newsletter

32 GB Kingston Flash Drive…$59.97
Tipping. What It Takes To Make Your Waiter Like You
Tattoo Parlors Start Hitting Mall
The History of Email
Cloud Computing (What is it? Who Cares?)
Contacting pcAmerica

32 GB Kingston Flash Drive…$59.97

(Note...pcAmerica has no relationship to Kingston or Buy.com)

Just unbelievable! Kingston (a major manufacturer of Flash Drives) is now selling a 32 GB Flash Drive for $59.97. It was only a couple of years ago that a 4 GB version was selling for $300+. At $59.97, I’d run out and buy a few.

Actually, there’s probably no rush. These tiny flash drives are great for backing up and transporting your files. 32 GBs is plenty of space to backup all of your Cash Register Express and Restaurant Pro Express data plus all of your documents and photos...with plenty of room to spare. I’m not sure that you need to run out and buy a dozen because $59.97 is probably the new price point.

32 GBs is a lot of space and enough to backup an entire computer (including the operating system). Using products such as Acronis, you can  make an image of your entire computer and boot from that image using the Kingston Flash Drive.

Here’s the Buy.com link so that you can purchase one of these Flash Drives today.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=209389453&adid=17070&dcaid=17070

Tipping. What It Takes To Make Your Waiter Like You

The current suggested tip is 15%. Lots of people give a 20% tip for exceptional service, 15% for average service and 10% for lousy service.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, the average tip is now 18% (up from 15% in the 1970’s.

Despite the bad economy, the tipping percentage appears to be rising gradually. People just don’t want to tick off the wait staff.

Apparently, your wait staff will give the better tippers much better service. According to the article, a waiter in one restaurant suggested to a fellow staff member to give better service to those tables with the potentially best tippers.

In a very busy understaffed restaurant, the suggestion is to take care of a few tables and go for the big tips. Leave a few tables behind and make them wait. That way, you can at least get better tips from the better services tables (instead of spreading the service too thin). There is no point in trying to give good service to all the tables when it’s so busy. So, a waiter will pick certain tables eligible for good service.

Read the entire tipping article at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122471487660660237.html

If you do not have a subscription to the online Wall Street Journal, write to me at hgosman2004@optonline.net and I’ll send you a copy of the article.

Tattoo Parlors Start Hitting The Mall

According to the Wall Street Journal online, Tattoo parlors are moving from the edgier parts of town to upscale malls.

36% of 18-25 year olds now have tattoos (compared to 10% of their parents’ generation).

Tattoo Nation LLC is the first mall-based tattoo parlor chain in the country opening up its first store in 2006 within 200 feet of Bloomingdale’s.

The History of Email

Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972. He was the person that chose the @ symbol on the keyboard to denote sending messages from one computer to another.

It wasn’t until 1993 that America Online and Delphi started to connect their proprietary email systems to the internet.

Less than 2% of the U.S. population used email in 1992.

In the past 10 years, email has grown from almost nothing to 100 billion emails. That is, 100 billion emails per day. 100 billion emails are sent each and every day.

I remember sending and receiving my first emails in 1990 using Delphi. You cannot appreciate email unless you were using it in 1990. Just imagine sending a note to someone on the other side of the country and receiving a reply minutes later.

Less than 10 years ago, almost no one in the world was using email. Today, it has become the primary method of communications for a good portion of the world.

...and here comes Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing (What is it? Who Cares?)

I have no doubt that Cloud Computing will grow just as fast as emails have grown.

Most of you have heard or seen the words, but haven’t given it a second thought.

I predict that Cloud Computing will grow as fast or faster than the use of emails. Within 3 years, most of you will be using Cloud Computing. Within 10 years, everyone will be using it.

I’m not going to give you a real technical explanation of Cloud Computing. We’re going to stay real simple.

Cloud Computing takes away the requirement of running programs and storing information on your local computer and moves that responsibility to the internet.

For example, within the next three to ten years, most retailers will be using a point-of-sale system that uses Cloud Computing. You simply connect any computer to the internet, log on to a web site, and run  your point-of-sale system directly from that web site.

You don’t need to install any software on your local computer since that computer will be using the software available on the internet. All of your data will be stored over the internet on the server that you are accessing.

You won’t need to worry about your local hard drive or backing up your system. This will all take place over the internet. You won’t need to worry about viruses or spyware. All of your emails will be stored over the internet. You won’t need to update your software because the software that you are accessing will all be up to date.

Forms of Cloud Computing are already here. You can sign on to Google and use Google’s word processor, spread sheet, presentation creator, email and other applications over the internet. It’s all free. You can access your documents and email for free on any computer, anywhere in the world on any computer.

For those of you who haven’t tried it, just go to Google.com. Sign up for a free email account (Gmail). Look under MORE and you can access all types of online software and documents, all for free. You can store and edit your photos. You can share and edit your documents with others from anywhere in the world.

The new world of the next ten years is all about Cloud Computing and doing everything over the internet. Internet speeds will get 100 times faster in the next 10 years. The days of worry about your local computer, hard drives, antivirus, and spyware will be over...or maybe not!

Dell and HP are already selling inexpensive internet laptops (Netbooks). These Netbooks are selling for under $500. They are small, light, and great for accessing the internet.