No Contest
I said at the last meeting that we hoped to win the user group newsletter contest at Comdex, sponsored by APCUG. It turns out the contest was cancelled this year, which is unfortunate. Layout Editor Ken Hopkins and I felt we had a good chance this year.
We've had a lot of favorable comments about the state of Sacra Blue. There are two basic outlooks: some people still miss the printed version (so do I!), but those who have adjusted generally feel we're doing a good job on the magazine.
We'd like to hear from you. If you're reading this, please drop us an e-mail letting us know what you like or don't like about Sacra Blue, and what you'd like to see us cover. We'll do our best to provide the material you want.
Volunteers Still Needed
We're still looking for a few good volunteers. The biggest need is for writers. If you're an expert in some area, we'd like to hear from you. We're looking to add regular articles on many different subjects.
We'd like to have regular pieces on the software we all use regularly: Windows, Office, Partition Magic, Drive Image, or whatever else you use regularly.
Century's End
Now that we are at the actual end of the twentieth century, where are all the parties?
I expected more. I guess I thought the people who understand that the "00" year is the last year of 100 would be arranging lots of century-end parties, determined to demonstrate century correctness.
But then, tech types never have known how to throw a party. (Except for Ken's annual volunteer get-together, of course!)
So instead of a listing of all the parties I thought we could go to this December, I've got to scramble to come up with ideas for my century-end editorial.
Well, the end of the year and the end of the century seems like a good time to round up a lot of the items we don't always cover, and that you might have missed.
Here are reports on new software, new software problems, new service packs, new trends in the industry, new rumors, and more.
New Service Packs
Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2000 is now available.
Service Pack 1 for Internet Explorer 5.01 is now available.
And Service Pack 1 for Internet Explorer 5.5 is now available. But see the note below about reported problems with IE 5.5.
Free Market Shakeout
The free Internet market continues to shake out the weaker companies as more free ISPs bite the dust. AltaVista dropped its free service because 1stUp Corp, the company providing it, is going out of business; Spinway.com, which has provided free service for many big-name companies, is being purchased by Blue Light, which itself is rumored to be dropping free service early next year.
And ZapMe, which offered free computers and Internet access to schools, has told schools they'll have to start paying.
IE 5.5 Problems
Woody's Office Watch, the outstanding free newsletter supported by sales of Woody Leonhard's books, has been reporting problems with Internet Explorer 5.5.
Apparently this new version can break the "Detect and Repair" feature in Office 2000. See the Microsoft KnowledgeBase article Q279177. It also breaks Outlook 98, says WOW; see article Q271561.
And the National Science Foundation, according to WOW, reports that IE 5.5 can't read some Adobe Acrobat PDF files. Note that the new version of Microsoft Encarta installs IE 5.5 regardless of your wishes.
Practice Safe Shopping
Discover, fourth of the four major credit cards, has joined American Express in offering one-time credit card numbers for online shopping. The idea is that you get a number from the Discover or AX online site, then use it to charge what you want to buy. It's only good for one purchase, and will be refused if used for any other buying.
Miscellaneous Gossip & Rumors
Inprise Corporation has announced it's changing its name back to Borland... Intel is reported to be cutting prices on the Pentium 4... Crashes of major online shopping sites are being blamed on shopping bots, the robots that crawl sites looking for the lowest prices... A former doctor has won the first libel judgment based on an anonymous Internet message... A new mouse from Siemens can recognize fingerprints and authenticate users.
The latest trend in SF and New York is the "pink slip" party, where people laid off from dot-bombs can network and look for new positions.
Microsoft plans to set up camp at the PalmSource Conference in Silicon Valley to lure Palm developers into porting their applications to the Pocket PC platform. MS could surely use some publicity- the Pocket PC in Charlie's Angels is described as a Palm Pilot!
