Of course you’re going to the New Media Expo in Vegas! Heck yeah! Guess what else? My team at RawVoice wants you to be our guest at the Coverville 500!

This totally fab event features rad cover artist Richard Cheese with Lounge Against the Machine, Jonathan Coulton, Chance, the Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, Natalie Gelman and is hosted by The Bitterest Pill’s Dan Klass.

Not only that, to make sure we get you in the right mood, we’re chipping in for your drinks, too! So smile, say “cheese” and keep checking back here as an, official sponsor of the Coverville 500, to find out how you, our favorite peeps, can catch up with us 7 p.m. Aug. 15 at the Bally’s Hotel and Casino on the strip.

You might not be sure of what DNS is and I could explain it to you (don't worry, I will), but let's just get to the meat and potatoes here. Some Major DNS servers will be getting patches applied to them that will fix some very important vulnerabilities.

OK. Technical jargon paragraph: DNS stands for Domain Name System. Basically, it takes the name of the website (like geeknewscentral.com) and points it to the host server on the internet. Think of it like a phone book - you open it up and reference a name with their phone number.

The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (or CERT for short) was informed of an issue where web sites could get misdirected through what is called "cache poisoning". Cache poisoning is like having a phone book where someone crossed out the phone number you want and put in their own.

Cache poisoning was not why Comcast was hacked 2 months prior. They suffered a "Pharming" scam, which is where the information is either changed on the computer trying to go to the site, or the host server (which is the case of Comcast). Poisoning happens on the DNS server itself.

The bug was luckily found by Dan Kaminsky, who is the director of penetration testing at IOActive Inc, a comprehensive Computer Security Services company. He basically found the bug by "Accident" and reported it in early 2008. Security researchers then convened at Microsofts' campus to plan a patch of this potentially dangerous issue.

Some companies were left in the dark until last month. They knew a problem existed but could only make some counter measures. This was so the research team could create a fail-safe fix and not make the issue known to those that could and would exploit the hole.

Even now, they will not give out all the details. We will finally get a full detail when all is said and done next month. What we do know is that the hole is related to the transaction ID in which each DNS entry has. The ID is a random number with 65 thousand possibilities and associated with the DNS entry in the database. If the two items do not match up, then DNS will not resolve the name.

Apparently, 65 thousand numbers is not random enough. It's like trying to break into a safe with a combination lock using a stethoscope. The new process will add "More randomness" with an added 16 bits of security.

Since this can affect the way you access sites (including secure sites), the application of these patches has to be done slowly and methodically. Can't just shut down the whole system at 2 AM. Any mix up and a large group of people won't be able to get to their part of the internet.

Where this gets even more hairy is the fact that Servers have to be aware of some of the changes so they can reroute and adjust their firewalls and DMZ. Most servers will have to update to BIND9 (Berkley Internet Name Domain). A large number are still on version 8. Yahoo, for example, will be updating it's infrastructure.

I think we avoided a possibly major issue here. Think what would have happened if someone found out about this hole. They could easily have re-routed you to a site that could have phished out and stole important data. You wouldn't have known until it's too late. Let's hope the fix is done as quick as possible and that it holds well.

Matthew's post just below this one got me thinking this morning. I don't use a news/RSS aggregator. I have tried one out once, but didn't like it much, because I thought I was missing out on some things. So I read my news, tech and otherwise, the old-fashioned way. I visit sites individually.

I know this sounds time-consuming, but I've done a few things to speed up the process. One is that I use Firefox and have the adblock plus add-on running, which turns off all advertising and leaves me with just the facts, ma'am. This leads to fewer distractions once I'm on a site. I also have pared down to where I really want to go, and go only there. Once in a site with multiple levels of information (like the New York Times or USAToday, I go only to those sections that I am going to get the information I'm looking for. The last thing I've done is turn into a really good headline reader. If the headline doesn't catch my eye, I pass it up. If the headline does catch my eye, but the first two sentences of the article don't follow through, then I pass it on for the next article. I also have figured out what tech sites are going to give me the best information without a bunch of duplication. I don't read Arstechnica anymore, or techmeme, because it is a rehash of what I get at Techdirt. I rarely read Techcrunch, because it is constantly talking about mergers and acquisitions of software and social sites and I'm not interested in either. I get good info from USAToday's tech section, believe it or not, and I am addicted to Engadget and Gizmodo. I avoid Digg like the plague, because too much of their content is focused on gaming and juvenile fanboy stuff that isn't my thing.

By being selective and using the tools at my disposal, I get through 5 newspapers and about ten tech news blogs/sites in about 45 minutes this way. It is not a huge amount of time and I consider it to be fairly productive. I spend a whole lot more time writing in my blogs and for here than I do reading the actual news.

I don't necessarily think that aggregators are the way to go for everyone. I have friends who use them, and I know Todd lives with his, but I have always felt that that "pared down" information was leaving something out for me. I have to wonder if aggregators will eventually go by the wayside through lack of usage. Of the 17 techs in my department at my J.O.B., only one of them uses an aggregator, and we all are heavy readers of tech news. That says something, I think.

Blogger Louis Gray has been studying the referrals to his blog and has noticed that getting linked to by a large blog site or influential blogger doesn't drive the same level of traffic as it used to. The move in traffic generation has been to the aggregators like Techmeme, Reddit, Digg etc. There is also a large shift towards readers consuming content through RSS readers rather than always coming direct to the website.

Both these trends are understandable to an extent. The sheer volume of content and the large number of blogs that are out there make it very difficult for people to easily find interesting or relevant content without the aggregators. This is a catch 22 situation. There is too much content out there for a user to filter it without taking up way too much time. The aggregator sites help with this by doing a pre-filter for us. This leads to a bit of group think though, where we only see the articles that algorithm's have determined are the most important. RSS readers are also a way for us to deal with large amounts of information more easily

It is natural that a space that is as relatively new as blogging will evolve rapidly over time. The environment will continue to evolve as technologies grow and develop and as people throw ew ideas into the mix. I don't think anyone can argue that we have the whole community information thing down perfectly yet. We have never individually had access to more information as a species and we need to work out exactly how to best process it.

I do not believe that the final solution is going to be the aggregators. This is not really a model that gives us the best information. It is the method that is easiest for advertising though, and since that is the prime method for revenue in the space this gives those sites the power at the moment. I would imagine that the future will be in more human edited content rather than algorithm generated content. For this method to succeed though a way to generate revenue directly from the content consumption needs to exist as advertising revenue is not large enough or stable enough to fund this.

Advertising also has a corrupting influence on editorial content. This is not necessarily in a pernicious way, but a subtle influence that this has when advertising is the only method with which a company gets its revenue. The people that give you your revenue are your real customers. If all you have is advertising then your business is to deliver people to advertisers, not to deliver a service to your "consumer". Over time a couple of revenue generating models will emerge and then the game will change yet again.

Since 2005 Godaddy.com has been the primary sponsor of the Geek News Central Podcast. They have understood the Podcast Advertising market from the very beginning and have committed 100’s of thousands of dollars into the Podcast Advertising Space.

While I was personally responsible for bringing GoDaddy into the Podcast Advertising Space, they quickly understood the power of the medium and now 100’s if not 1000’s of shows are sponsored by GoDaddy.

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Today I deleted well over 100 custom searches I have been doing on Technorati for a very long time. Simple reason is this, the site is useless. I have given them every chance to scale and fix their issues.

After today their site is in my personal dead pool. It’s a sad state of affairs that they never could master indexing blog conversations. They did a great job for a while, so good in fact that I would have paid a monthly subscription to find information that was not available anyplace yet.

Search results have degraded to the point that about 90% of the stuff I look at is coming back with spam post. Articles referencing information I am tracking is  usually never indexed at all. So sad really they really had a chance to be the #1 source of tracking search specific conversations.

The July GNC Awareness campaign continues. Listen to Win during the Listener Drive! I also reveal what party RawVoice is sponsoring at the New Media Expo!

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Listener Links:
MUTO Video you must Watch
Collision of Spam and Sushi
State of SLR Digital Market

Show Notes:
Geek News Central Top 25 Podcast in June
Bejing Pollution Solution
Will the Mac Faithful use Me.com?
Google Smacks Bell Canada Really Hard
Mexcio Food Import Ban
Managing Digg.com and the traffic Challenges
Yahoo lets Deal?
12 Quick Firefox Hacks
Don't let your small Town get smashed by Telecom Giants
Gmail Feature of the Year!!
Is Arecibo Doomed?
T-Mobile 3G Service in October?
SSD to lower World Wide Power Usage?
Is RIAA working with Dell and other PC Mfgrs?
IE / Office Zero Day Security Threat
Twitter buying Summize?
Take Kindle to Beach of Pool?
Getting Started with Movable Type
Ares 5 to have more Lift!
David Jackson on my Podcamp Ohio Presentation
In IRAN Blog and be Killed?
2009 Space Shuttle Schedule
Antivirus Applications full of Security Holes
Who's Safer Firefox or IE Users
Time Warner BW Marketing Campaign Idiots

BLOCKBUSTER Total Access click to activate coupon for $10 off your first month.

Is it just me? Or is everyone that flies on a regular basis, getting pretty sick and tired on how the airlines are nickel and diming us to death. I have flown nearly 70,000 miles since January 1st and it seems that nearly every flight I take things are getting more ridiculous.

I feel sorry for the Flight Attendants, once a glorious job they are now being forced by their employers to be candy and snack sales people. I have heard more sales pitches on flights lately that I expect them to start walking the isles with chickens legs and pork rinds for sale. Its truly pathetic what the airline attendants are being forced to endure.

Ohh and don’t even travel with luggage, because if you pack more than you can wear on your body you better get your credit card out and be prepared to pay up not to mention the scales Nazi. I think I will start putting rocks in my bags just to get them to exactly 49.99 pounds.

Meals well forget that, and even if your up in first class most meals just generally suck. When you fly from Hawaii on a regular basis the flights are at a minimum 4 hours long and usually more like 9. But yet most Airlines treat Hawaii flights as if they are domestic.

Little trivia for you, the closest land to Hawaii that is not a island is over a 1000 miles away. In fact Hawaii are the most remote islands in the world, yet we are considered a domestic flight by airlines in the types of services they provide, yet they charge International rates for the flights.

Do you think after I spent $1700.00 for a trip to New Mexico last week that I want to have to find food for the flight, and then have to pay for my bags to be checked. Would it not be easier to charge me $1800.00 for the ticket, where I can check my bags for free, get a meal during the flight and not have to worry about having change to pay for my $3.00 peanuts.

Give me a break. Flying is not glorious, Flying is Hell, and their is nothing we can do about it but scream about the stupidity of the airlines in how the are Nickel and Diming us yet their service goes down the toilet. Cattle Travel better than Airline Passengers at least they get fed.

I don’t care that the Airlines are in trouble, raise your fares to cover your expenses so that I have room in the overhead for my carry on instead of having to deal with some person bringing a “Carry On” the size of a Elephant trunk, and taking up the entire storage area above my seat.

Ohh and did you hear that we are all going to have to start stepping on scales when we get to the airport? Anyone that weighs more than 25 pounds will have to pay a 5 dollars a pound for the right to sit down in ones seat.

My wife hinted at the fact that she would like a iPhone. This encouraged me to consider getting two new iPhone’s on July 11th. But that conversation has quickly faded when we saw the plan pricing.

For over 7 years we have had our service with T-Mobile. We have there family plan with 2000 minutes a month and 4 phones on the service for a little less then what it would cost to have 1 iPhone on their unlimited plan.

I have issues with AT&T wireless but the price that their pricing for their service is completely non-competitive with the service I have now making the switch is not going to happen.

I predict that sales of the new iPhone will not be as brisk as they think they will be. Primarily because you are forced to be on AT&T, the economy is hurting and people are watching the dollars they are spending and beyond a speed increase the new features for consumers are not that great.

If Apple had replaced the crappy camera in the phone and made it possible to do video with the device that may have been enough to twist my arm to change. So now I am on the hunt for a new phone that will serve the niche I want to use it for.

But sorry AT&T an Apple your phone pricing discount is not enough for me to make the jump to the new phone because your plan pricing honestly really blows.

In early 2007 I ran a series of events that raised money for OLPC. We were successful in raising enough money for 5 OLPC laptops pairs to be purchased.

I ordered 2 units first, followed with 3 more several weeks later. During the long delivery time I was in the middle of a house move, I informed and received confirmation from the OLPC Admin that the first 2 units ordered had their shipping address updated.

But I found out in Dec 2007 that they actually shipped the first two units by fedex to the old address. The new residents of my old address denied receiving them. Conversations with Fedex driver guaranteed the OLPC Laptops had been left. Well I filed a Police Report, Filed a Fedex Claim and contacted OLPC.

Since that time I have received several email's from OLPC that said they have been working on it. My most recent communications with them have resulted in no response. I have asked OLPC to either refund the cash that was used to buy these units that came largely from donations or to replace the two stolen computers.

OLPC customer support is horrible and I feel that the OLPC organization cannot be trusted at this point. They have not worked in good faith to try and at least communicate with me on the issue even after multiple attempts to get them to move off of dead center.

The least the could do is tell me if the Properly Filed FedEx claim was paid or denied, they tell me they are not going to refund money or that they are not going or they are going to someday replace the laptops. All I want is a answer from someone over their.

The other 3 units that ordered at a later date were all received and have been shipped off to those that won one as part of the promotions we were having.

"This is not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of user information it had been stockpiling."

This is a quote from a CNN article I read this morning about the most recent ruling in the Viacom vs. Google lawsuit, in which Viacom is asking for $1 billion in damages from Google because some of their copyrighted content has appeared on YouTube (owned by Google). Viacom has won a preliminary ruling in which they asked Google to provide a complete listing of all videos, who viewed them, and how many times. Google claims this is about 12 TB of information and will take months to gather.

The quote caught my eye, because I can see where Google might have been able to get out of providing the required information, had they not been "stockpiling" it in the first place. A few years back, right after 9/11, the FBI showed up on the college campus where I work, looking for information on a particular user of one of our stations who had sent a threatening email to my state's governor. We did not have the information they requested, because we don't keep any kind of logs of our users. We don't record anything. They had the IP address of the computer in question, and we could tell them where that computer was (turns out it was in the student-use computer lab I manage), but that was pretty much all we could give them. They directed us to keep detailed records of who used what computer at what time, for at least 90 days.

You can imagine in a place of academic freedom this rankled quite a few people. The librarians were incensed. My boss and I were dismayed by the amount of work this would pile on us. Our college legal office attempted to nix the order on the grounds that it violated privacy. But in the end, we had to do as we were told; it was post-9/11, and everyone was on edge. Fortunately, after about a year of keeping the data as requested, our legal office had the order rescinded and we went back to our "don't ask, don't tell" ways and purged all information we had been keeping. If and when the FBI shows up again, we will have no records to show them.

But I'm sure Google has kept every tiny tidbit of information from day one. They have volumes and volumes of these records, which can easily be subpoenaed and used in any manner needed. Despite the fact that Viacom says it will not release the information or use it for anything other than the court case, I'm inclined to think that once the information is released by Google, it will be used in more than just the court case. If Google didn't keep the records to begin with, there would be nothing to be breached/released.

I'm sure they have their reasons for keeping the information, and that it has to do with making money. I hope it was worth it for them to do so. And how safe, now, is login information for YouTube? I, my husband, and my two teenagers all have YouTube accounts, and I and my daughter upload home video all the time. All of us watch videos on a pretty regular basis. I can't say whether we've watched anything that infringes or not, but I know I've watched videos of snippets of television shows or news reports, as well as home videos and self-made media.

Will Viacom take the further step of smacking everyone who has viewed infringed material once they've won their lawsuit against Google? After all, they will have the information on every user and what they've seen.

A pretty frightening thought, from my perspective.

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I have seen several articles out today regarding the slowing of adoption of broadband in the U.S. I find the theory that sales are "stalling" to be a bit suspect.

I, through the grace of some miracle, have high-end DSL (6-8 down, 3-5 up) in my semi-rural location. A friend who lives in the heart of the Big City near me can only get the lowest end DSL in her neighborhood, despite the fact that there is a substation less than a mile from her home. She would love to have higher speed, but the infrastructure isn't there for it. My mother has complained for years about dialup; she lives in a semi-rural area as well and can't stay online long enough to check mail most of the time. Yesterday, I took her to the local AT&T store and got her set up with 3G broadband wireless for her laptop. She is thrilled and I've gotten a couple dozen emails from her in the last 24 hours.

My dad can get DSL, but neither of my brothers can. Both of them are in semi-rural areas, and one is using microwave through a utility provider, the other simple dialup. It is frustrating to both of them. Many of my neighbors and those living with the surrounding suburbs of my Big City can get Charter cable broadband, but it is unreliable and there are frequent outages. This is why I opted for DSL years ago and continue to stay with it. We don't have Clearwire, Fios, or anything else available to compete, which is not unusual for many parts of the country.

So when broadband providers say that adoption rates are slow, or stalling, I have to wonder. Where we want broadband, it doesn't exist, What are they using to measure with? Are they even considering that people in rural areas or semi-rural areas might want/need broadband but because it's not available, there is nothing to "adopt?" I find the figures extremely suspect.

Another wrench in their monkeyed-up numbers could also be the availability of free wireless all over my metropolitan area. Being the home of Panera Bread, there are literally dozens of stores where you can get wireless. Because AT&T is the phone service provider in the St. Louis area, their wireless is available at virtually every McDonald's and Barnes and Noble for free. Most independent coffee shops offer free wireless, as do all of the libraries, college campuses (public and private), and some restaurants. Within five miles of my house there are at least a dozen places I can go to get free wireless with no time restrictions. I know that most of my student workers use our on-campus or other free wireless and have no service at home; this works well for them and certainly fits their budget.

But I know there are people in rural and semi-rural areas that would be happy to pay for broadband, if it were available. The prices are about the same as dialup, so cost is not really a factor. The fact is, it isn't available, so no amount of being willing or able to pay will make the broadband magically appear. I know from personal experience how frustrating this is.

I think this is just another excuse for broadband providers to use in order not to upgrade their infrastructure. I continue to be disappointed at their slow-as-molasses development in this area. If it can be done in Europe, it can be done here. If it can be done in India, for goodness' sake, it can be done here.

I am a big web user. I get on my website and write or podcast everyday. I get most of my information through many places. I Twitter and Plurk and Pownce and many other social keywords.

Today I am in the car dealership getting maintainence on my car. The process was going to take 3 hours to do, so I asked if they had Wifi. They said yes, and so I made plans just to work from the dealership.

I got connected and opened up the usual stuff (web browser, twhril for twitter, friendfeed). I entered a code and got a "You are logged in for 1 hour" from Websense Enterprise. That is all well and good however when I tried to get to some of my social network sites, I kept getting the block message: "The Websense category 'Social Networking and Personal Sites' is filtered.".

Now for most, this is not a big deal. However for me, I live my life on Social Networking. I use it to find tech information and new articles, and even contact friends to get quotes from them. With this being blocked, it really is like I am working without a limb.

MySpace and Facebook is blocked which is not a big deal. Twitter, Pownce, Plurk, Jaiku and Tumblr is blocked. Fark and Digg are blocked. What is worse is I cannot get to some of my email like Yahoo and personal. Thank goodness the Gmail account is still going.

What is worse is that when I go to pages like Cnet, this connection blocks the CSS. Why? I understand with email disable the CSS and scripts so malware doesn't get in. I am searching through many sites and it it's not being blocked for filtering, the CSS-less page is making it difficult to read news.

This makes me wonder if they connect their wifi to their network and the filter is to protect the corporate computers from malware and connection bandwidth. Maybe they have an employee issue connecting up to the free wifi and checking their email?

No matter the reason, I have lost a lot of functionality and pretty much don't have my usual resources. I understand in blocking certain sites, however these sites are not porn or questionable material. They are so I can get information to turn around and report it to you. When it comes to the dealership, I am glad they offer Wifi, but I don't think it should be this limited.

If they have this Wifi connection on their main network, they have to move it off. If they have an employee issue, they should deal with it. They shouldn't block me. We don't have bandwidth caps and I'm not trying to run illegal business through their connection. It really concerns me when I cannot get into a simple page like Cnet properly.

Good thing I don't need to VPN into a system or check important information on what they consider a questionable site. Thank goodness I could get to this interface to report about it.... ;)

It has been tender central at the day job recently with the sales teams answering multiple tenders from corporate and government clients. It has meant long hours and frustration for everyone with the promise of extra business if we win. Statistics suggests that we will win 1 in 3. Over my time in IT I have seen hundreds of tenders come and go and I wonder why companies bother with the process. The decision process for a critical business system is so complex that trying to define it in a requirements document is unrealistic, and generally limiting.

Every now and then I see a company that is smart and puts out a very simple request that states what the outcome they want is and describes the existing environment. Rather than try and build complex tenders that try and cover every possible contingency and question that might come up they allow the vendors the freedom to come up with their own solution to the problem. In the end isn't that what you want from your vendor? If you know how to do things better than them you would do it yourself.

I would struggle to list a single complex tender that I have seen that has delivered a better or cheaper result than could have been gained by making the decision another way.

Once again this year I will be attending the New Media Expo. This is the premier podcasting event of the year. I look forward to meeting with podcasters, listeners and media buyers.

My team from RawVoice will also be at the event, manning a booth.  We have some exciting things to share and best of all we will be giving away entrance and drink tickets to the Expo Party of the year.

If you would like to schedule a private meeting with me drop me a line at geeknews@gmail.com

Last week I was given access to GotoMeeting Version 4.0 which will be released next week.  I have been using GotoMeeting for 3 years as part of their sponsorship of my podcast so would consider myself an expert user.  I was blown away by what they have brought to the table with Version 4.

Since I have been using the application I have really wanted two additional features  The first was native Mac Support and internal VOIP support to eliminate the need to use a third part phone service for conference calls during online meetings.

Well the folks at Citrix have hit a homerun. In GotoMeeting Version 4 the application has a native Mac edition. It is not some cheesy adaptation it looks and feels like a Mac program. The feature sets between PC and Mac are exactly the same which now allows Mac users to lead meetings and no longer just observe.

The second major feature introduced into the new version is native VOIP support. During the briefing I simply put on my headset choose VOIP for the connection and was able to participate in the meeting and chat about the new features as if I was on a land line.

Since that time I have tested the VOIP feature with 26 people in the online meeting. The reception was clear and the ability to mute noisy participants was very easy. The interface has been cleaned up and while the core tools remain the whole online meeting pipeline from start to finish with the VOIP support makes the user experience much more rewarding.

GotoMeeting Version 4 is an explosive leap forward. With raising gas prices and the economy slowing the need to save money the application continues to be well poised for business owners to save huge amounts of money on travel each month by no longer needing to leave ones desk.

While GotoMeeting is a sponsor here let me be clear this is a product I use daily.  I completely endorse GotoMeeting and am quite passionate about the product. When a product simply works each and every time I use it there is nothing more one can really say.

The new version is not available till next week but you can get a free trial at www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts and it will update automatically when the new version is released.

Disclaimer: GotoMeeting is a Sponsor of Geek News Central Podcast while no promise of a favorable review has been promised. I am a big fan of the product.

July is the month the folks over at Sprint have implemented Bandwidth Caps on their wireless data plans. Over the past 6 months I have averaged between 4 & 9 gigs of usage. So for the first time ever I have had to change the way I used the Internet.

This really pisses me off in a big way.  It’s the sign of the times really. But because they have decided to go down this road why not offer me a way to pay for a higher level of service. Come on Sprint I have been a faithful user of the service for three years and I need more bandwidth.

I cannot afford to be cut off from the world when I hit my 5GB limit. That would anger me even more and if I get canceled or they block my access because I break their 5gb cap then I am going to expect to be compensated for lost business etc..

A company just cannot start our offering a service with no published cap then change horses mid-stream and implement a policy that is ridiculous in the first place.

As a side note my mom lives in a rural area with only dial up. But Sprint does have Rev A EVDO service in her area. She was going to switch to Sprint for her Internet service but with a 5Gb cap in place we have had to rethink that. Once again a company thinking way to small is hurt by stupid decisions.

Apparently if you use the Citibank ATMs at the local 7-Elevens in New York, you may want to change your Personal Identification Number. A security hole was exploited by 3 individuals who took over 2 Million dollars in a 5 month period.They are now facing federal charges for the crime.

The theives connected to the back end computer where they collected the PIN numbers as they were being transmitted. What is worse is it seems that these ATM's - which use Windows software - don't encrypt the PIN numbers when sent, so it's easy to intercept.

Now don't blame Windows for the error: a PIN number should be encrypted before sent and it seems these machines sent these numbers without. This is an oversight that will most likely be corrected and checked for in any ATM in the future.

Still, it does raise concern over how an ATM operates. I can easily purchase and set up an ATM machine in any location to make some money. If you watch CSI, you might remember the episode where Nick Stokes uncovers a card skimming operation - an overlay to the card reader and a small camera to watch the PIN being entered.

This, however, is something scarier because all the thief has to do is intercept the signal from ATM to bank. Some ATM's still run over phone lines. All you need is a recording device hooked up to a tapped line and you could get the card number and PIN of whoever uses the machine.

Something to think about when you make your next transaction. Most importantly, its more reason to watch closely to what your account activity is. You never know when someone else is watching it, too.

I am back in Hawaii after a very full weekend at Podcamp Ohio. I have a pile of news to cover tonight and some contest intros to play.

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Need to Copyright something? Come July 1st, all you have to do is get on the web to apply for the Copyright. This should make it quick and easy to apply.

The Library of Congress will be opening the portal so you can submit claims electronically. Filing online will save you $10 ($35 online), give you a registration date of when you file and online options like status of the copyright and ability to upload the materials.

It's all part of an initiative to get services online. The portal was established 10 years ago with the idea being you can copyright items including movies and music faster so nobody tries to stake claim on your material. You can copyright literary works, visual arts works, performing arts works, sound recordings and single serials online. Other claims will be offered later, but for now you must submit via the old process.

Of course there are other ways to obtain a copyright, however they might be a little harder to dispute down the road. Creative Commons, for example, is a Massachusetts based website that lets you copyright while giving people the ability to copy and distribute work.

There is what some call the "Poor Man's Copyright" where you put your work into a envelope, seal it and mail it to yourself. Do not open the mail until a time where your copyright is in question. You would then present the unopened mail at the inquiry as evidence of your copyright. The Postal date will serve as the copyright date.

This is a questionable practice because some have left the envelope unsealed, therefore the work could be inserted after the mail was sent. The best thing to do is have the work notarized. It would add to the authenticity of the copyright.

Protecting yourself from others that would try to take your work as their own is detrimental. Always obtain a dated copyright before submitting your work. You then have a reference if a dispute is raised.

The US Copyright Office handles over 550 thousand claims annually. The eCO hopes this new system will make copyrights quicker, easier and cheaper. I would guess it's also so copyright applications will increase - a lot of material out there is not copyrighted.

I will be live streaming as much as possoible from Podcamp Ohio

Thats all folks thanks for hanging out. Reruns later on Mogulus.com/geeknews

Most of us don't want to spend $600 for a program to edit pictures (Adobe Photoshop or CS3 Suite) or $400 for a text editor and spreadsheet program. And for those of us that detest Outlook, but like the calendar features, we've felt left out since Thunderbird doesn't offer a calendar in its standard install. And then there's that pesky problem with Adobe Acrobat Professional; unless you are an educational buyer, Adobe Acrobat licenses are a bit on the pricey side.

There are some free alternatives to all of these things that I'd like to share with you today.

Microsoft Office: For most purposes, you can replace the expensive Microsoft Office 2007 with OpenOffice, the free office suite. OO comes with frequent and regular updates and patches, and offers complete versatility. You can even save your text documents in an MSWord format when you're done, so you can send it to your client who doesn't have OO. Open Office also has a spreadsheet program and presentation program, so is virtually a full replacement for the MS Office Suite.

Adobe Photoshop/CS3: If owning Adobe Photoshop is too rich for your budget, and all you're doing is editing your digital photos and making a few signs or drawings, then a decent replacement is GIMP. GIMP provides all the tools you need to crop, resize, adjust, and retouch your photos before you send them to your printer or to the store for printing.

Outlook Calendar: While I am a huge fan of Thunderbird and use it for all of my pop3 and imap email, the one thing missing is a calendar. You can download and install the Lightning plug-in to add a calendar to Thunderbird, or you can download Sunbird instead, which runs as a standalone product. Visit Mozilla.org for these two products.

PDF: Creating PDF's is about 50% of what I do on a daily basis at work. I have Adobe Acrobat Professional at work to accomplish this, but when I'm doing things at home that have nothing to do with work, I am in need of a stable PDF-production tool that won't cost me anything, and gives me all the same tools that Adobe does. I'm using PDF Creator for most things, and find it to have all the tools I need for basic PDF production.

Microsoft Publisher: Need to make a flier, brochure, or handout but don't have MS Publisher? Never fear, Scribus is here to do your dirty work for you. This intuitive, easy-to-use, tiny-footprinted program is the best free tool I've found to replace Publisher and the well-loved Adobe Pagemaker (long gone from Adobe's lineup these days).

QuickBooks: Need to do your home or small business finances but would rather not spend the big dollars to get QuickBooks? Try out TurboCash. And for a $49 optional support fee, you get access to technical support and corruption help, should that ever happen to you.

Why buy it when you can get it for free? That's my motto.

Headed to Podcamp Ohio but my last night in Portland is being spent in a Hotel 6 Yuck. Anyway looking forward to Podcamp Ohio, and getting back to Hawaii next show from the Studio in Honolulu!

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CNet is reporting that Facebook has banned the "Top Friends" by Slide because it violated the app agreement. The installed application would apparently bypass information a user set to private. CNet found the error and reported it to Facebook. The Social Media giant then suspended the app from running on the site.

There have been a couple other applications that have had security issues, like Super Wall and SuperPoke. Both issues were resolved quickly. I am guessing the Slide apps could not be.

MySpace also has Slide applications on their site. CNet contacted them and they are looking into the matter.

It really is a "Too many Chefs in the Kitchen" scenario here. All it takes is either one mistake of code, or someone like Facebook to make updates that could change the way an application works with the site. Not sure what the case was with Slide. Maybe it's a bigger fix than just plugging a hole, maybe the company was using your information in the wrong way.

I have a Facebook profile (add me as a friend), and I did have this application. My profile is open to all so I didn't notice the problem. I have some other applications on there, too (Feel free to send me a hug or a plant) and new apps appearing daily from friends. I have even went to the extreme as to not accept new applications. It not only clutters up the page but you also don't know what could become a security hole.

Bottom line - a site like this invites error because so many can contribute. Limit the applications and watch those apps you decide to install. Importantly, just because an app looks safe now doesn't mean in 3 months wont have a gaping security hole to it. One small "fix" to the app or to Facebook or MySpace can change all that.

Harris Interactive released its 9th annual survey of perception of US top corporates. In rating the most and least respected Google, Intel and Microsoft made it into the top 10. While there are some telco's in the bottom 10 tech companies have kept themselves out of it. This survey only looks at the 60 most visible US companies so not every company is part of the evaluation. What these results show are an indication of how well these companies do with their relationships with their employees, the community and to a growing extent the environment.

I have written before about how the focus we have on the short term financial movements of the company and ignore that for sustained long term performance the company needs to manage 4 key resources, money, staff, the community and the environment. In the end company law requires that companies give a financial return to their shareholders so making this return is important to their continued existence. Some companies realise though, that making decisions that give a financial return over any other consideration can make a company seem like it is being sucessful but ends up destroying value. Look at the current sub-prime mortgage crisis, Enron, S&L's and many other examples from recent history.

If we take the results of the Harris survey as a proxy for how well the companies are doing in the non-financial measures, then we can gauge whether this is reflected in their financial results over time. I have taken the top and bottom 10 companies from the survey and looked at their financial results over the last 2 reporting periods, mostly 2006 and 2007. The top 10 companies averaged 16% revenue growth and 17% income growth, while the bottom 10 averaged a 3% decline in revenue and a massive 63% decline in earnings.

While this is by no means conclusive proof it is a strong indicator of a causal link. The sample size is too small to be statistically valid and there are a number of clouding factors like the different industries represented in both groups. The causality is also a two way one. While it is true that companies that think about employees, community and environment are more financially successful, companies that are financially successful can afford to be more generous in these areas.

So how do you think the company you work for would do in this survey? and would doing better improve their results? Let me know in the Ohana forum.

Todd is going to love this, but T-Mobile's Hotspot @ Home service has morphed into something that actually works, and might just replace that landline we're all so hot to get rid of. Labeled T-Mobile @ Home, it allows you to have unlimited nationwide calling for just another $10 more on your existing T-Mobile bill.

It works with a Linksys-based VOIP router that then lets you plug in any corded phone (or cordless base station). The router costs about $50, and they even sell V-Tech cordless handsets at a pair for $60. I already have the V-Tech cordless handsets all over my house.

But I don't have T-Mobile service, which is pretty sucky in this area (not many bars). Now if AT&T would offer something like this, I'd be on board.

Who am I kidding, AT&T giving up their landline money-makers? Never gonna happen. But a girl can dream!

Look for the T-Mobile@Home service to launch July 2.

It's probably an overstatement to call this guy a tool, but Mike Elgan over at Datamation seems to think that the mouse is obsolete and will disappear from computers in 2-4 years. Aside from this being a gross overstatement, his reasons for thinking this go beyond any kind of rational thought. Here's why he thinks that the mouse is dead:

1. Apple's improved large task pad on its new notebooks.
2. Gaming pointing devices (like joysticks and steering wheels).
3. "Brain-reading" devices.
4. Apple iPhone and iPhone killers.

Okay, let's get real here. First of all, an apple task/track pad with multi-touch is cool, but as unwieldy as any other track pad. Surely I'm not the only person in the world who rarely uses the track pad on any laptop because of its jumpy and ineffective nature. Even my new Dell, with an "improved" touchpad is still annoying enough that I still plug in the mouse for most things.

Second, gaming pointing devices? Is he kidding? I don't know about too many other people, but in my day-to-day work, I'm not using a steering wheel or joystick to click on things or move things around on my computer screen. The mouse is much more efficient and easier to manage, and certainly takes up a lot less desk space.

Third, "brain reading" devices? These are at least a decade away from true development, and will come as a result of work in the disability services area of technology development before it ever hits the general market. Even rudimentary "pointing" devices that use eye or head movement are a long way from being true and useful replacements for standard input devices. Ask anyone using such a device and they'll readily tell you it is great to have something they can use, but nothing replaces true tactile movement of the healthy human hand.

Fourth, the iPhone? I don't own one and in fact only know one person that does, and she's an Apple FanGirl. I know they've sold a million or three of them, but the device isn't on my list of things to buy in this lifetime, as it doesn't give me anything I can't get on devices I already own and use.

Sorry, Mr. Elgan, maybe you've been gaming too long, but in the real world, the mouse isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I may have missed this somewhere during my convalescence from surgery on Friday, but it looks like Microsoft, while not directly offering Windows XP for retail purchase after June 30th, has extended support for Windows XP through April, 2014. This is unprecedented in Microsoft's history, as most operating systems are sunsetted within ten years of their release. In this case, however, Microsoft has recognized that many of their corporate and business clients are not rolling over to the new Vista operating system.

Reasons for this are varied, but in the case of my campus, our equipment is not fast enough, and some of our older programs won't run properly in Vista. We're solving the compatibility problem through virtualization, but the equipment problem is not so easy to solve. In an economy that is being squeezed heavily by rising prices, replacement of 3000 campus computers is not exactly at the top of the list. In addition to that, simple upgrades are not possible; Vista runs paralyzingly slow on any machine with less than a dual-core processor and 4 gb of RAM, and adding this type of functionality to equipment is costly.

And in our case, we still have a campus license agreement to run Windows XP on any machine on campus, and XP will run on any machine on campus. We may order new machines that come with a copy of Vista, and we do have a campus agreement to run Vista (and have deployed it to several classrooms and on our newest laptops), but we still process new machines with a standard XP image that we trust and operates well within our equipment and software guidelines. So there is really no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista, for us.

That Microsoft is recognizing this by extending support is important. It shows that they are truly listening to their users, and accommodating them in ways they may not have in the past. Their steamroller approach to software upgrades has always rankled IT staff and users, and I have been well-known on my campus for complaining about Microsoft's upgrading tactics.

What Microsoft has promised are the following:

1. Continuing critical updates, security updates, and patches through April, 2014, a full 13 years after the release of Windows XP.

2. All users purchasing computers with Vista pre-installed will have the option to "downgrade" to XP at their choice and at no cost.

3. Windows XP will still be available OEM to the mini-notebook contingent, like Asus and others.

Hat-tip to my friend Paul for pointing me to this information this morning.

I just read an article on CNN that highlighted 11 people that could take Steve Jobs place, just in case something happened to Jobs. It kinda annoyed me. Just because we are seeing the departure of Gates, does it mean all the guards need to be changed?

Steve Jobs has only been in his current role for a few years after getting ousted by John Sculley in 85. Steve Jobs came back in 96 and brought some great ideas with him. Apples' market share rose more in the last few years than it has since the creation of the new Apple Macintosh line.

Apple is in a good position. There is no need to think about replacing someone who is producing. He's not giving the company a black eye or causing issue within the ranks, so why even talk about it?

On the other hand, it's always important to think about the future. You never know who's gonna get hit by a bus. Heck - even Ballmer could go (God forbid) the day after Gates retires and it could force Bill to go back to work again.

I could think of other names that should be considered in replacing. Of course, we may be seeing one of those names go in about a week. Everyone's time comes to pass the reins. It's not Steve Jobs time yet. As the song goes - He's only just begun.

Time Warner appears to be testing a “Powerboost” type of technology similar to what Comcast has. I am wondering what’s the point in doing this when they seem bent on implementing bandwidth caps.

This just may be a way to get people to reach their caps quicker then cash in on the criminal pricing they have in place when you bust your cap. Broadband Reports

Per an article in my local St. Louis paper today, Charter Communications, our local cable provider, has scrapped plans to monitor web usage of some of its high-speed internet users. Purportedly, Charter was going to monitor the web activities of users in four pilot areas in order to gather marketing data they could then use to target advertising to those users.

I, of course, find their claims of trying to target their marketing as dubious. It would become readily apparent to those monitoring their tracking system exactly who was using peer-to-peer services as well as opening the door to users' private viewing habits online. There were no provisions in their new terms of service to protect this data from those who shouldn't see it, and no clear definition of how they were going to use the information they gathered.

The plan drew criticism from some privacy advocates and from two members of Congress. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas both were in communication with Niel Smit, Charter's President, and Charter had also drawn the attention of the Center for Digital Democracy. An outcry by not only users but legislators and the attorney general of Connecticut seemed to sway Charter away from this ill-conceived plan to snoop on users.

I am not a huge fan of Charter, in fact, I'm not a fan at all and have avoided having services with them for at least the last six years because of their horrible customer service, snooping on digital cable boxes, and predatory pricing practices. But in this case, I'm glad to see they did the right thing.

Charter Communications is the fourth largest cable provider in the United States.

I gave away a nice crisp 100 dollar bill to a listener on the live event today. Lots of chances to win this summer and of course a great deal of tech news. Info on Listener and Podcaster Meetup after Podcamp Ohio on Saturday!

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Live Podcast and special Giveaway Starts at 8pm Eastern Tonight. Previously recorded show is available until I start the show tonight!

He folks I will be attending Podcamp Ohio, if you are a podcaster and would like to meet up with me let me know. If you are a listener and would like to come hang out with the Podcamp crowd their is a event on Saturday night.

Drop me a line and I will make sure to keep a eye out for you.

In my J.O.B. I work for the IT department of a college. Because of my position and my responsibilities, I naturally have access to a whole lot of things I don't really want to have access to. I have been in the same job for eight years, enjoy what I do, and in turn, have taken my responsibility for keeping my nose out of where it doesn't belong on the servers, even though I have access to just about anything I'd want to see. In addition to having server access, I also have a master key, a physical key that will get me into any interior office, closet or classroom on campus. This means I can walk into the dean's office, the president's office, the head of campus police's office, or the archival room of the library. I can go anywhere in the business office, cashier's office, faculty offices, etc. I am one of only four or five in my department who has one of these keys.

Over my eight years of employment, I've done no more than let myself into a classroom or meeting room, or into our storage areas. While I could let myself into my boss's office, I haven't, and wouldn't, do that, unless he were locked on the other side and begging for help. In my opinion, I have been given a great privilege in having the key, and the server access, and I do not want to ever be accused of overstepping my boundaries.

I know this is not so with others that I work with, and certainly not true for other IT staff around the world. A recent study of IT workers by UK software firm Cyber-Ark reveals that one-third admitted to secretly snooping, while 47% said they had accessed information that was not relevant to their role. I myself have been the target of snooping by members of my own department, with information then passed on to others that should have never left my home directory. And I know of at least two of our staff members that were reading memos and letters in our President's home directory without permission. Eventually, our department manager had to issue a written policy against snooping, including the "taking over" of machines for repair or updating without letting the user know.

It would seem that a policy would not need to be in place for such things. As an IT worker, I see my responsibility to my clients, who include our campus deans and presidents, as paramount. If I cannot act ethically and responsibly for them, then I am not serving my clients and don't deserve to have my job in the first place. Snooping is for juveniles with MySpace and FaceBook accounts. I'm a grown woman and hopefully have the ethics to know better than to snoop around where I do not belong.

As the US telcos move towards bandwidth caps the justice of this has been a large topic of conversation in the media and on the web. One of the possible outcomes of all this is a metered Internet service where users pay per MB that they use. From some commentary I have heard in response to a positive article on this plan by John Dvorak in PC Magazine, this is not a popular option for all. A metered Internet would actually offer real benefits to users and would be likely to end up with a cheaper and better service.

The most often cited objection to this plan is the belief that once the infrastructure of the Internet exists then incremental bandwidth is essentially free. This is unfortunately not the case. Incremental revenue is not free, it is just really cheap which is not quite the same thing. While ISPs do not need to add extra capacity each time someone uses an extra MB but the equipment they have does have limited capacity. This means that the incremental cost does not have a nice gentle slope and instead has very large and steep steps. This is very important in understanding the economics of the situation.

Lets put a couple of things aside in this discussion though, there are ways that the telcos game the system to day that are not fair to consumers and they will probably try and game any proposed system. This should not be the key factor in determining the best solution though. The core solution should enable the telcos to make decisions that are best for us consumers and the policing regulations should be on the margin. The fact that the majority of the Internet infrastructure was funded with public money is not cogent to this argument.

In the current business environment and laws the companies that run our Internet backbones and access are required to make the maximum return for shareholders. If they are charging a flat rate for unlimited (or at least very large limit) traffic, the way for these companies to increase their revenue is to add more subscribers. There is no incentive for them to increase backbone speed when doing this, it is not required to gain the revenue and the marginal impact of each user added will not change the average utilisation rate of their infrastructure. Over time though these little additions become a large amount of data use and the system starts to strain.

The companies are then faced with a choice to upgrade their bandwidth or not. Upgrading will improve service for their existing customers, who are already paying them for what they are getting. Upgrading will also not ensure them to gain new customers, and may cost them customers with the inevitable service issues the upgrades will cause. In essence upgrading their systems will cost a lot for no short/medium term revenue increase so it will actually hurt the companies bottom line. An option that is more likely to keep the executives in jobs is to take actions that limit the amount of bandwidth people consume in ways that have low cost. Bandwidth caps anyone? Blame the users for any slowdown caused by the lack of capacity. Maybe also hit up the government for funding for upgrades, or stealth charge the consumers for upgrades by creating a tiered Internet and charging for 'premium' Internet traffic. All predictable outcomes from unlimited access plans.

In comparison if the Internet was metered like any other utility the motivation on the ISPs becomes very different. Suddenly their revenue improves with each MB people transfer over their network. If they let the backbone of the system slow down then it hurts their top line and slows their growth. In this case there is clear incentive for them to add capacity as they add users. The users themselves are not what drives the revenue, but the capacity they use, so if that capacity is not there then the revenue from the new users will not flow.

There would need to be tuning around the margins, like base flat rate plans for those that need to know what their bill will be each month in advance. Preferably there would be a base free component of a GB or two a month that would ensure everyone had free access to the essential Internet services like encyclopedias, email, bank sites etc but not enough to enable rich media or online gaming. There would also need to be a way to set your own limits on the monthly bill or even to have pay up front options like on mobile phones.

This system would not make us pay more, the same supply/demand factors that keep prices where they are now would cause prices to average the same as today, high users would pay a bit more and lower users would pay less. The economics of this are the same as they are for electricity, water, grapes or milk. Prices will be low enough to encourage consumers to consume while making sure there is profit for the company. The differences being that we would be in control of what we spent and the ISPs would be encouraged to help us download more at faster speeds. The system we have now encourages them to keep us fishes crammed into our current bowl even though we are growing and more fish keep coming in to join us.

Yesterday I made the decision to proceed with the 2008 Podcast Awards with the new awards ceremony format. The current plan is to start the nominations process on September 15^th. The nomination period will be 15 days.

This will be followed by nominations review and slate selection in October with voting to commence shortly their after.

A big change this year is the decision to have the Awards Ceremony 100% virtual. In years past we have had the awards ceremony at the New Media Expo. Having the awards their was great but their were always a lot of unknown variables that caused me a lot of stress.

This year we will be doing a 100% live event and the awardees will be participating in the ceremony using modern technology. We had over 1500 people watch the live stream last year but I think we can draw a lot more people by advance planning the event.

I have started to collect volunteer names to review the nominated shows. I still need a lot of Volunteers to make the review process go easier. If you are not a podcaster and would like to be on the review committee drop me a line at podcastawards@gmail.com

Please visit the PodcastAwards.com website for more details. As always we are in need of sponsors for the 2008 event. I need to raise about $8000.00 in the coming weeks to meet the minimum prize amounts we have in the past.

If you type in "About:" in the new FireFox 3 browser, you will get the standard about screen. If you type in About:config, you will get a warning:

"This might void your Warranty"

Pressing through will give you the configuration of Firefox. About:cache, About:credits, About:license and About:buildconfig will give you information about the browser.

However, try typing in About:robots. Try typing in About:mozilla. Each one will give you an interesting response.

I tried About:IE and nothing came up. I even tried Internet Explorer, Mac, Safari, Opera, Microsoft, Windows,Apple and a whole host of others. All with the same results.

It's great for a quick chuckle and to play with. I would guess there are other items we haven't found yet, but a Easter egg is a great item for people start to get curious and ultimately start using the browser just to find the nuances.

There is no About:robots in IE.

Imagine you get a letter in the mail demanding $100,000 for having 20 movies in your shared folder that is tied to your P2P application. Imagine if you have no choice but to pay that demand letter.

Well if MPAA had it their way you will be doing just that. Pretty scary that they would think that way. If P2P software applications where smart they would do everything in their power to protect people using their applications.

I do not condone piracy but I do not condone the theory that you are guilty and have to prove yourself innocent. This country was built on the foundation that you are innocent until proven guilty and this notion by the MPAA is absurd.

I should not that their contention is that if they bring a lawsuit against you for having copyrighted file in a shard directory then you should have a default judgment held against you. [TorrentFreak]

Lot's of tech content tonight and I also talk about a cool giveaway we are going to have on the show I record live on Monday! If you want to see the video from the show that was recorded in my hotel room check out the link below.

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A few weeks ago it was a guy in Chicago waiving a gun. Now it's possible Hookers in California. It's turning into a Where's Waldo game - except it's "Who's on Street View"?

I wonder how many hours it takes to scan the Google website to find something interesting to report about. The only thing more hilarious is the fact that Google is not looking at what they are taking pictures of. There are even some people that, when they see the Google car coming, they plan a last minute improvisation. Jalopnik has a couple pictures of that.

So get out there and start scanning the street view. You never know what you are going to see....

I will be starting a live edition of the Geek News Central Podcast shortly. I will Twitter about 10 minutes befor I start. Or just stay tuned.

Let’s see here. Time Warner Cable provides Internet and Cable Television Service. TV is very profitable for the cable company. The Internet is not because they cannot control it.

Put in place bandwidth caps and you scare people into stopping how much time they spend on the Internet for the fear of going over their bandwidth caps.

So enter Time Warner and those with the highest speed service fully employed will spend about a $1.00 every 6 minutes or so once you bust the cap.

Time Warner does not care about Bandwidth or heavy users, they simply want you to watch more TV that you pay them to watch.  Get the full breakdown of Time Warners Bandwidth Caps Cost!

Over the past six months I have been traveling a great deal. I have stayed around 40 days in a variety of Hilton properties and another 20 days in Marriot hotel chains. I usually stay in Hilton properties to gain reward points.

Over the past three or four stays at Hilton properties on the east coast, I have been completely frustrated with Internet connectivity and other issues. I will obtain Hilton’s highest VIP status before the end of July which shows I have been a pretty loyal customer but my loyalty is starting to shift.

I am going to put this as nicely as possible, Internet Access has really sucked. The hotels I have been in, have not been full of geeks sucking up bandwidth they have had average occupancy with regular travelers. Here are the main issue and it applies to wired and wireless properties. Continual website time outs, which causes pages to fail to load, very slow connections last hotel had wireless clocking in at 128k up and 128k down with full signal Wi-Fi access.

I swear that the contracted Internet Service providers are blocking access to sites or slowing them to a crawl.

The issues do not stop with Internet Access. My current stay started with the room not even having a desk? Come on now, I have not been in a hotel in 10 years that did not have a desk. While they brought me a desk after I complained they did not bring me a light, ever try to work at a desk without a light. Trip to Target solved that. Guess I will have to pack a lamp from now on.

I would have changed hotels but the hotels are full this weekend. If you are going to cater to business travelers you better have “Good Internet Connectivity”, and room furnishings to support those travelers. My experience with Marriot lately has been the opposite. Great Bandwidth and a Great Business traveler experience.

From here on out I am going to start doing extensive reviews of all of the hotels I stay at. I will name the properties and do my best to make sure they are at the top of the search engine results. Piss Poor service deserves Internet attention so that other business travelers will not have to pull their hair out.