As someone who has worked with computers and high-technology for 20 years and as a self-professed generalist, if there is something I can’t grasp, then I fear how tech novices will deal with it. Take digital subscriber line, or DSL, a lower-cost Internet access provided over a phone line by the legacy telephone companies like Verizon and AT&T.

Where DSL is more than sufficient for most Internet users, it has received a lot of negative attention, much of it fueled by the cable TV companies who offer much faster broadband cable service. One of DSL’s drawbacks is that the signal strength deminishes the further you are from the telephone central office in your community. To distance itself from these drawbacks, phone companies have rebranded DSL under different names.

Here’s where the confusion comes into play. Recently I helped 2 relatives get DSL, one from AT&T the other from Verizon. AT&T called its offering of DSL “Broadband Internet” and offered different speeds. I say “called” as when I went back to AT&T’s Web site to lookup the names for this blog post today, they are now calling it DSL! This must have changed at some point in the last 2 months. They call their 4 offerings Basic, Express, Pro and Elite. Originally the confusion was over the name “broadband” as compared to what the cable company was calling broadband. Now they have switched it to what I feel it should be, but this will mean I should make a pre-emptive call to one relative to tell them about the name change.

Verizon offers DSL as “High-Speed Internet” and uses the word broadband in its descriptive information. One of the few mentions of DSL comes in its FAQ when it is describing the Yahoo! software that is offered as an add-on to the DSL software installation. In the case of helping this relative with Verizon, she didn’t know of other Internet offerings, so no explaining to do.

Fortunately my Internet consulting firm Dunkirk Systems does not offer any products or services that need to have their name changed or attributes masked in order to sell them. Granted, much of what I do needs further explanation that their name themselves, and this is something we are very upfront with. Perhaps the DSL providers should band together to dispel rumors about DSL and call it what it is – a decent product for the masses.

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For the past couple of days my two blogs - The Hot Iron and sourcegate - were broken. You could bring up the main URL and see the home page, and if you clicked on any link you would get the very same home page. This happened midday on Tuesday as the hosting company "upgraded" something, causing previous patches to prevent this problem to reoccur.

I am pleased to say both blogs are working. Special thanks goes to Andy Knight who reached out to me after I posted this issue on the ExpressionEngine support forum. Today he sent me details of a fix he made and it worked for me as well. I posted the details of this fix on sourcegate.

Interestingly, over that time period my Feedburner subscribers increased by 5 readers! I'll look into that another time, as there's a little catch-up I need to do. And thanks to Andy, I have one less thing on my list.

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Dunkirk Systems bought me 2 presents for Christmas last year – a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner and a One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer. I have been using both for the past few weeks and both are worthwhile, and dare I say revolutionary gifts, even with their simplicity.

The ScanSnap is unique in its packaging of existing technologies. As the name implies, it is a scanner. I saw headlines for it in several trade magazines, and after reading information on several Web sites and its own – including watching videos of it in action – I knew this was for me. It is a full-color, duplex scanner with a paper auto-feeder. The accompanying software includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard, optical character recognition to create searchable PDFs and a business card scanning application that creates both PDFs of each side of a card and converts it to text.

I have written before about how I need to eliminate paper in my life and business - and the solution I developed has been working well for me. But then there’s the burgeoning files of paper in my office that needs to be dealt with. My goal is to scan documents and items going forward that I don’t need to keep the original of, and then to slowly go back and scan similar items I already have. And backups – all must be backed up!

As I have gone through and scanned some older documents, I have found things I didn’t know or forgot I had. As I scan these items I am creating a hierarchy of file folders on my computer to organize them, eventually allowing me to scan the text within the documents as well. So in addition to solving the problem of stacks of paper, I am expanding my knowledgebase of information!

So far so good with the ScanSnap – I’ll report back on how things are going forward.

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If you own a Palm device, I highly recommend you subscribe to the Official Palm Blog for one reason – I have found several posts over the last several months related to critical software and features for Palm devices I have not found elsewhere. Not that these come out on a daily basis, and the blog itself does not publish daily, but the few I have seen I feel are important.

What prompted me to write this was a post over the weekend regarding Java for PalmOS and that you won’t be able to download it from their Web site. It does not say if it will be available elsewhere though. It will still be supported though, according to the post.

I have been a loyal Palm user for over a decade and despite advances on other platforms and devices I like the line they have produced, and knowing as much about it as possible is a good thing. When I read this, however, I did not know Java was available for the Palm to begin with, nor do I know of any Java apps I could or would run on my Treo 680.

Do you run any Java apps on your Treo?

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I just got word from Tim Courtney the next Silicon Prairie Social will be held on Thursday, January 24, 2008 at Mullen’s Bar and Grill in Lisle, IL. This is second in what I hope will be an on-going quality tech networking event for the western suburbs of Chicago.

The event is free, though you must register, and registration is now open. Check out the Web site for full details. Unfortunately I won't be there myself, but I have RSVPed in spirit. There is also the opportunity to become a sponsor, joining an excellent list of current sponsors. For those in the burbs, it is a must attend, and as well for those of us in the city - as we are all part of the local tech community.

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