Posts under ‘Commentary’

We’ve all heard the sayings directed toward the younger generation about how much they could learn from those who’ve lived before them.  Your parents can teach you valuable lessons about life that will prevent you from living through some of the same hardships they endured.  The value in that learning doesn’t have to only show [...]

I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks up near Mt. Baker, in a rural part of Washington. Isolated, but near a ski resort, this area caters to fast-driving college kids from nearby Bellingham and Vancouver. The two lane twisty road gets icy and it isn’t uncommon to see cars in the ditch, precariously close [...]

The web is all-a-twitter with netbook commentary and reviews lately.  Personally, I’ve had the pleasure of playing around with a few different netbooks lately.  First, the Hot Pink MSI Wind U100 that my significant other won via the MSI Wind Valentines Day promotion (that’s me, the guy in the first picture!), then my coworker’s HP Mini 1010NR.  [...]

The Seattle newspapers have been reporting on an interesting and unfortunate side effect of Washington State’s new “E-Cycle Washington” program.  The program is a new way to deal with the pricey electronic recycling predicament.  Washington’s program is entirely funded by the electronics manufacturers, allowing consumers to drop off many electronic devices (Monitors, TVs, computers, etc) [...]

Eugene, Oregon television station KVAL posted a great little story back on December 15th. “Two tasks in two minutes to prevent frozen pipes“.
Tip 1: Open cabinets to allow warm air to get under your sink to warm your pipes.
Tip 2: Turn on your faucets to get a trickle of water moving. [...]

Those familiar with IP telephony, IP-TV and internet connectivity in general know about Quality of Service (QoS) functionality to ensure the highest priority devices on the network get access to bandwidth first. This ensures that, if your office uses VoIP for phone calls, that the phone conversation will have priority over standard internet traffic [...]

I’ve been giving a lot of thought over the last few months to trying to establish a system to help small businesses build up a presence online.  Now, as the economy tightens up, its more important than ever for small businesses to leverage every means available to attract new customers.  Over the last 8 months, I’ve [...]

As I posted a few months back, I hesitantly laid down $300 recently to pick up an iPhone.
It’s an awful phone, but a great little device for everything else.
The iPhone app store offers a ton of free apps for all kinds of uses. Most of the free apps (and probably the paid) are garbage, [...]

Update: Turns out this news was bogus.  Jim Goldman over at Tech Check (CNBC) contacted Google and Google completely denied the rumor.  Here is the link to Jim Goldman’s CNBC article.
Rumors are swirling that Google will be ending its free dinner service for employees and that the announcement will be made today to staff.
The stories of [...]

I heard about AT&T’s new tech support service ConnecTech last week and thought it was a lost cause. Hoping to make money in home-based tech support seems tricky. I did it for a few years in the late nineties and any sort of flat rate service plan is likely to be a losing [...]