Hey Guys, hope you all enjoy this Easter Weekend's edition of the Weekly Tech News!
-Stephen

Table of Contents:

• Deep challenges for offshore wind
• Analyst expects 700,000 iPads to sell this weekend - Apply iPad Launch Day
• Fraudsters Can Easily Buy SSL Certificates, Researcher Finds
• Sharp's Next-Gen Mobile Touchscreens: 3-D for the Naked Eye
• The Great Firewall of China Will Engulf the Gutless
• Prefab May Give Any Software Open Sourciness
• Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot
• Computer pioneer and Gates mentor Ed Roberts dies
• April Fools 2010 - All the gags, after the fact

Dottech.org has a long essay up about the business of fake software review sites which give out fake "awards" to software for no reason at all, and the practice of software developers putting them on their pages.

I think one thing to add to this discussion is the harm these fake awards do to the *real* software review sites that actually take the time and effort to really review software.  That's why whenever i see one of those software review sites that actually takes the time to evaluate software, take their own screenshots, etc. I think it's worth praising.

Just how persuasive an awards-splattered web page can be was examined back in 2007 by developer Andy Brice. Having authored a distinctive new application, Brice used a submission service to upload it to various Internet software review sites, and then sat back to see what, if any, honors it might harvest. He didn’t have to wait long.

http://dottech.org/headline/15367

Hello mighty DonationCoder community! I beseech you to turn your powerful and all knowing gaze toward this simple problem which presently confounds me.

I find myself the sole, voluntary IT support for a friend's small business, a simple 2 person floral design studio and flower shop. They mostly do weddings and corporate clients, with infrequent in-person sales, and so far no online sales. They use Quickbooks Pro 2010 and have 1 desktop and 1 laptop system they use for all their work, both running Windows 7.

When a previous laptop recently crashed, I found myself waste-deep in a tangle of horribly organized documents and inconsistent business practices while recovering their data. I felt I had to do something about this. So, what they need is a simple, easy to use system for managing customer relationships, sales, simple marketing efforts, appointments and tasks, etc.. Preferably the system should have all those parts integrated, and also integrate with their existing Quickbooks data. Ideally it would also be relatively inexpensive as they are a small business without much money to spend at the moment; in fact they're in a bit of a financial pickle, though they're managing to stay afloat. They desperately need more customers though and providing tools to let them more easily run marketing campaigns is a part of this whole project.

So far I have spent a lot of time looking at dedicated CRM applications and systems like SalesForce, SugarCRM, etc. I've also looked at separate components like Google Apps for contacts, docs, and calendaring, mailing list tools for marketing, etc. The problem with the full-blown CRM systems is they seem way too complicated. They need something that replaces a bunch of separate Word and Excel docs in a unified system (e.g. imagine trying to search for past customer transaction info if your receipts are all separate Word docs, many of which have different formatting). So the Google Docs approach is also non-ideal. It solves some of the problems, but doesn't really focus on customer relationship management at all. They'll be using Gmail and Google Calendar regardless, but as far as building a customer database with good info, and then leveraging that database for ongoing marketing, they're lost with current tools. Ideally it *would* be an online tool like this so they could access it anywhere, even from a mobile device (the manager has a Blackberry), but a desktop Windows app would suffice if price and features were a better fit. They have web hosting and I can install any web apps for them.

In searching for something that could work for them it really struck me how difficult the world of the small business owner is, especially if they're not super technically minded. They are in a strange limbo world where they're big enough to want dedicated tools to keep them organized and, especially, to help them *grow* their business. At the same time they're not big enough or technically savvy enough to really make use of something like SalesForce or other complex CRM packages, nor can they necessarily afford the versions they might need. Just as an example, they want to start email marketing, which seems like a virtually essential thing these days. The version of SalesForce that has this integrated is $65/mo per user (potentially $130/mo if they both need access), which seems like relatively small potatoes I admit, but is still a lot considering what they're doing now is free.

I'm willing to try to sell them on the financial benefits of better organization and marketing tools (if they get just 1 additional customer from it, it could arguably pay for itself). Still they are somewhat in a panicky state as far as finances go right now, as I mentioned.

Any help and info greatly appreciated!

- Oshyan

Article from Lifehacker on how your passwords are not as safe as you think:

http://lifehacker.co...-your-weak-passwords

    * You probably use the same password for lots of stuff right?
    * Some sites you access such as your Bank or work VPN probably have pretty decent security, so I'm not going to attack them.
    * However, other sites like the Hallmark e-mail greeting cards site, an online forum you frequent, or an e-commerce site you've shopped at might not be as well prepared. So those are the ones I'd work on.
    * So, all we have to do now is unleash Brutus, wwwhack, or THC Hydra on their server with instructions to try say 10,000 (or 100,000 – whatever makes you happy) different usernames and passwords as fast as possible.
    * Once we've got several login+password pairings we can then go back and test them on targeted sites.
    * But wait… How do I know which bank you use and what your login ID is for the sites you frequent? All those cookies are simply stored, unencrypted and nicely named, in your Web browser's cache. (Read this post to remedy that problem.)

And how fast could this be done? Well, that depends on three main things, the length and complexity of your password, the speed of the hacker's computer, and the speed of the hacker's Internet connection.

The Gizmodo website sums up the early iPad reviews and they are quite positive..

The iPad is not a laptop. It's not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it's infinitely more convenient for consuming it - books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on. For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience - and a deeply satisfying one.

http://gizmodo.com/5...-ipad-reviews-are-in

Pretty standard fair here, but nice animation and good variation in difficulty..

http://www.agame.com...efense.html?home_new