Apparent wackjob Randall Flann has been making
fluid-holding
headgear for years. Gridiron fans can dispense beverages from a football,
and hockey addicts can wear a big beer-filled puck on their heads. Computer
aficionados aren't being left out. For $30, you can get a big plastic thing
that looks like a monitor, fill it full of Jolt and drink your brains out!
By the way, Flann calls himself "Madman." Can someone who calls himself
mad truly be mad? And of course, the question of the hour: Is Weird Al Yankovic
actually weird? I say no, but you can disagree at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 17, 20070 comments
Lucid8 is well-known for GOexchange, an
e-mail maintenance and performance tool. The company also has backup for Exchange
in the form of DigiVault.
Now, the company is getting into the e-mail discovery market with DigiScope.
Lost a critical message? Need to recover a message thread to defend against
a lawsuit or get a new employee up to speed? DigiScope can search, copy and
move around Exchange e-mail that may be stored in any number of places.
The tool can also recover deleted mailboxes and folders, and even get back
corrupted data.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 17, 20070 comments
When I suggested that Steve Jobs be let off the hook for possible financial
improprieties, a bunch of you just about ripped my fool head off. You might
get your wish to see Jobs in jeopardy. After being cleared by Apple (did they
put Leslie Nielsen on this case?)
the
feds decided to check up on the charges themselves.
While some might view Apple as some kind of touchy-feely company, it is, after
all, built to make money. In fact, its platform is more proprietary than Redmond's
because it is completely tied to hardware (bring back the Mac clones!).
Posted by Doug Barney on January 16, 20070 comments
According to reports, Mark Hurd, the head of HP, was copied on a key memo discussing
an investigation into reporters, employees and directors looking for leaks (Hurd
neglected to read the memo and missed part of a key meeting on the subject,
he says). Hurd is still running meetings, making the covers of business magazines
and doin' fine.
Meanwhile a 29-year-old peon (let's call him Scooter Libby Jr.) from the PI
firm with all the sneaky tactics, pled
guilty to identity theft -- all for doing the bidding of HP execs.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 16, 20070 comments
As beer companies know, sex sells. Domain registrar Dotster agrees, and recently
held a contest to find female spokesmodels. These women are no slouches. One
is a former Miss Arizona (yes, this century!), another appeared on a Dunkin'
Donuts commercial and a third actually speaks Spanish.
I've gotten numerous press releases about this and they all tell me to check
out the Dots at http://www.dotsterdots.com.
But this Internet company doesn't operate on Internet time, as the site is still
just a placeholder. Maybe the company should take a course in Publicity 101
and have the Web site ready before they blast out a million press releases!
Posted by Doug Barney on January 16, 20070 comments
While Wise is aimed at IT,
Laplink's
new PCmover for Windows is designed to help end users migrate files, settings
and applications to Vista. The new rev should be out Jan. 18.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 15, 20070 comments
Macphiles, rejoice. You don't have to be stuck with Office 2003 or NeoOffice/J
forever. Unfortunately, the new Mac suite will not use the ribbon interface.
However,
the
new Mac Office will run on new Intel Macs and older PowerPC machines. Now,
if we can just get a Linux port!
Posted by Doug Barney on January 15, 20070 comments
Altiris just
updated
its Wise Installation Studio to help IT easily move users to Vista. Besides
supporting Vista, the new rev works with Altiris' application virtualization
technology. Similar in concept to Softricity, recently acquired by Microsoft,
the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution packages applications in virtual
wrappers so they don't affect the registry, dramatically reducing conflicts.
Instead of just blindly going with the Redmond solution, you might want to give
Altiris a look.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 15, 20070 comments
At Macworld, Steve Jobs
announced
a cool (but expensive) cell phone and a device that lets you play your computer
video on your TV (this is not an original idea, but my guess is that Apple will
just do it better).
Unfortunately, Apple is missing out on a huge opportunity to start pushing
Mac back into corporations. Anyone in Cupertino listening?
Posted by Doug Barney on January 10, 20070 comments
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had gotten a free ride from the press:
How can you knock a guy who's giving away some 90 percent of his money? Now,
investigative journalists are looking at the
harm
some of the foundation's projects are doing.
Besides fighting disease, the foundation is funding power plants, which can
pollute and cause respiratory disease.
In fact, the foundation has been investing in lots of energy companies to earn
more money to pay for vaccines and research.
And therein lies the contradiction.
Energy companies are not known for their environmental contributions. But should
the Gates foundation shy away from what could otherwise be a good investment?
Just where is the greater good?
Would it be better for the foundation to invest in solar power and fuel cells?
Sure -- as long as it gets just as good a return as drilling for oil. Tell me
where I'm wrong at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 10, 20070 comments
Yesterday was Patch Tuesday, and my apologies for not giving you a head's up.
If you haven't already, take a look at the fixes Redmond was kind enough to
provide. Excel, Outlook and Windows all got critical flaws fixed. Get the deets
here.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 10, 20070 comments