New Media, and Internet Usage

The below courtesy of Ken Radio - www.kenradio.com

Internet Usage Statistics
10 mln Internet users in Vietnam
17 bln devices to connect to the Internet in 2012
18.6 mln mobile subscribers in Nigeria
20% of Malaysian government staff use Internet for personal activities
20.1 mln African Americans online by 2007
24% of rural Americans are online
3.6 mln Internet users in Mexico
30 mln Americans use My Yahoo!
30% of Internet users go online without any specific reasons
37% of Internet users spend less time reading books and more time online
4 mln MSN Messenger users in Australia
44% of UK population has no Internet access from home
5.39 mln Internet users in Netherlands
52% of Web users are women
61 mln online gamers in China by 2010
713 mln Internet users worldwide in June 2006
77% of Americans are online
82% of engineers use Internet to research required supplies
89% of US small businesses have Internet connections
Americans 18-26 years old spend 12.2 hours online every week
Families with kids spend 15.6-21.1 hours online weekly
Internet usage penetration is at 20% in Mexico
Top countries by time spent online: Israel, Finland, South Korea, Netherlands
US online gaming to generate $3.5 bln in 2009

Motorola Wins RFID Vendor in $3.9 Billion Bid

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID is a technology that stores an broadcasts data using an electronic tag. The tag consists of an RFID chip attached to an antenna which is capable of transmitting in the kilohertz, megahertz, and gigahertz ranges. These tags are used to identify items much like bar codes. Unlike bar codes, the RFID reader does not need to be in close proximity to identify the item tagged. RFID tags can be embedded in packages and do not require a line of sight to operate.

Symbol technology is a manufacturer of RFID tags and readers. A host of business problems including financial, accounting, and management issues led to the sale of Symbol to Motorola for $3.9 billion. This comes to about $15 per share paid by Motorola for Symbol, an 18 percent increase over Symbol’s closing price of $12.71 on September 15th. With the purchase of the RFID producer, motorola also gains access to their customer base. With this customer base Motorola gains access to a formidable roster including companies like Coca-Cola, FedEx, and the US Postal Service.

Motorola will use the technology acquisition to expand its wireless position outside the cell phone market. The new technology will be aimed specifically at customers on their corporate and government rosters.

The companies expect the deal to close by early next year. When the deal closes Motorola will be positioned to become the largest provider of hand-held scanners and devices that connect to networks via wireless interface.

March of The Battery Recalls

In the ongoing saga of the volatile Sony batteries Toshiba announced on September 19th they would recall 340,000 batteries. The batteries are for Toshiba’s line of notebook computers. Recalled batteries will be exchanged as part of a replacement program initiative begun by the computer manufacturer.

Seeking to distance themselves from the recent battery-related recalls like those initiated by Dell and Apple a spokesperson for Toshiba stated that the initiative was not a recall but a voluntary exchange. According to this spokesperson, Toshiba discovered the batteries may fail to charge or discharge properly in certain toshiba notebooks. This does create a separation from the recalls initiated by Dell and Apple. In both cases the Sony-manufactured batteries were recalled due to concerns that the batteries may overheat.

For information about the exchange including specific model numbers go to the Toshiba website: http://bxinfo.toshiba.com.

How Vulnerable is Your Browser?

Reports from a recent study conducted by Symantec indicate that with one exception, browser vulnerabilities have increased across the board. The most surprising finding in the study was the number of vulnerabilities detected in Mozilla’s Firefox browser. 47 vulnerabilities were discovered in a six month study from January through June of this year. Up from a total of 17 vulnerabilities in a similar study conducted in July through December of 2005. By comparison Microsoft’s Internet Explorer reported 38 vulnerabilities in this year’s study, up from 25 vulnerabilities last year. Despite a disappointing result in the sheer number of vulnerabilities discovered in their browser, Mozilla led the pack with the fastest turn around time for patches. Firefox’s turn around for patches showed a one-day window of vulnerability compared to Internet Explorer with a nine-day window.

Of the four browsers studied (IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera) Opera was the only browser that showed a decline in the number of vulnerabilities.

There are two important notes concerning these findings. First and foremost is that your choice of browser does not necessarily guarantee that you’re safe from attack. IE certainly gets more attacks than any other browser, but 85 percent of the market is using Microsoft’s product. It makes economic sense for malware writers to single out their product. Secondly, it is as important as ever that users practic skeptical computing, and be wary of suspicious content or pages while browsing the Internet. Regardless of browser platform, nobody is 100% safe.

Microsoft Sets Office Free

Yesterday Microsoft commented that it is considering making free versions of its basic word processing and spreadsheet applications available online. Before visions of a future free of software licensing begin to dance in our heads, it should be noted that online versions of this software will likely offer significantly fewer features than the full versions. The software being considered for release also bears a stronger resemblence to the consumer-oriented Works Suite than the more enterprise-oriented Microsoft Office. Nonetheless this announcement represents a considerable about-face from the nations leading software provider. Previously Microsoft had maintained a Dickenisan resistance to offering its software online. The change is likely due to a growing trend toward Web-based software, led by Google.


This trend was previously discussed on SADA Speaks in this blog about Writely, a free online word processing program offered by Google.


Earlier this month Google bundled their proprietary e-mail software, GMail, with a number of other applications and released them as a hosted, software-as-a-service product for businesses, universities, and other organizations. The package, dubbed Apps for Your Domain, also includes Google’s IM software (Google Talk), Calendar, and Page Creator (for creating and editing web-pages). In addition, the Apps for Your Domain are fully brandable, allowing subscribers and businesses to create a privately-labelled suite of applications. It remains to be seen if the online applications offered by Microsoft will have comparable features to free applications already available through Google, or allow company branding.


To learn more about freely available productivity applications check out some of the links below:

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Google: Apps for Your Domain Google’s customizable suite of applications. Sign up for this service to provide it through your domain.
Zoho tools: Zoho is a provider of online office productivity software. Zoho offers a number of their products for free. Information on fees for enterprise products such as Zoho Projects or Zoho CRM are available on their website.
Writely: Writely is a free online word processor hosted by Google. Writely offers a number of useful features including document tagging, blog formatting, and collaboration.
Thinkfree: Thinkfree offers free online word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications that are compatible with Microsoft Office. Thinkfree hosts online documents with 1GB per storage, per user.

Got Satisfaction?

SADA’s Satisfaction Index

Customer satisfaction is important to every business, and SADA Systems is no exception. We want to know if our clients are happy with the service they are receiving. We need to know if they’re not. What we found was we had no system in place to capture these metrics. As a first step in solving this problem we created the Customer Instant Feedback Form. This is an automated form that goes out to our clients upon completion of a service or project. For more information about the Client Instant Feedback System see the blog post

Our Immediate Feedback system has been providing us with some great numbers, but we needed a way to represent these numbers visually. Hence, the Client Satisfaction Index was conceived. The idea behind the index was to provide SADA and our customers with a real time picture of how we’re doing as a company. This information we share with our customers so they can see how other clients have rated our services. In this way SADA provides our clients and customers with an honest and transparent representation of how happy our clients are with what we do. To see the client satisfaction index, just visit our home page www.sadasystems.com

Even when the percentage is high, the satisfaction index is not about bragging, but about showing our clients how far we have to go to get to 100%. Using the satisfaction index to gauge where we are as a company, and the Instant Feedback results to analyze customer input, we can identify and address areas that need improvement. At SADA we want to be perfect for our clients as much of the time as we can be.

SADA Tours Windows Vista RC1

Recently SADA Systems had the opportunity to install and use the Releace Candidate 1 (RC1) version of the new Windows Vista operating system. For those who don’t know, the Vista upgrade is the first major rebuild of Windows in five years.

At SADA we put the RC1 version of Windows Vista on a Sony Vaio laptop running off of a 1.1 GhZ processor, 1 GB of RAM, and an Intel Graphics Controller with 64MB of Video Memory. One thing we found right away was that 64MB of video memory was insufficient to run Vista in its optimum mode. So the version discussed here, and the screenshots below come from Vista running in its basic mode. Even so, the display was gorgeous. Performance was okay, but nothing to celebrate. This does mean that Vista is not going to be a good fit for users on older computers, or computers with minimal resources.

Above is a screen capture of the Vista desktop. This picture doesn’t really do justice to how well the new operating system handles graphics and color.

The taskbar has been significantly changed, and the Start menu has also seen a number of updates. Recently and frequently used programs take up the majority of the start menu, as in XP. My Documents, My Music, and other menu items commonly given in the start menu have been updated somewhat to read simply “Documents” or “Music." “All Programs” is now at the bottom of the start menu. Clicking All Programs replaces the frequently used / recent programs with an explorer-like view of folders and programs. The new location and function for All Programs is a little confusing at first, as it differs significantly from previous versions of Windows. It does however elminate the problem of taking up the entire screen with multiple columns listing available programs. Instead all programs are listed in the start menu, which allows scrolling to view the listed programs.

The taskbar, window frames, the start menu, and other classic Windows elements have all been given a significant face-lift. The Windows XP blue has been replaced with black gradiant that gives Windows the look of having been molded in shiny black plastic.

Windows Vista allows a lot of the same changes to the look and feel of the desktop as perveious versions of Windows. The menu to do so has been updated somewhat, and breaks the customizations into a number of categories, under which a Windows Vista user may alter the desktop, theme, screensaver, event sounds, and so on. When right clicking on the desktop Windows Vista opens the usual menu of choice, but the traditional “properties” option has been replaced with the “personalize” function. If anything the personalize function is more user friendly and organized, and it replaces the sterile tabbed windows of Windows 9x through XP.

To capitalize on the new media functionality built into Vista, the new operating system comes with Windows Media Player 11. Designed to take advantage of the expanded media capabilities in Windows Vista, the venerable Windows Media Player has been given a facelift and improved functionality. The functions Now Playing, Library, Rip, and Burn still exist. Added to the menu is “Urge." Urge connects to www.urge.com an online source for music and music related video content. The new media player looks good, with a redisigned window, interface, and visualizations. It is a demanding program, however, and running Windows Media Player 11 on our test computer alongside some other applications pegged out the processor, forcing us to end the process in order to close the media player.

The new look of Windows Media Player 11

Functionally Vista felt as thought a large part of the operating system had been redesigned around the idea of manipulating the OS in the same way one might manipulte a web browser. Back and forward buttons are abundant as are address bars. In windows such as my documents, or document folders in the My Documents folder tree, moving to a previous folder can be done through a kind of graphical series of breadcrumbs. Each ‘breadcrumb’ will also provide a menu displaying any subfolders allowing the user to move to an entirely different folder tree with a mouse click.

As with Windows XP, Vista allows the user to change between a more graphically intense experience, to a blander operating system experience reminiscent of previous versions of Windows. Doing so does put significantly less demand on system resources, and somewhat improves performance. Otherwise performance in Vista suffers slightly when compared to XP. Running Vista in ‘Classic Mode’ does not impact the impressive way Vista displays graphics and visual material.

Also like XP, Vista does not come with much in the way of pre-bundled software. This means that users will need to purchase Office 2007 when it becomes available, or download an open source solution such as Open Office in order to acquire a productivity software suite.

Overall the Windows Vista operating system is an impressively featured, good looking update to what is already a solid operating platform. Performance problems discovered during testing will likely be ironed out before the final version becomes available in January 2007. For more information about Windows Vista go to the Windows Vista Home Page To try it your self go to the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program web page.

Smaller, Lighter, Faster: Photonics

Researchers based at Intel and the University of California Santa Barbara are preparing to announce the development of a silicon based chip capable of transferring information to another chip using laser light. The announcement, scheduled for Monday, is expected to shake the computing and telecommunication industries. Why the shake-up? The largest bottleneck in the transmission of information from chip to chip has been the fact that information was transferred over wires. With this hurdle cleared the speed at which information can be sent and received is virtually limitless.

For the full article click here

Windows Vista RC1 is Ready!

Windows Vista: The RC1 is ready!

The final major pre-release of Windows Vista – Release Candidate 1 (RC1) – is now available for download!
Please use the link below to access the download site, and install this release as soon as possible.
Go to the country selection to choose your download or order location!

Please note: If you ordered a DVD kit for Windows Vista Beta 2 you will automatically receive a new DVD kit containing RC1 in approximately 2-4 weeks.

Windows Vista RC1 is only available in English, German and Japanese.

We remind you that RC1 is pre-release software and you should not run this on production or mission-critical PCs. Support will be limited to newsgroups, and you may have to do a clean install to move from this release to the final release of Windows Vista.
You may upgrade an existing installation of Windows Vista Beta 2 or Windows XP to this release. However you will not be able to get back to your original installation after upgrading – you will have to do a clean install in order to get back to your previous configuration.
Installing RC1 requires a valid Product Key. You should use the same Product Key that was provided to you (and sent in email) when you registered for Windows Vista Beta 2 in June.
Be sure to visit MSDN’s Windows Vista Developer Center for more information on this release, Windows Vista technologies, news and updates, and other technical resources designed to help you get the most from the new platform capabilities of Windows Vista.

Windows Vista: The RC1 is ready!

The final major pre-release of Windows Vista – Release Candidate 1 (RC1) – is now available for download!
Please use the link below to access the download site, and install this release as soon as possible.
Go to the country selection to choose your download or order location!

Please note: If you ordered a DVD kit for Windows Vista Beta 2 you will automatically receive a new DVD kit containing RC1 in approximately 2-4 weeks.

Windows Vista RC1 is only available in English, German and Japanese.

We remind you that RC1 is pre-release software and you should not run this on production or mission-critical PCs. Support will be limited to newsgroups, and you may have to do a clean install to move from this release to the final release of Windows Vista.
You may upgrade an existing installation of Windows Vista Beta 2 or Windows XP to this release. However you will not be able to get back to your original installation after upgrading – you will have to do a clean install in order to get back to your previous configuration.
Installing RC1 requires a valid Product Key. You should use the same Product Key that was provided to you (and sent in email) when you registered for Windows Vista Beta 2 in June.
Be sure to visit MSDN’s Windows Vista Developer Center for more information on this release, Windows Vista technologies, news and updates, and other technical resources designed to help you get the most from the new platform capabilities of Windows Vista.

The Search for the Perfect Collaboration Platform

We have thus far evaluated and are looking at eRoom by EMC. Next, we will be reviewing eGroupWare: Enterprise Collaboration.

What makes the Perfect Collaboration System? This is the criteria we have set for ourselves:

Necessary:

1. Web Based (obviously)
2. Platform Independent – end users should be able to use it fully via any browser (this is where SharePoint fails)
3. Open DB – we can create our own reports.
4. Scalable
5. Has the built-in support for us to add Clients and Vendors as users, and give them access to ONLY the parts we need (pain in the ass with SharePoint)
6. Inexpensive to add potentially hundreds of users (eRoom and SharePoint carry per-user licensing costs)
7. Should be Searchable via the Google Search Appliance
8. Has to be enterprise-class. No single-user bull.

BONUS Features: (not required, but nice to have)

• LDAP Integration
• Supported by RSA Authentication Manager
• Compatible for import-export with MS Project
• Web 2.0 Features like Wiki’s, RSS, etc…
• Can be something we can customize
• Can be something we can sell/host for others.
• Proactive Notification about changes in the system

What’s NOT Important:

• Any timesheet features (ultimately, time will be kept in CRM – I hope, or Great Plains)
• CRM Features – not important, we have MS CRM for that.
• Linux vs. MS platform, or DB
• Any cost-accounting features – again, this is for GP and CRM.

We’ll be reporting our findings, as time progresses.

Customers Save Time With New Content Writing Service from SADA

SADA Systems Inc. is now offering clients the option of using SADA for content writing on the web. SADA’s Outsourced Content Writing is available as a stand-alone service, but is most useful to website and web-application clients. Developing content through SADA allows clients to concentrate on their own business activities. Content written under contract with SADA is approved by the client before being published.

“Our clients are business people,” says Tony Safoian, president and CEO of SADA Systems. “They often don’t have the time or resources to spend developing content.” SADA’s clients are often so busy that development of their website takes a back seat to business. As a result, website projects with SADA can be delayed anywhere from a few days to a month or more. Outsourced Content Writing is meant to serve clients by facilitating project completion.

Though their role in developing content is reduced, clients are still key to the development process. “We don’t want to cut the client out completely,” explains Safoian. “The goal of offering Outsourced Content Writing is to dramatically reduce the time a customer needs to spend on content development.” SADA describes the service as a collaborative effort between the client and SADA. At the start of a project in which SADA will write the content, the client provides SADA with an outline, advertising materials, or some guidelines indicating how their website content should read. SADA develops the content based on these guidelines. Upon completion the first draft is sent to the client for review. The client either approves the content, or requests changes. This process continues until the client is satisfied that the content meets their requirements.

The Employer Conundrum: Monitoring Employee Internet Activity

With the introduction of the Internet to the workplace came a new level of access to the outside world available to individuals at all levels of a company. As the Internet has become more important in the day-to-day operation of any business, there has been an increasing trend toward monitoring of employee activity on the Internet. The issue of monitoring employee activity has become a controversial sticking point on which individuals and companies frequently have highly polarized opinions. Regardless of where one stands on the issues, for the time being monitoring employee activity on the Internet is not a Best Practices requirement. This may, and probably will, change in the near future, but for the time being the decision to monitor user activity (and to what degree it is appropriate) is the responsibility of the individual company.

What is the cost of Internet abuse in the workplace? Put simply the real cost of Internet abuse is lost productivity, which translates to money lost by the company. An article on Salary.com estimates that employers nationwide spend approximately $759 billion annually on payroll for productivity lost to wasteful Internet habits. Below is a table showing how salary.com broke down time-wasting activities according to their survey results:

For those companies that make the decision to monitor how users are utilizing network and Internet resources there are some distinct benefits. Foremost is getting a true sense of resource utilization. In other words, by monitoring how users are allocating system resources managers and supervisors can get a clear understanding of how productively their employees are using company time. “We never want to say the Internet is bad for business,” says Tony Safoian, president and CEO of SADA Systems Inc. “The Internet isn’t bad for business, it’s good for business.” Monitoring user activity on the Internet shouldn’t be looked as a strictly disciplinary activity. More and more websites are no longer static pages with text written strictly for entertainment. Many newer websites provide visitors with resources that may be valuable to conducting day-to-day business. Through a system of monitoring user activity a company may discover that one user repeatedly accesses an Internet resource as part of doing his or her job effectively. If this resource has a positive impact on one user’s productivity, it stands to reason that the rest of the users within the company could benefit from it as well. In this way, monitoring of user activity on the Internet benefits the entire company.

A company’s major consideration when looking at monitoring Internet usage is bandwidth utilization. Regardless of the connection used (DSL, satellite, T1, and so forth) companies are restricted to a certain number of bits per second. Online services such as streaming radio and video use a significant amount of bandwidth, and can have a deleterious on the amount of bandwidth available for a company to stay productive. “Companies also need a way to filter inappropriate content, as this is a major liability issue,” says Safoian. This is especially important as a number of websites that provide potentially offensive content also represent a serious risk for virus or spyware infection. Employers can do some simple things to ensure that the majority of their available bandwidth stays available, and users stay away from offensive material.

• Installation of a firewall is a must for any company not only will a firewall help keep intruders out, but by closing off certain ports a company can deny access to streaming video, radio, and to chat clients such as those provided by Yahoo, Google, and AOL.
• Websites offering offensive content can easily be blocked and blacklisted.
• Websites with important resources can be white-listed allowing all users access to useful content.
• Clamp down the Internet entirely and dole out access on an as-needed basis. If the majority of a company’s information workers (those who spend half their day or more at a computer) don’t need access to the Internet, there’s no reason for them to have it as an option. This has been cited by companies as a very effective solution. Users don’t miss what they’ve never had in the first place.

“It is the responsibility of IT workers and departments to remove as much temptation as possible,” Safoian says about the function of internal information technology departments, as well as IT contractors such as SADA. In the absence of temptation IT and Internet violations can easily be kept to a minimum. SADA will be adding offensive content filtering to its list of best practices. Once added, offensive content filtering will be included in every network infrastructure implemented by SADA.

For employers and companies it is important to note that monitoring user activity on the Internet is not about spying. Nor should monitoring of activity be about disciplinary action. Monitoring employee activity is about helping employees to be more productive and effective in the workplace. By implementing a clear technology policy and exercising discretion in monitoring employee activity, employers can avoid the “Big Brother trap” while still maintaining the highest possible levels of productivity and security.

“The business place is not a private environment,” says Safoian about workplace monitoring. Internet and email scrutiny in the office is no different that monitoring and recording phone calls in a call center. Both are intended to ensure that customers are getting the best service possible. To avoid problems at work the best solution is to exercise common sense and discretion with Internet browsing habits. If you’re not supposed to be somewhere, don’t go there. In email never say anything you wouldn’t say in a postcard. Email is by no means confidential, and certain Federal regulations actually require employers to archive email correspondence for a certain number of years. In certain industries these regulations also stipulate that a certain percentage of email has to be read to ensure business confidentiality. This has nothing to do with ‘policing’ the individual. It’s about protecting the company.

For companies interested in a complete picture of how their Internet resources are being used SADA Systems offers monitoring services in partnership with BeAware. BeAware allows a user to monitor exactly what is appearing on designated screens at an interval set by the software user. The software lets a user save chat sessions, view emails, and take screen-shots of another user’s activity. For more information about this product visit the website by clicking here: Be Aware.

By exercising common sense and utilizing tools such as BeAware companies and employees alike can avoid disciplinary action from careless Internet usage, while maximizing the Internet as a tool for business.

Full EMC Insignia Product Line Evaluation

By, Jeremy Sawyer - SADA Engineer

CLARiiON AX150

• Support iSCSI 100/1000 Fiber Channel, and cluster with Novell and Windows – flexible
• Uses SATA II – cost effective
• Comparable to other well know SAN technology
• Good overall value
• Dual Controller available
• Up to 6TB with Raid5
• Good basic support services

Overall the product looks good for backup to disk (Single Controller) or for DATA, Exchange, SQL (Dual Controller).

EMC eRoomTM SMB

• 5 -250 users
• $995 for 10 users
• SQL Anywhere back-end
• Support most browsers
• Support most operation systems
• 4 templates
• Integrates with Outlook Calendar
• No integration with AD
• No integration wit LDAP
• Simple
• Customization limited to modifying set of templates

It’s a good alternative to SharePoint, if they don’t have SBS 2003 already or already have Windows 2000 or 2003 standard and are looking for something like SharePoint. Could also be use in conjunction with ZEROi. I would say more like 5-50 users though, given that it doesn’t integrate with AD. Note that the standard addition does.

EMC RepliStor SMB

• DFS replacement for Windows 2000
• Byte- level changes similar to Windows 2003 R2 DFS
• Work over WAN
  • 128 bit encryption
  • Throttling and compression
• Works with Exchange, SQL Server, file servers, PCs
• Works with XP Pro, 2000 and 2003 Windows Server
• Can replicate to non-windows NAS, VPN over Wan. Very Cool
• Integration AD, cluster aware

It’s a great alternative to Windows DFS. Has many more advantages, and can be setup in many different ways. I like this product a lot!

EMC Retrospect SMB 7.5

• Less then 250 employees
• One license for all open file options.
• Cost considerable less and is comparable to VERITAS
• 4 different Data Encryption methods
• Offline verifies speed up backups
• Easy to learn and use
• Deployment Tools
• User restore capability

It appears to be good solid backup solution with many advance futures for the SMB market. However, it should be tested before actually deploying it in a production environment.

EMC VisualSRM SMB

• Nice reporting features
• Automate storage management
• Free space for critical servers
• Set time limits on unused files
• Move and Deletes automatically
• Doesn’t work with SBS 2003 server only 2003 Standard and Enterprise?
• Alternative to Symantec Storage Exec
• Has many more features then SSE
• Up to 6TB
• Works on Servers, desktop, and workstations.
• Risk of depletion/failure avoided.

I like this product simple because it allows you to manage storage automatically with customizable parameters. I don’t see the need for it in all SMBs. However, for companies that have storage problems, or needs a simple and easy way to manage the data, it would be ideal.

Top Websites are based on User Generated Content

Are we surprised? Below, Ken Rutkowski (www.KenRadio.com) discusses web-traffic growth rates of the top sites - they are all based on Web 2.0 concepts:

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Top Fastest Growing Web Brands are User-Generated Content
User-generated content sites, platforms for photo sharing, video sharing and blogging, comprised five out of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands according Nielsen//NetRatings. Image hosting site ImageShack ranked No. 4 among July’s fastest growing Web brands, increasing 233%, from a unique audience of 2.3 million to 7.7 million. Heavy.com, a video sharing site, took the No. 5 spot, increasing 213%, from 965,000 to 3.0 million unique visitors. Photo sharing site Flickr followed at No. 6, growing 201% from 2.1 million to 6.3 million unique visitors. Other user-generated content sites that made it into the top 10 fastest growing Web brands were MySpace, with a 183% year-over-year increase, and Wikipedia, with a 181 percent year-over-year increase.

Among the top 10 Web brands overall, MySpace was the number one fastest growing, increasing 183% from 16.2 million unique visitors in July 2005 to 46 million in July 2006. Google ranked number two, growing 23% from a unique audience 76.2 million to 94 million. eBay came in at the third spot increasing 13% from 51.1 million to 57.8 million unique visitors.

Content Statistics
16% of portable videos to be delivered over the Internet by 2011
46% of online users watch an online video at least once a week
70% of YouTube’s registered users are American
73% of UK downloaders download music regularly
9.2 mln Americans have downloaded a podcast, 5.6 mln downloaded video
In 2005 8% of American Internet users paid for digital music, in 2006 - 23%
Social network ad spending to reach $1.8 bln by 2010
Top 10% of YouTube videos generate 79% of plays
Video ads market shares: Yahoo! - 24%, TimeWarner - 14%, Microsoft - 11.4%, Viacom - 8.5%

Will iPods be super-sized, and take over the Movie Biz?

Next Tuesday Apple is set to announce some new products. It’s pretty much a given that they will begin to offer full-length movies for download (in addition to the TV shows they have now) - so what’s needed on the hardware side to make this new offering a success? Here are some rumors:

• iPod with full Video Screens
• iPod Mobile Phones, with movie-playing capabilities.

Again - these are only rumors on the net. Only time will tell - though these sorts of predictions have been pretty right on thus far.

Flying Korean Air? Leave the Dell at Home.

Korean Air this week announced that it’s banning all Dell and Apple Laptops from all flights, because of fears that their faulty batteries could cause fires mid-flight.

The ban applies to all Dell laptops

BBC News has the Full Story.

Let your phone choose the cheapest calls.

Samsung and Nokia unveiled telephones last month based on the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) standard. The SG-T709 and the 6136, respectively, are both smart enough to use the cheapest connection available to make a call, or access DATA - and will automatically switch between an available WiFi connection, or a Cellular connection.

Nokia 6136 Clamshell

T-Mobile in the first carries in the US to support the UMA standard.

Full story from PDA Street.

SADA Allows Customers To Send Immediate Feedback

To better serve its clients SADA today announced the launch of their Client Instant Feedback System (CIFS). CIFS is designed to send a brief questionnaire to clients upon project completion. The completed questionnaires provide SADA with a significant amount of usable information regarding their service strengths and weaknesses. SADA will use information gathered in this way to expand and improve their services.

“Without continuous improvement a company stagnates, and can no longer be competitive,” said Tony Safoian, President and CEO of SADA Systems, Inc. “The best way to improve is by listening to our customers.” CIFS is a custom system created by SADA to capture real-time business intelligence information about their clients. Delivery of the CIFS form is automated through integration with the Microsoft CRM 3.0 system. CRM is a Microsoft Dynamics product and stands for Customer Relationships Management. The CRM product from Microsoft Dynamics is the leading tool of its kind. More information about Microsoft CRM can be found on the product website, located here.

“We wanted to make this as painless as possible for our clients,” says Safoian. “If it’s difficult or time consuming it’s of no benefit to our customers. We want to provide our clients with a feedback form that will be of real value in improving the services we offer.” CIFS was designed with ease of use in mind. There are fewer than a dozen questions on the form that ask the responder to rate SADA’s service on a scale ranging from “Very Satisfied” to “Very Dissatisfied.” In most cases the form will take less than a minute to fill out. Only slightly longer if a client chooses to fill in the optional comment fields.

SADA’s release of the Client Instant Feedback System is a key component to maintaining the highest levels of service and customer satisfaction.

CA Antivirus Deletes Windows 2003 File - Fix

Details are below, but most importantly, so is the link on how to fix it.

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Some Windows 2003 users have been experiencing problems with the operating system after CA antivirus software wrongly detected part of the operating system as malicious software last week.

At the heart of the problem is part of Windows’ built-in security, a file called Lsass.exe. This was wrongly detected as a virus by CA’s eTrust software and

The cause of the confusion seems to be Lsass.exe being mistaken for the Trojan Win32/Lassrv.B.

Lassrv.B was discovered in the wild on Aug. 24 and was rated as a very low threat. The problem for Windows 2003 and eTrust users occurred in a subsequent signature update from CA on Friday.

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The Fix is Here:

Details are also Below, from CA:

Document ID:

TEC405236

Technical Document

Title: Why is my server crashing after I get a detection on the Win32/Lassrv.B virus?

There are issues with a malware sample and Vet DAT signature 30.3.3054. The realtime/scheduled scan policies need to be temporarily switched to the Inoculate engine and the signatures updated on the machines. As of September 01, 2006, Vet signature 30.3.3056 will address this; please download the updates.

If the server is down and can not boot in safe mode, the following may need to be done to get it back up to a working state.

1. Perform a web search on “NTFS boot floppy” (http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm).
2. Boot the server from the floppy disk you created in step 1.
3. Copy the lsass.exe to the system32 folder.
4. Boot into safe mode.
5. Start -> Run -> regedit.
   HKLMSoftwareComputerAssociatesCurrentVersionInternalSettings.
   Set RPCThreadContext to 0 so the local machine’s policies can be changed.
6. Change the realtime settings to the Inoculate engine.
7. Boot into normal mode.
8. If the eTrust Admin server is one of the servers affected by this, make sure to change the policies and push them to the other machines so when they are brought back up they are not forced to use Vet and the affected signature.
9. Perform an update now on the signatures.

CA Antivirus Deletes Windows 2003 File - Fix

Details are below, but most importantly, so is the link on how to fix it.

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Some Windows 2003 users have been experiencing problems with the operating system after CA antivirus software wrongly detected part of the operating system as malicious software last week.

At the heart of the problem is part of Windows’ built-in security, a file called Lsass.exe. This was wrongly detected as a virus by CA’s eTrust software and

The cause of the confusion seems to be Lsass.exe being mistaken for the Trojan Win32/Lassrv.B.

Lassrv.B was discovered in the wild on Aug. 24 and was rated as a very low threat. The problem for Windows 2003 and eTrust users occurred in a subsequent signature update from CA on Friday.

==

The Fix is Here:

Details are also Below, from CA:

Document ID:

TEC405236

Technical Document

Title: Why is my server crashing after I get a detection on the Win32/Lassrv.B virus?

There are issues with a malware sample and Vet DAT signature 30.3.3054. The realtime/scheduled scan policies need to be temporarily switched to the Inoculate engine and the signatures updated on the machines. As of September 01, 2006, Vet signature 30.3.3056 will address this; please download the updates.

If the server is down and can not boot in safe mode, the following may need to be done to get it back up to a working state.

1. Perform a web search on “NTFS boot floppy” (http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm).
2. Boot the server from the floppy disk you created in step 1.
3. Copy the lsass.exe to the system32 folder.
4. Boot into safe mode.
5. Start -> Run -> regedit.
   HKLMSoftwareComputerAssociatesCurrentVersionInternalSettings.
   Set RPCThreadContext to 0 so the local machine’s policies can be changed.
6. Change the realtime settings to the Inoculate engine.
7. Boot into normal mode.
8. If the eTrust Admin server is one of the servers affected by this, make sure to change the policies and push them to the other machines so when they are brought back up they are not forced to use Vet and the affected signature.
9. Perform an update now on the signatures.

The Newest Windows Nears General Availability

The release of the latest Windows operating system now glimmers on the horizon. On Friday, September 1^st Microsoft rolled the Release Candidate 1 version of their Windows Vista operating system out to TechNet subscribers and members of the early Technology Adoption Program (TAP). A Release Candidate is an early version of the software submitted to partners and testers for an initial review. Over the next few months revisions will be made to the Vista software based on findings from testing the RC1 version. Early response from Windows partners indicates that Windows Vista has made some great improvements from the Beta 2 release, but does not appear as though it will be ready for the proposed fall release.

This week Microsoft will make a test version of Vista generally available by reopening the Customer Preview Program to new participants. Those who had previously downloaded and installed the Beta 2 version of the software will be receiving email instructions for updating to the latest release of the Vista test version.

Microsoft’s Vista operating system is the first major update to the venerable Windows platform in five years. Recently, pricing for the various Vista software packages was leaked first unintentionally by Microsoft Canada, then by Amazon.com. Microsoft has officially announced the prices for both the full and upgrade versions of Windows Vista. Prices announced by Microsoft are given below:

Vista Home Basic

• Retail: $199


• Upgrade: $99

Vista Home Premium

• Retail: $239


• Upgrade: $159

Vista Business

• Retail: $299


• Upgrade: $199

Vista Ultimate

• Retail: $399


• Upgrade: $259

Microsoft Boasts 380,000 Partners Worldwide, 2% are Gold

Only 8,000 of the 380,000 Microsoft partners are Gold Certified. This calculates to be just over 2%. SADA Systems, Inc. has been a Gold Certified Partner since November of 2005. As far as Microsoft technologies are concerned, you’re dealing with a company who is in the top 2% of all Solution Providers on the planet. Not too bad.

Source: VAR Business Magazine

Sony to stop selling LCD Monitors

At least in Japan and North America, which is quite a shift in strategy from a company that used to be the undisputed leader in computer monitor technology back in the CRT days (remember Trinitron?).

I guess this is what happens when both commoditizeation and super-specialization (IE - Sony didn’t really manufacture the LCD monitors itself - it contracted the process out - like a lot of the major players) take their toll.

Below are some facts:

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Sony had the tenth position in the global LCD monitor market in 2005, shipping about 3.07 million units and gaining 2.9% of the worldwide market, according to DisplaySearch. In the fourth quarter of last year, the sales volume of Sony’s LCD monitors totaled 347,000 units in North America, accounting for 40% of its worldwide quarterly shipments, the research firm added.

WiFi at O’Hare - WiFi Roaming Finally Works?

So - sure SADA runs the FreeNET project - and our vision is to spread free WiFi for the consumers of the world, but we still own and use T-Mobile’s HotSpot network accounts for our internal needs (we also believe businesses should absolutely have to pay for Internet / WiFi). We also know that the various major providers of paid WiFi services have been talking for months and years about a seamless roaming agreement amongst them such that the paid customers of one network would be able to log in and use hot-spots operated by others - but today is the first day I’m actually experiencing such functionality - and I have to say - it was rather easy!

The Primary provider for this Concourse-operated hot-spot mesh, was Boingo, but I easily signed in with my T-Mobile account (I had to pay $4.99 one-time for the privilege, but that’ s much better than Boingo’s daily rate, or having to worry about maintaining monthly accounts for both Boingo and T-Mobile).

Also, I’m on, catching up with some work, and of course, blogging about my discovery. As a sidenote, Chicago’s a great town! Wish I had more time to roam around the City during this short trip - but I have implanted a mental note - must come back - any time during Spring or Summer, that is.

What would a Google / Apple Alliance mean?

Is Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt joining Apple’s board a sign of even stronger future collaboration between the two companies? It could very well be.

Other Notable members of the Apple Board:
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Genentech (nyse: DNA - news - people ) Chief Executive Arthur Levinson, Intuit (nasdaq: INTU - news - people ) Chief Executive Bill Campbell, Harwinton Capital Chief Executive Jerry York, former vice president of the United States Al Gore, and Fred Anderson, former Apple chief financial officer and current partner with Elevation Partners, a minority owner of Forbes Media.
=

Should Microsoft be worried? I guess only time will tell. Business Week did an interesting story about the possibilities. Read Here.

What would a Google / Apple Alliance mean?

Is Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt joining Apple’s board a sign of even stronger future collaboration between the two companies? It could very well be.

Other Notable members of the Apple Board:
=
Genentech (nyse: DNA - news - people ) Chief Executive Arthur Levinson, Intuit (nasdaq: INTU - news - people ) Chief Executive Bill Campbell, Harwinton Capital Chief Executive Jerry York, former vice president of the United States Al Gore, and Fred Anderson, former Apple chief financial officer and current partner with Elevation Partners, a minority owner of Forbes Media.
=

Should Microsoft be worried? I guess only time will tell. Business Week did an interesting story about the possibilities. Read Here.

Google and Writely

Online Word Processing Done Writely!

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Writely is an online word processing service now hosted by Google. This service allows users to create documents online from any computer, anywhere in the world. Documents created using the Writely service can then be published on a website, a blog, tagged for distribution, made public on Writely itself, and more. There is even a feature that will allow you to collaborate with others. Writely’s online collaboration will show you what changes have been made and why, allow you to roll back to a previous version, and even alert you if a collaborator is making revisions to the same document you are writing.

Writely is very easy to use. Its interface is built to mimic a desktop client. Writing in the interface is a snap as controls common to desktop word processing clients are the same in Writely. Additional features such as collaboration, online publishing, and submitting to a blog are intuitive, requiring only a few mouse-clicks to complete. For those with a desire for more control over the look of the final product, Writely provides an HTML view.

All documents are stored in servers that are backed up every ten seconds. When a back up occurs Writely notifies the user with a quick, non-invasive alert, and changes the time stamp on the document to reflect the most recent save. Those concerned about security need not worry about unauthorized access to their documents. No one has access to your documents until you make the document public, or invite collaborators.

For several weeks Writely was closed to membership during beta testing, and migration to the Google architecture. As of the 17th membership is now open to everyone, free of charge.

Writely online word processing is one of a growing number on web-based alternatives to the Microsoft Office Suite, and MS Word in particular. Other entrants to the online office application race include ThinkFree and Zoho Writer. While Microsoft’s planned update to their Office Suite of applications includes web-functionality, they have not been able to provide a concrete release date as yet. In the meantime, free applications such as Writely provide those seeking freedom from their desktop client, and platform dependence with a powerful writing tool.