Frequently, in the act of diagnosing computer problems or deciding which parts to order for upgrades, we find ourselves wanting to know about the hardware components inside a computer. A new program aims to make it easy to know as much as possible about the innards of your machine.
Speccy is a product from Piriform, the [...]
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Wednesday’s post showed how a simple extension called Weave can synchronize your Firefox passwords, bookmarks and other preferences between computers. That’s all fine and good, but what happens when you are installing a fresh copy of Firefox and want to install all your favorite add-ons and plugins? Do you write down your list [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Anyone who uses multiple computers has the struggle of maintaining productivity across different environments. Web browsers store passwords and bookmarks and preferences on each computer. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to have each computer automatically synchronize your bookmarks and passwords?
If your browser of choice is Firefox, you’re in luck. A product [...]
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Sometimes there is a piece of software that is so obvious for a specific need that we make assumptions. We assume that everyone uses it and, if not, that those who don’t at least know about it and for some unreasoned purpose decide to use something lesser. A few products fit this description, [...]
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On September 28, Microsoft announced the general release of a new product called Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s the successor to OneCare, Microsoft’s prior for-pay security package. Security Essentials has been in limited preview under the codename Morro and now is available to everyone for free.
Security Essentials racked up 1.5 million downloads [...]
Held every year in San Fransisco, the TechCrunch50 Conference showcases the best and brightest startups. We wrote about the 2007 winner, Mint, which this week announced that it has been acquired by Intuit for $170 million.
The experts panel this year included tech and investor rockstars including Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, Marissa Mayer, Yossi Vardi and [...]
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We love us some Opera. We’ve been advocating the Opera 10 web browser since the first alpha version was released last December. We even wrote about it in March. We’ve been faithfully using it through the beta releases and release candidates. The final version was recently released and it’s stellar.
Today, we were routing [...]
Yesterday, Google finally announced what many were expecting – a full-on operating system to compete directly with Microsoft Windows. What is somewhat less expected is that they are using their Chrome product instead of their Android platform as many anticipated.
The Chrome OS will be the Chrome browser on top of a Linux core. The operating [...]
By far the most important part of advertising an auction is the item-level listing on the Internet. With that listing, a prospective bidder can find the items he’s interested in, not just a prospective auction that he may or may not have the time to investigate. One of the two crucial parts of listing an [...]
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We try to cover basic security best-practices as much as possible. We talked about the value of NoScript, a Firefox plugin that prevents JavaScript from loading on web pages unless specifically allowed by the user. Today, we’re going to examine why reading email as HTML is a bad practice from a privacy, security [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Fourth Wave, LLC, a vendor of auction clerking and cashiering software, has apparently closed its doors.
On May 13, we received an email from an auctioneer claiming that he had purchased the software and needed to contact Fourth Wave but was unable to do so. We noticed that the website, fourthwave.net, was indeed down and we [...]
Real-time Internet bidding is a process that allows an auctioneer to accept Internet bids during an auction. A bidder downloads client software, usually either Flash- or Java-based, and can hear the auctioneer and place bids until each individual item is declared sold. There are several prominent real-time bidding service providers competing in this space, each [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Tech startup Wakoopa this week released some intriguing findings regarding software trends. They have relatively-real-time data on the usage of apps like Facebook, Outlook and Firefox, for example, throughout the day. They claim to have logged over 525 million hours of software usage from their 75,000 users. How do they get their data? Why is [...]
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It’s no secret that we’re enamored with Twitter. Our AuctioneerTweet site has over 45 auctioneers listed and it seems we’re continuing to add several each week as more and more auctioneers join Twitter.
Twitter is useful. It’s replaced instant messaging and reduced our use of email and Facebook. Even [...]
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Microsoft officially released Internet Explorer 8 yesterday.The first Internet Explorer to pass the Acid 2 test, a test to verify that a browser renders web pages correctly, it boasts improved speed, better security and a few new features.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, pre-release versions of Opera and Safari are already bragging a perfect score on [...]
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We mentioned how easy it was to create web forms with Google Docs back in November. Now, technology blog TechCrunch is running a story about a very interesting do-it-yourself project combining the ease of Google Doc form creation with the enormous prospective bidder pool of Craigslist to form a rudamentary Internet bidding system.
Craigslist [...]
Even though our enjoyment of Twitter has caused Facebook to go the way of MySpace for us at AuctioneerTech – something checked infrequently, usually at the behest of the automated emails sent any time something happens – we still recognize the importance of contact lists. The hundreds – some have thousands – of friends on [...]
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Newer, faster browser rendering engines are all the rage. Google released Chrome based on Webkit and V8; Firefox uses Gecko and is going to be using TraceMonkey for JavaScript. Apple made some noise a few weeks ago by releasing a beta of its Webkit-based Safari 4, now using Apple’s new Nitro engine for [...]
Read the rest of this entry »We got our hands on a copy of the public beta of Microsoft Windows 7, the planned successor to Windows Vista. From what we can see so far, it’s very fast on our test system, though we haven’t tested it with graphics drivers since our old video card isn’t supported.
Hardware support is an issue for [...]
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No, we’re not talking about breakfast cereal. The Crunchies 2008 is a set of awards given to the top technology companies, products and ideas in a given year. The awards are sponsored by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch. Last years winners included Facebook, Digg, Tesla Motors, Hulu and the [...]
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In this time of giving and over the course of the next few weeks that begins the new year, many of us may be looking for was to give to good causes. As many of us may have difficulties giving financially during these times, we look to alternative ways to help others. If [...]
Read the rest of this entry »We discussed back in September how Internet bidding has been referred to as eBay style or static bidding, and we’ve explained why those are bad descriptions for this type of bidding. Features like automatic extension and staggered ending make most modern Internet only auctions nothing like eBay and they certainly are exciting and dynamic enough [...]
Read the rest of this entry »One of the reasons AuctioneerTech exists is to make life easier for everyone, including auctioneers. One of the ways this goal is accomplished is by reviewing software that performs a novel or important function. Most of the software covered is open source, and in this episode, we’re going to discuss open source software, explain why [...]
Read the rest of this entry »The concept of file compression is fairly simple. You take a file or group of files and you make it or them smaller and save them as a single, compressed file. The actual mechanisms can be complicated, but the simple way I always think of it is like an index. If you had a 1000 [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Microsoft Outlook is the best corporate email and scheduling tool. That’s a tough statement to make as an open source advocate, but until the open source equivalent called Evolution matures, Outlook will remain the corporate standard for email, calendar and scheduling.
For personal and small-business email, Outlook sucks. It’s bloated, expensive and has a problem with [...]
Microsoft a few hours ago released an unscheduled update for pretty much all versions of Windows. They normally release updates once a month, but today they released an out-of-band updated because of the severity of the attack vector. It’s pretty bad in that it allows someone to gain access to your computer if you have [...]
Read the rest of this entry »An interesting fact about notebook computers is that they’re called notebooks instead of laptops because the term laptop implies that you can use it on your lap, blocking the ventilation ports and causing the unit to overheat. The industry initiated the switch to the term notebook several years ago not because of a change in [...]
Read the rest of this entry »It’s time for a little housekeeping. In case you didn’t notice, the new resources page was published a few days ago. Its goal is to list various offerings from various companies and vendors serving the auction industry. If you don’t see a product listed, it’s due to an oversight and not an agenda. If you [...]
Read the rest of this entry »The previously-reviewed OpenOffice version 3 was officially released today. As of 9:05am CST, their servers are down. At least I’m unable to access them from Manhattan, Kansas.
Get the latest version from FileHippo if you’re like me and don’t want to wait for their servers to come back up.
UPDATE
Want a quick way to tell if a [...]
My HP Pavilion tablet PC is slowly dying. Sent to and returned from the shop twice already since I bought it 14 months ago, both times for a motherboard replacement, its hard drive started flaking on me last month. I was able to repair the hard drive with a disk utility and it’s been working [...]
Read the rest of this entry »As I was browsing my daily news feeds this morning, I came across an article about Skyfire.
I got my Treo 700wx based on Windows Mobile 5 in November of 2006. Its coolness lasted for several months, but I started wanting for more when the iPhone and Windows Mobile 6 came out. The biggest missing pieces [...]
I admitted on Saturday that there were indeed some good uses for the PDF. If, after analyzing the situation, PDF seems like the right tool for the job, here are some ways to make its use less painless and less expensive.
Adobe has two products related to PDF use and creation. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the [...]
One of the best marketing techniques for auctioneers and everyone else who is running a business is proper management of an email list. Keeping a list of emails in Excel and copying that list into the BCC field of Outlook does NOT count.
There are rules put in place due to the proliferation of spam. The [...]
I recently took part in the Kansas Auctioneers Association bid-call contest at the Kansas State Fair. This was my third time competing, having also done so in 2002 and 2006. I’ve also seen other contests, such as the National Auctioneers Association International Auctioneer Championship and the Oklahoma State Auctioneers Association competition.
The NAA IAC this year [...]
My friend and fellow auctioneer Don Hamit pointed out to me at the KAA auctioneer contest yesterday that the recently-released Chrome doesn’t work with the recently-funded real-time Internet bidding platform Proxibid. I was able to get the Proxibid Bidder App to run in Chrome on XP and Vista. Here’s how to get it, and other [...]
Read the rest of this entry »The tubes are full of baddies. It’s not enough anyomore to simply install an antivirus package and pay your yearly virus tax. Antivirus is becoming outdated. Granted, it’s still a requirement for all but the most elite computer users, but in the time of the always-on Internet connection we need to protect ourselves against all [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Apple today released new versions of their iTunes software as well as updated versions of iPods. This release was hardly surprising and, as predicted, there wasn’t anything unexpected or widely diverging from the rumors that had been floating around the Internet.
The take-aways are really fewer than I had expected.
iTunes 8 is out and it’s cool. [...]
I’m typing away on my Apple slim aluminum keyboard. It’s the one I poured nearly a full cup of coffee into a couple weeks ago. I dried it, wet it, dried it again and when it wouldn’t work I’d left it for dead. A week passed and I tried it one more time and it’s [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Using the Internet to take bids doesn’t mean that the item will sell to Guam or Kansas
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Friday saw the release of the first release candidate of OpenOffice version 3, the free and open source alternative to Microsoft Office.
The last thing an auctioneer needs when starting out or outfitting employees or workstations with new computers is to have to pay upwards of $200 for a copy of a piece of software when [...]
Google released its entry into the browser wars Today. I’ve been playing with it all day. I like how it puts the tabs in line with the minimize / maximize / close buttons. I’ve wanted this in a browser for years. They have a long way to go to enable other features, but it’s blazing [...]
Flash is a very bad way to build websites. It’s not only about SEO. It’s about usability. For the same reasons that mature developers don’t use “fly-out” or “drop-down” menus, you shouldn’t use Flash because it requires you to do one of two things. You can either alienate the growing minority of users using alternative [...]
Read the rest of this entry »I was playing around on the NAA forum, a great member benefit for auctioneers, and I realized that what I was writing was applicable to just about anyone, not just auctioneers. Here you are, for whatever it may be worth to you.
I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for the last two years. It’s fantastic [...]
