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Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Consumer Updates
Both Intuit and Microsoft recently updated their personal finance software, Quicken and Money respectively.
Intuit dropped their Quicken Basic and added Quicken Starter, which retails for the same $29.99. Starter includes tools for bill paying, account balancing, and tracking spending, but lacks the saving planning and investment management bells and whistles of its big brothers, Quicken Deluxe, Premier, and Home and Business versions. Those same big brothers got a few new gadgets, too, like support for PayPal transactions (has eBay taken over the world yet?) and streamlined budgeting.
Intuit also announced an online-only version of Quicken is in the works for 2008, presumably thanks to the success of the online version of Intuit's business line, Quickbooks, but nothing solid about the likely subscription fee.
Microsoft, ever eager to beat the competition to the punch, released the 2008 versions of Microsoft Money a week prior to the new Quicken release.
For more information on the new versions, check out their websites.
Okay, I admit it, I just don't get what all the fuss is about. I have a friend who works for AT&T mobile, the company with the exclusive airtime contract for the iPhone for the first three years, so I heard all about the bells and whistles early on from someone who had to know. I admit, the visual voicemail feature sounded neat, but not likely to give me iPhone envy.
Apparently I am in the minority. Check out this article from internetnews.com about new VV alternatives on the horizon.
Many of you know Dy, she's the lady that wades through the information I send her and comes up with these nifty blog posts you see here...
What you may not know is that Dy is... well, we love her, but she's a bit odd. For instance, her favorite holiday is not Halloween or Valentine's Day or anything silly like that. Oh no! Her favorite holiday is.... Talk Like A Pirate Day!
So, in honor of that and a big big thank you for all that she does for us here... enjoy!
Last month Google premiered their new Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center, designed to be thesingle source information clearinghouse for click fraud and ad traffic quality-related issues.
A little over a year ago Google settled a click fraud/ad traffic quality lawsuit brought by their advertisers for a whopping $90 million. This new website seems like CYA to me.
Before I say anything else, I have a confession. I am not a user of Skype. This puts me in a minority among VAs, since most of the ones I know use it, many raving about it.
So, when Skype went down last month it took me a while to even hear about it. Once I did, well, frankly it wasn't all that big a deal in my mind. No communications service runs completely without interruption. Any that tell you they do, well, they're probably lying. If it was a landline, or cable-based, I doubt there would have been as much fuss. It probably would have also taken longer to fix.
For more information about the specifics of the Skype outage, check out these articles:
I have a lot of issues with the assertions made about the future of Skype in the second article, starting with the note above about service outages in communications in general.
Considering that Skype had never before had a major outage, unlike all the other major VoIP providers, is a single outage really likely to kill them? Unlikely.
Are businesses really likely to lose faith in Skype? Again, no more so than any other provider.
Which brings me to the real point of all this: ALWAYS HAVE A COMMUNICATIONS BACKUP.
No business, even a home-based one, should rely on a single method for communicating with their clients and suppliers. Phones, mobile phones, and the Internet should all be part of your communication strategy. If you have VoIP, definitely make sure you have a backup. But of course, you've already done that... Right?
So, just a few years ago, we were all really happy with our single core processors. If we needed multiple cores, we had multiple cpus. And this was really only useful on servers. Then came the dual core. Once again, it started on servers, but within a couple of years, moved to the desktop. Today you just about cannot buy a computer without a dual core processor.
Next year, we are looking at quad cores....or are we?
This cpu is based on completely new technology. It will not run Windows as Windows stands. But Linux is very adaptable. If the prices on these cores come down as fast as processor pricing in the past, in 5 years we could all be running Linux on our shiny new 64 core computer.
Okay. Until I read this article, I had no idea Google gets sued so often. Apparently being a search engine is hard work.
The suit mentioned in the article is being brought by American Airlines because when you google* "AA.com", their website and a registered trademark of American Airlines, it brings up a number of paid/sponsored sites before American's site. American Airlines is alleging trademark infringement. Google is standing by their trademark policy, so we shall see.
My question is... is a person knows to Google "aa.com" why the heck don't they just type into the dang address bar?
All I can say is, wow. On the plus side, they probably would have spelled it right. Despite the non-traditional spelling of my own name, or perhaps because of it, unusually spelled names are my pet peeve.
"Kimber Lei" is not unique and special. They're still gonna call the kid "Kimberly", it will just be misspelled by people around her all the poor girl's life--yes, this is the voice of experience.
I can spell "at" though. Candy calls it a sign of the times. I, well, what I call it is pretty non-PC, so let's leave it at that.
Well, you might want to wait. If you have upgraded in the last 2 years, chances are a few tweaks and some "cleaning" can keep your old computers limping along another year or so. Why wait?
AMD has just announced the release of their Quad Core CPU's.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33762/135/
What does this mean for you? It means that the pricing of the "old" Dual Core technology CPU's are going to be plummeting over the next year as AMD and retailers try to clear inventory. Probably the best time to buy will be around this time next year. Even better, closer to the 2008 Xmas holidays.
Now if only they had released this LAST month before I bought my top end Dual Core system...
Check out the article for yourself, about Cary Malchow of Muncie, Indiana. In a gesture of protest at rising property taxes, he paid his tax bill, all $12K + of it, in person. In coins and one-dollar bills.
There's another article here, detailing how his protest cost his county because employees were kept late counting the cash (overtime) while under guard by sheriff's deputies (security costs) and could not make the nightly deposit (an estimated $1100 lost in interest-for that ONE day!).
Okay, so I can think of lots of things TO say, but I think I'll hold my tongue. I own a home in one of the most expensive (property tax-wise) places to do so. And I pay those taxes happily in lieu of a state income tax.
It is tempting to start saving change for the IRS, though. Have you SEEN the self-employment tax rate?
That seems to be the message corporate America is sending, at least at the managerial and executive levels.
A recent AP article shines a light on the efforts companies are making to retain executives, particularly women, who take time off for family reasons. Programs vary from scaling work levels up or down based on home-life needs to mentoring employees on extended leave and inviting them to come back for networking events.
Employee turnover is one of the most expensive budget items for any business. The higher up the chain of command the employee is, the more expensive they are to replace. Some of the programs described in the article sounded pretty expensive to me; I can only imagine how costly turnover is if these programs are the money-saving alternative.
Which is not to say I'm not glad to see it. I just wish it extended down the career ladder, too. In the meantime I think I'll keep working for myself. That way I know the boss will approve my time off ;-)
Many of us learned computing in the days of DOS, when there was no mouse and if you didn't know the keys to do something you were in trouble (think WordPerfect 5.0)!
With the advent of GUIs (do I really need to explain this one?) the mouse became a dominant force in how we interact with our computers and software. This is great for the web surfing, but leaves a bit to be desired when working with large documents or spreadsheets.
Here to save us from scroll-wheel induced carpal tunnel is a great article from CFO.com on 10 keyboard shortcuts for Excel. I know I added it to my bookmarks.
Candy, like me, is a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. Her response to this article was, "Cool! I'm a keyboard junkie and Excel always makes me crazy with all the clicking clicking clicking!"
Who hasn't heard of Wikipedia, the giant Internet-based, user-generated encyclopedia?
If you've spent any time looking up information at Wikipedia you probably understand how it works. It is a giant interactive forum where anyone can log in and create or edit entries; basically a giant collaborative project.
When was the last time you had to work on a collaborative project? How long did it take just to find a time when everyone could get together? Longer than you wanted it to, probably.
Wikis allow for real-time online collaboration. Many of them include features that allow users to track changes to the collaborative areas, determine who made a change and when, and, if necessary, restore to an earlier version.
The corporate world, home of bloated meeting schedules and frequent lack of productivity on collaborative projects, is coming to see the sense of wikis, according to this recent accountingweb article.
Another great use for wikis is in academics, from junior high to doctoral programs. Some wikis we here at OffAssist like are Google Docs and Spreadsheets and the wiki feature of Backpack found at backpackit.com.
Candy says, "One of my corporate clients uses a wiki - I LOVE it - it keeps us all up to date on what's going on and houses all those pesky questions that people ask over and over and over :) ."
The first I heard of the issue of digital rights and royalties for Internet radio was this article from internetnews.com.
A lot of it went over my head. I've gotten pretty knowledgeable about written work rights in the last couple of years for obvious reasons, but music and movie rights issues go right over my head.
This article reminded me a lot of the whole Napster-Metallica (and others, I just like picking on Lars Ulrich) debacle, but seems to be lower key. I didn't know streaming audio webcasters had to pay royalties.
Does that mean regular radio stations have to, too? I always thought it was the artists pleading to the stations to play their work (think That Thing You Do or DreamGirls), not expecting to paid when their music is played.
