Companies compete to deliver search- engine marketing

Jessica Guynn
Sun

SAN FRANCISCO — When it comes to finding local products and services, consumers are increasingly letting their fingers do the clicking.

Locally targeted search engines have replaced thick phone books as the starting point for millions of people seeking plumbers, personal injury lawyers or hair stylists. That trend is creating a big business opportunity for a slew of online players, including advertising start- ups, Internet giants and traditional yellow- pages publishers.

One Los Ange l e s company, ReachLocal Inc., just landed $ 55.2 million in venture funding to bulk up as it tackles the local- search market.

Welcome to the next big front in the battle for online advertising dollars. The Kelsey Group, a research firm based in Princeton, N. J., predicts that local search and Internet yellow pages ad spending will grow to $ 4.9 billion in 2011, from $ 1.9 billion this year.

“ It’s a huge growth opportunity,” said Warren Kay, Yahoo Inc.’ s managing director of strategic alliances. “ We are very interested in small businesses. They provide meaningful content consumers are looking for.”

Search engines are investing in initiatives to create virtual neighbourhoods where people can find detailed information on local businesses, including consumer reviews and such basics as the hours of operation.

Google Inc., for example, recently launched a pilot program to send contractors into local businesses to collect such information. ReachLocal is using some of the money it raised to take a similar approach, sending salespeople into small businesses across the country to offer to manage their search- engine advertising campaigns.

Those “ feet on the street” efforts reflects how hard it is to reach the country’s millions of small business proprietors, who tend to rely on more traditional forms of advertising, and teach them about the benefits of online search, analysts say.

To wit: Businesses with fewer than 100 employees spent less than five per cent of nearly $ 72 billion on advertising in 2006, according to Borrell Associates, a media research and consulting firm in Williamsburg, Va.

Companies such as ReachLocal, Irvine- based WebVisible Inc. and New York- based Yodle Inc. — as well as the digital arms of huge directory publishers such as AT& T Inc. and R. H. Donnelley Corp. — are preaching that the Internet can be the great equalizer for small merchants struggling to get noticed. They tout simple text ads alongside search results as one of the most effective strategies to land new customers.

Advertisers like search ads because they’re highly targeted and shown to people who are actively looking to buy a particular product or service.

Major advertisers have seen the upside for some time — search advertising revenue in the first half of 2007 jumped nearly a third to $ 4.1 billion, representing 41 per cent of all online ad spending, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

But, because mounting an effective search- marketing campaign is complicated, most small businesses have yet to experiment with it.

Some small businesses have mastered the science of rising to the top of search results without having to buy keywords by tweaking their websites and getting prominent ones to link to them. Others buy their own search- engine ads, but analysts say most either don’t know how or can’t spare the time.

That’s where ReachLocal and its competitors come in. The services vary, but essentially small businesses hire these companies to buy keyword ads on major search engines such as those of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Corp. Some companies track the results for their clients, be it through e- mails or phone calls. Now many of these companies are developing video and mobile technologies. And they are armed with success stories.

Take Eddie Ugalde, 33, who runs an eco- friendly carpet cleaning business in Altadena. He started spending $ 1,000 a month with ReachLocal in March and received such a dramatic response from the search campaign that moved Right Away Carpet Drycleaning out of his home, grew from two employees to 10 and bought a distribution business. He recently increased his monthly ad buy to $ 1,500.

“ It would have taken a real long time for word of mouth to give us the opportunity to be in the place we are today,” Ugalde said.

To reach this largely untapped online market, the old- fashioned yellow pages publishers have an edge because they already have relationships with small businesses around the country, said Matt Booth, a Kelsey Group senior vice president.

After a few fits and starts, these publishers increasingly are marketing search advertising to mom- and- pop operations.

“ As online takes off, small businesses know that they need and want to be there,” said Matt Crowley, chief marketing officer for AT& T subsidiary Yellowpages. com.

ReachLocal is borrowing a page from the yellow pages. Chief executive Zorik Gordon says his 300- person company will use some of the money invested by Rho Ventures, Galleon Crossover Fund and VantagePoint Venture Partners to hire a national sales force to sell its product directly to small businesses.

Ultimately, the idea is to use mapping and satellite imagery to create virtual storefronts that tell you everything from the types of products and services offered to methods of payment accepted, said Chris Sherman, e xe c u t ive editor of SearchEngineLand. com.

Get Wired exhibit showcases high-tech innovations that blend seamlessly into your life

Joanne Blain
Sun

The high-tech home is here, but don’t expect it to look like something the Jetsons might live in. There are no robot maids dusting the furniture and not a flying saucer in sight.

In fact, a lot of the technological innovations in the Get Wired exhibit at the Vancouver Home and Interior Design Show, which runs through Sunday at B.C. Place, are hidden in plain sight.

Look in the bathroom mirror, for instance, and what you’ll see at first is just your own smiling face. But flip a switch and the mirror turns into a television so that you can watch your favourite show while you brush your teeth.

The microwave in the contemporary kitchen appears fairly ordinary, but it’s also got a secret. It has a scanning wand that can read the bar code on a frozen entree or other prepared food and automatically program in the correct cooking time and temperature, without your having to push a button.

Designer Erik Lauzon of Vancouver’s Konstruk Design put together the Get Wired display to showcase some of the high-tech innovations more and more of his clients are demanding in their homes.

Those homeowners fall into two camps, he says — “the ones who want to show off all that technology and make sure everyone sees it, and the total opposite, people who want the technology but will do everything in their power to hide it.”

So if you’re in the home of one of the latter of Lauzon’s clients, don’t be surprised if the bookcases or the walls start singing to you. He can disguise stereo speakers as books or bookends, and even embed them in the walls so seamlessly that you can’t tell they’re there — you can even paint over them.

“If you have a character home in Shaughnessy, you really don’t want to see speakers or any of that stuff,” he says.

And that’s just the beginning, says Stan Strenger of North Vancouver‘s Smart Home Shop, which teamed up with Lauzon to create the Get Wired exhibit.

“If you can dream it up, we can probably do it,” he says.

Worried about being stuck at the office when you’ve got a domestic crisis and desperately need to let someone into your house? Strenger can set up a system that will allow you to turn off your security system and open the door to let them in — and then reset the system and lock the door when they leave.

You can be energy-conscious but come back to a comfortable house by remotely turning on the heat and the lights before you arrive — you can even turn on the oven and start dinner.

But rule-breaking teenagers beware: Not only can homeowners get a system that lets them keep tabs on home-alone kids from afar via cameras installed around the house, they can also get a good night’s sleep without wondering whether or not the little rascals tried to sneak in after curfew.

“We can have the system send you an e-mail saying ‘this door was opened at 1:04 in the morning,'” Strenger says.

But let’s give the kids a break. Get Wired showcases lots of innovations they’ll love, such as a centralized media system that lets you consolidate your CDs, MP-3 files and DVDs on one server and then play them in any room of the house.

We bring it all to a central point in the house and you can distribute it out from there,” Strenger says. That means you can listen a cello concerto in the den while your kids are tuning into hip-hop in the rec room, with everyone controlling their own selection from a touch screen or a hand-held remote.

In the kitchen, you can watch TV or a DVD, access the internet or listen to the radio via a flip-down screen and a waterproof keyboard. “A lot of people who cook like it, because if they spill something, they don’t have to worry about the keyboard,” he says.

Lauzon incorporated all these innovations in a contemporary show suite featuring Italian-made Mesons kitchen cabinets, Ecosmart fireplaces and furnishings by Koolhaus and Flavour Furniture.

in this house, from furniture to accessories,” he says. George and Judy Jetson would surely approve.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Security: Back up computer files to safest building in B.C.

Gordon Clark
Province

Imagine you’re about to type the final sentence of your great Canadian novel when your cocker spaniel — we’ll call him Trouble — jumps up and knocks a cup of coffee into your laptop.

The screen goes dead and a strange, burnt electronics smell rises from the machine as your heart sinks.

Did you back up your data?

The scenario is played out in various forms — business presentation, PhD dissertation, iTunes collection — thousands of times a year.

Guy Robertson, a Vancouver disaster-planning and records-management consultant, says that at least once a week he hears from a desperate person who has lost valuable files.

“They’re looking for that magic bullet that will recover their data, but if they don’t have a reliable backup system in place, there’s nothing that can be done,” Robertson said.

“The files are gone. It’s a hard lesson to learn,” he said. “Death, taxes and losing an important computer file — the three things you can depend on in life these days.”

Now a Victoria company has launched an online service that automatically and continuously backs up all the data on your computer for just under $30 a month and stores it in an encrypted form in one of the most secure buildings in B.C.

“It’s called continuous data protection,” said Christopher Weston, the vice-president of CUBE Global Storage, a 27-year-old data-storage firm now marketing its new LiveBackup data-protection service.

“The minute you hit ‘save,’ it automatically backs up in a cache and it’s sent encrypted back to the site. You don’t have to hit backup ever and you don’t need to schedule it ever.”

Weston said the data is stored in servers in the company’s building in Victoria that is described as the “Fort Knox of storage centres . . . Earthquake, flood and fireproof, the building has one million cubic feet of storage space and is so secure that it’s been named the safest building in the province and designated as a post-disaster centre for the Victoria region by Public Safety Canada.”

“Chances are that it won’t be a natural disaster, but something smaller, but just as devastating, that will cause you to lose data,” said Weston.

“It can be one file or your entire system and it can be personally and professionally devastating.”

Weston said he’s targeting the new service at “road warriors” — business people who take their laptops on the road — and home businesses. But he’s working on a cheaper version for students and also to make the system compatible with Mac computers. It only works now with PCs.

The company said it offers the only service of its kind in B.C. “with a long history of protecting the most valuable physical and virtual assets for hundreds of clients in one of the safest buildings in the world.”

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Misty Harris
Sun

The old folk wisdom that an apple a day keeps the doctor away may need a cautionary corollary for the computer age. That’s because a daily dose of Apple — or any other brand of computer or high-tech device — can be a direct path to the physician’s office.

Across the country, excessive use of laptops, cellphones, personal digital assistants and other technology has led to such modern-day maladies as “tech neck,” “mouse wrist,” “iPod finger,” “BlackBerry thumb” and “computer headache.”

According to the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, the global pervasiveness of these technology-induced afflictions, their effect on quality of life, and the affected demographics — now including children as young as eight — were among the hottest topics at this year’s World Confederation of Physical Therapy Congress in Vancouver.

“There’s an emerging body of knowledge about how these [technological] devices are actually impacting our health,” says Natalie Bovair, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Physiotherapy Association.

Of particular concern is the growing number of children and teenage patients complaining of headaches and neck pain, which researchers believe are due to overuse of videogames, long or frequent cellphone use, excessive text messaging, and poor posture at the computer.

A Boston University study found 40 per cent of sixth graders who regularly used computers had physical complaints that suggested the presence of a musculoskeletal disorder. An Australian study found 60 per cent of computer users aged 10 to 17 years had similar complaints.

Among adults, a Pollara poll of more than 1,000 Canadians released last week found that nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of people regularly experience back, neck, joint or general muscle pain. Of those, nearly 40 per cent blame technology as the primary or contributing cause of their discomfort, with women being especially likely to do so: 45 per cent, compared to 31 per cent of men.

The nationwide survey, commissioned by RUB A535 pain-relief products, is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Peter Vass, a real estate agent, is among the roughly 13 million Canadians who believe the use of technology contributes to their physical torment.

“I’m a ‘crackberry‘ addict with BlackBerry thumb,” says Vass, laughing. Although this ailment originates in the digits, symptoms can include pain or throbbing, swelling and numbness of the entire hand or forearm.

The Toronto man also developed wrist problems, including the loss of feeling and muscle control, that he believes were caused by holding his phone at an unnatural angle for extended periods of time in his car.

His solution was to switch to a Bluetooth earpiece, which he wears about 18 hours a day.

“While I’m driving, I do all my communication: e-mails, texting, Internet, make my phone calls. I pretty well live on a BlackBerry,” says Vass. “When you’re a real estate agent, technology isn’t a choice; it’s your life.”

Colleen Lichti spends most of her 40-hour work week on the phone or at the computer, leading to what’s known in popular parlance as “tech neck.” For nearly four years, the Canadian insurance-claims specialist has seen a chiropractor for her “perpetual muscular pain,” but finds little empathy for her condition outside the medical community.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Smartphone offers Windows, QWERTY keyboard, GPS capability

Jim Jamieson
Province

What is it? Moto Q 9h mobile phone

Price: $249.99, with a contract

Rating 4 out of 5

Why you need it: You want to upgrade your smartphone and you have a need for speed.

Why you don’t: You like feeling smarter than your phone.

Our rating:

Anyone who’s been watching the evolution of the mobile phone knows the device is getting closer and closer to PC functionality.

The Moto Q 9h, Motorola’s newest smartphone, takes another step in that direction. It boasts multi-functionality in an easy-to-look-at form factor with faster connection speeds.

Just launched, the Moto Q 9h might seem at first glance like something for the mobile professional. But looked at a little closer, it’s also got an impressive array of features.

It has a tactile QWERTY keyboard to make e-mail and texting a little easier. It also offers built-in GPS capabilities and a two-megapixel camera (with flash) that is able to capture video at 15 frames per second and display it at 30. The device also comes with a microSD memory-card module for those wishing to store or display large files or a library of digital music.

Another bonus for professionals — and the rest of us — is that the Moto Q 9h uses Windows Mobile 6, so users can have the look and feel of their desktop computers. E-mails are delivered in their original HTML format and displayed as they would be on a PC. MS Word documents and Excel spreadsheets can also be viewed and edited in their original formatting.

The Moto Q 9h operates on Rogers Wireless’ new High Speed Packet Access network, which allows data users the ability to access web content at as fast as 3.6 megabytes per second.

 

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

You can post your whole life on the web now, but you can’t control who sees it and what they do with the information

Elaine O’Connor
Province

B.B. is 19 years old. She lives in Vancouver. Her favourite movies are Love, Actually, and Amelie. She reads Harry Potter, too.

She’s in her second year of university at Simon Fraser University studying political science and art history. She might go on to law school. Her e-mail is [email protected].

She took ENGL 104 first year and was sharing notes with classmates.

This year, you’ll likely find her in a second year class: Introduction to Political Philosophy (Wednesdays, 1:30 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. in room WMC3210) or Politics and Ethics (Mondays 10:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. in room C9000).

Her birthday is later this month. She’ll celebrate with friends (many from a Vancouver private school, which she graduated from in 2006), calling them on cell numbers they posted online, along with compromising pictures of them partying at grad and in limos. You can download all 195 of them.

When she’s not in school you may find her working at an East Vancouver Extra Foods store.

She lives nearby. You can find her complete address and home phone number on Canada411.com. You could even look up directions to her house on Mapquest.com.

If she’s not at home, you could arrange to meet her at a music show downtown: she was at Hot Hot Heat Sept. 18 at The Commodore. In the summer, you may find her at her family’s cabin in Washington.

B.B. is a complete stranger to me.

But I know all about her. (Her real name, school, birthdate, and e-mail are all online. But we’ll leave them out here, for privacy’s sake — although she chose not to use privacy settings.) I learned this and more about the pretty college student on her Facebook profile.

And she never knew a thing.

To some, this information is meaningless. But to a predator, an academic adviser or employer, a few clicks can reveal details about someone’s life that could be used against them.

– – –

Social-networking sites are coming under scrutiny for just these reasons. Groups like the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s Cybertip.ca are trying to raise the alarm about web dangers.

“With these networking sites typically, you’re exposing everything,” says Signy Arnason, Director of Cybertip.ca.

“What’s not resonating with children is that the Internet is a public space. You’d equate it to your child going with a photo album into Safeway and allowing people who pass by to view it. You’re doing the same thing placing all this information on the Internet.”

That openness is risky. In its first year of operations, Cybertip.ca logged 5,771 reports of potential online child sexual abuse: 21,000 to date. It found 93 per cent of those lured are female, 73 per cent aged 12 to 15. Ninety-five per cent of the suspects are male.

In the most recent B.C. case, Burnaby RCMP revealed Thursday they were investigating an elementary school janitor for having online contact with a female student, though no sexual allegations have been made.

In the U.S., the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states one out of five kids online have been propositioned.

Just last week, a 15-year-old Florida girl disappeared after she snuck out of her house to meet a 24-year-old man she’d met on MySpace — a man who turned out to be a 46-year-old sex offender.

The primary fear about the safety of social networking sites (and there are dozens besides MySpace and Facebook — see sidebar) remains sexual predators. But there are other risks for kids, too. One concern is innocent photos a child or teen uploads could be used for insidious purposes.

“Kids need to know that once a picture, once anything, is posted on the Internet quite often it is there forever,” says Const. Annie Linteau of the B.C. RCMP’s E Division.

“You don’t know who at the other end of the line is seeing that photo. You don’t know what they are doing with it. It is certainly possible for children to become victims [of sexual exploitation] without knowing the adults who are looking at the photos.”

And, adds Cybertip.ca’s Arnason, pictures on social-networking sites can also be used for bullying.

“We’ve had nude photographs of kids show up in locker rooms of schools.” Because of this, she cautions,”the focus [of online education] shouldn’t be solely ‘you’re going to have sexual offenders coming after you.’ It has to resonate with them in terms of embarrassment and humiliation that can occur.”

– – –

Adults, too, can find themselves the victim of social-networking site indiscretions.

Employers now regularly go online to Google, MySpace and Facebook to screen recruits. Suddenly, the picture of you passed out by the toilet on New Year’s is less funny.

Just last week, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day ordered an investigation after Canadian Border Services employees were caught in a YouTube video drinking and calling Prime Minister Stephen Harper a “serial killer.”

Police are using social-networking sites, too. So be aware that the YouTube graffiti-tagging video your gang embedded on your MySpace page might not be such a good idea.

In September, Penticton RCMP used YouTube to reopen an investigation of a Highway 97 crash after they found video of a street race that may have preceded it. Hamilton police have even used YouTube to distribute surveillance video to aid in a murder investigation.

Fraudsters can also take advantage of personal details in your profile. The credit report agency Equifax recently warned consumers not to put personal information on social-networking sites for just this reason.

And finally, easy access to your social calendar and personal details can also have unintended consequences.

In the U.S., there have been cases of scholarships being rescinded after unflattering details surfaced. And in April 2007, a U.K. house was destroyed by crashers who saw an invite to a party on MySpace. The 200 revellers caused $50,000 worth of damage.

– – –

None of this has prevented Canadians from signing on to social-networking sites in droves.

An Ipsos-Reid poll this week found 37 per cent of Canadians had visited a social-networking site, and 30 per cent posted a profile. The figure rises among 18- to 34-year-olds: 63 per cent have visited a social-networking site and 55 per cent placed a profile.

Users often don’t realize the sheer number of people who have access to these profiles.

MySpace has more than 105 million registered accounts. Facebook boasts 69 million users. Nexopia, which caters to youth aged 14 to 22, has half a million registered users. Several districts — Vancouver, North Vancouver and Langley — have found it so viral they’ve banned it from school computers.

Warren Nightingale, a media education specialist with Canada‘s Media Awareness Network, admits that despite school efforts, the lure of such sites for teens remains strong.

“It’s a generation that was raised on celebrity culture, and with these sites you can create your own celebrity,” he says.

“Young people are exploring their identity and they can do so through their profiles.”

He advises the safest way to use these sites is to withhold as much as possible.

“If you use a gender-neutral nickname and avatar instead of a real name and picture you’re going to protect your privacy much more.”

Mindful of these safety concerns, some sites have taken their own precautions.

Facebook warns users that, “unless you’re prepared to attach something in your profile to a resumé or scholarship application, don’t post it.”

On MySpace, registrants must be 14 or older and every profile of a 14- or 15-year-old is automatically set to the highest level of privacy. Users 16 and older can choose their own privacy settings. Users over 18 can’t add users aged 14 or 15 as friends unless they know their full name or e-mail.

But the best way to keep your profile — and your personal details — safe might be not to post one at all.

CANADIAN INSTANCES OF LURING TEENS ONLINE

-In August, a 25-year-old Montreal man was sentenced to nine years in prison for posing as a teenager online and luring 13- and 14-year-old girls into sending him video of themselves naked. Police later found he had targeted “hundreds and hundreds of girls online.”

-In April, Langley Mountie Adam Jonathan Clarke, 23, was sentenced to one day in jail for using the Aldergrove community policing office computer to access Nexopia and chat with a 12-year-old Langley girl and a 15-year-old Richmond girl, in search of child pornography.

POPULAR SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

– 43Things.com

– Bebo.com

– Buzznet.com

– Classmates.com

– Clubpenguin.com

– Couchsurfing.com

– LiveJournal.com

– Facebook.com

– Flickr.com

– Friendster.com

– Linkedin.com

– MEETin.org

– Meetup.com

– Minggl.com

– MySpace.com

– Nexopia.com

– Socialgrapes.com

– TeenSpot.com

– Tribe.net

– Twitter.com

– Wink.com

– Xanga.com

TIPS FOR PRESERVING PRIVACY ONLINE

-Never use your last name. Use a nickname or pseudonym. Remind friends not to refer to you by your first or last names in posts. Tell them to check with you before posting photos you appear in.

-Never post work, home, college dorm details or school schedules.

-Use the highest level of privacy settings on profiles. If you have to provide personal information to create a profile, use initials.

-Password-protect personal blog posts and photos and e-mail the password to friends and family.

-Remember police departments and university administrators can use these pages to check for illegal behaviour, threats or violations of student codes of conduct.

TIPS FOR PARENTS

-Parents should know where their kids are going online and either supervise their computer use or install controls. Parents can use keystroke programs that record their child’s activities or install filters to ban certain sites.

-Kids should never have web cams, because you can never be sure who’s watching.

-Don’t let your child use computers behind closed doors. Put the computer in the family room.

-Warn children never to meet online friends unless you are there.

-Test sites your child wants to use and learn how they work.

IT’S THIS EASY TO TRACK YOUR KIDS

In the August issue of The Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan stunned readers in an article on cyber safety by stalking a teenage girl. In her article, “Babes in the Woods,” she tracks a local girl she calls “Jenna” and learns about her friends, boyfriend, planned outings, even her graduation date. She even shows up at Jenna’s school at her graduation and notes the time and place of her new college classes after Jenna posts her schedule.

WHAT CANADIANS LOG ON TO

According to a recent Ipsos-Reid study, Canadian adults spend an average of over five hours a week on the sites. The most popular site for Canadians is Facebook (65 per cent), followed by Classmates.com (20 per cent), MySpace (15 per cent) and Windows LiveSpace (13 per cent).

ONLINE SAFETY RESOURCES

– Cybertip.ca

– Media-awareness.ca

– Mediafamily.org

– Kidsintheknow.ca

– Kidsrisk.harvard.edu

– WiredSafety.org

– Netsmartz.org

– ConnectSafely.org

 

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Tech Toys

Sun

Mobile Bicycle Computer, $69 Cdn

Track your speed and make your bicycle sound like a motorcycle all with this mobile bicycle computer and Bluetooth sensor. The creation of Vancouver-based Sound of Motion, this bike computer attaches to your bike wheel and transmits data via a Bluetooth connection to your Bluetooth and Java-capable mobile phone. It gives you speed, acceleration, time and distance traveled. For serious training you can upload the data from your phone to your computer for spreadsheet analysis. It has the added safety feature of a sound simulator that can warn pedestrians and cars by making your bike sound like anything from a Harley to a horse. Check out www.soundofmotion.com for a demo and ordering info.

Solio Hybrid 1000, $79 Cdn

This next generation portable solar charger from Solio has a multitude of interchangeable tips to allow for universal compatibility, with electronic devices ranging from music players to GPS systems and game consoles. Powered by the sun through its built-in solar panel, it can also be plugged into the USB cable of any computer to recharge the internal lithium ion battery that stores power for up to a year. A fully charged Solio will charge a typical mobile phone once or power 10 hours of MP3 music. One hour of sunshine equals 15 minutes of talk time or 40 minutes of music. Lest you worry about the environmental impact of manufacturing this device, its maker Better Energy Systems plans to support renewable energy projects in Africa to offset the CO2 created by its production.

Gomadic’s QuadCharge Universal Charging Station, $50 Cdn

The answer to serious gadget overload is Gomadic’s newly released universal charging station that bills itself as a command centre capable of charging up to four devices at once. That tangle of charging cords is replaced by one outgoing cord, making for a more attractive charging solution and one that won’t see you creating an octopus every time you try to boost flagging batteries. The TipExchange tips, which come separately, allow you to swap devices in and out with a click of the tip. TipExchange uses removable connector tips that snap onto the end of the cable, allowing you to tailor the charger to your collection of electronic gizmos and gadgets.

Brother HL-4070CDW colour laser printer, $630 Cdn

From Brother’s new line of colour laser printers for the home office and small business, the 4070 combines built-in automatic two-sided printing with Wi-Fi connectivity. It prints up to 21 colour pages per minute and the USB direct interface allows PictBridge and USB flash memory drive printing. Not the most expensive in the new line, which starts with the HL-4040CN at $500, but the WiFi and automatic two-sided printing are worthwhile added features.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Michelle Kessler
USA Today

SAN FRANCISCO — Computer makers are going all out for all-in-one PCs, which combine a monitor and a processing unit in one piece.

Gateway last week launched its first consumer all-in-one in four years. The Gateway One, starting at $1,300, squishes all the parts needed to make a PC into a 3.6-inch-thick flat-panel monitor case and comes with a wireless mouse, keyboard and remote.

Rivals have released similar products. Sony  in August launched the Vaio LT PC/TV, which has computer parts tucked behind a flat-panel monitor that can be hung on the wall. Hewlett-Packard  this month plans to update its year-old TouchSmart PC, which features a touch-activated screen (similar to an Apple  iPhone) and is designed for a kitchen or den.

All-in-ones make up only about 2% of the worldwide PC market, says tech analyst Roger Kay at Endpoint Technologies Associates. But that could jump to 7% by 2015, thanks to compelling new offerings, Kay predicts.

“We’re still in the early stages,” says tech analyst Richard Shim at researcher IDC. “But … things are taking off.”

All-in-one PCs have been around for decades. The original 1984 Apple Macintosh was one. But desktops evolved into the now-common monitor and tower configuration because all-in-ones were heavy and hard to upgrade. The failure of one part could crash the whole system.

Apple helped revive the market in 1998 with the popular iMac. (The latest version packs a PC into a 7.4-inch aluminum flat-panel monitor case.) Now rivals are willing to give all-in-ones a try, thanks to:

•Cool, dependable, high-speed components. PC parts used to generate a lot of heat, requiring big cases with noisy fans. New, cooler parts allow for sleeker, quieter designs, Kay says. They’re also more dependable, and so fast that upgrades aren’t as important, he says.

•Wireless. All-in-one PCs can save space, look nice and make rearranging a room easy — if they’re not plugged into a slew of cables. Wireless Internet technologies allow them to connect to the Web and peripherals such as a keyboard, mouse or printer, cord-free.

•Flat panels. There’s little difference between a flat-panel computer monitor and a flat-panel TV, letting an all-in-one PC do double duty in a kitchen or living room, Shim says.

Early forays into the market have been tentative but positive. HP’s TouchSmart sales far exceeded expectations for a product with the relatively high starting price of $1,799, marketing director Thi La says. Sony, which put out its first all-in-one three years ago, has been “completely taken aback” by their popularity, product manager Xavier Lauwaert says. Sales have quintupled in the past year, he says.

Gillian Shaw
Sun

Sanyo Xacti HD1000 digital camcorder, $1,100

“Smallest” and “lightest” have to be among the favourite adjectives of the folks in tech public relations and why not? Who wants to be the only one at the party lugging around a brick-sized camcorder? Weighing in at 268 grams, the latest in the Xacti line records in full high definition MPEG-4 video with AVC/H264 video compression that lets it record 85 minutes of full HD (1920x1080i ) on an eight-gigabyte secure digital high capacity (SDHC) memory card or more than five hours on the lower 640 by 480 resolution. And it takes four-megapixel still photos. Of course smallest and lightest here counts only among consumer full HD digital movie cameras. If your needs are more furtive, read on.

Spy Gadgets Micro-Camcorder, $295

Here’s a camcorder so small it makes Sanyo’s Xacti HD1000 look like it’s on steroids. From spygadgets.com, it’s little enough to slip into a pack of chewing gum. It records up to 33 hours of video on a one-GB micro security digital card and its internal rechargeable battery recharges with a USB connection. One charge keeps it going for more than two hours. Unlike the Sanyo HD camcorder this one isn’t aimed at recording family birthday parties and holiday videos, but it could have a certain appeal to the amateur gumshoe.

Ion Audio TTUSB05, USB turntable, $150

Dust off those old vinyl records and plug Ion Audio’s next generation USB turntable into your computer to transform your record collection into digital form. Comes with MixMeister’s EZ Vinyl converter software that converts vinyl tracks directly to iTunes. Ion has also released the TTUSB10 in its latest generation USB turntables, at $250 a more deluxe version with extra features. The USB port lets you hook both these turntables up to either a Mac or a PC.

Kodak Easyshare All-in-One Printers, from $130 to $330

Coming in three versions, the lowest priced 5100, the 5300 at $230 and the 5500 at $330, Kodak’s new line of all-in-one inkjet printers promises to lower your ink costs. With sticker shock coming not at the price of printers but at the price of the replacement ink cartridges, Kodak is clearly hoping consumers will opt for its solution to printing photos and documents. The ink for these printers comes at $12 for a cartridge of black ink and $18 for a five-ink colour cartridge. Kodak puts the cost of a four by six-inch print at 13 cents using its Photo Value Pack.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

‘The truth is it may already have happened’

Frank Luba
Province

Canadians don’t have any idea how bad the identity theft problem is, says Surrey author George Greenwood.

“Most people have the feeling that they are careful, they do the right thing, so therefore it can’t happen to them,” said Greenwood, author of a new book called In Your Good Name.

“The truth is, it may already have happened and you don’t know about it,” he added. “It’s way below people’s radar.”

Greenwood helped draft a Surrey Board of Trade resolution calling on Ottawa to strengthen the Criminal Code against identity theft and patch loopholes against possession of other people’s personal information.

The resolution, unanimously approved earlier this month at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting, also calls for the creation of a passport-like document for victims of identity theft so they could verify their identity if challenged.

Phonebusters, a police task force set up to target telemarketing fraud, received 7,600 calls from identity-theft victims who had lost more than $16 million in 2006.

But Phonebusters believes that figure represents as little as five per cent of the actual total.

The Canadian Institute of Mortgage Brokers and lenders reported that mortgage fraud jumped 400 per cent between 1999 and 2001, with fraud totalling $300 million in 2001 alone.

Greenwood himself wonders how there can be five million more social insurance numbers active in Canada than there are residents.

Greenwood said credit-card and debit-card problems are just a small part of the identity theft problem. A bigger concern is people coming into Canada and appropriating another person’s identity.

Anyone with your medical Care Card, for example, could get treatment that would go into your record — possibly complicating other treatment you might require.

Greenwood is also writing another book on the topic but this time he is collaborating with someone who committed commercial identity theft. “What he could do in a place of business will curl your hair,” he said.

In the meantime, Greenwood has four upcoming seminars on helping people prevent identity theft. The next event, which is free to the public, is Oct. 14 at the Pacific Inn in Surrey.

More information is available at www.itcanhappentome.ca

© The Vancouver Province 2007