Mr. Telephone Man...

...is looking a bit lean these days. Particularly hungry-looking is the telephone man in hotels, where telephone surcharge revenue has declined 16% since 2000 and doesn't look to get better any time soon.

The biggest reason, of course, is the explosive growth of affordable wireless phone service. Hotel phone charges have been over-the-top, outrageously high for decades. The difference now is that people have a choice and, in most cases, wireless phone roaming charges are STILL cheaper than using the in-room phone.

As an ex-hotel person I hate to see a line of revenue cut-off, but I honestly can't see this trend changing any time soon.

For more detailed info on hotel phone usage stats (for you number geeks out there), check out this article atHospitalityNet.org.

oh, yea... Happy Halloween!

Heh... Firefox 2.0

Ever feel like you're a little behind the curve?

I'm feeling it today. Firefox 2.0 came out last week. I found out yesterday.

I could go on, but the folks over at C-Net did a much better step-by-step comparison of IE 7 vs. Firefox 2.0 than I ever could. Follow this link for the details, but for those of you looking for the abridged version, Firefox steamrolled IE 7.

Shame on you, Microsoft...

I was just finishing up lunch here and browsing through the news stories, when I see THIS little gem. I'm pretty dumbfounded.

Now, before anyone can come down on us, I don't hate Microsoft. I don't like their business tactics very often and hell will freeze over before you'll actually get a human-being on the phone if something is wrong. But most of all, over the past few years, I've really seen them acting like the bully of the school yard, taking all the other kid's toys away. They are greedy - and underhanded. I believe in competition - good, healthy competition. This, well... this is rough.

Last year, Microsoft sent me their Small Business Accounting software - for free. They also sent me their full Office suite along with it - for free. Apparently, it went out to a good many accountants and accounting-nerds. I installed, I tried it, I was amazed at what a complete rip off of Intuit's QuickBooks it seemed to be. I uninstalled it.

Now, I'm not much of a QuickBooks fan either. I use it because it's what my client's like and - let's face it - everyone pretty much uses QuickBooks. The software itself is fine, it's the whole idea of "anyone can do accounting with this software" that they use in their marketing - very misleading and I get a good many clients that have screwed it up "doing it themselves" -- anyway, I'm off the subject here...

Fast forward to this year... Microsoft is giving away the express version of their accounting software to EVERYONE. Downloadable. For free.

Let me say that again. You can get FREE software from Microsoft. Real software. (and no, I'm not linking to it, google it if you must have it)

(the professional version, you have to buy)

Huh. Then it hit me...

They really are going after Intuit HARD. And that, folks, makes me angry. I don't think that Microsoft can affect Intuit that badly, too many accounting folks are die-hard QuickBooks users. But I'm supremely bothered that not only did Microsoft rip off the look of QuickBooks, they are now trying to get all of their clients by giving them something for free.

Doesn't sound like good healthy competition to me...

Remember, just my opinion... ;)

Firefox, only Bluer

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 7.0. So that I could be fair and in-depth on this blog entry I downloaded it a week ago and have been running a few side-by-side comparisons, taste-testing it, if you will.

Man, I was trying really hard to be even-handed about this but I just can't. I've been a die-hard Firefox user since Candy introduced me to the wonders of Open Source a couple years ago.

The new IE looks a dreadful lot like Firefox (my exact comment to a friend was, "gee--Firefox, only bluer" and has essentially the same functionality, plus a few "bonuses".

-It's soft. By that I mean it has the oversized, overly curvaceous, marshmallow-ey design MS has been moving to in it's latest incarnations of anything. I am an angles and corners kinda gal and I really dislike this look, so that right there was a turn-off.

-It's Microsoft, so (yea, I keep coming back to this--it's important) there is a target on it and all viruses out there will be written specifically targeting it and other MS products. Come to think of it, kinda makes me wonder if Firefox will be made vulnerable since the two are so similar now.

-It's sllloooowww. It was released last week and I've been testing it for a week and, in a side-by-side comparison it just flat out loads slower, both the initial load and many site loads.

-It's a bit wonky in the display department, too. Text sizes are a bit off so they overlap, things like that that looked fine in the old IE (wonder if I can get mine back or if I'm stuck with the new one?) and still look fine in Firefox look odd or off in the new IE.

-It's slowed *everything* down. Yea, okay, this could be my imagination and dislike for MS, but it feels like ~everything~ moves slower if I have an IE window open.

That said--if you have someone who needs a MS browser solution, or prefers to stay all MS for support and compatibility issues this is a HUGE improvement over the old version.

Things I liked:

-It has the little 'x' to close a tab on the tab itself and not off to the right.

-No pull down menu to get a new tab-there's a 'tab in waiting' all the time. The downside? The INSANE "You have opened a new tab" screen that I can't make go away!

The best I can say? It's out there, it's available. Check it out for yourself HERE and see what YOU think.

iPod...Oops!

I am a die-hard iPod junkie - it goes everywhere with me and is the primary motivator for me to get ~anything~ done (everything gets done better with a soundtrack, doncha think?)

So, when someone sent me this link, my first thought was, "Wow! Glad mine is an older iPod (pre-video)."

Since I decided to blog it, I went digging a little deeper this morning and found a new, updated article. Apparently some of the iPods shipped in the last month (Sept 2006) from a particular manufacturer carry the RavMonE.exe virus. This virus only affects computers running MS Windows.

Apple has declined to name the manufacturer or give a precise number as to how many units may be or are affected, just that it is less than 1%.

What gave me the giggles, though, was the finger-pointing going on in the second article.

In all fairness, though, I think MS is basically blameless in this. Sure, the virus only affects them, but, umm... It is the most commonly used OS in the world--no one writes viruses for DOS anymore because no one uses it. Heck, let's face it, Microsoft has big ole hacker target hanging over their products all the time. If I'm honest, as an open-source proponent, this doesn't bother me much except when it affects my security (I'm not brilliant enough to have figured out what other OS I *could* use instead of Windows. Unlike Tom, I am not a geek so it would have to be pretty darn idiot-proof).

The biggest downside to this, aside from the bad PR for both companies, is how long it will take to fix the problem if yours is one of the infected iPods. I scoured the Apple tech site this morning and found a few posts about it, but no solutions were offered. I dunno about you, but *I* don't know how to run my antivirus package on my iPod.

If you know a fix, please share it in the comments section.

Rise & Shine!

There are times it is really good to be a virtual assistant. This is one of them :-)

A recent study by the Trasnsportation Research Board, "Commuting in America III", found that, among other things, over 13 million ~more~ people are solo commuters than were in 1990.

The Transportation Research Board has been analyzing commute info since 1986, based primarily on U.S. Census data. So, while report is very interesting, it also six years out of date since it is based on the 2000 Census.

The same study also indicated that people are leaving for work earlier, arriving home later, and spending more time on their commute--the number of people commuting over 60 minutes grew almost 50% from '90 to 2000. (Hence the popularity of audiobooks?)

The most interesting thing about the report, to me, was the fact that less and less people are commuting from the suburbs to town centers. More and more people, apparently, are commuting from suburb to suburb as major employers move out to the 'burbs for tax advantages or to be closer to the skilled employees they want to attract.

You can view the entire report in pdf format at the Transportation Research Board's website or click here.

Speaker: Jeff Crilley

I was lucky enough to attend the VAConference in Dallas last week. I really had a great time. The thing I least look forward to are the hired speakers. It seems to always be touch and go; you never know if they are going to be good... or, well, bad. Just a kudos to Mr. Jeff Crilley who wrote Free Publicity. Not only was he entertaining, but I walked away feeling like I had actually learned something from him. He actually seemed like a really nice guy to boot. If you get a chance to see him speak, I highly recommend him. His book can be found at Amazon and his website is http://www.jeffcrilley.com/

... Now I just gotta find me a turkey that looks like Elvis ...
(don't ask)

Happy Birthday to my little man...

Yes, this is a business blog, but I'd be remiss if I didn't wish Jamie, my 6 year old son, a very happy birthday. Happy birthday, dude!

Then:
Now:

Happy Birthday Open Office!

Open Office, just about the best free office package around, turned six last week.

The makers of Open Office decided to give all of us a birthday present instead of the other way around and announced the release of Open Office 2.0.4. This latest version is, in the developer's words, "a significant release" with numerous new bug fixes and features.

You can download the latest Open Office.org package here and view developer's notes here.

Happy Computing!