Small Business Computing Staff

PCWorld: Tips for Weathering Power Outages As a central-California resident, I’m accustomed to a couple of flavors of weather–mild and not-as-intensely-mild-as-it-was-last-week. Yet this week we’ve been getting hammered with real, honest-to-god weather–hail, buckets of rain, high winds, thunder, lightning, and the occasional flurry of toads. And, because our power lines remain above ground–as the early […]

PCWorld: Dragon Dictation for IPhone Now hear this: Dragon Dictation is shaping up to be the essential voice app for the iPhone and iPod touch. You say the words and they appear as you said them with remarkable accuracy. Although the technology isn’t new, the application from Nuance Communications is novel and terrific. And for […]

PCMag@Work (Small Business): Box.net Adds Online Viewing of All Files It’s not enough anymore to just store or even share files online. Users need a bit more access. So, short of providing the applications to edit them, Box.net has now integrated file viewing into its Cloud Content Management service. Rather than download a file to […]

InformationWeek SMB: Are Windows 7 Compatibility Issues Still A Concern? Every time a new operating system hits the market, compatibility becomes a hot topic. That’s especially true with Windows 7 — how well does it work with the thousands of Windows-based third-party programs and applications already on the market, as well as with the wide […]

Entrepreneur: 6 Mobile Musts for Your Online Business According to a recent study by comScore, the number of people in the U.S. using multipurpose smartphones such as iPhones, Blackberries, and Droids more than doubled last year. Of those who used mobile devices to access news and information on the Internet, 22.5 million–or 35 percent of […]

PCWorld: Firefox 3.6 Brings Performance Improvements, a Few New Features Earlier today, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6, the latest version of its popular browser. While it’s not as big of an update as the more ambitious Firefox 3.5, it includes a number of under-the-hood improvements, and a handful of changes that you might discover as you […]

Smallbiztechnology.com: Software is Expensive: Should You Steal It? The Dangers Of Illegal Software Microsoft Office, depending on the version you buy, can cost hundreds of dollars. Microsoft Outlook can easily set you back around $100. “Competing” office suites, many free, such as Open Office, Zoho, Google Docs and Word Perfect, are often touted as replacements […]

PCMag@Work (Small Business): edgeBOX Delivers Unified Communications for the Small (and Very Small) Business Critical Links’ edgeBox offers small business a complete Unified Communications system. edgeBox combines Voice-over-IP, Router, Virtual Private Networking, security, Network Access Control, Quality-of-Service and a Wi-Fi access point. Not enough? It also offers a fax server, web server, email server, print […]

IDC: IDC Outlook for Solid State Drives Remains Bright, Despite Market Challenges and Economic Uncertainties Despite the economic recession and constrained IT spending, 2009 was a good year for solid state drive (SSD) vendors, with SSD shipments surpassing 11 million units, an increase of 14% year over year. Looking forward, IDC expects SSD adoption will […]

ABI Research: Dedicated People-Tracking Solutions Dedicated person-tracking devices are available for a wide range of applications such as child tracking and teenage driver tracking. However, the strongest growth in dedicated person tracking devices is expected in segments such as the elderly, Alzheimer’s patients, parolees, offenders, and lone workers due to the unique characteristics of these […]

Gartner EXP Worldwide: Survey of Nearly 1,600 CIOs Shows IT Budgets in 2010 to be at 2005 Levels IT budgets will essentially be flat in 2010, increasing by a weighted global average of 1.3 percent in nominal terms, compared with 2009 levels where IT budgets declined 8.1 percent, according to results from the 2010 CIO […]

Juniper Research: Number of Embedded Mobile & M2M Connected Devices to rise to 412 million globally by 2014 According to Juniper Research, the number of Mobile Connected M2M and Embedded Devices will rise to almost 412 million globally by 2014 with several distinct markets accounting for the increase in their number. The markets include: Utility […]