House paint that blocks WiFi!

Wow…I never even thought…

Cnet’s Crave site has a nice little piece on this. There is a new house paint that will block your wireless signal from leaving the house so your neighbors can’t steal it anymore. Hmmm…

Of course, you could always put in some security, maybe MAC address filtering, something so the neighbors can’t leach off your signal. But with this paint, no worries! Just re-paint your house!

My goodness, what will they think of…oh, never mind.

And as the Crave story says,

Of course, it’s only bound to attract the attention of every hacker out there who can’t resist a challenge.

See the Crave story here.

Also, see this note…found on an apartment by a concerned neighbor. Isn’t that nice?

Well, they aren’t really sure, as this crowd-counting stuff is a bit tricky.

PC World has an article detailing some of the issues with counting the crowd, and how inexact it can be. There are lots of satellite images that show everyone who gathered (including our very own Ruthy Gillen and her fiance Colm). See the article here.

That’s my daughter, upper right, third person from the left.

More business people are taking to the road these days, armed with all the tools they need to do their work — PDAs, laptops, etc. So it pays to know a thing or two about how to use the new Wi-Fi connections available on some airlines.

• Read more at Inc. Technology…

When the toner runs out of the printer in your office do you run to change it or do you cringe, shaking at your desk, just hoping some other poor soul has to change it before you do?

• Read more at Small Biz IT…

Actually, I haven’t made it all the way through it. I am unable to.

Microsoft has some new software out, called “Songsmith”. This dreadful piece of code spawned this commercial that is so bad it’s (almost) good, if you know what I mean. Sort of like Plan 9 From Outer Space, or this fabulous David Hasslehoff music video.

Plus, to add to the fun, this PC World article says the laptop in the commercial is a MacBook.

Not sure if you could really call this a commercial, as it is over four minutes long. That allows for too long a time to poke your fingers wayyy into your ears to “make it stop, please make it stop!!”.

If you’re up to it, have a look and listen here. And here’s hoping you make it out in one piece.

There comes a point when gadgets detract from meetings. Or does there? Companies are coming up with different strategies to manage technology in the meeting room.

• Read more at Entrepreneur…

Businesses need to use the economic crisis as a time to reassess their IT needs and options. Server virtualization, consolidation, and energy costs are a good place to start.

• Read more at Inc. Technology…

Cnet has lots on Windows 7, the beta shipping, a big Q & A, and more, as part of their Beyond Binary blog.

See it here

And who can blame him?

President-elect Obama is a very tech-savvy fellow, unlike past residents of the White House. The man actually knows what the Internet is (imagine!). He has used a BlackBerry for years and – reasonably, I might add – wants to keep it.

Anyone who has used a BlackBerry or similar smart-phone device, whether a Motorola Q, Apple iPhone, and so forth, will know what he is saying. The productivity gains and easy access to relevant information are something you get used to very quickly.

All of this about “security” is a red herring anyway. Why let his assistants have BlackBerrys if he can’t? If the issue is the President’s BlackBerry being hacked, the hackers will just get the assistant’s BlackBerry and have the same access as if they got the President’s.

No, the real issue relates “public information”. Email is like regular documents and if the President sends an email the entire country should have access to it as public information.

I suppose we could be more backward than that as a nation, but offhand I wouldn’t know what it would be. I thought the idea was to bring this country full-blast into the 21st century? If so, we need to revisit such silly issues as not letting our President use email.

So I am pulling for you, Mr. Obama! Wake Washington DC up. And name that CTO for the country you have been talking about, and give him or her some real power. You’ll scare Congress with such space-age things (“A Chief Technology Officer? What in the world…?”), but keep at it.

The NY Times has an article about the President-elect and his BlackBerry here

Wired Magazine has an article about it here

Lifehacker has a post today:

Tech evangelist and Microsoft consultant Blake Handler hosts an impressively complete list of free Windows programs offered by Microsoft, dug from the trenches of Del.icio.us tags. It’s a handy bookmark for Control+F hunting.

Follow the link and get to a great list of everything free from Microsoft. This looks to be a really useful link.