Friday, July 10, 2009

How to Keep Your Lunch Yours at the Office

If you've ever walked over to your office fridge anticipating the lunchtime meal that awaits you only to discover that someone else has nabbed your meal, foodie weblog Chow details how to avoid being left empty-handed.

We're big fans of the anti-theft lunch bag, but if your sandwich is already gone, Chow's "Table Manners" Q&A column has addressed the problem that is the office kitchen thief. Reader Hungry for Justice wrote in when his chicken sandwich was eaten by a co-worker. "I wrote a mean note and taped it on the fridge, but I felt totally impotent. I'm still really angry about it. What's the best way to keep people from stealing your stuff, and chastise them when they do?" inquired Hungry.

Chow suggested that rather than criticize someone or use devious tactics to get at them, it's better to air your situation to whomever will listen with the aim that it will get back to the thief-in-question. If that's too passive aggressive or time-consuming, then pen an explicit note and tape it to the fridge. How explicit? They suggest using "concrete terms" and "plaintive, rather than aggressive, language." Need an example?

"To whomever ate my eggplant sandwich yesterday, I got up a half hour early so I could make a healthy lunch. When I discovered it missing, I had to spend half my lunch hour going to the deli for a $7 sandwich I couldn't afford. I don't mean to be a jerk, but times are tough right now, and I don't have much to spread around. Sincerely …"

As a last resort, the article says to keep your food nearby, like in your desk drawer. Have any office food nightmares and coping mechanisms to share? If so, detail yours below. And if you're not concerned by would-be lunch thieves, then check out our guide to making your brown bag lunch more appealing.

If office gremlins are making off with your daily meal, innovative designer Sherwood Forlee has a clever solution: the Anti-Theft Lunch Bag. Simply put, Anti-Theft Lunch Bags "are regular sandwich bags that have green splotches printed on both sides." With your sandwich inside, the bag simulates mold and makes the contents look disgusting. These bags aren't available for purchase, but the idea shouldn't be difficult to replicate if you need more sandwich security at your workplace. Read More.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

USB 3.0 Enabled PCs

Most of the news about USB 3.0—the finalization of the spec, the first drivers, the first controller—doesn't tell us much about when we'll actually get to see a product hit stores. The answer? According to Nikkei, before 2010.

Their contacts in the Tawianese PC industry predict the first machines to include the hardware will start rolling off the line by the end of the year, citing rapid development in integrated circuits and the shipment of compliant controllers to PC manufacturers. The date is a bit earlier than the "early 2010" prediction that's been bandied around recently, and inline with initial predictions of a 2009 release.

A quick reminder of what this means:

With transfer speeds of 4.8Gbps, it'll dump a 25GB HD file in about 70 seconds, and the architecture has been beefed up with extra data lanes to make for more sustained, rather than bursty transfer speeds, making it better for camcorders and the like. Even though it delivers more power than USB 2.0 to charge gadgets faster (and it'll revive a completely dead one too), its new polling architecture makes it more efficient.

Unfortunately, full 5Gbps speeds won't be reached for some time.

Read More Here

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

GCFLearnFree.org

GCFLearnFree.org® is supported by the Goodwill Community Foundation, Inc. (GCF®) whose mission is "to create and provide education, employment, and life enrichment opportunities for people who desire to improve the quality of their lives".

GCFLearnFree.org exists to serve the educational part of the GCF mission. We create and provide quality, innovative online learning opportunities to anyone who wants to improve the technology, literacy, and math skills necessary for them to be successful in both work and life. We believe there's freedom in the ability to learn what you want, when you want, regardless of your circumstances. That's why we're 'GCFLearnFree.org.'
Over 700,000 learners from around the world have taken advantage of our free learning opportunities. Read their testimonials to see what they're saying or take a look at our interactive maps to see how far-reaching our program is today!

GCFLearnFree.org, formerly GCF Global Learning®, is operated on behalf of GCF by Goodwill Industries of Eastern North Carolina, Inc. (GIENC).

Monday, June 22, 2009

Outstanding Service Earns National Award

TOP TEN

MedCom Professional Services, Inc. Wins ATSI Award of Excellence

MedCom Professional Services, Inc. of Levittown, PA has been honored with the exclusive 2009 Award of Excellence for twelve consecutive years, earning a combined score of 96.9%. The award is presented annually by the Association of TeleServices International (ATSI), the industry’s trade association for providers of telecommunications and call center services including telephone answering and message delivery. MedCom Professional Services, Inc. was presented with the award at ATSI’s 2009 Annual Convention held at the Westin Convention Center Hotel in Pittsburgh, PA.

After six months of intensive testing, an independent panel of judges scored call-handling skills such as courtesy, response time, accuracy and overall service to their clients, the cornerstones of the call management industry. If a company scores 80% or better in ALL categories, they are presented with the coveted Award of Excellence.

“The ATSI Award of Excellence offers the industry the kind of quality testing and benchmarking that is essential to help us establish the service levels demanded by our customers. We congratulate MedCom Professional Services, not only for their TOP TEN achievement in 2008 but also for following up this year with another TOP TEN placement in 2009 from a field of 136 participating telephone answering services,” stated ATSI President Dennis O’Hara.

Now a twelve-time winner, MedCom Professional Services, Inc. has earned the Diamond Award for twelve consecutive years. ATSI congratulates the staff of MedCom Professional Services,
Inc. on their proven quality service to their customers.

About ATSI
The Association of TeleServices International was founded in 1942 as a national trade association representing live answering services. ATSI now encompasses companies across the United States offering specialized and enhanced operator based services including: call centers, contact centers, inbound telemarketing, paging, voice messaging, emergency dispatch, fax, and internet services among others.



Multi-Device Wireless Broadband from Sprint MiFi

It's a MiFi, Sprint's new wireless broadband device, and it's geek gadget magic that'll realistically fit in your wallet. Disclosure! Sprint gave us a MiFi device to test. We tested it for a couple weeks and sent it back. We were sad to see it go.

We first tested the device with three laptops at a Facebook Vanity URL-Grabbing party. The host's WiFi connection was getting bogged down with traffic from about 20 other devices, so three of us picked a spot and huddled around the warmth of our own connection.

Sweetly simple and functional, the device easily accommodated the three users' surfing around. Multimedia uploads were as zippy as on a normal connection during the time we were test-driving the device.

Read More

Friday, June 12, 2009

Today is the Digital TV Switch

Are you ready for the transition to the digiterized picture-box? We certainly hope so: Today, June 12th, we'll all be moving over to digital television and discarding the rabbit ears forever. Well, the few of us who need to, anyway.

It's been a long road, paved with delays, misunderstandings, and altercations with the rare Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel. We'd love to hear your experiences: Has anybody actually tried it out? Good experiences? Bad? Let us know in the comments. [DTV]

Monday, June 8, 2009

iPhone 3G S announced: $199 16GB, $299 32GB, June 19

As endlessly predicted, Apple's unveiled a new iPhone today at WWDC, the iPhone 3G S -- the "s" stands for speed. Although it looks almost exactly like the 3G, it's much, much faster -- some tasks are almost four times faster. Data speeds are upped to 7.2Mbps HSDPA, and the camera is now a 3 megapixel unit with tap-to-autofocus and auto white balance -- and just as expected, it now supports 30fps VGA video recording with editing features. You're also getting a built-in compass, Nike+ support, and a new battery that offers 5 hours of 3G talk time and 9 hours of WiFi internet use. There are some surprises, too -- holding down the home button now enables a new voice control interface that lets you do everything from make calls to control iTunes, and Apple's touting a new "fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating." New and end-of-contract pricing is set at $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB when it goes on sale June 18th Stateside and in 80 more countries in August -- and the current 8GB 3G will remain on sale for $99, effective immediately. You'll have to pay a bit more if you're mid-contract, though -- $299 for the 3G and $399/$499 for the 3G S.

Read More

Friday, May 22, 2009

10 cool tools in Windows 7

The changes to the Windows 7 interface have gotten a lot of play, but some of the new built-in tools are just as compelling. Deb Shinder runs through some of the most impressive enhancements, from the ISO burner to the Biometric Framework to PowerShell v2.

read more | digg story

Friday, May 15, 2009

First Look at the BlackBerry Storm 2

CrackBerry's got the first photos of the BlackBerry Storm 2, the phone that hopes to set right what once went wrong. It looks thinner than the original Storm, and has a 3.2-megapixel cam on the back. It doesn't seem like there's any other info. More pics if you head over to the site.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Clickfree Traveler External SSD is Credit-Card Sized For Convenience

Clickfree's new external SSD comes in 16GB ($80), 32GB ($150), and 64GB ($250) capacities. Roughly the size of a credit card, the Traveler is a compact but pricey drive.

Clickfree has also released the DVD Transformer ($40), which plugs in like a standard USB drive, but automatically scans your computer for personal files and other important data then backs it up on CD or DVD. [Clickfree via CNET and Slashgear]