I have become quite enamored of the chumby (www.chumby.com to find out more). And in particular I am enjoying the photoframe widget created by my friends over at discarded ideas (www.discarded-ideas.org). As a PC user I could not use the Linux script he offered to create the xml file that his program uses (and anyway my photos are stored in many sub directories so it would not work for me!) in addition my photos are quite large (4-8 mega pixels) and so would have taken a while to download even over my internal network. So I created chumbify (click here to download) this program makes a copy of all of your photos resized to 320x240 (the chumby native resolution) and also generates the images.xml that photoframe requires. Do not forget to add the crossdomain.xml file that flash requires to the ROOT directory of the server as described on the discarded ideas website. Chumbify is offered as freeware and I will happily provide the source code to anyone who is curious.

        

I  frequently need to call outside the United States while traveling and this leads to problems. Until now I either had to wait until I could find a land line and use a pay card, use VOIP (if I could find a functioning hotspot) or pay T-Mobiles extortionate international telephone rates (no better or worse than any other cell carrier). By using mobivox www.mobivox.com you can call anywhere in the world for outrageously low prices from your cell phone or landline, and if you can persuade you friend to join too then the call will be entirely free. Their system recognizes the phone you are calling from greets you by name and asks who you would like to call. Give it a try.

        

I was just telephoned by someone asking if my website was the same as another Rothman Report apparently published up until 2004. Short answer is that it is not although eerily that report was also about small business technology. So if you came here expecting to see Mr. Howard Rothman's deathless prose I am afraid you may be disappointed, but I hope you read and are informed by my ramblings!

        

Ok this one is a bit geeky please ignore if you are not oriented that way.
Probably the greatest new feature in Visual Studio 2008 is Linq which allows you to embed SQL directly into your applications (much cooler and even more usefull than it sounds) but there is a bug (more than one I am sure but one I have come across). If you create a stored procedure with an nvarchar(max) as a parameter then LINQ assumes that it does not return a result set just an unitary result

        

Accoring to T-Mobiles CEO we can expect 3G in the summer of '08 (but then again we were also supposed to get it in '07 and there were rumours that '06 would be the year). Here's hoping after all they certainly need to do something about their data offering now that Starbucks has crossed to the dark side with AT&T for WIFI (don't sweat too much T-Mobile subscribers will keep access for at least 5 years (by which time I suspect that WIFI may be a thing of the past!).

        

One of the problems with running a Small Business Server is that you are reliant on your office Internet connection which, while reliable,  is does not have 100% uptime. You can however host your email on Google (privately) by registering for Google Apps with your company's domain name N.B. you do not need to change all of the hosting details for your domain over to Google just the mail related ones i.e. your MX records and mail.yourcompany.com. Once you have set this up you will need to set up an account for each user and forward the email to another (semi-private) email address for me this works like this:
1) I have the MX records for rothmancompany.com hosted on google
2) I use DynDNS.org to host a dynamic domain for my Small Business Server in the form mycompany.dnsalias.com
3) Small business server is configured to recognize myemail@mycompany.dnsalias.com as a valid internal address
4) My default email address is still unchanged
This provides you with a 100% uptime mail server that you can also access remotely it also provides you with a great backup of all of your incomming email!

        

1) You do not need a separate server or any additional applications or licenses to host a Windows Mobile device on your company's Exchange Server
2) Wireless sync supports not only email but your calendar and address book
3) Windows Mobile Smartphones are smaller and lighter than Blackberries
4) There is more software available for  Windows Mobile products
5) The Windows Mobile Professional phones support a wide range of power user tools including remote desktop

        

www.cellplans4u.com will analyze your cellphone bill from range of providers and tell you the cheapest plan for you on your current provider. As a bonus it will also tell you your most frequently called numbers for use with My Circle and My Faves. Best of all it is entirely free!