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Welcome to the
Great Lakes Geek Show!

The area’s best athletes were honored for their outstanding 2009 accomplishments at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel.

Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN College Football Analyst, hosted the event with an attendance that exceeded 1,100 guests.

Bob Feller with Captains mascot Skipper

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Paul Thurrott has a great posting about an ancient bug discovered in all versions of Windows back to version 3.1

Paul wrote: "In a stunning example of how slow moving Microsoft really can be, this coming week Microsoft will patch a bug in various versions of Windows that first appeared in Windows NT 3.1 (the first "modern" version of Windows as we now know it, and the basis for all current Windows versions) 17 years ago. The bug was found by a Google security researcher (and, I presume, a Dead Sea Scrolls enthusiast) last month: It involves a backwards compatibility technology for running 16-bit DOS-style applications.

Apparently, it can be exploited in all currently supported Windows versions, including XP, Vista, and 7, as well as Windows Server 2003 and 2008. I wonder if the bug was found encased in amber. "

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The Geek has used Eudora as his main e-mail client for many years. It's no longer being supported and many recommend a move to Thunderbird.

Thunderbird 3 is now out and the Mozilla folks have some cool features. One is for the situation where you promise to attach a file to a message and then forget to attach. Thunderbird 3 will scan your message for words like 'attachment' and then prompt you if you don't actually attach anything.

The tabbed model, a la their web browser Firefox is also cool. But they still don't have a separate line for CC or BCC when you create an e-mail. Any addresses go to the To field by default and then you have to move to CC or BCC. That's too kludgy.

I wonder about the future of e-mail clients when so many seem to be going to the cloud (gmail, etc) for their mail.

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The idea behind this program is good.

The Ai Squared web site says" ZoomText Express is an affordable screen magnifier designed for those who squint at the computer screen and lean in to read the fine print. It provides a gentle boost of magnification (up to 2 times) so that hard to read text is larger, clearer and easier to see. You can also apply a soft tint to white areas of the screen or reverse all colors to eliminate that familiar blinding glare."

But the Geek had some real problems with the utility and does NOT recommend it.

See why in the Geek's review of ZoomText Express

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Hopefully you saw the recent Inside Business Magazine with the Power 100 listings. I want to narrow that down to Tech and write about the Top Tech people in Cleveland in my next column.

Shoot over a few (or a bunch of) names that you think are the top tech people in town. Feel free to elucidate. Would love to see some more obscure names as well as the shoe-ins.

Some thoughts to consider:

• Whose calls/e-mails do you always return right away?
• Who do you follow on blogs, Twitter or other SM because they are saying important things?
• Who will you try and go see speak when they present?
• When you brag to out-of-towners about the Cleveland tech scene, who are your examples.
• When you need a tech answer or connection, who do you contact?

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What happens when you point the Hubble Space Telescope at a seemingly blank patch of sky?

It's not so empty. Watch the results of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 3D project.

Would you be ready if your business was one of the 6,000 companies expected to be randomly chosen for employment tax audits beginning this February?

Our financial adviser gives some expert advice to save headaches down the road.

2009 payroll reporting tips

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Andreas Pouros, COO, Greenlight wrote today that France’s “Google tax” – Sounds like protectionism - and we agree.

Porous says "A report has been made public proposing that France begins taxing the likes of Google to subsidise its own creative industry. The authors of the report suggest that this new taxation could raise up to the equivalent of $28 million, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t much money at all.

The suggestion that the tax will help France subsidize music artists and book publishers doesn’t therefore sound like the sole objective here, given that this amount of money won’t make much of a difference if it’s spread so thinly across France’s creative community.

On this basis it feels like protectionism of the worst sort – instead of collaborating with successful, innovative companies, or creating an environment that promotes innovation domestically, France appears to want to give its own industries an unfair commercial advantage by taking money from non-French firms.

If the proposals are made into law, this then obviously sets a precedent which would allow France to raise this taxation as it saw fit and usher in a period of conflict between the French government and some of the world’s most innovative online firms.

It is of course understandable why France would be concerned, particularly given that Google has approximately 98% of the search engine market in that country, but instead of treating successful companies as the enemy it should look to the music and publishing industry to reinvent themselves and offer the consumer an alternative to Google et al. Google and other ad-driven websites exist because they offer something of value to the consumer.

If the creative community have left a vacuum in terms of how they serve the needs of their online-loving consumers, and then this vacuum is filled by the likes of MySpace and Google, then the blame shouldn’t be put at their door.

Punishing innovators for innovating is a very short sighted stance to take."

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Microsoft just released their pricing plan for Office 2010. One new idea is that buyers who choose to download and forego boxed, retail versions will enjoy significant savings.

The standard Office Home and Student version is priced at $149 for packaged software, or $119 for those who wish to download the software and activate it with a key card.

For home office workers and small businesses, Office Home and Business is available for $279 boxed, or $199 for a key card. Office 2010 Professional, which includes a number of tools geared toward enterprise environments, is $499 boxed, or $349 for a key card.

College students and professors can get a price break by purchasing Office Professional Academic. It's priced at $99 and will be available at campus bookstores and other selected retailers.

All versions of Office 2010 will include access to Office Web, which is a pared down, Internet-based version of the software. Microsoft also plans to make Office Web available for free to the public through its Windows Live portal.

So here's the question. Will you take advantage of the significant savings and download or do you want the box and media? Vote on the right-hand-side.

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OK, many of you got 8 or 9 of the last 10 Rebus puzzles but only a few of you got all 10. The same who got all 10 in the first batch did just as well in the 2nd batch.

Let's see how you do on this 3rd batch of 10 Rebus puzzles.

Here is an example of a Rebus.

Man
-------
Board

would be Man Overboard. Get it?

Try these next ten on your own.

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Dan Hanson is honored to receive the Microsoft MVP award again this year. 2010 is the 7th consecutive year he has been awarded.

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Questions. We get questions. Instead of just e-mailing the answers back, we will now post some of the more popular Q&A here on the Great Lakes Geek site.

Here's two new questions about an e-mail shortcut and firewall protection

You have questions. The Geek has solutions.

Ask the Great Lakes Geek

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Need new hardware? Why pay extra for those expensive name brands?

Check out our on-line hardware store and browse pre-configured systems or tweak the configuration options yourself and get instant pricing.

We'll ship the custom built system right to your door. Take a look at the Magnum Computers Webstore

Order Domain Names, e-mail accounts, web hosting, SSL certs and the usual menu of Internet items for great prices at Great Lakes Geek Domains. Follow the link at the bottom of the nav bar (under search) or click to visit

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