I am showing my co-worker, Alex, how I can blog in text entered with the pen, as well as in ink on the screen via email to dasBlog. 

By the way - this is nothing new... I did the same thing over a year and a half ago (see links below), but it still gets a bit of a "wow, that's cool" reaction.

Also did pretty much the same thing a few times from OneNote (which tends to group multiple images in a confusing way to try to avoid positioning problem unless you tell it not to, by the way):

• http://www.greghughes.net/rant/BlogEntryDirectlyFromOneNote.aspx
• http://www.greghughes.net/rant/VeryInterestingMoreOnOneNoteBloggingTrials.aspx
• http://www.greghughes.net/rant/BloggingOneNoteAndAudio.aspx

Hopefully you don't need this advice because you've been victimized, but this is something everyone should know.

If you ever become a victim of online fraud or any other form of fraud where you believe or know your personal information has been obtained or used improperly, there are a number of things you need to do. Microsoft's Security at Home team has put together a list of things you should do. They include:

• Close any affected accounts - both verbally on the phone and in documented written form
• Place a fraud alert on your credit reports - will all the credit reporting agencies
• Contact the proper authorities - both federal (FTC) and local (police or sheriff's office)
• Record and save everything - document, document, document

That's all good advice in general. Additional resources and more specific information is available on their web site.

My favorite RSS aggregator, FeedDemon, has just had an update pushed out in beta form. Existing registered users of FeedDemon can run the beta (warts and all) now.

And there's a whole slew of add/changes/fixes in this beta release from v1.5, all of which can be read on the release notes page.

The announcement from Nick is here. A download link is on that page.

New in this beta release is greatly enhanced synchronization with NewsGator. In a matter of seconds I got my NewsGator account hooked up to FeedDemon and was on my way.

Also, you can update all your feeds - across your subscription folders -at once. Nice!

And it looks great, too. "Surfer" is definitely my new newspaper style. I can group and sort inside the newspaper, and can choose whether I want to view full, short or no descriptions. Very slick.

Great job Nick!

Update: Part two of this review is here. Part three is here.

Just in time, since my old laptop's hard drive just started making shhhpppppttt-CLACK!!! sounds (sure sign of impending hard drive death and doom), an IBM X41 Tablet PC arrived on my desk this morning for testing and evaluation. I'm doing more and more travelling, so a single-machine solution with killer battery life and compact size is of interest to me nowadays.

Anyhow... So I've spent the last half a day between meetings and conference calls with a new X41T. That and backing up the old machine.

So what's it like? Well, let me just say this: "Finally – a Tablet PC that really makes me really want to have and use a Tablet PC."

Keep in mind, I’ve been using Tablet PCs ever since the TC1000 came out a couple or so years ago. Since then, I have primarily been using an Acer C300-series Tablet. That’s the one with the sick hard drive. A week or so ago I wrote about past experiences and how much I use the Acer machine. I also wrote about my thoughts spawned by an Engadget article that asked "How would you change the Tablet PC?"

While the X41T doesn't have all the things in my wish list, what it does have is quality and well-put-together.

Initial thoughts:

• This one has the biometric fingerprint reader. Cool, and it actually works.
• The red eraser/nub/pointing device will take some serious getting used to. Touchpad would be better.
• /me likes the keyboard - ThinkPad keyboards rock.
• Nice display, wide viewing angle, matte finish reduces glare nicely but doesn't sacrifice contrast. Needs to be higher than 1024x768 resolution, but I'll live.
• It's really light and really sturdy. Even with the extended battery I have on it. In fact the 8-cell battery makes it easy to handle when walking around with it, due to the ergonomic shape (OMG did really I just type "ergonomic???" Aaagh!)
• Seems to be speedy and snappy in terms of processing and computing power. I have a gig of RAM in this one.
• The hard drive is this goofy new short/stubby model, not something you can easily replace with another available standard notebook hard drive.
• Overall, impressive!

I'll have to live and work with this thing for a while, and then document some more thoughts. For now, the honeymoon has started and so far it's a lot of fun. But don't read anything into that.

More to come...

WHAT YOU SAY???

Zero Wing meets Star Wars in the English translation of the Chinese translation of the English version of Revenge of the Sith, a.k.a. "Backstroke of the West."

Click here for full details and a bunch of laughs. It gets fairly colorful.

[via Rory]

Over on Microsoft's Channel 9, Scoble's posted a new video of Kim Cameron, who has a weblog called the Identity Blog. He discusses identity and trust, and what it will take to build a single-experience trusted system for common identification. It's an interesting conversation. I've read his weblog for a while now, so it's good to see him speak about this.

"Identity is like the Hotel California of Technology - you can come but you can never leave. We have a lot of work to do."

This is a topic that is near and dear to my professional heart. Identity protection and theft is something I deal with every day. It's complicated. It's not easy. It's a goose chase at times. There are almost no standards. But it's of great importance right now. The people I manage and work with are super-talented and are building a couple terrific pieces of security software right now, software intended to protect people who do critical personal transactions on the Internet, and to catch the bad guys that try to steal and use your personal information.

Where I work we are charged with protecting the identities and assets of people who are doing critical financial transactions with their banks and credit unions. To us this stuff matters - it matters a lot. And it should matter to anyone that's doing business on the 'net and everyone who writes software used to do business on the 'net.

"It's impossible to be too paranoid about this ... We have to be paranoid."

The video is about 55 minutes, and it's worth the time for people who are concerned (or who should be concerned) about the topic. You'll need to get about two-thirds of the way through it til you get to Cameron's "Laws of Identity," which are akin to pure gold in their simplicity. Go watch.