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It seems that Dell UK has valued OEM Windows XP Home at

It was essentially about "Your Online Identity" but an alternate sub-theme of this year's Lexi.net Conference in Calgary would have to be about the power of women online. There was great online talent here from the likes of Kristin Darguzas, Janine Warner, Regina Lynn and the dooce herself, Heather Armstrong.

This was my first of the biennial Lexi.net Conferences and if they get within 50% of what Sharlene was able to do this year, I'll be back in 2008. Having spent a bit o'time at the likes of Northern Voice 2005 and the Portable Media and Podcast Expo 2006, what was especially nice about this Confab -- as they say in the land of memories -- is that I got to meet Calgary bloggers like D'Arcy Norman.

For my money, the killer tech mind in the room was Aaron Seigo . I missed Aaron's presentation because it coincided with equally killer content from JC but we spent a few minutes at lunch talking about "Why Software Stinks". Expect a lengthy podcast exposition from Aaron on the Bradcast in 2007. This guy makes KDE desktop software and if I don't post for a few days it'll be because I'm playing with Kubuntu, which is the KDE desktop based distro of Ubuntu Linux.

John Armstrong (the other half of power couple 1, he being Mr. dooce) was outstanding with his non-bullet point intro to design and identity. John's thing was more extemporaneous than I think even he realized -- I was mulling the subtleties of his links between appearance and message for most of the weekend. There is clearly an art in impression but it can be fulfilled in a variety of ways as he demonstrated with his impactful collection of logos.

The women were definitely inspiring. Kristin is one of the first "big-time" blogher.com members that I have met and she has agreed to a future chat so that we can talk about that. Her success seems to come from a perfect balance between the nonchalance of her frank writing and the nervous insecurity of her own questioning. She knows there's a big audience out there but when she sees them there is a touch of writer's anxiety in her delivery. That trait is also a characteristic of Heather Armstrong. Heather's journey is a perfect accident of need and deliberation. It's risk/reward in a new environment and it is something I saw too in each of Janine and Regina; although their topic spaces are worlds apart. The dooce was not someone I had read much. Her story is well known and she put a face on it that spoke to the inevitability of its outcomes. While she is all moving hands and fine boned fragility to see her, the dooce is also a woman of power and charisma.

A last thought; as one half of a great couple, it was motivating to watch working couples like Janine & David and Heather & John in action. Now all we have to do is get Janine & David blogging...
Update: Okay, I found David's blog. Where's Janine?

lexi.net_conference_2006 lexinet lexicom

On your latest Bradcast -- a feature interview with Michael Auzenne of the Manager Tools Podcast. Michael, along with podcasting partner and management consultant Mark Horstman, produces one of the most consistently practical, useful and impactful podcasts in the 'sphere today.

Business advice, management consulting and personal coaching topics have been flogged to near extinction in various books, courses and schools. Despite this, Auzenne and Horstman routinely provide fresh conversational insight on these topics. You won't agree with everything these guys say on Manager Tools but more often than not you will find yourself realizing that they have developed a conversational mentoring approach that makes you feel like you're there asking for help at Mark's office door. This is the kind of approach podcasting was built for.

Manager Tools "Time to Party?" episode... Do the right things at this year's office party.

Update: Sorry for the dropped audio file... It has been newly restored and placed back on the server.

manager-tools auzenne

Have you noticed how popular all the gadget and gizmo sites are? Those sites are always full of upcoming product info; secret photos, leaks from manufacturers, rumours and hoaxes. Well -- in advance of THE most IMPORTANT product annoucement since... well... since the last one -- here is some interesting conjecture regarding product development of the Zune line.

Let's put two and too together; Zune rhymes with tune and, according to podcaster Paul Colligan and Scoble, there is no obvious podcast tie-in for Zune. You want to know why? Could it be that Microsoft will release a Zalk just for talk and that by next year we will all be Zalkcasting? There may also be a further spin-off with a Zame that will only be for gamers. The Zame unit will feature digital rights managed claymation. Sources say these units may be delayed until the plain English EULA's can be re-written so that all legitimate uses of the units can be disallowed. Test units at research locations have also been spotted -- code-named Zribble -- that shake uncontrollably within 10 feet of a person using an iPod.

Forget about history, competition, restraint of trade, restrictive licenses and virtual monopolies. Let's just look at where we are now in the world of operating systems and services.

Market forces -- big and small -- have led to a world where the first operating system you buy for a new computer is essentially free. Free.

I don't want to hear about the "Microsoft tax" or how darned hard it is to buy a computer without an operating system so that you can load your favourite distro of Torvaldux. Don't ask for a discount if do get a computer without an O/S pre-loaded because to do that will cost the manufacturer money; so you will not be getting a discount. The O/S on any computer you buy -- PC or Apple -- is free. If you don't understand the economics of what I'm saying then do you think this Dell Dimension E521 that sells for as low as $329.00 would be $130.00 if there was no O/S installed on it? Of course you don't.

"But Brad" you say, "manufacturers pay OEM license fees to big computer makers. They get a cheaper price than retail." So cheap in fact that the cost of the O/S is not a significant differentiator in any buying decision. So cheap that if you don't really know the "true" price (whatever that is) and you don't even notice it, well then it's free. Essentially free. Forget about all those O/S boxes you see at the computer store with the $199, $299, $399 price tags. Who are those for any way? Who the heck is going to "upgrade" a computer to Vista? Microsoft certainly does not expect you to "upgrade". This era of PC is built for the O/S that came with it, don't whine and complain that your 2004 AMD whatzit with the really old fashioned graphics card from Feb 2005 doesn't run Vista well. If you need the tea leaves read for you just look at the new "plain English" EULA from Microsoft.

The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time.

(Translation: Because you will not want to do it again.)

This is a legal way of giving us a clue. Microsoft is doing us a favour by pricing the retail product at absurd levels. You think all that Aero glass is going to clean itself without brand new hardware?

Much has been made of restrictive licensing covenants in the new Vista EULA. Buyer beware. If you don't like the idea of features disappearing or the possibility that your legal copy of the O/S may be designated for rendition or that your media files may all stop working then you have a choice. Don't boot the code. Nobody has taken that right away from you.

Microsoft Vista EULA OS

The on-the-spotters and rapid reporters have already told you how great the Podcast and Portable Media Expo was this past weekend (Sept 29 & 30, 2006). Best general re-cap is available from Leesa Barnes -- who I'm making my "most important podcaster I did not meet". (Expect an email soon Leesa...)

I went with a sense of irreverence -- don't worry I still have it -- but also picked up some great vibes around podcast commercialization, specialization and pure podcast passion.

So; is podcasting disco? I was glad to see that a group at the show had picked up on a thought I had some time ago to create "podcasting sucks" t-shirts -- everybody got a laugh out of it and we need to be laughing. It was Trucker Tom Wiles though who has really articulated what we all hope is the best metaphor for podcasting. Tom says that podcasting is more like email than disco.

That's the difference between history and trivia. Listen to his chat with the inimitable Michael Zwerling on Tom's episode 382 and you'll get the whole American philosopher buzz around Tom. (Update: Tom sent me a link to the show)

Every project starts with a request. (Click here to play now)

Shout Outs:
Not a lot for this week -- just a reminder that I will be at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo with iPod and TuneTalk in hand. If you want to meet or be interviewed for The Bradcast then drop me a note: thebradcast AAATTT gmail.com

Main Line:
Riffing on a topic I broached a few weeks ago, this podcast looks at those ubiquitous PIM and email clients. I focus on Outlook, of course, because that's the one that now dominates.

Our email clients are dumb. They are not able to relate our commitments to our tasks and they have no ability to derive any context from the stuff that gets entered into them. Sure we have "rules" and routing features but we don't have the ability to provide meaning to data on-the-fly as we reply to emails.

One way we can move toward that goal is to open the proprietary nature of the data in the hope that somebody else will build a tool that does something new. As a result I looked at this blog entry on the "Holy Grail" for synchronization, the ScheduleWorld.com site and this tantalizing peak at something called Taskmaster from PARC.

This show was recorded entirely using the on-board microphones of the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo recorder for gen 5 iPods to give you an idea about the sound quality. I did get pretty aggressive with the low-pass filter and the compression. The sound is okay but it's sibilant and is prone to noise from the hard drive on the iPod. Use an external microphone if you don't want hard drive noise spoiling low volume level sounds on your TuneTalk.

Click here to stream the show through your favourite player.

Notes:
Length:00:35:33
Recorded: 2006/09/25
Bradcast_20060925 is copyright 2006 by Brad Gibson and he is solely responsible for its content. The Bradcast is not associated with any technology blogging group or association. Opinions represented in the podcast are not those of any client, customer or employer organization, past or present.

I'm suspicious. This recent item from engadget is setting all kinds of tongues wagging. I on the other hand hear, 'Danger, Danger Will Robinson!'.

News organizations in other countries are starting to quote the story which engadget has sourced from only one spot; forums.somethingawful.com.

Couple the single, unreliable source with the fact that the EXIF tags for "Date Time Original" and "Date Time Digitized" are from January 7, 2004 and I think we have a problem here...

Where is Lenovo's press release? What about an LAX release? Why no local stories in TV or the newspapers?

UPDATE: Well duh... somethingawful.com specializes in hoaxes.

UPDATE 2 (Sept. 21): This is just getting weirder. Tom Krazit of cnet.com assures me that Lenovo has told him that "there was an fire incident at LAX and that their laptop was involved". Brian Humphrey (Firefighter/Specialist, Public Service Officer, Los Angeles Fire Department) at first reported no fire calls but subsequently discovered that(check out the comments):
"One media caller today provided more detail in the way of a date and approximate time, and I discovered our response on Friday, September 15, 2006 at 5:44 PM to Terminal 7 at LAX.
We responded to a 'fire out' in the terminal area involving a personal laptop computer. The apparent fire had been completely extinguished with a dry chemical extinguisher by bystanders prior to our arrival.
There were no injuries.
The LAFD notified custodial staff at LAX to handled the cleanup. Firefighters did not determine the make and model of the device or the cause of the fire."

The original source and the photo anomalies are still very problematic. On top of that, there are not yet any reported corroborating eye-witness accounts from people who are not using pseudonyms. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 3 (Sept. 29, 2006): Lenovo announces a re-call on some R, T and X series notebooks. There are still big questions to be answered about how this story originally broke and got reported but, sadly, I don't think we're going to get the answers. The truth is out there...