I was finally able to get hold of a Blackberry Pearl to mess with for a few hours.  I have a soft spot for the Blackberry, as I had one for most of 2003.  Anyhow, I was able to help someone set the unit up on their computer so they can sync with outlook. Here's what I found... 

My wife and I were discussing Second Life yesterday (as I'm sure all geek couples do), and she noted that unless you have a certain level of programming ability there's not much you can do in SL besides walk around and chat. If you've visited Second Life you've probably experienced this, too. Second Life is a pretty intimidating (and boring) place when you don't know what's going on. When everyone around you knows how to manipulate the environment and you don't, you're at a significant functional disadvantage.

Editors note: It's not all sunflowers and "Kumbaya" at Texxors.com. Last week Tara wrote an article on the Pandora internet music service that some of our other editors disagreed with. In the interest of equal time, here are their thoughts on why Pandora rocks. If Texxors.com seems schizophrenic at times, it's because we've got several different author's writing for the site. As you might expect, these authors don't always agree on the best products or approaches. You saw this a little bit in Jeff and Liz's different takes on how to stay virus free online and you're going to see it again in this response to Tara's recent article on Pandora.com. In the interest of presenting multiple opinions and giving our readers as much information as possible, these are the reasons I and a few others affiliated with the site think that Pandora rocks.

In this world of rushing around, it seems that we no longer have time to do things properly. Being busy is no excuse for doing things half-a**ed - you must use your whole a**. Give it your ALL and put your best foot forward. This is true for email. Email is your frontline expression of who you are, and it says a lot about how you conduct your affairs.

I was sitting down tonight enjoying a cigar, listening to Internet radio, and I started thinking of how the Internet has changed our lives. However, in my usual way, I looked at it from a different angle. I decided to make a short list of things that the Internet has made obsolete. 1. Records and CDs: These are the most obvious thing. From the moment I first used Napster way back when, I realized that this was the end of record companies as we then knew them. I was loosely involved in the record business at the time, when I was doing some remixes. I realized that after I completed a remix, I could just make an MP3 and make it available on Napster. At that point, I made a handful of unauthorized remixes and put them on Napster. They were a hit. Wow! It blew my mind. Now we see major record store chains closing their doors as people prefer to pick the songs they like from any album they like from places like iTunes.

I'll tell you up front, it's not just because they chose us for last Friday's Publisher Buzz. (But they did.) Really, it's just because they're so damn cool in every way possible. FeedBurner is a free, web-based RSS service. From a webmaster's perspective, it allows you to simplify the distribution of your site's feed and track stats regarding the number of readers that subscribe to your site. For a fee you can also get more extensive stat tracking. From a reader's perspective, using a FeedBurner feed essentially ensures compatibility with whatever feedreader you use, whether it is web-based, a part of your browser, or a standalone program.

I've been posting things on eBay since 1998, and I can definitely say, it can be an idiot magnet.  One rule I have: the cheaper the item is, the more of a pain the buyer is likely to be. I will try to express some of the pitfalls I've experienced and hopefully you can be the wiser for it.  Please read on...

I have been hearing rumblings around the office lately about OpenOffice, the multilingual, multiplatform, FREE office suite. One of my coworkers was a beta tester for Excel 2007, and had several complaints. He was telling me that everyone should be using OpenOffice anyway, including our company. I was suspicious of his enthusiasm and decided to do a little bit of research to find out the whole story. For those of you who are not familiar with OpenOffice, it is an office suite (like Microsoft Office) that utilizes open source code. Open source means that source code is made public so that any programmer or layperson who can write code can copy, fix or redistribute the open source material. The suite is comprised of Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (multimedia presentations), Draw (graphics), Base (database manipulator), and Math (formulas and equations with graphic user interface).

Never before in the history of the world have we seen such a seamless melding of media: radio, TV, film, Internet, personal music players, phones, etc. Any format can be instantly converted and distributed into almost any other format. Case in point, the recent incriminating remarks of Alec Baldwin to his 11 year old daughter, or John McCain hepped up on cold medicine making jokes about bombing Iran to the tune of the Beach Boy’s “Barbara Ann.” And of course the infamous remark from Don Imus.

Not all plug n' play devices are created equally. When choosing cards and components for your PC, make sure the drivers are easily installed or better yet, native to your Windows OS. Case in point: I had to install a network card for one of my customers at their site. They had this off-brand card, brand new in box. I followed the instructions telling me to install the driver first, then turn off the PC, install the card and boot back up. Of course that didn't work. I tried reinstalling the driver while the board was in; that almost worked but the card would not enable. It just stayed disabled. I am now thinking, this is bull honky - it was supposed to be a 5 minute stop-in.