Bits & Bytes Online The DealsGuy November 2005

Once, during a McDonalds show, I was a guard for the largest dinosaur skeleton (and the most complete) ever found, and Sue Henderson who discovered it. (McDonalds sponsored the recovery) I guess they knew better than to let me guard any of the food. I topped that when I worked the ASIS (American Society of Industrial Security) [http://www.asisonline.org] show covering all kinds of security. Colon Powell was one of the featured speakers. Exhibits took up about 700,000 sq. ft. and attendance was about 20,000, which was the best ever. I was assigned to the Videoprotein [http://www.videoprotein.com] booth whose owner and founder, Anthony Pugliese, is a collector of many unusual items. In 1991 he bought the 38-caliber Colt Special that Jack Ruby used to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Mr. Pugliese purchased it at an auction from Jack Ruby's brother who had acquired it from the FBI 20 years after the shooting and needed to raise money for legal fees. Mr. Pugliese paid $75,000 and it is now valued at about seven million. While guarding that gun I met attendees from around the world who seemed to know the story.

Being stationed there prevented me from browsing the show much, but I did see some of the biometric lock products. Placing your finger on a pad or scanning your eye iris will open a lock, or initiate other functions if you like. There were also various security gates, special roll up doors and too many unique products to mention here. One company had a stranded steel cable to string around your property that, if breached, will tell you exactly where it happened and can even initiate camera action. Some cameras can detect motion and initiate a camera sequence to follow the action, also notifying the office of the activity. You could easily spend two days or more at that show. One evening the show rented Universal Studios for the attendees and my wife and I worked checking the attendees entering. Since there were drinks inside, we placed wristbands on people under the age of 21 to identify them as minors to bartenders. Food and drinks of all kinds were all free inside the park, and people could enjoy all the rides.

*Zio Corp. Is Acquired

I’m sorry that the PDF file with the rebate forms for the Zio Corp. products were not posted on my Web site. It turns out that Zio Corp. was acquired by SmartDisk and I have to assume that everybody was very busy with whatever changes would take place. However, Zio has some of the rebate forms posted on their own Web site and I hope what was there would fill your needs.

*What’s In Your Computer?

Here is another data gatherer that sounds good. Bob Balogh writes a monthly column called “Window Pains” for Boca Bits, newsletter of The Boca Raton Computer Society Inc. and it is always a good one. In the May 05 issue, he wrote about Everest Home Edition 1.51 (version 2.20 at this writing) that will collect all the important information about your computer. I won’t try to list all the information it collects here, but you can find out all about it at [http://www.lavalys.com]. Best of all, the home edition is free. Bob is not the only person who authors informative columns each month in Boca Bits and you can access their newsletter at [http://www.brcs.org]. You’ll find it interesting.

*Punch Software

I hope some of you took advantage of the rebates for Punch Software products. Punch products offer excellent tools for designing your home or for your remodeling project and I may have more offers in the future.

*What’s a Skin Clock? An Edited Announcement Received in June Offering a Discount

“Our company has released the personal assistant for Windows – Skin Clock. It is a personal reminder integrated with a new trendy tray clock. We would like to inform all user group people about a 25% discount as a part of our launching campaign.

Best regards,
Eugene Kryukov
[eugene@alcyonesoft.com]”

For immediate release

With Alcyonsoft You Needn't Choose Between Style and Functionality. Skin Clock Has Plenty of Both.

June 23, 2005 - Alcyonesoft announces today the launch of its Windows integrated personal assistant. Skin Clock has become an advanced replacement for the standard Windows clock. Besides a choice of professionally designed skins for your new system tray clock, the program features personal notification service and time synchronizer. Just make your alarm centre know your appointment time or a report deadline and it will remind you what you have on the agenda The only other thing your personal assistant needs to know is whether you prefer just a note, or a note and a pleasant chime, or should it launch any application for you.

"The idea of Skin Clock came from our customers," explains Eugene Kryukov”, CEO of Alcyonsoft. Skin Clock is shipped with a portfolio of skins, ranging from neo-modern to futuristic to classic. By grading the hue of the clock panel you can easily integrate it into your desktop color scheme. You can synchronize your system clock with the internet time server. Alternatively, you can rely on automatic synchronization. Unbounded range of ways to customize your Skin Clock can be found in the Options menu.

Skin Clock v.1.0 Features at a Glance

Highly customizable intuitive interface;

System tray integration;

A portfolio of skins for the time panel;

Alarm centre with a choice of reminder options;

Automatic and manual time synchronization.

Pricing and Availability

Skin Clock 1.0 runs under Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003 server platforms and costs $29.95 (USD) for a single-user license. Free technical support is extended to all registered users. A trial version is available as a free download at [http://www.skin-clock.com/files/skinclock.zip]. More information about Alcyonsoft can be found on the official website: [http://www.alcyonesoft.com].

Product page link: [http://www.skin-clock.com]

E-mail: [eugene@alcyonesoft.com]

*Announcement For IntroWizard (Edited) They offer a discount.

“Our company, IntroWizard, has released IntroWizard Flash Website Builder 1.0. This new wizard-style website designer is helpful for anyone who wants to create a professional-looking Flash website, but doesn't have any knowledge of HTML and Flash. Its special feature is the automatic text website creation for indexing the content of a Flash website in search engines. We also would like to offer all members of your user group a special discount - 15% off the purchase of IntroWizard Flash Website Builder 1.0 or Flash4D 4.4. This discount is only available until December, 2005. Please use the links below:

Discount 15% Off Links:

Buy IntroWizard Flash Website Builder v1.0:

[http://www.introwizard.com/store/fwb-15off.php]

Buy Flash4D, Flash Intro Builder v4.4:

http://www.introwizard.com/store/f4d-15off.php

Have an excellent day,
Adan Vielma
E-mail: [Adan@IntroWizard.com]”

Create Flash Websites in a Flash!

MCALLEN, Texas. - September 13, 2005: IntroWizard today announces the release of version 1.0 of IntroWizard Flash Website Builder. Using its point-and-click environment, you can build a website simply by selecting a design, typing in your content, and adding images.

Over 20 design templates help you to jump-start your website project with professional layouts. Once the layout is chosen, the Customize Website wizard guides you through all customization stages from defining the background color, title, slogan, width and height to specifying the website sections and entering content. Your website may contain up to 13 sections. A section contains its own text, which may be complemented by up to 4 images. The program lets you insert your own images or choose from the collection of 30 stock images included free.

You can integrate Flash plug-ins, such as Flash poll, chat box or guestbook, to add a level of interactivity to your website. To make the website visible in search engines, you can add meta keywords and descriptions to the website. Create a text website, a text copy of your Flash website. The text website lets you reach out to search engines, while enjoying the aesthetic benefits of the Flash technology. If you select to use the text website creation feature, then the text website is created automatically on the basis of the Flash website content.

IntroWizard Flash Website Builder Benefits:

Point-and-click technology of creating a Flash website;

No need to fork out money to designers and programmers;

No subscription fees or restrictions on the amount of websites you can create for yourself or your customers;

Automatic text website creation to make a Flash website visible in search engines;

Affordable price, only $49.95.

Pricing and Availability

IntroWizard Flash Website Builder runs under Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP and costs $49.95 (USD). Registered customers are entitled to non-watermarked designs and technical support. A 15-day fully functional evaluation version of IntroWizard Flash Website Builder is available as a free download at

[http://www.introwizard.com/trial/flash-website-builder-trial.exe] (3.49 Mb).

For more information, please visit http://www.introwizard.com.

Product page link: http://www.introwizard.com/flash-website-builder

That's it for this month. Meet me here again next month if your editor permits.

This column is written to make user group members aware of special offers or freebies I have found or arranged, and my comments should not be interpreted to encourage, or discourage, the purchase of any products, no matter how enthused I might sound. Bob (The Cheapskate) Click [bobclick@mindspring.com]. Visit my Web site at [http://www.dealsguy.com]..