Gadgetopia

Microsoft to debut updated Office program in 2006: I haven't upgraded since Office 2000. Jeff Raikes, the senior vice president in charge of the Office division at Microsoft, said that the trial, or beta, version of Office 12 would be ready by the end of this year, followed by the ...

An Office User Interface Blog : Picture This: A New Look For Office: Lots of good-looking screencaps from Office 2007, revealed at a German conference this morning. Gorgeous interface design. The big winner in my mind is Access -- that screencap is light years ahead of where the interface is ...

Microsoft Office 12 Beta 1 Is Out: Slashdot links to all sorts of good information about the next version of Office. The screenshots look good.

Microsoft Revamps Mac Office Packages: "The company this month will ship a 'Student and Teacher' version [of Office] as well as a Professional release that includes Virtual PC."

Creating Your Own Research Service for the Microsoft Office 2003 Research Library: Office 2003 has an enterprise search engine built into the apps. Microsoft Office 2003 Editions add a powerful new tool to the Office task pane: the Research Library.By default, the Research Library allows you to type in a ...

I'm on one of my "shiny object" tangents lately. The latest thing is non-Microsoft software. I don't know why, but I suddenly feel the need to be all counter-culture-ish and find alternatives to the standbys. I've been browsing with Mozilla all week, and I don't think I'll go back to ...

Microsoft to sell Office, security software subscription for $70 a year: This has been rumored for years. I think it s a response to the growing competition from things like OpenOffice, Google Docs, and the general lagging need for a productivity suite anymore. Office used to be simply required for a ...

Amazon.com Research Services for Microsoft Office System: No more research for creating bibliographies or footnotes. The Amazon Research Pane download for Microsoft Office 2003 allows you to search for Amazon products from within Microsoft Word or Excel documents, and to insert product information and footnotes into documents and spreadsheets. The ...

Office Depot offers to recycle electronics for free: This is a Very Good Thing. I'm not an Earth-muffin or anything, but old electronics do some really crappy things to the environment. Don't be so quick to toss out your old PCs, fax machines or digital cameras office supply retailer ...

Fight the power: I consider it my civic duty to pass this on. Don't let the copyright office REQUIRE IE. Take a break from email and Web surfing to send a real, paper letter (with five copies) to the U.S. Copyright office and tell them that REQUIRING use of IE ...

Forget Work, IM Is for Scheming, Flirting, Gossip: One of the myths about running IM clients in the office is the fear that employees would just use them to screw around. Well, that may not have been a myth after all... "Flirting with colleagues, scheming against the boss and gossiping ...

I've had an eternal struggle with taxonomies and crumbtrails and I'll share it with you now in the hopes of finding some resolution that will let me sleep. (Okay, it's not THAT bad, but I have been tossing this around for days now with no solution.) A taxonomy is a ...

Today is National Leave The Office Earlier Day. If you're still at work, you shouldn't be. Get your tail home, kick back with a good book, and relax. You've been working too hard lately. Tell your boss that I said it's ok.

OutlookSpy - the Ultimate Outlook Developer Tool: A phenomenal tool if you ever do Outlook / Exchange / CDO programming. This guy also built OfficeSpy if you do Microsoft Office VBA programming. My days of hardcore Exchange programming are behind me, but I so wish they had this tool back ...

Jon Udell: Exploring Office 2003: Here are some screencaps of the XML capabilities of Word and Excel in Office 2003. The mind reels at the possibilities. Here's something a little more in-depth on the topic from MSDN: Importing XML Maps, XML Lists, and Dynamic Chart Sources in Excel 2003: "Excel ...

Office 2000 HTML Filter 2.0: This is a handy little tool. Once you have completed editing an HTML document in Word 2000 or Excel 2000, you can use the Office HTML Filter to remove the Office-specific markup tags from the final copy of the HTML document. I took a 45-page ...

I wonder how long it will before Web-based Office apps trump client-based apps in intranet environments. Slowly but surely, Google Docs has become my default choice when I have to write a document or a spreadsheet. How long before this infiltrates the enterprise? I got to thinking about this when ...

Bold Redesign Improves Office 2007: These interface changes should go over nicely. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of the menus are gone -- every one. None of the familiar toolbars have survived, either. In their place is a wide, tabbed band of icons at the top of the screen ...

If I convince my employer to replace my cube with one of these, I believe I become an honorary Dark Lord of the Sith. via neatorama

Microsoft: Legit Windows or no updates: I found this via Techdirt which comes to the same conclusion I have: the more Microsoft does things like this to prevent piracy, the more Microsoft alternatives will thrive. Aiming to crack down on counterfeit software, Microsoft plans later this year to require customers ...

It's possible to ditch Microsoft Office: I actually used OpenOffice (used as opposed to played with, which I've done a number of times) the other day to write a document. It was fantastic. In many respects, better than Word. I'll admit that a lot of my desire to use Linux ...

Microsoft, eBay hook up software and auction data: Not a bad idea, I suppose. Developers can tap into eBay's data and offer them directly to Microsoft's programs, such as Excel and FrontPage, without having to go through a Web browser. Under the joint effort between Microsoft and Ebay, both companies ...

R.I.P. WYSIWYG - Results-Oriented UI Coming: Interesting post on the future of UI. For the last twenty-five years, one user interface style has reigned supreme: the Macintosh-style graphical user interface. It's now reached its limits, however, and will be replaced by a style that partly reverses some of its most ...

Tipping the Microsoft Cash Cow Could Be Adobe s Next Move: Apple users will flock to this like they flocked to Safari for two reasons: (1) it s a chance to screw Microsoft, and (2) anything that sets them apart from the unwashed masses is, by definition, better. [ ] the stage is ...

Sounds like the long expected release of Office 12 for the Mac is well on it's way through the halls of Redmond's Mac Business Unit. The thing most potential customers are looking forward to is a version that will run natively on Intel Macs, but it will also have many ...

Bye-bye, FrontPage in New Office, Says Microsoft: Could it be? I hope so. Long live Contribute. Microsoft will close the book on its FrontPage Web-design program with the release of Office 2007, formerly known as Office 12, late this year.

Office hunts for new niches: This is an interesting trend for Microsoft, and one we ve written about before. It involves add-ons that customize a product for a certain vertical. The first seven products from the Accelerator Program will focus on specific business segments and tasks: sales proposals, personnel recruiting, quality-management ...

The WINE configuration gurus over at Codeweavers have announced that their next version of Crossover Office will allow iTunes to play nicely on your Linux box. For those unfamiliar with the product, Crossover Office allows MS Office, Photoshop, and many other Windows programs to run quite nicely on your Linux ...

Microsoft's Mac Hebrew snub prompts Israeli AntiTrust complaint: It seems like a small thing, but this has resulted in a suspension of Microsoft contracts with the Israeli government through the end of next year. "Microsoft's refusal to provide Hebrew support in its Macintosh Internet Explorer browser or Office suite has ...

My office is considering buying a new copier/printer. Have you looked at these things lately? I've been through a half-dozen vendor presentations in the last few days (they talk a long time when the price tag approaches $20K), and I can't believe the functionality available. One vendor dropped off a ...

Yet another Friday diversion, this time, from our friends from across the sea. BBC Learning specializes in corporate training video. Apparently, they also have a sense of humor (or is it humour) by sponsoring a little web diversion called ...To The Rescue. After 5 minutes, my personal best is only ...

Defense Lawyers Cringe at MediaDefender s Child-Porn Patrol Plans: This is interesting. [ ] MediaDefender planned to unleash a peer-to-peer crawler to search unspecified file-sharing networks for child-porn videos and images based on keywords such as young, kids and taboo provided by the AG s office. Once suspected image files were ...

Patent office to re-examine Eolas patent: It looks like the W3C's trip to the patent office may have paid off. "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has stepped squarely into a fight roiling the Web by agreeing to re-examine the Eolas patent for a browser plug-in, a development likely to ...

City of Austin pilot proves OpenOffice.org works: This is really great news. I'd love to see OpenOffice get more saturation. ...uninstalling MS Office and putting OpenOffice.org in its place on about 300 desktops. The city has more than 5,000 desktops in total. He also pointed out that not everyone can ...

One of the things that drives me nuts about Microsoft is the licensing. The other day, I found myself wishing for a book or a class on Microsoft licensing so I could understand it...then I realized how utterly absurd that was. Understanding licensing should not be a core competency of ...

BW Online | Apple's Real Worry Isn't the Loss of IE: Good article on the future of the Mac and how it's tied in with Microsoft. "...far more daunting is the prospect of Microsoft abandoning the Mac version of its popular Office software. That's because Apple hasn't yet shown it ...

British boss bans e-mail: This is a very interesting thought. "John Caudwell, CEO of High Street mobile retailer Phones 4U, announced Thursday that he'll ban all employees from using e-mail across the business. The reasoning behind the total ban is apparently to improve productivity by reducing the time Phones 4U ...

Bookshelf Symbol 7 Font Removal Tool: Do you want to get the swastikas out of Office? Here's the tool. This utility removes the bssym7.ttf font included in Microsoft Office System 2003, which has been found to contain unacceptable symbols.

Our company is sort of in the market for office space. We have an office now, but we're casually looking for something we'd feel a little more at home in. We've been talking about it, and all of us want the same thing: something very hip, very cool, like...oh, I ...

Convert PDF, HTML, DOC, TIFF and more: So, your office needs to produce simple PDFs, but you don't want to pay $450 for a retail copy of Acrobat? First, of all, don't pay it because their are a number of alternatives like RoboPDF that are so much cheaper. They don't ...

Cyber Blackmail Wave Targets Office Workers: Nice. Cyber blackmail artists are shaking down office workers, threatening to delete computer files or install pornographic images on their work PCs unless they pay a ransom, police and security experts said. The extortion scam, which is believed to have surfaced one year ago, ...

Good article on CNET on how Microsoft is under pressure in the Asian market. Microsoft has always maintained a 'one-price' policy, meaning Windows costs the same no matter where you go, regardless of local currency or economic conditions. This makes Microsoft products very expensive in some nations. Now, with more ...

OpenOffice995: It looks like the guys over at Software 995 (we've talked about them before) are re-packaging Open Office and selling support for it as "Open Office 995." For $19.95 you get email tech support with a 24-hour respond time. This, of course, being the only way you can make ...

Microsoft claims software like Linux violates its patents: I thought Microsoft was trying to bridge the gap to the open-source world lately? This is a really horrific idea. Did the SCO fiasco not warn them off a plan like this? [ ] there s a shadow hanging over Linux and other free ...

By Telecommuting, the Disabled Get a Key to the Office, and a Job: Great example of how technology can improve people's lives: "About two years ago, NBC gave Ms. Pearce the option of working at home when she needed to, and today she splits her time, spending three days a ...

Ford to Debut Pickup With Mobile Office: Fascinating. Ford Motor Co. says it will soon offer wireless mobile offices in its F-series pickups, an option aimed at building contractors and others who do business on the road. [...] Ford expects to offer the mobile office as a dealer-installed accessory in ...

Asterisk Voicemail that reacts to my AIM status: Interesting article on how to use your AIM status to control your voicemail. It occured to me that my computer already "knows" whether I'm in the office or not because my iChat status (aka my AOL Instant Messenger/AIM status, as they use ...

German city picks Linux over Microsoft: We've known about this deal for a while, but what's interesting is the lengths Microsoft went to win and was still rebuffed. Microsoft offered last-minute concessions that would have made Windows and Office cheaper than switching. USA TODAY obtained city records that revealed Microsoft: ...

Microsoft tries free office suite: Utterly fascinating in the crack that it opens in Microsoft s business model. It ll be interesting to see where this goes. Free copies of some of Microsoft s office software will soon be available. The software giant said it would make ad-supported copies of the Works package ...

Open House: I want to go so bad it hurts. Joel, send me a ticket. Great pictures at that URL of their new office space. Someone in New York needs to go and take pictures. Here at Fog Creek Software we recently finished a big expansion of our office space. ...

Programming is a mostly paperless endeavour, but I still wind up attending meetings where I'm bound to take some paper notes. For a couple of years I tried to handle this on a PDA, but it doesn't work very well. Even if you avoid the problems with handwriting recognition, the ...

Microsoft to roll out online versions of Windows, Office: This is apparently a very big deal, but I can't figure out why. I went to the site -- there's nothing really available yet. Windows Live will be offered for free and try to make money from the rapidly expanding online ...

SourceForge.net: Project Info - Peep: The Network Auralizer: My office's server is just under my desk, so I listen to it all day long. I've gotten to the point where I can often hear if something's wrong. I know the hard drive starts cycling at five minutes past the hour ...

Instant messengers take corporate world by storm: A quick look at IM in the enterprise. This has been talked about a lot, but I've never seen it actually take off anywhere. "...many are awaiting the entry of Microsoft. The software giant already offers consumer-grade IM and included a corporate messaging ...

Got FoO - Office 2K3 Style: This guy duplicated the upcoming Outlook 2003 layout in HTML for his blog. Nicely done.

Congress Shuts Pentagon Unit Over Privacy: The Total Information Awareness database project is dead. "The Pentagon spending plan for 2004 adopted by the Senate says that the office, the Information Awareness Office, which had been headed by Adm. John M. Poindexter, should be 'terminated immediately' while a few projects under ...

One phone number to rule them all: The bad news is that you can't hide from anyone anymore. GrandCentral is a brilliant new web app that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of ...

Well, it's been about six months since we last posted a Friday Diversion, which makes it less of a weekly feature and more of a biannual one. We've got two here that won't keep you busy all weekend (I hope not, anyway), but should get you frustrated enough to build ...

Microsoft, Apple Sign 5-Year Software Pact: Some interesting news out of MacWorld. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines ...

PureText Home Page: This is a wicked handy. Microsoft Office includes a "Paste Text Only" option between Office applications, but it's really handy to have this system-wide. Have you ever copied some text from a web page, a word document, help, etc., and wanted to paste it as simple text ...

How I Work: Bill Gates: Bill Gates wrote this piece for Money Magazine on how his office is laid out and what he does with it all. If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a ...

Bionic Office: I've been waiting for this post for a while, ever since reading Joel's (hysterical) treatise on how he found his new office. He's now had it built out and here are the details and the pictures. "The monthly rent for our offices, when fully occupied, will run about ...

Computer makers face slowdown, firm predicts: Gartner is saying that three of the Top 10 computer manufacturers will be gone in two years. I pick Gateway as one of them, given that its workforce has been cut 92% in the last three years. Three of the nation's top 10 personal ...

Spammers have gotten inventive. We've starting getting spam that appears to come from someone else in the office. For instance, Rachel the administrative assistant has started getting spam from "dbarker." She thinks it's from me, so she opens it. What these spammers have done is match up harvested email addresses ...

How to fix Mom's computer: Here's a great article on how to de-malware a computer. Gina from scribbling.net went home over the holidays and had to "fix" her mother's computer. She was so awesomely kind to write down everything she did, complete with screencaps. Related to this, the people in ...

From Christian Science Monitor: Deciding what kind of software Massachusetts wants to load on some 50,000 state computers may sound like something of interest only to uber-geeks. But that decision could spark a revolution in how software is developed and sold. The Commonwealth wants to adopt an "open document" standard ...

The Justice Department is moving to block Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, I suppose arguing that it would create a sort of CRM monopoly. Charles Cooper seems to think Larry Ellison is reaping what he's sown: Setting aside the question of whether Uncle Sam has a case or not, Gates surely ...

Essentials : Mark Pilgrim has listed his "essential" software tools for doing his job. I always like to see these the absolute, "can't live without" tools of people who do the same work as me. As the risk of being self-indulgent, here's mine: Email: Thunderbird or Mozilla Mail via ...

S.D. governor pulls plug on part of library Web site: Our governor, Mike Rounds, ordered some links removed from the youth section of the South Dakota State Library Web site this week because they linked to "inappropriate content." The governor's office isn't identifying the links, but sources say they were ...

I've been putting off posting about The Building of Basecamp because I was trying to get my hands on a picture. Neither Joe nor I thought to bring a camera, and the workshop was the first thing we did in Chicago, before Joe bought a disposable to shoot this ...

Google today celebrates it's 5th birthday. "The search engine site moved to its first office, actually a garage, in Menlo Park, California on 7 September 1998. "

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Microsoft Office Word 2003 Preview: A look at new features in Word 2003 from the perspective of an average user, not geeks like us.

On Piracy, or, Nick Bradbury is an Amazing Idiot: This was written in response to Nick Bradbury's bit about piracy from yesterday. ...most people who pirate his software probably would never use it anyway, so they aren't costing him any money and they're providing him with free advertising. This is ...

What science fiction technology -- if it suddenly became a reality -- do you think would change the world most fundamentally? My pick: teleportation. Specifically, telelportation that was afforable for everyone and could not be blocked on a large-scale (you couldn't block 'porting into a country, but you could into ...

Developers Developers Developers Developers: This is one area where Microsoft has excelled: getting people to build software for its operating system. I have worked in an IT shop with the subscriptions Joel details below. It's overwhelming to have that much software. "If you're a software company willing to commit to ...

Apple Earmarks New Cat Names "According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple registered four new trademarks in early July: Cougar, Lynx, Leopard and Tiger. All four were filed under the 'computer operating system software' category."

I was in the Bay Area couple of months ago for FM s Conversational Marketing Summit, and I needed to go visit a client down in Mountain View (no, not Google, though they were right down the street). I went south on the 101, but that was boring. I was looking ...

Microsoft Office Real-Time Communications Server 2003: Behold Microsoft's new corporate instant messaging platform. "RTC Server enables an enterprise to deploy a managed IM solution with functionality including logging, archiving, file transfer, audio/video conferencing, and application sharing."

Blue Ball Machine: This is amazing. I watched a single ball for two or three minutes as it ran through the various machines. It's a repeating 500 x 500px background image -- a big animated GIF. The music is perfect. I want that playing in my office all day. Via ...

While I'll always be a little bitter about Gateway leaving South Dakota, they have one feature of their Web site which I adore: serial number lookup. Somewhere on the case of your Gateway machine is a sticker with a 10-digit serial number. It starts "00." You can input this at ...

What a great problem to have. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man, said the tax office in the US has to store his financial data on a special computer because his fortune is so vast. My guess is it's not on a PC or Mac. Read more here. ...

Patent central to Microsoft case invalidated: And in a complete reversal... The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has invalidated a claim to Web browser technology central to a case against Microsoft, a move that could spare the software giant from paying more than half a billion dollars in damages... This ...

Make The Logo Bigger. The Song.: We play this in our office everything someone asks us to I don t want to tell you how to do your job. But, could you make the logo bigger? Bigger, bigger, make it big. Make the logo bigger. Chorus Make the logo as big ...

Music industry raids offices of Kazaa: Australian authorities went after Kazaa today, looking for evidence of copyright infringement. The raided sites included the office of Kazaa owner Sharman Networks, the homes of two of the company's executives, three Australian universities and Internet service providers. Fark had the best headline for ...

Wired News: Sinbad Hears Linux's Siren Song: Watch out, SCO may sue for a cut of the box office. "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, an animated movie from DreamWorks Animation Technology that hits theaters July 2, is the first Hollywood production created entirely on Linux. More than 250 Hewlett-Packard ...

Basecamp API: The Basecamp API has landed. The API allows programmers to access/read/write Basecamp data from third-party systems like OS X dashboard widgets, Yahoo/Confabulator widgets, web sites, back-office systems, billing systems, and more. The API allows Basecamp to integrate with a variety of other products and systems. Prepare for some ...

Chuck (TV series): I saw a preview for this show on the flight from Denver to San Francisco. It looks pretty hysterical Chuck is a member of the Geek Squad Nerd Herd at Best Buy Buy More, and he gets a bunch of spy secrets embedded in his brain. ...

What a great idea; from CNET News: A new policy from China's governing body states that all government ministries must buy only locally produced software at the next upgrade cycle. The State Council's move, aimed at breaking the dominance of Microsoft on desktop computers, will eliminate Microsoft's Windows operating system ...

RAM Upgrades Are A Wonderful Thing: Let's take a little survey: How much RAM do you use? I can't imagine using a modern computer with less than 1GB of ram. When you factor in Thunderbird, Firefox, Emacs, two IM clients, Office Apps, PuTTY, the Gimp, and the various other stuff ...

Consumer Electronics Surge Ahead of Office Computers: More argument that Gateway's push into consumer electronics is a good thing: "The dichotomy underscores the harsher prospects for companies still tied to older computer businesses. Though pressure to cut prices is severe in most categories of electronics, companies riding the crest of ...

OpenOffice gets programming kit | CNET News.com: This is really great news. I love OpenOffice, but one of the big strengths of Microsoft Office is that it has VBA, whereby you can change, extend, and essentially re-program the entire application. I'm excited to see OpenOffice go in that same direction. ...

Blogger: Download Blogger for Word: I knew this would happen sooner or later. Now you can use Blogger right within Microsoft Word. Just download and install the Blogger for Word add-in and a Blogger toolbar will be added to Word allowing you to: Publish to your blog, save drafts, edit ...

States Consider Fight Against Oracle's Bid for PeopleSoft: Because, you know, there just weren't enough lawsuits. "Looking to put additional pressure on Oracle Corp. to halt its hostile takeover bid of enterprise software rival PeopleSoft Inc., Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has contacted every state in the union asking them ...

In today's local paper... The tallest building in South Dakota will come tumbling to the ground amid great fanfare on Dec. 3 [at 1:00 p.m.], and the owners of the property plan to use the event to raise money for the fight against multiple sclerosis. The old Zip Feed Mills ...

Bullfighter: Stripping The Bull Out Of Business: Too much 1999-ish Internet crap-speak in your documents? This little add-on will give you a "Bull Index" for your documents, so you know just how much crap you're spewing. Bullfighter is software that runs in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, within Microsoft Office 2000 ...

U.S. tech workers training their replacements: This seems rather gut-wrenching. "...it was tough for [Scott] Kirwin...to relish his final assignment: training a group of programmers from India who would replace him within a year. 'They called it "knowledge acquisition,"' the Wilmington, Delaware, resident said. 'We got paid our normal salaries ...

Sun's Mad Hatter takes crack at desktop Windows: They demoed this a LinuxWorld today, so it's back in the news. "Mad Hatter, which Sun first disclosed a year ago, is Sun's effort to dislodge Microsoft and its Windows/Office combination from the desktop PC. Like StarOffice, Mad Hatter will include a ...

Feds help create PDF archiving standard: We've written about this initiative before. Looks like it's moving ahead. The committee hopes to release a draft of the PDF/A standard by early next year with a final standard out by the end of 2005, said committee member Stephen Levenson, who works in ...

Project Aardvark: This is happening over at Fog Creek Software, the Spolsky joint in New York. I could only be so lucky. I can't wait for the film. Yes, it's true... there will be a filmmaker, Lerone Wilson of Boondoggle Films, working out of the Fog Creek office this summer ...

Google Presentations Released: Google has just added its Power Point replacement, alongside its Word and Excel replacements. The first impression is that Google Presentations does all it’s supposed to do (and without resorting to Java or Flash, at least judging by the parts I checked – it’s DHTML/ Ajax technology). ...

I've waxed poetic about the joys of OpenOffice here before, but here's a really neat trick. Create a "Word" document in OpenOffice Writer, then save it. Now, using an archive tool like WinZip, open it -- unzip it just like it was a zip archive. You should find the following ...

Road to Expo: iWork '05, Jam Pack 4 arriving: Think Secret who predicted a monitor-less iMac last week is now talking about Apple's planned Office-killer: iWork. Chatter surrounding iWork then called iWorks, as it was speculated to be the successor to AppleWorks first emerged almost two ...

119 students who failed courses get group email: 119 kids are failing out of the University of Kansas, and now they all know each other. The students were notified earlier this week that they were in jeopardy of having their financial aid revoked. The e-mail sent Monday by the Office ...

The Museum of HP Calculators: Perhaps the be-all and end-all spot for Hewlett Packard calculators. This site goes gonzo on HP calculators: See the very first HP calculator produced in 1968 Marvel at the the legendary HP-12C business calculator which entered production in 1981 and can still be purchased new ...

NASA mulled nixing Web site after shuttle loss: The recent report on the Columbia disaster shows that NASA got worried about how current the information on its Web site was and how this would be interpreted by the press. "...one proposal by a midlevel employee at headquarters for a 'complete ...

Project Aardvark: What a fun gig this would be, just to check out the legendary Fog Creek offices. I want to go. Do you live anywhere near Manhattan? Do you want to meet Joel, check out the Fog Creek Office, try out Fog Creek Copilot, and get paid $30 for ...

'Master' and 'slave' computer labels unacceptable, officials say: I can't even think of anything witty to say about this. Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive. The request ...

Lightspace Corporation : Cutting Edge Interactive Lighting Surfaces: These people make lighted floors that sense weight (I'm guessing), and light up with different effects based on where someone is standing. Using the latest LED and pressure sensing technologies, Lightspace has created the ultimate club experience by offering an interactive dance ...

Blog, Blog, Blog: The Navy Tests Web Logging For Team Communications: If the Navy can use it to evaluate top secret technology, you're description of the cheese sandwich you had for lunch should be pretty safe. The Office of Naval Research and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) are testing ...

The Page Design Genie: This is what design-challenged people like me have been waiting for. "Rather than replacing the graphic artist, Xerox's software is designed to function like a page layout genie that looks over the shoulder of the person creating a document, whether the person is an artist or ...

Understanding the Psychology of Programming: Here's a great little article, again from my buddy Chris, about programmers and how to maintain peak creativity. Very much worth reading: "In his research, Csikszentmihalyi cites the case of a famous computer researcher who made a lot of discoveries in the computer field who ...

Users Blast Microsoft Over Worm Response: Bill's not making any friends in the security community...again. "Widespread problems with the Blaster patch, issues with the Microsoft-supplied workaround, and a general dissatisfaction with the way the vendor handles updates have led administrators and security experts to lay much of the blame for ...

Best Buy Web site pricing probed: If Best Buy actually did this, then they're brutally stupid. Blumenthal said his office received at least 20 complaints after a columnist for The Hartford Courant reported the experience of one Connecticut man who found a laptop computer advertised for $729.99 on BestBuy.com, then ...

Is Microsoft bribing schools to focus on its software? Interesting Washington Post article on the subject. No one can dispute Microsoft's dominance in the classroom and elsewhere, but that dominance certainly didn't result from quality software. Tobacco companies have been criticized for marketing their wares to hook kids; is Microsoft's ...

Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession: Michael Jackson set up a Web site to counter child molestation charges. Now the prosecutor's office has done the same. There's an interesting debate on the effectiveness and appropriateness of this. Some legal experts said that posting documents detailing the criminal charges against ...

Microsoft gets Vista launch off the ground: My prediction is that the world will let out a big, collective yawn over this. The biggest, and broadest, product launch in Microsoft's 32-year history started Tuesday. And the near-term success of the world's largest software maker will greatly be determined on how ...

Korea launches a switch to open source: They may seem like strange bedfellows, but two announcements this week strengthen open-source in government IT structures: "Thousands of computers in ministries, government-linked organizations and universities in South Korea will replace Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office productivity suite with open-source alternatives under ...

Charity Begins at Home. It Can End Online: Here's a fascinating story of incredible Web incompetence. A journalist tried to donate to the Cousteau Society but was thwarted at every turn by an abandoned site, a Flash site invisible to search engines (the link above), and an email delivery issue. ...

Let me play industry analyst for a second and explain why I think computer manufacturers are in deep kimshee: Hardware has vastly out-paced software. Besides gaming, there's no compelling reason to upgrade your computer. I'm still running on a 1GHz/384MB machine I had built for me two years ago. I ...

OpenGroupware.org Complements OpenOffice: A group of open-source folks are looking to torpedo Exchange: "'Just to be perfectly clear, this is an MS Exchange take-out,' said Gary Frederick, leader of the OpenOffice.org Groupware Project, in a statement. 'OGo is important because it's the missing link in the open source software stack. ...

NBC pulls YouTube channel: This really, really sucks. There were a lot of Monday mornings around here where we would replay the latest Digital Short. [ ] the relationship had run its course. NBC got buzz for a revived Saturday Night Live and The Office, and YouTube, through the sheen of ...

Wireless Technology Could Soon Help Farms: Interesting story about wireless penetration in the farming industry. Farms of the not-too-distant future could be managed through wireless computer networks that allow farmers to sit in their pickups with a laptop and drive tractors, monitor soil moisture and even feed the hogs remotely. ...

It's a never-ending day in office: 10 p.m. and you think you're leaving? Get back to work, you slacker. Instead of gathering the few remaining souls from their cubicles, three managers move into a conference room to dial India, where engineers 12-1/2 time zones ahead are just arriving in Hyderabad. ...

Humble Throne: Assessing Herman Miller s downscale Aeron - the Mirra: This piece is technically about Herman Miller s new chair, the Mirra, but it turns into an homage to one of the enduring symbols of the dotcom era. In the 90s, the Aeron became an emblem of the dot-com boom; it ...

Worksheet-Server: Run and Consolidate your Spreadsheets over the Web (Excel, OpenOffice, Lotus, Star Office): Now this is something to behold. Build a spreadsheet with all the business formulas and logic you need, then upload it to this server it will be converted to a Web app. Check out the demo ...

Microsoft Millionaires Grapple With Wealth: Apparently those Microsofties that got rich in the boom are having problems "dealing with their wealth." Consider this guy who was a gofer at age 27 and hated his job. Ten years later... "...Thatcher joined one of the iconic clubs of the 20th century. He ...

Official: International hackers going after U.S. networks: 140 of 194 is 72% of the world, trying to hack our government. Nice. About 140 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to hack into the computer networks of the U.S. government and U.S. companies, a top counterintelligence official said. The nation s electronic systems are ...

MSN 9.0 to Include Built-In Outlook Synchronization: Premium subscribers to the next version of MSN will be able to sync their Web mail, contacts, and calendar with their client version of Outlook. "The Connector will allow for 'rich integration scenarios,' Pai said, such as the ability to drag contacts from ...

Turn Word Into a Syndication Client: This article is about using Word 2003 as an RSS client, but it also sheds some light on the fantastic new features in Office 2003: The most visible aspect of Word's XML support is its ability to act as a native editor for XML ...

Copilot: coming soon from Fog Creek Software: The guys over at Project Aardvark finally spilled the beans as to what they're really up to. They're apparently hot-rodding Windows Remote Assistance. [...] a service that lets you help your friends, relatives, and customers fix their computer problems over the Internet. Built ...

How To Get Rich & Famous By Blogging At Work: This is a pretty funny parody of the whole, "I got fired for blogging..." craze. Refuse To Stop Blogging About Your Work, Even If Threatened With Dismissal. Freedom Of Speech is what it's all about, so screw off, Mr. Bossman! ...

TerraFly: This is kinda interesting. It's an aerial map that you can move interactively. I found my house then followed my drive to work. Sioux Falls is not a teeming metropolis, so if I can find my house and office, odds are you can too. TerraFly ® changes the way ...

Microsoft to Acquire Groove Networks, Combining Talents to Create Anytime, Anywhere Collaboration Products and Services: This is kind of a no-brainer. Micrsoft owned 25% of Groove, and it was only a matter of time until Groove got built into Windows. Microsoft Corp. announced today that it will acquire Groove Networks ...

Is your 2.5 pound Ultralight laptop really dragging you down when you tote it through the airport? Sony has you covered: The X505 is Sony's smallest notebook, weighing less than two pounds and under an inch thin. While small in size, the X505 delivers big performance through the power of ...

Grand Theft Auto seen breaking games sales record: Lots of big new gaming titles are going to hit the market in the next month, starting with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas today. At about $50 each, first-week sales of 4.5 million units would equal about $225 million. Should it reach ...

e-t-a-o-n-r-i Spy and the F.B.I.: This is a pretty funny story about a kid, a secret code, and the FBI. About six weeks later, when I happened to be off on another escapade, my mother was visited by a man who identified himself as an investigator from the F.B.I. [ ] ...

Google takes 'beta' off desktop search: What? A Google tool coming out of beta? How unlike them. The SDK sounds very, very promising. Google on Monday plans to introduce a full version of its desktop-search software, with a developer's kit and support for Firefox and Netscape Web browsers. The Mountain ...

Fog Creek Software - About the company: I noticed this on the new Fog Creek Web site. The average Fog Creek developer has 694 square inches of screen real-estate, 2 desktop computers, and an Aeron chair. Most have private offices with windows and doors. Related to this, I m reading Peopleware: ...

40-hour work week? Guess again.. According to this article in the local paper, I work too much. [Deane] Barker's schedule is so busy that he won't take his full vacation time this year. He manages to sneak in a day here and there, he said, but there isn't time for ...

Deane is one who finds beauty in the code that defines a website, but here s a guy, artist Brian Piana, who finds art in the layout of a website. In my work I use deconstructed abstractions of actual websites to create new compositions in a removed, off-line environment. The layout, ...

Users force Dell to resurrect XP: This is interesting. If you remember, a few months ago, I had to work pretty had to find a Dell with XP. Responding to customer demand Dell has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them. The decision reverses a policy begun ...

There's a new version out of Dave's Quick Search Deskbar, which is a terrific addon toolbar for your Windows taskbar. Dave's Quick Search Deskbar is a tiny textbox that Dave Bau designed for search hounds with weary mouse-fingers. Unlike the Google Toolbar, this little deskbar lets you launch searches without ...

Webnote - an online tool for taking notes: This is an interesting app. It's like sticky notes in Ajax. Webnote is a tool for taking notes on your computer. It allows you to quickly write something down during a meeting, class, or any other time that you have a web ...

According to an article on ThinkSecret, Apple Computer has assembled an Enterprise Sales Group that will focus on selling the Xserve and Xserve RAID to big-time IT management groups. The Xserve and matching RAID box have been catching on in IT circles, what with the combination of slick hardware and ...

When is Web Content Management Right for an Intranet?: There's a really nice distinction in the first paragraph of this article that I guess I'd never acknowledged before. From a functional standpoint, intranets fall into a continuum. At one end, an intranet is a fully personalized, dynamic system, tightly connected ...

FTC clamps down on stealth pop-ups: I still remember the first time I got one of these. I screen capped it and sent it to my buddies with a note that said, "You won't believe this..." Now it's so common that I shut off the Messenger service on all the ...

It's time for server-based Greasemonkey. I support an organization of a dozen or so people, and I find myself answering the same questions about the same Web sites and teaching people the same things over and over There are so many times in the few weeks since taking that first ...

Brazil Leans Away From Microsoft: First China, then Korea and Boston, now Brazil. "We have some islands in the federal government using open-source, but we want to create a continent," said Amadeu, a former economics professor who gained fame before joining Silva's team by launching a network of free computer ...

Ice keeps New York office towers cool: New cooling units in some skyscrapers are using big blocks of ice to supplement or replace their air conditioning. Essentially they re generating cold air at night, saving it up, then using it during the heat of the day when it s needed. Because electricity ...

My office is moving to a new building in a few days. We have at least 100 programming books of many flavors which we have accumulated and for which we have no more need. One of them, Teach Yourself Web Publishing With Html 3.2 in 14 Days by Laura Lemay, ...

The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis: This is a fascinating story about the Citicorp Center in Manhattan. About a year after it was built, the architect realized that something was very wrong with it. This famous New Yorker article, published two decades after the problem was found and fixed, explained what happened ...