Sometimes in my line of work, I find it necessary to hunt down images.

Searching for an “image” is somewhat of a dark art. While there have been many advances over the years, computer do a horrible job at recognizing the contents of a image. One only has to look at the error rate in most OCR software to see that even on something as plan text, machines have trouble distinguishing between “$” and “S” or “l” and “I”. So asking a computer to find me a picture of a woman with black hair standing at the western face of the Siegessäule in Berlin is a bit of a stretch.

For some time Google has had image searching system, but has worked primary by guessing the content of an image based on the context clues of the page on which that image sits. The search can be refined a bit by specifying size and overall color composition, but in the end I’m still left sifting through dozens if not hundreds of images looking for something that may or may not exist hoping that someone both has posted the desired image and described it contents in minute detail.

Today was such a day in which I was on a bug hunt for an image. I had a small thumbnail of an image, but needed to confirm details within that image which had been lost when the image was shank. I spent some time on Google, but could only find other thumbnails of this same image. One of the things about the internet is that is constantly copies itself. If information is posted, it will be copied, stored, and republished elsewhere. This is one of the great strength of both the technical and social elements the network. (and the biggest reason why current copyright laws don’t work in the digital word). In my case, the thumbnail of the image I was after could be found in Google images, but the full-size version was proving more difficult to locate.

After some time I decided to check Microsoft’s Bing image search. To my astonishment, using the same search terms as I did with Google, the full size image I was looking for was the third choice on Bing Image search. No only did I find the image I as looking for, but I also found several related full size images that were part of the same set that I did not know even existed.

While this incident has not persuaded me to move from Google to Bing for my search needs, I do feel more like Bing is becoming a legitimate competitor to Google. Microsoft has publicly stated that they will destroy all traffic records after six months, and this bodes well for my need for privacy. I also feel better knowing that Google is standing up to China’s draconian censorship policies. Maybe the worm has turned.

While the people here at TCG are great conversationalists, sometimes a problem with technology just can’t be handled over the phone. When that happens, it’s best for one of our techs to go “hands on” with the afflicted system. In the past this involved a trip onsite to visit a client, or having the client bring things to us.

Back 15 years ago, I would spend 30 minuets driving to and from a location to preform a 5 minute “fix” for a problem. To overcome this discrepancy of billable time my employers of the past would often institute bizarre fees such as “Service call charge”, “one way travel bill”, or bill at a high rate for work done on site. When I started TCG I wanted to eliminated this confusion, and not penalize a client just because I was clever enough to fix their issue in 5 minutes. This is one of the reasons we never bill for things that take less than 10 minutes to fix.

However, time is the most valuable of all resources, for both our clients and our techs. As much I enjoy my clients company, sometimes the best use of everyones time is for me to go “hands on” with technology without the need for scheduling an onsite visit and travel time. This is were the gem of IT Consulting comes in, Remote Access. Remote Access gives the ability for a tech to take “remote control” over a system, and use it as if he or she was siting at the desk.

This is not new, in fact remote access features have been a core part of the Windows Operating system for almost 10 years. Even here at TCG we have a collection of remote access methods, mainly centering about the use of Windows RDP, Open Source VNC, and Mac Screen Sharing. The problem is however that there is not a unified and simple way for any of these methods to transit the complex world of Internet security and firewalls. The end result is that even with our own remote access methods we spend more time maintaing the access paths (port forwarding, routing, etc) than we ever do proving support.

Starting late last year, I started a research project to find the “best” method to create a system that would allow us at TCG to best serve our clients via remote access. The fruits of that research have lead a company called LogMeIn.

There are several commercial and free remote access software packages, such PC Anywhere, RealVNC, Windows Remote Desktop, and MAc Screen Share. The problem with a software package is that it requires that we here at TCG maintain a “path” into whatever system needs to be remotely accessed. This gets even more complicated when realized that most computer no longer connect directly to the internet, but rather are behind NAT routers and firewalls. Several computers within a single office all share a common “gateway” to the internet, and transitioning this gateway to access a single system within that network is a non-trivial task. Also, there was no real uniformity between Macs and PCs. Both had native remote access system, but of course they are not compatible. VNC does work on both, but it’s not a totally secure method. Because of all of this, we ruled out using a “software only” solution.

The other possible solution was a “hosted” remote access system. The advantage of a hosted system is that it is much easier for client and tech to link up. Both sides report to a common third party computer that handles the messy technical details of the connection. This means that accessing any number of computers behind an office NAT router is no longer a problem. There are several high profile companies that offer this hosted remote access service, they include Webex, GoToMyPc, and LogMeIn. The down side of these hosted remote access services is the cost and the dependancy on a third party companies which may or may not be around in the future.

Of all the services I looked at, I liked LogMeIn. I felt like they offered the best overall package of features for the price. But what really tipped the scales was they apparent embrace of new technologies. They no only offer remote support for Mac and PC, but also Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Symbin Phones. They also have an iPhone app that will allow me to take a quick look at a clients machine directly from my iphone.

The correct software for LogMeIn can be downloaded from the software section and instructions for installation and use can be obtained by contacting us at TCG.   

This evening while working late in my lab I decided to play a movie in the back ground. This is somewhat out of character for me. I normally prefer not to have any sort of visual media playing while I work. I feel that it is distracting. However this evening my task involved presiding over a fairly autonomous data transfer, and having just come back with takeout dinner, I thought it might be nice diversion to an other wise long and boring lab session.

A couple of my techs had been quoting lines from an older movie to each other earlier in the day, and not having seen this movie in many years, I thought I might watch it. I am a Netflix subscriber, and one of the features of Netflix is the ability to “watch instantly” on a computer. I surfed over to Netflix and found the movie I wanted to watch, clicked “play now”, and as the film buffered, I unpacked my dinner. Just as I raised the first fork full of spicy chicken to my famished lips, I am presented with this most unsettling of screens:

Shocked and amazed, I followed the two on screen steps, but alas, the same error persisted. Being particularly resourceful (and momentary Sociophobic), I opted not to call the number provided, but rather Google the three key bits of information about my problem, “Macintosh” “Netflix” “Error Code 8151″.

The results from Google while insightful where ultimately unhelpful in fixing my problem. I tried various permutations of reinstalling the Microsoft SilverLight software. I tired updating various Apple kext and plist files. After 45 minutes of trying various things, I realized that my as yet untouched diner was cold, and I had extended my “long and boring lab session” by 45 minutes chasing a problem that should not even existed in the first place. My problem is that I had at some point worked with various sub-sub-sub settings on my Mac, and now the software which playes Netflix could no longer determined if my computer could be “trusted” to play digital content.

After taking the first bight of my now cold dinner, my visceral reaction was to call the 866-579-7113 number and verbally impart my frustration on whoever answered the phone to such a degree that they would go home crying at the end of the conversation, never to return to call center work again. However, my intellect overrode that ideal, because I know that whoever answered the phone would not personally be responsible for this DRM debacle. Then it occurred to me, not even Netflix itself is really responsible. I’m sure Netflix could care less about DRM, they are in the business to rent DVDs by mail, and offer digital downloads to subscribers. The more logical focus of my anger should be on the Copyright Holders who undoubtedly put this DRM requirement on Netflix as a precondition to offering the film for online viewing. (Of course following that logic I should be angry at the government for passing such arcane laws that empower Copyright Holders. Then be mad at the American people for electing the government. But I’ll stop at the Copyright Holders).

It was then I had an Epiphany – the sudden realization of a fundamental truth. That truth was at that moment, it was easier to download that movie from a file sharing site (Pirate Bay, Mininova, etc) than it was to try and fix this issue so as to watch the movie legitimately. Even further in my Epiphany, I realized that this moment I had every moral right to acquire a copy of this film in any manor I chose. (So long as my acquisition did not deprive someone else of the ability to watch the movie.)

Here is my rational.

1. In the 1980s I paid (well my parents paid, i was only a kid) to see this film in a theater.

2. I have purchased two copies of this movie over the years, once in VHS, then in DVD.

3. I have a Netflix account, with which I pay to have access to ANY AND ALL films in their digital download catalog.

4. I made a good faith effort to abide by the frame work to obtain this film via a method approved by the copyright holder.

so therefor…

5. Having personally perviously paid for a license for a Analog copy (VHS), a Digital Copy (DVD), and Digital Download Availability (Netflix), and in light of the failure of that Digital Download Availability, I am not morally, or ethically, bound to abide by artificial restrictions put into place by the Copyright Holder to protect their digital rights.

Simply put, the protection of the copyright holder’s rights is not applicable, because I otherwise have the “right” to have and view the content. So if the copyright holder’s rights are not applicable, then I can obtain and view the content in the manor of my choosing.

After thought…

This train of thought that lead me to realizing that I had a moral right to get that movie anyway I wanted might simultaneously seem complicated to the layperson, and overly simplistic/naive to a copyright attorney. I think there in lies the problem. You see, copyright law is an immensely complicated affair. Copyright law touches each of us in profound ways everyday. We normally think of copyright law when it comes to “big” things like movies, tv, or books. But it is all pervasive in our society, from the labels on soap cans, to the background music at the grocery store, even to the logo’s imprinted on the tags of our clothing. When you have such a integral part of our existence governed by incomprehensible laws, the people will simply ignore those laws in favor of a more reasonable path. No amount of law suites, congressional lobbying, or advertising campaigns can stop or change that.

The lesson to the MPAA and anyone else who supports the current Copyright model is this: 1. If you fail to make your content available, 2. Available in a manor which works any/all the time, and 3. Available at a price which is competitive in the market, others WILL make your content available. MPAA, your competition makes YOUR content available, universal, and free. Good luck fighting that… my torrent just finished and I’m going to watch a movie.

Well 24 hours after me Google Voice review, I found some additional information which adds some VERY cool features to Google Voice.

First, I went-a-Googlen’ and I found a help article inside of Google knowledge base that completely addressed my second suggestion: “Cell Phone Voice Mail integration”. Basically this article (and the comments there in) allowed me to setup my iPhone to use Google Voice as my Voicemail provider. So I am no longer using AT&T Visual Voicemail feature. While checking my voicemail is now less seamless, having the machine transcription emailed to my iphone I think more than balances it out.

Here’s the address: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=00a93855af6943b4&hl=en

Next, I completely forgot to address the Text Messaging/SMS feature of Google Voice.

This feature actually saved me a few weeks ago. Our weekly Rotary Meeting is held in the basement of the Cumberland Mountain State Park Lodge. As I am the secretarial officer of the club, my job is to get there early, setup, take attendance, and clean up afterwards. Well, shortly after I arrived at the meeting location, I realized that I had forgot to SMS a colleague a list of things he need to bring to the meeting. For AT&T users the park lodge (like much of the US) is a dead zone for service. Rather than spending several minutes wandering around outside looking for signal, I simply hopped on the parks Internet and used Google Voice to SMS my list out. I even exchanged a few additional message to clarify the things I needed.

I’ve recently written about my feelings regarding SMS and billing practices of the Cell Phone Industry (they stink). So anything that usurps an unfair Cell Phone Company is a good thing in my book, and Google Voice Does just that.

There are some technical limitations however that I feel will prevent Google Voices SMS system from gaining much ground on traditional SMS. Google Voice’s SMS is not “real” SMS as defended by the GSM and digital mobile phone specifications. Google Voice’s SMS is more like AOL or Yahoo Instant Messaging with a conduit to the Mobile Phone Network. Incidentally, most Internet IM services already have a conduit system that allows for free sending and receiving from an IM client to a Mobile Phone. Well, free for the IM user, not the Mobile User.

In a very real way, to use Google Voice’s SMS system requires a change in behavior for the user that I think most will not be willing to do. Right now, SMS comes to your cell phone without a user having to proactively do anything to get that message. I send a message to you, your phone alerts you to let you know you have a message from me. With Google Voice, to receive an SMS the recipient must “check” his or her Google Voice account to see if there are any new messages. This is a small but stark behavior change. People use the SMS system on mobile phones because there is a perception that one can send a quick message to someone else, and there is an expectation that the message will be delivered (and read) within a short period of time. Requiring a recipient to proactively “check” for new messages removes that sense of immediacy from the SMS process. If the sense of immediacy is removed, then the sender of a message would be better of composing an email to the recipient. An email would have the same requirement of the recipient proactively “checking” for the message, but not have the limitation of traditional SMS such as a maximum of 160 charters per cost unit and no ability to send images.

To overcome this behavior change requirement Google Voice SMS would have to do one of two things. One, have an application that ran on a phone to actively check for new messages and alert the user. This of course would mean that Google would have to create a view swath of software to run and a variety of Smart Phones, and that does not take into account that MOST cell phones in the market today are not capable of installing and running Third Party software. Two, use a traditional alert mechanism, like Cell Phone Company SMS, to alert the user that they have a new Google Voice SMS. This of course is self defeating, why pay for a Cell Phone Company SMS to get a free Google Voice SMS?

Ultimately I fear that no matter how much I admire Google sticking it to the Cell Phone Companies, Google Voice SMS is to-little to-late. All Smart Phones and most Dump Phones (called “Feature” Phones to make them more sellable) already allow for automatic checking of traditional email and some IM services without the user having to proactively think to stop and run a program on his or her phone. I’ve been getting email almost instantly on my cell phones going all the way back to 1998, 4 years before BlackBerry made checking your email while out of the office chic. (It amazes me that people still think that BlackBerrys are the only way to do that.) As more people become used to the ideal of “instant email everywhere” the notion of having a separate SMS system becomes obsolete and redundant. We have been at that point technologically for many years, it will just take a while to catch up to it socially.

In that light Google Voice’s SMS features are a genital bridge to a time when SMS will no longer be necessary. Having Google forward SMS messages your Cell Phone is a way to still receive legacy messages from those who have not yet embraced mobile email. Sending SMS out of Google Voice is a Free way to side step Cell Phone Companies charges when you need to textually communicate with a luddite. But in the end, with all the “extra” steps one must do to send or receive SMS with Google Voice, it’s simpler to just use mobile email, or just place a voice call, unless SMS is your only option.

I do wish that Google would pass on those SMS messages to me as email rather than as a Cell Phone Company SMS messages.

SMS and Text Messaging is quite possibly the largest mass act of theft ever perpetrated in the history of US commerce. So much so that it makes Bernie Madoff look like a shop lifter by comparison. To understand just why this is an act of theft by Wireless Companies, one needs to understand a few simple things about how SMS works.

Digital Mobile phones communicate with the cell towers in various ways and frequencies that all boil down to some method of Code Division. Code Division cuts up digital radio traffic into small chunks (sometimes called “frames”) that allow many devices to share the same frequency space. This is why each cell phone does not have its own “channel” like analog TVs, CB, or police radios do. There is a lot of “non-voice” traffic that get exchanged between a mobile handset and the tower(s) it is hooked to. Most of these “non-voice” digital communications involve the handset telling the tower it signal strength, location data relative to other towers, call status, etc, etc, or the tower telling the handset things like the exact time. Your phone exchanges many of these “non-voice” digital messages per minute, each of which is transmitted or received in a Code Division chunk/frame. Even when there is no “non-voice” data per-say, your phone may still be transmitting empty frames just as part of the protocol.

Soon after the first deployment of a digital cell phone system in 1982 it was realized that after you packed in all the mundane “non-voice” signaling data there was still empty space left in the frame. The ideal was proposed to allow “extra” data to be packaged in this empty frame space, the phone was sending up the data anyway, why not use all the available bits? The “extra” data could be composed by the user of the mobile phone as sort text messages, or as text alerts from the network, and thus SMS was born. Later, in 1985, a full specification of using partial and spare frames was created. The ubiquitous 160 character limit comes from the space limitation of a single Code Division Frame, including the overhead of routing data (to and from numbers). The first SMS message as we know them today was sent in the UK on December 3 1992 by Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis on the Vodafone network, it read “Merry Christmas”.

Now 17 years on, SMS and text messaging is a multi billion dollar a year industry with some messages costing as much as $1 for 160 charters of data. In fact, text messaging charges are bankrupting families who fall into the trap of “over texting”. The internet is filled with stories of families that get $1,000 invoices from Cell phone companies who then seem to think there is nothing morally wrong with that amount and expect the subscriber to make prompt payment. The cost to a subscriber of sending text messages is at least FOUR TIMES the cost NASA pays to get images off the Hubble Space Telescope. To put this into perspective, to transmit the King James Bible (without annotations) over AT&Ts text messaging network would cost $12,400.00. If you converted a single music file to text and sent it over AT&T is would cost about $6,000.00.

It’s outrageous and here’s the truly sad (and I think criminal) part, IT’S ALL FAKE. The text message system is simply part of the Digital Cell Phone Protocol. Those tiny text messages are being squeezed into otherwise blank areas of Code Division Frames. Transmitting those frames, blank or not, are essential for the cell network to function. It costs the cell phone companies the same to send your text message as it does to simply leave your phone turned on. Yet these companies are making ungodly amounts of money on nothing more than perceived value and empty space. IN FACT is costs the Cell Phone Companies MORE if you ask them to turn off Text messaging on your phone. If you ask them to turn it off, the signally protocol still requires that you transmit and receive text message frames, but the cell phone company has to proactively block those messages at many points on the network. What a completely upside down scenario, over charging people for nothing vs. spending money and effort to implement something for which cannot be invoiced.

While I am still working on my comprehensive comparison of all of the major Cumberland County Broadband providers, i think it’s important to share some of my experiences as they occur. Recently, one of my Fairfield Glade clients switched ISPs, and it gave me an opportunity to do a straight up, side by side comparison of the two services.

Now, I don’t want to through either of these companies under the bus. The truth is that both have their strengths and their weaknesses. However, after what happened with my client, I feel that it’s important to share this information.

First, some background. My client is a business on Peavine Road. They have 3 phone lines, (two for voice, 1 for fax), and high speed internet. They, like all businesses should, use their ISP for high speed internet and ONLY high speed internet, they use none for the ISP offered email, web-hosting, of other value-added services. My client was at the end of a multi-year agreement with their ISP/Phone Provider, and was looking for some alternatives. While cost was a factor in choosing to switch, there was also some service issues regarding internet speed especially in wet/rainy weather. Their current provider had tried on several occasions to address the problem, but no suitable solution had been found.

My client had been with Frontier Communications, and was coming to the end of their multi-year contract. We were approached by Comcast who gave us a proposal.

Of course, before the lines get installed, the numbers on paper are the first things to look at. On paper, the Comcast offer was widely better. For 3 phone lines, Unlimited US Long distance, and high speed internet, the average monthly cost would be around $135 per month on a two year agreement. The current agreement with Frontier, for 3 phone lines, 900 minutes of US LD, and high speed internet was $221 per month.

I would expect the two numbers to be within 10% of each other, but 61% is almost unconscionable on the part of Frontier. In fact at that rate it’s worth it to break a contract with Frontier to switch services, because you will get back your escape fees with the savings within a couple of months.

But numbers on paper are one thing, it remained to be seen how the service would perform. As I said, my client had issues with Frontier. We had talked with them on several occasions regarding weather related outages. I had even gone so far as to trace the problem back to a specific peace of equipment inside the Frontier system, but sadly being able to communicate my findings to Frontier proved fruitless.

On the switch over day I was on site to coordinate and I had the opportunity to test both the Frontier lines and the Comcast lines under identical circumstances. Our speeds with Frontier would sometimes get as low as 300k Down and 200k Up. The average packet loss would be 16% to 30%. On cutover day however, the Frontier speeds were better, but not as good as they could be.

For my speed testing I use Speakeasy’s Speedtest. There are many such speed testing systems out there, but when you are comparing different locations and ISP, it’s good to have a known baseline, and this happens to be my known baseline. Here are the numbers from screen shots I took before and after the cut over:

Frontier:

Comcast:

As you can see the numbers are absolutely staggering. There is a 15x increase in download speed and a 5x increase in upload speed.

In all fairness, my client will most likely never fully use that much speed. I could even make an argument that at 20,000 kpbs he is pulling pages of the web faster than most servers can feed them to him. But for that much speed for $90 less per month, switching is a no brainer.

We still need to build some history with Comcast. I have some reservation about dealing with a company that was the runner up in the 2008 Consumerist’s Worst Company In America Contest. Comcast also has a very bad reputation regarding bandwidth throttling, deceptive advertising, and penalizing users for unsubstantiated copyright violation claims. But for now I am willing to set that aside and deal with Comcast based on how they work with my client.

Endicia is a postage printing system for the Mac.

<disclaimer and rant>I have a very low opinion of the United States Postal Service. Most of this stems from my interactions with the local post office personnel. I will not allow my venomous loathing of the American Postal Workers Union and the apathetic laziness it cultivates to negatively impact my review. </disclaimer and rant>

I do a lot of mailing and for the most part the less I interact with postal workers the better. While I have found a few postal employees that have been really helpful, far to often I have encountered people who seem to actively try to thwart my attempts to use the service.

For many years I printed out labels from my printer and spent a few hours affixing labels and stamps to #10 envelopes. At the end of 500 mail peaces, I was lucky to get the label on right side up, much less straight. At some point we managed to get a printer that would print directly on to envelopes, but ever after that, we had to spend time putting stamps on.

A few years ago, I discovered the on-line postage printing system, Stamps.com. This system allows a person to print postage with just a computer, Printer, and #10 envelopes. SWEET! So my work load was cut down dramatically and I’ve been using Stamps.com happily for the most part sense shortly after they started.

However, I have always been miffed that Stamps.com did not have a Mac client, and truth be told the windows version was slow and kinda buggy, but it was better than lick’n & stick’n, so I suffered on.

With my Desktop Mac Change over, I have found a need for Postage on my Mac. For the first couple of runs, I used Stamps.com in Parallels, but this sort of defeats the purpose of trying to convert to Mac. After posting some of my thoughts on my transition, a person wrote in to tell me that there was indeed a postage system for Mac, called Endicia.

At first glance, Endicia for Mac is pretty much like Stamps.com for Windows. It costs $15 per month, plus postage, and has similar features to Stamps.com. Oddly, Endicia does have a windows client, but the monthly cost is much lower than Stamps.com (because it lacks some features most people will never use), but the Mac client was the full $15.

I of course had to sign up before I could download the software. The service does have a free month to try, but you have to give up payment information right off the bat to get a look at the software. Fantastically, there was a screencast of the Mac software I could watch, so while I could not use the software with out singing up for the service. This answered many of my off the cuff questions.

There was a bit of trouble signing up. I went through the online process of registering, and got an email back with my combination, but I could not log in to get the software. I gave it 24 hours, but I could never get in. Now while this was a bit deflating, it did give me a opportunity to “test drive” their technical support. My first few calls to the tech support number, 800-576-3279, netted me only a voice mail box for tech support. I did leave a message, and sure enough, a few minutes later Mike called my back. After about 90 seconds on the the phone with this guy I was logged in and downloading software.

What was THIS tech support call that sold me on the company. When I first called and got the voice mail box for tech support, I though they were busy, but playing with the phone tree I soon realized that the company seems quite small. While taking to the support rep, I could here other people talking. What struck me at first was that EVERYONE seemed to be speaking American English with west coast ascents, this seemed to jive with my impression that it was a small well run company doing its own in house support. The people I spoke where not generic paid support people reading from a script, they seemed to me to be real people who cared about the company they worked for. Also there was none of the artificial “have I helped you with all your issues today Mr. Tabor?” BS that I get when I talk to Mumbai. It was refreshing.

As far as the software itself, it’s pretty straight forward. It installs like most other Mac Applications.

Of course I did not have any postage so I had to add $10. I had to provide my Credit Card when I signed up, so it did not ask for it again, nice touch.

Setting up my custom Mailing Graphic and Fonts was easy. Setting up the printer was a bit more diffacult. This is where I figured out that the Macintosh OS 10.5 Driver for my HP 7410 All-in-one does not recognize the second paper tray. I found a couple of forums talking about it and it turns out to be a driver bug from HP, not related to Endicia. About the only thing I had trouble finding was the option to do a sample print of postage just to see if I got the setting right. In Stamps.com you have to do a big walk through to make sure you have the envelopes pointed the right way, and you wind up burning two envelopes in the process. Annoying if you have to do a reinstall of the printer, but helpful burning a first setup. The second burned envelope in this possess is an full sample showing you exactly what the finished product will look like. Stamps.com also has a quick “sample” button to see the effects changes you make to the return address’s font or size will have on how the envelope looks.

I spent several minutes looking for a “sample” button in Endica, but could not find one. The printer setup process does not send anything to the printer, which is in contrast, to Stamps.com. Ironically, the setup process does have a print dialog window, complete with a “print” button, but a dialog warns you that clicking “Print” will only save your settings and not send something to the printer.

After 20 minutes, I decided I would burn $0.42 cents, just to see the envelope print, and clicked on the “Prepare Envelope for Printing..” button on the main window after filling out all the required stuff.

Much to my surprise, this did not “Print” anything, but did bring up a window showing me the finished product, and here is where I found a “Print a Test Envelope” button.

I’m glad I did this, turns out the my HP Officejet 7410 had some issue printing to the edge of my #10 envelopes. I wound up fixing the issue by manually adjusting envelope size in the Printer Setup in Endicia from 9.5 inches wide, down to 9.15 inches wide. This tricked my printer into printing all the way to the edge of my #10 envelopes, the thus getting all of the bar code.

I’ve only done a couple of mail peace through Endicia. So far I’ve really liked it. the only draw backs I’ve noticed have been things not related to Endicia, such as my Business Addresses being trapped in Quickbooks Premiere 2008 for Windows. Endicia does work with Apple’s address book, and I can do batch printing. I lost my USB scale to a coffee spill some time ago, so I cannot test the interface, but Endicia does came to work with them.

Like Stamps.com Endica does have an option to just print “stamps”, Called “Netstamps” in the Stamps.com world and “InstaPostage” in the Endicia world. I have used Stamps.com photo stamps service in the past (a grade christmas gift for grandparents is a sheet of stamps with their only grand daughter on them ), and Endicia seems to be matching Stamps.com on this as well.

Now only if I could print those “Forever Stamps” with a photo on them.

All in all I have been every pleased with Endicia, and I am looking forward to using it more.

Exchange is Microsoft’s “Messaging and Collaboration” server. In plain English, Exchange is the server which an office can use to receive e-mail and share address books and schedules with each other. It is quite possibly the single best product offered by Microsoft, and the one that works most reliably.

Most people think of e-mail in the POP3 dial-up ISP model. They open up their e-mail program and “download” messages from the internet to Outlook Express or Mail.app. Of course anyone who has tried to use the same e-mail address from the office and from home knows the great limiting factor. If you download a message at the office, you won’t have access to it at home or vice-versa. There have been several “hacks” over the years to try and get around this, the most notable one being “leave a copy of mail on server”. But here you are forced to sort through mail that you may or may not have read, and you do not have access to messages to may have already sent, or that you were in the process of writing. The final great downside to this style of e-mail is that you must have an e-mail program configured for each place you may want to get you mail. For most business professionals this turns out to be 3 places, office, home, laptop.

One way of addressing these problems has been the rise of wed based e-mail, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, and gmail.com. While these fix most of the problems with the POP3 model, they still have a few serious drawbacks. Chief of which is that they are not corporate e-mail systems. You lose the professional face of joe.user@mycompany.com in favor of finding an awkward e-mail address with the service, juser-mycomp1977@gmail.com. I cannot over state how deeply unprofessional it is for me to get a business card with an “@aol.com”, or “@gmail.com” address. There are again “hacks” to make web based systems look more corporate, but these systems are still “single user” and thus sharing your data across the office is not easily done.

Enter Microsoft Exchange. Exchange has solved the problem of multiple locations (work, home, road), and the problem of installed software (Exchange can be accessed from either Outlook or via a web browser). Exchange also has the advantage of being a corporate e-mail system (i.e. @mycompany.com), and allowing each user of the server to share out his or her address book and schedule so that other people in the office know what’s going on. Except for answering the phone, it’s about the only communication service/server you will ever need.

Exchange also has a mobile e-mail access feature which is exactly like ubiquitous Blackberry, but without the ridiculous Blackberry costs. Microsoft calls this “Push Email”. A message sent to joe.user@mycompany.com not only shows up in Joes Outlook Inbox, but also a copy is sent to his Windows Mobile Phone. If he reads the e-mail on his phone, the message is marked as read when he sits down at his computer. If he replies to the e-mail from his phone, then the reply is also in his Outlook folders for him to refer back to.

In fact it is the sync of Exchange that is its greatest virtue. No mater were you use it from, Mobile, Outlook, Office, Home, or via the Web, it always looks the same, has the same messages, and the same read/not-read statuses. The Contacts and Calendars are the same. In fact address books and schedules are automatically synced to your cell phone over the air. This means that if you enter an address in Outlook it will be on your phone (no more tying to type in a name and number of the keypad). If you run into someone and schedule a meeting while waiting in line at the post office, you can put that meeting right into your cell phone and then it will show up at the office. No need to plug in your phone to your computer, it just works.

Exchange is not at all expensive. A typical small office can have all of the virtues of exchange, for less than $1500. There are some additional “data plan” coasts from the cell phone provider if you want to use Push e-mail, but those are only $10 to $15 a month depending on carrier, where Blackberry services can be $50 per-month in total or more. Of course your office will also have to have internet access via broadband.