Ever wanted to have your own online store, but had absolutely no clue how to do it?  Leave it to Google to come up with possible one the simpliest, and cheapest, solutions ever.

According to an announcement on the Google Docs blog, there is now a system to use a simple spreadsheet in Google Docs to tie in with Google Checkout and create your own online store in three steps, or just a matter of minutes.

1. Sign up for Google Checkout
2. List products you want to sell in a Google spreadsheet
3. Place the Google Checkout store gadget on your website. (Also supported: Google Sites, Blogger, and iGoogle).

Seeing as this can be used with sites such as Blogger, which is a free blogging service from Google, every one under the sun now has the ability to open their own online store completely for free.

If you haven’t heard of Google Checkout, don’t feel bad, this is exactly why Google created this system.  This online payment system was supposed to be Google’s answer to PayPal, but it has failed to gain much traction over the past few years of its existence.  Since one of the biggest barriers to starting an online store is figuring out accepting credit cards, Google handles all of that for you without a whole lot of hassle.

While this is not a solution for people with hundreds or thousands of products to sell, it is perfect for your smaller sellers who make handmade items, have only a few items related to their blog or site and so on.  This could also be a good avenue for the ever growing number of people disenchanted with with eBay.

We here at StarterTech plan on creating a small store with this ner service for another site very soon, and once we do we will post a full review here for everyone to check out.

According to Mozilla, Firefox is about to cross the one billion downloads mark.

Launched in 2002, Mozilla’s browsers went through a few different names, and finally becaome Firefox oficially in 2005.  The number obviously represents total downloads and not unique users.  Heck, I alone have probably downloaded 30 or more copies of those one billion.

If you want to watch this milestone happen you can follow TwitterCounter on Twitter to watch the number grow.  After they pass the number you can head to OneBillionPlusYou.com for a retrospective of the browser ans other information.

While this number may be small compared to Internet Explorer, you have to remember that you have to choose to download Firefox, so this is one billion download decisions.  Kudos to them on this amazing achievement.

If you are using any version of Internet Explorer, you need to apply a security patch immediately.

Microsoft has discovered a previously unknown security flaw in every version of Internet Explorer since 5.01 that will allow hackers to execute remote code on your computer.  In every day terms this means that just visiting a web site with malicious code installed could push a malicious program in to your system and take control of your system, steal personal information, use your system to send out spam emails and more.

Here is what Microsoft has to say about the situation from their security bulletin:

This security update also resolves three privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. These vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, running on supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000; Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows XP; Critical for Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows Vista; Moderate for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows Server 2003; and Moderate for Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows Server 2008. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The security update addresses these vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Internet Explorer handles objects in memory and table operations.

Let us stress that this is a CRITICAL UPDATE. Do not waste time, install this update immediately.  If you go and look at the chart they provided, you will see that there is no combination of Windows operating system and Internet Explorer since version 5.01 that is not impacted by this flaw.  (This seems like a good time to yet again mention, just change to a different browser that is more secure from step 1)

AudioMicro has added 55,000 new sound effects to its already massive catalog of music and sounds, but this new batch has an added edge in that they are all ones you’ve probably heard before.

Up until now AudioMicro has had only a smattering of professional music and sound effects, but with the announcement of a new partnership with The Hollywood Edge sound library, users now have access to over 55,000 sound effects from movies such as Kill Bill, Braveheart and Fast and Furious to name just a few.

These new, professionally created, sounds have the same pricing as any other clip on the site, and they also have the standard royalty-free licensing that all of the other clips on the site have.

In the day and age where videos are getting pulled off of sites like YouTube at an ever increasing rate due to copyright issues, royalty free is the way to go for your music and sound effects.  Who wants to pour all that work in to a video just to have it pulled down over a five second sound of a sword whipping through the air?

It seems there is a lot more going on with this new Apple Tablet than a lot of people suspected at first.

According to the Financial Times (free registration required), not only is the tablet basically an over-sized iPod, but it is going to be an ebook reader.  Speaking to multiple sources, the paper found out that the device is codenamed “Cocktail”, and that Apple is in active negotiations with major book publishers about supplying the new device with content.

If these rumors prove to be true, this would be a direct, and probablys serious, blow to Amazon’s popular Kindle reader.  Seeing as Amazon is insisting on sticking with a gray scale screen at this time, the uses for textbooks and magazines has been somewhat limited.  The “Cocktail” would be launching with a multitouch color screen, and could be quickly adapted to serving up textbooks all across various school systems.  Imagine susbscribing to a paper like USA Today or Time magazine and having it delivered to a full color, zoomable, multitouch screen.  You quickly begin to see the distinct advantages this device would have over the Kindle.

There are also reports that timed to coincide with the launch of this new device will be a new music deal being struck with the four biggest record labels (EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music Group) that would give you bonuses for buying full albums as opposed to inividual tracks.  You could be treated to an interactive booklet, liner notes, lyrics, videos and more.

Word is that the new device will release in September with the traditional refresh of iPods, placing it in perfect position for the holiday shopping season.  Parents may as well start lining up now for what is sure to be one of the most in-demand items with consumers of all ages this holiday shopping season.

If you’re to believe senior officials at the United States Postal Service, we are in the end times and that nasty, evil Internet is to blame!

According to an article from The Washington Post, the United States Postal Service is seeing its volume drop off so fast that even after an increase in rates earlier this year, there will be a loss posted for this year.  To try to combat these losses the service is removing over 100,000 drop off boxes that receive less than 25 pieces of mail per day, cutting office hours, combining delivery routes, placing hiring and raise freezes and lobbying congress to let them reduce home delivery days from six days a week to just five.

While the tone of the article, and various statements by senior postal officials, all seem to point to the reason being the Internet and email, but I think that is disingenuous at best.  There is no denying that it is indeed having some effect as people are paying bills online, sending ecards as opposed to physical birthday cards and so on, but there are also a lot of financial reasons for people to no longer send mail.

Big Dogs, one of the advertisers here on StarterTech, has stopped mailing out printed catalogs citing printing and postage costs.  Banks are reducing mailing volume in droves, and are even mentioned in the original article we linked to as desperately trying to get away from sending any mail at all.  I can speak from a personal point of view that just yesterday the only piece of snail mail I received was my copy of The Wall Street Journal.  I can not tell you the last time I received only 1 piece of mail or none at all.  We normally are drowning in the amount of mail we receive here at the StarterTech office, but the volume has been steadily declining.

There is also the aspect that companies are making an effort to go more green, and any reduction in the amount of paper used is certainly a step in that direction.

Something the Postal Service needs to consider is that raising the price for postage while also reducing the number of services customers get for their money may also be a factor.  Reducing the number of delivery days?  That’s another factor that certainly will factor into how much people want to use the service.  ”Gee, I can send an email that will get there in seconds, or can I send it by snail mail and… oops, my drop box is gone… oops, my office closed before I got there… oops, it didn’t make it there before the weekend.”

Increasing prices will reducing services is not usually a formula for success when you have a competitor that is about as close to free as you can get.

It looks like those rumors of a 10 inch Apple tablet device are shaping up to be more than rumors.

Back in March we mentioned rumors of a 10″ iPod Touch, well as time has progressed the rumor just won’t die, although it is now more commonly referred to as the “Apple Tablet”.  Well with a new report from AppleInsider, who name their sources as “people well-respected by AppleInsider for their striking accuracy in Apple’s internal affairs”, it appears more and more likely that this device will soon be a reality.

Everything is pointing to a release in the first quarter of 2010, and the device will have some form of 3G connectivity for Internet access while on the go.  It is also rumored that Verizon will be the carrier for the device, but no one is confirming those claims.

The rumors began when word started to leak out that Apple was buying up large supplies of 10″ touchscreens, but as with all Apple products, you never know for sure what they are up to.  Word is that the product has been in development for four years and has been stopped and started by Steve Jobs, CEO of the company, several times as he was not happy with the various iterations of the product.

Suspicions are running high that we will see the announcement in September at the annual iPod press event, but that is speculation just like everything else.  The scary part is the rumored price of $800, but if it is truly 3G, you may see the cellular carrier of choice subsidize the cost with the usual 2 year contract situation.

Only time will tell how much of this proes to be true, but it sure is looking likely at this point.

If you are one of the hundreds of millions of users of Windows XP users in the world, you might want to think twice before even pondering the idea of upgrading to Windows 7.

Walt Mossberg, the man behind the All Things D column at The Wall Street Journal, released a video about the pain Windows XP users will suffer when trying to upgrade their current computers to Windows 7.  The bottom line?  Buy a new computer.

While Windows Vista users will probably have a painless upgrade experience (about the only painless experience Vista users have ever had), Windows XP users have no direct route to doing so, and the only workarounds involve a ton of work.  Feel like wiping your entire hard drive and having to reinstall every program?  Yeah, that kind of painful.

Basically there is no official support for XP users to upgrade, but it is possible.  Mr. Mossberg goes in to far greater detail in the video below, but at the end of it you will just be saying, “… I think I’ll just buy a new one instead…”

Google has updated Google Maps for mobiles to add new layers that will bring even more functionality to the popular mobile application.

According to the Google Mobile blog, starting with the new  version 3.2 of Google Maps for mobile devices, you can add locations to a route from your desktop and then access them from you mobile device so you have the information on the go.  Make notes of places to stop along a route you take driving, walking, running or whatever and you’ll never forget it.

If you end up in a new area unexpectedly, you can access the Wikipedia information for the area to find interesting place to go.  If you prefer you can just search for types of places you are looking for, or just browse various categories to try to narrow your results.

So far the new version is only available for Symbian S60 phones and Windows Mobile devices.  There are plans to roll it out to other platforms, but no release dates were announced, or even what platforms they will be doing for sure.

Google has added yet another feature to its popular Gmail application, and this may be one of the most welcome ones yet.

Everyone has ended up on a mailing that seems to be impossible to get off of.  For me it was a Major League Baseball list when I helped a friend vote for her team in the All-Star game a few years back.  No matter how many times I have gone through the unsubscribe process, it has never taken.  Well, now Gmail is going to handle all of that for me.

Lifehacker got a reader tip about an Auto-unsubscribe feature that just showed up in the help pages of Gmail with no fanfare.  The description of the feature is pretty straight forward:

We don’t think you should be burdened with managing messages you don’t want to receive. We do our best to put messages in Spam when we’re pretty sure you won’t want or need them. But everyone has different preferences about the mail they want to see. You may not want to read any messages sent by a certain company or mailing list, while another Gmail user finds these same messages to be valuable.

To help solve this problem, we’re providing you with an unsubscribe tool for some messages. You’ll see the unsubscribe tool when you mark a message from particular types of mailing lists as spam. If the particular message is a misuse of a mailing list you like to receive, you can Report spam as usual. But if you never want to receive another message or newsletter from that list again, click Unsubscribe instead. We’ll send a request to the sender that your email address be removed from the list. It’s that simple!

This is a feature that has been needed for years in email programs everywhere, and I can’t wait to try it out