Nor was I very impressed when Microsoft first introduced its first generation streaming video product called Silverlight.  With Adobe Flash and Quicktime dominating the web scene, it seemed that there was little that Microsoft had to offer the marketplace that could not be more easily found in products already in widespread use.

I was wrong.

Silverlight is, in fact, somewhat revolutionary in the evolving world of streaming media.  And while it may have had a slow start, it is quickly gaining ground in a world where streaming movies and television programs for multiple formates (from big screen TV to desktop PC to 2×2″ smartphone screens) are quickly dominating the use of the Internet.  Silverlight 4, released to developers in April of this year, expands the number of controls and platforms available.  And, more to the point, it allows the rendering of HTML inside a  Silverlight package.

I don’t want to get goofy technical about this, because we don’t need to and because the video experts are much better at this than I am.  Just remember this:  the present state of the art for streaming video used in IPTV (that is, television over the Internet) was based on a simple little platform called UDP  – the User Datagram Platform.  UDP was an early method of sending messages, called datagrams, from one computer to another.  Unfortunately, this became widely used despite such major weaknesses as a lack of reliability and message integrity.

The follow-on Transmission Control Protocal (or TCP) brought better reliability and message ordering, but even with its ability to stream data and use a reserved point-to-point socket architecture, TCP today is proving to be too limited for today’s fast-paced streaming video services.

If you have not fallen asleep at all the acronyms, or become dismayed by this extrememly simplified explanation, stay with me for a couple of sentences more.  Silverlight allows for reliable streaming using TCP/IP over the Internet that also encompasses HTML and other core internet technologies.  And it is gaining on the market leader Flash, which uses less IP-centric technologies like vector and raster graphic rendering.  And Silverlight’s ZIP and XML standards-based accessibility contrasts with that of Flash, which uses specialized non-standardized formats for which specifications are only available from Adobe.  Finally, it is notable that Microsoft has not bludgeoned the marketplace with this product, but rather produced steady enhancements while wooing customers to it.

If you go online and look up Silverlight, you will find scores of comments to the effect that if Flash is around, you can safely skip Silverlight.  I disagree.  People who believe that Silverlight is simply another graphics format were not paying attention when Netflicks selected this platform for its streaming of movies and television.  Or when the Country Music Association last year picked Silverlight as its choice to spiff up its features on some 90 major artists.  You see, Silverlight is not the next generation of old-style web graphics. 

It is the next generation of Internet based movies and television.

Which is why it matters.

The conference was jointly hosted by the US Internet Industry Association, Net Literacy and Broadband for America, with the support of Verizon.  It featured such speakers as Blair Levin, architect of the national broadband plan; John Horvath, the consumer research guru from the Federal Communications Commission; Brian David, who worked on the broadband adoption parts of the plan; Emy Tseng from the National Telecommunications and Information Agency; the best from Cisco Systems, Intel, the Fiber To The Home Council; and yours truly.

If you are beginning to nod off here, don’t.  Because the forty-some programs that make up the $7 billion in broadband stimulus grants have accounting and reporting requirements that will water your eyes, and they present an opportunity (as do follow-on grants that are in the works) for high-visibility, important-to-the-nation kind of accounting work.

How do you get into the process?  I have been working for the past year with one of the grant recipients, and suggest strongly that you send your best rain-maker to www.broadband.gov to track down the list of grant recipients…then approach them to determine whether they are hip-deep in alligators and in need of accounting help.  Just as an aside, it would not hurt to familiarize yourself with the bewildering requirements of grant management for these grant.  And cosy up to the engineering firms for these projects (as they are selected) to participate in the budgeting process.

Hint:  Engineers never budget enough for the accounting and reporting, so you will need to work with them to bump it up.

This is just one tiny part of the stimulus package grants, and there are others worth pursuing — particularly in an economy where new business is hard to find.  But it is the part I am in the thick of, and I can attest that good accounting is always hard to come by if you are on your own.

• Apple released the new iPhone 4 to amazingly strong sales, which (coupled with the growing use of the iPad among corporations) gives the Apple franchises a much stronger life.  Microsoft should be paying attention…
• Which they apparently are, as the leaked previews of Windows 8 hit the wires and (gasp!  awe!) look remarkably like and Apple interface.  I, for one, and very happy with Windows 7 and will hold judgment on the new version until we see actual working screen shots.
• The US Supreme Court either tore apart Sarbannes Oxley (on the one hand), or mostly upheld that law (on the other).  What appears to have most happened was that they made a minor tweak, acknowledging that the way the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is organized is unconstitutional, but then allowing it to continue to operate and made no major changes to the law itself.
• Verizon kicked off a new logo and ad campaign for its wireless services, built around the Droid smartphone as a hedge against the iPhone.
• Economists are warning of a third, deeper recession on the way for the US, which if it occurs will make this winter a very difficult time for all of us.  Or not.

But the most interesting news of the week came out of the Federal Trade Commission, which has managed to track down the insidious credit card penny scams.  It’s a mega-million dollar industry in which your stolen credit card number is hit for…well, a few pennies here and a few pennies there, maybe even a dollar or two.  You see the monthly charge, but it is such a small amount you can’t be bothered to track it down…but against millions of stolen credit card numbers, it adds up.  The FTC is now chasing the master-mind behind the scheme.

I’m betting it is the same people who hit your smartphone with spurious text messages that cost $9 or so each…insidious, and originating in Eastern Europe.

There is a lesson here:  pursue and cancel any recurring credit card charge you do not authorize specifically, and refuse to accept downloads via text messages from anyone not known to you.

Meanwhile, I’m off to pursue Windows 8, and will report back when I have some more concrete information.

Then they killed it dead as a doorknob and told small businesses to take a hike.

I’ve spent the better part of two years looking at the various “replacement” technologies, and for me it comes down to this:  I’m going to dust off my FrontPage 2003 CD, reinstall it, and pray that my web hosting service continues to support it.  Which they will, because they are as unhappy with Microsoft’s new platforms as I am.  Why am I so unhappy with Microsoft’s more recent offerings?  Three reasons:

1. They are designed for professionals, not small business.  You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in astrophysics to operate Microsoft Expressions Web, but close to it.  Stung by criticisms that FrontPage produced web sites that are not compliant with web standards, they went to the extreme with their “replacement” product.  The result is a steep learning curve and a complex piece of software.
2. Worse yet, they are obviously pushing to make this a proprietary platform.  The overhead required to run an expressions web site is hefty, and the requirements for all of the Visual Studio stuff is nearly as bad.  In case they have not noticed, most businesses could care less about implementing SharePoint and .Net architectures.
3. What all of this means is the third point — Microsoft is making the classic error of chasing the hundred or so major entrprises, while leaving the tens of thousands of other businesses in the dust. 

Which brings me to the subject of FaceBook.  Yes, I have a page there.  No, I do not want to be your Friend.  And I wouldn’t be caught dead in Farmville.  But an enormous number of small businesses have taken to FaceBook for their web presence.  On the minus side, Facebook is difficult to search, regularly tries to invade the privacy of its users, has no visible business model and is subject to viruses and trojans.  On the plus side, FaceBook is simple, fun and easy to update.  It does the job without paying a designer thousand of dollars, having a massive IT staff on hand or even knowing a whole lot about web design.

That’s a lesson that companies like Microsoft ought to be paying attention to, but are not.   And that is surprising, because Microsoft is trying to offer such a service on its Office Live Small Business pages.  The hitch is that you have to host with Microsoft, which is not always possible for an accounting firm that may have clients in the web hosting business.  The point is that if Microsoft can make such simple tools available for their own purposes, why can’t they add a similar application to Office?

I know, you can save Word, PowerPoint and Publisher pages to HTML and publish them to the web, but spare me the pain.  I’d rather slam my hand in a car door than try to design a web site in Publisher.  Worse yet, the new Office 2010, due for release this month, drops the web publishing tools from Publisher altogether (though you can still edit and update existing pages).

Trapped between FaceBook, with its rigid designs and colors; and Microsoft Expressions Web/Studio/Whatever, what I most want is to have FrontPage back.  I’m tired of having to hand-code changes to HTML, tired of having to have an advanced degree to change a color on my web page, and tired of having developers ignore the small business market.

And you can call me an old codger if you wish, but things really were easier, simpler and better in the good old days of web design, like around 2006.

And its not from the Viagra sites, the scammers, the enlarge some part of your body, or reduce some part of your body spammers.  These are from legitimate retail companies, including some of the best known brands in the world.  Companies that last year or the year before would never have dreamed of sending mass emails are now sending them almost daily.

When Congress passed the Can-Spam Act in 1998, they left a small loophole that allows a company to send you unsolicited commercial email — SPAM — if you have ever done busines of any kind with them.  So the company I bought a light bulb from five years ago now sends me weekly lists of their inventory.  LLBean, who I do not ever recall buying anything from but did ask for a catalogue once, sends them twice a week.  And so on until my inbox is crammed.

The problem is that the recession is not going away.  Even the president is now talking in terms of a double-dip recession that may send us headlong into another deep decline next year.  And the holiday season, while prices will crash and consumers may do okay, will likely be another disaster for retailers.

The retailers know this, so they are being their solicitations early and often.  This serves two purposes.  First, they can get their low prices in front of your eyes at a time when traditional media is stumbling.  Second, they are hoping that the frequency of the notices might jar some consumers into impulse purchases.

The whole arena of online advertising is still in its infancy, and email marketing — while lucrative in some terms — is still an issue that both retailers and consumers struggle with.  When is an email solicitation useful?  When is it annoying?  How to sort out the difference?

One thing I know for sure…if the sheer volume of these soliciations continues to rise, it may well signal the end of email marketing as consumers lose their patience and demand that the government act to require opt-in procedures for this kind of behavior.

And though I am an old hand in marketing, I think that would not be a bad idea.

There was DSL available…only not where I live.  Cable stops about 300 feet from my house, and Comcast killed the project before it reached me.  So I weighed the options of optical wireless or satellite, and elected to go with Hughes.net.  Understand, I appreciate the fact that Hughes Satellite even provides service to rural customers.  But between the service outages, the constant modem reboots, and the ridiculous service caps, I was not happy.  I once spent 24 hours with sub-dialup speeds for violating the Hughes Terms of Service download limits — I downloaded a Microsoft trial software program.

So I was pleasantly surprised when both Verizon and Sprint began offering the Novatel MiFi product at a reasonable price.  The MiFi is basically a cellular broadband reciever combined with a wifi router.  About the size of four credit cards stacked together and with an impressive battery life, this little device is the NEXT BIG THING in rural broadband — and for accounting firms fielding audit and IT teams.

It connects easily, has WPA-secure wifi connections, and while it is only 802.11g and b-compatible today, an 802.11n version is in the works.  It downloads at 800K to about 1 Mb — roughtly twice the speed of satellite connections.  Uploads are a little slower, but only a little.  The wifi router can handle up to five simultaneous connections.

Translated, this means that an accounting firm can field a team to a client location, set up its own secure network on the site, and work there for as long as it needs to.  The device is portable, and the service plan is about $40 per month.  No need to use the client’s network or public wifi sites.  Up to five simultaneous connections and you are good to go.

So what does all this mean?  For rural customers who can get DSL or cable, not much.  You already have one of the best, low-cost Internet connections.  But for those of us who choose to live on the side of a mountain or the middle of the wheat fields, this is a critical technology.  It means we can use a cell tower, if one is nearby, to get decent broadband.  The 5Gb download limit is not overly generous, but I haven’t busted the limit in two months of average small-office use, either.

And what it really means is that today, in the Shenandoah River valley of Virginia, I have another credible broadband choice.  And it means that I will be disconnecting my satellite connection next month to make the move to cellular broadand.

And if it is good now, I can’t wait for the deployment of LTE starting in 2010.

This is an exception.

I was shocked last month to discover that one of my kids on the “Family Plan” had managed to rack up $1,100 in cell phone charges in just a few weeks.  Since it is not possible to talk that much, even for young people, I investigated and found the culprit was something called “Premium” text messages.  Sure, I have unlimited text messaging on all our phones.  But these services are not covered by that fee.

Instead, these “Premium” services charge $1 to $2 per message.  Hundreds and hundred of messages, potentially, sent your your cell phone and charged to your bill.  They are personal ads, news items, entertainment items, and some are even outright scams.  But the reality it that you are stuck paying for them, just as in the old days when someone used your phone to all 900-numbers.  The kid in question did not even realize he had agree to accept the messages.  When they arrived, he simply deleted them without reading.

Most of these “Premium” messages don’t even originate on the phone, but through your personal computer.  Here’s how the scam works:  You log onto a portal or site and there is a challenge to take a test or see some salacious item:  current events, IQ or whatever.  You click on the box, and up pops a long, boring service agreement.  To get past this, you do what everyone does — click on the “I agree” button.  You take the test or look at the item, and it offers to send the results to your cell phone.  If you enter your phone number, they can hit your account without limit until you stop them.

This is an emerging issue, and the horror stories make mine seem tame — phone bills in the tens of thousands of dollars, mostly from young people.

With a quick call to Verizon Wireless customer support, I was able to get premium messaging blocked for the future — but still had to pay the bill.  Nonetheless, they were good about explaining the problems with third-party billing to me so I could better protect myself, and for that I thank them.

I strongly recommend that you immediately call your cell phone provider and have these messages blocked on your cell phones — particularly company phones issued to employees who may not know how this scam works.

While I am not unhappy with Verizon, I nonetheless have to ask…why didn’t they warn me about this threat?  Why do they handle the billing for these scams?  And where is the Federal Trade Commission, which ought to be all over this on behalf of consumers?

I know this, even though I must confess I am not a CPA.  For all of the years I have spent in and around the accounting profession, I am a geek, not a green-shade guy.  Nonetheless, I spend an amazing amount of time working with causes of every kind and description.  And everywhere I turn there are accountants in service.

That is how I know that the year ahead will demand all of the attention, and all of the caring and giving, that this industry has to offer.  Here’s why:

• Times are tough, and will get tougher.  Budgets will be smaller, even as the need becomes ever greater.  Non-profits of every kind will see the requests for help grow even as they struggle to meet their basic financial obligations.  There is no real end in sight to the current recession until far into 2010, and that will make things increasing stressful.
• Fraud will be an issue.  Sadly, human nature is not always as noble as it should be.  That means that a small minority of people, both paid and volunteer, will seek to take advantage to gain something for themselves.  When jobs are tight and money is tighter, fraud and theft increase.
• Fraud begets more fraud.  Even worse, once it becomes easy to take a little, the number of people taking will grow.  Whether it is a few dollars from the collection plate or massive fraud on a grand scale, the environment that encourages the taking will expand.

Standing against this, to protect the inegrity and the purpose of charitable non-profits, are the legions of accountants who serve.  Part of their services is standard accounting skill — the reconciliations, the audits, the reports and the internal controls.  But equally important is the abilitiy to bring to bear the technical knowledge in which accountants have always had a leading role.

When money gets tight, it becomes essential that non-profits implement trechnology plans that can eke ever-greater results from ever-dwindling resources.  And this means that the real value of an accountant to a non-profit is the dual service of financial controls and technological restructuring.

There are few non-profits that have decent technology.  Most have inadequate member and donor databases, under-powered computers and obsolete software.  Bringing these technical resources up to snuff is the task for a keen mind and a wizard’s wand.

That’s where the spirit of accounting comes into play.  For though they are known for their analytical skills and their brusk adherence to standards, accountants are also the steadfast core of charities and non-profits.  They provide the spirit, the soul and the heart that fuels America’s efforts to care for those who caanot care for themselves alone.

That’s an important role in the fabric of America, and one that receives little attention.  But from foundations to food banks, from fraternal lodges to the fight against the ravages of disease, it is accountants who stand on the front lines.

And this world would be a poorer place without them.

Don’t expect Microsoft to exhibit that kind of patience, now that Google has issued a direct challenge to the MS supremecy in PC operating systems.  Vowing to offer a new system based on its Chrome web browser, Google unabashedly says it is going to war with the intention of killing Microsoft. 

I wish them luck. 

It isn’t just that we’ve seen this before (McIntosh, WordPerfect, Unix, Ubuntu, etc.).  There’s also the question of what motivates the two companies to excel.  Microsoft wants to sell products to people that will bring them back to buy more products.  Google appears to want to sell products that allow them to track and extract data from people that they can sell to their advertising partners.

And while I’m not always a fan of what the guys in Redmond do, I also have to note that they’ve been at this game a lot longer than Google has.  They may be older, but they are therefore wiser and more skilled at the marketing in-fightin needed to win such a war.  And while both companies are well capitalized, Microsoft is moving boldly in three areas that should have Google concerned:

• Bing.  Right now, Google is still primarily a search engine.  Its revenue derives from advertising, which in turn is greatly tied to advertising from that engine.  So when Microsoft announced its new search engine called Bing, it largely began the war with Google.  Remember, Microsoft often enters markets it cannot win — if for no other reason to bleed competitors enough to keep them away from Microsoft’s core businesses.  That happened with Corel, and could be happening again with Bing, which to all appearances is an upgrade to the venerable search engine.
• System 7.  Sure, Vista was not the operating system everyone wanted.  But it did push the envelope in a number of areas, and gave Microsoft experience it needed to build the next generation of operating system.  Google has none of that experience, and will be launching their product after the debut of what appears to be a very capable new System 7.
• Microsoft Security Essentials.  This free security solution for PCs will debut in the fall at no cost.  While this may at first seem an assault on Symantec and Trend Micro, it is more likely an effort to build more value into the operating system while avoiding the kind of regulatory scrutiny Microsoft suffered because of its Media Player.  Take it outside the operating system, offer it for free, make it integrate tightly with System 7, and you have another major piece Google can’t compete against.

The bottom line is this:  Google didn’t declare war on Microsoft, but vice versa.  The launch of Bing was an act of war that Google could not overlook.  It remains to be seen whether it is a war that Google can win.

Personally, I have my doubts.  Like America Online before it, Google is making three major blunders in its efforts to dominate the world.  First, it is moving too fast in too many directions.  Books, art libraries, geo-mapping, web browsers, email and more — Google can’t seem to decide what business it wants to be in.

Second, Microsoft has spent 25 years building relationships with other players in the industry.  Google, a relative newcomer, seems more inclined to try to buy its friends — and alienate other key players by insulting or assaulting them.  They may be going to ware without allies, which is dangers and foolhardy.

Finally, it is attempting to overcome marketing deficiencies with political sleight-of-hand.  Sure, Google has great ties to the Obama Administration.  But its reputation in Congress and with the FCC have been badly damaged by its efforts to “game” the spectrum auctions for wireless and by the Network Neutrality debate (which Google initiated and then abruptly abandoned).

No matter how this turns out, it will make for an interesting winter in the tech world.  I plan to settle in to a comfortable chair with a botle of good Cabernet and some popcorn to watch the show.

No, today’s “paperless office” programs – neatly renamed “Document Management” — are necessary for far more pragmatic reasons like lowering office overhead costs, retrieving information more quickly, collaboration and file sharing over the Internet, and document security.

No matter.  It turns out that there is more than enough landfill space to handle paper, and more trees on North American soil than there were 100 years ago.  It doesn’t matter, because we still receive massive benefits from using document management systems.

But interestingly, in all the ballyhoo about the importance of DM, and the number of rapidly evolving systems that offer state-of-the-art, soup-to-nuts storage and retrieval, we have overlooked what may be the most important part of document management – the hardware.

In fact, there are four pieces of hardware that are critical to the success of any document management system:

·         The scanner, which is necessary to bring older paper files and supportive documentation into the virtual file cabinets for storage.

·         The printer, which is necessary for those rare times when a document needs to be presented in physical form (as when presenting and discussing plans with a client).

·         The data storage system, where the data is placed, indexed and housed until it is retrieved for use.

·         The data security systems, which can encompass backup devices, physical security systems such as retinal and fingerprint scanners, and power scrubbers to keep from losing data to power spikes.

It is interesting that such hardware is nearly always assumed.  Not bundled with the document management system.  No recommendations for brands and models.  No inclusion of the hardware in the proposed solution price or in lifetime cost evaluations.

This blog is too small a space to go in to all of the intricacies involved, but it is worth noting that a $50 scanner and the free inkjet printer that came with your last computer purchase will likely not fit the bill.  Any accounting firm serious about its client data will need to spend as much time – perhaps even more time – in the selection of hardware as it does software.

And that is a problem because few software vendors are helpful in this regard and few hardware vendors are willing to make a firm recommendation for a decent package.  They don’t want to risk relationships with other vendors, but that shouldn’t be their primary concern.  Keeping customers happy should be.

In the interim, the job will fall to the implementers.  And the mantra should be that any system they recommend should be turnkey – hardware and software – and they should be prepared to stand behind their recommendations based on personal experiences and a willingness to warrant the performance of the hardware. 

That’s my $.02 worth.