http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/blog313540.html I've been writing about technology since 1988. I divide my time between technical writing and technology journalism. I am Contributing Editor at EContent Magazine and Contributing Writer at InsideCRM. I have written for a variety of other publications including Streaming Media Magazine, CIO.com, eWeek, CMP, BusinessWeek Small Biz, PC Magazine Online and many others. I won an Apex Award for Publications Excellence in Feature Writing in 2006 and 2007. You can subscribe to my blog with Feedburner by following this link: [url= http://feeds.feedburner.com/TechTreasures]My feedburner subscription link[/url] http://www.daniweb.com/forums/dani-images/misc/dani/logo.gif http://www.daniweb.com http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2835.html In a promising technology mash-up, the New York Times (NYT) has entered into an agreement with LinkedIn that displays a list of suggested content for readers on the NYT web site based on information in their LinkedIn profile. For now, the service is confined to the Business and Technology section. (Thanks to my virtual colleague Tish Grier who pointed me to this story.) The NYT has placed a LinkedIn widget on Business and Technology article pages. When you click the widget for the first time, a dialog box opens and you are prompted to either join LinkedIn or sign into your LinkedIn profile.... IT Water Cooler Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:09:40 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2835.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2814.html Is your vendor giving you trouble? Won’t respond to your calls? Won’t help with your problem? Who you gonna call? Well, when I spoke to Brent Leary, a partner at CRM Essentials, yesterday, Leary surprised me when he suggested if your vendor won’t help you, go on Twitter, find a person with expertise in the problem area, and ask them. You might find you get an answer, but you may also find that by publicly calling out the company, you might actually get some attention. We live in a Web 2.0 world, which means you have a variety tools at your disposal that can give you access to an... IT Water Cooler Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:09:40 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2814.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2798.html Though nothing will Drive them away We can beat them Just for one day ~David Bowie, Heroes. That collective sigh of relief you hear this morning is probably the millions of YouTube users who are relieved that Google and Viacom have reached an agreement to protect their privacy. All I can say is thank goodness that common sense prevailed for once. I am sure I was not alone in my anger and outrage when word got out earlier this month that a federal judge had ruled in a copyright infringement case against Google involving its YouTube property, that the plaintiff Viacom had the right to see... IT Water Cooler Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:58:02 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2798.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2782.html By all rights, iPhone consumers should be storming the gates of Apple headquarters this morning in true Bastille Day fashion after Friday's mishandling of the iPhone 3G launch, but as far as I know all remains calm in Cupertino, and consumers remain strangely silent over the whole affair. In a post on Friday afternoon, my colleague Bill Andad (aka newsguy) rightly took Apple to task for failing to provide the necessary server capacity to ensure the iPhone 3G launch went smoothly. He's right of course. It's unthinkable that a company with the resources of Apple failed to provide a seamless... IT Water Cooler Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:16:51 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2782.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2776.html It's not always easy, And sometimes life can be deceiving, I'll tell you one thing, its always better when we're together ~Jack Johnson, Better Together. AP is reporting this morning that Eric Schmidt, he being CEO of the great and almighty Google, thinks it would better if Yahoo! remained independent. Excuse me for a moment. I can't type I'm laughing so hard. Thanks. That's better. Nothing too self-serving there, is there? Specifically, he stated: IT Water Cooler Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:21:42 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2776.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2770.html The other day, my buddy got a shiny new 32GB iPod Touch. This morning he was kind enough to let me play with it and I’m glad he did because I learned that using that touch keyboard takes some practice. The bad news: you can get frustrated in a hurry trying to type with your finger tip. The good news: after about 15 minutes of touch typing, I found I was getting pretty proficient and I’m sure my speed and accuracy will keep getting better with practice. It’s not exactly a secret that I have been jonesing for an iPhone (pretty much since Jobs first announced it in 2007), but I’ve been... IT Water Cooler Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:24:52 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2770.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2751.html Nothing's wrong as far as I can see We make it harder than it has to be and I can't tell you why ~Eagles, I Can’t Tell You Why. Apple and Adobe have both gotten some press lately for going to the trademark police after a couple of small business people had the audacity to publicize their products by including corporate trademarks in their business name. First there was the case of Apple going after The iPod Mechanic as reported by my colleague Davey Winder (aka Happy Geek) in his Inside Edge blog. Now comes news from ReadWriteWeb that Adobe is going after a guy for setting up a web site... IT Water Cooler Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:50:07 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2751.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2735.html I’ve been highly critical of many of Microsoft’s moves lately, mostly because they have felt like the awkward ramblings of a company one step behind the curve, but the other day Microsoft made, what in my view, is a smart play. They bought Powerset, a San Francisco-based semantic search company and with it, they got themselves a nice piece of technology that could vault them ahead of the pack. Semantic search involves looking beyond keywords at the meaning of the search itself. When you search for “jaguar” are you looking for information on the car, the operating system or the... IT Water Cooler Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:16:38 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2735.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2718.html You might have woken up this morning to a distant noise not unlike the pounding of hoof beats. Yesterday you could see the dust cloud forming far off on the horizon, but today, July 1st, it’s a little easier to hear the slow and steady march toward July 11th when Apple releases its second generation iPhone. The masses have been champing at the bit, waiting, waiting for their $199 iPhone and as the day draws closer, the number of blog entries increase and the drumming grows ever louder. I know I’m not the only one who has been having an internal debate about whether or not now is the time... IT Water Cooler Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:49:44 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2718.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2710.html My colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols recently wrote a piece on his fine Practical Technology blog called Dear Microsoft, Thanks for the help, Linux in which he argues that Microsoft’s ill-timed decision to cut off easy access to XP tomorrow (June 30th) combined with its announcement it would be releasing the next version of Windows in January, 2010 effectively lends a death blow to Vista and creates a huge opportunity for desktop Linux. With all due respect to my esteemed colleague, this is not the first time I’ve heard such a prediction. I am certainly not as immersed in Linux... IT Water Cooler Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:58:35 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2710.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2687.html Yesterday a (slightly) risqué ad for JC Penney made the rounds on the internet. It depicted two teens getting ready for a date by timing how fast they could get dressed. At the end of the ad, the boy comes over to the girl’s house and they let the stern looking Mom know they are going to “hang out” in the basement. By late morning, JC Penney officials had foolishly tried to distance themselves from the ad, claiming they never authorized it, all because supposedly it meant they condoned teenage sex. What JC Penney failed to understand is that this ad did them far more good than harm.... IT Water Cooler Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:56:43 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2687.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2681.html Last week Adobe surprised a few people—well, at least it surprised me--with the announcement that it was including Alfresco content management services as part of its LiveCycle Enterprise Suite Update 1 package. The surprise was two-fold, that Adobe felt it was necessary to add content management services at all and that it chose open source vendor Alfresco as its content management partner. I spoke to Alfresco CEO John Powell to get his perspective on the pact and how it can help push open source into the enterprise mainstream. Powell is understandably excited by this arrangement and one... IT Water Cooler Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:09:41 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2681.html