Posts Tagged ‘memories’

You might have a Digital Frame buy you might still have the old Photo Album. Well, now with TruView Digital Photo Album, you can do that.

Todd Cochrane talks with Ray about this new idea in Digital technology. A built in memory card storage will allow you hold 18 cards of many different types. With special software, you can have single pictures, or multiple.  Everything is plug and play, USB connection. The product will be out shortly, so you can share all your memories in one area and still have the feel of the old scrapbooks without pictures falling out of the pages.

Sponsor:  Get GotoAssist Express free for 30 days and complete the IT Toolbox – GoToAssist.com/techpodcasts.

Get this content on TiVo, Roku and Boxee – Subscribe to the YouTube Channel and Check out Techpodcasts.tv

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (37.4MB)

You want to take items off your computer and play them on your Flatscreen TV. Photos, Videos or even music. That is where Iomega ScreenPlay Director comes in. It’s a HD Media Player and it brings HD media to your living room.

Andy McCaskey talks with lauren about this great device.With 1TB of space you have a portable hard drive that can be connected to your network, or taken to a friends house to enjoy memories together. You can also use Cinema Now to rent or buy movies. Look at the catalog and with Progressive Download, you will have the movie right on the machine. Retail is at $249.

Sponsor:  You need this in your IT Toolbox – GotoAssist Express free for 30 days – GoToAssist.com/techpodcasts.

Get this content on TiVo, Roku and Boxee – Subscribe to the YouTube Channel and Check out Techpodcasts.tv

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (62.3MB)

Do you remember those photobooths? Stuff all your friends and take 3-4 pictures, then have a good laugh as you leave the Mall. Well the folks at Shutterfly want to recreate the Photobooth with Wink.

Wink lets you create photostrips from pictures on your iPhone, Camera and Social Networks. Their portal – at wink.shutterfly.com – is where you can recreate memories. Jeffrey Powers talks with Shutterfly about this, and other services. For $2.50 you can create Photobooth photos without having the Photobooth.

Sponsor:  Put GoToAssist in your IT Toolbox free for 30 days – GoToAssist.com/techpodcasts.

Get this content on TiVo, Roku and Boxee

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (30.9MB)

1973 – IBM had a suit filed in January of 1972 by Telex. They accused IBM of monopolizing the “plug compatible” equipment market. This included tape and disk drives, along with other add-on memories.

Judge Sherman Christensen hands down his 222 page verdict. He found that both Telex and IBM were guilty for the allegations waged against each other. Telex is awarded $350 million and IBM will be restrained in its ability to market its computer and software bundles. IBM, in turn, is awarded $22 million.

This suit began a witch hunt and other suits against IBM came up. CalComp, Memorex and Marshall Industries filed suits and won over 3 billion from Big blue.

Brought to you by GoDaddy.com – 10% off hosting with code pod150

Please add to your favorite aggregator. RSS Feed – iTunes – Stitcher

Other items in the Day in Tech History:

• Data Travellers and Fry Guy
• Microsoft became America’s Most valuable company
• MS-DOS retired, Windows ME released

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:00 — 5.5MB)

You might remember the products. You might remember the hype. Then, you are tooling down highway 41 years later and all of a sudden you think to yourself – “Hey, whatever happened to…”

Failed ideas. Maybe it was a great idea, but wasn’t made right, or design errors brought it down. Maybe it was just a bad product. Well, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and see if we cannot repeat these errors again.

Oh yeah, why 16? Well because we could.

The Computer Watch: Whether it was the Ruputer, the MSN Direct ‘Smart’ Watches, the Timex Data Link Watch or another gadget watch – BTW – I remember having a “Transformers watch”. It was awesome!

Still, the Dick Tracey style communication watches, the “Computer on a wrist”, never really hit it off. I even remember a watch that gave you directions. You would put in the paper tape and turn a little dial to indicate where you are and where you are going.

Read the rest of this entry »

My brother called me today to let me know that SITEL – the place where I got my tech start – is closing the Madison office. While SITEL is not what it used to be, it still brought a lot of memories in the late 90’s for me and a lot of other techs in this area.

It wasn’t Sitel when I started there. It was called “Softmart – ETG”. They were looking for a bunch of people to work on a contract supporting an exciting new Operating System called Microsoft Windows 95. I wasn’t one of the original phone staff, but I did get in there on the next round.

This was the most memorable job I had. It was always a community atmosphere – everyone was helping everyone else out. In return, the call stats showed positive results. We hit 100% customer support for our call center. Most important, I learned a lot about computers because of this job.

We got the word that in August of 1996, Microsoft was backing out. They were winding down the initial support and consolidate offices closer to Washington. Although it was a loss, it was also quickly replaced as AT&T was ramping up their Worldnet Dial-up service. The only real issue was during this transition, Softmart was in the middle of building a new call center. We had to split up between a couple buildings as the finishing touches were being completed.

After finalization and move to the new building, we continued on with AT&T Worldnet. I worked on that contract for about 4-5 months when we were shuttled into a room one morning. We were all told that Softmart had been sold overnight to SITEL.

They said that SITEL was a call center that wanted to get into the technology support section. The running joke at the time was that since other SITEL offices took orders for the “Pocket Fisherman”, we would be doing the tech support. They said the plans were to continue on as normal – Softmart had purchased land in a developing area, so they had extra land to build a “Campus”. SITEL was going to continue this process.

The company heads also said we were the first tech office, so we would become the primary tech office. They were going to pump in a lot of training and effort for us to benefit from. It sounded like a great opportunity at the time…

Shortly after the takeover, we started to see some changes. We were all salaried employees, which was great because we could take the extra time to help people. SITEL changed us to hourly. It really took it’s toll on those who work harder just because they were thorough on their jobs.

A month later, I moved onto a new contract. Solomon software was an accounting software contract that has been with Softmart – SITEL for a few years. They went from a Dos based Solomon III to 16-bit version of Solomon IV. It was a tough contract simply because not only did I need to learn the tech side of it, I also had to learn a little bit about accounting. It also introduced me into MySQL and SQLServer, Crystal Reports and a host of other software that later became important to know. It was a tough contract, but very fulfilling.

However, SITEL wasn’t living up to their contract. Shortly after our purchase, the company acquired another tech office in VA. It seemed more and more that this office was getting the tech. Our office did get another contract – AOL was expanding, so they contracted 700 people for tech support. With the AT&T contract also in the same centre, we had rules about crossing from one area to another. The best part of the centre was AOL was technically in one building and AT&T was in another – therefore, crossover was minimal.

Read the rest of this entry »