Personal computers were supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, these beasts have turned us all into part-time IT administrators, our lives given over to downloading upgrades, installing patches and updates and drivers and antispyware, decrypting error messages and screaming at stalled applications. Enough! The folks at Zonbu, a tiny firm in Menlo Park, Calif., think they've produced the answer...

The best innovations tend to be cheap and disruptive. Hand in hand as they're usually found, these characteristics go some way to explaining why I like the EeePC (Asus's new laptop) so much. The other reasons are obvious, it's small, it's light, it has WiFi, Firefox and Open Office, and judging by the reactions of those who saw Paul and I with them at Bar Camp Leeds, it's cool enough for everyone to want one!

Make Tech Easier recently wrote a guide on setting up a program called SBackup to automatically backup all of your important files to another place. There is no major news with SBackup, but it made me realize the importance of Linux distributions including an easy-to-use GUI application to make backups easy.

"Licenses are in the news everywhere this month. The SLFC takes on Verizon for violating the GPL. The FSF releases the Affero GPL and a handy new guide to the GPLv3. The FSF, Creative Commons, and the Wikipedia Foundation agree to make the GFDL compatible with the CC BY-SA. GNOME is the other big newsmaker. A new GNOME Journal, a D-Bus debugger, GUADEC video, GNOME Foundation elections, and GNOME news about FOSDEM 2008. All the usual topics are covered as well..."

"...In the early computer lab at MIT where "computer hacking" first began, all software was free. There was a drawer next to the console where all computer programs were deposited. Anyone working on the computer could take those programs out of the drawer, copy them, run them, modify them and put their version back in the drawer so that anyone else could do the same things. That system of free sharing and collaboration worked extremely well in an academic environment and was the default model for early computer science..."

"The escalating demand for field service and installation engineers with an awareness of customer service techniques reflects a continued focus by the IT sector on adding customer value, a competitive edge and identifying new business opportunities through field service operations," said Chris Short, managing director of IT recruitment firm Concept IT.

When I hear "mail merge," I usually think of personalizing letters and printing envelopes. However, many other projects can make use of mail merge. This year I tackled a new Christmas gift project by using mail merge in OpenOffice.org (OOo) to create a tear-off daily calendar, personalized with holidays and family events. Here's how.

"On 10th of December 2007, if you’re interested (or addicted) to Ruby on Rails, and present in Paris (France) there are two events..."