I’m going on vacation for the next week or so. I’ll be off the grid—literally out of range of most forms of communication. While I’m away, you can catch up on what I’ve been doing lately, with a 20% discount on the new, significantly expanded edition of Windows 8 Head Start, which covers the Consumer Preview release. The book is available in DRM-free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats, which will work on any Kindle, Nook, iPad, or PC. You can buy the new edition directly. The normal price is $9.95, but while I’m away you can use this code to get a 20% discount: BottNet20. (It’s OK—this BottNet is perfectly safe to join.) That purchase gives you all three formats in a convenient single download, ... Continue reading →
Edbotting with @edbott and @JudyBott ! Continue reading →
Edbotting with @edbott and @JudyBott ! Continue reading →
No, it’s not 1998 again, although if you just awoke from a 14-year nap you might think nothing has changed. Last week, Mozilla Corporation accused Microsoft of giving Internet Explorer an unfair advantage over competing browsers like Firefox in its upcoming release of Windows RT. That’s an eerie echo of the mid-1990s, when Netscape and Internet Explorer battled for the dominant position on the Windows desktop. Mozilla’s Firefox is, of course, a direct descendant of Netscape, which accused Microsoft of abusing its monopoly in personal computer operating systems by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95. The U.S. Department of Justice won the antitrust battle against Microsoft in a case that finally ended in 2001, but Netscape never recovered and was eventually absorbed into AOL. The ... Continue reading →
Over the weekend, I wrote an article titled “Facebook censors members after unjustly labeling them spammers” in which I described how Facebook user Rima Regas was being censored by the social network. The company put her on time out after apparently getting complaints about public posts she has made. Facebook then automatically labeled her a spammer. She was told her punishment would last a week. After two weeks passed, she posted a status update complaining that she still couldn’t comment. Worse yet, she didn’t have a way to file a complaint or defend herself. Even though a week had passed, when she tried to comment again she received this error: Commenting Temporarily Suspended As we notified you earlier, commenting on walls of users you are ... Continue reading →
We at ZDNet have been to our fair share of corporate conferences, and there’s no better example than SAP’s Sapphire Now symposium happening this week in Orlando, Fla. In between glad-handing with tech’s finest and meetings to get the lowdown on the enterprise, there are several keynote presentations that dot the week’s agenda. They also happen to be excellent examples of corporate culture in action. In celebration of this — and in anticipation of the keynote presentation that will begin in just 15 minutes — we present to you our special SAP Sapphire drinking game. For each mention of: DRIVE or DELIVER: take a drink! EFFICIENCY: take just a sip. (you glutton!) ECOSYSTEM: take a drink from each bottle. TRANSFORMATION: drink the beverage held by ... Continue reading →
