Apple is launching a new service in July named MobileMe, and it will be doing some interesting things that may be perfect for the small business owner, the self-employed, or even students on the move.

Big businesses have enjoyed services called “Exchange Servers” for years that allows them to update all their devices in one go.  These have been complicated to run, expensive, and out of reach of the every day person.  MobileMe will be changing this for people who love their Apple products.

Say you have one computer at home, another at work and an iPhone or iPod Touch for when you are on the go.  Keeping your contacts, emals and calendar all synced up with one another can be a difficult task.  With MobileMe, all of your devices will sync to one centralized system so that all contacts, emails and calendars are exactly the same on all systems.

Lets say you add a contact on your iPhone, MobileMe will update the other devices within seconds of you making the change and vice-versa.  For iPod Touch owners, you will need to be near Wi-Fi to take advantage of the syncing, but it will still be a big help.

What excites me personally is that you get all of this for $99 a year with the addition of 10 GB of online storage space that will allow you to access files on the go, or send them to friends and family.

Are there any potential drawbacks?  Yes.

- No word yet if you can use it in conjunction with your pre-existing email accounts.  I am not thrilled about setting up yet another email account.

- If don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, it will be pretty pointless as you can accomplish the same computer-based tasks with numerous other applications.

- $99 is a bit high, I would rather see it around $60 a year.

They will be offering a free 60-day trial period, so it it will be worth giving it a try, but it will certainly not be for everyone.  It is, however, a step in the right direction for small businesses and the self-employed.

What is going to be an endless question for a little while now will be, “should I buy the iPhone 3g?” The answer, sadly, is “yes and no.”

If you already have an iPhone from the original 2007 release, your answer is going to be a tricky one.  The first things you need to do is ask yourself if you will really need the new features.

Do you really need the faster 3G speed for viewing websites?

If you are satisfied with the current speeds the EDGE technology gives you, than you would have to go with no.  Sure, 3G would be nice, but is it worth enough to make you upgrade so soon?

Do you really need the built-in GPS?

The GPS is a really stellar bonus to the new iPhone 3G, and the ability to add geotags to your images will be nice, but true mapping functions will be a killer update to the iPhone’s functions.  However, you’ve lived without this feature for the past year, will it change your life enough to want to buy a whole new phone?

What about the new third-party applications?

Current iPhone users will get to enjoy all the iPhone apps without any worry when they release the new software update in early July.  This update will be free, so at no extra cost you will get this new function.

What about the new Apple online service, MobileMe?

MobileMe is an exciting new product from Apple that will allow you to share email, calendars, files and more across multiple devices such as Macs, PCs, the iPhone and the iPod Touch.  It will work with the current iPhone also at release.

In short, if you have the current iPhone, you will just have to weigh how important these new features are.  Personally I would say most current owners could wait on them until their 2-year contracts expire with AT&T in 2009 (or later, depending on when you signed up).

For people who don’t currently have an iPhone, and have been sitting on the fence, this is what you were waiting for.  Buy it, but it now.  $199 for 8 GB and $299 for 16 GB with GPS and 3G is a heck of a deal… if you didn’t already buy one.

This is more of a very short “how to” as it was one of those pesky things we ran into at work today.

Sometimes you need to copy and paste a hyperlink to a website to someone else, whether it be in an IM or an email, and when you go to copy it, you end up going to the linked site instead of actually getting copied.  So, how do you safely copy it?  Well, an odd trick I have found is to start your copy highlighting to the right as opposed to the left.  The reason for this is that usually on the left it is butted up against the margins, so you can’t tell if you are clicking outside of it.  By staring to the right, you know you have some clearance and this allows you a bit more breathing room.

I know, not very long, but it is just one of those little tips that makes your life a little bit less frustrating.

If you’re anything like the StarterTech crew, you’re building a small pile of outdated or dead equipment.  Computers, laptops, VCRs, TVs, video games and more are cluttering up your life, just taking up space.  We actually have a shelf in our office building we call “The Graveyard” as it holds nothing but dead computer parts.

As this problem has gained momentum due to the number of computers in the world, more and more companies have tried finding solutions to help consumers.  Many computer manufacturers now offer some sort of trade-in program, and companies such as Staples offer a program where they will take nearly anything you have.

If the items are in working order, I always think it’s always a good idea to donate them to a school, a home for wayward youth or anything where access to a computer may very well change someone one’s life.  If it isn’t working, than I always recommend going with a recycling program.  Quite often these programs will offer you some sort of credit with their company, admittedly not much, but it’s better than getting nothing at all and helping to fill our landfills faster.  You also have to remember there are many dangerous items in many gadgets if they should leak into the soil.  Rechargeable batteries are always a worry, so cell phones and MP3 players are never a good idea to throw out as they will eventually leak.

In short, yes, it will take a little work on your part, but recycling of electronics is always the best idea.

The other day we mentioned our computer failure on my personal laptop, and that a new hard disk drive was on the way to me. Well, now that it is here, I am having the grand fun of reinstalling all of my computer software again. This is a process I went through just two months ago when the computer was brand new, and it reminds me of the physical backups you have to make as well as to the ones you do with your data.

Whenever you buy software, whether it be a physical disk or a download, you are presented with a serial number to activate your software.  You need to keep this in a safe place because if you ever need to reinstall your software, you’re going to need that number again.

For physical media, I store all the disks in a CD case where I cut down the paper with the serial number to fit in the sleeve with the disk, allowing for easy storage and organization.  For software I download, I file all the emails with the serial numbers into one mail folder as well as print off a copy to keep with my physical media for ease of locating it.

Losing the serial numbers is as bad as losing the disks all together, so you need to make sure to take care of them as you would a piece of currency worth the value of the program.  Lose them, and you’re sunk in an emergency.

This website is really not here to tout any particular company or technology but after this past weekend I have to shout about OnStar.

I was in Dallas, Texas this past week working at a convention in the area of part of my business. I do this quite often—travel to a city with product, set up in a convention hall and sell for the weekend. Of course means I must break down and pack my trailer at the end of the show. This also means there may be nasty people waiting for me to leave the building. This time there were nasty people waiting for me. I don’t feel I made a mistake in my judgment that led to this situation—they were there and so was I.

They tried to stop me three blocks from the event area but I didn’t fall for it—knocked on my window to say there was something wrong with my trailer. I didn’t open the door or lower the window. I went back to the convention hotel where there was light and people and checked it—no problems. Nasty people averted right? No, they followed me on the freeway for 8+ miles—they could see me and my big, red trailer—I just couldn’t see them.

Dinner was at the IHOP. I have eaten there before and had no problems. All of the sudden the staff is telling me someone broke into my car and that they had already called the police. There it was—smashed and grabbed. Lots of damage from drivers side over to passenger side—amazing what a cinder block can do to glass windows and plastic interiors.

So now what to do? Late on Sunday, no window on one door and glass everywhere!! I called OnStar and they spent at least thirty minutes trying to find a glass company for me at that late hour. No luck but they tried and they cared. I realized that I should have hit the red emergency button immediately when they tried the first time to get me to open the door or window. OnStar would have known exactly where I was through GPS and would have contacted the police to help me right away. It is technology, it is helpful. I am not afraid of it but I just didn’t think of it in that way.

So, I have learned my lesson. I have taken the time in the past few days to look at every tech item I own and to judge their uses in such a situation. Some cell phones can call 911 wherever they are—find out if yours does and then use it if you have to! Some other brands of cars have similar units to Onstar—find out if yours does and use it. If you have none of the above consider them for your next phone, or car. This would truly be the grand use of technology that I feel some inventors meant it to be—you are not alone and technology is your friend.

Normally at StarterTech we don’t delve in to the normal blog style posts where we relate personal stories, but this was just too odd not to.

Just two days ago we talked about making backups of your system. I was prompted to write that piece by my having just signed up for Backblaze, and I was in the process of backing up my system. As this is a long process, even two days later I wasn’t done and… my laptop hard drive failed today. Completely dead, as in a new hard drive is on its way to me.

So, with this in mind, it seemed appropriate to mention it to you all again that it really does happen without warning, and you should always be working to backup your system,

There are times where you have to shut down your system in a hurry, and the normal method just isn’t working. So, what do you do in these cases?

Let me say first off that you should always shut down your computer in the standard method. Anything other than what you usually do can cause damage to your files.

If the standard shut down isn’t responding, I suggest you follow the steps we wrote in How To Determine What Is Slowing Down Your Computer. At thet your top, you will see an option for “Shut Down”, and because of where you are in the system, hat sometimes seems to get a better response than going through the Start button.

Another option is to push in the on switch and hold it for several seconds. This will reset your system, but without the normal shut down process, which means this should be used sparingly.

The absolute last ditch effort is to unplugging the computer. You should use this only after every other method has been exhausted, and there are times where the computer will simply not to react to any sort of input, so you have to use this option.

Essentially, just always try to be a responsible computer user and shut down properly, but don’t fret if you have any other option.

There can be nothing more devastating than a loss of your data. Whether it be from equipment failure, theft, natural disaster or any other number of reasons.  This is exactly why everyone should back up their data, but knowing how is half of this battle.

There are numerous options for PC owners, but almost all of them rely on you being diligent in making them.  Most people know how to burn files to a CD-ROM, but will you do it often enough?  CDs and DVDs also can suffer from “disc rot” where little holes will form in the recording layer, making the disk unreadable.  You can certainly use the format, but it isn’t always the best solution.

You also can use external hard drives or a Network Additional Storage (NAS) to back-up to, but these also require you to remember to do it on a regular basis.  There is software you can purchase to do it for you automatically, but then you also face possible hardware failure, and if you have a fire, you still lose everything.

My personal favorite option is remote back-up to an off-site company.  I currently use two companies for this: Carbonite for my computer at work, and Backblaze for my laptop.

Carbonite is fairly simple in that you download their manager, mark which files you want to back-up to their servers, and any time you make a change to them, the system will automatically upload the new copy to their site.  Backblaze is brand new, it isn’t even open to the public yet, and takes the approach of backing up every file on your computer except for the files associated with your operating system.  There is zero thought process needed to using Backblaze, it just assumes it should do everything, and does so.

There are other services such as SugarSync and Mozy, but we have only personally used the two I mentioned before.  every service has their pros and cons, and you should research which one best suits your needs, but I do highly recommend everyone go with off-site back-ups.  These services do cost (generally around $5 a month), but when your computer crashes, it is worth it just for the peace of mind.  When my work computer recently crashed, I did not feel the usual dismay and panic that accompanied that in the past because I knew all my vital files were safely stored at Carbonite.  That feeling was worth every penny I have paid them.

DRM is an abbreviation for a lock put on digital files called “Digital Rights Management”.

If you have ever purchased a song file from Apple’s iTunes store, you have experienced DRM in that those files can only be played by the account that purchased them.  Also, the vast majority of their songs can only be played on their own iPod digital players, meaning they are locked to particular devices.

DRM was created as a way to combat the amount of online piracy going on over the Internet, but at the same time it restricts how a consumer can enjoy their legally purchased files.  Files purchased to play on an iPod won’t play on a player produced by Microsoft, and vice-versa.  Due to continuing pressure from consumers to use files as they see fit, there are movements from companies to start freeing up more and more of the files so that you can use them any way you choose.

Everyone at StarterTech always tries to be very neutral in our coverage of all technology, but this is one subject we firmly believe in.  To be blunt, DRM should not exist.  When a consumer purchases something in a legal fashion, they should be left to enjoy it for personal use in any way they see fit.  Essentially this exists only because it can.  Imagine if you purchased a car and were told you could only drive it on certain roads, you wouldn’t be very happy, and this is exactly what DRM does.

Whenever possible, we highly recommend you support DRM-free alternatives.