This story is so bizarre and ironic on so many levels that it makes my head hurt. You may know about LifeLock. It's that online identity theft company whose CEO, Todd Davis, gives out his own social security number in TV ads to show just how much he trusts his own company to protect his identity.

Mr. Davis' identity may be safe, but one of the LifeLock's main competitors isn't feeling as safe. NameSafe has filed a lawsuit against LifeLock, accusing it of deceptive business practices and corporate identity theft. NameSafe alleges LifeLock purchased sponsored ads on most of the major search engines (including Google, YahooI and MSN) using NameSafe as a key word in the ad.

You can imagine what would happen next.

A potential lead runs a search using the company name, "NameSafe", and LifeLock ads pop up with NameSafe somewhere in the ad copy. Click on the ad and the visitor who was looking for NameSafe lands on LifeLock.

LifeLock claims it wasn't their doing, blaming it on resellers who ran the ads.

We'll see how this one plays out. LifeLock is no stranger to controversy. About a year ago, one of its founders, Robert Maynard, Jr. (Let me get that Jr. in. Dad must be sooooo proud!), was outed by the Phoenix New Times as a guy with a shady past that included allegations of identity theft, a couple of bankruptcies and, oops, failing to pay a $16,000 casino loan taken out at a prominent resort in Las Vegas (in the old days this story would have ended much sooner in a hole in the desert).

p.s. if the allegations are true, one of Maynard's identity theft victims was his own father, who found himself in dutch wtih American Express for $154,000 worth of credit card bills on a credit card he didn't open himself. The bills were being sent to the address of Jr.'s latest business venture at the time, NetShield.

Walkaway lessons from this tawdry tale of loss and little redemption.

1. Businesses should Google themselves periodically (don't forget the other search engines, as well). You never know what might turn up; like your company's name on another company's advertisement.
2. Be aware of your competitors to begin with. By doing business online, it's trickier knowing the other players out there going after the same market with the same products or services. Be aware of them. They may already be aware of you. Remember that old maxim; keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.

Paying thirty something bucks for one little ole ink cartridge is enough to make anyone give the third party ink cartridges a try.

The people who make printers count on selling you those $30-something cartridges. In fact, you can't even find a cheaper brand alternative for most printers these days.

PC World has conducted a comparison test between all the cheaper ink brands (namely Walgreens) vs. the premium name brand ink made by the printer manufacturer.

In addition to the quality of the print, PC World compared the trueness of the colors and whether the cheap ink fades more quickly over time.

You be the judge. Here's a link to their slide show of side-by-side copies.

I see a difference. The question is; does it make a difference?

Apparantly, some of the largest companies in the world are trying to do just that; sit this cycle out, so to speak.

Microsoft typically releases a new version of Windows every three years. That being the case, we're 18 months into Vista; implying we have 18 more to go. There's also been much chatter over Bill Gates making a very vague comment about Windows 7 coming out in 2009.

Ars Technica makes a very strong case why we shouldn't get too excited (dare I say, hopeful) about that.

Meantime, General Motors has said its sticking with XP for the duration, for example. Even more shocking, Intel hasn't upgraded to Vista yet and the New York Times is reporting anonymous sources within the company that they have no intention of doing so at all.

Intel, folks.

The other half of the nickname "Wintel", as in Wintel machines (what we used to call PC's at the height of the Microsoft vs. Apple rivalry, before Intel starting selling chips to Apple too).

Wintel is sort of the "Bennifer" or "TomKat" tongue-in-cheek nickname of high tech.

Intel, by the way, employs 80,000 people worldwide. That's a lot of desktops sticking to XP. In the grand scheme of things, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the number of Vista operating systems that are being deployed. But the irony that Intel hasn't made the upgrade must be pretty painful for the folks up in Redmond.

File this under "humor for hump day". I guess it's safe to say that morale is pretty low at Yahoo! these days. As noted and logged by Real Tech News, these are just some of the more recent high profile departures:

Jeff Weiner, Executive VP of the network group, and Usama Fayyad, Executive VP of research and computing infrastructure; Qi Lu, Executive VP in charge of search and monetization, Brad Garlinghouse, Senior VP of communication and communities, and Vish Makhijani, Senior VP of search.

Also, thanks to Real Tech News for pointing me towards the Yahooreziner. It's a Yahoo-customized automated resignation letter generator (say that three times fast!). And, it's pretty hysterical.

Don't feel so bad, Yahoo! executives. (those of you that remain). We've all been there and done that.

In fact, I'm guessing many who visit this site can appreciate the "reziner". Most people who startup their own companies don't start out as entrepreneurs. We start out as tools working for the man and one day just get tired of getting screwed by the hammer (that's an on purpose mixed metaphor, by the way).

Parting thoughts...

I count five VPs that have fled Yahoo! according to Real Tech's count. That's five out of a zillion by the way. But, I wonder how many startups will be born out of those five departures. Are two or more already in cahoots to launch something? How many will just pull up stakes and move on to another technology megalith to continue tool-time? How many will be their own boss and decide they'd rather be the hammer than the nail this time around?

File this under "strange, but true". AT&T announced months ago that its working on its own browser, Pogo.

It's still not available for public scrutiny. But, its in beta by invitation only. And a pitch video by AT&T and various screen shots are making the rounds in the blogosphere these days.

AT&T's party line, as explained by the PR tool in the pitch video, sounds like the biggest bunch of hooey ever. To hear him tell it, AT&T just thought it would be a fun thing to offer customers, blah blah blah.

Since when do really, really big companies jump into an overcrowded field like the browser market just to spread the joy of web surfing?

Reviewers who've seen Pogo are pretty much in agreement. It's actually a nice browser. It should be. It's basically Firefox 2 (soon to be upgraded to Firefox 3) with it's own customized features and extensions.

This is a real head scratcher. What is AT&T thinking? I haven't stumbled upon any good theories, so far. So here's my own. I think this is the equivalent of custom publishing in the magazine field; taking a quality information platform and tailoring it for corporate use and public relations.

All I know is I don't want to find out that I'm being charged a dollar a month to use it buried in the fine print of my monthly statement.

For the ESeller going over web analytic reports, perhaps nothing is more frustrating than tracking all those sales that fell through somewhere between "put in shopping cart" and "submit order".

PayPal, the largest merchant account provider online, conducted a recent survey among online shoppers asking why they abandon a purchase mid-sale.

Would you like to guess the number one reason why?

Shipping charges!

- 43% surveyed said they had recently stopped a transaction due to sticker shock over the shipping charges.
- Sticker shock over the final tab was a major theme in the survey's findings, with 36% admitting sales flight when they saw the difference in the final tab, versus the initial price tags for goods selected.
- Slightly over one in four bailed because they wanted to comparison shop a little more.

Those are the big reasons for shopping cart interruptus. I think there is more to be learned from the lesser reasons cited.

- 16% said they drop out of the sale because they needed customer service and couldn't get through.
- Another 14% forgot their user names and/or passwords.

Lessons to be learned from this survey:

- Don't require shoppers to register to make a purchase. Resist the temptation to gather marketing data off every sale. It would be nice. But, making sales is even nicer.

- Be more up front about shipping and handling charges. Rather than offering a discount off the product or service; offer free shipping. Online customers take product discounts for granted in the online world. Clearly, they don't feel that way about shipping charges.

One last thought; remind your customers how much they're saving on gas driving to the mall to make the same purchase. These days it may be cheaper to pay for UPS ground than a couple of gallons of regular unleaded.

So, as I pledged earlier this week, I waited until Mozilla got past it's 24 hour download-athon (didn't want to become part of the story).

By the way, here's the story; the new Firefox 3 open source web browser was downloaded more than 12 million times this week (8 million of those downloads happened within the first 24 hours of its release).

I'm impressed!

I'm also impressed with Firefox 3. I like it. It loads really fast and has a number of really cool new add-ons. I pounced on the new bookmarking organizational tools (I'm always in a world of hurt on that front).

My favorite add-on, however, so far is "ClipMarks". ClipMark comes with a green paperclip button on the browser. You click on it to activate it and it then allows you to mouse around web pages highlighting content areas in orange boxes. Click on an orange box and you then have the option to save it (rather than bookmarking a whole site or saving a web page), e-mail it, put it directly on your blog or best of all; print it. I love that; only printing specific parts of web pages and not trying to print the whole thing wasting color ink on ads and logos.

My only word of caution; apparantly there are some 15,000 new features. It would be easy to get lost in all the new bells and whistles offered and over-bling your browser. Pick wisely.

Coming online any hour now, Yahoo! has announced today is the day it will open registration for accounts in their new e-mail domains, ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

Why do we care? Insertnamehere@yahoo.com has hit the saturation point with some 266 million users (that's the most of any single e-mail domain, by the way. Microsoft comes in second around 264 million accounts and Google is third with 102 million accounts). In other words, if your name is Bob Smith then you are not likely to easily find a handy e-mail address on any of the aforementioned domains. Today's your chance, Bob, to make a play for BobSmith@ymail.com. Tomorrow will likely be too late.

Firefox 3, the latest version of the open source web browser put out by Mozilla, has now been available for download about 24 hours. Check out the "Download Map Page". It shows which areas of the world are downloading the most and there's a running total tally at the bottom of the page.

As of this writing around 9am EST this morning, the number of downloads was 6.5 million and counting.

Mozilla is pushing Firefox fans to help them set a Guiness World Record for the most downloads in a 24 hour period. If the current record is on the site, for the life of me I can't find it. Don't think that's not on purpose.

As always, I see the brilliance of marketing in these things. If the record to beat was posted on the site, people might put off downloading the new browser once the magic number hit.

Okay, enough marketing however. Back to Firefox 3.

Mozilla is making some pretty heady claims about their new browser, including:

- It's up to three times faster than Firefox 2.
- It boasts more than 15,000 new features (how is that possible?)
- one click bookmarking (sounds good to me. how about better organization of bookmarks?)
- tighter security
- built-in spell checking (they know me well).
- more customization (I've already got the University of Texas skin on my Firefox 2 browser. I love the OU button with the red slash across it. I really don't need anything more beyond that.)

In the interest of not becoming part of the story, I am waiting until the 24 hour record setting frenzy has past, before I download the new version. Stay tuned tomorrow, I will tell you what I think of the new version then.

I notice Mozilla claims Firefox 3 is 2-3 times faster on Macs. No word on PCs.

Hmmmm...

For many businesses, the June Swoon is just the beginning. We have a lot of dog days ahead us until Labor Day, with lots of co-workers and clients dropping off the map for vacations, etc.

Summer is a great time to catch up on techie housekeeping.

Here are the five things to put on your to-do list, due by the end of August.

1. Clean up your e-mail. Delete, delete, delete. Organize and archive what's important.
2. Get the sneaker- net activated. The sneaker net is an IT euphemism for actually walking the office; work station to work station checking on each computer. Who needs a memory upgrade? Who needs old applications removed off their hard drive? Who needs patches installed? Who needs their browsers updated?
3. Training (See this morning's posting about self-tutoring yourself with a tech manual). For businesses who can afford it, this is a good time to send your admin to an Office 2007 workshop or train someone on staff to be the back-up web master (learning just enough; like how to post new content, swap out a picture, etc.).
4. Research new technologies. Take inventory. What technologies are working well for you? Which technologies are not? Now is the time to read up on topics like software as a service, web conferencing, cloud computing, online collaboration tools, etc. Involve a cross section of your colleagues to take a look at what's out there that can really help make the business more efficient and then set some goals for implementation.
5. Update contact information; both internally and with key clients, vendors and contractors.With so many modes of communication nowadays (office phone, e-mail, cell phone, texting, etc.), contact information is a moving target. Addresses and numbers change and so do individual tastes for preferred methods of contact. Some people rarely pick up the phone, but will answer a text in a nano-second,for example. Make a note wherever the mother rolodex is housed.

We've all been there; reading through those dense, technical how-to books (that cost a fortune, by the way) self-teaching our way through Excel, web design, wireless networking, setting up a business on eBay, etc.

They're not exactly the latest James Patterson novel, now are they? However if you go into any Borders or Barnes and Noble bookstore; you'll notice a huge chunk of floor space is taken up by technology titles.

So for those small to midsize business owners who can't afford to send themselves or staff to proper training conferences, learning to digest the occassional technology manual is a necessary part of business.

Here are some tips to make it as painless and as effective, as possible.

1. Compare publishers and the formats of the books. Which one is easiest to read, with the most step-by-step tips? There are countless books on wireless networking. You don't have to buy the first one you see and live with it.
2. Don't just read through the book. Work through the book. Even if it's not laid out like a workbook; stop and actually work with the application or hardware in question in chunks as you are reading up on them.
3. If more than one person in the office is also boning up on the same technology, band together and form a reading group. Two heads are better than one and it's a good way to discipline each other to keep studying.
4. See a book that looks great according to the outside covers, but it's in shrink wrap? Tech publishers are notorious for doing this. It's very frustrating. Try looking up the same title on Amazon and looking through their sample pages scanned into their site. Don't buy a book before checking out the inside.
5. Assessing the book: look at the table of contents and make sure it's covering the topics important to you. Flip through the book and look at how information is laid out. Is it readable? Are their step-by-step examples of specific tasks? Is it current with the version of technology your company is using?
6. Some technology manuals come with a CD-ROM that offer tutorials. It's a great complimentary tool, if you use it!
7. Other complimentary tools: Working your way through a tech manual is just the first step. Practice, practice, practice with the technology in question. Take notes, for quick reference. Write up questions, as you read. You can go to your IT person or IT message boards for answers.
8. Share what you've learned. Write up the most salient points and pass them onto your co-workers. Show them new tips and tricks that you've learned.

File this under "things to do during the summer slow down".... stay tuned for more on that.

I guess Microsoft hasn't given us all enough agida with Windows Vista. Internet Explorer 8 has been out in beta since the beginning of the year. Beta, part two is due out in August and Microsoft is warning web masters to bring their sites up to standards code or they potentially will not work with the latest version of Internet Explorer.

In other news...

Yahoo! announced this week it will not sell it's search business to Microsoft. Take a hint, Redmond. Take a hint, Jerry Yang, as well. Wall Street is not happy! Yahoo! stock is trading some ten bucks below what Microsoft offered to pay per share earlier this spring. Yang & Co. may feel like heroes for not selling out, but shareholders are likely not sharing those sentiments.

Also this week, Apple finally unwrapped a 3G version of the iPhone. HP is also going to start selling 3G smartphones in the United States.

Ajit Jaokar, the Mobile 2.0 guru and author of the popular "Open Gardens" blog, had an interesting post on how people pick their mobile technologies. What's more important the handset or the telco operator? Jaokar intimates in a posting this week that at a Mobile Web Summit, an unnamed company has quietly conducted a survey asking mobile users which operator they prefer. Hands down, Nokia won. Ugh.. folks, Nokia makes the devices. In other words, in answer to that first question; it appears it's all about the device and not the telco operator billing your minutes.

Keep an eye on the news coming out of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston today. Microsoft will apparantly be giving a demo of it's new social networking tool, TownSquare.

Word is that TownSquare is similar to Facebook (which Microsoft has already bought into to the tune of $240 million). However, TownSquare is meant for internal use only with features that track company anniversaries, announce promotions, and provide workflow information from Sharepoint; just for starters.

TownSquare is already being used in beta within Microsoft itself. Available to all 8000 employees, TownSquare has been up and running among the 'softies since January.

Sounds interesting. Will it be priced for smaller businesses?

Urban geeks with more money than sense get out your lawn chairs and sleeping bags. The 3G iPhone cometh; soon! In fact, they are expected to hit Apple and AT&T stores on July 11th.

What a difference a year and an scary economy make. Unlike last year's June launch of the iPhone at nosebleed prices starting around $600 (not including AT&T's outrageous two year committment deals and pricey monthly payment plans), this year Apple is advertising the new 3G as "Twice as fast. Half the price."

The 16 gig version will go for $300, instread of $500. The 8 gig iPhone will be priced at $200, instead of $399.

This is a textbook example of why you should never buy a product the first year it launches. Wait a year; fewer bugs, more features and deep discounts.

Apple has always priced their wares at the high end. It appears they now get it that we're in a recession and most laying around cash (that once went towards guilty pleasures like iPods, etc.) is now going to the pump or milk (which actually costs more per gallon than gas).

Its' easy for me to imagine what happened. Cupertino is just north of San Jose, CA off 280. If you've ever worked in Silicon Valley (or visited by car on a work day), then you know 280 is a parking lot most of the day. At four bucks plus a gallon, I'm guessing Apple workers are getting kicked where it hurts most, as well (the wallet).

This is a good thing. May cheaper Macs follow.

Apple got a big dis' from The Big Apple. I had to laugh over the weekend when I finally got a chance to see "Sex and The City".

Without spoiling any plot points, there's a scene among Manhattan's icons of sexy single gal pals (Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte) where the proverbial you-know-what really hits the fan. In a moment of crisis (No, it had nothing to do with missing a Manolo shoe sale), Carrie desperately needs a cell phone. All three friends scramble to hand their's over. One offers an iPhone and Carrie gives a disgusted harumph and dismisses it with a "I don't know how to work that thing".

Apple love only goes so far, I guess. Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie, who plays a writer no less, was a Mac faithful throughout the show's run on HBO and her notebook plays prominently in the movie, as well.

Hmmm..

Security software maker, McAfee, has released its annual report, "Mapping the Mal Web Revisited 2008", listing in order the most dangerous domains to visit. For example, the one most of us frequent the most, sites ending in dot com or .com, rank #11 as most dangerous domains.

Topping the charts, however, is .hk. That's "hk", as in Hong Kong. According to McAfee, nearly one in five web sites ending in .hk pose some sort of security threat to web visitors. One more time; that's one in five sites. Yipes!

Coming in at #2: China's extension, .cn, with a roughly one in ten chance of hitting a shady site.

Where is it safe to go online? Finland, Ireland and Japan (.fi, .is, and .jp, respectively); and in that order, are deemed safest domains online today.

Walkaway thoughts from this study: block .hk on the company network, unless there's a business reason not too.

Mystery and intrigue alert: I'd give you the link to the actual report on the McAfee site. But the page is down.

Yes, Starbucks has finally gotten the message that free Wi-Fi makes it easier to swallow those $3 to $4 cups of latte.

This week the roast master of coffee beans quietly put into play two free hours of Wi-Fi a day for their customers.

Of course, there's a catch.

To qualify for the free Wi-Fi, you have to join the Starbucks Rewards Program (The free Wi-Fi being one of those rewards), create a "free" AT&T account (for those of three of you that AT&T doesn't already know where you live), agree to getting their e-mails and use that rewards card at least once a month.

Worth it? You decide!

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

- Renee Oricchio

Okay I confess, I still use Word and Excel 2003 (not sure if this applies to the 2007 versions). Here's the bugaboo that drives me crazy most frequently, especially when I'm writing in Word.

Overtype Mode (OVR).

According to Microsoft's web site, OVR is only activated when you hit insert or INS in Word and in Excel, it requires double-clicking on a cell or hitting F2.

I don't believe it; at least not in Word.

I find that OVR strikes quite arbirarily. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, its that weird quirk Word has to randomly start eating your words when you backspace or click in mid-sentence to add copy.

The way to stop it is to click on the OVR box in the lower tool bar until it goes pale.

Let me just add, I am a professional writer by trade and I've never used OVR as a tool. It' only serves as a nuisance.

Harumph!

For decades I've been observing the progress of technology. In the balance of
power between the individual and large powerful organizations, it has not always
been clear to me which one benefis the most from new innovations.

The web has been good for individuals, at least initially. But the accumulation of
data that Google has about you dwarfs what Mastercard has been building up for
years. And the feds can get to it all if they really want to. Cellphones empower
people more than big organizations I think (unless you count that NSA wiretapping
bruhaha - and you should) Cars empower people. As do phones. And electricity.
And Benjamin Franklin's famous cast iron stove.

The millions of cameras around the world at traffic lights and 7-11s are a serious
privacy invasion, but now along comes an interesting new development that blurs
faces of the innocent until a security problem has arisen. Then the unblurring
becomes an auditable event, providing a method for a The boss or magistrate could tell whether the monitor jockey wanted to see a robber's getaway, or a woman's legs.

Perhaps privacy is not dead entirely, as Scott McNealy is widely reported to
have quipped.

Curt runs a timesheet company in Austin.

It hasn't made it into Webster's yet, but "staycations" are definitely gaining ground into the mainstream lexicon; thanks to gas surpassing four bucks a gallon and climbing.

Staycations are just what they sound like; vacations close to home. Summer time is upon us. Where to go and what to do with those days off in July or August that you blocked off the calendar back in December when gas was a mere $3 and some change (ah, the good ole days!). Many folks are electing to take short trips closer to home or stay at home altogether spending time in the backyard or local pool.

As you make your plans to reacquaint yourself with the nearby golf courses and museums; here's my free advice:

Draw your line in the sand now. Whether you go to Bermuda or no further than the above ground pool in your own backyard; don't let your staycation turn into a workcation.

A vacation is not about where you go, but what technology you put away for a time. Make a committment to family and friends that you will go off e-mail, screen work calls and put the laptop in a closet somewhere under the supervision of someone else other than you.

Do that and you'll discover Dorothy was right; there's no place like home.

Don't try telling Microsoft that! Just announced today; Microsoft has inked a deal with Hewlett-Packard to bundle in Microsoft Live as the default search engine in all of its computers starting early next year. More importantly, it will also come with the so-called and much ballyhooed Silverlight toolbar.

There goes Microsoft ingratiating itself on PC buyers; again!

While more consumers are demanding their new computers arrive sans bloatware, perhaps with an alternative Linux-based operating system or at the very least; good ole Windows XP (keep your Vista, thank you very much!); Microsoft continues it's favorite form of marketing.

Bundlng!

And the 'Softies wonder why consumers are revolting against their products and demanding other options from PC makers.

Technology today is all about choice. The more choices the better and they are to be made at the individual users level, not around the c-level in Redmond, WA.