DocSyncer Unveils Public Beta

A few days back, David posted the tantalizing news about DocSyncer, which syncs your Microsoft Office documents with Google Docs. Alas, the service was in private beta testing at the time, meaning you had to request an invitation. As of today, however, DocSyncer has reached public beta status, meaning anyone with an e-mail address (and Google Docs account, natch) can have at it.

DocSyncer supports a wide variety of file types, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, HTML, and OpenOffice. (I didn’t find out about the OpenOffice support, which isn’t mentioned anywhere on DocSyncer’s home page, until just now. Kinda kills the need for the OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension I mentioned the other day.)

Unfortunately, during this beta phase, only your Desktop and My Documents folders can be synced. I keep the bulk of my Office files elsewhere, so I can’t yet take full advantage of DocSyncer. That’s a shame, because I’m really excited about this service. In fact, I’ll be surprised if Google doesn’t buy it outright, as it has the potential to take Google Docs to the next level.

By Rick Broida – BNet

DocSyncer – https://www.docsyncer.com/

How to Add Your Signature to PDFs

Ever need to “sign” a PDF, meaning insert your signature in a document as though you’d handwritten it? Productivity501 shows how you can sign PDFs using Adobe Acrobat’s stamping feature:

It turns out you can import an image file and use it as a stamp as well. If you follow the instructions from our post about how to create a scanned signature, you’ll find it imports nicely. The transparent background lets you sign on a line without covering it up.

See the post for more complete instructions — and keep in mind that this stamping option will work only if the document in question supports commenting. Still, between this and the option to remember the last PDF page you viewed, I’m seriously considering going back to Acrobat. It may be bloated, but it offers several compelling features over Foxit Reader. Hmmm. Photo by TonivS.

By Rick Broida – BNet

Using Acrobat to Sign Documents

Acrobat is capable of doing two types of signatures. Technically the best way is using a digital signature. Not only can the signature show that you signed it, but it can also prove that the document wasn’t changed after you signed it. If you deal with a lot of people who use digital signatures, this is a great way to go.

Personally when I sign something it is usually to fax or mail. While I like the digital signature idea I just don’t interact with enough people who could actually use it.

Originally I was signing documents in Acrobat by creating my own digital signature and then attaching an image to the signature. Acrobat will use the image anywhere you place the digital signature so things look normal when you print it.

While this works, it can take a bit of effort to setup. You have to generate a public and private key and then import them into Acrobat, etc. Also when you sign something Acrobat adds an additional graphic showing that it is a digital signature. This doesn’t show up when you print it, but it can be confusing for someone who gets the PDF.

Today I discovered another feature in Acrobat called “stamps”. This is a way to stamp parts of the document with an image like “Confidential”, “Past Due”, “Top Secret”, etc. You simply select the stamp and then you can go through your document just like you would with a rubber stamp.

It turns out you can import an image file and use it as a stamp as well. If you follow the instructions from our post about how to create a scanned signature, you’ll find it imports nicely. The transparent background lets you sign on a line without covering it up.

Once you apply the stamp you can use the tool to resize it or move it around for better placement.

To import your signature as a stamp go to Tools > Commenting > Stamps > Create Custom Stamps.

I am using Acrobat 7 Standard. If you are using a different version there is probably a slightly different process.

by Mark Shead – Productivity501.com

Outsource Your Mail Room

If you’re a frequent business traveler, you know the feeling of returning to a house full of junk mail and unpaid bills. For a monthly fee (starting at $10), there’s a clever way around this: Redirect your mail to an Earth Class Mail. At their facility, they send scans of your envelopes to your email address. From there, you can have the mail destroyed, sent to your home, or opened and scanned and emailed to you.

If you’re a privacy nut (which I’m obviously not), then this service is not for you. But if you’re not—and you’re away from home a lot—it seems like a great way to 1) cut down on junk mail in the house 2) get your mail when you’re traveling and 3) hold on to important records.

Check out the TechCrunch discussion to see some feedback from people who already use the service. In general, they seem pretty pleased.

By David Goldenberg – BNet

Using the Terminal Services through Internet Information Server

Although many administrators think of the Windows Terminal Services primarily as a mechanism for hosting user sessions, it can also be used as a very effective remote management tool. For example, if you need to work on a server that is not in close geographic proximity, you can use the Terminal Services as a way of remotely accessing the server’s console. It’s true that most of Windows Administrative Tools will allow you to manage a remote server, but the Terminal Services have the advantage of allowing you to see the remote server’s desktop. This is advantageous because sometimes there may be an error message displayed on the server’s screen and you would never see the message if you were accessing the server solely through Event Viewer, or one of the many other management tools.

The problem with establishing a Terminal Service session between your machine and a remote server is connectivity. Imagine for a moment that you are at home, in bed, blissfully asleep. The phone rings and wakes you up. You groggily notice that it’s 3:30 AM as the voice on the phone starts explaining to you that there is a problem with a server that’s in an office a hundred miles away.

At this point you’ve got a few choices. You could ignore the call, go back to sleep, and get fired (not a good choice to make). You could road trip it to the remote facility (not fun at 3:30 AM), or you could establish a Terminal Service session with the ailing server. This is where the connectivity issue comes into play. Your company probably has WAN links between the various offices, but that does you no good right now because you are at home. If your company has a VPN, you could establish a VPN connection and then establish a Terminal Service session over the VPN. Another alternative that most people seem to be unaware of however, is that you can interact with the Terminal Services over the Internet.

OK, before I get into the nitty gritty details, let’s stop for a reality check. From a security standpoint, making a Terminal Service session with your servers available over the Internet is probably a bad idea. A Web Based Terminal Service session isn’t completely insecure though. SSL encryption is an absolute requirement and anyone who connects must have a valid set of credentials that are authorized not just to log on, but to log on through the Terminal Services. You can also lock down IIS so that only machines with specific IP addresses are allowed to connect. There are dozens of other things that you can do to make the server more secure, but the thought of being able to remotely control my server through the Internet still makes me a little nervous.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take advantage of the ability to use the Terminal Services over the Internet though. If you feel comfortable making your server available through the Web then go for it. If you’re like me and you don’t feel comfortable doing that, then you can use the same technique and the same security measures to make the server available across your corporate Intranet.

What good does that do? Well, let’s go back to my earlier example that involved you sitting in front of your computer at home in your pajamas in the middle of the night. Rather than driving to the office or to the remote facility, you could dial into your remote access server at the office and then use a Web browser to establish a Terminal Service session with the Remote facility.

Right now you might be wondering why you would ever go through all that trouble when the Windows Remote Desktop client is actually a Terminal Service client. True, you could dial in and use the Remote Desktop client to establish a Terminal Server session without ever having to install the remote access Web component. Still, there are at least a couple of reasons why it’s a good idea to have the Web component on hand. First of all, the Remote Desktop client comes with Windows XP. If you happen to have an old PC at home that’s still running Windows 98, then your machine won’t have a Remote Desktop client. Another reason for using the Web interface rather than the Remote Desktop client is that depending on how your network is set up, firewalls may prevent you from using the Remote Desktop client. The Remote Desktop client communicates across port 3389. If there is a firewall anywhere between you and the server that’s having the problem, that doesn’t have this port open then you are out of luck. The Web interface for the Terminal Services also uses port 3389, but you can reconfigure it to use any port number that you want.

Setting up Web Based Remote Administration

Now that I have talked about some of the philosophies behind Web based Terminal Service access, let’s take a look at the setup process. The component that does all the work is technically known as Remote Administration through HTML (formerly known as the Terminal Services Advanced Client (TSAC) in Windows 2000 Server)

Begin by selecting the Add / Remove Programs option from the Control Panel. When the Add / Remove Programs applet starts, click the Add / Remove Windows Components button. This will cause Windows to display a list of Windows components that you can install. Select the Application Server option and click the Details button. Select the Internet Information Service (IIS) option and click Details again. Now, select the World Wide Web Service from the list and click Details one more time. At this point, select the Remote Administration (HTML) check box , as shown in Figure A, and then click OK three times, followed by Next. Windows will now install the necessary files. You may be prompted to insert your Windows installation CD, so be sure to keep it handy. When installation completes, click Finish.

Figure A: Select the Remote Administration (HTML) check box

Now that you have installed the necessary files, select the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager command from Windows’ Administrative Tools menu. When the IIS Manager console opens, navigate through the console tree to Internet Information Services | your server | Web Sites | Administration. Now, right click on the Administration Web site and select the Properties command from the resulting shortcut menu to see the Administration site’s properties sheet. Now, select the Web Site tab and make note of the port numbers that are listed for the TCP and the SSL port. The default values for the TCP port and the SSL port are 8099 and 8098 respectively, as shown in Figure B. If you need to change the port numbers because of the way that your firewalls are set up, this is where you do it at. Now, select the Directory Security tab and click the Edit button found in the IP Address and Domain Name Restrictions section. If you want to restrict Terminal Service access by IP address, then this is where you would enter the addresses that you want to either allow or block. Click OK when you are done.

Figure B: The default values for the TCP port and the SSL port are 8099 and 8098 respectively

Now, let’s look at how to manage the server through a Web browser. Open Internet Explorer and enter HTTPS:// followed by the server’s IP address, a colon, and the port number. For example, https://192.168.0.1:3389 When you do, you will be prompted to log into the server. You must use an account with administrative credentials. After logging in, the Administration Web site will be displayed. To initiate a Terminal Service session, click on the Maintenance link found on the blue bar along the top, and then click the Remote Desktop button. Internet Explorer will install the necessary ActiveX component and the remote desktop will be displayed within a browser window, as shown in Figure C.

Figure C: Enter HTTPS:// followed by the server’s IP address, a colon, and the port number to access the Terminal Services over the Web

Conclusion

Setting up Web based Terminal Service access is not without risk. However, when properly secured, Web based Terminal Service access can be an extremely valuable management tool.

by Brien M. Posey – MSTerminalServices.org

Handing Out Business Cards – You Mean There’s a Guide for That, too?

Handing out business cards is one of the most annoying things that you can do to another person. Neil attended a lunch-n-learn session on Networking in his building last year. As some people entered the room they made a performance of putting their business card in front of each of the other attendees in the room and the empty seats in the room. Neil’s eyes scanned left then right to see what other people were doing with the cards as he wondered, “Should I be distributing my business cards?” Of the 12 people at the session, 6 had piled their cards in front of him. What is he going to do with those? What would you do with them?

Neil was doing the best thing by seeing that he connected with someone before exchanging cards with them.

Putting your business card in someone’s hand before you have a good reason is:

• Confusing. Why are you giving a total stranger your card?
• Useless. Without some sort of credibility there is no reason for the recipient to keep your card.
• Wasteful. Is there is a possible return on the investment of even this little inexpensive card?
• Risky. You might just be offering your contact information to someone who wants to recruit your for their multi-level marketing project and now you’re on their recruiting list.
• Good for firestarting. Most people could start a blaze with the box of ‘dead’ business cards they have around their office. But is that why you gave them your card? People just don’t throw out the cards of people who handed it to them but they don’t do anything with them either.
• Misguided. Someone along your career path said, “Get your card into as many hands as possible, you never know what will come of it.” Come on people, nothing will come of it. That’s the ‘throw it on the wall and see what sticks’ technique. You appear desperate doing this.

The key to good form when handing out your business card is the mindset of exchanging cards. You’re offering your card as a second step to connecting with another person. The first step is talking so you find that you have something in common, a follow-up action to take, or other connector. Similarly, you’re asking for someone’s business card because you have something he values to give to him. That something could be business, information, a referral, or other useful thing. Using this approach you might walk away with only one or two cards from a business gathering. However, they represent the start of real relationships not just passing of paper.

When you’ve determined that you have a reason to exchange cards with someone you could do the following:

• Initiate the exchange by saying, “May I have one of your cards? I’d like to get an article to you and this will ensure that I do.”
• If you’ve only had conversations on the phone with someone
  (the initial connection) and are seeing them face-to-face for the first
  time it is appropriate to offer your card as you’re shaking hands. This
  verifies you are who they expected and is a touch of credibility.
• State: “It sounds like I could help you by introducing you
  to my accountant. Why don’t you give me your card and I’ll write an
  email making the connection.”
• Suggest you’ll call to follow-up on your conversation so,
  “Let me give you my card and I’d like one of yours. When I have my
  calendar in front of me we’ll find a day in the next two weeks to have
  breakfast.”

Finally, it is possible that you should just skip exchanging cards. If someone interests you be thorough in getting their name and employer. Then, do a Google search, locate him, and write a thoughtful email as follow-up. Business cards are a method of communicating and exchanging information you must follow-up with cards you receive or they are valueless. But that’s the topic of a different article.

by ProductivityCafe.com

Use Color-Coding to Highlight Important E-Mail

Hot on the heels of the excellent suggestion to use rules to simplify your Outlook inbox, Productivity Cafe’s Susan Sabo serves up another valuable tip: Use color-coding to make important e-mail stand out and grab your attention.

For example, you could configure Outlook to automatically “colorize” messages that come from your boss or a client. Assign another color to mail received from team members, and so on. (Obviously you don’t want to go overboard with the color-coding, lest your inbox turn into something resembling a box of crayons. Limit yourself to two or three colors.)

See the complete post for details on setting up color coding in Outlook; it’s an extremely simple process. (Outlook Express and Thunderbird users can accomplish more or less the same thing using message rules.) For my part, all new messages I get from my beloved editors will be coded red so they get immediate action! (That’s right: I know how to suck up.)

By Rick Broida – BNet

Outlook Feature Most of Us Should Use – Color Coding

What does a red color-coded sign or folder mean to you? Many of us think ‘Urgent’ or ‘Stop’ or ‘Hot’. We know that our attention is needed for something. We can use red to mean that when an emali has arrived in your inbox from a VIP. Usually my clients make the emails from their boss and/or key customers turn red when they arrive. Then, the red-titled emails get their attention right away.

Similarly, team leaders color-code the emails from their team members so they stand out from their general correspondence.

Other times you might want to color-code are:

• Personal messages
• From financial institutions (green representing money for this group)
• Vendors & suppliers
• Particular Projects

Remembers, usually it’s best to move emails into related folders. That’s explained in this post: Moving Emails in Outlook. For those emails that still make it to your inbox color-coding will catch your eye and increase your productivity and effectiveness in handling the most important messages.

Here are the steps to color code your messages in Outlook 2002/3:

1. Click on the email message you want to use as the example for the colorizing. For example,

1. you might want all messages from Susan Mrugal (your boss) to turn red.
2. Click on tools then organize.
3. A box ‘Ways to Organize Inbox’ will open. This menu will appear like this:
   

4. Click on Using Colors along the left margin.
5. Select the from / to in the first box to the right of ‘Color message’ drop down menu.
6. Select the color (red in this example) for these messages from the drop-down menu.
7. Click Apply Color.
8. Verify that the color coding was done by looking in your Inbox.
9. You’re done!

by ProductivityCafe.com

Turn Your Cameraphone Into a Productivity Tool

If your cell phone has a camera built in, you can use it for more than just the occasional snapshot of the kids and dog. Indeed, you can put it to productive use during your workday, especially when you’re traveling. Here’s how:

• Remember where you parked. When you arrive at airport parking, take a snapshot of the nearest signpost so you can easily find your car again.
• Insure your belongings. Business Hacks reader Weaver1 offered this great tip in response to our post on packing light for business travel: “When laying out clothes for a trip, I take a photo with my cameraphone to document clothes/shoes/etc. for the airline in case of lost luggage.”
• Send a fax. Using a service called Qipit, you can snap a photo of anything — say, a whiteboard or secret company documents — and have it delivered via fax. The service can also deliver cameraphone photos via e-mail and store them online for future reference. Amazingly, it’s free.
• “Scan” a business card. Similar to Qipit, ScanR (also free) adds the option of capturing business cards, which are then delivered to you via e-mail in vCard format (ready for importing into Outlook or another contact manager). The only hitch? You need a 2-megapixel camera for this to work.
• Create a visual to-do list. Blogger Steve Rubel throws out the idea of making a to-do list consisting of photos rather than text. To me it sounds like more work than it’s worth, but as a “visual” person I can definitely see the appeal. Maybe you will, too.

What’s the most productive thing you’ve ever done with your cameraphone? Click that Comments link up top and share your brilliance! Photo by Thomas Rockstar.

By Rick Broida – BNet

Use Google Spreadsheets to Conduct Surveys

One more reason to love Google Docs: You can take advantage of the new spreadsheet forms feature to conduct surveys and collect other customer data. Here’s the scoop straight from the Google Docs Blog:

Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page.

Creating the form is easy: Start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you’ll get the spreadsheet automatically. Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet. You can even keep a closer eye on them by adding the Google Docs forms gadget to your iGoogle homepage.

I’m curious to know how you might take advantage of this cool new feature. Hit the Comments to share your thoughts. [via Download Squad]

By Rick Broida – BNet.com

No strings attached: DisplayLink’s wireless USB monitors

December 12, 2007 It’s no secret that hooking up multiple monitors to a computer provides a clear productivity improvement and DisplayLink is aiming to make the setup even more efficient by incorporating Wireless USB technology into their designs. Alereon and DisplayLink have announced the availability of a reference design for a Wireless USB display adapter, which Alereon will display at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2008. The reference design will enable PC accessory Original Equipment Manufacturers to develop wireless display connectivity adapters and related products.

It’s now common for a home PC to be equipped with a wireless mouse and keyboard, but DisplayLink hopes that wireless monitors will have a larger effect on computer use. The company argues a point which most of us who have used multiple screens would agree with – having multiple, wireless monitors can streamline multitasking by allowing users to have different programs open at different resolutions and with little to no delay. Unlike fiddly, analog VGA connections, DisplayLink USB technology is simple to assemble, and delivers a consistent, high quality result. The Wireless USB design transfers information at fast ultra-wideband speeds, and supports resolutions of up to 1680 x 1050, with 16.7 million colors and smooth DVD video playback.

The reference design pairs Alereon’s Worldwide WiMedia Alliance-certified AL5000 chipset with DisplayLink’s network display technology. It is the only design available that allows manufacturers to produce a Wireless USB adapter that meets all international regulatory requirements, and all products based on it will be compatible with future Wireless USB enabled notebook computers from major PC vendors.

The Wireless USB design has appeared on the heels of DisplayLink and LG Electronics’ European presentation of the FlatronWide L206WU Windows Vista compatible USB computer monitor. The FlatronWide is a 20 inch monitor that features high-performance HD graphics display over a standard USB 2.0 link. Enabled by the DisplayLink DL-160 network display chip, the monitor also offers wide-screen 1680×1050 resolution for full-screen display of rich graphics and playback of widescreen video.

The FlatronWide has a multi-port USB hub built into the display that allows up to three LG FlatronWide monitors to be connected to a single PC, while consuming only one USB 2.0 port on the computer. Future improvements will enable up to six monitors to be connected to a single PC over USB 2.0.

Alereon’s AL5000 Worldwide Wireless USB chipset integrates all of the essential RF circuitry, including synthesizer VCO/PLL, anti-alias filters, LNAs and transmit/receive (T/R) switches, Media Access Controller (MAC) and Baseband Processor (BBP). The chipset is bundled with all the firmware and software drivers necessary to develop a worldwide Wireless USB product covering the entire WiMedia spectrum from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz.

DisplayLink technology is comprised of high-performance Hardware Rendering Engine (HRE) network display chips and Virtual Graphics Card (VGC) software that powers high-quality, fully interactive 32-bit true-color graphics with real-time video playback across a USB link. They are designed for monitor manufacturers, PC OEMs and PC accessory companies who want to develop easy to use high performance products such as USB-connected monitors, video-capable USB laptop docking stations, Skype video phones, picture frames, and other devices. The company’s adaptive compression algorithm and graphics protocol can also transmit graphics over other standard network interfaces, including wireless USB, Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

Video demonstration of the Wireless monitor technology can be seen here.

Video demonstration of six monitors connected to one computer can be seen here.

by Gizmag.com

OQO readies its Model 1 uPC

I recently had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of OQO and received a sneak peak not only of their upcoming Model 1 ultra personal computer (uPC), but of their working environment and their marketing plan. The office itself is interesting, an eclective mix of and old and new. The interior of the building looks like the sandblasted shell of a factory built at the turn of the last century, but has been updated with bits of postmodern/industrial looking art here and there. The main striking difference from the offices that most people work in was the lack of walls. Not even cubicle partitions separate the workspaces of OQO’s staff. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of doors, they’ve attached legs and wheels and turned all the doors into desks.

The creative minds that envisioned this unique workspace have come together to push the envelope and build the smallest functional PC that can possibly be built with today’s technology. From the looks of the advanced sample that I had a chance to test out, I’d say they’ve done just that.

The OQO uPC Model 1 is basically a PDA sized notebook PC. The technical wizards at OQO have managed to squeeze nearly all the features and performance of an ultra light tablet/notebook PC into a package that measures 4.9 x 3.4 x 0.9 inches in size. The only major difference between OQO’s UPC and a a notebook like a Sharp Actius MM20 is the screen, which is 5in. and 800×480 pixels on the uPC. Other notable differences are the keyboard and the lack of a PC-Card slot. It’s got everything else that you’d expect in a full sized PC and a couple of extra features that take advantage of its size. Since the device is designed to be held in your hands while being used, the clever engineers at OQO have included a thumb wheel to scroll through lists and window contents, as well as a magnetic pen that allows you to write on the screen in the way that you’d use a tablet PC. The device is equipped with an array of I/O ports as well as both WiFi (802.11b) and Bluetooth networking. To make things even easier, OQO has created a “docking cable” which has connectors on it every few inches for video, USB, Firewire, Ethernet, audio, and power.

Awesome Technical Achievement, but is it worth the bother?

There’s no doubt that the hardware is impressive, but after using the device myself I’m left wondering about the wisdom of running the desktop version of Windows XP on a device that feels like a PDA. Aside from the fact that Microsoft’s desktop OS eats up a lot of CPU power, the applications that run on XP aren’t optimized for use on a handheld device. As a high-end gadget user I’m more attracted to a super PDA like Samsung’s Nexio XP30 or Bsquared’s Power Handheld devices. Both of these devices run Windows CE .Net version 4.1, which is an OS designed to be used in handheld devices, so there’s a more natural fit for the applications that run on the CE .Net platform. If you’re a business user that uses your PC for Outlook and Office applications, then it might be better to choose a device with a PDA OS, especially considering that the newest crop of high end PDAs have 3G networking and phone capabilities built into them.

With that said, OQO says that they’re targeting business users to buy their uPC. Businesses that have custom applications that run only on PCs could be served well by this new class of device that’s substantially easier to handle and carry around than a notebook PC. After hearing their pitch, I tend to agree… with parts of it. While I think that the device will be a star at running vertical applications, OQO’s other business target users are corporate executives who leave their notebooks in their docking stations and don’t carry them around. Apparently the fact that an executive has a device that’s mobile, but doesn’t move it, is extremely troubling to the IT staffs of many fortune 500 companies. To solve this problem they want to swap out the notebooks PCs these executives are using with OQO uPCs in the hopes that the executives will carry them around more if they’re smaller.

Personally I don’t see the point, and I think that anyone that had a relatively powerful notebook replaced with a much less powerful uPC would ask for their old PC back pretty quickly. Time will tell if executives accept these devices as their only PC, or if they use them as a really high end, high status PDAs. Either way, as long as the IT guys don’t send back the ones the execs aren’t using, OQO benefits.

The only really important feature that I can see that’s missing in this device is the lack of 3G networking. I spent a lot of time discussing this with the company and got two answers on this issue.

1) “We’re working diligently on successfully launching the device in September, and we don’t want to discuss future plans or anything that isn’t already in the current design.” A fair statement considering that they first announced the device in 2002 and are a bit late in shipping it as a product.

And 2) “We’ve got built in WiFi and Bluetooth in the device now which is more than most notebook PCs, so we’re ahead of the game even without 3G networking.”

Again, to be fair, I’m not sure what the company could easily do short of adding a PC-Card Slot that would solve this problem. So on this issue we agreed to disagree. OQO thinks that WiFi networking is pervasive today to allow you to use their device just about everywhere. I think they’ve created their own networking problem by making their device so small. With a regular notebook it’s not really an issue setting yourself up at Starbucks, since you’ve got to unpack the thing and sit down to use it anyway. With the uPC you just slip the thing out of your pocket and start using it. This easy access is what causes networking problems, since the places you’re likely to whip out your uPC aren’t likely to have WiFi access.

Granted, if you have a GSM phone that’s Bluetooth compatible you could use your phone as a modem for your uPC. With such and impressive design team, and incredible first product we’ll just have to hope that they’ll have a high speed WLAN solution in the future, even if they won’t talk about it today.

Competition

There’s really three types of competitors that are vying for mind share in the small portable space. The first are other uPC manufacturers. In the uPC space there is only one other company of note, Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures. This investment company headed by a Microsoft co-founder got so frustrated with the lack of availability of a handheld PC that they decided to build their own. The result is the FlipStart PC. While sharing similar specs with the OQO Model 1, the FlipStart PC differs in a few key areas, not the least of which is that no one that I know of has actually seen one of the devices. It wasn’t all that long ago that OQO itself was in the running to be inducted into the vaporware hall of fame, so I don’t want to be too hard on the FlipStart, but I can’t consider it a viable competitor until it’s actually seen and used by someone outside their company.

The second class of competitors are ultra portable notebook manufacturers. Small lightweight notebooks are twice as heavy and have 4 times the footprint of the OQO uPC, but they’ve got the advantage of having faster processors, larger screens and full sized keyboards. In situations where flexibility is more important than portability it’s more productive to use a small notebook. I think that this is where OQO is going to find they have the most competition, with lots of customers being impressed with their product, but “compromising” and buying the notebook anyway.

The last class of competitors are the uber-PDA manufactures. The Windows CE .Net devices like the Nexio and Power Handhelds mentioned above are meant to used full time with 3G networking and make better calendar and e-mail devices. If you need a device that keeps you connected to the office and allows you to occasionally use Microsoft Office applications, these devices are better suited to the task.

So is it worth the wait?

Possibly, but it’s hard to imagine the Model 1 succeeding in all of the niches that OQO has identified. While it looks like it might be ideal for custom vertical applications, I don’t see it winning big with executives as a notebook replacement. This is especially true since OQO decided to stick with Transmeta’s aging Crusoe 5800 processor instead of launching with their new higher performance Efficeon processor. Additionally a device designed to be carried in your jacket pocket and used anywhere needs network access that works anywhere.

Ironically the Model 1’s diminutive PDA-like size leads you to expect that it will work like a 3G-PDA instead of like the ultra small notebook PC that it really is. It’s just too much of a compromise coming from the full featured desktop PC that these executives’ notebooks already have replaced.

But even with all that said, if none of these issues are show stoppers on your personal evaluation list, there’s not much that could be done to stop you from running out and buying one of these things the moment that its available. Even if you think it’s not practical you can’t deny that it’s just plain old cool!

OQO is planning on a limited release in June (to corporate customers) and a general release in September. If you’d like to be one of the lucky ones to participate in a corporate pilot, OQO has a signup form on their website for just that purpose (http://www.oqo.com/enterprise/corpsales/).

Dave Weinstein is Gizmo’s Editor-at-Large in the United States. If you’d like to comment on this article or have products that you’d like Dave to look into, feel free to e-mail him at daveknows@gizmo.com.au.

by Gizmag