Microsoft set to ship Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft is set to ship the next version of its Visual Studio IDE (Integrated Developer Environment) and .NET Framework. Visual Studio 2008 comes packed with more than 250 new features while .NET adds SOA, Web 2.0 and SaaS.

Features in Visual Studio 2008 include:

• Support for LINQ : A new Language Integrated Query (LINQ), to handle query operations directly from the various languages supported within .NET.
• Write applications that work with multiple versions of .NET Framework such as 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5.

Features in .NET Framework 3.5

• Support for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
• Support for Ajax, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), REST (Representational State Transfer), POX (Plain Old XML), RSS (Really Simple Syndication), Atom, and several new WS-* standards.

More information:

Microsoft ships Visual Studio 2008 (PC World)

Latest Visual Studio Ready Ahead of Schedule (Internet News)

MS Unwraps Latest Visual Studio and .Net Framework (TechNewsWorld)

Microsoft ships Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 (Ars Technica)

Setting up a BBPress dev environment with XAMPP

I’m just lazy so when it comes to my personal Web sites I tend not to do the right thing and set up a dev environment first. Instead I just deploy stuff and work on the templates directly in my live Web site. I do keep copies of the templates locally before I go messing around so I figure the worst that can happen is the pages on my site will go down briefly if I accidentally put in a syntax error. I can back it out pretty quickly and restore the site, so why bother with a dev or test environment first?

Recently though I wanted to upgrade the software on my OraclePortalSucks.com site to the most recent release. And when the upgrade process failed utterly I realized I would need to go ahead and revert the entire site to the original templates, then set up a dev environment somewhere so I could test out the upgrade and figure out what I did wrong.

Now this was a site I slapped together one January afternoon last year, when I was banging my head against yet another weird set of bugs in the Oracle Portal. I got so frustrated I had to find some avenue to vent so I registered the domain, and since I already had a hosting plan I was able to get the site online within a few hours of registering it. I uploaded BBPress, which is a powerful yet easy to manage bulletin board system from some of the same folks who created WordPress. But then I haven’t really touched the site since. It was the attempt to upgrade BBPress to the latest version that blew up for me.

So first step was to set up a local development environment to support BBPress. That means Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I really like the way XAMPP rolls all those into a single ZIP file, and wraps a simple GUI around the whole package to let you start and stop the various components. Plus it’s great because it doesn’t have to be installed — you can run it immediately after un-zipping the whole mess as long as you unzip into the root directory of your hard drive with the \xampp folder. So I downloaded the latest version and unzipped it onto the C drive, thus it’s in C:\xampp.

Inside that xampp directory you should see a file called xampp-control.exe. Double click that to launch the administration utility:

I don’t use the options to install and set up the components as services, because I don’t use this all the time. I just click Start next to the components I need. In this particular case you’ll need both Apache and MySql, so start both of those.

Now launch a browser and go to the http://localhost address. You should see the XAMPP Web site.

In the left-hand menu bar, scroll down until you see the Tools section. Click on phpMyAdmin.

From the phpMyAdmin page, click the Privileges link and then click on the Add a New User link. Here I created a database and user to match the configuration used in my existing OraclePortalSucks BBPress setup. Of course you can create whatever name and database you like, just jot it down because you’ll need the info to edit the config.php later. Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Go button.

So now I had to get the PHP templates and the database contents from my site. The PHP templates were easy, just FTP them into a local folder. I called the folder “portalsucks” and put it in the C:\xampp\htdocs directory. Then I edited the config.php file in that portalsucks directory. Since I had created a database and useraccount with the same name as in the actual site, I only had to change the host string:

define(’BBDB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

I also changed the domain and path from the original settings:

$bb->domain = ‘http://www.oracleportalsucks.com’;

$bb->path = ‘/’;

To something appropriate for my local configuration:

$bb->domain = ‘http://localhost’;

$bb->path = ‘/portalsucks/’;

Last step was to download the database. Luckily my hosting company uses phpMyAdmin as well. So I selected the database and clicked the Export option. I just left all the default values and licked Go. That generated a textarea
that I cut-and-pasted into a local file. Which I could then import into my local phpMyAdmin.

Now since I had already created the database, I did have to edit the SQL to comment out the CREATE DATABASE command. Otherwise phpMyAdmin complains because you’re trying to create a database that already exists.

That’s it. I now have a fully functional development copy of my site. Now I just have to roll up the sleeves and figure out why my attempt to upgrade BBPress failed.

Save time with Visual Studio 2005 project templates

While application development provides plenty of opportunities to be creative, there are numerous aspects of every project that require developers to perform the same tasks over and over again. Automating such tasks provides you with more time to concentrate on the more challenging aspects of your work. Visual Studio 2005 provides numerous ways to boost productivity; templates are just one example. This article describes creating and using project templates.

Templates

Visual Studio 2005 has two different kinds of templates. The first is a standard template. Standard templates are included with a Visual Studio 2005 installation. You can find these templates in the Visual Studio 2005 directory under the Program Files directory (assuming the default directory is used during installation). On my system, the following directory points to the standard templates:

C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 8Common7IDEProjectTemplates

The second type of template is user or custom templates. A registry key (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0) specifies where custom project templates are stored on a development machine. The default directory for these templates is contained in the templates subdirectory of the project’s directory of the Visual Studio 2005 installation. The default directory is:

C:Documents and SettingsMy DocumentsVisual Studio 2005Templates

To control where project templates are stored via Visual Studio 2005, you simply select Tools | Options from the drop-down menu to open the Options window. In this window, expand Project and Solutions and select General. It includes a field for designating where project templates are stored.

Template file structure

Templates are contained in compressed files. A good example is the directory for standard Windows C# applications:

C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 8Common7IDEProjectTemplatesCSharpWindows1033

By default, the following template files are included in this directory:

• ClassLibrary.zip: Project template for a Class Library project.
• ConsoleApplication.zip: Project template for a Windows console application project.
• CRCSharp.zip: Project template for a Crystal Reports Application project.
• EmptyProject: An empty project.
• WebControlLibrary.zip: Project template for a Web Control Library project.
• WindowsApplication.zip: Project template for a Windows Application project.
• WindowsControlLibrary.zip: Project template for a Windows Control Library project.
• WindowsService.zip: Project template for a WindowsService.zip.

The compressed files are standard, so you can easily view the files’ contents with a project like WinZip or via Windows XP compressed folder.

The zip files contain all files necessary for creating a project. In addition, it contains an extra file with the extension vstemplate. This template file contains all information necessary to create a project and add appropriate files to the project.

The vstemplate file stores project template meta data as XML. In addition, it includes the details of how the template is displayed and what is included with it. As an example of a standard project template, the WindowsApplication.zip file contains the following files: assemblyinfo.cs, consoleapplication.csproj, csconsoleapplication.vstemplate, and program.cs.

Creating your own template

The simplest way to create your own template is by using another template as the starting point; that is, create a new Visual Studio 2005 project by selecting a template. Once the project has been created, you can make your changes like adding forms, classes, and so forth. Finally, save the project.

Once the project has been saved, you can select Export Template from the File drop-down menu within Visual Studio 2005. This opens the Export Template Wizard window, which guides you through the creation of the project template.

First, you select the template type (which is project template in this example). A drop-down list is available to specify the project to be used as the base for creating the template (it defaults to the currently open project that you just saved). Another drop-down selection is present for choosing the language (your choices depend upon what is installed) that the template will exist.

At this point, you select the next button and a final window appears. This window allows you to specify an icon for the project template (it appears in the Create A New Project window) along with assigning a template name. Also, a field is provided to type a description of the template. The output location of the new project template file (compressed file) is displayed, but it may not be edited.

Finding templates online

In addition to the previously described standard templates that are included with Visual Studio 2005, there are starter kits available from Microsoft as well. The starter kit concept promotes the consumption of sample code applications and projects through community sites. These samples may be downloaded from the community Web sites.

You may search online for templates or starter kits when creating a new project. The New Project dialog box provides an option called Search Online Templates. This option allows you to search for starter kits online by keyword. If a match is found, you can choose to download and install it into the appropriate directory so it may be used as a template. These starter kits provide an opportunity to learn via code that has been tested and developed by professionals. The MSDN and MyCodezone sites are examples of online template resources.

Conserve time and energy

The main selling point of Visual Studio 2005 templates is the ability to automate redundant steps, thus saving developers time. Many organizations include a base set of features in new Visual Studio 2005 projects, including standard graphics, splash page, login form, specific references and so forth. By including these elements in a project template, you can easily create new projects with the template and avoid having to manually do it each time.

Stop the systematic abuse of object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming (OOP) has become the dominant type of programming over the last 10 years or so; a major driver of this has been Java, VB.NET, and C#. But what I keep seeing more and more is that too many programmers using object-oriented languages really do not understand OOP.

A huge misunderstanding is the concept of encapsulation. Encapsulation is meant to hide the underlying implementation of a concept from the code that makes use of the object — not to expose it. The idea is that the consuming code does not need to know or care about the particular implementation “under the hood,” so it can be changed without affecting anything else. Encapsulation works hand-in-hand with polymorphism.

Between encapsulation and polymorphism, code can (and should) be extremely loosely coupled. But really it isn’t in many pieces of code that I have seen. Far too many objects end up simply being equivalent to a Pascal “type” structure, a strongly typed collection of other types, gathered in one spot for easy reference. Another fairly common misuse of OOP is to write “classes” that play out like hashtables of hashtables of hashtables. While that type of programming made sense in Perl for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is the lack of a comprehensible object system in Perl), it is not in the spirit of OOP.

Why are these techniques a problem? For one thing, they require too much knowledge by the consumer of the underlying functionality. The first example leads to these statements that look like this:

FooObject.Property.Item(Index).Method(Parameter 1, Parameter2).Property = BarObject.Method(Parameter 1).Property.ToKludgeObjectType()

If the consumer has no idea what any of those sub-properties, methods, and so on do, they cannot get too far using either of these classes. On top of that, by exposing so many of the internals to the consumer in what will need to be a full-access manner, the encapsulating object hands over full control. This can cause some real damage, particularly if those contained classes have properties or methods with negative consequences.

The second type that I describe typically looks something like this:

FooObject("Property").Item(Index).Method(Parameter 1, Parameter 2)("Property") = CType(BarObject.Method(Parameter 1).Item("Property"), KludgeObjectType)

Wow… what an utter disaster. Can you imagine working with this? The worst part is that, with all of those collection lookups, you can throw compile time checking out of the window. The person who writes this manages to combine a very dangerous aspect of dynamic languages (lack of compile time checking) with the worst of compiled languages (design time knowledge of types) into something that derives none of the benefits of either type of language. One “fat finger mistake” in all of those lookup values will compile just fine, but come run time, they will become errors of one sort or another. It would not be so bad if a simple mistake just lead to an outright exception like “Index out of range,” but if the mistake just happens to be purely logical (e.g., the item named does exist, but the wrong item was named), there is a solid chance that the code will keep running but with silent and hard-to-detect corruption of data and/or logic.

I know part of the problem here is simple laziness. I am guilty of it plenty of times. For me, what usually happens is that I am using an OO language for something that I really just need a procedural or mostly procedural language for. Let’s face it, not every application requires too much OO design — they really just need a way of quickly passing a bunch of loosely related data around. But these “shuttle classes” always seem to take on a life of their own, and the next thing you know, you are writing static/shared classes with static/shared members to process the data within the “shuttle classes.” Why? Because you really meant to be using Perl, Pascal, or maybe even Smalltalk or a simple shell script, not C++, Java, C#, or VB.NET (at least for this one part of the project, that is).

Folks, this is where the rubber stops meeting the road. Those earliest experiences with programming will always color our current thought process regarding programming. And nearly universally, we were introduced to programming with a procedural language or a very procedural use of a non-procedural language. Add to that the fact that contrary to popular belief, Java, VB.NET, and C# are not purely noun-oriented OO. After all, they have some primitive verbs in there. What we really just want to do sometimes is to extend the language itself (add new primitive verbs) –that is where those anti-OO static classes of static methods come from, and it is the only way we can really add a new verb to the language. Those pseudo-procedural-functions end up needing a ton of parameters passed to them (just like procedural code), since the data that they are working on is no longer included in the class that they are members of.

At the end of the day, this type of programming is indicative of one or more of the following things:

• The programmer was “born and bred” in a non-OO environment and is untrained in proper OO.
• The programmer does not feel like using the proper OO techniques for whatever reasons.
• The language being used is the wrong language for the job.

I think the last item is a lot more common than most of us care to admit. After all, we turned to OO to save us a lot of headaches, increase code reuse, etc. But none of the OO promises can be fulfilled when we treat an OO language like it is something that it is not. And if we are going to program away the benefits of OO, why bother using the languages?

I guess this is yet another reason why I am fairly pro on the .NET CLR (and would be on the JVM if Sun was more supportive of other languages). It is possible (in theory) to write the right code in the right languages. Sadly, the only two languages with massive support in .NET right now are the nearly identical twins, VB.NET and C#. It looks like the first language to get formal “kid brother” status is the functional language F#. IronRuby and IronPython are still “CodePlex cousins,” in which Microsoft might donate some time, server space, and documentation but little real support. Ruby is also attractive to me because it seems to blend procedural and OO code pretty well. I really, really need to try Ruby out.

The takeaway here is that you really need to get off the couch, learn proper OO, and use it correctly. Otherwise, you are hurting your own efficiency, writing slow code (all of those collection lookups and OO tree traversals are rather expensive!), and making your code difficult to maintain. If you still cannot figure out how to write what you need in an OO-friendly manner, you may need to think about switching languages.

courtesy @TechRepublic

Windows XP SP3 boasts speed boost, testers claim

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to release next year, runs Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.

Devil Mountain Software, which earlier in the week claimed Windows Vista SP1 was no faster than the original, repeated some of the same tests on the release candidate of Windows XP SP3, the service pack recently issued to about 15,000 testers.

"We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog Friday.

Devil Mountain ran its OfficeBench suite of performance benchmarks on a laptop equipped with Office 2007, Microsoft's latest application suite. The notebook -- the same unit used in the Vista/Vista SP1 tests earlier -- featured a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory. The results reported a 10% speed increase under XP SP3 when compared to SP2, the service pack released in 2004.

"Since SP3 was supposed to be mostly a bug-fix/patch consolidation release, the unexpected speed boost comes as a nice bonus," Barth said. "In fact, XP SP3 is shaping up to be a 'must-have' update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond's not-so-latest and greatest desktop OS."

According to the Office performance benchmarks, Windows XP SP3 is also considerably faster than Vista SP1. "None of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than two times slower than the most current builds of its older sibling," said Barth.

While Microsoft was not available for comment over the weekend about XP's performance, it defended Vista SP1 after Devil Mountain's first round of tests. "We appreciate the excitement to evaluate Windows Vista SP1 as soon as possible. However, the service pack is still in the development phase and will undergo several changes before being released," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

Microsoft has at times struggled to wean users from the six-year-old Windows XP and get them to migrate to Vista. During 2007, for example, it made several XP concessions, including adding five years to the support lifespan of the Home edition and extending OEM and retail sales of XP through June 2008, as it recognized that customers wanted to hold on to the older OS.

Recently, Forrester Research said that XP remained Vista's biggest rival, and cited survey data that showed American and European businesses would delay Vista deployment, in part because of application incompatibility issues with the new OS. "That's causing a lot of XP shops to take a wait-and-see approach to Vista," said Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray two weeks ago.

courtesy @computerworld.com

Must-have gadgets for the discerning geek

Sure, you're getting an iPhone. But real techies will want these cool toys, too

It's that time of year when even adults' thoughts turn to toys. For IT pros and technology lovers, that means gadgets and cool apps. Chances are that you've got an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch on your list, if not already in your pocket. And a high-def TiVo, Apple MacBook Pro with Leopard and Parallels Desktop are all old news to you.

So you want something that not everyone else has already discovered.

You've come to the right place. InfoWorld has looked beyond the merely cool to uncover seven items that the truly leading-edge tech cognoscenti will want on their holiday lists.

InfoWorld's must-have gadgets
Sun Microsystems Project Sun Spot Development Kit sensor and robotics kit
Vudu Box movies-on-demand server
Amazon.com Kindle wireless e-book reader
Fujitsu PalmSecure PC Login Kit biometric mouse
AMD ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB HDTV converter for PCs and Macs
T-Mobile HotSpot @Home base station for cellular/Wi-Fi combo phone service
Data Robotics Drobo intelligent backup drive

Sun Microsystems Project Sun Spot Development Kit sensor and robotics kit
Why you must have it: If your happy childhood centered around your Heathkit radio, computer, or home audio electronics kits, you'll drool over Sun Microsystems' Project Sun Spot Development Kit, a battery-operated platform for development of radio-controlled sensor networks, robotics, and personal consumer electronics. Each kit comes with a base station and two Spot devices, each of which, in turn, includes a processor, a radio, a sensor board, and battery. You can also add servo motors and your own sensors on top of the acceleration, temperature, and light sensors that come with each Spot. You program and build the Java VM-based Spots to do whatever it is you want to build; examples of Spot applications developed so far include microwave detection, robotic-arm control, and slot-car control.

Project Sun Spot was the brainchild of Sun Labs, which developed the basic technology but soon realized it had more possibilities than its team could research. So Sun Labs has made the technology available to anyone willing to purchase a kit for $499.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: Very high, as supplies are limited and frequently need to be back-ordered.

What you should know: The Sun Spot technology is decidedly not commercial — it's more like an open source hardware/software platform. So be warned: If you're not willing to go deep into the tech thicket and work with an evolving technology, Sun Spot is not for you. The kits can be ordered only from Sun.

What you need: A PC running Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.4 (only PowerPC Macs are supported now, though Intel Mac compatibility is planned), and Linux (Fedora Core 5, SuSE 10.1, and Ubuntu 6.06 have all been tested). Sun has not tested Sun Spot on Vista or Leopard, but users report that it works on those operating systems. Each kit costs $499.

Vudu Box movies-on-demand server
Why you must have it: Sure, it's a bit cliched to get yet another entertainment box, but the ongoing industry transformation to digital media delivery gives you no choice. The cable and satellite companies have been pushing video on demand for years, so why bother with the Vudu Box? The answer is that you get to keep your movies with Vudu — sort of like an iPod that can store your digital movie collection and move them to your TV. And you're not tied into your current TV provider's offerings. Vudu uses a broadband connection to download the movies, which you can either rent for 24 hours or buy, and there's no monthly subscription fee. The HD-capable Vudu Box can access about 5,000 movie titles — though it only store about 100 movies at a time. When Vudu upgrades its software next year, you'll be able to store movies on a USB 2.0 hard drive (the Box has two USB ports). Another option: Store them on Vudu's Web site, and they'll be streamed back down when you want to watch them.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: High, as this movie server has been available only since September.

What you should know: The encoding technology is proprietary, so you cannot move over TiVo'd or other view files to the Vudu Box. The company offers about 5,000 titles, so the selection is about as much as a large video-rental store's inventory. There's a risk that if the company goes under, you'll lose access to any movies you've bought but not stored locally. HD films play only over the Vudu Box's HDMI connections, not over its composite interface.

What you need: A broadband connection of at least 2Mbps, plus the ability to run an Ethernet cable from the Vudu box to your router. HDMI input is required for HD playback. The Vudu Box costs $399.

Amazon.com Kindle wireless e-book reader
Why you must have it: E-book readers have always sounded like a great idea. But until now, they've generally fallen short. The Amazon.com Kindle is the first e-book reader you might actually want to use in real life. What makes Kindle different from predecessors such as the Sony Portable Reader and various PDA-based software readers is that it doesn't need a computer. Instead, it uses Sprint's EvDO (evolution, data optimized) 3G cellular connection to download the books you buy or the magazines, newspapers, and blogs you subscribe to, such as the New York Times, Le Monde, Time, Atlantic Monthly, and the Huffington Post. About 88,000 titles are available. You don't pay for the wireless access, just the books you buy or publications you subscribe to, as their price covers the wireless charges.

The reader is about the size and weight of a paperback book, with search capabilities, adjustable text size, and a nonbacklit screen, so it can be read in daylight. We didn't get our hands on a Kindle in time for this piece, but its resolution is similar to that of e-book readers that have gotten good marks for readability. It has a few bells and whistles such as free (that is, no data charges) access to Wikipedia, a built-in copy of the "New Oxford American Dictionary," and some annotation capabilities, including bookmarking and notes. Each Kindle has a customizable e-mail address through which you can receive HTML, ASCII, and Microsoft Word documents and pictures in a variety of formats for 10 cents each. With its USB port, the Kindle lets you transfer Audible.com audiobooks from your PC; it should be noted, however, that the audiobooks are too large to send over the EvDO network.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: High, as the Kindle was released just before Thanksgiving.

What you should know: The biggest issue for most tech-savvy buyers is that the Kindle does not support the Adobe PDF format. The battery life is good for about two days of "normal" use, and it takes two hours to recharge The Kindle holds about 200 titles (books cost about $10 each), so you're not likely to run out of reading material in a hurry. The inventory of books is relatively low, though Amazon says it is adding several dozen a month. Books and publication subscriptions can be purchased through Amazon.com's Kindle Store only. Books with images that are complex or that require color reproduction, will not be made available, given the Kindle's 167-pixel, grayscale display.

What you need: A PC with a USB 2.0 port if you want to transfer audiobook files. The Kindle costs $399.

Fujitsu PalmSecure PC Login Kit biometric mouse
Why you must have it: Biometric security is both easy to use and hard to defeat, so it's no surprise that finger scanners are popping up on notebooks and as PC peripherals. But once you've swiped them, anyone can use the computer. Fujitsu has taken the biometric protection concept one step further, making it continuous. It's done so with its PalmSecure mouse, which has an infrared scanner that reads the pattern of the veins in your palm as you hold the mouse (check out our video preview), all without adding more desktop clutter or replacing your biometric-less laptop.

Fujitsu has had its PalmSecure technology available for a while, but only in a version that required an authentication server. That tended to limit its uses to enterprises such as hospitals, where users might work on multiple PCs during the day. What's changed is the availability of the PC Login Kit, which has translated that authentication server into software that can run on your PC.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: Extremely high, as Fujitsu has not yet begun selling the PalmSecure PC Login Kit.

What you should know: The PalmSecure works only on Windows XP and Vista. If you want to have managed multiuser authentication across an enterprise's PCs, you'll need the authentication server edition.

What you need: A Windows XP or Vista PC with USB 2.0 port. Pricing is not yet available.

AMD ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB HDTV converter for PCs and Macs
Why you must have it: For many of us, our PCs double as a TV — at least occasionally. There's been no shortage of cards and dongles to bring TV into a PC, but chances are the gadget you have isn't ready for HDTV. The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo is. When an HD antenna is attached, this inexpensive USB-connected box will pick up HD signals over the air, as well as conventional analog signals. (There's also a PCI version for desktop PCs.) It can not only receive digital signals from the standard free networks and local stations; it also has cable/satellite inputs to get signals from your paid service, including the unencrypted ClearQAM HD channels that you may be getting from your cable provider but can't see on your regular TV without a compatible HD tuner.

As with previous ATI Wonder models, the 650 Combo comes with TiVo-like ability to pause TV while you're watching it, as well as DVD-burning capabilities.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: Medium, given the mania around digital TV and the low cost of the device.

What you should know: Use of ClearQAM to transmit unencrypted HD signals to digital TVs is very uneven, so there's no guarantee that the Wonder 650 will give you access to HD channels your analog converter box can't detect. There's also no guarantee your provider will continue to send any ClearQAM transmissions it now delivers in this transition period to the FCC's 2009 digital TV mandate. So consider ClearQAM support as a bonus that may in the end deliver little or nothing at your specific residence. Check out AntennaWeb to see what your over-the-air HD signal coverage is.

What you need: A USB 2.0-equipped Windows XP or Vista PC with a DirectX 9 or later graphics card, or USB 2.0-equipped Mac running Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later (an OpenGL 2.0 or later graphics card is recommended). An HD antenna (about $30 to $50) is required to receive HDTV signals over the air. The ATI Wonder 650 Combo costs $150.

T-Mobile HotSpot @Home base station for cellular/Wi-Fi combo phone service
Why you must have it: It's nuts to have a cell phone and burn minutes at home, where you're already paying for broadband service and probably a regular or VoIP line to boot. For several years, T-Mobile has said it would change that equation, delivering cell phones that use your broadband connection at home — without incurring minutes — and then switch to the cellular network when you're out of range. This year, T-Mobile delivered, with its HotSpot @Home service. Plus, when in range of a U.S.-based T-Mobile HotSpot (such as many Starbucks Coffee stores) anywhere else, your phone also uses Wi-Fi rather than the cell network so that you're not burning minutes in those locations, either.

If the service replaces just one fixed-line phone at home, the service cost is usually paid for by those savings. Even if you keep a landline number as a general line, you could save enough cellular minutes at home to at least make a dent in HotSpot @Home's cost. And you can have multiple phones work over the HotSpot @Home router, perhaps significantly decreasing the cellular minutes you need to buy.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: High, given T-Mobile's small market share compared to AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless.

What you should know: You'll need a compatible phone, which means you're limited to the Samsung T409 and the RIM BlackBerry Curve. You can use the Wi-Fi connection outside your home network and T-Mobile HotSpots, but only over unsecured wireless LANs, as there's no way to enter SSID and other access permissions from the phones. T-Mobile's coverage can be weak out of major metro areas, and the carrier has no 3G offerings and almost nothing in the way of data services on its cellular network. As with a Wi-Fi network, the service is subject to interference, which is more noticeable on a phone call then when browsing the Web.

What you need: A T-Mobile cellular service plan, plus the additional HotSpot @Home service ($20 per month). You'll also need a $50 T-Mobile router at home because it contains the SSID the phones seek out to connect via Wi-Fi. However, this T-Mobile device can work in access point mode when it's attached to your existing router, rather than force you to replace what you already have in place.

Data Robotics Drobo intelligent backup drive
Why you must have it: MP3 files, TiVo videos, vacation photos, you name it — a lot of precious information now resides on our hard drives, vulnerable to becoming so much electronic dust in case of a system crash or a drive failure. The Drobo takes a step beyond the large external drives widely available today by adding intelligence and configurability to the device, both simplifying operations and giving you more control. The Drobo enclosure can take up to four half-height or full-height SATA hard drives and combine them into a massive, multiterabyte backup system — no need to figure out RAID settings or worry about whether the drives are the right capacities to work together. And as you add or replace drives within Drobo, it handles the updating and migration of affected backup data automatically. It also initiates the backup for you, so there's no need to have backup software on your PC or Mac.

You can use the Drobo with multiple PCs, backing each up on it. The Drobo personal storage array is also compatible with Mac OS 10.5 Leopard's Time Machine, letting you back up your data and allowing access to the various changes to individual files that Time Machine provides.

Your chances of having the first one on the block: Very good, as Drobo has been available only a few months.

What you should know: To support both Macs and PCs simultaneously, Drobo drives should be formatted with FAT32 partitions. Drobo has no network interface for LAN-based backup, but users have successfully connected it to a USB-equipped Apple AirPort Extreme wireless router to enable network backup in all-Mac environment. The company says Windows-only and mixed-platform network backup should be possible if you use another vendor's USB 2.0-equipped router (AirPort requires that attached devices use Apple's HFS+ partitions for storage).

What you need: A USB 2.0-equipped PC running Windows 2000, 2003 Server, XP, or Vista, or a USB 2.0-equipped Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Still not sure what to put under the tree? Maybe you're torn between buying an iPhone or some other mobile device. (After all, as cool as the iPhone is for personal use, it's not yet enterprise-class.) Not to worry. InfoWorld can make help you make that decision a little more easily, too:

Read Tom Yager's iPhone review, then watch our two video reviews of the iPhone: one of the device as a combo MP3 player, Web browser, and cell phone, and the other of it as a multimedia device.

Read our Test Center comparison of seven supersmart phones for extreme mobility: the AT&T 8525 (a.k.a. the HTC Hermes), HTC Advantage X7501, Nokia E61i, Nokia E65, RIM BlackBerry 8300 (a.k.a. the Curve), RIM BlackBerry 8800, and T-Mobile Wing (a.k.a. the HTC Herald). Watch our handy slideshow for a quick take on each.

courtesy @infoworld.com

10 Tips To Secure Your Laptop

Whether you're home or on the road, these security steps will help protect you and your computer from wireless scoundrels.
As more people use laptops for their primary work PCs, the chances for being compromised because of wireless miscreants loom large. Here are 10 how-to tips to protect yourself and make the best use of a wireless network, whether you are at home, at work, or in between.

Avoid peer-to-peer connections, like the Linksys one in this example.

1. Make sure you are connecting to the right network.

Although this sounds sort of obvious, I've noticed in my travels that there are lots of unscrupulous people who purposely name their wireless connection "Linksys," or some other common vendor's name, in hopes of getting someone who is less than careful to connect to them. The security industry calls these sorts of conditions "evil twins."

The issue here is that your laptop is set up to automatically connect to a particular access point's Service Set Identifier (SSID) -- so someone who uses a common name can grab a bunch of users who aren't wary. There are also tools (such as AirJack) that an attacker can use to disconnect users from the right access point and have them then connect to his rogue network. (More information about this exploit is available from Nomad Mobile Research Centre.)

When you are out on the road, look carefully at the screen that shows the available network connections, and particularly at the different icons next to the connections. The icon that looks like a light beacon indicates an access point, while the one showing two computers with connecting lines indicates a peer-to-peer connection. These peer-to-peer connections are the ones to avoid. There is also a padlock icon that indicates whether or not an access point is running encryption protocols. In the screen shot above (we use Windows XP for our examples), the "wireless" network is an access point running encryption, while we have mistakenly connected to another computer called "Linksys."

Select the option to only access infrastructure networks.

If you are worried about this, there are several steps that you can take, including disabling automatic connections and using a unique name for your home network. Go to your Wireless Networks panel, click the "Advanced" button and then uncheck "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks" and check "Access point (infrastructure) networks only."

If using SP2, configure every wireless network to not connect automatically when the network is in range by going into the "Connection" box under Wireless Properties.

2. Secure your connection.

This next tip is for your own home-based wireless network. If you don't mind having all your neighbors share your wireless connection, then just ignore this tip and keep your access point running unsecured.

For the rest of us, make sure your home wireless network is secured with WPA2 encryption, if you can. This is the strongest encryption method, and while it is somewhat cumbersome to set up, it is worth the pain to keep prying eyes from examining what is going on over your network. To support WPA2, you'll need to patch XP (and you need to be running SP2).

To set up WPA2 once you have installed the patch, bring up the wireless network properties sheet and choose WPA2-PSK from the pull-down menu.

If you can't run WPA2 on all of your home machines, then consider some other encryption scheme -- anything is better than nothing. ("Open" in the screen shot below means you aren't running with any encryption.) When you are on the road, if you have a choice, choose the wireless network that is encrypted if you have the appropriate access and a password.

Encrypt your home network with WPA2, if possible.

3. What's the frequency, Kenneth?

If you want to get the best performance out of your home wireless network, make sure to set up your access point to use a frequency channel that isn't already occupied by one of your neighbors' networks. Of course, this can change from day to day as new people move in or as your neighbors buy new gear, so it is worth checking the airwaves around your home and seeing who is broadcasting on which frequency.

Every wireless adapter comes with monitoring software, but sometimes you have to look around your hard disk to find it. In the sample screen shot on the next page, we use the Linksys monitoring software and see which channel our wireless network is broadcasting on, along with other information such as the kind of encryption being used and the MAC address of the access point itself.

Use a different wireless frequency than your neighbors use.

The frequency channels are important, because Wi-Fi networks have a limited number of frequency bands that they operate on. Each 802.11 protocol (a, b, g, and n) uses a different combination of frequencies to allow multiple devices to broadcast. (Moonblink offers a nice graphical depiction of the 802.11b frequencies, the most common ones in use today.)

Even though 802.11b has 11 different frequencies, only three of them aren't overlapping: 1, 6, and 11. The issue gets murkier when you add the newer wireless products, because, not only are the frequencies overlapping, but also because the 802.11n products actually can interfere with your neighbor's older 11b/g equipment.

This means that if you live in any high-density wireless area and don't care about what happens to your neighbors, then upgrade to an 802.11n network.

4. Find the strongest signals. When you are on the road, you often have a choice about which network to connect to. All other things being equal, choose the one with the strongest signal strength if you can. The stronger the signal, the faster your connection and the less time you have to waste before you have to catch your flight. (Lisa Phifer offers more technical information about how to measure signal strength.)

In years past there was talk about people wiring up their own external antennas based on potato-chip canisters to boost their signal strength, but as wireless network adapters have become better integrated into laptops, this is getting harder to do. (You'd have to open up your laptop and see if you can remove the lead wire for the antenna.) The best bet is to use equipment with the newer 802.11g or n adapters, as they have the best reach.

But you don't have to re-wire your laptop; you can also be smart about where you sit to find the best connection. Look around and see where your fellow travelers are located. They might have done the wireless airport site survey already for you. Of course, it would be nice if these Wi-Fi-rich areas were also located near AC power outlets, which are getting to be an endangered species in airports these days. (Another travel tip: carry a three-way tap so you can share your plug with others.)

Also, keep in mind that many airport restaurants and lounges have their own free Wi-Fi -- you can sit in the lounge, or even nearby, and get the best signals there. If you really want to obsess about signal strength, buy something like the Kensington Wi-Fi Finder Plus that will report on what networks are available nearby without having to open up your laptop.

Turn off file shares while traveling.

5. Turn off your wireless network adapter when you are on the plane.

You can save battery life, and you are better protected, too. While you are at it, turn off the Bluetooth radios on your laptop for an extra energy boost.

Also, turn off any Windows file shares when you travel. To do this, go to your wireless connection's Properties panel and make sure that "Client for Microsoft Networks" and "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" are both unchecked.

Finally, turn off your iTunes sharing arrangements. At many hotels, I am able to browse music libraries and shared directories of other guests, which, while amusing for me, is probably not what they have intended. This is found in iTunes' Preferences, in the Sharing control panel. 6. Use whole disk encryption on your laptop.

And think about using a better protection scheme for your USB thumb drives, too. You never know when someone will steal your data or break into your car or hotel room and lift the laptop. (That happened to me on one business trip.) I like PGP Disk, but there are others that cost next to nothing and provide plenty of protection. For an added layer of protection, use a security cable when you leave your laptop in your hotel room.

7. If you are having trouble connecting to a network, trying rebooting Windows.

Disable automatic connections on your wireless network.

Sometimes Windows just gets confused and a reboot will find a network and connect right up. I don't know why this is the case. Macs don't seem to have this problem.

8. Make sure you have a firewall and it is running.

I am using Kaspersky, but there are dozens of different programs that will protect your laptop, including free ones from AVG and Zone Alarm. You need to use them if you don't want to catch any infections when you are out on the road. Windows has had a built-in firewall since XP SP2, but neither that one, nor the one that comes with Vista, is as good as any of the third-party products. The Firewall Leak Tester Web site is great place to learn more about firewalls and what they do and don't protect.

9. Pick your hotspot connection and your supplier carefully.

When I travel, I first try to use the free wired connection at the hotel or a public library. If that isn't possible, then I go someplace that has T-Mobile service, because it has the best security and also supports encrypted connections. A lot of airports now charge you for access, but keep in mind tip #4 about finding a restaurant or other business that has a free connection.

You can typically purchase an access pass for a few hours, a 24-hour period, or an entire month. Boingo.com for example has plans at $8 per day and $22 per month for North American hotspots, and $39 per month for global coverage. If you are a frequent traveler or know you are going to be on the road for awhile, sign up for a monthly access plan.

10. Finally, don't blithely accept SSL certificates and SSH public keys.

Before you accept, make sure you first understand what you are accepting. Don't log on to a public hotspot that presents you with an invalid certificate, and know when to expect the certificate in the logon process.

Summary

This may all seem like a lot of work simply to roam around the world, but if you follow these 10 tips you will find that you are protected for the majority of situations and can balance protection with the convenience of using a wireless network.

Torvalds On Where Linux Is Headed In 2008

The creator of Linux is excited about solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualization despite his personal lack of interest in the area.
With new releases of the kernel coming every two to three months, Linux continues to test the limits of the open-source development process. Moving forward, the roadmap for the open-source operating system indicates a constant drive to add features, while maintaining quality and stability.

To get some perspective on what lies ahead in 2008, we caught up with Linus Torvalds via email. His responses touched on the Linux development process, upcoming features, and whether he's concerned about potential patent litigation.

InformationWeek: Is Linux kernel development proceeding faster than Windows Server development?

Torvalds: I'm the wrong person to ask, for multiple reasons. First off, I'm somewhat biased, of course. But the other reason is that I don't even know -- or really care -- how Windows Server development actually proceeds, so how could I even compare and make an intelligent point?

I simply don't use Microsoft products, not because I hate them, but because they aren't interesting to me.

So, yes, with the above really big caveats, I obviously do believe that Linux development tends to be a lot more efficient than the alternatives -- both inside the kernel but in many ways even more so in all the things going on around it. And I don't mean Windows in particular, I mean any behind-closed-doors-commercial-proprietary model.

And as to why, let me instead answer your second question, because I think that one is more directed.

InformationWeek: In your opinion, where does Linux shine versus Windows? Reliability? Virtualization?

Torvalds: I think the real strength of Linux is not in any particular area, but in the flexibility. For example, you mention virtualization, and in some ways that's a really excellent example, because it's not only an example of something where Linux is a fairly strong player, but more tellingly, it's an example where there are actually many different approaches, and there is no one-size-fits-all "One True Virtualization" model.

There are many different levels of virtualization, and many different trade-offs in efficiency, management, separation, running legacy applications and system software, etc. And different people simply care about different parts of it, which is why the buzz-word "virtualization" shows up in so many places.

And not only do we tend to support many different models of virtualization, but one telling detail may be that I am personally so totally uninterested in it, that I am really happy that I have almost nothing to do with any of them.

And I mention that as a strong point of open source! Why? Because it actually is a great example of what open source results in: one person's (or company's) particular interests don't end up being dominant. The fact that I personally think that virtualization isn't all that exciting means next to nothing.

This is actually the biggest strength of Linux. When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft -- or any individual company -- is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility. And it stems directly from the fact that anybody who is interested can participate in the development, and no single entity ends up being in control of where it all goes.

And what does that then lead to? Linux ends up being very good at a lot of different things, and rather well-rounded in general. It's also very adept at taking up any new niche, because regardless of where you want to put it, not only has somebody else probably looked at something related before but you don't have to go through license hassles to get permission to do a pilot project.

InformationWeek: Where will the Linux kernel gain added strengths in 2008?

Torvalds: We really are pretty much all over the map. One of the fun things about Linux, and certainly the thing that has kept it interesting over almost two decades now, is how different people have different goals and the hardware keeps changing under us too.

So a lot of the effort ends up being hardware-related. Both in terms of peripheral drivers and simply in platform changes. The bulk of the kernel really is about hardware support, and that alone keeps us busy. The situation in graphics and wireless networking devices -- both of which have been somewhat weak spots -- is changing, and I suspect that will be a large part of what continues to happen during 2008 too.

One of the things I personally am really interested in is the move over to SSD [solid-state drives] disks. I'm a huge believer in [reducing] latency, and some of the better SSDs are changing the whole game when it comes to access latency, which in turn has potentially big impacts on the kernel -- and while they are currently expensive enough to be a pretty minor player, that is certainly looking to change in 2008 and later.

And you already mentioned virtualization. It may not be my favorite area, but it's certainly a happening one ;)

But in the end, a lot of this is just a huge amount of individually small changes that may not be even interesting on their own - what is then really stunning is how big a difference all those small not-so-interesting changes make when you put them all together.

In other words, I'm a huge believer in the "99 % perspiration, 1% inspiration" rule. It's a lot of hard -- but happily, mostly interesting -- work, and there is seldom, if ever, any single big silver bullet. So 99 % of all the real work that will go on during 2008 is just more of the same, and that's really the important part!

InformationWeek: Do you think there is any way Microsoft, patent holders, or lawyers can take direct aim at the kernel development process and impede it?

Torvalds: I really don't know. I don't think they can impede the technology, and I really don't think there is anything real behind that whole intellectual property FUD machine. But nearly infinite amounts of money certainly goes a long way.

I'm again the wrong person to ask. I work on the technology, and I make sure we do that as well as we can (which does include the ways we do it, including things like doing all the copyright certification we do), but I think that when it comes to these issues, you're really talking about marketing and FUD, not so much anything I'm able to really answer.
courtesy @informationweek.com

The 10 most important business technology products of 2007

Technology product developments came at a blistering pace in 2007, including big moves from major vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, and Apple, as well as exciting innovations from several upstarts. Here’s my list of the 10 most important business technology products of the year.

10. i-Mate smartphones

Decades from now when the history of this period of technological revolution is written, 2007 might be remembered as the year of the smartphone (hint: that’s a dead giveaway for what’s No. 1 on this list). A ton of vendors made moves in the smartphone market in 2007. We had important developments from tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Intel, the traditional mobile handset makers such as Samsung, Motorola, LG, and Sony/Eriksson, and nearly all of the global wireless carriers. However, there were also important innovations from smaller players, such as i-Mate, which has developed a line of smartphones aimed at replacing laptops for mobile workers.

The i-Mate Ultimate smartphones look and act like he average high-end smartphone in most ways, but they have a critical trick up their sleeve. You can hook them up to a full VGA screen, connect peripherals, and run it like a desktop or laptop. It even has a built-in RDP client so that you can use it to connect via Remote Desktop to your machine back at the corporate headquarters. You can also use an i-Mate to connect directly to a projector and run a PowerPoint presentation from the phone. With this functionality, the i-Mate could be a peak at the future of the smartphone.

9. Sprint Xohm

Xohm is the brand name that Sprint has given to its forthcoming WiMAX service, which is expected to reach critical mass in the U.S. during a major rollout in 2008. You may rightly ask why I would put a product on this list when that product hasn’t even been commercially deployed yet. There are two reasons.

First, I expect that this product will be that important - it has the potential to finally untether and mobilize broadband Internet access and to bring cost-effective broadband to a lot of areas and regions that have been left off the information superhighway so far. Second, I’ve actually tried the preliminary Xohm network that Motorola built in Chicago (which will be one of the first two metro areas to get Xohm in 2008 along with Washington D.C.) and it appears that Xohm is going to be everything we hoped that WiMAX would be. Since these new WiMAX networks were built during 2007 and many of the Sprint’s plans officially unveiled, I think Xohm deserves a place on the list.

8. Salesforce.com

It’s tough to get excited about backend software like customer relations management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA), but Salesforce.com has taken the mundane and complicated and made it easy to deploy for IT and easy to handle for users. Salesforce.com has been around since 1999, but in many ways, 2007 was the year that it arrived. The company grew by 60% this year after 58% growth in 2006, and it now has over 35,000 companies and nearly a 1 million users running its software. The poster child for Software as a Service (SaaS) has been so successful that it is now working to extend its success into a full SaaS platform called Force.com.

7. (tie) Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard

During 2007, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X - the two most popular operating systems on planet Earth - both released their most significant OS update in years. However, both upgrades have run into major stumbling blocks in their quest for user acceptance and for many of the same reasons - compatibility issues with existing applications and hardware. IT departments and users are sick of paying to be beta testers.

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has garnered more critical acclaim than Vista, and rightly so. It brings several new elegant usability touches to the desktop, led by its Spaces feature, which allows the user to switch between multiple desktop environments. This has been available in Linux for years and Apple uses it to excellent effect and usefulness in OS X 10.5. Also, Leopard’s stacked folders for Documents and Downloads in the new Dock provide easy access to working files without cluttering up the desktop screen.

Vista includes some nice additions for home users (e.g. parental controls and better tools for photos and video), but it does not have much to offer over Windows XP for business users, especially now that nearly all of Vista’s Windows Desktop Search features have been released for XP. Nevertheless, Vista has already captured about 4.5% of the desktop market, which is equal to the entire market share of Mac OS, according to W3Counter.

In both cases, if the software had been done right, Vista and Leopard should have been higher on this list rather than relegated to the bottom half. What’s most significant about Vista and Leopard in 2007 is the fact that both of them have been dogged by compatibility problems and drawn a lot of public frustration from users, who are holding the feet of Microsoft and Apple to the fire. In 2007, users seem to be making the statement that they’d much rather have incremental OS improvements and updates than run huge upgrades that ultimately disable some of their most important hardware and software.

6. LinkedIn

Another product that has been around for several years but really hit its stride in 2007 is LinkedIn. It is the representative of the social networking movement on this list. Essentially a combination of digital rolodex, online resume, and business networking forum, LinkedIn connects over 16 million business professionals. There used to be a very high percentage of techies and Web enthusiasts on LinkedIn, but now I’m finding more and more of my non-technical friends and associates.

It is a very useful tool for keeping track of consultants, business partners, former colleagues, and other business associates. Rather than calling around or asking around to find out if so-and-so is still with Company X, just check their LinkedIn profile. Conversely, you can also use LinkedIn to find out who is the new VP of sales at Company Y, where your best contact recently left for greener pastures.

Although FaceBook is quickly expanding into business networking and does many of the same things as LinkedIn, it still feels like an after-work hangout. LinkedIn is a much more serious business site.

5. Zoho Office

I’ve written about Zoho several times during 2007, most prominently in Sanity check: Can tiny Zoho beat Microsoft and Google in online office apps? As I’ve said before, I believe that Zoho is the best-of-breed in online office apps. While Microsoft and Google have been wrestling with feature sets and business models for online office apps, Zoho has been lapping them by building online apps that deliver full functionality and take advantage of the power of the Web. The Zoho suite has over 15 apps, headlined by Zoho Writer (word processing) and Zoho Sheet (spreadsheet). I’ve also been particularly impressed with Zoho Planner and Zoho Notebook.

As I wrote earlier this year, Zoho faces the same three challenges as other online apps: offline capability, security, and business model. Nevertheless, Zoho has created a terrific product and continues to improve and enhance it at a pace that is far faster than anything coming out of Google or Microsoft.

4. Cisco TelePresence

For 2008, John Chambers has sliced 20% out of the travel budget for all of Cisco Systems. This is not a cost-cutting measure. Chambers wants Cisco to eat its own dog food. One of the big pitches that Cisco is making to large enterprises that deal with a geographically dispersed workforce is that they can decrease decision-making time and cut travel budgets by using Cisco TelePresence. These high-definition video and audio conferencing systems provide a virtual conference room setting that allows for much faster and more realistic interactions than traditional teleconferencing and video conferencing.

Cisco has done a terrific job of building an end-to-end solution. The biggest drawback of Cisco TelePresence is cost. It’s in the $500,000 range - minimum. Of course, if you’re a large company that has scores of employees crisscrossing the country every week just to attend regular meetings then this solution can often reach a positive return-on-investment (ROI) within 1-2 years, and sometimes less. As the cost of video screens and bandwidth decrease and compression technologies improve, the cost of this solution will decrease dramatically. This is what standard teleconferencing will look like a decade from now.

3. Microsoft Outlook 2007

When I test a product, I try to actually use it as part of my daily work whenever possible. This summer I was testing Microsoft Office 2007 and so I installed it on a laptop that I was using as my primary production machine. After the initial “where-is” feature frustration, I easily adapted to the new interface in Word and Excel and found that getting to most functions was probably a little quicker. But, it was Outlook 2007 that really grabbed me.

Searching for old messages in Outlook had always been a crapshoot in past versions, but the new folder search at the top of every folder in Outlook 2007 works exactly as expected and is very speedy. There is also a golden parachute since Outlook 2007 integrates with Windows Desktop Search (it requests you install WDS when you install Outlook 2007). Thus, you can use the WDS box on the Taskbar to search all folders and PST archive files for messages that you can’t find in specific Outlook folders. The other two features that I loved in Outlook 2007 were 1.) the ability to paste as unformatted text (with “Paste Special”) so that you don’t blow out the formatting of your typed message when you paste text, and 2.) the new calendar quick preview on the right side of the screen makes it really easy to see your upcoming meetings.

When I switched back to my primary ThinkPad laptop this fall, I also went back to Outlook 2003 since that was what has always been on that machine. I quickly realized that I could no longer find my messages, I couldn’t paste unformatted text, and I didn’t have a quick glance at upcoming meetings on my calendar. When my IT department upgraded my machine to Office 2007 two weeks later, it was like a breath of fresh air to work in Outlook 2007 again.

2. OQO

At most of the IT conferences and expos that I attended throughout 2007, there was rarely ever a busier booth than the one for OQO. Business professionals and techies simply loved to stop and ogle at the “full PC that fits in your pocket.” Technically, the OQO is an Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), but when you pick it up it simply feels like a device that combines the best mobility and connectivity features of a high-end smartphone with the computing power of an ultraportable notebook.

While most of the UMPCs from big vendors have received only a tepid response from businesses, the OQO, which is currently the sole product for San Francisco-based OQO, Inc., is being gobbled up by lots of different organizations in various industries. Movie producers are using them to watch dailies (with the help of specially-modded Slingboxes). News photographers are using them to instantly submit their on-site photos, The U.S. Army uses them at security checkpoints in the Middle East. Others are using them as mini PCs for workers who don’t sit at a desk. For these workers, the OQO is helping to create a new category of PCs - one with a very high geek factor.

1. Apple iPhone

Before you accuse me of drinking the kool-aid on this one, hear me out. The iPhone’s place at the top of my list is not for the same reasons that you’ve read about in other publications such as Time. Sure, the iPhone has a gorgeous design and an amazing user interface that blows away just about everything we’ve seen in a phone, or any other digital media device, for that matter. Nevertheless, the iPhone is not a great business smartphone because of its lack of mobile messaging options. Despite that, it has still made a major impact on business technology in 2007 for two critical reasons:

1. It is the first phone to offer a truly usable Web browsing experience
2. It has popularized smartphones in the U.S. and created demand for them

The iPhone offers the first great Web experience on a phone. It doesn’t rely on custom versions or stripped-down versions or text-based versions of Web sites. It renders the full version. This has changed user expectations forever and will influence other products in the near future. The iPhone marketing and press blitz has also helped educate users about smartphones and thus created general demand for smartphones. Many users are starting to feel like they need to have one to keep up, in the same way that many users started gravitating toward PCs two decades ago.

For more screenshots and images of all ten of these products, see our companion gallery Photos: The top 10 business technology products of 2007.

What is the big deal about 802.11n?

802.11n is being touted as the networking standard that will unwire the network world. Most people are not convinced, yet curious to see how one defends such a claim. The 802.11n standard has two top-level mandates (unwiring the world not being one of them): Achieve higher data rates and retain backward compatibility with legacy 802.11a/b/g devices.

The significance of requiring backward compatibility shouldn’t be taken lightly since it complicates the development process exponentially. Yet the 802.11n group has come up with a soon-to-be-ratified standard that meets both objectives.

In a previous post: 802.11n, MIMO, and multipath environments I discussed MIMO smart antenna technology, which is by far the most visible improvement being leveraged by 802.11n. In this post, I will touch on how MIMO and other 802.11n technological advances dramatically improve data rates, system stability and reliability. Maybe even convince some that it is a viable alternative to a wired connection/network.

802.11n’s improved technology

802.11n’s version of OFDM: 802.11a/g already uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) to achieve data rates of 54 Mbps. 802.11n OFDM technology builds on 802.11a/g OFDM modulation by creating support for multiple channels (MIMO), allowing more bandwidth per channel, and higher code rates. This brings the maximum data rate of a single 802.11n OFDM channel to 65 Mbps.

MIMO antenna systems: The 802.11n standard allows up to 4 MIMO transmit/receive antenna pairings. 802.11n OFDM has a maximum data rate of 65 Mbps, multiplying that by the 4 MIMO antenna channels raises the data rate to 260 Mbps, which is a significant improvement when compared to 54 Mbps.

40 MHz channels: To further improve data rates, 802.11n allows the use of 40 MHz channels-twice the existing 20MHz channels used by 802.11a/b/g-which effectively doubles the data rate to over 500 Mbps. 40 MHz channel size is also the most controversial tenet of the new standard, having the potential to disrupt existing 802.11a/b/g networks due to co-channel interference.

Aggregation: Aggregation is an important feature developed to overcome shortcomings of having to be backward compatible with 802.11a/b/g networks. It improves mixed-mode performance and efficiency by bundling several frames together that are destined for 802.11n devices, while still being able to transmit single data frames to legacy devices.

RIFS (Reduced Inter-Frame Spacing): RIFS is a required 802.11n feature that also improves performance by reducing the amount of dead time required between OFDM transmissions. It should be noted that this feature is restricted to greenfield deployments.

Consumer and enterprise interest

With pre-release equipment already for sale and claims of equipment being firmware upgradeable to the ratified 802.11n standard, is it time to switch? What does this mean to consumers and businesses that may want to start using 802.11n equipment?

Consumer interest: 802.11n promises many things, greater bandwidth, better range, efficiency and reliability. These promises are starting to be tested as pre-release equipment is being integrated into many households. The general consensus is noticeable improvement, especially when considering coverage area, throughput, and reliability. There is also a movement to eliminate mixed mode networks as soon as possible to take full advantage of 802.11n technology.

Enterprise interest: Enterprise use of 802.11n will take longer to integrate because IT departments have to be more concerned about everything working all the time and being cost effective. The introduction of 802.11n equipment by the major wireless networking houses has given the standard an unequivocal stamp of approval, even without final ratification. Network designers and administrators are already looking at several unique uses for 802.11n equipment. With data rates exceeding some wired Ethernet networks, using 802.11n equipment for a backbone link that’s difficult to cable may now become a consideration. Increased bandwidth and larger coverage area per device may make it economically feasible to unwire the office or install a wireless network in the new addition.

Conclusion

802.11n is indeed a significant improvement, just like 802.11g when compared to 802.11b. All the theoretical data looks good, but with any new technology there is a learning curve. 802.11n technology is complicated, which means problems are likely to be complicated as well. Consumers and businesses alike will have to decide where along the accumulative learning timeline they feel most comfortable about moving to 802.11n.

courtesy @TechRepublic