TECHNOLOGY TOOLS TRADE of the - Strategic …...from Wuala. TECHNOLOGY 58 STRATEGIC FINANCEI February 2010 TOOLS of the TRADE TaxWise TaxWise, a CCH Small Firm Ser-vices enterprise,

Google’s Nexus OneIt’s no surprise that Google’s

platform (Android) preceded its

hardware (the Google phone)—

Google is primarily a software

company (Internet apps). But

with the arrival of the Nexus

One smartphone, Google is now

a hardware company selling the

best Android-powered cell

phone. Nexus One has no key-

board, and it strongly resembles

Apple’s iPhone, only it’s thinner

and a little lighter. Four basic

touch buttons on the bottom

row will take you back one

screen, open a menu, bring you

home, or open search. Right

below these basic navigators is

a trackball pointing device. The

screen is larger than the iPhone

(3.7" diagonal widescreen) and

has higher resolution (800 ✕

480 pixels compared to iPhone’s

320 ✕ 480 pixels). The Android

Mobile Operating System (Éclair)

runs on a 1GHz Qualcomm QSD

processor, which can run multi-

ple applications simultaneously.

There’s a built-in five-megapixel

camera with 2X digital zoom

and LED flash capable of video

capture at 720 ✕ 480 pixels at

20 frames-per-second. Built-in

512MB of RAM is supplement-

ed by a 4GB Micro SD card

(expandable to 32GB). The bat-

tery provides up to 10 hours of

talk time, 290 hours of standby,

up to 6.5 hours of Internet use,

seven hours of video playback,

and 29 hours of audio playback.

There’s more information at

www.google.com/phone.

BlackBerryPresenterIt may look like an Eskimo Pie®,

but the Blackberry Presenter is

actually much cooler. It’s a little

less than 2" ✕ 3" ✕ 1" thick,

and it weighs five ounces. In its

case, it will get lost in your pock-

et. It’s an accessory for your

BlackBerry smart phone that will

let you plug into a projector or

monitor and then run a Microsoft

PowerPoint presentation wire-

lessly from your phone. Leave

your laptop at home if your pres-

entation is on the road. The con-

nection between your phone and

the Presenter is via Bluetooth, so

you can walk around during the

presentation—the reach is up to

30 feet with Bluetooth Version

2.0. There’s no additional work

to prepare the PowerPoint file,

and the Presenter can support

most PowerPoint (2003 and

2007) animations and transi-

tions. The display resolutions

include VGA, SVGA, and XGA

(1,024 ✕ 768). You can use a

single button on the Presenter to

put it in sleep mode, wake it up,

or begin a new presentation.

And you can set a loop mode to

automatically run the slideshow

with a set time between each

slide. The Presenter works with

the following BlackBerries:

Bold 9000 and 9700, Curve

8500 Series and 8900, the

Storm, and the Tour.

www.blackberry.com/presenter

LaCie USB Flash Drives

LaCie is an international com-

pany that’s as concerned with

design as they are with func-

tion. Their personal digital stor-

age products are unique. In the

case of their key series of per-

sonal USB flash drives, they

offer three different designs so

you can immediately identify

your home, your office, and your

photo or MP3 data keys. It isn’t

difficult to tell them apart with

all on the same keychain. And

they are reasonably priced, with

the 4GB versions selling for $20

each. They are also available in

the 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes.

The design is sturdy, and the

gold SIP connector on each is

water- and scratch-resistant.

Protective edges on the connec-

tors guide the proper insertion

of the LaCie Keys. With the pur-

chase price, you get two years

of 4GB of online backup storage

from Wuala. www.lacie.com

TECHNOLOGY

58 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 0

TOOLSof theTRADE

TaxWise TaxWise, a CCH Small Firm Ser-

vices enterprise, has tax solu-

tions that cover three areas with

a wide variety of products in

each: tax software, tax research,

and specific applications that

speed up the process from inter-

views to e-filing and final

reports. Among the Tax Software

offerings, there are seven pack-

ages for professional preparers:

ProFiling handles 1040, A, EZ,

X, NR, NR-EZ, SS/PR, and all

states; ProBusiness and Special-

ty covers 1120-Corporate,

1120S-S Corporate, 1065 S

Partnership, 1041 Fiduciary, 990

Tax Exempt, 706 Estate, 709

Gift, 5500 Employee Benefits,

and all states. The other five

packages offer combinations of

personal and business modules,

added research services (CCH

U.S. Master TaxGuide Online

and Research Library from CCH),

and a number of accounting

modules, including TaxWise

Fixed Assets Manager, Trial

Balance, Document Manager,

Client Write-Up, and Payroll.

All the programs have built-in

e-filing. The TaxWise features

that are universal include

Instant Error Checking,

keystroke-by-keystroke or entire

return; the ability to open multi-

ple instances of TaxWise to view

more than one return at a time;

Automatic Fill-Ins with ZIP

Codes that fill in city and state,

auto name, and address com-

pletions for EINs; Real-Time

Calculators; Comprehensive

Diagnostics with multiple

warnings checking your input;

K-1 Pass-Throughs that carry

data from business returns to

appropriate 1040 return; Carry

Forward of Last Year’s Data;

3-Year Summaries; What-if

Alternate Scenarios; Manage-

ment Reports, and more. Visit

the www.taxwise.com site for

more details and online

evaluations.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been held

each January in Las Vegas since 1967. The show has quite

an impressive history of firsts, debuting the first VCR in

1970, the Commodore 64 computer in 1981, Tetris in

1988, DVDs in 1996, and the DVR (Digital Video Record-

er) in 1999, among many other new technologies. This

year featured the portable computer in the form of Web

tablets, netbooks, and new e-Readers. The Apple tablet

didn’t make an appearance, but many others were there.

Two interesting devices that have similar functions in

very different formats were the Lenovo U1 Hybrid note-

book/tablet and the Skiff steel e-Reader, with its largest

and highest-resolution electronic display.

The Lenovo U1 looks like a conventional notebook com-

puter with a nice, high-definition screen and reasonable-

size keyboard. With a sideways push on a button on top,

the detachable screen lifts out of its hinged backing and

becomes a thin, very portable tablet. It’s actually now a

different computer. Attached to the base, it’s a computer

with an Intel Core 2 processor running on Windows 7.

Detatched, it’s a Web tablet with a touchscreen interface

and an ARM Snapdragon processor running a Linux oper-

ating system. The unique, dual computer format will be

available this June.

SAVING THE PRESS

For years, the situation has been getting more and more

desperate for newspapers and magazines in their tradi-

tional (500-year-old) paper-and-ink format. Advertising

isn’t providing the buoyancy necessary, and major titles

are sinking with increasing frequency. Many think the

solution will come in the form of a new business model

on the Internet, but that grail has yet to be discovered.

There are news websites like Politico.com that claim to

be profitable, but the other online counterparts of the

conventional press, like NYTimes.com, are still stumbling

around.

The New NewsprintBy Michael Castelluccio, Editor

continued on next page

TECH FORUM

Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 0 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 59

Some media specialists see the salvation, or, more accu-

rately, the successful transition, coming in the form of a new

delivery system for newspapers. The survivors, they claim,

won’t depend on the flat panel on your desk at home or in

the office, but rather on some kind of electronic daily news

reader carried in your briefcase or found lying on the

kitchen table.

The news tablet isn’t exactly a new idea. Sixteen years ago,

the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab proposed a large,

page-size tablet that would download your daily newspaper

with all of its advertising and some additional audio-visual

information. This tablet was never developed because screen

technology at the time was just too limited and advertising

streams were still comfortably flowing. Not so today. When

the publisher of The New York Times publicly laments that

his paper is dying, the rising tide that he blames may drown

all but a few publications.

Enter Hearst’s Skiff. Unveiled at this year’s CES, this slate

format reader is described as competition for the now

almost 50 different varieties of e-Book readers, but that isn’t

the reason for the 120-year-old publisher’s backing. Hearst

is looking for a new format for its magazines and newspa-

pers that doesn’t involve a press. In its current design, the

Skiff is a black-and-white reader, but a color edition is

promised for later this year. No surprise, the front page

shown on the product photos at the show was of one of

Hearst’s most famous imprints, the San Francisco Chronicle.

The technical specs on the Skiff are amazing. It has the

largest page size of any electronic reader (9" ✕ 11")

to more easily accommodate the layouts for newspa-

per and magazine pages. Even better, the resolution of

the print is a world-class 1,200 ✕ 1,600 pixels

(UXGA—quadruple that of SVGA). It has a full touch-

screen that responds to both fingers or stylus, with no

printer’s ink to smudge your fingers.

The Skiff is sleek, weighing just slightly more than

one pound (17.56 oz.) and about a quarter of an inch thick

(0.268 in.). And you won’t be able to break the screen because

it isn’t made of glass or plastic. It has the first metal-foil e-

Paper display constructed of silicon thin-film transistors

(TFT) on a flexible stainless-steel substrate. You won’t want to

be training the puppy by tapping him on the nose with a

rolled up copy of this newspaper. But if you do leave it on the

couch, your mastiff could sit on it, and it would survive.

The Skiff ’s battery will last for a week of page turning,

and it recharges in two to three hours. Content delivery is

via WiFi and 3G connections or through a direct USB

hookup to your computer. Whichever you choose, your

paper or magazines can be scheduled for automatic down-

loads. On-board memory is 4GB, with an additional SD

card slot for a larger library. There’s a built-in speaker and

audio jack.

Will newspapers like The New York Times and the San

Francisco Chronicle have a better chance of survival with

delivery over the Skiff? The publishers have been slow to

react to their revenue problems, but this could work for

them and the other venues planned for it. Skiff is setting up a

Skiff Store online to deliver newspapers, magazines, books,

and blogs. SF

TECH FORUM

TECHNOLOGY

60 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 0

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