14. August 2009 by admin.

* From the minds or Minolta… oops wrong commercial From the mind of this guys blog:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/168189/three_ways_to_reduce_your_communications_costs.html?tk=nl_mcx_h_cbstories

James A. Martin, PC World

Jul 22, 2009 4:00 am

1. Don’t Call, Skype

Skype should be an essential part of every traveler’s communications tool kit.

2. Try Google Voice

As of this writing, Google’s free Google Voice VoIP service wasn’t widely available–but it should be, any second now.

3. Bump Up Your Cell Phone Plan

Before you leave town, you could switch to a mobile phone plan with a larger block of anytime minutes, then forward your home or business numbers to your mobile.

(more at the link above.)

* Alan Spicer Telecom / Marine Telecom - providing 3G Mobile and Fixed Cellular Voice and Internet Systems, and WiFi Hotspot Sharing Systems, among other Equipment and Services to the Land-Mobile and Marine Markets.

http://www.wifiyacht.net

http://www.marinetelecom.net/Ericsson_W35

Main Site: http://www.marinetelecom.net

Telephone +1 954 683 3426

Email: communications @ marinetelecom.net

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14. August 2009 by admin.

* First the shameless plug… Alan Spicer provides Internet Systems for Marine and Land/Mobile customers using 3G, WiFi, and such technologies. So since I’m always trying to find ways to provide systems that work in the most areas of travel, and save the most money, this article was interesting.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/168186/payasyougo_internet.html?tk=nl_mcx_h_cbstories

James A. Martin, PC World

Jul 15, 2009 4:00 am

The recession isn’t likely to take a vacation this summer, but there’s no reason you can’t. In fact, if business is slow, this may be the perfect time for a month-long home swap, or to hit the road with your camper and French poodle, Steinbeck style. Either way, with a little planning, you can still get work done by taking your virtual office with you. And if you’re careful, you can set up your virtual office without spending a lot of money.

The first item on your to-do list is to figure out how you’ll get broadband Internet access while you’re away. This week let’s take a look at your options, including two new contract-free, pay-as-you-go 3G mobile broadband services. Next week, how to keep your communications costs down when you’re away from home.

 (more at the link above, but the following was particularly interesting…)

If you need to avoid 3G service contracts, you have two primary pay-as-you-go 3G cellular alternatives, both of which only became available in the past few months: the Novatel Wireless MiFi and Virgin Mobile USA Broadband2Go.

Novatel Wireless’s MiFi is a compact router that lets you create a wireless hotspot using a mobile broadband network. The device is available from Sprint and Verizon Wireless. If you pay full price for the MiFi ($400), you can then pay $15 per day for unlimited use, with no contract.

That may be okay for those who need only a day’s worth of 3G cellular Internet connection multiple times throughout the year. However, if you need MiFi for Internet connectivity for several consecutive weeks or more, the $15-per-day plan is prohibitively expensive. Otherwise, you’d have to opt for a $60 monthly data plan (for 5GB of data) or $40 monthly plan (for up to 250MB)–both of which require contracts.

Virgin Mobile USA’s Broadband2Go is a USB 3G cellular modem ($150 at Best Buy) that you can use with blocks of broadband cellular Internet usage without a contract. You have four plans to choose from: 100 MB (for use within 10 days) for $10; 250MB for $20, 600MB for $40, or 1GB for $60 (these three plans give you up to 30 days to reach the maximum usage limit).

If you’re planning to be gone for several weeks, the 1GB plan might serve your needs. But you’ll pay about $210 total ($150 for the device, $60 for the 1GB plan) for the privilege. Also, be careful: Playing YouTube videos, downloading iTunes songs and movies, and such, will quickly eat into your data allotment. If you expect to download lots of multimedia content, you might want to do that at a nearby Wi-Fi café and save your Broadband2Go plan for e-mail and basic Web surfing.

(again, like I said before, there’s more at the link…)

* As always, I usually counsel my customers on 3G Cellular (or satellite for that matter) to limit or avoid videos, movies, and any kind of streaming music - to avoid going over plan limits on Gigabyte usage in a month. This is why we often tag-team a yachts system with both WiFi Sharing System and 3G Cellular System - thus letting you go for WiFi when out of range of 3G cellular, or when it offers all-you-can-eat bandwidth. If there’s WiFi at a location - and it works good - and has no limits on MB’s or GB’s then that will be a better choice than 3G Cellular. WiFi can also be used to avoid Internet Roaming outside of the U.S. which can be very expensive. These are the things to watch for. Both on a boat, or if travel in another vehicle on vacation or for work/business. Travel Routers (e.g. Cradlepoint [I’m being set up as a dealer]), as well as the Ericsson W25 and W35 (and previously Junxion Box [bought by Sierra Wireless]) continue to be popular for all sorts of travel and mobile use. Both on boats and other land-mobile motor vehicles.

… If I can be of assistance?

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Telecom / Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

+1 954 683 3426

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14. August 2009 by admin.

* First - Alan Spicer says:

Thu Aug 13 23:30:15 PDT 2009
Re: ICANN Says New Policy Has Killed ‘domain Tasting’
It’s nice to see this being done by ICANN. The days of domain squatting should have been long over - long ago.

You register a domain - you should have to pay and keep it for a year. And to register tons of domains looking for a cash cow - is soooo 1990’s.

I for one am soooo tired of landing into domain camper pages - with ads - but no content. Or content that looks like it was writtent by a poor software program.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170131/icann_says_new_policy_has_killed_domain_tasting.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl

Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

Aug 13, 2009 7:10 am

The entity in charge of the Internet’s addressing system is declaring victory over an abusive trend in registering domain names.

Last year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) modified its domain name registration policy to make it much more expensive for people to register domain names en masse.

The move was intended to stop “domain tasting,” where someone registers a raft of domain names and then monitors those domains for up to five days to see which domains attract a lot of visitors. If the domain looks like a loser, a person could get a refund within five days, called the Add Grace Period.

(more at the link above.)

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Telecom / Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

+1 954 683 3426

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14. August 2009 by admin.

* A lot of people talk about Open Office and it’s open document formats, and even some government agencies (and others?) refuse to use anything else because they want the open format. Maybe they want something that won’t get sued out of existence? Of course these days just about everything is vulnerable to being sued out of existence for technology that it contains. This may be just patent campers deciding when the time is right to pounce and make their millions. But is there any point in killing of MS Word? I mean a HUGE amount of people depend on it every day. Stopping its sale would leave a LOT of people trying to figure out what the alternative is. It would also lower the value of Microsoft Office in general, I think, because a LOT of people expect Word to be in there. So anyway here is the article link:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170124/microsoft_vows_to_appeal_word_patent_ruling.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl

Microsoft Vows to Appeal Word Patent Ruling
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 5:53 PM PDT

Microsoft must pay nearly $300 million in damages and interest to Canadian company i4i because it infringed the latter’s patent for a document system that relies on XML custom formatting, according to court documents filed yesterday.

U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis has also slapped an injunction on Microsoft forbidding it to sell Word 2003, Word 2007, and Word for Mac 2008 in the U.S. The injunction takes effect Oct. 10.

Although a jury awarded Toronto-based i4i $200 million in damages last May, Davis’ final order wasn’t released until Tuesday. In it, he spelled out the total Microsoft owes i4i.

$200 million in damages for infringing the i4i patent;
$40 million in “enhanced damages” for Microsoft’s “willful infringement”;
$11.8 million in post-verdict damages, calculated from the May jury verdict through yesterday;
$38.8 million in pre-judgment interest.
The grand total comes to $290.6 million.

Microsoft said it plans to appeal the decision. “We are disappointed by the court’s ruling,” said company spokesman Kevin Kutz in an e-mail. “We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict.”

According to Davis’ injunction, Microsoft is barred from selling “Word 2003, Word 2007 and Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Word 2003 or Word 2007,” as well as “any Infringing and Future Word products that have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX or .DOCM file containing custom XML.”

.DOCX, introduced in Office 2003, is the default file format for Word 2003 and Word 2007; .DOCM is the same file format, but with macros enabled. Although the Word 2003 and Word 2007 file formats are different, both are based on XML (Extensible Markup Language).

(more at the link.)

* I must have a different Word 2003, my MS Word doesn’t default to DOCX file format. Maybe I changed the default - but I don’t remember ever doing that. It does seem to have a DOCX option (Word 2007 format) for saving files. It seems I remember recently having someone send me document that was DOCX - and I thought I remembered having to download something special to be able to open or modify that format. I also remember not liking that they keep changing the format of files between versions. Not everone gets a new OS or MS Office Suite every year or even every few years. And it makes it difficult for other systems to be able to make compatible software that MS Word users can accept.

I’m not saying that Open Office is the end all… and I’m not saying it’s easy to slide into using it. I have tried it on several occassions and switching to it was definately not seemless or necessarily easy. And for a tech guy to say that, imagine how difficult it is for a non-tech person.

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Telecom / Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

+1 954 683 3426

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