PC Today - September 2010

Table Of Contents Volume 8 • Issue 9 • September 2010www.pctoday.com

IT Services & The CloudThis year Fujitsu is celebrating 75 years of innovation, includingdevelopments in IT services for enter-prise. Turn to page 10 for ourinterview with BarryCarter, executive vicepresident of theInfrastructure ServicesGroup at FujitsuAmerica, for perspectiveon how the IT servicesmarket has changedover the years and howFujitsu has adapted toaddress those changes.Then turn to page 12 fora visual overview ofFujitsu’s history.

Take Your Cloud PrivateIn the realm of cloud computing, what is a pri-

vate cloud? How do companies imple-ment them? And what are some

of the security issues organiza-tions should consider when

contemplating private cloudcomputing? Turn to page 16

for a series of articles onthese topics, including in-

formation about privatecloud hosting options—

who the hosting com-panies are and what

solutions they offer.

10Essential Business Tech

Technology intelligence for executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs

38Mobile Office

Highly useful information for conducting business on the road

64Personal Electronics

Electronics, services, and helpful advice for home and leisure

68Business Travel 911

Fast tech support especially for traveling professionals

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Use and protect your

iPhone or iPod touch

with Magellan’s

ToughCase.

❚ Intel Gets Security Clout With

McAfee Buy

The boards of

directors at

Intel and

McAfee ap-

proved Intel’s

plan to buy the security firm for

$7.68 billion, and analysts were quick

to point out possible repercussions

from the deal. Intel’s Atom processor,

for example, could benefit from new

security features and help Intel better

compete with other chip makers

such as Qualcomm. Still, Intel

didn’t outline any specific plans for

McAfee, stating only that the acquisi-

tion would help Intel in the area of

wireless mobility.

❚ CA Buys Cloud Consulting Firm

Following completion of a CA

Technologies buyout, 4Base Tech-

nology, a cloud infrastructure con-

sulting firm, will become the CA

Virtualization and Cloud Strategy

group. This is a score for CA, which

will draw from 4Base’s expertise in

assisting big businesses successfully

move to cloud environments and

virtualization infrastructure. The

4Base client list includes Fortune 100

companies such as eBay, T-Mobile,

and Visa.

❚ Bidding War Over 3PAR

Dell’s purchase of 3PAR, a company

specializing in utility storage for

data centers, would boost Dell’s vir-

tualization technology offerings,

propelling the company further in

its competition with the likes of

IBM and Oracle. Dell announced it

would pay $1.15 billion in cash for

3PAR. According to Dell, the acqui-

sition will help its customers benefit

in the “Virtual Era” and meet “a

goal of reducing overall data man-

agement costs by 50%.” However,

at press time, HP had launched a

rival bid for the company.

❚ Oracle Goes With Intel,

Promises Sparc Support

In a Webcast in Palo Alto,

Calif., John Fowler, formerly a

Sun Microsystems executive

and now executive vice presi-

dent for Oracle’s Server and

Storage Systems division, an-

nounced plans to end design on

AMD-based servers and instead

standardize with Intel chips. Fowler

also outlined a five-year future for

Sun’s Sparc processors and Sparc-

based servers, allaying fears that de-

velopment would stop on that line.

❚ IBM Launches Unix Server

For Large Enterprises

IBM’s new Power 795 is a Unix

server built for enterprise customers

that employ large-scale business an-

alytics and database applications.

The Power 795 uses Power7 proces-

sors, scales up to 256 cores, and sup-

ports multiple operating systems

(AIX, IBM i, and Linux).

❚ Juniper Networks’

Secure Investment

Juniper Networks announced it

would purchase Columbus, Ohio,-

based digital security company

SMobile Systems for $70 million.

SMobile’s main focus has been on

security software for small devices

such as smartphones and tablets,

with customers ranging from con-

sumers to the enterprise. Juniper

plans to incorporate SMobile’s soft-

ware into its own Junos Pulse net-

work client.

❚ Adobe To Acquire

Web Software Company

Adobe Systems announced plans

to buy out Swiss software firm Day

Software Holdings for $240 mil-

lion. According to Adobe, the ac-

quisition is a “significant market

opportunity” that will bolster the

company’s Web content distribu-

tion and creation offerings. In

speaking with the IDG News

Service, Day Software CEO Erik

Hansen, who will move to Adobe,

said that the Day product line will

become part of Adobe’s Digital

Enterprise Solutions Business Unit.

❚ Unisys Offers Cloud Services

For Its Mainframes

Companies using ClearPath

mainframes, take note: Unisys

has rolled out ClearPath Cloud

Development and Test Solution,

the first in a series of Web-based

software improvements for the

mainframe series. Responding

to an online poll indicating that

its customers’ cloud interests fo-

cused chiefly on devel-

opment and testing

environments, Unisys

created the ClearPath

Cloud Development

and Test Solution as a

PaaS (platform-as-a-

service) solution to meet

that demand.

IN BRIEFTECHNOLOGY NEWS

❚ Qualcomm, ECOtality

Take Steps Toward

Electric Future

Among the clean electric

transportation and storage

technologies ECOtality

offers are Blink brand

charging stations for elec-

tric and plug-in hybrid

vehicles. ECOtality and

Qualcomm recently made

an agreement that will

bring cellular connectivity

to Blink charging stations.

This will enable the stations

to send and receive data, in-

cluding firmware updates

for vehicles, in real time.

6 September 2010 / www.pctoday.com

IN BRIEFTECHNOLOGY NEWS

❚ More Social Networking

For Google

Google has gobbled up yet another

company; according to TechCrunch,

this time it paid a reported $228

million for Slide, a 125-employee,

San Francisco-based software devel-

opment company specializing in

creating virtual game worlds for so-

cial networking Web sites. The ac-

quisition report fueled further

speculation about Google’s social

networking intentions.

❚ IBM Buys Storage Firm Storwize

By entering into an agreement to

acquire Storwize, IBM will put real-

time data compression technology

under its wing. Along with Oracle,

NetApp, VMware, and others, IBM

is already a Storwize partner, and

Storwize will continue to sell its

STN 6000 products and offer sup-

port for multiple platforms. The

key benefit of Storwize’s data com-

pression technology for businesses

is a 50 to 90% reduction in storage

without reducing performance.

❚ AT&T Launches Voice

Encryption & Smart Messaging

Among the new services AT&T re-

cently announced for governments

and businesses of all sizes are the

AT&T Global Smart Messaging

Suite and AT&T Encrypted Mobile

Voice. The former enables organiza-

tions to use a worldwide text mes-

saging service for more efficient

communications with customers,

partners, and employees. The latter

represents the first voice encryption

service with two-factor authentica-

tion to be available through a U.S.

wireless carrier.

❚ Qualcomm Preps Dual-Core

Mobile Chips

According to an IDG News Service

report, Qualcomm intends to ship

its fastest Snapdragon chips yet by

year’s end. With its Snapdragon

platform, Qualcomm is helping

to transform smartphones and

other mobile devices into powerful,

albeit tiny computers. The Snap-

dragon QSD8672 chip, for example,

set to ship in Q4, is a dual-core chip

with 1.5GHz processors.

❚ Document Capture Company

Joins IBM

Among IBM’s recent acquisitions is

Datacap, a Tarrytown, N.Y.,-based

software company best known for

its Taskmaster document and data

capture products. Terms of the deal

were not disclosed. The move com-

plements its $1.6 billion buyout in

2006 of FileNet, maker of docu-

ment imaging systems. IBM says

it will integrate Datacap into its

ECM (Enterprise Content Manage-

ment) business.

❚ Big News For Clearwire

& WiMAX

Clearwire has been the dominant

champion for WiMAX to become

the next mobile broadband (or 4G)

technology; the technology’s chief

competitor is LTE (Long Term Evo-

lution). So it’s of no small signifi-

cance that Clearwire, facing ongoing

financial losses and modest industry

interest in WiMAX, announced it

would test ways to work with LTE.

Results could include technology

that permits WiMAX and LTE to

overlap, or Clearwire could move

its main focus to LTE.

❚ Google Helps Government

Move To The Cloud

Now offering what it calls “reliable

Web-based tools, certified by the

U.S. government,” Google is tar-

geting the government sector with

cloud computing services at a time

when budgets continue to tighten

and security concerns are at an

all-time high. The products include

Google’s Web-based productivity

apps, which are FISMA (Federal

Information Security Management

Act) certified and accredited, with

disaster recovery service included.

❚ TI Sells Cable Modem Business

To Intel

Texas Instruments, in the process of

shedding some of its less profitable

businesses, has agreed to sell its

cable modem unit to Intel. Terms of

the deal were not disclosed, but in

a press release, Intel stated its in-

tention to use TI’s Puma product

lines in the development of con-

sumer electronics products (such as

set-top boxes for televisions) and

cable industry products (such as

residential gateways and modems).

❚ Plastic Logic Changes

Ereader Plans

The UK plastic electronics firm

Plastic Logic announced an end to

its QUE ereader before it even had

much of a beginning. Following a

positive response to the prototype

at this year’s Consumer Electron-

ics Show, Plastic Logic faced a

rapidly changing ereader market

and decided to stop developing

the QUE, which would have been

its initial ereader, and focus in-

stead on the “next generation”

ProReader device.

❚ Travel Site Moves To Facebook

Nextstop, a user-oriented travel

site devoted to exchanging guides

and reviews, is now part of Face-

book. Although Facebook didn’t

announce what it intends to do

with Nextstop, the acquisition

reveals Facebook’s interest in loca-

tion- and discovery-based tools.

Nextstop shut down its site, of-

fering export tools to its users, and

announced that Facebook would

offer “greater impact and scale”

for Nextstop’s mission.

❚ Is It A Smartphone

Or A Tablet?

The answer to the question

about what exactly Dell’s

upcoming Streak device

actually is depends on who

you ask. In some circles it’s

viewed as an Apple iPad

competitor, in others more

of an oversized alternative

to the Motorola Droid. Dell

refers to it as a tablet, but

you can use it as a phone.

In any case, the Streak

(which, incidentally, runs

Google’s Android OS) is

now available for presale

with or without a two-year

contract from AT&T.


❚ Billions Of Banking Texts

More and more banks are discovering

that their customers are interested in

mobile banking services, so there is a

great deal of interest right now in

finding ways to make better use of

mobile services to communicate with

customers. One method is sending text

alerts. Juniper Research reports that

this year alone mobile banking serv-

ices will generate 30 billion text mes-

sages, and that by 2015 that number

will reach 90 billion.

❚ Enterprise Mobile Data Breakdown

ABI Research reports that three key in-

dustries—healthcare, manufacturing,

and retail—combined account for 36%

of business mobile data revenues

worldwide, including mobile broad-

band usage and messaging services.

According to ABI Research, mobile data

revenues from these industries will

total about $27 billion by 2014, with

other industries varying by region.

❚ A Boom In Connected Devices

It’s clear that you no longer have to go

to your work or home PC to connect to

the Internet. Not only are laptops en-

abling people to work virtually any-

where, other devices such as TV sets,

tablets, and ereaders are equipped with

Wi-Fi radios for connectivity-based fea-

tures. According to IMS Research, this

trend will continue; there are currently

5 billion Internet-connected devices,

and IMS predicts that figure to reach

22 billion by 2020.

❚ Femtocells Big In The U.S.

Manufacturers are poised to sell a mil-

lion of those little cellular base stations

known as femtocells this year, with

AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon already of-

fering femtocells and associated serv-

ices. Dell’Oro Group expects femtocell

shipments to reach 64 million world-

wide in 2014. Dell’Oro predicts an

uptick in shipments throughout the

world compared to North America be-

ginning in 2012, but until then most

shipments will head for North

American markets.

Mobile Internet Use On The RiseAs smartphones continue to gain in popularity (and continue to gain market share relative to ordinary mobile

phones), an increasing number of Americans are discovering a new wealth of information resources and serv-

ices via the mobile Internet. Researchers at eMarketer have found that mobile Web usage will increase at a

steeper rate (15.7% annually from 2009 to 2014) than the number of mobile customers (2.1%). According to

eMarketer, while 34.7% of mobile customers are using the mobile Internet now, 53.9% will do so in 2014. The

following percentages show the rise in mobile Internet usage among the U.S. population as a whole, not just

mobile customers.

IT Spending To Grow 2.9% This YearAccording to analysts at Gartner, by the time 2010 is through, IT spending will have risen 2.9% over

2009. That’s especially significant considering that there was a 5.9% decline in 2009 compared to 2008.

In all, Gartner viewed IT spending for this year as reaching $2,407,063,000,000; total IT spending was

$2,338,544,000,000 in 2009. Gartner examined numerous industries, including government, healthcare,

insurance, education, and those listed below; the figures listed are in millions.

IT Spending By Industry

PC Today / September 2010 9

Barry Carter is executive vice president of the

Infrastructure Services Group at Fujitsu America.

IT Services & Doing More With LessHow Fujitsu Will Meet Tomorrow’s Challenges

ujitsu has positioned itself as a household name inthe IT services market and several other industries.As it approaches its 75th birthday, there is a lot tocelebrate at Fujitsu, such as a third-place rankingin worldwide IT services market share, accordingto Gartner. With the momentum swinging inFujitsu’s favor, it is poised to continue offering newproducts and services for the IT industry based onthe cloud and virtualization. Barry Carter, execu-tive vice president of the Infrastructure ServicesGroup at Fujitsu America, took some time to ex-plain some of Fujitsu’s accomplishments and forth-coming initiatives to PC Today.

This year Fujitsu is celebrating 75 years ofinnovation. How do you see Fujitsu’s rela-tionship with the American market ashaving changed over the years, particu-larly in the IT services market?

I think what you’ve seen is growth inthe IT services market with Fujitsu. If wetake a look at what’s happened with inno-vation over the years and how we’vemoved from the mainframe society to thedistributed society to this cloud-centricsociety, I think that Fujitsu has been thereevery step of the way.

Originally, working in the centralmainframe era with the acquisition ofAmdahl and the old Amdahl business,and then moving into the distributed en-vironment with a strong partnership withSun (selling Solaris), and helping peoplemove their applications to distributed en-vironments, to now moving into new eraof the cloud, Fujitsu is right there. So Ithink Fujitsu has adapted to a changingtechnology market and particularly hasbeen able to provide services wrappedaround those technology changes.

What are some of the significant challenges IT de-partments in the U.S. are facing today and what aresome of the solutions Fujitsu has released to meetthose challenges?

I think clearly the challenges today are tryingto do more with less. Our services support thatbecause we believe, from a services perspective,that we have greater scale and we have somegreat capabilities with our lean practices, wherewe’ve taken the lean manufacturing approach,built that into our methodology, and we canpartner with customers in the delivery of servicesto eliminate waste.

ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECHEXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS



We also have some great capabilities with virtu-alization and with private cloud solutions to helpthem drive the greater efficient use of their assets,or someone’s computing assets if it’s ours, to helpthem be more efficient in marketplace.

Another challenge that folks have is just dealingwith the plethora of regulations and the complianceissues associated with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Wehave some managed security services and some really neat capabilities there that have allowed us tobe a PCI (Payment Card Industry)-certified host,and so we can clearly help people that are lookingfor assistance getting beyond the sea of regulationsand to operate in a much simpler environment withvery strong internal controls.

How has Fujitsu’s approach to developing and mar-keting IT services changed in recent years to addressthe shifting needs of businesses, particularly in theUnited States?

I think our approach to the market really hasn’tchanged. We want to go out and line up with themid-enterprise companies and we really want todemonstrate to them our flexibility in working withthem. We really think that’s one of our differentia-tors. We want to industrialize the IT process andprovide for repeatability and scalability.

We also want to work with the customer and wewant to solve their problem. We don’t want to put asquare peg in a round hole. If they really want asquare peg and it’s important to them, we’re goingto listen to them and we’re going to tailor our serviceand solution to help them meet their business needs.

Many businesses are moving toward (or considering)cloud computing and virtualization services. Do yousee that more as a temporary trend to address spe-cific business needs or a movement that will con-tinue to thrive?

I believe it’s going to continue to thrive. Whatvirtualization has taught us to do is to get more outof the assets. The typical server had about a 15%utilization rate. Now with virtualization, we canmake one server do the work of six to 10 servers,and have a very high utilization of that. It allows usto effectively lower the cost and to get more valueout of what already exists.

What the cloud has done is that it’s created a dy-namic provisioning model that sits on top of virtu-alization and then it takes it a bit further and says,“Well, do I really have to own the assets and can Ipay by the drink?” And clearly with the success of

Salesforce.com, which is one of our partners,people are more than happy to pay by the drinkand relieve the headache of buying and keepingcurrent that holistic infrastructure of hardware andsoftware and giving that to someone else. I thinkyou’re going to continue to see it thrive. I thinkyou’re going to see more business processes like theSalesforce.com emerge out there in this cloud-basedmodel, as well as the evolutions of the other end ofthe spectrum, which is the Googles and Amazons,that are the servers in the sky.

You’re going to see the convergence of the appli-cations, the business processes, and the computerpower shifting away from physical ownership to

effectively the time share business. I think we’rejust going back in time to the good old days of timesharing, and I think that’s the market of the future.

What role do you envision Fujitsu having in the fu-ture of cloud computing and virtualization services?

Clearly Fujitsu wants to be a big player in thecloud computing space, as has been announcedby the corporation. We’ve got some great thingson the drawing board with our intelligent societyinitiatives that leverage the cloud computing toconnect it and solve some bigger problems thatmake the quality of life for the human societymuch broader.

We have capabilities to put sensors on bridgesand then to detect when there are structural fail-ures. We have an application that leverages sensorsto detect rainfall to maximize crop yield in in-clement farming areas. So we have some great tech-nology that allows us to solve very large dataissues, very large analytical issues, outside of tradi-tional business transactions.

We believe that the cloud is going to allow us tohelp contribute to the advancement of society, aswell as be a key player in world of cloud com-puting just as we are a key player in the manufac-turing of IT hardware devices today. ▲

You’re going to see the convergence

of the applications, the business processes,

and the computer power shifting

away from physical ownership

to effectively the time share business.


Technology companies evolve or die. Staying on one course and continuing to do what you’ve always done is a sure way to court ex-tinction, and no company knows this better than Fujitsu, the Japanese conglomerate that has reinvented itself several times over—andwhich continues to do so today. The company, which began in the early 1930s as a telecommunications vendor, is now a global tech-nology force employing some 170,000 people around the world, with revenues of $50 billion. From a humble manufacturer of tele-phones and switching devices, Fujitsu has grown to become, according to some measures, the world’s third largest IT services provider.Here are some key highlights of that growth path.

Still Going StrongCompany Celebrates 75 Years Of Innovation

1954 – The FACOM-100 Mainframe ComputerFujitsu unveils Japan’s first trueelectronic computer, theFACOM-100. It uses telephoneline transfer switches as relays instead of vacuum tubes. This isFujitsu’s first commercial forayinto the computer business.

1975 - CS-12M SubmarineCoaxial Cable Repeater

1945 – Fuji-typeModel-3 Telephone

1961 – The FACOM222Fujitsu, now fully committed to computers as acore business, releases the FACOM222, the com-pany’s first transistor-based business computer.

1963 – Model 600 TelephoneHarkening back to its roots as a telecomm provider,Fujitsu begins commercial production of its Model 600telephone. The company’s successful communicationsproducts helped fund its computer-related ventures.

1969 – Japan’s FirstSubmarine Repeater Under contract to NipponTelegraph and Telephone PublicCorporation, Fujitsu deliversJapan’s first submarine repeater,the Fujitsu CS-10M, a device thatincreases the capacity and relia-bility of telephone connectionsmade using undersea cables.

1935 – Fujitsu Ltd. Founded As FujiTsushinki Manufacturing Corp. The company spun off from Fuji Electric, makers of products like the Step-by-Step TelephoneSwitchingMachine (picturedhere) that helpedto redevelopJapan’s earthquake-devastated communicationsinfrastructure.

1958 – Fujitsu Cross-bar TypeSwitching System C30A


1989 – The FM-TOWNS Fujitsu unveils the FM-TOWNS, a 32-bit personal com-puter that utilizes hypermedia and is aimed at multimediaapplications. The computer is the first in the world tocome standard with a CD-ROM drive and helps solidifyFujitsu’s place in the burgeoning microcomputer industry.

1995 – Color Plasma Display The company commercial-izes the world’s first 42-inch color plasma display.

2006 – PRIMEPOWER 250 UNIX Server The company debuts the PRIMEPOWER 250 server, which of-fers SPARC64 V processors, gigabit onboard LAN, and up to16GB of memory. The unit is still in production.

2009 – T4410 Convertible Laptop Fujitsu’s T4410 LifeBook tablet PC is released. The laptop offers a rotating/foldingdisplay and an optional capacitive multitouch screen.

2010 – 3D PC Fujitsu releases the world’s first 3D PC. The computer offers 3Dcontent viewing, conversion from 2D, and 3D content creation,and is compatible with Blu-ray 3D.

1980 – The OASYS100 The company introduces the OASYS100, theworld’s first Japanese-language word processor.

2009 –FujitsuT4410

2010 – Fujitsu ScanSnapS300


Killer Features

• Create 3D presentationsto impress your partners, shareholders,and customers

• Use the dual Web camsto take compelling 3D photos

• Display Blu-ray 3Ddiscs and many online3D videos

• Present 2D DVDs in 3Dwith built-in conversion

• Passive, circularly polarized presentationlets viewers experience3D flicker-free

• Lightweight, battery-free 3D eyewear

• 20-inch widescreen display

• Remote control forlean-back multimedia

• Comes preloaded with3D content

A Culmination Of

Fujitsu gets it. A new paradigm requires a newway of thinking. Now that high-def video pro-ducers are thinking outside the box, there’s no

better time for a computer without a box. The remarkable ESPRIMO FH550/3AM is the

latest in a long line of innovations—three-quartersof a century’s worth—from Fujitsu. It’s a 3D pow-erhouse that brings together a trio of aspects of thethree-dimensional experience in a single system,for the first time ever.

Foremost on the list of specifications is theability to display Blu-ray 3D content, along withmany 3D videos available online. No matter whatline you’re in, it doesn’t take long to think of inno-vative business uses for this ostensibly consumerentertainment technology.

Moreover, this all-in-one PC can automaticallyconvert existing two-dimensional DVD materials

(but not 2D Blu-rays) to simulated 3D. In otherwords, your investments in presentation andtraining videos to this point haven’t been wasted.

The kicker? With the FH550/3AM’s two built-inWeb cams and microphone, you can make yourown 3D videos with sound. The dual cams also letyou take 3D snapshots that pop out of the screen.The ESPRIMO FH550/3AM is currently availableonly in Japan, but it represents a culmination of in-novation and a sign of things to come from Fujitsu.


No need to buy $150 pairs of heavy

glasses with this 3D PC. Fujitsu chose

to use circular polarization technology

to enable the 3D effect, so a comfortable set of

passive eyewear is all that’s required.

The ESPRIMO FH550/3AM all-in-one is a full-featured

productivity and entertainment PC without the bulky tower.

INNOVATIONFujitsu Dives Into The 3D Business


KEY POINTS▲ Cloud computing offers some powerfultools and features, butthere are also some serious potential pitfallsto consider.

▲ A public cloud is one where services andapplications are deliv-ered by a third partyfrom a remote location,whereas a private cloudruns on a company’sown IT structure.

▲ Private clouds can deliver many cloud services and applica-tions without the issues inherent with pub-lic clouds.

▲ Although any type ofcloud implementationrequires research andforethought, the processis not necessarily ascomplex as it may seem.

Your Company’s Own CloudHow Private Clouds Are Created

by Seth Colaner

F or many companies, the idea of cloud com-puting—powerful on-demand hosted serv-ices, the ability to scale your company up or

down easily, a massive reduction in hardwarecosts, and so on—can at first seem incredibly ex-citing, but can lose some of its sheen when compa-nies are faced with some of the potential pitfallsand costs required.

Cloud computing solutions can be expensive toimplement, and there are always the issues oftrusting your vendor with your security andavoiding vendor lock-in (which is when you getstuck with a bad service but are bound by a

contract). You have to have a great deal of trust inyour cloud vendors.

One part of the cloud computing paradigm isprivate clouds, which can deliver some of the ben-efits of the cloud without some of the problems.

What It IsSimply put, the difference between a public cloud

and a private one is that the former offers companiesall the aforementioned functionality and perks ofcloud computing from a remote location, while thelatter delivers cloud services from a company’s ownIT software, hardware, and infrastructure.



Elements Of A Private CloudTo put together a private cloud, you need a solid

plan. Your onsite data center must have the horse-power and capacity to handle on-demand tasksthat fluctuate—this includes a lot of hardware andsoftware, as well as virtualization all the wayaround. On top of that infrastructure, a privatecloud needs the capability to automatically doleout resources when users request them, and theservice must be easy enough for users to work withand offer consistent performance.

Additionally, depending on your particular or-ganization, there may be an organizational,human element. Perhaps not every department isthrilled about moving to a cloud format, ormaybe two departments aren’t keen on sharingthose resources.

Implementing a private cloud at your com-pany is certainly not a cakewalk. Indeed, pur-chasing your cloud services from a third-partyvendor is a great deal simpler. Either option,however, requires a great deal of research andforethought before any action should be taken.Even so, Duplessie points out that it doesn’t haveto be a painful or overwhelming experience:“Private clouds are how most enterprises willadopt any widespread cloud services in the nearterm. Cloud is more confusing than it need be; it’ssimply IT in the modern world.” ▲

A public cloud offers

some powerful features,

but it also can have

issues with security,

data vulnerability, and

other concerns.

Although a private

cloud requires more

time and expertise from

an organization’s IT staff

as well as investment in

hardware and software,

they don’t suffer from

as many of the issues

public clouds face.


According to Steve Duplessie, founder andsenior analyst of ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group),private clouds “are essentially internal IT opera-tions that provide services like public cloudproviders, only to their own constituents.”

A private cloud, says Duplessie, is “normally aset of services offered by your own IT departmentto offer infrastructure provisioned to your require-ments (normally virtual servers, storage, and net-work assets) in a secure manner.”

A description of a public cloud could almost beidentical, but replace “your own IT department”with “a third-party cloud vendor.”

Public vs. Private CloudsThe primary upside of cloud computing is

present in both private and public clouds. Simplyput, according to Duplessie, “They allow servicesto be provisioned quickly at known costs.” Fromthere, however, they differ in pros and cons.

Because a private cloud is built on a company’sown equipment, the issues of having to trust avendor with a solid SLA (service level agreement),your company’s crucial and potentially very sensi-tive data, and your security, are nullified.However, building and maintaining a privatecloud can be expensive and requires an IT staffwith the appropriate level of expertise to manageit. Depending on the size and scope of a privatecloud, a company may also find that its cloud ismissing some of the capabilities it could have pur-chased from a cloud vendor.

On the other hand, you can purchase virtuallyany type of cloud feature or service you can imagineat any scale with a public cloud, and your dollarsalso get you the ability to scale your required re-sources up or down with great alacrity, in most casesmuch more so than on your own private cloud.However, you have to be comfortable with losing allthe control you would have with a private cloud.

It’s a tradeoff. “There is limited security in mostpublic cloud offerings as they stand without addingadditional controls on your own site,” saysDuplessie. “Because you share the public cloud re-sources with many others, you can't guaranteequality of service or that issues will be addressed asyou would like. In short, you get what you pay for.”

Many companies employ both public and privateclouds to meet their and their customers’ needs,smartly leveraging the strengths of each and dimin-ishing the overall risks. Cloud computing certainlydoesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing venture; prag-matic managers will find the best use of a giventechnology to help a company work more efficientlyand spend less on operating costs.


KEY POINTS▲ The exact definition of “private cloud” and“public cloud” remainsfluid, so don’t be sur-prised at the variabilityof vendors’ offerings foreach category.▲ Check the large ven-dors first (for example,Google, Amazon, andMicrosoft) to see what’soffered and to get ahandle on typical poten-tial costs, and then lookat smaller providers tosee what they have tooffer; you may be sur-prised at what some ofthe smaller vendors arewilling to do to get yourbusiness.▲ Statistically speaking,you will be in thecloud—if you’re not al-ready—at some point. Asthe market shakes out,this is a good time to beinvestigating private andpublic clouds as partialreplacements for devel-opment, deployment,and IT infrastructure.▲ In most cases, a “pri-vate” cloud at the veryleast maintains your ex-isting security infrastruc-ture; that way, even ifother aspects of your in-frastructure are housedoffsite, your firewalls, au-thentication tools, andother security mecha-nisms remain in effectand under your control.

Private Cloud Hosting OptionsVendors & Options Proliferate

by Rod Scher

As interest in cloud-based computinggrows, more and more businesses arelooking at private cloud options: access to externally hosted services and deploy-ment tools provided by vendors who’ve alreadybuilt complex infrastructures and who—for aprice—are willing to share the power of that infra-structure with you. This is appealing, of course, be-cause developing and deploying in a “privatecloud” is a way of benefitting from these new toolswhile still addressing potential security issues—aworry that remains one of management’s greatestconcerns about cloud-based computing.

According to Info-Tech Research Group reports,few see the cloud—public or private—as a whole-sale replacement for typical internal infrastructure;however, even fewer see the cloud as not playingany role at all. Therefore, since it’s likely that yourorganization will be utilizing cloud resources tosome extent, we’ll give you an overview of somewell-regarded private cloud providers.

Private Cloud VendorsAmazon VPCAWS.AMAZON.COM/VPC

Amazon’s suite of cloud-based services, collec-tively known as AWS (Amazon Web Services), isthe big dog in cloud-based development andhosting. The company’s private offering, AmazonVPC (Virtual Private Cloud), creates what the com-pany calls a “seamless bridge” between a com-pany’s existing IT infrastructure and the AWScloud. VPC is a way to connect a company’s infra-structure to isolated and protected AWS computingresources via a VPN. Amazon VPC integrates withAmazon EC2, the company’s Elastic ComputeCloud—a Web service meant to quickly providescalable computing capacity in the cloud.

Amazon VPC provides end-to-end network iso-lation by utilizing an IP address range that you


This Online Tech data

center is typical of secure,

enterprise-class cloud

hosting environments.



specify, and then routing all network traffic be-tween VPC and your data center through an en-crypted VPN. This allows you to leverage yourexisting security infrastructure, such as firewallsand intrusion detection systems.

VPC runs within Amazon’s proven global net-work infrastructure, and makes use of its worldwidenetwork of enterprise-class data centers and servers.

As with all such services, pricing varies widely,depending on usage and on contracted services. Youcan estimate some typical costs using the AmazonWeb Services Simple Monthly Calculator (tinyurl.com/2q4e3t).

Windows AzureWWW.MICROSOFT.COM/WINDOWSAZURE

Microsoft’s Windows Azure is a flexible (and, itgoes without saying, Windows-based) cloud com-puting platform that provides scalable infrastruc-ture for which you pay according to your resourceusage. Azure includes an SDK (software develop-ment kit) that allows the creation of Azure-basedapplications that can run in the cloud. Not surpris-ingly, Azure is tightly integrated with such tools asMS SQL, .NET, and other Microsoft technologies.

Azure is development-centric. That is, it is inmany ways more like Google’s App Engine orSalesforce.com’s Force.com development tools thana true private cloud hosting service. Nonetheless,Azure appears in this overview because Microsoftis positioning it as a complete solution, one that in-cludes “an integrated development, service hostingand management environment maintained atMicrosoft datacenters.” The environment includesstorage and hosting, as well as development tools.

As with all such providers, the cost of Azurevaries depending upon the uses to which you putit, the load you place upon it, and the resources youconsume. Typical costs are outlined on theWindows Azure Platform Pricing Info page (tinyurl.com/2w3vjc3). Discounts are available forMSDN and Microsoft Partners Network members.

Virtacore Systems WWW.VIRTACORE.COM

Like most other providers, Virginia-basedVirtacore offers both private and public cloud solu-tions. And, as with most others, the difference boilsdown to the fact that in a private cloud offering, avirtualized/optimized infrastructure is made avail-able only to those residing behind a specific fire-wall, via a VPN or similar secure technology.

Virtaware touts its solution as offering avail-ability, security, and scalability—all with a min-imum of capital outlay, thus resulting in a lowertotal cost of ownership.

OrcswebWWW.ORCSWEB.COM

Orcsweb, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner,provides managed private cloud hosting that in-cludes virtualized dedicated servers in an environ-ment isolated from other clients. Hosting alsoincludes a dedicated support team, full systembackups, proactive system monitoring, and the ap-plication of critical Microsoft patches.

All Orcsweb private cloud solutions also includethe SmartTools Professional bundle: SmarterTrack


Professional (two agents), SmarterMail ProfessionalEdition 6.x (250 mailboxes), and SmarterStatsProfessional Edition 5.x (50 sites).

Orcsweb SAS 70-certified data center facilitiesare provided by Peak10, in Charlotte, N.C.

FusepointWWW.FUSEPOINT.COM

Toronto-based Fusepoint is a Microsoft GoldCertified Hosting Partner that delivers managedhosting services from multiple SAS 70-certified datacenters. Fusepoint supports VMware and MicrosoftHyper-V virtualization technologies and handlespatching, operating system, Web, and database

server management, aswell as firewalls, net-working, and backups.The company boasts a pur-pose-built 85,000 squarefoot data center in Toronto,as well as facilities inVancouver, Montreal, andQuebec City. Fusepoint isowned by Savvis, a global

leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solu-tions with more than 2,500 clients.

Online TechWWW.ONLINETECH.COM

Online Tech offers private cloud hosting that fea-tures service-level agreements reflecting a SAS 70-cer-tified, dedicated environment that includes dedicatedand customized servers and storage. The companyuses VMware to deliver virtualization services.

Hosting.comWWW.HOSTING.COM

Hosting.com provides a dedicated VMware-en-abled infrastructure that includes licensing andmanagement, with resources administered via aself-service customer portal. The SAS 70-certifiedcompany uses Dell R-series servers and offers mul-tiple North American data centers. The company,which has been in business since 1997, can alsooffer dedicated support teams.

BlueLockWWW.BLUELOCK.COM

BlueLock offers a virtual private cloud solutionthat provides a virtual, fully managed and encapsu-lated environment. Straddling the multiple—andsometimes confusing—definitions of exactly whatconstitutes a “private cloud,” the service, called TheBlueLock Box, can reside either on your local net-work or in the BlueLock data center. BlueLock is SAS

70-certified, and uses HP servers and SANs andVMware or vSphere virtualization tools.

INetUWWW.INETU.NET

INetU offers a dedicated set of physical hard-ware and software resources with a virtualizationlayer running on top of it, creating a pool of virtualservers, all of which are dedicated to your enter-prise. INetU utilizes VMware ESXi, MicrosoftHyper-V, and Citrix XenServer virtualization. Inbusiness since 1997, INetU offers direct access toreal-time monitoring and bandwidth information.

Google App EngineAPPENGINE.GOOGLE.COM

While most private clouds are actually deliv-ering infrastructure (thus the oft-seen IaaS label),Google App Engine and its ilk are really tools forplatform delivery: Technically, App Engine is reallya PaaS (Platform as a Service) utility that utilizescloud-based tools to help developers avoid thecosts of procuring, setting up, and then maintainingand scaling the hardware and software required tobuild and deploy applications. (This is similar toForce.com, the virtual PaaS offered by SalesForce.com; Force.com provides a development and de-livery platform, but one that is linked to—in fact,requires the presence of—the “parent” platform.)

Google AppEngine is free, up to a point.Beyond that point, fees are charged for additionalstorage, bandwidth, or CPU cycles required by theapplication. Those fees are variable and are out-lined on the Google App Engine Billing AndBudgeting Resources page (tinyurl.com/apv8oq).

Google AppEngine supports the Python andJava programming languages (and their derivativesand related frameworks), and features bulk down-loading via Python. App Engine itself can only exe-cute code called via an HTTP request; C and PyrexPython modules are not supported.

A Changing LandscapeThe number of cloud vendors—indeed the defi-

nition of “public” and “private” cloud itself—con-tinues to change rapidly. As tools mature and asnew technologies emerge, more providers come tomarket almost weekly—while a few disappear al-most as frequently. The providers noted above arerepresentative of “best of breed” cloud vendors,and all offer benefits you should seek whenlooking at any potential cloud vendor, including asolid SLA with a guarantee of 100% uptime, a min-imum latency, appropriate security certifications,and pricing commensurate with resources used. ▲


Manufacturers are

beginning to partner

with cloud vendors; in

this case, Dell Power-

Edge servers are being

used in concert with

offerings from Microsoft

(Windows Azure),

Stoneware (private

clouds for higher

education and other

entities), and others.


KEY POINTS▲ The most importantsecurity issues SMBsshould consider beforeworking with a vendorinclude data center secu-rity, security defenses,and the quality of its IT staff.▲ To gain the most froma cloud service, SMBsshould focus on thoseservices that best meettheir business needswithout compromis-ing security.▲ A good cloud provider will ensurestrong authentication,separation of duties,role-based access control, and strong data encryption.▲ Not every aspect ofcloud security is as direas many make it seem,although in the long-term, better securitymeasures are paramount.

Cloud ComputingSecurity ConsiderationsIdentify & Ameliorate The Issues

by Seth Colaner

Concern over security is hardly unfounded; in-deed, it’s a topic that computer users have to con-front every day. However, in the context of cloudcomputing, the need for superb security multi-plies several times over, as potentially everysystem company-wide must rely on a third-partyservice provider for security. Moving some or all

of a company’s data or applications to the cloudrequires a great deal of trust in the cloud provider.

Finding The Right ProviderAccording to Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst

with the Enterprise Strategy Group, the security is-sues most pressing to a given company depend on


Although cloud computing offers immense potential for businesses of virtually all types and sizes, there are a few issues that all companies must be aware of beforeworking with a cloud provider. Security is the one thatusually tops the list.

Many cloud providers

have (or at least use)

data centers around the

world; you should know

which country (or coun-

tries) your data is in.



the type of cloud computing service it wants toadopt. However, there are a few items every com-pany should look for. “They should assess thevendor’s data center security (for example, havethey achieved SAS-70 certification?), their securitydefenses, the IT staff, skills, etc.,” Oltsik says.“Don’t settle for words in a spec sheet; do ex-tremely deep due diligence or have a security pro-fessional do it for you.”

In other words, the key to security is finding theright gatekeeper, as most of the security issues in-herent in cloud computing begin and end with theprovider. For example, is the provider’s physicaldata center secure and relatively safe from naturaldisasters? Does it back up your data to multiple lo-cations? Does the provider meet best practices andregulatory compliance? Is the provider prompt andthorough in keeping their equipment and softwareup-to-date? Geographically speaking, where isyour data being housed—is it in another countryand therefore governed by non-U.S. privacy laws?

Insecure technology, weak policies, and question-able practices of any kind on the part of the cloudprovider lead to increased risk for you, the customer.

To oversimplify cloud computing, it’s essentiallyoutsourcing some or all IT work to a third party. Inother words, a cloud computing provider can takethe place of much of your IT staff and equipment.IT personnel hold the keys to the kingdom in everycompany. More than anyone, including even theCEO, they have a complete picture of the companyand can access and edit all of the company’s mis-sion-critical or sensitive information.

Therefore, you need to be able to trust yourprovider as much as you would your own internal ITstaff. If you were hiring an IT manager for your com-pany, you wouldn’t just accept a firm handshake, anice business card, and the casual referral of a friendbefore you hire a person. Instead, you would do athorough background check, scrutinize references,and have multiple interviews before you were cer-tain that this person was best for the job. Why wouldyou do anything less before signing an SLA (ServiceLevel Agreement) with a cloud provider?

Although the process for vetting cloudproviders is still developing, there are a few waysyou can check to make sure a provider is aboveboard. You can ask to see a cloud provider’s SAS70 and ISO 27001 security audits, which are meas-ures that help ensure a given company meets se-curity standards.

The Trusted Cloud Initiative, the product of analliance between the CSA (Cloud Security Alliance)and Novell, will be a third-party, vendor-neutralstandard for cloud security and compliance that’s

designed to offer additional security certificationrequirements for cloud providers as well as educa-tional tools. The Trusted Cloud Initiative is sched-uled to be available by year’s end.

For Cloud ProvidersOltsik has a few suggestions for ways cloud

providers can bolster their own reputation andhelp ensure secure operations. “Cloud providersshould do background checks on all employees.

Cloud providers must have strong authentication,separation of duties, and role-based accesscontrol. All customer data should be encrypted atall times.”

If your company is hunting for a good cloudprovider, these practices are some of the ones youshould look for before signing any contracts.

Sober Risk Assessment Despite the (warranted) concern over security,

it’s also important to maintain perspective. Yourbusiness’ sensitive data, such as trade secrets andemployee information, must be kept secure at allcosts. If you have applications hosted in the cloud,you must keep thempatched and bug-free toguard against maliciousexploits. But there aresome instances wheresecurity isn’t quite aspressing of an issue.

One example Oltsikgives is simple storage ofnonsensitive data. Thebenefit is that by out-sourcing some storage, a company can poten-tially save a great deal of money on hardwarecosts without frettingthat critical data is at risk.

In other words, the latter is a low-risk, short-term issue. However, as Oltsik is quick to pointout, long-term security is a major issue andshould be taken seriously. No business that lever-ages cloud computing can afford to turn a blindeye to security. ▲

WHAT TO LOOK FORIN A CLOUDPROVIDER▲ SAS 70 certification▲ ISO 27001 certification▲ Geographic location of data▲ Data encryption▲ Secure hiring practices

. . . the key to security is finding the right gatekeeper, as most of the security issues inherent in cloud computingbegin and end with the provider.

Groups such as the

Cloud Security Alliance

(www.cloudsecurity

alliance.org) are trying

to develop universal

security standards by

which to measure

cloud providers.


▲THE JOY OF PHYSICSMoving a computer evena little farther from anaccess point can affectthe computer’s ability tosend and receive Wi-Fisignals. That’s becauseradio waves (in fact, allwaves) are subject to theinverse square law: Thestrength of a signal asmeasured at the receiveris inversely proportionalto the square of the distance between thesignal’s source and thereceiver. In plain English,that means that doublingthe distance between thetransmitter and the re-ceiver does not halve thesignal strength, it quar-ters it. Doubling it againwill result in a signalthat’s now received (if it’sreceived) at 1/16 its orig-inal strength. And so on.

What To Do When Wi-Fi FailsResolve Common Wireless Networking Problems

by Rod Scher


No matter what product you create or what service you deliver, your business is—at its core—a communicative enterprise. The unfettered flow ofinformation is critical to the operation of your company; obstruct that flowand your business grinds to a halt.

You may have to tell Windows explicitly to

manage your Wi-Fi network.

issue. (Still got a problem? Let’s move ahead, butfirst turn the firewall back on before you forgetabout it.)

In the Control Panel, go to Network Connectionand select View Available Wireless Networks. Right-click the Wireless Network Connection icon, selectProperties, and then select the Wireless Networkstab. Check the Use Windows To Configure MyWireless Network Settings checkbox.

In Windows XP, another option is to go to theControl Panel and select Administrative Tools, andthen click Services. Right-click Wireless ZeroConfiguration to activate the Windows service. (Ifit’s already activated, try deactivating and then re-activating it. Still no go? Deactivate WZC and tryusing the manufacturer’s network managementsoftware instead.)

Is the workstation in question a laptop? Manylaptops have Wi-Fi switches; be sure that theswitch (it may be a key-combination “soft switch”)is on. Hardware Wi-Fi switches located near thefront of laptops are notorious for accidently get-ting turned off.

Try using IPCONFIG to reset the TCP/IP connec-tions on the system: Go to Start, and then select Run.Type ipconfig /renew and click the OK button.

Use the PING utility to test whether yoursystem can communicate with other systems onthe network. Go to Start, and then select Run. Typeping 127.0.0.1 and click the OK button. If the testfails, then it’s possible that your network driversare corrupted or that the adapter is not working.(There are many other uses of PING, but they’rebeyond the scope of this article.)

Finally, if you or someone at your company haschanged the workgroup name, computers that are

One particularly aggravating form of obstructionresults from a Wi-Fi networking failure. You in-stalled Wi-Fi in the first place in order to avoidproblems in workflow and data communication;now one of your most relied-upon tools has seem-ingly turned against you. Meanwhile, you and yourstaff—and a myriad of critical business processes—have come to depend on your wireless network.When it bogs down—or disappears altogether—those processes stop and your staff flounders.

We’ll provide a brief overview to help you trou-bleshoot some common Wi-Fi problems.

Lost Connection For One ComputerProblem: A computer suddenly cannot communi-cate with the network or with the Internet, al-though it worked perfectly before. (Or computerscontinually lose—and then regain—network con-nections.)Solution: It’s possible to leave either Windows orthe router manufacturer’s utility in charge of yournetwork communications, but not both. If you

switch them (or if they mysteriously getswitched by some other process), communica-tion between the workstation and the network it-

self can cease, even if the network icon inthe computer ’s System Tray reports agood connection.

Before you do anything else, rebootthe computer. Still not working? Brieflydisconnect your firewall, just to be surethat the firewall itself is not causing the



Using ipconfig / renew to

reset your system’s TCPIP

settings will sometimes

help you recover your

Wi-Fi connection.

If your wireless network

doesn’t broadcast its

SSID, you can manually

enter the network name

in order to connect.

A corrupted Undocked

hardware profile can

result in a failure to

connect when a laptop

is undocked. Delete

and rebuild the profile

to take care of

the problem.

not members of that workgroup will be unable tosee one another; change it back or update the work-group name on any affected computers.

No Connection For Many ComputersProblem: All of a sudden, none of my systems hasnetwork (or Internet) access.Solution: You know how 80% of computer prob-lems can be resolved by rebooting? Shut downyour modem and router, and then restore power tothem in that order. This oftenresolves such issues.

It’s always possible thatyou really do have no Inter-net access, possibly becauseof a problem with your In-ternet service provider. Call to see if the ISP is receiving any reports of outages.

You can test the router itself by taking it out of theloop and connecting a system directly to your broad-band modem. If the system can connect without therouter, the router may be at fault; swap it out, if pos-sible, and see if the problem is resolved. (Don’t leavethe computer connected directly to the modem;without the router in the loop, you’re missing an im-portant layer of protection against hackers.)

Wireless Network UnavailableProblem: My wireless network doesn’t even showup in the list of available networks.Solution: To show up in the list, your network mustbe broadcasting its SSID (Service Set Identifier)—inother words, the name of the network. If it’s not, andif you don’t wish to broadcast, you can go into ViewAvailable Wireless Networks as described above, se-lect Add A Network, and then enter the name andother particulars of the network.

Slow Wireless NetworkProblem: My wireless network is very slow.Solution: If your wireless network is boggingdown, it may be because multiple users are ac-cessing multiple high-bandwidth streams. (Thiscan occur when users are downloading large filesor streaming video, for example, whether for per-sonal use or for legitimate business-related activi-ties.) If the network is simply being overloaded,you’ll have to either reduce the load or talk to yourISP about providing a bigger pipe.

It’s also possible that one or more systems issimply not getting a decent signal—even if thesignal used to be acceptable. (Had any work donein the building? Moved any large equipment?Added equipment that might cause interference?)If range is the issue and you cannot move the

system closer to the nearest access point, consider arepeater or a booster antenna. If you’ve expandedsince the network was originally installed, it maybe time to add more wireless access points.

If you’re not running 802.11n gear, consider up-grading. The 802.11n standard specifies the use ofMIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) gear,which can increase range and reduce interference.(Such things as Bluetooth devices, landlinephones, and mobile phones can interfere with the

Wi-Fi signal, slowing thingsdown.) Note that 802.11ngear must be used at both thetransmitting and receivingends; simply installing an802.11n router does little

good if workstations are still running 802.11b/gnetwork cards.

Problems With Security SettingsProblem: My Wi-Fi network works fine until I at-tempt to secure it using WEP or WPA.Solution: First, remember to use a hex key ratherthan a decimal key when using WEP; in decimal,it’s too easy to make a mistake entering the info. Ofcourse, WEP is easy to crack; use WPA or WPA2 in-stead, if possible. Remember that 802.11b gear isnot compatible with the WPA security protocol; ifyou have older wireless gear in your network,you’ll need to use the older security protocol—newer machines can understand the older protocol,but the older machines generally cannot work withthe newer one.

Docking IssuesProblem: My laptop’s Wi-Fi works fine when themachine is docked, but fails when I undock it.Solution: Some laptops use a built-in wired net-work controller when docked and should switch towireless when undocked. But depending on howyou undock it, the system may not switch to Wi-Fiwhen you undock; the result is that it’s still at-tempting to access the network using the wired(but currently disconnected) card. Stop and restartthe radio to reset and restart the correct networkadapter. If that doesn’t work, you may need insteadto reboot the entire system.

It’s also possible that the Undocked hardwareprofile is corrupt, in which case you can rebuild itby going to Control Panel, System, and then se-lecting the Hardware tab. Click the HardwareProfiles button. Remove the other (i.e., non-working) profile. Then power down so that thesystem will shut down and rebuild the Undockedprofile when you reboot. ▲

All of a sudden, none of my systems has network

(or Internet) access.


Need Tech Info ForYour Business?The Conversation Starts Now At Best Buy® Business District

A part from the pages of PC Today, where doyou turn when you need information aboutnew technologies and products that affect

your business? Best Buy might not be the firstsource that comes to mind given its strong pres-ence in consumer electronics, but the company isworking to change that perception. Best Buy notonly serves businesses large and small with thetechnology products and services they require;Best Buy also backs them up with service, support,and know-how.

To further support the needs of businessesseeking reliable technology information, thismonth Best Buy unveiled the Best Buy BusinessDistrict (www.bestbuybusinessdistrict.com), aWeb site for sharing tech info and connectingmembers of the business community.

Ask The DistrictAs a businessperson in this increasingly digital

world, technological know-how is the key to suc-cess. The Best Buy Business District is dedicated todelivering the tech info you need in a way that’sboth inviting and to-the-point.

Best Buy manages the service, creates and se-lects content for the site, and actively participates

in the community discussions. It’s business cus-tomers such as yourself, however, that truly powerthe Business District. Enter your question in theAsk The District box on the home page, click theAsk It button, and you’re on your way to bene-fiting from the knowledge of fellow business usersand Best Buy professionals alike.

In the Questions & Answers section, you canquickly view recently posed questions, highlyrated questions, and answered questions. You canalso browse open questions and chime in to relateyour own experiences or advice.

Tap Into The Knowledge CenterWhether you’re interested in cloud computing

for a large business or advice about what featuresto look for in the newest smartphones, you’ll findthe answers you need in the Knowledge Centerarea on the Business District site.

Browse the lists of popular and recent articles—many of which are written by the staff at PCToday—or look through technology and how-tovideos. You can also use the Search box at the topof the site to start your research, or choose the ap-propriate general categories or specific tags.

Open For BusinessAs a PC Today reader, you are among the first to

learn about the Best Buy Business District. We in-vite you to register and begin using the site.There’s no charge for membership, and if youprefer not to create a special account, you can alsolog in using an existing LinkedIn, Facebook, orTwitter account login. After signing in, you’re wel-come to ask questions in addition to participatingin the weekly polls and enjoying the articles andvideos in the Knowledge Center. ▲


The Knowledge Center is

the place where you’ll find

articles and videos about

the technologies that

affect your business

right now.

Do you have a business technology question? Just ask!

The Best Buy Business District is a place for members

and Best Buy experts to share their knowledge.

BEST BUY, THE BEST BUY LOGO AND THE TAG DESIGN ARE TRADEMARKS OF BBY SOLUTIONS. INC.


Get Rid Of Electronics & Sensitive DataEnvironmentally Friendly Solutions

by Josh Compton

When your company decides to upgrade computersystems, mobile phones, or other related products,environmental responsibility is now a must whendisposing of the outgoing electronics. Luckily,there are many services that provide recycling op-tions in a variety of ways. If you simply want tofind a local recycling center, Earth911 (www.earth911.com) is a great option. But if you want more in-depth solutions that include pick up, drop off, se-curity, and other features, we’ll show you where togo and how to get started.

All Green Electronics RecyclingAll Green (www.allgreenrecycling.com) is an e-

waste disposal company that provides recycling

services for everything from iPods and mobilephones to computers and televisions. You canschedule a free pickup where All Green’s e-wastecollectors and waste haulers come to your businessand take all of your unwanted electronics. You canalso schedule a drop-off at one of their locations onany day of the week. If you want to refurbish andresell products, All Green will do that for you andsend you 70% of the net revenue. All Green willalso de-manufacture or simply recycle outdated ordamaged items that can’t be resold.

Although it is recommended that you wipe yourown data from hard drives and other data-sensitivedevices, All Green guarantees 100% data destruc-tion during the mechanical, mostly automated,


Being green has become a major focus for many businesses.It makes sense to start with recycling paper, plastic, and aluminum, but there are other recyclable items that are moreof a concern for growing businesses: electronics.


recycling process. This means that whether you de-cide to resell or recycle, no customer information orother data will be recoverable. Along with pickupand drop-off options, All Green frequently holdsevents that are either free recycling collections orfundraisers where electronics can be dropped offand recycled.

CloudBlueCloudBlue (www.cloudblue.com) offers multiple

electronics services including ITAS (InformationTechnology Asset Sustainability Service), asset re-covery, and asset disposition. ITAS helps resell, re-furbish, remanufacture, or recycle electronic assets.Inventory management, logistics information, riskmanagement, and compliance are included and,throughout the process, ITAS provides performancereporting and benchmarking assessments.

Asset recovery is a service that helps maximizethe value of end-of-life IT equipment. It featuresasset valuation, logistics programs, data destruction,and auditing and reporting on each asset. CloudBluealso ensures indemnification against compliancerisks and a secure portal for you to track your assetthroughout the asset recovery process. Asset disposi-tion is a recycling service for IT assets. CloudBluehas a zero-landfill policy which means that all ofyour unusable electronics will be 100% recycled andcertificates of recycling will be provided. Legislativecompliance is also provided and CloudBlue usesdownstream recycling partners to ensure that na-tional standards and restrictions are enforced.

CorporateRenewCorporateRenew (www.corporaterenew.com) is

the business-focused arm of YouRenew (www.yourenew.com), specializing in the recycling of mobilephones and PDAs. Orders affecting more than 250 ofthe same device model or requests to recycle othertypes of products can be arranged. CorporateRenewalso provides payment for electronics that can be


resold but if you simply want to recycle devices thatare in bad condition or outdated, this can be donefree of charge.

You can either test the service by sending in a fewphones at a time or place a full order. Corporate-Renew provides instructions on how to package thedevices and UPS pickup can be scheduled. Onceyour recyclables are received, CorporateRenew re-moves the data from them or, if this can’t be done,shreds and recycles them. Finally, you will receive acheck if your order qualifies for payment and a re-port detailing your order.

GazelleGazelle (www.gazelle.com) is well-known as a

consumer electronics recycling company but it alsoprovides business services. On the consumer side,Gazelle pays for electronics that can be resold or re-cycles items with no market value free. For busi-nesses, Gazelle provides the same service forrecycling or selling electronics in bulk orders.Gazelle accepts laptops and mobile phones as wellas other items from over 16 categories.

You can search for your item by model, brand,or other criteria and select the condition and in-cluded components of each one you want tosubmit. The more original cables and packagingyou have available, the higher the value of yourtrade-in. After you’ve finished adding items,submit your order and you will receive an officialemail offer. Shipping your electronics to Gazelle isfree and payment will be sent by check.

Importance Of RecyclingThe possibility of recouping some money for

used electronics and saving money on recyclingservices are great incentives for putting a business-wide recycling program into place. But, perhaps themost important benefit is avoiding the creation ofhazardous waste and pollution by recycling theseproducts instead of sending them to a landfill. ▲

▲ RETAIL STORESIf you don’t need to recycle electronics inbulk or want to provideyour employees withpersonal recycling sug-gestions, retail storesoften provide services ona smaller scale. For instance, Best Buy(www.bestbuy.com) hasrecycling kiosks whereinkjet cartridges,rechargeable batteries,and other products canbe dropped off; Best Buyalso offers a Tech Trade-In service (www.bestbuy.com/tradein). Consumerelectronics can also betraded in for gift cards ifthey are in good condition. Target(www.target.com) willaccept inkjet cartridges,cell phones, and MP3players. And VerizonWireless (www.verizonwireless.com) has aHopeLine programwhere used cell phonescan be sent in ordropped off; other wire-less carriers have similarprograms, as well.

All Green uses a mostly

mechanical recycling process

that destroys data and

breaks electronics down to

their most basic parts.

CloudBlue helps you analyze

your IT assets then maximize

their value or recycle them

through an environmentally

friendly process.

CorporateRenew lets you search for

items and then select the functionality,

condition, and quantity for your order.

Some electronics that qualify are

bought while others are recycled free.

Gazelle provides a bulk option for

electronics recycling and will pay

you for items that can be resold.

You choose the item, describe its

condition, and submit it for review.


T he social Web has presented many opportu-nities for companies to communicate directlywith their customers and discover what cus-

tomers want out of their products. By leveragingpublic opinions on social Web sites, organizationscan gather important consumer information, fishfor new product concepts, and collect feedback re-garding current products on the market.

Although crowdsourcing has been around for awhile, the social Web has helped companies perfect

the crowdsourcing modelso that it has recentlymorphed into a vital toolfor some businesses.

What IsCrowdsourcing?

Although the conceptwasn’t new, crowdsourc-ing officially received itsname in a June 2006Wired article by JeffHowe. Through his blog,Howe defines crowd-

sourcing as “the act of taking a job traditionally per-formed by a designated agent (usually anemployee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, gen-erally large group of people in the form of an opencall.” Crowdsourcing is very similar to the conceptof open-source software, which calls upon the pas-sionate software development community to im-prove and create programs by making changes to apublicly available software code.

It’s likely that you’ve seen examples of crowd-sourcing but were unaware of the term. For ex-ample, Frito-Lay has used crowdsourcing to find aSuper Bowl commercial for Doritos over the pastfew years. This year, the winners of the commercialcontest were awarded $1 million, $600,000 (for

second place), and $400,000 (for third place).Contestants had to write, shoot, and submit theirown video entries while Frito-Lay simply pro-moted and facilitated the contest.

How To Use CrowdsourcingCrowdsourcing can take many different forms,

but it always involves leveraging “the crowd” tocome up with innovative solutions for your organi-zation. In order to maximize the benefits fromcrowdsourcing, be sure your initiative has a specificgoal and is mutually beneficial for your organizationand the crowdsourcing participants. For example,cash prizes and other awards could be given out ifyou choose to have a contest of sorts. This will helpentice the most creative and innovative thinkers toparticipate in your project and it won’t look likeyou’re trying to get something for nothing.

Crowdsourcing is used by a variety of differentindustries and can be something as simple as amedia outlet asking its viewers to submit ques-tions prior to interviewing a public figure. This letsthe media outlet deliver what its viewers reallywant to know about.

Similar crowdsourcing techniques have alsobeen used by government organizations before de-ciding on budget cuts and legislative initiatives. Byproviding a forum for discussion, you are able tocollect ideas and hear what your customers wantand don’t want from your organization.

Is Crowdsourcing Right For You?Most large organizations that use crowdsourcing

employ it as just one tool in their toolbox. However,startups can use crowdsourcing as an inexpensiveway to get ideas and objectives rolling before theyhave the resources to hire an in-house creative staff.It’s up to you to decide the best type of crowd-sourcing technique for your organization. ▲


MyStarbucksIdea.com

is a forum for Starbucks

customers to share and

vote on ideas for new

products, services,

and more.

101CROWDSOURCINGIs It Right For Your Organization?

by Tessa Warner Breneman


As one would assume,

Microsoft’s cloud-based

CRM offering is tightly

integrated with the MS

Office suite.

Business SoftwareThe Latest Releases & Updates

by Rod Scher

Comodo Releases New Version OfEndpoint Security Manager

The latest release of Comodo’s business-orientedEndpoint Security Manager, version 1.6, lets net-work administrators centrally manage Comodo se-curity products installed on hundreds or thousandsof computers. The update offers improved compati-bility with Windows Domain Controllers and in-cludes numerous minor tweaks and enhancementsrequested by customers. Comodo Endpoint SecurityManager 1.6 prices range from $22.95 per year permachine for 100 or fewer endpoint licenses to lessthan $10 per year for 5,000 or more endpoints.

IDEALSTOR iBac 5.0 Adds Mailbox &Email Recovery Support

IDEALSTOR’s iBac 5.0 backup and recovery soft-ware now supports Microsoft Exchange 2010. Thecompany, which provides a variety of removabledisk-to-disk backup products, says the update allowsiBac to back up Windows servers and databases andoffers native format backup, drag-and-drop restore,

and file-level data deduplication. With the newlyadded Exchange 2010 support, iBac 5.0 now supportsthe recovery of individual emails or complete mail-boxes. The product is available in two licensed forms:iBac Single Server for simple file servers or serversthat do not contain open files or databases and OVSfor database servers such as Exchange, SQL,SharePoint, and others.

Office For Mac 2011 Hitting StoreShelves This Fall

Despite persistent rumors of its demise, Micro-soft Office for the Mac is alive and well, and sched-uled for an October release. The suite will beavailable in two retail editions: Office for MacHome and Student 2011 ($119 to $149) and Officefor Mac Home and Business 2011 ($199 to $279).An academic version that includes Word for Mac,PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook forMac and Messenger for Mac, will be available atauthorized academic stores for $99. Customerswho have recently purchased Office 2008 for Mac

Nothing ever stays the same, certainly not in the world of business-relatedsoftware. And managing a business while keeping track of new and updatedsoftware releases is enough to try anyone’s patience, so we’ll give you a handby letting you know what’s happening out there.



will be able to upgrade to Office 2011 at no addi-tional cost for a limited time.

Microsoft Demonstrates Next-Generation CRM Release

Microsoft’s cloud-based CRM product is aboutto get a facelift: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011,scheduled for a September beta release, will beavailable in an online version in 40 markets by theend of the year. The new release lets partners—in-cluding independent software vendors, globalsystem integrators, and value-added resellers—create and deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM exten-sions and custom solutions. The product will useinterface elements from—and be integrated with—such existing Microsoft products as Outlook andExchange. The release will offer data visualizationtools, real-time dashboards, and the ability to de-fine and measure performance goals.

Microsoft Delivers SQL Server 2008 R2Microsoft has released the newest iteration of

SQL Server, calling the product its “most completeinformation platform for desktops, data centers, andthe cloud.” The company promises “rich support formission-critical scenarios and significant produc-tivity boosts for IT pros.” The database market as awhole continues to grow, in spite of the general eco-nomic downturn, and SQL Server’s market sharehas continued to increase. Analysts cite an increasedneed for “business intelligence” tools—products thathelp companies mine and use their data—and SQLServer is perceived as a prime example of such a tool.

Google Wave Waves Bye-ByeGoogle’s Wave collaboration app, released only

last fall, is no more—or won’t be, after the end of theyear. The powers-that-be at Google announced onthe company blog that Google would suspend fur-ther development immediately, and would phaseout support for the tool: “Wave has not seen the useradoption we would have liked. We don’t plan tocontinue developing Wave as a standalone product,”says Urs Hölzle, a Google senior vice president.Hölzle noted that the company may use technologyoriginally developed for use in Wave in other prod-ucts, and promised to deliver tools that would letusers port their Wave content to other apps.

Apple Updates Safari, Adds Support For Extensions

Apple has released updated versions of Safari 5,adding support for extensions that customize and add to the browser’s functionality. Safari 5.0.1

includes access to the Safari Extension Gallery, whichlets users search for and install extensions that addfeatures to Safari. Users can access the Gallery fromwithin Safari or on the Webat extensions.apple.com. Youcan use extensions to addtoolbars that display liveWeb feeds or Web content fil-tering programs, for ex-ample. Developers can createextensions using HTML5,CSS3, and JavaScript. Bing,MLB.com, and Amazon.comare among big-name compa-nies who have already builtand deployed Safari extensions.

Sage Peachtree 2011 ReleasedAccounting software giant Sage Peachtree has

released a new version of its business-orientedentry point product. Sage Peachtree 2011 is aimedat small business owners and managers, and offersstreamlined service billing, a new Inventory andServices Management module, and the ability toquickly identify job status. Other new features—which may not be present in all versions—includethe ability to process change orders, enhanced as-sembly reporting, and additional improvements tojobs management. Sage Peachtree versions range inprice from $99.99 to $699.99 for a multiuser editionof Sage Peachtree Complete Accounting.

Zoho Discontinues IE6 SupportZoho is discontinuing support for IE 6 across the

board, including its CRM, Business Email, Invoice,and other products. Company spokesman RodrigoVaca noted in a recent Zoho blog, “This was a longtime coming. We just wanted to give InternetExplorer 6 users a little more time. Looking at ourtraffic, from January 2010 to July 2010, IE6’s share . . .got cut in about half. We will not actively block IE6users from trying to access Zoho applications, butwe’ve stopped testing on it.”

Zmanda Releases V3.0 Cloud BackupZmanda has updated its cloud-based backup ap-

plication, Zmanda Cloud Backup. The product backsup Windows servers, desktops, and live applicationssuch as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server toAmazon’s AWC online storage. ZCB offers live, en-crypted backup of SQL Server, Exchange, and otherapps, and provides a one-click restore mechanism.The company touts AWC’s $9.99 SLA guarantee;HIPAA compliance; and the ability to store data inU.S., European, or Asian data centers. ▲

Google’s Wave app

looked promising

and generated lots of

buzz, but in the end it

could not attract

enough users.


The electronic

devices that make

our lives easier also

produce some

unwanted side-

effects on the

environment.

Fortunately, many

consumer elec-

tronics manufac-

turers are working

to create products

that keep us

productive while

reducing energy

demands to lessen

our impact on our

surroundings. Here,

we take a look at

the newest environ-

mentally friendly

technology

initiatives.

GreenovationsEnergy-Conscious Tech

by Nathan Lake

Energy-Efficient EthernetWith current wired connections, there’s a constant link between all connected devices that lets you access

a network when necessary. The result is that some network devices, such as servers or network storageunits, must always be on (even when no one is accessing the stored data) because the devices can’t knowwhen someone needs to access the network. Enter the IEEE 802.3az standard for Energy Efficient Ethernet,which is expected to save energy by allowing network devices to enter into a low-power mode when theelectronics aren’t transmitting data.

When you need data, a network command will wake up the device in a minimal amount of time. Thestandard should be finalized by next year, and the University of New Hampshire recently announced thatits InterOperability Laboratory will serve as a third-party testing facility to help member companies assesscompatible equipment. By testing your equipment in the lab, your organization can use market-ready hard-ware when the standard is approved.

Cut Costs By Turning Off PC PowerNetWrix, a company that provides quality systems management and

compliance solutions, reports that the average computer uses 500 to 700kilowatt hours of electricity each year, which can cost businesses around$100 annually per computer. NetWrix’s Workstation Power SavingManager reduces PC operation costs by as much as 30%. Computers usingthis program will automatically enter into power saving modes duringnon-business hours. Workstation Power Saving Manger freeware is avail-able for 50 computers.

A commercial version is available that can automatically wake PCs whenIT personnel need to access them for maintenance operations. Thus, thepower-saving features won’t impact productivity or hinder your organiza-tion’s security maintenance. The paid version also lets you exclude the com-puters of specific users, as well as the option for all employees to postponethe power saving mode.

Mac & PC Power ManagementIf your company uses a mix of Macs and PCs, you’ll want to check out 1E’s new NightWatchman (con-

tact 1E for pricing; www.1e.com), which lets you automati-cally and remotely power down the computers regardless ofwhat OS they run. NightWatchman can shut down, suspend,or hibernate the computers, and the program will protect allunsaved data before closing open applications. You can evenset when systems will power down to avoid unnecessary im-pacts on employees, and the Sleepless Client Detection fea-ture ensures that each PC and Mac will be properly shut offwhen necessary.

There’s a dashboard where you can review key perform-ance metrics, including current energy costs (based on actualenergy tariffs) and CO2 emissions. NightWatchman provides

customizable reports for power usage and cost savings, so you’ll have identifiable results for your returnon investment.



Flexible Solar PanelsSoloPower has created a thin, lightweight solar panel that holds up when rolled up or walked on. The re-

sult is a panel that weighs less than a “glass sandwich” panel, which makes it quicker to install. SoloPowerindicates the panels are optimized for the flat roofs on commercial and industrial buildings. In the secondhalf of 2010, SoloPower will release the SFX1-i and SFX1-i3. The SFX1-I offers up to 80Wp (watt peak) andweighs 5 pounds, while the SFX1-i3 can produce up to 260Wp and weighs 13 pounds. There’s also an SFX2module that provides 170Wp and weighs 8 pounds.

The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently tested the flexible panels and found that theyachieved conversion efficiencies up to 11%, which was the highest efficiency rating of any full-sized flexiblepanels tested by the laboratory.

Water FootprintA new trend in green culture is tracking your water footprint; you can take inventory of how much water

goes into a product and how that waste water affects the local drinking water supply. The water issue is im-portant because, unlike air emissions, stopping the source of a water problem doesn’t stop the pollution.When water is contaminated, the cleaning process is both energy intensive (must be monitored until clean)and costly. To help you track your organization’s water footprint, Locus Technologies added water qualitymonitoring—in addition to the existing water quantity measurements—to its EIM (EnvironmentalInformation Management) software (contact Locus Technologies about pricing; www.locustec.com)

The EIM’s water quality features help you log data generated by the seemingly endless number of chem-ical parameters you’ll need to define water quality to regulation standards in the Clean Water Act. Inessence, Locus Technologies EMI helps you monitor the water footprint of your business the way that in-dustry, agriculture, and manufacturing organizations must.

Take ControlControl4 (www.control4.com) lets you take control of your house’s electrical devices via your iPhone,

BlackBerry, Android-based phone, or the Control4 Home wireless controller. With Control4 equipment, youcan set up when your lights turn on or off, and motion sensors can tell the Control4 components when toturn on or off. You can also automate Control4 shades to open or close and let in or block sunlight to bettersuit your heating and cooling needs. In all, Control4 offers wireless switches and dimmers, outlet switchesand dimmers, a wireless thermostat, and motorized shades.

Bring The Smart Grid To Your Home

Sometime in 2011, GeneralElectric will release the Nu-cleus, a wireless home energymonitor that you plug intoany standard electrical outlet.The Nucleus sends informa-tion to a smart meter whereyou can examine the energyyour connected appliances,thermostat, and other elec-tronics use. You can view thedata the Nucleus gathers on adashboard on your home PCor smartphone, so you cantrack electricity usage in real-time or over the course of agiven time period.

NewRulesForLightBulbLabelsThe FTC announcedthat by the middle of 2011, all lightbulb packaging willbe labeled in lu-mens (the measureof brightness) ratherthan watts. The labelwill also list the esti-mated annual costof using that partic-ular kind of lightbulb to help con-sumers choosing an economical and eco-friendlyproduct. On theback of the pack-aging will be an in-formation panel thattells you the bulb’slife expectancy, mercury content (if any), and the typeof light (such aswarm or cool) thebulb provides.



Dial In To Your Account


MobileFinance

More people are picking up their mobilephones rather than heading to the bank totake care of their personal finances.

According to Juniper Research, 400 million peopleacross the globe will be using their phones to com-plete some financial transactions by 2013, which isdouble the current amount of mobile banking users.In fact, more than 80% of banks from various regionsin Juniper’s global study said they currently providea mobile banking solution for their customers.

Fiserv (www.fiserv.com), which providesbanking solutions to financial institutions, re-ported in a 2009 study that mobile banking is closeto a tipping point due to the amount of peoplecurrently using mobile phones daily. Approx-imately 58% of adults use their mobile phone fornon-voice data activities, which could provide anopen door for mobile banking solutions. Also,Fiserv says Generation Y will earn $3.4 trillion in

income by 2018, whichpresents an opportu-nity for banks to capi-talize on a tech-savvyage group.

Howard Wilcox, who authored the Juniper re-port, says it’s too early to determine if users willbegin making their banking decisions using themobile banking services financial institutions pro-vide, but it’s possible that Generation Y and the so-called Millennial Generation could factor thosefeatures into their decisions in the future.

Mobile Banking OptionsBecause banks are using a combination of SMS

(short message service, or text messaging), mo-bile Web sites, and mobile applications to delivertheir services, users don’t necessarily need asmartphone to accomplish tasks, such as check-ing your account balance.

In fact, an IDC Financial Insights surveyshows SMS as the most popular form of mobilebanking. Most institutions will send informationsuch as your account balance, recent account ac-tivity, payment due dates, and ATM locationswhen a customer texts a specific command to anumber provided by the bank.

Additionally, financial institutions with a mo-bile banking strategy will often support many of

The Future Of

Wells Fargo offers a

mobile application for

Android, BlackBerry,

iPhone, and Palm devices.


MOBILE OFFICEBUSINESS ON THE ROAD

the same transactions available with an online bankaccount through your mobile Web browser or adownloadable application. Wells Fargo, for ex-ample, will let its customers pay bills, transferfunds, and view transactions through its mobileWeb site and its application for Android, Black-Berry, iPhone, and webOS devices. Some applica-tions and mobile sites will even route you to thenearest ATM by leveraging your GPS location.

Marc DeCastro, the research manager for theconsumer banking and community banking divi-sion of IDC Financial Insights, says mobilebanking is trending more toward applicationsthan other mobile banking options. “Download-able applications appear to be primed to be thepreferred mobile channel,” DeCastro says.

“The main driver of this is the mere fact thattouchscreen smartphone sales will exceed non-touchscreen phones in the near future,” DeCastrosays. “This changes the interaction people havewith their mobile devices and the touch naviga-tion does not work as well with the traditionalbrowser-based applications.”

Although most people use mobile banking tech-nology to stay in touch with account balances andview transactions, many analysts and financial in-stitutions see the opportunity for other types ofservices to emerge. For example, real-time transac-tion alerts could provide an extra level of securityfor certain accounts, and remote deposit capturewould let you deposit checks by sending a multi-media message with photographs of the front andback of the check you want to deposit as capturedby your phone.

What’s In It For The BanksIn order for financial institutions to be suc-

cessful in their mobile banking strategies, theymust address a few challenges. For starters, a per-ceived security risk seems to be preventing someconsumers from getting involved. Wilcox saysusers are understandably anxious about the secu-rity of their bank accounts and need to be able totrust mobile services before they will adopt themand use them regularly.

Part of that trust could come from mobile se-curity software emerging in the market.According to DeCastro, most people have not ex-perienced any virus or threats to their mobile de-vice, but they have had something happen totheir PC. However, DeCastro says, people stillcontinue to use online banking and bill paymentservices on their desktop computers. “The mo-bile device will eventually need the same protec-tion that people put on their PCs and laptops.

The one big difference is that the network usedfor mobile banking is still controlled by the car-riers and more private than the public Internettraffic,” DeCastro says.

Banks are also struggling to find ways to makemobile banking profitable. DeCastro says financialinstitutions are using mobile banking as a defen-sive strategy so they won’t lose customers, ratherthan finding ways to monetize mobile transactions.But this could change.

“Financial institutions are going to be under in-creased pressure to raise non-interest income, usu-ally through monthly fees, overdraft charges,etc.,” DeCastro says. “So the only angle bankscould go with is that mobile banking may reducesome costs. But for now it is more a defensivestrategy to try and keep customers rather than away to make any additional revenue. The mobilepayments components will present some inter-change income opportunities, but this is still in theearly stages.”

Wilcox says banks could potentially profit fromthe monetary savings that mobile strategies willbring over the long run. “Mobile banking offers sig-nificant cost saving for banks compared to [other]channels. An example is that phoning a call centerfor your balance costs the bank at least six dollars,including the cost of the call center person, com-pared to five cents or less to send a bulk SMS.Despite this, some banks make a monthly charge formobile banking,” Wilcox says.

Where To Go From HereAlthough mobile banking has increased its pop-

ularity, and research shows it will grow rapidly inthe next few years, DeCastro says mobile bankingis still far from being a mainstream U.S. channel.

“The branch remains the No. 1 preferred chan-nel, followed by online. At some point, mobile willbe there, but not in the next couple of years,”DeCastro says.

Additionally, researchers will need to work outthe definition of mobile device. DeCastro pointsout that there’s ambiguity around devices, such asthe iPad, that don’t fit existing def-initions. But in the meantime,DeCastro says, banks should con-tinue to develop solutions in allchannels and let their customerschoose what is most appropriatefor them. ▲

“Over 80% of the banks

that we surveyed offer

some form of mobile

banking service,” says

Howard Wilcox, senior

analyst at Juniper

Research.

“The mobile device will

eventually need the

same protection that

people put on their PC’s

and laptops,” says Marc

DeCastro of IDC

Financial Insights.

Chase customers can bank online

using their mobile browser.


Mobile Conferencing?You Bet!Voice & Video Over IP Are Where It’s At

by Joanna Safford


Are all VoIP signs pointing to mobile confer-encing? Well, at least some are. IP-basedconferencing isn’t new on the tech block,

but mobile Web conferencing has yet to claim thetitle of “the next smartphone trend.”

Because executives play the role of both roadwarrior and business jetsetter, attending a videoconference via laptop (or boardroom) can seem likean impossibility. But a dilemma such as this willlikely transform mobile conferencing services froma beta launch to fully featured app. Already thereare a number of VoIP apps for audio conferencingavailable (some of which we’ll introduce below),but mobile videoconferencing is still in its gesta-tion period.

Conferencing Strategies &Advantages

The core objective of collaborative technology isto communicate and share information with thepurpose of reaching a goal sought after by mem-bers of a team. There are plenty of virtual toolsavailable to facilitate electronic meetings, such asmessaging, chat, social media, and electronicwhiteboarding, and now that both networks andsmartphones are capable of supporting virtual

meetings, we can add video and voice confer-encing to the digital mix.

The benefits of mobile conferencing are practical:administrative time for setting up a conference isminimized; meeting leaders and participants canconduct on-the-fly meetings; and networking canremain personal as you interact visually with othermeeting attendees. Both AT&T and T-Mobile are en-deavoring to boost mobile productivity by offeringaudio conferencing services that make on-the-gocollaborations more of a reality.

Designed for road warriors, the AT&T ConnectMobile App (www.wireless.att.com) for theiPhone combines audio, video, and Web confer-encing into a single unified platform, making itpossible to join mobile meetings free (if you’re already on the network). AT&T has created theapp to be interactive rather than passive withwhiteboard view, participant emoticons (for con-necting and expressing opinions), chat (with oneor all associates), event hosting, and alerts. Afteryou download AT&T Connect Mobile from theApple App Store, you can join a mobile confer-ence by clicking the To Connect To The WebConference link you’ve received in an email or cal-endar invitation.



Although currently available in the UK only, T-Mobile offers Group Call for mobile conferences withup to 20 colleagues on one call. If a UK customer iscalling, meeting participants can still call in from inthe UK (landline or mobile) or another country,meaning U.S. callers may participate. The group callprocess works as follows: The meeting organizeruses his or her mobile number as the Group IdentityNumber; the organizer determines if a PIN is re-quired, then schedules the meeting. Callers use theGroup Call Access Number at one time.

If you have an Apple iPhone 4, you might be fa-miliar with the FaceTime video calling feature.FaceTime lets you make full-screen video calls andstream a visual for your recipient as you continue

to talk to them. ToFaceTime video chaton your iPhone 4,you’ll access yourContacts and locatethe person you’d liketo call. If you’re al-ready engaged in aphone conversationwith said contact, youcan tap the FaceTimebutton on the screento transfer to videomode. An invitationwill appear on his orher iPhone screen tojoin FaceTime. TheHD (720p) camera canrecord something you

would like to share on the other side of the device.The FaceTime interface isn’t complicated, so there’severy reason for the app to eventually develop intoa videoconferencing tool.

Virtual Meeting TechnologiesMobile conferencing apps are quite similar

when you get down to it. Each one lets you chat viaIP with a few extras.

Calliflower. The cleverly branded Calliflower(free; www.calliflower.com) iPhone app providesyou with unlimited, international voice confer-encing. Calliflower lets you share documents, textchat, record calls, and archive calls. It features anin-call mode, which shows every call participant onthe same screen. Additionally, the chat wall scrollsas you control the Agenda feature, enablerecording, or manage volume levels.

Fring. Available as a free download at m.fring.com on your mobile phone, Fring makes it possibleto connect to colleagues via mobile calls, video calls,

and live chat. The unified interfacecombines your contacts saved onAIM, GoogleTalk, IDQ, Facebook,MSN Messenger, Skype, Twitter, andYahoo!. Fring uses a detailed call logto keep track of contact names, con-tact method, date, time, and outgoingor incoming status.

iVisit. Appropriate for business orpleasure, iVisit Mobile ($4.95 permonth; www.ivisit.com) includesconferencing, sharing, and location-based features. Live video is thesingle user mode of iVisit; multipartyvideo lets you conference on yourmobile devices with up to eight otherusers. Other iVisit-ers don’t have tojoin your mobile meeting with thesame device; anyone can be on adesktop, laptop, or phone to partici-pate. The push-to-talk audio functionoperates on either the 3G network(via AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon) or Wi-Fi connectivity, so you don’t tap intoyour monthly minutes. The iVisit service incorpo-rates high-resolution photo sharing and GPS LBS—with a GPS-enabled phone—for checking a point ofinterest or disclosing your whereabouts.

PGi Mobile. If your productivity goal is to focuspurely on audio meetings, PGi Mobile (www.pgi.com) is an appropriate app option. Integrated withReadyConference Plus, PGi Mobile is compatiblewith the Apple iPhone, iPod touch, or BlackBerrysmartphone. When you’re hosting mobile confer-ences, you can view all of the partici-pants (including their names, titles,and photos), record calls, add morecallers, and administrate sidebar meet-ings from the conference call. Youdon’t have to remember call-in num-bers or passwords because you’llsimply just tap to join the call. Version2.0 supports language translation forFrench, German, Italian, Japanese,Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Skype. Though already a popularVoIP service for iPhone, iPad,BlackBerry, and Android devices, Skype (www.skype.com) videoconferencing is still in the works.According to a Skatter Tech report, Skype wants tointroduce video calling to Android phones beforethe end of this year. Skype features free calls toother Skype handsets, global calling, instant mes-saging, and “always on,” which saves you fromusing wireless carrier minutes. ▲

Fring supports

add-ons, such as

Skype, MSN,

GTalk, AIM, and

Twitter, that can

extend your

social network.

Host audio meetings from

your smartphone with PGi

Mobile; it features extensive

caller identification, call

management, and call

locking capabilities.

Calliflower is a

conferencing

app for the

iPhone that

displays data for

each caller using

in-call mode.

You can

conduct on-the-

road VoIP calls

using Skype for

your iPhone,

BlackBerry, or

Android hand-

sets. Skype is

slated to launch

video capabili-

ties on the

Android later

this year.


Why Smartphones Are Getting

Handheld Power Increases Exponentially

That gadget you’re carrying around on yourbelt is much more than a phone: In effect,you have clipped to your person a palm-

sized device with more computing power than thedesktop computer you were using a couple ofyears ago. In fact, making a telephone call is onlyone of the things you can do with it—and odds arethat it’s not even the most important or mission-critical thing.

So just how “smart” are today’s smartphones?And why are they getting smarter so quickly?

Users Demand UbiquitousConnectivity

Neil Mawston, director of global wireless prac-tice for Strategy Analytics, Ltd., notes that users’

expectations, fueled by powerful, easy-to-usehome and office computers, is a primary driver:“The global smartphone market is computerizing.Consumers and corporations want desktop-classfeatures and services on their cell phones. Mobileusers want smarter phones with more sophisti-cated hardware and expandable software.”

The bottom line is that both consumers and cor-porate users are used to having 24/7 access toemail, social networking, and Internet browsing athome and in the office, and they expect to have ac-cess to those same services in their cars or on awalk around the block.

On the supply side, there’s an obvious profit mo-tive, says Mawston: “Operators want smarterphones because they need to drive 3G data usagehigher and develop fresh revenue streams beyondvoice and SMS. Handset makers want smarterphones because they need to increase their sellingprices and raise profit margins.” Thus, companiessuch as Apple, Google, and AT&T are helping todrive the computerization of the cell phone industry.

The Power Curve AcceleratesWe can measure smartphone power by exam-

ining some of the same criteria we use to evaluateany other computer. A quick look at the specs ofpast and current devices is illuminating.

Memory. The Palm Treo 650, arguably the firstnon-BlackBerry smartphone with a meaningfullevel of corporate acceptance, had 32MB of RAM.Last year’s Motorola Droid offered 256MB, whilethe new Droid X has 512MB of RAM. That’s a sig-nificant increase in memory: 1500% over the pastfew years.

Processing power. The Treo 650’s Intel XScaleprocessor ran at about 312MHz, the MotorolaDroid’s Texas Instruments OMAP CPU at 550MHz.The Motorola Droid X also runs a TI OMAP, butthe new CPU is clocked at 1GHz.

Storage. The Treo 650 offered 23MB of storageplus SD card expansion; a few years later, theMotorola Droid came with 256MB of permanent


Smarterby Rod Scher

OMAP processors from

Texas Instruments

are being used

in a variety of

mobile devices,

including the new

Droid smartphone.



storage plus expansion options. With the release ofthe Motorola Droid X, storage skyrocketed to 8GBplus expansion.

But Is It Still A Phone?When evaluating the power and utility of a smart-

phone, there are many other important considera-tions, of course: hardware limitations, displaycapabilities, accessory availability, ports and connec-tors, input mechanisms, UI, etc. But no matter howyou slice it, today’s smartphones are more than justsmart; they’re powerful computational and commu-nicative tools on which we’ve come to depend.

They are, in effect, small computers that happento be able to make phone calls.

“Many of today’s high-end smartphones can al-ready be considered handheld computers, as theypack more processing power and memory thandesktop PCs of yesteryear,” says Alex Spektor, ananalyst in Strategy Analytics’ Wireless DeviceStrategies service group. “Nokia, for example,refers to its Maemo Linux-powered N900 smart-phone as a ‘mobile computer.’”

In reality, there are some ways in which smart-phones are even more powerful than computers.“Phones are always with their users and canleverage contextual information (such as, for ex-ample, location) to deliver more compelling appli-cations and services,” notes Spektor.

And they’re about to become even more powerful.

What’s Next?Cloud phones. A new high-performance mobile

communications interface called LTE (Long TermEvolution) is the leading contender for becomingthe dominant 4G cellular network technology.Among other things, 4G high-bandwidth networkswill encourage the emergence of what are beingcalled “cloud phones”—thin-client mobile devicesthat can perform Herculean feats of processing,mainly because much of that processing is actuallyoffloaded to cloud-based platforms.

Cloud phones are a disruptive technology thatmay be somewhat threatening to vendors. But, aswith any disruptive technology, the change alsorepresents a tremendous opportunity for new prod-ucts, new services, and new markets.

The MEMS gyroscope. Apple’s iPhone 4 maybe the first smartphone to include a MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) gyroscope—a nano-scale device used to detect or maintain orientationof the apparatus in which it is embedded. In effect,it’s a microchip that can act much like the gimbaleddevices historically used to help steer and stabilizeairplanes and ships.

Why put a gyroscope in a phone? Well, first,forget that it’s a phone—as we’ve seen, it’s muchmore than that; it’s a computer that happens to beable to communicate with other computers. Thinkinstead about scenarios in which determining theorientation of the device might be important.Consider some of the what-ifs: What if you couldsimply tilt or rotate the phone to switch betweenmenus or make menu selections? (The handset’s UIwould thus become a one-handed operation ratherthan a two-handed one. Imagine how smudge-freeyour screen would be if you could pan and zoom bymoving the handset, rather than by “pinching” thescreen.) What if the handset were acting, tem-porarily, as a Wii-style game controller? What if thedevice could recognize gestures—and use them to“air sign” a document, authenticate a security check,control a 3D mouse, or operate a television? What ifthe device could tell that you had just fallen—andwhat if it could measure the impact of the fall andmake note of the fact that after a minute or two youhad not gotten up? (Might you have programmedthe handset to call for help in such a case?)

This sort of handset functionality is not sciencefiction; it’s currently being built or already in use,and applications such as these are about to open upa whole new world of smartphone productivity, asthe device makes a quantum leap forward in termsof power, application, and efficiency. As smart as itis, your smartphone is about to get even smarter.

Then What?It’s difficult to say just how smart your smartphone

can get. If much of its processing can be handled in thecloud, and if onboard processing power, memory andstorage continue to grow—and if the device can containan array of positional sensorssuch that it constantly knowsits location and attitude—then there’s almost no limitto how powerful these de-vices can become. It’s per-fectly reasonable to envisiona day, not very far in the fu-ture, when your phone isyour computer: You carry itwith you and simply dock itat your desk to interface itwith larger input and displaydevices, and then grab it andgo whenever you happen toleave your desk. It doesn’tget any smarter than that. Orperhaps it does. ▲

This Palm Pre uses

built-in GPS for

navigation. The device

also includes 8GB of

RAM and a touchscreen

display. It weighs less

than five ounces.

This

BlackBerry

Storm can

utilize

Bluetooth

to connect

to other

devices,

including a

nearby PC

that’s using

a USB

Bluetooth

adapter

such as

the one

pictured.


Are Cell Phones Deadly? The Answer Is Yet To Come

by Blaine Flamig

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome loveshis iPhone. He told Maureen Dowd as muchin her June 25 New York Times op-ed piece.

That didn’t stop him, however, from spearheadingan effort that resulted in the Cell Phone Right-to-Know ordinance, which beginning in February willrequire retailers to post the amount of radiationthat cell phones sold in stores emit.

The law is the first of itskind in the United States, butmore pertaining to cell phonesand the radiation levels theyemit could soon follow. Al-though Maine voters turnedback a bill in March that wouldhave mandated warning labelson cell phones, an Oregon statesenator reportedly plans to in-troduce legislation in 2011 to re-quire retailers to label potentialhealth concerns on packaging.Ohio Congressman DennisKucinich, meanwhile, intendsto introduce national legislationto create a research programdevoted to cell phone healthstudies, update “the decades-old Specific Absorption Rate(SAR), and grant a consumer’sright-to-know by providing forwarning labels on cell phones.”Kucinich has stated, “Con-sumers have a right to knowwhether they are buying thephone with the lowest—or thehighest—level of exposure tocell phone radiation. They alsodeserve to have up-to-date

standards, which are now decades old.”


Naturally, these efforts and others have furtherfueled the question that’s hovered over cell phonesfor years: “Are they safe to use?” Despite numerousstudies involving hundreds of thousands of peopleand millions of dollars, the answer remains a defi-nite “further study is necessary.”

Speaking SAR SAR is the measuring stick by which cell phone

safety is measured. The FCC states SAR is “theamount of radio frequency energy absorbed by thebody when using a mobile phone.” SAR is measuredin W/kg (watts per kilogram), and the FCC limitsU.S. cell phones to an average 1.6W/kg or lessrating, deeming any legally sold cell phone at orbelow the level as safe. SAR ratings for individualphones are available online in such places as manu-facturer Web sites and the FCC site (www.fcc.gov).Newsome’s and others’ contention, however, is thatratings should be easier to find. To date, retailershaven’t been required to list the radiation level a phone emits at the point of sale. Thus, the desirefor labels.

CTIA, the international group representing thewireless industry, sees things differently. FollowingSan Francisco’s ordinance passage, CTIA stated thatinstead of informing consumers, the “ordinance willpotentially mislead consumers with point-of-sale re-quirements suggesting that some phones are ‘safer’than others based on radiofrequency emissions.”CTIA added that “all phones sold legally in the U.S.must comply with the Federal CommunicationsCommission’s safety standards for RF emissions,”thus “all such compliant phones are safe phones asmeasured by these standards.”

To prove it’s serious, CTIA announced it willmove its Enterprise and Applications show from SanFrancisco after hosting it there five of the last sevenyears—bringing in 68,000 exhibitors and roughly $80

“Consumers have a right to know whether they are

buying the phone with the lowest—or the highest—

level of exposure to cell phone radiation.”



million to the city, no less. CTIA notes that this year’sOctober-slated event will be its last in San Francisco“for the foreseeable future.”Additionally, CTIA fileda lawsuit in July in U.S. district court to block en-forcement of the ordinance altogether.

John Walls, CTIA VP of public affairs, stated,“The FCC monitors scientific research on a regularbasis, and its standard for RF exposure is based onrecommended guidelines adopted by U.S. and in-ternational standard-setting bodies. Furthermore,according to the experts at the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration, the available scientific evidenceshows no known health risk due to the RF energyemitted by cell phones. As the FDA states on itsWeb site, ‘the weight of scientific evidence has notlinked cell phones with any health problems.’”

Due Diligence To date, the overriding opinion on cell phone

safety has been they don’t pose a meaningful healththreat, specifically cancer. For example, Live Science(www.livescience.com) wrote in November 2009 that“cell phone makers can point to about 30 studies in-dicating that the devices are not a health risk.” TheAmerican Cancer Society (www.cancer.org) statesvirtually the same, adding that most studies don’tshow “a tendency for the risk of brain tumors to in-crease with increasing cell phone use, which wouldbe expected if cell phone use caused brain tumors.”

Conversely, the ACS and many scientists point outthat although most studies haven’t proven a link,“these studies have had some important limitations,”namely a lack of data covering long usage dura-tions—an important factor, as widespread cell phoneuse is essentially still less than 20 years old, and“when tumors form after a known cancer-causing ex-posure, it usually takes decades for them to develop.”Further, people now use their phones vastly moreand differently (more texting, apps, and so on) than inthe past, phones are physically different, and studieshave largely omitted children and teens (a large usersegment with still-developing physical traits).

One study many hoped would turn out con-crete evidence is the now-controversial Interphonestudy published in May. Launched in 2000, Inter-phone is the longest and most expensive study of itskind, costing roughly $30 million and including10,000-plus adults in 13 countries. Through 2004, sev-eral dozen scientists acting under the umbrella of theWorld Health Organization’s IARC (InternationalAgency for Research on Cancer) conducted researchthat involved adults with glioma- or meningioma-re-lated tumors and those without.

Essentially, the study “found no increased risk ofglioma or meningioma with mobile phone use of

more than 10 years.” However, a slight increase inrisk of brain tumors was found for those reportingthe highest 10% of overall phone usage, “althoughthere was no consistent trend of increasing risk withgreater duration of use.” Researchers, however,“concluded that biases and errors limit the strengthof these conclusions and prevent a causal interpreta-tion.” One such error reportedly centered on someparticipants reporting impossibly high phone usage.Overall, the Interphone researchers con-cluded more study is needed.

To that end, there’s COSMOS ( CohortStudy of Mobile Phone Use and Health;www.ukcosmos.com), a European studyaimed at following 250,000 adults for up to 30years using questionnaire material and phoneand health records to identify possible healthissues linked to long-term mobile phone use.As of early August, COSMOS indicated67,000 people in the UK had registered to participate.The WHO has endorsed the study, which the UK,Imperial College London will oversee.

Sources & Alternatives If you can’t live without your mobile device but

harbor health concerns, preventative measures areavailable to at least partially safeguard yourself, in-cluding checking the Environmental WorkingGroup’s (www.ewg.org) list of 2010 cell phones andcorresponding SAR ratings. EWG also lists the 10Best Phones from major carriers safety-wise and hasa radiation cell phone database that lists more than1,000 phones from major carriers. Elsewhere, to re-duce radiation exposure, sources suggest talking lessand texting more, storing the device away from yourbody, and using a headset or speaker. Additionally,Pong Research (www.pongresearch.com) has casesfor BlackBerrys and iPhones that it claims include the“first technology proven by FCC-certified laborato-ries to reduce the amount of cell phone radiation ab-sorbed by your head.” ▲

Pong Research states

its cases for iPhone and

BlackBerry models re-

duce cell phone radiation

by 60% and hotspot

radiation by 85%.

COSMOS (Cohort

Study of Mobile Phone

Use and Health) is a

European study that

aims to collect data on

250,000 cell phone

users to uncover pos-

sible health risks.


Satisfaction Is Not Always Guaranteed


As smartphone use continues to rise globally,smartphone hardware and software makersare trying different combinations of features

to see which ones will attract the most consumers.Thanks to ChangeWave Research, now they’ll know.

In May, ChangeWave released information aboutwhat smartphone users enjoy most and least abouttheir devices, and which devices have left consumersthe most satisfied. The customer satisfaction surveyreports the preferences of 1,009 recent smartphonepurchasers. It looked at all the different models andoperating systems, as well as common featuresfound on smartphones presently on the market.

Features & Platforms That ProduceAccording to the survey, applications ranked

highest on the list of key “likes” with 14% of respon-dents indicating apps collectively as their most fa-vorite feature. Ease of use and Internet access tied forsecond place with 12%, while integration capabilities,email, and general functionality were each namedthe favorite by 10% of respondents. When askedwhich features they liked least, 12% of consumersnamed battery life, with screen (10%), keyboard (8%),and service provider (8%) following behind.

Apple’s iOS ranked as the most satisfying oper-ating system with 71% of owners saying they are“very satisfied” with their device. Android is righton the heels of the iOS, with 67% of customers verysatisfied. Palm’s webOS was third with 57%, andBlackBerry (37%) and Windows Mobile (24%) camein fourth and fifth, respectively.

ChangeWave’s Andy Golub says customer satis-faction is tied to individual consumers and theirneeds. “Among iPhone owners, apps, features andease of use are the top reasons respondents chosetheir iPhone. In comparison, among BlackBerryowners, the fact that their company provided thephone and email access are the top reasons [for fa-voring their phones]. In addition, the operatingsystem is becoming more and more important in thedecision making progress, and Apple and Androidare currently the clear leaders in this area and havethe most momentum.”

Looking To The FutureSmartphone software and hardware makers are

now faced with the challenge of delivering what thissurvey says customers want, but also leading theway in innovation and creating new demands andsatisfactory features to stay ahead of the pack.

“The biggest challenge for manufacturers is goingto be keeping up with the industry leaders, and put-ting out phones that yield highly satisfied cus-tomers,” Golub says. “For example, the AppleiPhone, HTC Incredible and HTC Evo 4G have someof the best satisfaction ratings in the industry. For theother manufacturers to challenge them, they’ll needhighly impressive devices that meet or exceed con-sumers’ increasingly high expectations.”

With the release of the BlackBerry 6 OS andWindows Mobile 7 on the horizon, Research InMotion and Microsoft will soon have a chance tomake a run at the iOS and Android. ▲

What People Want From Their

Smartphone

Apple iPhoneMotorola

HTCRIM

PalmLG

Samsung

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

Apple’s iPhone leads

the pack in terms of

satisfaction ratings, with

Motorola and HTC

following behind.

The iOS was

found to

satisfy the

most cus-

tomers, with

Android and

webOS next

in line.

SATISFACTION RATING BY MANUFACTURER OF SMART PHONESPURCHASED PAST 6 MONTHS - MAY 2010

MOBILE OPERATING SYSTEM SATISFACTION RATING BY MANUFACTURER - MAY 2010

SOURCE: CHANGEWAVE RESEARCH SOURCE: CHANGEWAVE RESEARCH

iOS(Apple)

Android(Google)

webOS(Palm/HP)

BlackBerryOS (RIM)

WindowsMobile

71% 67%57%

37%24%

77%64%

51%46%45%

40%35%



Y ou probably rely on your smartphone formany things, but with new software andupdates, you can improve the efficiency

and functionality of your mobile phone. We’ll de-tail the most popular, newly released software andkey updates to help you maximize your smart-phone’s ability to help you on the road.

New For AndroidPreviously available for BlackBerry, Palm, and

iPhone, 3Beam Technologies released FlightViewFor Android ($0.99; www.flightview.com) that provides up-to-the-minuteflight information, weather condi-tions, and airline phone numbers.You can track by flight number, de-parture, arrival, route, flight map-ping, speed, and altitude. To shareflight information with friends andfamily, FlightView can automaticallysend updates via text message,email, or social networking Websites. FlightView will inform you ofdelays and gate changes to help youreduce travel stress and help you de-velop a plan of action when flying.

To help you find nearby places, ver-sion 4.4 of Google Maps For Android(free; www.google.com) features aPlaces icon in the App launcher, whichyou can use to search a detailed list of local businesses. For each business,you’ll find a Place Page that offers reviews, photos, and other pertinentinformation, such as hours, prices,

parking, or menu links. The Places feature is location-based, so it bases the results off of your cur-rent location. Google Maps For Android can directyou (using walking or driving directions) to yourchosen destination.

Phone providers have begun to distribute Froyo(aka Android 2.2). The first two phones to get theupdate are Sprint’s Evo 4G and Verizon Wireless’Droid. For businesses, security is one of the biggestupgrades in Froyo, because it includes a device


policy manager that letsprogrammers create ap-plications that can controlthe security features of the Android phone. ITstaff can also enforce password policies for Ex-change content, and Froyogives them the ability toremotely wipe the phone.Business travelers will ap-preciate the built-in taskkiller app that will im-prove battery life.

If your car features aViper remote car starter orsecurity system and youhave an Android phone,you should check out Viper SmartStart (free;www.viper.com) from Directed Electronics—theparent company of Viper. With SmartStart, you’llbe able to start your car’s engine, lock or unlockthe doors, pop the trunk, or arm the securitysystem. Even better, the car will send alerts to your phone if something triggers the security alarm. You also can control multiple cars using Viper SmartStart from one Android phone. TheViperSmartStart app is free; however, you’ll needto pay for a compatible Viper system and Smart-Service plan, which is free the first year and then$29.99 annually.

New For BlackBerryRIM released version 5.0.2 of the BlackBerry

Enterprise Server (price varies by edition; www.blackberry.com), which includes a feature thatlets users separate their personal and corporateinformation. This way, IT staff that needs to lockout business access, such as work email, canblock just the corporate part of your phone ratherthan make the entire phone unusable. It’s idealfor employee-owned BlackBerry users who wantto connect to corporate data on their personalphones, because it reduces the risk of cross-cont-amination from personal BlackBerrys used for

Google Maps For Android

4.4 includes a Places feature

that improves your ability to

search for local businesses.

FlightView lets you track individual

flights, check for delays, and

organize your trip.

For Your SmartphoneThe Latest Software & Updates

by Nathan Lake



corporate purposes. Upgradeswere also made to features inBlackBerry messaging and cal-endar utilities.

RIM announced the AppWorld 2.0 Beta (free; www.blackberry.com/beta), and the updateincludes a number of new fea-tures for payments and services.For example, with a BlackBerryID, you can manage the applica-tions on your phone and transferthem to another phone if you geta new phone. You can also re-download applications thatyou’ve deleted. Similar toAndroid-based phones, AppWorld 2.0 Beta incorporates2Dsquares that you can scan todownload apps. For payment, you can now use acredit card or charge apps to a monthly service billin addition to the PayPal option found in AppWorld 1.0.

Upvise (free; www.upvise.com) isa collaboration app that lets youshare contacts, debts and credits,shopping lists, notebooks (a way toorganize and store information, suchas feedback or ideas), and other datawith your co-workers. For example,you can import and export contactsbetween your BlackBerry’s addressbook and the Upvise contacts app.There’s a business contacts managertool that lets you keep track of who’stalking to whom, and what theythink should be done next. You caneven assign tasks to co-workers oryourself. Ad-vanced features areavailable in a Premium version thatcosts $49 a year per user.

NikkiSoft released version 3.0 ofQuickLaunch ($4.99; www.nikkisoft.com), an app that opens a pop-up

menu that displays shortcuts to your favoriteBlackBerry applications or functions, so you don’t

have to back out of a program or navigate through folders. Theupdate also adds the ability toschedule reboots of your Black-Berry and support for Pandora,Lister, Slacker, and iHeartRa-dio. NikkiSoft also added OperaMini URL launch support, soyou can open Web sites using ei-ther the BlackBerry browser orOpera Mini.

New For iOSApple released iBooks (free;

www.apple.com) to provideereader capabilities for the iPad,iPhone, and iPod touch. iBooksalso functions as a place for you to browse and buy ebooks from

the iBookstore. iBooks lets you preview samples ofbooks before purchase, and you can search by title,author, or genre. When reading a book on a compat-ible device, you can flip pages by tapping the rightor left edge. iBooks lets you search for, bookmark,and highlight sections in a book.

Agendus ($7.99; www.iambic.com) is a personalinformation manager for iPhone and iPod touchowners, and Iambic recently introduced version2.2. New features include the ability to assign iconsto Events and Tasks, making them easier to iden-tify, and you can view that day’s scheduled itemsby shaking your iPhone or iPod touch. Agendus 2.2offers a new interface to provide easier navigationand an improved layout of preferences.

Agile Web Solutions released 1Password Pro($14.99; agilewebsolutions.com), which is designedto securely store all your passwords, digital identi-ties, and credit card information. All you need toremember is a single password. 1PassWord Pro in-tegrates with the Safari browser to provide aLookup In 1Password bookmark to quickly copyusernames and passwords. To hide private data,there’s a freeform notes section that’s locked be-hind a four-digit code and master password; thefreeform notes are ideal for storing information youmight find in your wallet. ▲

Upvise (free; www.upvise.com) is a collaboration app thatlets you share contacts, debts and credits, shopping lists,

notebooks (a way to organize and store information, such as feedback or ideas), and other data with your co-workers.

QuickLaunch lets you quickly switch

between your favorite applications,

BlackBerry utilities, and Web sites.

iBooks lets you turn your

iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad

into an ereader.


Why You’ll Want This App• You can compose email, SMS, and notes via speech

vs. a keyboard

• Facebook and Twitter integration included

• Composing messages with speech is proclaimed to be five

times faster than typing

• The app can automatically detect when you’re done com-

posing a message

• Composed text is automatically saved when you receive

a phone call

NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS’ Dragon Dicta-tion was well-regarded even before ver-sion 2.0’s recent release. Originallylaunched in December 2009, the app,which Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking technology powers, lets youcompose email, SMS messages, and notesvia speech vs. typing from within theapp. Going the speech route, Nuancestates, is five times faster than a key-board, and with version 2.0 you getdirect Facebook and Twitter integra-tion, multilingual support, and animproved interface.

Say, for example, you want topost a Twitter update from a confer-ence to colleagues back in the office.Tap the record icon and start talking.Tap the Done button when you’refinished or enable the app to auto-matically detect when speech hasended. If you receive a call whiledictating a message, the app auto-matically saves what you have to itsclipboard and picks up where youleft off when the call concludes. Tap theicon in the screen’s lower right, select theTwitter option, and your Twitter accountlaunches with your update in the statusbar. The same holds true for the Face-book, email, and SMS options. PressCopy, meanwhile, and composed textcopies to the clipboard.

Available for the iPhone, iPod touch(you provide the mic), and iPad, the iOS4-compliant app includes editing abilitiesyou’ll carry out via composing newspeech or using the provided keyboard.A couple downsides include a lack ofcontacts integration and an inability toembed text in a current SMS thread.Instead, you must treat each text interac-tion as a new message. Reviewers andusers report that these snags are relatedto Apple’s app restrictions.

Dragon Dictation 2.0Typing Is So Passé

Price: Free | Size: 4.4MB | Release Date: July 22, 2010


IPHONE APPS


Salesforce MobileFree • 2.1MB

Stay on top of your Salesforce data with SalesforceMobile (Rel. July 8, 2010) from Salesforce.com. Thefree app is available to all Salesforce.com licensetypes and offers full access to creating and editingCRM information.

To-Do List $0.99 • 4.5MB

Concrete Software’s To-Do List (Rel. June 24,2010) features the ability to make multiple cate-gories of tasks, with drag-and-drop sorting. Youcan set due dates for tasks and have To-Do Listalert you when an item’s deadline is nigh.

Genius ScanFree • 5.5MB

With Genius Scan (Rel. July 13, 2010) fromGrizzly Software, you can scan documents usingyour iPhone’s camera, and then send the imagesvia email or create PDFs. Features include smartpage, perspective, and grayscale detection.

Mocha VNC LiteFree • 1.2MB

Mocha VNC Lite (Rel. June 25, 2010) fromMochaSoft Aps. lets you connect remotely to a PC or Mac OS X computer. The app featuresstandard VNC protocol with encrypted loginand multiple color modes.

Documents To Go$9.99 • 11MB

DataViz’s Documents To Go (Rel. June 24, 2010)lets you create, edit, and view Microsoft Wordand Excel files. You can also view PDFs, Power-Point, iWork, and other files from DataViz.

Citrix ReceiverFree • 35MB

Citrix Receiver (Rel. July 19, 2010) from CitrixSystems lets users access their Windows 7 vir-tual desktops remotely with zoom, pan, click,scroll, and typing navigation. The app requiresthe Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop infrastructure.


IPHONE APPS


Price: Free | Size: 396KB | Released: Nov. 3, 2009

SYNCING BUSINESS DATA between softwareand devices is critical to maintainingtimely communication with co-workersand clients. So, why wouldn’t you usean information management app thatprovides you with a flexible mobile of-fice suite?

eAgency’s Nice Office LITE CRM appturns BlackBerry (or Windows Mobile)devices into a mobile office, an-chored by the Nice Office CRM WebApplication and Microsoft Outlook.With the LITE version, you canmanage email, calendar appoint-ments, contacts, and tasks.

The Auto Journals function savesthe man hours of recording andtransferring account details intoCRM. Nice Office LITE logs thedata automatically, providing a de-tailed record of the contact’s docu-mentation. To avoid carrying paperdocuments with you, use NiceOffice LITE’s storage space for formsand company documents. And whenyou need to share them, you can sendthem from your BlackBerry to a col-league or customer.

Appointments submitted to yourNice Office account online will also syncwith your BlackBerry automatically.Because you can update information inboth locations via the Web, you don’thave to plug in your device to uploadnew data. And you don’t have to con-stantly check multiple email accounts.Instead, you can centralize them onIMAP, which let you receive and sendmessages through each account.

Nice Office CRM Premium ($9.95)cuts out the banner ads and features220MB of extra storage, data encryption,and a customized domain name for youremail address.

Why You’ll Want This App• Share documents wirelessly with co-workers and clients

• Newly added appointments sync automatically, no matter if

the information is added via your phone or the Web

• Execute tasks without forgetting your to-do list

• Keep track of your sales based on workflows and account

status levels

• Stay in control of employee data via automated data flow

to your phone

Nice Office LITESync & Manage Mobile Business Data


BLACKBERRY APPS


miTimesheet$3.99 • 121 KB

miTimesheet (Rel. Dec. 8, 2009), from loopSpin,helps you stay on schedule with projects andyour growing list of clients. You can also addtime sheet data including start time, type ofproject, and total hours.

Activity Log Classic Free • 1895KB

Trying to eliminate wasted moments and menialtasks? Hasan Computing Systems Activity Log(Rel. June 12, 2010) lets you calculate how muchtime you’re spending on true to-do items,Internet news, or Web surfing.

BillableGoal$7.99 • 96KB

A great productivity app for the activity-orientedmobile user, Team G&A Software’s BillableGoal(Rel. Sept. 11, 2009) tracks phone calls and emailsand lets you accurately document the time youspend taking care of your clients.

HandyLogs MoneyFree • 108KB

Tracking travel expenses, mileage, and timesheetscan get complicated. HandyLogs Money fromHandyLogs LLC (Rel. March 26, 2010) keeps yourdata on record with customizable payment lists,client-specific lists, and more.

Dragon for E-Mail Free • 374KB

You can audibly dictate messages on your phone toa client with Dragon for E-mail (Rel. July 15, 2010)by Nuance Communications. While holding downan assigned key, speak the contact’s name and yourmessage; release the key to view a composed email.

MobisoFree • 703KB

Using your free Mobiso account at my.mobiso.com, you can use your BlackBerry to keep tabson business contacts. Mobiso (Rel. July 22, 2010)features a corporate directory manager, contactimporter, and CRM integration.


BLACKBERRY APPS


■ AndroidADDING & DELETING BOOKMARKS

You probably know how to add a bookmark with your Android-based phone: Just launchthe Browser, navigate to a Web site, press the Menu key, tap Bookmarks, and then tap the starAdd icon. But if you’re fickle with your favorites, you can delete any of them at any time bylaunching the Browser, pressing the Menu key, tapping Bookmarks, and then pressing andholding your finger on the Bookmark you want to delete. When the context menu appears,just tap Delete and then OK. If you’re running an older version of Android, you may have tohighlight the bookmark you want to delete, press the Menu key, tap Delete, and then tap OK.

SMARTPHONE

TipsMake Your Mobile

Life Easier

by Andrew Leibman

Delete unused bookmarks to

shorten the list of bookmarks

you have to sift through.



SET UP GOOGLE READERAs a smartphone user, you’re beginning to get

used to finding shortcuts for getting things done andquick ways to access the information you want. RSS(Really Simple Syndication) is the ulti-mate way to get everything that’s newon a particular Web site without actuallyhaving to go to the Web site. To start en-joying RSS feeds, you’ll need to con-figure an RSS reader, and Google Readeris one of the easier ones available. Tostart using it, just launch the Browser,navigate to www.google.com, clickthe More link from the top of thepage, and then select Reader. Youcan also get here by navigating towww.google.com/reader. If prompt-ed, input your Google username andpassword, check the Remember Mebox, and tap Sign In.

On the mobile Google Reader in-terface, tap the double down arrowicon and then tap Add Subscriptionto search for and add RSS feeds. Thefollowing page gives you a searchbox and an extensive list of FeedBundles, which are collections ofRSS feeds that share a topic ortheme, for things as broad as sportsor as specific as Fantasy Football.Tap the Subscribe button below aFeed Bundle to get updates from the collection ofrelated pages, or click the feeds link to the right toview the individual sites that make up the FeedBundle. To subscribe to a specific site’s RSS feed, go

back up to the top andstart typing terms intothe search box. For in-stance, you can searchby topic or input thename of a specific site.Tap Search and thentap the Subscribe iconsthat correspond to thesearch result you want.Once you’ve assembleda respectable numberof feeds, you can signin and return to GoogleReader to see updateditems in the All Itemsfolder.

RSS feeds typically in-clude the first paragraph orso of the new item, so tap

the headline to see the full text version. GoogleReader also lets you share, “like,” and mark itemsas unread using the options at the bottom of the screen.

■ BlackBerryMUSIC SHORTCUTS

Your BlackBerry’sNo. 1 job is to makeyour life easier, andmemorizing a handfulof shortcuts can let you

do even more with your device. The BlackBerryMusic utility supports several shortcuts that let youperform tasks without opening menus and scrollingthrough options.

While playing a song, you can skip to the nextsong by pressing and holding the Volume Upbutton. Skip back a song by pressing and holdingthe Volume Down button.

Press the N key to skip to the next song on theplaylist from the Now Playing screen. Press the Pkey to skip to the previous song while viewing theNow Playing screen. As you might’ve guessed, theMute button mutes the music but does not pause it.If you want to stop the currently playing selection,press the Spacebar.

MORE IMAGE SHORTCUTSLast month we recommended a handful of

image manipulating shortcuts, including how toquickly zoom in (press the R key), zoom out (pressthe C key), rotate the image (press the L key), andreturn to original zoom level (press the Z key).Between then and now, we found a few more imagehandling shortcuts that we failed to mention.

ORGANIZE YOUR CONTACTSThe latest version of Android avail-

able as we went to press, Froyo, other-wise known as Android 2.2, lets users

arrange contacts in different ways. Totry out a few of the new sortingmethods, launch the Contacts app bypressing the Phone icon from the Homescreen and then tapping the Contactstab. Now press the Menu key and tapDisplay Options to see your alternatesorting methods. Tap the checkbox atthe top to view only contacts withphone numbers. Tap Sort List By tochoose First Name or Last Name. TapView Contact Names As and select FirstName First or Last Name First. Whenyou’re finished, tap Done to save yoursettings, or Revert to keep the defaults.

ANDROID

Google Reader is a nice RSS

reader for your Android-

based smartphone.

Android’s latest update lets

you organize your contacts in

a number of different ways.


While viewing an image, you can press the S keyto pan to the left and press the F key to pan to theright. The E key lets you pan upward, and the X keylets you pan down. Press the N key to view the nextimage in the folder and press the P key to view thepervious image in the folder.

CLOCK SHORTCUTSThe Clock application has a few shortcuts of its

own. To access the Clock application,press the Menu key from the Homescreen, select Applications, and thenselect Clock.

Press the B key to enter BedsideMode, which lets you view theBlackBerry’s clock and effec-tively send calls and messages tovoicemail and your inbox, re-spectively. To exit Bedside mode,simply press the Escape key.While in Bedside mode, you canadjust settings by pressing theMenu key and selecting Options.From this menu, scroll down tothe Bedside Mode options to en-able or disable the new messageLED, enable or disable the radio,enable or disable screen dim-ming, and choose the defaultsound profile for Bedside Mode.

While in the Clock utility, youcan press the S key to enter StopwatchMode, which lets you record times andtrack multiple times via the Lap function.

Press the T key while viewing the Clock toaccess the Timer, which lets you set a timerand alarm. To change the Timer’s settings, justpress the Menu key and then select Set Timer.

■ iPhoneRECOVER DELETED VOICE MESSAGES

You know that sinking feeling you getwhen you’ve just deleted something impor-tant? Well if you get it after deleting a voicemessage on your iPhone, you can relax be-cause there’s an easy way to get it back—aslong as you act fast. First, tap the Phone iconfrom the bottom of the iPhone’s Home screen,and then tap the Voicemail icon from thebottom-right corner of the screen. Scroll downthrough your list of voicemails, and if there areany recently deleted voicemails that you canrecover, you’ll see a Deleted Messages icon;tap it to access any recoverable messages. Forevery item you want to recover, tap it and then

tap Undelete. Now, the recovered voicemail shouldappear in your list of current voicemails.

SET YOUR IPHONE WALLPAPERTo add a personal touch to your iPhone, change

the wallpaper. You can use photos synced to youriPhone through iTunes, photos you’ve taken withyour iPhone, or even images you downloadedfrom the Web. To save images from the Web,launch mobile Safari by clicking the icon from thebottom row of icons on your iPhone’s Homescreen, search for an image, and then press andhold your finger on the image until the contextmenu pops up. Tap Save Image to download it toyour Photos folder. Now press the Home button,


Stopwatch Mode can help you

track multiple times.

Put your BlackBerry into Bedside Mode.

IPHONE

DELETE SENT ITEMSBy default, your iPhone saves a copy of every mes-

sage you send out, which after awhile can bog down themail server. To dispatch unnecessary sent items, tap theEmail icon from the Home screen, tap the Mailboxes iconin the upper-left corner to go to the main email menu (ifnot there already), tap Sent Mail, tap Edit from the upper-right corner of the screen, and tap the circle to the left ofevery message you want to delete. Finally, tap the Delete

button at the bottomof the screen. If youhave multiple emailaccounts on youriPhone, you may

find a different SentItems folder for eachemail account, somake sure to repeat

the procedure for every Sent Items folder. If you’re an active MobileMe user, you can also clean

out your Sent Items from your computer via the Web.Launch a browser and navigate to me.com, log in usingyour MobileMe username and password, click the Mailicon, click Sent, and then select the messages you want todelete. You can do this quickly by clicking the first mes-sage in your sent items folder, scrolling to the bottom,holding the Shift key, and then clicking the last message.Click the Delete button from the top of the screen. Now,the next time your iPhone syncs with your MobileMe ac-count, the sent items will be deleted there, too.

Clean up your Sent

Mail folder to reclaim

some space on the

email server.



■ webOSUPDATE YOUR NETWORK SETTINGS & PRL

If you’re using a Palm Pre or Pixi on Sprint’scellular network, you might be able to boostyour signal slightly while roaming in areas withspotty coverage. To do this, tap the Phone icon,tap the application menu via the tab in theupper-left corner of the screen, tap Preferences,and then tap Update Network Settings, whichhomes in on the closest cell tower. Next, tapUpdate PRL (Preferred Roaming List), whichgives your phone the latest list of towers yourphone can connect to while roaming.

■ Windows MobileUSE YOUR PHONE AS AN ALARM CLOCK

Your Windows Mobile phone has a built-inalarm, which you can use as a backup to ensureyou make it to all your important appointments.

If you’re using a Windows Mobile 6.1-based de-vice, press Start, select Settings, and select theSystem tab. Tap Clock & Alarms, tap the checkboxbeside a new alarm (to enable it), type the name ofthe alarm, and designate each day you want thealarm to sound. Tap and use the Up and Down ar-rows to set the time, andthen press the Back buttonto finish. Because youralarms depend on thephone’s internal clock,you’ll want to make sureit’s set to the correct timeand date, as well.

To set alarms usingWindows Mobile 6.5, se-lect Start, Clock & Alarm,and then choose eitherAlarm 1 or Alarm 2. Typein the correct time; scrolldown, and then scrollthrough Everyday, Week-days, Weekend, and Onceto select the desired fre-quency. Scroll down onceto select the Alarm Soundmenu and scroll to the right to choose the sound.Scroll down once more to select the Alarm Type;options include Increasing, Play Sound, Vibrate,Pulsing Vibrate, Multiple Vibrate, Vibrate ThenSound, and Vibrate And Sound. Scroll down againto set the Alarm Volume and scroll to the right toselect 1, 2, 3, 4, or Loud. Select Done, scroll to andselect Date And Time, and then ensure the time isset correctly. ▲

UNDO AUTO CAPITALIZATION

Like most phones, webOS-baseddevices automatically capitalize thefirst letter in a sentence, or more ac-curately, the first letter following aperiod. The problem is, occasionallyyou will type a period in the middleof a sentence for such things as ab-breviations, and in these cases, auto-matic capitalization is unnecessary.When typing, you can undo the autocapitalization by pressing the Back-space key once. To delete the letter al-together, you’ll have to press theBackspace key twice.

WEBOS

You can easily save images from

the Web to use as wallpaper.

Just tap Set Wallpaper to

change your background.

tap the Photos icon, and locate the image you wantto set as the wallpaper and tap it. By default, Webimages are saved in the Camera Roll. Press theArrow icon from the lower-left corner of the screen,select Use As Wallpaper, use gestures to shrink andpan the image as desired, and then tap SetWallpaper; if you’re using iOS 4, the options will bedifferent, offering the three choices Set Lock Screen,Set Home Screen, and Set Both for a given image.

■ SymbianFUN WITH THE SHIFT KEY

The Shift key on your S60 3rd Edition smartphoneis one of the more useful buttons on the keypad.Here are a few of our favorite Shift key-related tips.

The copy-and–paste feature on Symbian phonesis a Shift key function. Start by highlighting lettersand words by pressing and holding the Shift keyand scrolling up, down, left, or right. Once the blockof text you want to copy is highlighted, release theShift key. Next, press and hold the CTRL key, pressthe C key, and then release both keys. Now the textis copied to an unseen clipboard that functions simi-larly to the clipboard on a PC. To paste the text into adocument, press and hold the CTRL key, press the Vkey, and then release them both.

The Shift key is also handy for highlighting, se-lecting, and checking multiple items in folders. Forinstance, if you want to delete multiple voicemailsfrom your phone at once, just access your voicemailinbox, press and hold the Shift key, scroll down toplace a green checkmark beside each voicemail youwant to Delete, press the Options key, select Delete,and then Yes to delete the mass of messages. Thisworks for emails, SMS messages, and most file types,including Notes, songs, podcasts, documents, andmore. Note that the Shift function may not work inthird-party applications, such as Quickoffice.


WEB

Web NotesNew & Updated Sites & Services

by Seth Colaner

YouTube Mobile If there isn’t a YouTube app for your smart-

phone (or there is but you just don’t like it verymuch), you can still enjoy YouTube on your mo-bile device with the newly updated mobile site atm.youtube.com. After the page loads, a simplelist of recent videos greets you, and you canchoose to watch any of those videos in portrait orlandscape mode. The mobile site also features asearch function you can use to dig up additionalinteresting videos.

YouTube Mobile has a dashboard area that in-cludes clickable Home, Browse, Favorites,Playlists, Subscriptions, My Videos, and Settingsicons. This revamped mobile YouTube site is rela-tively full-featured and is great for killing time,checking up on interesting or important newvideos, or doing a bit of research.

The mobile site is missing some core function-ality you’d find on the full site, though. For ex-ample, although you can view your subscriptions,

favorites, and playlists, you can’t add to or organizevideos in those categories. Additionally, you can’tupload new videos via the mobile site. Still, for thepurposes of searching for or viewing previouslysaved videos, the mobile site is a powerful tool.

Quicken Online Folds Into Mint.com When Intuit (www.intuit.com) bought Mint.com

(a provider of online personal finance services) lastyear, the company promised to keep QuickenOnline and Mint going, stating that the programsserve separate but equal roles. It appears, however,that Quicken Online is no more. Intuit is no longeraccepting new user accounts for Quicken Online; in-stead, you’ll be directed to sign up for Mint.com.

Smart Facts In cahoots with Incisive Media and Computing

magazine, IBM released Smart Facts (smart-facts.mobi), a new mobile Web site designed tooffer tips on IBM’s business technology, products,and services. If you enter your email address,


When you’re away from the office, your productivity doesn’t have to stop.The Web is exploding with mobile sites and online services, including officetools, news alerts, entertainment, and any number of other useful items. Justas quickly, it seems, others go under, are bought by larger companies, orsimply evolve into something different. We’ve found some of the freshest andmost useful sites, services, and updates for you to consider.

YouTube’s updated mobile

site (m.youtube.com) has

a simple, clean interface

but also several features

you’d expect from the full

version of the site.

Apple purchased Poly9

and its Poly9 Globe

interactive 3D mapping

tool and moved

the team to its

Cupertino headquarters.



you’ll receive white papers each week from IBM,as well. When you read a fact, scroll to the bottomof the page and answer questions in a short poll.You can also enter your email address and receivethe aforementioned white papers on the subjectmatter addressed in the Smart Fact.

Opera Mobile 10.1 For Symbian S60 Phones

Web browser developer Opera (www.opera.com) has been busy as of late. Opera Mobile 10.1launched for Symbian Series S60 phones and boastsfeatures such as geolocation capabilities, as well asbetter performance. Although still in beta, OperaMobile 10.1 is available for download. Opera alsoreleased Opera Mini 5.1 for Android phones, aswell as Opera 10.60 (the full version of the browser)in the Czech market.

Poly9 Apple recently purchased Poly9Group’s Poly9

(globe.poly9.com) online mapping service andmoved the company’s employees to Cupertino,Calif. The company created the Poly9 Globe, a cross-browser, cross-platform, 3D tool that lets users zoomin to anywhere on the planet. evel-opers have addedPoly9 Globe to a number of services including Skypeand LinkedIn. Although the site is still up, you can’tview pricing plans or order Poly9 Globe. It’s possiblethat Apple will resurrect the tool or incorporate itinto its own software and services packages.

Crocodoc Crocodoc (crocodoc.com) is a new startup

service designed to let users collaborate on doc-uments online without having to send email attach-ments back and forth. With a free crocodoc account,you can view and mark up documents online, col-laborate on documents, and save items as PDFs.With a Pro account (a mere $36 per year), you alsohave the ability to password-protect shared itemsand use SSL encryption. You can also upload PDFs,Word files, and PowerPoint presentations, and savemarked-up items to your computer or to GoogleDocs (all without having to give your Google pass-word to crocodoc).

The service is great for doing some office busi-ness in a pinch when you are on the road or collab-orating with telecommuters. And if you haveproblems, you can engage in a live chat with acrocodoc representative right from the Web site.

Evernote Trunk Many people are familiar with Evernote, the tool

that lets you capture a photo, jot a note, or otherwise

record something of personal importance and or-ganize everything locally and online.

Now, Evernote has Trunk (www.evernote.com),a group of tools that Evernote’s Web site endorsesas things that “make your Evernote experiencemore awesome.” Items in the Trunk are organizedinto Mobile, Desktop & Web, Hardware, Gear, andNotebooks categories.

The Mobile section has dozens of apps for dic-tation, scanning, note-taking, and other tasks. TheDesktop & Web section has software for use on desktop PCs, Web-based tools such as WebClipper (for snagging interesting or impor-tant tidbits from the Web), Twitter integration, and more.

You can also have alook at some of thehardware Evernoterecommends for usewith the application,including a pen thatrecords digitally whatyou write, a couple ofdifferent scanners andprinters, and a WacomBamboo Pen Tablet for digital text anddrawing input.

Scriblink Imagine that you and a handful of colleagues

are hovering over a whiteboard, all collaboratingand discussing the project at hand, each adding a note here or a drawing there. Now, imagine that you and those same colleagues need to tackle that same task, but you are all scattered tothe four corners of the (broadband-connected)Earth; that’s why Scriblink (www.scriblink.com)was created.

Scriblink runs in your Web browser and givesyou a blank whiteboard space where you can work.The whiteboard includes plenty of shapes, colors,text features, and more; you can even upload im-ages to the whiteboard, as well.

You can invite other users to participate on what-ever you’re working on and chat within the applica-tion or speak to one another with computer mics viaVoIP conferencing. When you complete a session,you can print, save, or email the whiteboard.

Businesses can use the Scriblink BusinessSolutions service ($9, $19, or $29 per month, de-pending on the plan you purchase) and customizethe whiteboard to suit your own site, add elementssuch as your company logo, and get a uniqueScriblink URL. ▲

IBM’s Smart Facts site

offers weekly tips on

technology, products,

and services from IBM.

The popular Evernote

has added Trunk, a list

of apps and hardware

that Evernote suggests

will enhance the user

experience.


Audio & Videoby Blaine Flamig

In One Ear & In The Other ■ If you’re a headphones aficionado, there’splenty of new ear candy for the tasting, includinga pair of earbuds that literally puts a twist onthings. First, though, is Phitek’s Blackbox i10 ActiveNoise Cancelling Earphones for iPod ($129; www.blackboxonline.com), which the company states use Active NoiseRejection technology to cut up to 92% of ambient noise. Unlikeother active noise-canceling headphones, however, the i10doesn’t require batteries to power the functionality. Instead, theheadphones sport a 30-pin dock connector at the end of its cordthat hooks directly into an iPod or iPhone to sap juice from thedevice. The result is a pair of cans that’s lighter on your ears andbetter for the environment in the long run.

Shure (www.shure.com), meanwhile, has been a long-timeplayer in the earbuds realm, and its models are highly regardedfor their sound output and notable for their use of Shure’s non-battery-using “sound-isolating” approach toward blocking out

PERSONAL ELECTRONICSTECH FOR HOME & LEISURE

ambient noise. Now, Shure is venturing into the over-the-ear mobile headphone space with theSRH240m+ ($79.99), an Apple-certified model

that integrates a three-button remote/mic unitin the cord to handle volume and calls. Shure says

the 40mm neodymium drivers in each earcup repro-duce full bass, mids, and highs, and in a nice bit of engineering,the ear pads are replaceable.

Finally, we bring you Swedish export AIAIAI’s Swirl 2.0earbuds (www.aiaiai.dk/stockistsnorthamerica), which admit-tedly won’t meet everyone’s fashion criteria but are almostguaranteed to draw attention. Designed by Kilo Design, theSwirl purposely shows off an industrial look that also housesdrivers that AIAIAI states C4 Studios precision tunes. Mostnotable, however, is the Y-shaped unit and twisted-cord ap-proach that the earbuds utilize to prevent tangling. Trans-parent, purple, orange, black, and white/blue/red options areavailable for roughly $70 each.

Scosche Runs Its (Motor)MOUTH■ Apparently, one motor-mouth wasn’tenough for Scosche (www.scosche.com). Thus, say hello to the company’snewest bigmouth, the motorMOUTH II($79.99), which officially goes by theBTAXS model name and is now avail-able for preorder. After plugging theMMII in to your vehicle’s Auxiliaryinput and pairing it with your mobiledevice via Bluetooth, the MMII gives

you hands-free phoneabilities via an oversizemicrophone housed atits front and A2DPmusic streaming. Bothfunctions play throughthe vehicle’s speakers. One-touch voicedialing is also supported, and DSP echocancellation is built in to enhance con-versations. Scosche throws in an audio

splitter that allows for at-taching an MP3 player toswitch between tunes andcalls. Further, you get anextended auxiliary cablein the package that has a

suction cup piece attached to situate theMMII closer to your mouth if necessary.Scosche includes a USB charging cableand car charger, as well.


Grace Digital Puts The Stereo In Internet Radios ■ Over the past few years, Grace Digital Audio (www.gracedigitalaudio.com) has builtan impressive line of Internet radios. The company’s new Tuner Wireless Radio & MediaPlayer ($219.99) does nothing to hurt the cause. Resembling a stereo tuner from days ofold, the device should nicely integrate into your current stereo setup while proceedingto grant access to more than 50,000 Internet radio stations, including from the likes of Pandora, NPR, CBS Radio, iheartradio, Sirius, and Live365 via Ethernet and Wi-Fi(802.11g) connection options. A remote control isincluded, but you can also download and useGrace Digital’s free Remote Control App fromthe iTunes App Store and control the systemusing your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Further,if the prospect of streaming tunes from your per-sonal PC-stored audio library sounds enticing,you can do that, too. The tuner includes a four-line LCD screen, RCA and Toslink and Coax dig-ital outputs, 10 presets, a five-function alarmclock, FM receiver, stereo headphone jack, USBport, and dual-band equalizer.

Panasonic Enters TheMinicamcorder Fray■ Add Panasonic (www.panasonic.com) to the listof companies now selling a minicamcorder.Whether you choose the HM-TA1 ($169.95) in red,dark grey, or purple, you’re getting an HD-capable(1,920 x 1,080) model small enough (4.09 x 2.09 x0.70 inches [HxWxD]) to stow in a pocket and ableto upload videos to YouTube and Facebook via in-tegrated HD Writer PE 1.0 software. Also on tapare various color effects, 4X digital zoom, imagestabilization technology, onboard editing abilities(cut still images out from video, for example), anda built-in LED light that helps illuminate dim settings. Video records as MPEG-4 files and storesto SDXC, SDHC, and SD memory cards while a 2-inch LCD helps frame what you’re shooting.Conveniently, the camcorder doubles as a Webcam when connected to a notebook, works withSkype, and houses a USB connector so you don’tneed to bring along your own cable.

Konnet Gets Funky With Video-Out ■ Not all iPhone/iPod docks are created equal. Take, for example,Konnet Technology’s Reflex Dock Pro ($49.99; www.konnetonline.com), which resembles a funky piece of furniture you might find onexhibit in the MoMA. The Reflex Doc Pro integrates a video-out porton its backside, so you can output those episodes of “Mad Men” storedon your iPhone to the TV in the corner of your office when no one islooking. Further, the company says the dock’s Advanced SoundReflection design will improve the iPhone’s speaker quality and micreception. Elsewhere, a built-in mini-USB port means you can chargeyour iPhone/iPod and move files to it from a PC without taking it outof the Reflex Dock Pro.

SugarSync Streams To BlackBerrys; Adidas Gets Fit■ As SugarSync states, “with all the hype around the iPhone 4 and the iPadlately (not to mention Android), many companies forget our BlackBerry friends.Not SugarSync.” Thus, the company recently released a newly updated versionof its BlackBerry-based mobile app in the BlackBerry App World that supportsstreaming music you upload to SugarSync’s cloud-based storage to your smart-phone. An ability to work in the background means you can carry on with busi-ness while listening to tunes. Further, the app plays a complete album throughvs. one track at a time. SugarSync storage plans start at $4.99 monthly for 30GBof space; that’s enough to house 3,000documents, 6,000 photos, and 6,000songs, the company says. SugarSyncalso has mobile apps for Apple,Android, and Windows Mobile (al-though in beta) devices.

Elsewhere on the app front, if you’vebeen looking for a personal trainer, yoursearch may be over. Adidas’ miCoachapp “uses GPS and real-time voicecoaching” via your Apple iPhone (3G,3GS, and 4) or BlackBerry (select Curveand Bold models) device “to pace youthrough easy to understand workoutzones as you run.” Training plans areavailable for various sports, with datafrom your workouts syncing to your account at miCoach.com where you canview saved analysis. Additionally, the app will shoot daily workout plans andfeedback to your mobile device, among other things. Run yourself towww.adidas.com/us/micoach for more details on the app, as well as compatibleAdidas gear, sharing your workouts via Facebook, and more.


Reflex Dock Pro


D on’t let your love of music erase yourability to hear it. Like buckling up and re-membering to brush your teeth, you know

darned well that you’re not supposed to crankyour MP3 player up loud enough to hurt yourhearing. Let’s cover the what and the why, andthen move on to the how—as in how to safeguardwhat remains of your hearing.

Eh?“Temporary changes in hearing sensitivity

measured by audiometry and otoacousticemissions indicate the potential harmful ef-fects of listening to an MP3 player.” So says an

abstract of a study in the June edition ofArchives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery(archotol.ama-assn.org). “Further research is

needed to evaluate the long-term risk of cu-mulative noise exposure on the auditorysystem of adolescents and adults.”

According to the National Institute forOccupational Safety and Health (www.cdc.gov

/niosh), exposure to sounds louder than 85dBA(deciBels on a scale weighted with characteristicsof human hearing) for eight hours a day will prob-ably result in hearing loss. MP3 players can easilyexceed that threshold by a wide margin. Themechanism in this scenario is damage to so-calledhair cells deep in the inner ear, which are criticalto our sensitivity to sound.

There’s a time factor involved, too. Noise louderthan 85dBA can hurt your hearing in much lesstime, especially if a very loud sound occurs closeto your ear.

Even quieter sounds can eat away at yourhearing under prolonged or constant exposure.For example, there’s evidence that the hum ofcomputer fans, air conditioning, and other officeambience can give longtime employees a deadspot, or noise notch, in the range of frequencies

they can hear. Should a co-worker ’s voice bepitched about the same as your personal noisenotch, you’ll think he’s mumbling at you. Thenoise level in a typical factory is obviously clam-orous enough to mandate protective measuressuch as earplugs for floor personnel, and yet low-level office hum often goes without remark de-spite its cumulative, detrimental effects.

There’s more, of course. As we age, we natu-rally and gradually lose the ability to hear higherfrequencies. Those of us who habitually crank upthe music or volume on movies accelerate thisprocess. It’s like someone mowing his lawn withearbuds instead of earplugs. Instead of mitigatingthe harmful noise of the mower, he compounds thedamage to his ears by adding MP3s turned uploud enough to hear over all the racket.

ShhhhObviously, the No. 1 thing to do to preserve

your remaining hearing is to turn down the volumeto your earbuds or headphones. If you have tostrain to hear talk radio or song lyrics at low gain,try increasing the treble or changing sound settings.

Better yet, use high-quality headphones thatminimize the hubbub around you, and thus let youhear your audio at a non-harmful volume level.Sound-isolating models passively block audioleakage through acoustic materials and tight-fittingdesign, while ‘phones with noise-cancelation tech-nology actively phase out external sounds.

Oh, and about those indistinct lyrics? Next time,Google ‘em. ▲


ProtectYourHearingTurn Down Those MP3s

by Marty Sems

The sound-isolating Image S4 Headphones from

Klipsch ($79.99; www.klipsch.com) seal out the world

so you can enjoy your tunes at a sane level of volume.

Able Planet (www

.ableplanet.com)

brings extensive

experience in hearing

aid technology to its

lines of headphones

and earbuds. The

Clear Harmony Active

Noise Canceling

Headphones with

Linx Audio and SRS

retails for $129.99.


A s soon as you purchase any electronic de-vice, it quickly becomes susceptible to life’saccidents. But, when you drop your laptop

or spill coffee on your digital camera, you don’thave to worry that the devices will be destroyed.Following are some high-impact cases that can pro-tect your electronics from a multitude of mishaps.

Aquapac 420 Camera Case withHard Lens. With the Aquapac 420

Camera Case with Hard Lens($55; www.aquapac.net) from

Aquapac International,you can protect yourdigital camera fromunwanted liquids and

particles. This case canfloat, is made from UV-stabilized TPU materialto shield the devicefrom sunlight, and is equipped with ahard lens that letsyou produce high-quality photos. The

Aquapac 420 is bestfit for smaller cameras.

OtterBox 9000. You can keepyour smaller electronics, such ascell phones, safe and dry with theOtterBox 9000 ($22.49; www.otterbox.com). This case can with-stand water submersion up to

100 feet, thus protecting a device from that ac-cidental dive into the lake. The crushproofOtterBox 9000 weighs less than a pound, andit is airtight to prevent unwanted materialsfrom destroying its contents. The case fits easily

into a purse or suitcase, so you can transport yourdevices without worry.

Pelican 1495 Laptop Computer Protector.Protect your laptop from drops, spills, and in-truders with the Pelican 1495 ($134.95, www.pelican-case.com). This foam-embedded carrying caseprotects your laptop from scratches and features athree-dial combination lock. The Pelican 1495 ismade to handle all weather conditions, rangingfrom -10 degrees Fahrenheit to 210 degrees F. Theincluded waterproof, crushproof, and corrosion-proof features will ensure the safety of your docu-ments and your laptop.

ToughCase. Your iPhone or iPod touch undoubt-edly contains a lot of information, so protecting themis more than necessary. Magellan’sToughCase ($179.99, www.magellangps.com) will en-sure the safety of your devicewith its shockproof designand ability to keep waterand other elements out, all while keeping yourelectronics fully functionalwhen in the case. This casealso includes an internalbattery. ▲


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WithstandHigh-ImpactAccidentsWith These Durable Cases For Your Electronic Devices by Amanda Bouc


Connection Problems

Ping ItAll Internet or network hosts, computers,

routers, and other Internet-enabled devices use anIP address (a string of four groups of numbers sep-arated by periods, such as 233.122.0.2) to uniquelyidentify themselves. You may have used thisnumber to access a network login. This can also bea Web address (called a host name) or DNS name toaccess a login. IP addresses and DNS names are in-terchangeable. With either, a ping command candetermine whether the computer and network canexchange basic data.

From the command line window, type ping fol-lowed by a space and the IP address or DNS name(examples would be ping 167.154.16.27 or pingwww.corporatenetwork.com). Press ENTER. If you

see a time-out message, wait a few seconds. Atime-out alert appears if the reply takes longerthan a second.

If the response indicates the data packets weresent and received, your machine is exchangingdata with the network address. You can skip to“Get Connected” to set up a dedicated connectionand edit settings. If you have been accessing thesite via a Web address, go to “Look It Up” beforeheading to “Get Connected.”

If you receive a response that contains somethingabout a nonexistent domain, you are likely using thewrong IP address or DNS name to log in. Double-check the address and try to connect normally. (Ifyou are logging in with an IP address, skip to “LookIt Up” for a quick way to check its validity.)

BUSINESS TRAVEL 911ON-THE-GO TECH SUPPORT

Solve Remote Network

Resolving remote network issues often goes beyond common fixes you may haveused to fix your Internet connection. Fortunately, you can quickly eliminate anumber of possibilities using a CLI (command-line interface; a text-based com-mand window that is a holdover from the early days of computing), which is stillavailable in Windows XP/Vista/7.

All these suggestions assume that the network is up and operating. It also as-sumes you are connected to the Internet. Before you proceed, you’ll need to knowhow to open the CLI window. In WinXP, click Start, select Run, type CMD in theOpen field, and press ENTER. In Vista/Win7, click the Start button and type CMDinto the Start Search field, and then click the CMD icon that appears in the results.



If you receive a transmission error, the ping datais not leaving your PC. Your firewall is likelyblocking you from accessing the network. You’llwant to add the site to your firewall as an allowedexception (refer to your firewall’s help documenta-tion for instructions) and try again.

If you receive a response after an excessivenumber of time-outs, the network’s response toyour connection may be slow and your browser orother network access utility may be giving up be-fore it connects. Lengthen the response time byadding a -t switch (ping -t followed by the IP ad-dress or DNS name). This will ping the address in-definitely. After a dozen pings, press CTRL-Break toview the packet data. If there is no response yet,continue awhile longer, and then press CTRL-C. Ifyou never get a response or the number of pings toget a response is considerable, skip to “Trace theRoute” for assistance.

If you get a message saying the ping requestcould not find the host or the response indicatesthe number of data packets sent is zero, the net-work is not acknowledging your ping. Changes tothe network or configuration may now be pre-venting access. Contact the network administratorfor further assistance.

Look It UpYou can look up a DNS name from an IP address

and vice versa. From the command line window,type nslookup followed by a space and either theDNS name or the IP address and press ENTER.

Write down the DNS name and numeric se-quence you see in the lines that begin with Name:and Address: (ignore aliases). If you are checkingan IP address, the DNS name should help confirmit. If you recognize nothing, contact the networkadministrator to confirm the IP address.

If you are using a DNS name, Windows may behaving a problem with DNS name resolution (trans-lating the DNS name into an IP address). Performtwo pings from the same command line window,first using the DNS name you wrote down and thenusing the IP address. Compare the access times andpackets you sent and received. If there is a big dif-ference in behaviors pinging the DNS name vs. theIP address, skip to “Get Connected.”

Trace The Ro uteTracing the path data packets take going to

the network will help pinpoint problems. From thecommand line window, type tracert followedby a space and the DNS name or IP address, andpress ENTER. Lines will appear with access timesand IP addresses. The final few hops should show

domain names—the last one being your network.This is the route—and the time the trip is taking—between nodes on the Internet.

If an early hop takes a long time or causesthe trace to hang (a flood of time-outs), contactyour ISP. If you reach many hops before thingsgo awry, the problem may be with a gatewayor router at or near the location of the remotenetwork. Check with the network adminis-trator for assistance.

Get ConnectedSetting up a direct VPN connection gives you a

dedicated login interface and lets you avert DNS is-sues. To set up the connection in WinXP, selectControl Panel on the Start menu. Click NetworkAnd Internet Connections and then select Create A Connection To The Network At YourWorkplace. In Vista/Win7, click Control Panelon the Start menu and click Network AndInternet (in Category view), then Network AndSharing Center. Click Set Up A Connection OrNetwork (Vista) or Set Up A New ConnectionOr Network under Change Your NetworkSettings (Win7). Select Connect To A Workplace,then Use My Internet Connection. (Vista/Win7offers smart card as a connection option. Wewon’t discuss that here.)

Select Virtual Private Network Connection,name the connection, and provide the host(DNS) name or IP address. If you are asked ifyou would like to dial a connection, click No (un-less you only have dial-up Internet) and clickFinish (WinXP) or Connect (Vista/Win7). The OS will attempt to connect you without configuringany settings. If this solution does not work, or ifyou are using WinXP, proceed with the fol-lowing instructions.

Return to the Network Connections windowin WinXP or the Network and Sharing Center inVista/Win7 and click the option to manage net-work connections. Right-click your VPN net-work icon and select Properties. Next, click theNetworking tab, click Internet Protocol (inVista/Win7, you’ll need to do this for TCP/IP V4and TCP/IP V6), and click Properties. Overrideautomatic configuration and provide the exact IPaddress and DNS names for the network. Exitthe Properties interface, right-click the VPN icon,and click Connect. Provide your login informa-tion if prompted.

If you cannot connect, Windows can providesome assistance, but you may need more advancedconfiguration information. Contact the network ad-ministrator for detailed information. ▲

Obtaining the

DNS name and IP

address and comparing

access times between

the two can determine

whether Windows is

experiencing DNS

resolution issues.

The point at which

a route trace hangs

can help you

determine where

your request for

network attention is

being disrupted.

If you can send data

packets but none are

returned, it generally

means the network is

refusing to acknowledge

your request.


Explore Various ScenariosOne of the most powerful things you can do

with Excel is play around with worksheet values toanswer “what-if” questions. What if sales decreaseby 6% next year? What if the cost of goods sold in-creases by 3%?

To calculate multiple outcomes such as these,you can use Excel’s Scenario Manager. This toolenables you to specify which data cells you wantto change and then quickly view the result in the

worksheet.To use the Scenario Manager, select the

cells you want to include in the scenarioand then choose Tools and Scenarios. In theScenario Manager dialog box, click Add todisplay the Add Scenario dialog box. Type

a name (such as Status Quo, Worst Case, or BestCase) in the Scenario Name text box and thenspecify which cells you want to change. Click OKand then enter a new value for each changing(variable) cell in the Scenario Values dialog box.Click OK, and the Scenario Manager dialog boxwill redisplay with the new scenario shown on thelist. Complete the same steps for each scenario youwant to create. Finally, to switch between the sce-narios, click each one’s name in the ScenarioManager dialog box and view the change directlyon your worksheet.

Select Cells By Data TypeYou can quickly locate all the cells in a work-

sheet that include a particular type of data, such asthose that include comments or formulas. For ex-ample, if you want to identify cells in a selectedrange that contain formulas, press CTRL-[ (opening


You appreciate the fact that Excel is a power-packed program, but you’re also a pro-fessional on the go, and, frankly, you don’t have a lot of time to learn the finerpoints of the software. No sweat. In this short article, we’ll give you some greatideas of how to kick up your Excel skills a notch without spending a lot of timedoing so.

CRUNCHExcel In A

You can use Excel’s Scenario Manager to help

you make sound business decisions.



bracket); to find and select all cells with comments,press CTRL-SHIFT-O.

You can also highlight all the cells in a rangethat include objects, such as clip art, charts, or pic-tures. This helps you quickly identify all the itemsso that you can then apply actions to them, such asresizing, moving, formatting, or grouping them. Toselect all of a worksheet’s objects, click one of themand then press CTRL-SHIFT-Spacebar.

Find Any Type Of DataYou’ve probably noticed that it doesn’t take

long for a business worksheet to quickly mush-room in size, making it almost impossible to finddata by simply scrolling. This is especially truewhen you’re working on a laptop with a relativelysmall screen. It’s also an inefficient way to find,let’s say, one customer’s name among several hun-dred. But help is at hand in the form of Excel’sFind command.

To use this command, first select the range inwhich you want to look for the data (or select asingle cell if you want Excel to search through theentire worksheet). Choose Edit and then Find orsimply press CTRL-F to open the Find And Replacedialog box. Enter the text that you want to locate,and then click Find Next to highlight the next cellwith your data; click Find All to display a list of cellreferences that contain the search text.

By default, Find searches through cells withvalues, such as text or numbers. But you can alsolocate information buried in worksheet comments,even if it is not displayed. To do this, click the LookIn drop-down arrow in the Find And Replace di-alog box and then choose Comments from the list.

Add CommentsYou can easily add com-

ments to an Excel work-sheet, either for your ownfuture reference or to shareyour ideas with others. Toadd these notations, right-click in the cell where youwant to place the com-ment and then chooseInsert Comment. Typeyour notes in the com-ment box and then clickoutside of it.

If necessary, you can edit the contents of aComment by right-clicking the cell, selecting EditComment, and then modifying the text as youwould in a word processor. You can also hide,show, or delete a comment by right-clicking the cell

that contains the Comment and then choosing theappropriate command on the displayed list.

Replace Data & FormulasIn addition to helping you locate data, Excel can

help you rapidly replace formulas, numbers, or textwith other data. For example, you can update aname that appears multiple times in a worksheet. Todo this, choose Edit and then Replace or pressCTRL-H. In the Find And Replace dialog box, enterdata in the Find What and Replace With fields. ClickFind Next, decide if you want to replace the selectedoccurrence, and then choose Replace. (If you’refeeling especially brave, you can instead chooseReplace All without looking at each occurrence.)

Calculate Values On The FlyYou can quickly calculate and display informa-

tion about a selected group of values on Excel’sstatus bar, which is located at the bottom of eachworksheet. To do this, select the cells you want toadd and then view the total on the status bar. Butdon’t stop there. You can also display a wealth ofother information about a selection by right-clicking the status bar and then choosing functionssuch as AVERAGE, MIN (minimum), or MAX(maximum) on the pop-up menu.

Take A ShortcutYou’re probably already familiar with many basic

Excel keyboard shortcuts, especially when you takeyour laptop on the road and don’t want to use themouse. However, there are some little-known short-cuts that can help you work even more efficiently inselecting ranges and moving around a worksheet.

For example, you canquickly select an entiredata region (a range ofdata cells bordered byempty cells) by holdingdown CTRL-SHIFT-* (as-terisk). Another way to se-lect a data range is to placeyour cell pointer in the

range and then pressCTRL-A; press CTRL-Aa second time to selectthe entire worksheet.You can also pressCTRL-Spacebar to select

the column where your cell pointer is located. Another helpful keyboard shortcut is to press

END followed by an Up, Down, Left, or Rightarrow key to efficiently move the cell pointer to theoutermost edge of a data range. ▲

The EssentialFunctions

Although Excel includesmore than 300 functions,most business profes-sionals rely heavily on ahandful of essential onesand then learn additionalfunctions as needs arise.We’ve compiled a list ofsome of the most-usedfunctions and a brief explanation of their purpose. If you needmore guidance usingthese functions, consultExcel’s Help feature.

SUMTotals the values in arange.

AVERAGEAverages the numbers ina range.

MAXReturns the maximumvalue in a selected rangeor set of numbers.

MINReturns the minimumvalue in a selected rangeor set of numbers.

COUNTReturns the number ofcells that contain data ina range, such as a list ofinventory items.

DATEReturns the serialnumber associated witha specific date. This func-tion is often used to cal-culate the number ofdays between two dates.

IFReturns one value if aspecified condition is“true,” a different value ifthe condition is “false.”Helps you create various“what-if” scenarios andlogically evaluate data.

ROUNDRounds values to a specific number of places.

You can use comments to jot down electronic

notes on your worksheet.


PINCHThe Ribbon

As in other Office 2007 applications, in Power-Point 2007, the Ribbon replaces the menu bar used

in previous versions. The Rib-bon’s purpose is to keep similarcommands grouped under eachtabbed heading. Every time youclick a tab, such as Insert or De-sign, the commands and buttons

logically related to that topic appear. Even thoughthis is an efficient setup, it may take some gettingused to if you’re accustomed to using PowerPoint2003. It may help to look at the features and com-mands under each categorized tab like the sub-menus in the older versions of PowerPoint, onlysomewhat more intuitive.

If the interface is too cluttered for your taste,or if you simply want more room to work on-screen, you can minimize the Ribbon when not in use. To do this, right-click any Ribbon tab and choose Minimize The Ribbon in the con-text menu. To restore tab options, right-click anyRibbon tab again and deselect Minimize The


PowerPoint In A

Packing a punch during live presentations is a great way to advance your career orgrow your small business. However, if you’re like most mobile professionals, youprobably don’t have a whole lot of time to explore Microsoft Office PowerPoint2007’s features. Never fear. We explore a few tips and tricks that will help you getup-to-speed and fine-tune your PowerPoint skills.

You can minimize the Ribbon

by right-clicking it and selecting

Minimize The Ribbon. Deselect

the option to restore the Ribbon.



Ribbon. Alternately, you can double-click any ac-tive tab to minimize the Ribbon. When you wanttemporary access to Ribbon options, click the tabthat has the commands and features you need. Torestore the Ribbon again, you can double-clickany tab. And if you prefer to use your keyboardto toggle between the Ribbon’s minimized and re-stored states, press CTRL-F1.

Set Slide TransitionsYou can preview slide transitions even while

you’re working with a slide in Normal view. Thislets you see a transition style before decidingwhether to apply it to your slide.

To do this, display the slide in Normal view, andthen click the Animations tab. Rest your mousepointer over the animation styles shown in theTransition To This Slide section. When you find atransition you like, click it, and PowerPoint appliesthe transition to your slide.

If you don’t care for the initial styles on theRibbon, you can use the up or down scroll arrowsat the right of the last transition effect to view addi-tional options. Each time you click the scroll arrow,for example, Power-Point displays another row ofslide animations.

In addition to setting an animation for the slide, you can choose a sound to play during theslide transition. With the Animations tab still se-lected, click the Transition Sound drop-down menuto display a list of animation sounds. Rest yourmouse pointer on any of the sound effects on thelist, and PowerPoint will play the sound.

You can also set the speed at which the animationdisplays by clicking the Transition Speed drop-downmenu and then choosing Slow, Medium, or Fast.

Change Your ViewJust as in previous PowerPoint versions, Power-

Point 2007 includes a variety of views, each

designed to help you work with your presentation in a specific manner. To quickly change the view, you can click the Normal, Slide Sorter, or Slide Show buttons located in the lower-right corner of thework area.

PowerPoint also includes other built-in meth-ods for changing slide view. You can double-clicka slide in Slide Sorter view to quickly display it

in Normal view, and you can press F5 tolaunch a slideshow. To access more viewoptions—maybe you want to use the NotesPage view, turn on the ruler, or see yourslide in grayscale—just click the View tabon the Ribbon.

By default, PowerPoint presentations openin Normal view. However, you can choose another view, such as the Slide Sorter or Slide Show, as the default view. Click the Mi-crosoft Office button and choose PowerPointOptions. Click Advanced in the PowerPointOptions dialog box. Next, click the Open

All Documents Using This View button in theDisplay section and then choose a view from theOpen All menu under Display. Click OK to close thedialog box.

Use Zoom EffectivelyYou can magnify or shrink the display of your

slide in Normal view by clicking the Zoom Out orZoom In buttons (indicated by the minus and plussigns, respectively, at the lower-right corner of thework area). Each click of your mouse decreases orincreases the slide’s display by 10%, depending onthe zoom button you select, of course. For morecontrol over the zoom level, you can drag theZoom slider to achieve the desired view. To redis-play the entire slide, click the Fit Slide To CurrentWindow button next to the Zoom In button.

Display OptionsIf you’re itching to jazz up your PowerPoint’s

interface, you can control and customize its lookon your display. For example, to change the bluecolor scheme, simply click the Microsoft Officebutton, click PowerPoint Options, and selectPopular in the PowerPoint Options dialog box.Next, click the Color Scheme drop-down menuand choose Silver or Black for the interface. ClickOK to accept the change.

For more display settings, click Advanced in thePowerPoint Options dialog box and select from theoptions in the Display area. You can choose toshow all Windows in the Taskbar, display shortcutkeys in the ScreenTips, or turn the vertical ruler onor off. Click OK when you finish. ▲

Quick AccessToolbar

▲ PowerPoint 2007 also has a Quick AccessToolbar, which includestools that are indepen-dent from the Ribbon.You can move or cus-tomize this toolbar tobetter fit your work style.

▲ By default, the Quick Access Tool-bar is located in theupper-left corner ofPowerPoint, to the rightof the round MicrosoftOffice button. If you’dprefer to move thistoolbar closer to yourwork area, click thedown arrow at the rightof the toolbar to accessthe Customize QuickAccess Toolbar menu,and then choose ShowBelow The Ribbon. If you decide later that thenew location encroachestoo much into your workarea, open the menuagain and choose ShowAbove The Ribbon.

▲ You can also addcommands to the QuickAccess Toolbar by open-ing the drop-down menuand choosing a com-mand, such as Spelling.Because many of thecommands on this menuare toggles, you can re-move a command fromthe toolbar simply bydeselecting any optionyou don’t want.

▲ If the command you want doesn’t ap-pear on the list, choosethe More Commandsoption to open thePowerPoint Options dialog box. Select thecommand you wantfrom the list at the left,click the Add button,and then click OK.

Click the Animations tab to view slide transitions and

special effects.


SmartphoneSoft Reset

All phones have a soft reset function, which is similar to restarting your computer. Bewarethat performing a soft reset will cause you to loseany data that you don’t have saved, but you will retain information previously stored on your smartphone.

T-Mobile G1. With the G1 powered off, holdthe Home and End keys simultaneously. When yousee a triangle with an exclamation point, press theHome and Back keys.

Motorola Backflip. Power the phone off.Remove and reinsert the battery, and then powerthe phone back on.

Android (Other). All remaining Androidmodels use a simple power cycle to perform a soft reset. Just turn the phone off and then back on again.

BlackBerry (QWERTY keyboard). Press andhold the ALT-CAP-Delete key combination. Thedisplay goes black for a second, and yourBlackBerry resets.

BlackBerry (SureType keyboard). Press theALT-CAP and Right Shift-Delete keys. When thescreen goes blank, release the keys.

BlackBerry (touchscreen). Turn the Black-Berry off and remove the battery for at least 30seconds. Reinstall the battery and turn the de-vice back on.

HTC FUZE, Touch Cruise, Touch Diamond.Insert the tip of the phone’s stylus into the resethole on the bottom of the device.

HTC HD2, Touch Pro, Touch Pro2. Use a smallobject, such as a toothpick or stylus, to press thereset button, located below the battery and SIMcard slot.

iPhone (all models). Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button on the top of the iPhone and theHome button. Continue to hold both buttons (ap-proximately 10 seconds) until the screen goesblank. You will see the white Apple logo as theiPhone reboots.

Nokia (all models). Power the phone off andremove the battery for 30 seconds. Reinstall thebattery and power the phone on. Alternately, youcan enter the code *#7380# and select Yes.

Palm Pre. If the phone’s menus are still active, se-lect Device Info, Reset Options, and then select SoftReset. If the Palm Pre is locked up or frozen, hold thepower button and cycle the ringer button on and offthree times. If that doesn’t work, press and hold theOrange, Sym, and R keys until the device reboots.Turn the phone off, remove the battery for 10 sec-onds, reinstall the battery, and power the phone up.

Palm Centro and Treo. Press and hold thePower/End key. Remove the battery from thephone for 30 seconds and then reinstall the batteryand power on your phone.


Emergency CPR Techniques

Revive A Dead

What should you do when your smartphone decides to play dead? Resist the urge tothrow it against the nearest wall and try one of these techniques instead.



All other smartphones. You can generally per-form a soft reset by powering the phone off, re-moving the battery for 30 seconds, and poweringthe phone back on.

Hard Reset A hard reset is a last-ditch option that returns

your phone to its factory settings, which meansyou will lose all the data and installed appli-cations. Before performing a hard reset, you willwant to remove the memory card from yourphone; that way, you can recover data from the card later.

Android (all models with functioning menusystems). One of the following menu-based sys-tems for performing a hard reset should work, de-pending on the phone and version of Android.

Open the application menu. Tap Settings, SDand Card Storage, Factory Data Reset, and followthe on-screen instructions.

From the Home screen, tap Menu, Settings,Privacy, and Factory Data Reset, and then followthe on-screen instructions.

From the Home screen, tap Menu, Settings,Security, and Factory Data Reset, and then followthe on-screen instructions.

When the menu system isn’t functional, followthese phone-specific options to perform a hard reset.

Google Nexus One. Turn your phone off. Next,hold the Volume Down button and press the Power button. Use the Volume Down button to se-lect Clear Storage from the list of options. Press the Power button and confirm your selection bypressing the Volume Up button.

T-Mobile G1. With the G1 powered off, press andhold the Home-End keys until you see a trianglewith an exclamation point. Open the QWERTY key-board and press ALT-W.

Motorola Droid. Turn the phone off. Press andhold the Power-X keys to force the phone into re-covery mode. Next, press and hold the Volume Up-Camera key to display the recovery menu. SelectWipe Data/Factory Reset from the menu, and thenselect Reboot Phone.

Motorola Backflip. Power the phone off. Pressand hold the Power and Camera buttons. Whenthe phone turns on, you need to release thePower button but continue to hold the camerabutton until prompted to release it. Next, pressthe Volume Down button. After 15 seconds, ayellow triangle with an exclamation point willappear. With your phone closed, tap the bottom-right corner of the display, and select WipeData/Factory Reset. Press OK and follow the on-screen instructions.

BlackBerry (all models). Remove the batteryfor 30 seconds. Reinstall the battery and turn thephone back on.

HTC FUZE. With the device turned on, press and hold the Left and Right soft keys. While holdingthe keys, use the stylus to press and hold the Resetbutton on the bottom of the device near the USBport. Text on the display will ask you to confirm the reset.

HTC HD2. With the device powered off, pressand hold the Volume Up and Volume Down but-tons. With the volume buttons depressed, press andrelease the End/Power button. When a warningmessage displays, release the volume buttons. Next,press the Volume Up button to perform the reset.Pressing any other button cancels the reset.

HTC Touch Pro, Touch Pro2, Touch Diamond.With the device turned on, press and hold theVolume Down and Enter buttons. While holdingthe keys, use the stylus to press the Reset button,located under the battery cover. Continue to holdthe Volume Down and Enter keys until a warningmessage displays. Release the Volume Down andEnter keys, and then press the Volume Up key toreset the phone. Pressing any other button cancelsthe reset.

iPhone (all models). From the Home screen, tapSettings, General, Reset, and Reset All Settings.This action resets all preferences but retains ap-plications and data. If that doesn’t work, from theHome screen, tap Settings, General, Reset, EraseAll Content, and Settings. This will delete all data and applications and return the iPhone to fac-tory conditions.

Nokia (all models). With your phone poweredon or in standby mode, type *#7370# and select Yeswhen prompted. You may need your Lock Code forconfirmation. The default lock code is 12345.

If your phone doesn’t turn on, try pressing theOn/Off button, *, and 3 simultaneously.

Palm Pre. Open Device Info, tap Phone ResetOptions, and then tap Full Erase twice. If yourPalm Pre is frozen and you’re unable to use themenus to perform a reset, try running the latestversion of webOS Doctor (www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/pre/recoverytool/webos_java_sprint) to troubleshoot and reset the device.Follow the on-screen instructions.

Palm Centro and Treo. Press and hold thePower On/Off button. While holding the button,remove the battery, wait 10 seconds, and then rein-stall the battery. Continue to hold the Power buttonuntil you see the Palm Powered screen. Release thePower button. When the screen displays the “Eraseal l data?” query, press the Up button. ▲

The hard reset and soft

reset procedures are the

same for all iPhones.

If your Nokia smartphone

doesn’t turn on after

you perform a hard

reset, try pressing the

On/Off button, *, and

3 simultaneously.

Don’t worry if it takes

your BlackBerry several

minutes to start up after

a reset; this is normal.


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(888)247-2262Baggage information

(888)689-2247

American Airlineswww.aa.com; mobile.aa.comReservations (800) 433-7300TDD (800) 543-1586Flight information (800) 223-5436Baggage delayed less than five

days (800) 535-5225Ticket refund requests

(918) 254-3777

British Airwayswww.britishairways.comba2go.com (mobile)Information and reservations

(800) 247-9297

Continental Airlineswww.continental.compda.continental.com



Dollar Rent A Carwww.dollar.comReservations (800) 800-3665Reservations outside the U.S.

(800) 800-6000TDD (800) 232-330124-hour roadside assistance

(800) 235-9393

Enterprise Rent-A-Carwww.enterprise.comReservations (800) 261-7331 TDD (866) 534-9270

Hertzwww.hertz.comhertz.mobiReservations (800) 654-3131 Reservations outside the U.S.

(800) 654-3001 TDD (800) 654-2280Extend rental (800) 654-4174Billing information

(800) 654-4173Customer relations

(888) 777-6095

National Car Rentalwww.nationalcar.com(800) 227-7368TDD (800) 328-6323

Payless Car Rentalwww.paylesscarrental.com(800) 729-5377

Thrifty Car Rentalwww.thrifty.comReservations (800) 847-4389Emergency (877) 283-0898

TRAVELSERVICESAAAwww.aaa.comaaa.mobiRoadside assistance

(800) 222-4357

Expediawww.expedia.com(800) 397-3342

Hotwirewww.hotwire.com(866) 468-9473OCS (Overseas Citizens

Services) traveler’s hotline(202) 647-5225 or (888) 407-4747

After-hours emergencies (202) 647-4000

Orbitzwww.orbitz.commobile.orbitz.com(888) 656-4546

Pricelinewww.priceline.compriceline.mobi(800) 774-2354

Travelocitywww.travelocity.commobile.travelocity.com(888) 872-8356

HOTELSCandlewood Suiteswww.candlewoodsuites.commobile.candlewoodsuites.com(888) 226-3539

Chase Suite Hotelswww.woodfinsuitehotels.com(800) 966-3346

Choice Hotels International(Cambria Suites, ComfortInn, Comfort Suites, Quality Inn, Sleep Inn,Clarion, MainStay Suites,Suburban Extended StayHotel, Econo Lodge, andRodeway Inn)

www.choicehotels.com(877) 424-6423

Courtyard Hotelswww.courtyard.comcourtyard.mobi(888) 236-2427

Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resortswww.crowneplaza.com

mobile.crowneplaza.com(877) 227-6963

Doubletree Hotelswww.doubletree.comdoubletree.mobi(800) 222-8733

Embassy Suites Hotelswww.embassysuites.comembassysuites.mobi(800) 362-2779

Four Seasons Hotels & Resortswww.fourseasons.commobile.fourseasons.com(800) 819-5053

Hampton Inn Hotels & Suiteswww.hamptoninn.comhamptoninn.mobi(800) 426-7866

Hawthorn Suiteswww.hawthorn.com(800) 527-1133

Hilton Hotelswww.hilton.comhilton.mobi(800) 445-8667

Holiday Innwww.holidayinn.commobile.holidayinn.com(888) 465-4329

Holiday Inn Expresswww.hiexpress.commobile.hiexpress.com(888) 465-4329

Homewood Suiteswww.homewoodsuites.comhomewoodsuites.mobi(800) 225-5466

Hyatt Hotels & Resortswww.hyatt.comHyatt Hotels & Resorts

(888) 591-1234TDD (800) 228-9548Hyatt Place (888) 492-8847

Hyatt Summerfield Suites (866) 974-9288

Marriottwww.marriott.commarriott.mobi(888) 236-2427

Radisson Hotels & Resortswww.radisson.com(888) 201-1718

Ramada Worldwidewww.ramada.com(800) 272-6232

RenaissanceHotels & Resortswww.renaissancehotel.com(888) 236-2427

Residence Innwww.residenceinn.comresidenceinn.mobi(888) 236-2427

Ritz-CarltonHotels & Resortswww.ritzcarlton.com(800) 542-8680

Sheraton Hotels & Resortswww.sheraton.com(800) 325-3535

Staybridge Suiteswww.staybridge.commobile.staybridge.com(877) 238-8889

Westin Hotels & Resortswww.westin.com(800) 937-8461

Wingate Innswww.wingateinns.com(800) 228-1000

Wyndham Hotels & Resortswww.wyndham.com(877) 999-3223

Woodfin Suite Hotelswww.woodfinsuitehotels.com(800) 966-3346


TrailsHappy

I n t r i g u i n g G e a r , N e w & A r o u n d T h e B e n d

3D Recording In Your Hand■ Even if the brand DXG (www.dxgusa.com) does not ring a bell, its new 3Dcompact camcorder may make you pay attention to the company’s productline. The recently released DXG-5D7V 3D Pocket Camcorder ($599.95) cap-tures recordings in 3D using two lenses. If you have a compatible 3D display,you can view the video in 3D without using the typically required, unflat-tering 3D glasses. In case you don’t already have a compatible display, theDXG-5D7V ships with the 7-inch touch-sensitive DXG 3D Media Player anda remote control. The 3.2-inch TFT LCD screen displays your video and stillswhether you captured them in 3D or 2D. Other notable specs include supportfor high-capacity HD cards (up to 16GB), 5MP photos, and an HDMI inter-face. If you get your hands on this bundle, be sure to check out how the 3Drecordings translate to a 3D-enabled TV.

An Ereader With A Social Twist■ You wouldn’t think the ereader marketwould benefit from another device, but, Copiaintends to release its Wave5, and it will sportan attractive price tag compared to those ofcurrent competitors. Though the small man-ufacturer is unofficially slated to release a newline of ereaders sometime this fall, the 5-inchcolor Wave5 ($99; www.thecopia.com) ismaking the biggest splash so far. Preliminaryspecs for the Wave5 include multitouch capa-bilities, 64MB of RAM, 2GB of built-in storage,and support for most standard image, audio,and video formats, along with ePub, TXT, andPDF. Capitalizing on ereader and social mediatrends, the Wave5 features a social ereadingplatform (in beta at press time). Copia com-bines the online interaction of sites such asTwitter and Facebook with Goodreads, sousers can connect with others to discussgenres and compare virtual libraries.

by Joanna Safford
