Office Max!

Sometimes I get press releases from organizations that I don't support and wonder why they have me on their distribution list. One of those is the Business Software Alliance, the group that trumpets how stolen software is costing the industry twenty zillion dollars a year, and how we'd all be gainfully employed and how there'd be no national debt and, probably, world peace, if we'd all just pay for the software we use.

And it's not just OpenOffice. Let's talk about the thousands of software titles that meet or exceed the professional standards of business software. Free for the taking, cost-cutting software...The busness world will get knocked on its ear.

It's hard to impeach the logic of Google's desire to separate the acquisition of cell phones from specific cell phone companies:

BASDA is the Business Application Software Developers Association based in the UK, which represents almost 200 of the world’s leading business software vendors including Causeway Technologies. BASDA works with governments and policy-making groups in the UK, Europe and worldwide. In early 2000’s BASDA came up with ebis-XML standard for exchange of structured documents between organisations. ebdex standardised ebis-XML as its internal standard. These days, number of accounting software vendors has ability to exchange documents with other applications using ebis-XML, e.g. Sage Transaction E-mail. BASDA events are great opportunities to build relationships.

Cisco and Microsoft have an opportunity because I don't see web2.0 technology being adopted by any other integrated business software vendor and sold into enterprise. Given that voip will be a big requirement within the web2.0 technology and Cisco are looking for a sales angle it seems a match made in heaven.

Google has recently added Google Apps referrals. Get $5 for every person you get to sign up for Google Apps, Google’s web-based business software suite.

Drivers are software programs that are critical to making those kinds of devices and other hardware, from video cards to printers, play nicely with and communicate with a computer’s operating system.

TechCrunch scooped the Photobucket app, which has been in development at Adobe for a few months. It’s yet another addition to the growing list of browser-based movie editing/remixing tools. None of them are Final Cut Pro killers, but all allow the user to take short video clips and images, putting them together or reassembling them in a seamless presentation. The one to beat so far has been JumpCut./p>

In Google’s army of web office products, this is one that will seem strikingly different. JotSpot is also another example where the power and advantage of a web-based product has been put to good use. In the end, this is how I think web office will dominate traditional office: not by simply replacing and replicating, but by adding something that previously would not have been possible.

In the 6th and 7th grade classes I teach them to use Office Products more effectively (they think they know how to use them already - I show them lots of things they never knew - hehe) Usually in those classes I end up with about the last 2 weeks to do something different. I used to teach PowerPoint during the last two weeks, but there are so many other other products out there that are better in many ways.

Think about it. Many people build their entire work at home business around their computer. The computer is their link to all of their websites that make them money. It is also the place where they store their business software, e-books, products, customer information etc. Take that computer away and how will YOU go on?

Greg Young just wrote about the impedance mismatch between agile development and the fixed price contract mindset our clients are used to. Businesses like to allocate a chunk of money to a shiny package, but we've realized that good business software solutions usually don't come in shiny packages. We're not alone in this problem, though.

For those who insist on using proprietary commercial software (or, in some cases, Open yet Free open-source software), there are probably more reasons to fear. Apart from Genuine Advantage in Windows – that which delivers critical updates only to legal copies of the operating system – there is a further crackdown on illegal use of software in the UK.

In what seems like a move pointed in Microsoft's direction, China has announced that it will ban the sale of "naked PCs", which are PCs sold without an operating system. With the somewhat over-optimistic headline, "Government ensures computers will use genuine software", the People's Daily reports:

Big news - German software giant SAP has acquired enterprise risk management software provider Virsa Systems to boost its software compliance skills and strengthen ties with Microsoft. Virsa systems, the privately held US based company had recently bagged office space in the Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park.

From our vantage point, it appears that professionals will most likely be spending their technology budgets on mobile devices this year, while also improving their core business software applications.

The problem with software, business software mostly, is that people don’t want to wait. I want to fire the program up and use it.

The problem with software is that it’s too powerful and has too many options. Companies have tried to sell simpler software - remember Microsoft Write? No one buys it - even if no one ever builds a database, but you MIGHT. It’s the SUV principle of software… He shows us Microsoft Office with all the toolbars turned on - you can barely see the text entry box.

Thanks to Richard MacManus and his review of the best web office products, I’ve discovered iRows.

That’s a problem only in that the market for the cash cows is growing more saturated. Already, Microsoft admits that its biggest competition for Office business software is earlier versions of Office itself.

But just days ago, Microsoft said it had signed a five-year pact with Apple to continue to develop versions of its Office business software for Macs.

The Office 12 story isn’t as clear cut as that for Vista, but a slick new UI won’t change the fact that office suite software is a mature market in which Microsoft holds all but a minuscule share. Office servers and the use of Office as a front-end for business software are too small or too new to change the results. Net: Information Worker results will be basically flat as usual.

A quick round-up of the best in open-source software for business owners:

First, I think Bill sets the stage nicely by explaining the age of software on your PC is over. There is an explosion of devices, and the only way to tie them together and give the next wave of features that people want is with software as a service. I don't feel the discussion of this as a "sea change" is very convincing -- as he mentions, this vision is a lot like the 1999 company meeting, and the decks look a lot like many of the .NET decks. Maybe it comes from having worked in Netdocs and MSN and seeing lots of "service-izing" of Windows and Office firsthand, but it doesn't seem all that new to me.

Everything we have done on MSN fits the live software model,” Gates said. Live software also extends to managed services for enterprises, with Microsoft running SharePoint or Exchange for customers. Small business software connecting to ADP payroll service, for example.

Automated article creation software will soon be banned… most of the Search Engines are already starting to block these types of pages from being listed in their results. Why do people still buy them?

I am still working my way through The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. As I fully anticipated there are numerous things in this book that speak to my ecclesial dream. I found the chapter, The Magic Cauldron, to be one of the best chapters in the book. I am going to comment on it in a later post but since it is available online I wanted to link to it. I think anyone who is thinking about church and the structures we use to sustain and support the business side of it needs to read at least this chapter.

The most important is knowing some sort of word processing. Today’s world is requiring it and it is not going away. Power point is another important tool to know, from school to the working world. The student can create a simple report (presentation) and in the working world, they need to make more complex reports. Excel is a widely used softeware, if anyone has looked in the want ads, they would notice many places want/require the knowledge of excel. Inspiration is a learning tool taught in school and can have many uses. Imaging Software is great to know, but may not be required for the business world. It is a great asset to have when editing pictures.

It seems to me that there has been some sort of change in the way projects are budgeted and positions are filled in the software industry. And I believe the culprits for this climate are the go-go years of the Internet and Offhsore production. (Of course I could be wrong)

Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance, said the group will ask Congress to overturn an appeals court ruling that allows damage awards to be based on a product’s global sales rather than those in the United States. The ruling upheld the calculation of a $521 million jury verdict against Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker.

Thus, according to a survey for Business Software Alliance (BSA), involving 500 British managers, approximately 55% of them stated that the proliferation of mobile devices makes it difficult for them to control the software installed by their employees, although 67% of the participants were not worried about the potential problems derived from the use of illegal software.

Now I would recommend another more advance tool, HijackThis. HijackThis is written specifically to detect and remove browser hijacks, or software that takes over your web browser, alters your defaut home page and search engine and other malicious things.

Yahoo! News has a story on the release of a new Business Software Alliance study that claims software piracy is growing in-step with the expansion of the Internet. No surprises here.

Use this OS for your business software, and use this OS for your digital lifestyle software all in one computer.

10) It comes with two hard drives - one for fleyshedik (business software)and one for milchedik (games).

With software forming an increasingly vital part of the infrastructure of the world's economy, reliability, stability and security are paramount concerns. In the past, software companies routinely shipped bug-ridden programs, figuring they could patch and update them later. And their customers took what they were given. That's history - or will be soon. In the future, the best business software companies will distinguish themselves by producing industrial-strength, bulletproof code - code that approaches Six Sigma standards.

The Business Software Alliance, an American trade group that combats software piracy, says that software piracy cost has cost the global software industry 33 billion dollars in 2004. And what’s worse, they say, that number could climb to 200 billion dollars by the end of the decade. They way they spin it, thievery on this scale must be on par with mass-murder.

Readers know that I recently changed computers and picked up an HP tc1100 which has become my main computer. I installed QB on the HP and did all the live updating and it works just as it should, rather it worked fine. I can't use it now at all. Since my copy of Quickbooks had already been activated several years ago I immediately went through the QB online activation process which stalled right away. They ask you to enter the first and last name of the person that did the original registration, a horrible practice for business...

Beth Scott, European manager for the Business Software Alliance, said: “We would never rejoice in anyone going to prison but we do not accept their defence that this was a victimless crime - their actions clearly contributed to a major piracy problem that impacts jobs, the economy and the businesses and consumers who benefit from innovation.”

SAP AG, Europe’s biggest software maker, will again dominate the business software applications market this year while rival Oracle Corp. will see its market share slip, an industry report predicted on Friday.

In the small business software marketplace, especially in vertical niches such as those in which we play, credibility is a key selling feature. We’ve found that openness pays on many ways. On our website you can see how many employees we have, read their names and see their photos in all their glory. You can red the detail of our software updates. Find out about bugs. Read our user advice sheets and check the latest fixes. There isn’t any part of our website hidden for registered users.

While the heat is still on the MPhasiS case, NASSCOM is keeping busy. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the NASSCOM have taken on the task of launching a toll-free hotline for reporting piracy efforts in India.

It seems as though the new dual-core CPU’s from AMD and Intel are causing a little bit of confusion for business software users. Some databases and financial software charge by the CPU core, meaning that some businesses may end up paying twice as much to run a program, even though it isn’t running twice as fast. Interesting problem. Lets see how these vendors get themselves out of this one. Obviously, Open Source doesn’t suffer...

The witness list includes representatives of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), the Business Software Alliance, Genentech, and the American Bar Association.

Business software maker Oracle Corp. said Wednesday that 83 percent of retail software maker Retek Inc.'s stockholders had accepted Oracle's $11.25-per-share acquisition offer, which topped an earlier bid by another business software maker, Germany-based SAP.

We encourage you to purchase an Anti Virus software package and maintain your subscription to the updates. The university uses McAfee Anti Virus, however, any well-supported Anti Virus software should be fine. Many Anti Virus software packages can be purchased locally at various stores such as Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Office Max, Circuit City and many others. You can even purchase and download the software off of the web from the manufacturers web site.

Office Max should have this pop-up blocker software in stock shortly.

Panicware, Inc., a Seattle developer of PC pop-up control technology, announces the newest update to Pop-Up Stopper Professional. Panicware's ad-blocking software is the first and only product to block pop-up and pop-under ads in all browsers including AOL, MSN, SBCYahoo!, Opera, Mozilla, WMConnect, Juno, NetZero, Netscape, and Internet Explorer. Pop-Up Stopper Professional works on every type of Internet connection.

The latest release of Pop-Up Stopper Professional accesses a new update server, which will enable current and future users to more easily receive future updates. This version also includes a direct desktop link to the Panicware Resource Center -- a constantly updated collection of privacy information and bonus resources such as free spyware removal tools.