We have followed the travails of Vonage who seems to be sued by every other communications provider. Initial Suit…Vonage Response

According to Reuters, it appears that Vonage has lost a case with AT&T.

Read More….

As we continue our march towards an all-digital world, we are going to have to make changes as old analog systems go away. As companies have perfected digital communications systems, they are eager to phase out the older analog systems. The reasons for the desire to fade out older analog systems is that companies want the frequency spectrum that is currently being used in an inefficient manner and they want to stop spending funds to maintain the older equipment. This has taken place in out-of-sight public safety (fire and police) communications and in high-profile cases such as broadcast television.

The next guidepost in the digital conversion trail is the cellular telephone system. The FCC will allow the carriers to shut-off the old analog cellular phone system in February 2008. What will be affected? I have listed below some of the common devices that will no longer function.

• Cellular Phones – It is speculated that their are 1 million active cellular phones in the United States that still use analog service. You are safe if you use a handset that is newer than five years old. The big and possibly disastrous effect could be on 911-only phones. Check if you or possibly your parents have one of these old 911-only devices. I know that my father has kept a 911-only phone in his glovebox for years.
• Car Communitions – General Motors OnStar, TeleAid from Mercedes-Benz, or Lexus Link will be affected for cars of fairly recent vintage. The manufactures are pointing out that most systems in 2003 or older models will no longer function. OnStar is offering to upgrade systems in 2004 and 2005 models for a small fee. The older models do not appear to be eligible for upgrade. This could affect up to 700,000 cars.
• Home Alarms – Check how your alarm system communicates with the central monitoring station. Many systems still use analog landlines, but some advanced systems used the analog cellular phone systems as a primary or backup. Any system older than 2006 should be inspected. These systems are generally not upgradable, so you will most likely need to purchase a new main board or communications panel at the least.

For more information consult with your cellular telephone provider, alarm system monitoring company, or automobile monitoring server. You can specifically visit OnStar’s web site to check the status of your vehicle.

It can be said that Apple started this small-computer trend with the MAC-mini, but others are picking up the ball and running with it. In addition to the very small ASUS eee notebook computer there are other companies entering the fray with small desktop computers as well. Most of these companies are small shops, but you can bet that bigger names such as Dell and HP will jump on board if they see an opportunity.

One of the small shops is Sharp and Tappin of England. They have created the PicoPC which uses the same low-power processor as the gPC now available at Wal Mart. You can purchase the computer as a kit or a ready-built, tested unit. The cost is still prohibitive, but it will get better if more manufacturers join the fray. The unit pictured on the right costs 295 Euros or $424.89 at the current exchange rate.

If you have ever shopped for a wireless router then you may have noticed that there are different types of wireless protocols beyond just the manufacturers. We will run down the differences and help you make the right choice.

801.11 is the common thread among the four standards. They have been developed by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802). I am glad that we have that out of the way.

The four different protocols are denoted by the letters A, B, G, and N tacked onto the end of 802.11.

A and B were the earliest standards released in 1999. They use separate frequency spectrums and modulation techniques. The “B” protocol allows up to 11 Mbit/s of throughput and the “A” allows up to 54 Mbit/s. The “A” protocol was not really adopted by the wireless device manufactures and “B” is quickly fading into history.

The “G” standard released in 2003 has become the de facto protocol that you will find on store shelves. The throughput speed is up to 54 Mbit/s, and the range is slightly farther than “A”. This shares the same frequency spectrum with “B” so you will find most “G” wireless equipment to be backwards-compatible to the “B” protocol.

The “N” standard is the newest protocol on the block. The problem with this standard is that it really does not exist, yet. The wireless manufacturers are taking guesses as to what the final standard will be when it is completed in 2008 or 2009. You may find pre-N and draft-N models on your local store shelves. The throughput of this newest standard is reportedly up to 248 Mbit/s (That is 2.5 times faster than many of today’s wired connections). The range is much greater than current standards with distances up to 70 meters.

So what should you purchase? For most that will surfing the web and reading email and only occasionally moving files the current “G” standard is more than sufficient. The “G” protocol routers can be purchased for as low as $35 at big-box retailers. If you will be moving large files in such as watching full-screen movies from an in-home or office file server then the $90+ might be justifiable for the “N” standard. Just remember that all of your equipment must be “N” standard or else the speed will fall back to the “G” standard. Most laptop makers are not taking the plunge to “N” yet so you likely have a “G” built-in wireless card. One more word of warning on using the “N” standard is to stay with one vendor such as Cisco or D-Link because there can be issues with cross-platform compatibility.

It has long been rumored that Google has wanted to get into the personal computer operating system business. Based on Google’s recent moves I doubt they want to go that far but instead have chosen to provide application support to those that want to build low-cost computers based on open source software.

Wal-Mart is now featuring a low-cost PC that is based on Linux with a nice mix of Google-hosted applications and built-in open source software. This isn’t a “Black Friday” dash for a low-price computer. It is what appears to be an everyday item in the electronics department in many Wal-Mart stores. The Everex gPC is a low-power $198 computer with a nice mix of applications.

The applications pre-installed or linked to include Skype, Wikipedia, Google Docs, Gmail, Facebook, Google Maps, and Gimp. That is a package that will allow most people to take care of all of their needs. The obstacles that will cause problems for some users is difficulty in finding a printer or scanner that will work with the Linux Ubuntu operating system.

Not all Wal-Marts currently carry this low-priced computer, but many do have them in stock. My father recently saw one at the Deland, FL Wal-Mart store. Here is a list of stores that carry the gPC. One last feature that many will like is that this computer includes 24/7 toll-free phone tech support.

Since the announcement in June, 2007 have been anxiously awaiting arrival of the ultra portable notebook computer from Asus. I have been fortunate enough to purchase and review an Asus eee 4 Gigabyte model for someone who will be using the computer on an upcoming foreign trip.

The first word from nearby observers is “cute”. Once they have a chance to try it or watch it work they are impressed with the fact that it is actually a powerful platform. It can do the same things that much larger notebook computers can do such as surf the web, edit documents or spreadsheets, and even make VOIP calls over Skype.

I actually tried to do some casual computing for a few days to see how it would fit my lifestyle. Though it is impossible to use it as my primary desktop computer, it does fit my portable needs that are currently filled by a 15.4 inch notebook computer from HP.

I do believe that with a couple of attachments that it could operate as a desktop computer for many users. I would recommend adding a USB keyboard, USB mouse, and an analog monitor for fixed use. With an external monitor the computer is quite capable of resolutions up to 1280 by 1024 pixels and many more choices in between. That would work well in just about any size monitor with the exception of some of the super-large, wide-screen format models.

The price that was paid for this model was a bit more than I had hoped. The price from Newegg.com was $399.99 with a little more for shipping. Asus has blamed the price increase on the cost they had to pay for the LCD screen. I suspect that the price will slip soon as the early adopters grab up the first production run, and possibly a competitor jumps in the ring.

Channel Flip has a great video review below.

I am a huge GTD (Getting Things Done) fan. I first read the book when I heard about it in a Lascivious Biddies interview a few years ago. I do not feel that I have ever truly engaged the GTD way of doing things entirely, but I have implemented many of David Allen’s techniques with great success.

The Seminole County Public Library is going to have a book discussion about GTD on Thursday, November 15th at the central branch. They call it the Book An Expert series. I realize that time is short, but reading the book is not mandatory. Click through the link for more information.

Web site password management is more critical than ever. We are storing and accessing more of our information online and theives are getting evermore creative in how to steal that information. It is critical to have a good password management system for all of your financial-related web sites.

First it is very important to one a unique password for each web site that you use. Though not optimal it is probably all right to use a shared password for your myspace and NY Times web site access. Passwords for your bank, bill payment service, credit cards, and other financial sites should be unique to each site. Be sure to create a password that does not contain any personal information such as your birthday, age, address, social security number, or a dictionary word. A good password should be a random string of characters that meet the following criteria.

• Be sure that a word is not spelled in the password. i.e. rutabaga25
• Include at least two numbers
• Capitalize at least one letter

The problem is that with so many unique passwords it is impossible to remember them all, but various forms of recording them can be dangerous. Web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox will offer to store your passwords, but this is not a good practice. You can fall prey to a trojan horse program on your computer that can read these passwords or someone could simply steal your computer. It is also not portable which is important today. The option of keeping them written on paper also has its obvious drawbacks.

I have discovered a program that I have used since version 0.5 that has served all of these criteria very well. The best features of the software are that it is free, portable, and very secure.

The program is the open-source Password Safe which is available at http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net. Bruce Schneier originally developed the program and then turned the code open source which allowed to develop the software. They have versions for JAVA, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and even Pocket PC. The most developed version is for Windows.

When you run the installation program it will ask if you want to install it to your computer or to an external disk drive. This is where portability is available. I have run all versions of Password Safe from an inexpensive USB flash drive that I almost always wear. You could enhance security if you stored the program and database on a secure, encrypted USB flash drive. The price of these is coming down significantly as more enter the market. Just choose the disk drive that is your USB flash drive and it will install there.

Once you have installed the software, go to your USB flash drive and start the program. It will walk you through creating a password database. You can have more than one password database in case you wanted a work-related database that you could share with coworkers. Yes, the password database has a password referred to as a safe combination. Be sure to create a good password for your database. The software will even prompt you if you create a password that is not sufficiently secure.

Once all of your usernames and passwords are entered, you simply need to click the proper database entry and then choose to copy the user name or password into your computer’s clipboard. You can then paste it into a web site or other password-protected software.

You now have a portable and safe password solution. The software can moved from one computer to another and it does not leave any evidence of its usage on your friend’s or work computer. The original version of the software did leave a small text file on the host computer, but their was no revealing information left behind. The newest version has eliminated that problem. The software even goes so far as to clear the computer clipboard when you close it in case you have copied a password or username there.

Just a reminder that Daylight Savings Time did not end this weekend. In spite of the time displayed by many of your gadgets and possibly some of your computers, the time actually falls back one hour next weekend. In March at the start of Daylight Savings Time I posted some fixes for computer operating systems.

To add confusion to my older devices that still stick to the old schedule, I spent the weekend in the central time zone.

I consider myself to be a careful computer user. I have do not remember ever catching a trojan or virus in at least the last seven years. I carefully surf the web on any of my production computers. Well, I got caught in a simple and easily-contrived phishing scam recently.

An email arrived indicating that the credit card used in my Yahoo pay-per-click advertising account was about to expire. I knew this event was going to happen soon, so I clicked the link and entered my user name and password in the very official Yahoo Marketing login page. The remainder of the process was odd, though. I was not taken to a page with my credit or account information. I chalked it up to a web oddity and made a note to check it out later.

Well later did not come soon enough. When I went back to log into Yahoo I was unable to do so. It all came together in my head – I had been scammed. A call to customer support at Yahoo quickly resolved the issue. The culprit had charged $500 to my credit card and proceeded to setup his keywords and such. Yahoo refunded the $500 and restored my account in just a couple of hours.

How to you prevent this. I now have a habit of not opening any notice directly from an email. I will open a link if a friend sends me a Youtube video or such, but I do not click on a link if it involves my bank, credit card, or any account with monetary value. If any link leads to a login page or any form that asks a personal question then I just close the browser.

Obviously we need to follow up on certain notices, though. The best method is to open a browser and enter the usual address that we use to access the service. Then look in the area of interest pointed out in the email.

This brings up a another valuable point. DO NOT use the same password for every web site. Using a unique password for each web site will minimize your exposure if you do get caught in a phishing scam. I do use the same password for non consequential web sites, but I use a different password for each and every financially related web site. I will follow up with more information about how to manage passwords easily and safely.