Telstra Business Womens Awards

Wow - I've been shortlisted as 1 of 6 in my category in Vic for the Telstra Business Womens Awards! (Westpac Business Owners Category).
Mr Megabyte compiled my entry without my knowledge until the last couple of days when he needed me to locate various documents required for the submission. He was a very proud byte! And so am I!

Next steps? There is an interview in the 1st week of September for the 6 shortlisted women and they'll announce the finalists soon after that!

Last year, the category winner was Diana Williams who founded Fernwood Fitness Clubs. She then went on to win the the Victorian Business Woman of the Year award and the overall National award. The year before it was Janine Allis for the category, for Victoria AND Nationally.

Very exciting!

9am with david and kim - Windows Media Center PC

I've been overrun with interest since the segment this morning on Channel 10 re: the Windows Media Center edition. You'll find the Inside Info at the 9am website but here's some further info for you. Also visit my first Blog entry on the subject.

Windows Media Center Edition (WMCE) is a version of Windows - an alternative to Windows XP. You don't buy it and install it on your existing PC (yes, yes, some tech heads will and yay to them!, but not the average person). The next time you're going to buy a computer for home, you should get one that comes with WMCE installed.

Then, you put the PC in the study or office and you can do some of these very cool things:

• Load up your entire CD collection to the hard drive.. the computer goes to the Internet to download the cover art automatically.
• Store your entire photo library
• Hook up your digital video camera and import video to edit into home movies

THEN - you get an xBox games console, connect that up to your ampliphier and TV in the lounge room and use the groovy remote control to drive it. It communicates wirelessly with the Media Center PC in the office, serving up your music, photos, video and TV!

• You can watch, pause and record live TV (DIRECT TO THE HARD DRIVE.. no tapes!).
• The recording feature is excellent because you can set the unit to record 'every day' or 'every monday' or 'every weekend day'. If you want to start watching a show that hasn't finished recording, you CAN.. the PC continues recording the rest and you can catch up by fast forwarding through the ads! (my favourite feature!.. although I must say that 1x fast forward is too slow and 2x fast forward is too fast.)
• Once you've got some things recorded to the hard drive, you can make DVD's! (it's quite slow.. taking about 40mins to put a 1.5hr show onto a DVD I made recently.. but it was worth the wait!).

The PC I've been testing and that I had on set is the Optima AV.

Tell me about you...

1. What frustrates you most about the computer?
2. What do you want to know more about, computer-wise?
3. Imagine a world without computers - describe it in one word...

my answers:

1. When it's slow I could pull my hair out!
2. How to find the very best, easiest e-commerce option for my customers.
3. SLOW!

... you?