1. Software Package:  OpenOffice.org
   Platform Availability:  Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Apple Mac
   Replaces:  Microsoft Office
   Paid Support Available:  Yes, if you buy StarOffice (commercially supported OpenOffice) from Sun for as little as $34.95 USD

   This package is by far the epitome of the free software revolution.  For the small business, it can do everything you could ever want and more.  Best of all, it doesn’t include all the complicated things that Microsoft Office offers that just get in your way.  It has PDF export capability built in, has ability to open Microsoft Office documents natively, has the ability to save in Microsoft Office format, is fully scriptable, has a lot of freely available templates available and is very easy to use.

2. Software Package:  Firefox
   Platform Availability:  Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Apple Mac
   Replaces:  Microsoft Internet Explorer
   Paid Support Available:  No, but there is a free forum and knowledge base

   Firefox is probably the most famous of all the free software available on the Internet.  It is now celebrating its fifth birthday this year.  It is based on the Mozilla codebase from the old Netscape browser, which in turn was based on Mosaic, from the NCSA.  It has a few edges over Internet Explorer:  extensions (also known as add-ons), themes, and the inability to run Active X controls without a plugin (this is actually a good security feature).  The add-ons extend the capabilities of Firefox so much, that it actually changes into your own, personal version of a browser.  Themes allow you to change the look of the browser, also known as ’skins’ in other applications.

3. Software Package:  Thunderbird
   Platform Availability:  Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Apple MacIntosh
   Replaces:  Eudora, Pegasus, Outlook Express, Outlook
   Paid Support Available:  No, but there is a free forum and knowledge baseLike its cousin, Firefox, Thunderbird also has add-ons and themes.  With the new Thunderbird 3, the search mechanism is leap years faster than the search mechanism of any mail client I’ve ever used.  It employs a very simple set up for any mail accounts, including Gmail.
4. Software Package: Inkscape
   Platform Availability: Windows, Mac OSX 10.5, Mac OSX 10.6
   Replaces: Corel Draw, WordPerfect Graphics, Harvard Graphics
   Paid Support Available: No, but there is a free forum, mailing lists, wiki, and Planet Inkscape

   An all around great program.  It’s good for laying out vector graphics.  It’s too light on the text support to be a true desktop publishing application, but they are making it better all the time.

5. Software Package: The GIMP
   Platform Availability: Windows
   Replaces: Corel PhotoPaint, Adobe Photoshop, ColorWorks, Paintshop Pro
   Paid Support Available: No, but there are free mailing lists, Internet Relay Chat, and a plenty of published books

   For many people, The GIMP is just as good as the leader of the market, Adobe Photoshop, and it can even use a lot of Adobe Photoshop plugins.  It is more simplified than Adobe Photoshop, and so for a lot of complex operations it’s easier to use than Adobe Photoshop.  Adobe Photoshop definitely has a slicker, more polished interface.  Adobe Photoshop will also make a nice big dent in your wallet.  If you’re not making your living at graphics, it’s definitely worthwhile looking at The GIMP.  If you’re making your living at graphics, it’s still worth looking at.  Don’t dismiss it just because it’s free.  You’d be doing yourself a great dis-service.

via Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings.

Thanks for any updates you might have.

NEXT BIG FUTURE

On Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 AM (UTC)

smart.apnoti.com launches world’s first real-time search engine.

via smart.apnoti.com.

The problem was recently highlighted this week when a 46-year-old Fredericton-area woman had trouble calling for help when her home in Lincoln caught fire.

The woman may owe her life to Patricia Percy, a 911 operator who managed to coax out the address just before the woman passed out. Percy had no idea where the woman was because the province’s cellular system is unable to provide information on the caller’s location the way it would if the call is made on a traditional landline.

via No solution in sight for tracking 911 calls on cellphones.

Many e-mail hoaxes will trick you into forwarding messages about fake viruses or other fabricated stories. These e-mails waste time, clog inboxes, and might cause embarrassment when they’re proven untrue. But there are other, more insidious types of fraud that might end up costing you a lot of money.

via Avoid E-mail Hoaxes and Email Scams | Microsoft Security;.

Nowadays, there is a lot more competition within the local telecommunications market.  However, one facet of that competition that has remained largely untapped up until now has been the voice over IP industry.  The Voice Over IP industry consists of telecommunications providers that will route your calls over the Internet to help you save on long distance phone calls.  However, a growing segment of that market has been repositioning itself trying to market the technology to companies that spend a lot of money on calling features.  Voice Over IP phone systems can provide the calling features all on their own, and generally much cheaper than Telus, Bell, Allstream, or any of the big players.

If you’re a do it yourselfer, you can try taking a look at Asterisk.  However, the vast majority of us are not a bunch of technogeeks.  Some of us are semi-technical.  And others are not technical at all.

Let’s cover off those of you that are semi-technical.  I will assume you can figure out how to set something up, if someone tells you what needs to go where, and that you can find your way around a webform.  There are basically two competing products out there for the mid-range office market.  There is Aastra Telecom and Polycom.  Aastra Telecom and Polycom both make business desk phones that rival their analog and digital counterparts.  The Aastra 9143i will allow you to have up to 9 lines for a very reasonable price.  Aastra’s phones use the same moulding used on Nortel phones.  So, for those of you used to Nortel desk phones, you’ll find yourself right at home with Aastra.  On the other hand, Polycom has long been an industry leader in the office telecommunications market, especially for conference phones.  The Polycom SoundStation IP430 provides you with up to two lines, and is also a very attractive looking business handset.  Both it and the Aastra offer you a full duplex speaker phone.  However, business is very familiar with the Polycom name.  If you have a larger office, you might find it a hard go getting your company to approve the Aastra.  They are both very easy to set up, although I would probably lean closer to the Aastra, personally.

For the totally non-technogeeks out there, you will want to go with an ITSP (Internet Telephone Service Provider, aka VoIP Provider) that will supply you with an ATA (analog terminal adapter).  It’s basically technobabble for a device that will allow you to use your traditional analog phone on a VoIP line, and generally when you get them, the ITSP will have the black box all configured for you and ready to plug into the power bar.  You can then plug your favorite cordless or wall phone into it, and you’re good to go.

Regardless of which path you choose to take, you’ll need to find an ITSP or VoIP service provider.  One quick way to find them is to do a search on Google.  Type in ‘voip providers in city, province’.  eg.:  ‘voip providers in hamilton, ontario’.  I’ve found spelling out the state or the province works much better than using the two character abbreviation.  Your mileage may vary.  VoIP phone lines can generally run as cheap as $3.95/mo, and run as high as $50/mo.  It all depends on what calling features you want, and how many minutes a month you want of long distance, or if you want an all-you-can-eat plan.

I’ve always been a strong supporter of open source.  However, up until recently all the open source solutions were predominantly only available on Linux, they weren’t really up to the task, and you had to use a hodgepodge of them together, to achieve the same functionality as Microsoft Office.

Several years back, Sun Microsystems realized they could fill this void.  From a company that most Windows users have probably never heard of, came forth an office suite called, Star Office.  If you look for Star Office elsewhere on the Internet, you will also come across the name ‘OpenOffice‘, or ‘OpenOffice.org‘.  This is the open source version of Star Office.  Star Office is a repackaged OpenOffice.org, rebranded, and with full, business grade support.  OpenOffice.org only offers self-help support.

For a single license of Star Office 9, the price point is about $66.  For Microsoft Office 2007, it’s about $350.  Also, Star Office 8 may be installed on up to 5 machines per user.  What this means is that for a typical user that might have a desktop at the office, a desktop at home, and laptop for when they’re a road warrior, they pay once for it, and can install it on all three machines.  What it does not mean, is that you buy it once, and install it on every staff member’s machine.  You will still need to buy one copy for every staff member.  For the capability to install on additional machines for each user, Microsoft charges an additional $200/machine for what StarOffice includes in the base license.

When you begin to look at after-purchase support costs, you’ll see the price differences skyrocket, if you’ve got a large office.

To sum it up, for a small office, StarOffice 9 is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office 2007.  You’ll also find that StarOffice 9 will run on a much larger range of Microsoft Windows versions.  It will also run on Linux, Solaris, and MacOS X.  Alternatively, if your office is on a shoestring budget, OpenOffice.org is also well worth looking at.

I’ve been running OpenOffice.org since v1.0.  In all that time, I’ve come across a few problems with spreadsheets where what I was trying to do wasn’t possible.  However, those few problems are not something the average user would try to do.

All in all, I give it an outstanding pass.  It’s definitely 4-1/2 out of 5 stars in my book.

Some of my readers might already be familiar with web sites such as Constant Contact.  These are websites that allow you to send out a newsletter, and they host all the data for your company’s contacts.  It’s a great idea for the scads of people that have never heard of the software that I’m about to tell you about, and that want to maintain that much sought after relationship with their customers.  However, I’m a major proponent of the open source software revolution.  I’m also all about not having someone else having all the access to my data.

If you’re like me, you might find that PHP List is a great piece of software.  My wife and I use it for our real estate investment business, to maintain contact with our network.  Using PHP List, you can maintain several newsletter mailing lists, with very little technical knowledge.  It comes with a complete subscribe/unsubscribe system so that you can adhere to bulk mailing requirements in certain US and/or Canadian jurisdictions.  Certain states (and possibly provinces) have very strict laws on what constitutes unsolicited email (spam).  In some states and/or provinces for instance, as long as you have an existing relationship with an individual, you can add them to your mailing list.  However, in other states and/or provinces, the subscribee has to specifically opt-in.  Check with your lawyer before sending out bulk mail to make sure you’re in compliance with any local regulations (California spam regulations for instance still apply to you, even if you’re not in the state of California.)

Yes, they could alleviate this issue by keeping their patches and service packs up to date.  However, sometimes as those of us that are more technically familiar with Windows know, Microsoft will sometimes release a patch that has not been tested well enough.  What happens to those poor, unfortunate users that apply this patch can sometimes be a system that locks up, or behaves erratically.

One source of a lot of the spyware (and sometimes viruses or other malware) are what are known as OLE2 controls, or more colloquially as ActiveX controls.  These are plugins embedded in web pages to provide for richer content.  They allow web pages to perform tricks that they would not normally be able to perform.  Similar web controls available are Java applets and Adobe Flash applets.

Unlike Java Applets and Flash applets, Active X controls do not operate in a security sandbox.  What this means, is that they’re allowed to do whatever the author would like them to do, including nasty things on your machine that you would probably rather not have them be able to.  One solution to avoid this problem is to use a web browser like Firefox.  Firefox will not normally run Active X controls (unless you pay for an Active X plugin).  This in and of itself increases the safety of the browser considerably.

Starting with Firefox 3, Firefox also now has the ability to prevent you from viewing web pages/sites that have been flagged as being malicious.  It also makes it much more difficult to visit secure URLs (https://) that have self-signed certificates or that have certificates assigned to a domain other than the domain you’ve gone to.

With the new Web Of Trust add-on, Firefox enters a new stage of Internet safety.  It includes some new technology to rate websites from being spammers all the way up to being great netizens.

Do yourself a long needed favor, and install Firefox today!