California, you say? Crazy like a fox, I say back. Have you checked out the stock prices of some of these companies lately?

Here's my Labor Day message echoing back from the 1880s, treat your workers well. Without them there is no business.