I usually admire Microsoft in equal measure to how much it annoys me, but today the balance is seriously in favor of annoyance. The reason? I foolishly installed Microsoft's Office Live Workspace Beta some time ago and then got sidetracked. Thus it was that I ignored the system … at least until it removed my Autotext entries.

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Last year I reviewed the Pogoplug from Cloud Engines.

To recap, the Pogoplug is a low-end, personal Network Attached Storage (NAS) server (you have to add your own USB drives) that can be accessed from your local network or from anywhere on the Internet. The Pogoplug also provides access controls and can even run applications. In short, it is way cool.

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This week I must first direct you to a classic bit of geek entertainment from the world of chemistry, a blog entry by Derek Lowe on Corante.com titled "Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride".

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A few weeks ago I discussed the Synology RackStation RS409+, a 1U rack-mount network-attached storage device that I absolutely loved because Synology managed to get so much into one really well-integrated package.

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You've got cameras all over your facility. There are cameras in reception, the loading bay, the hallways, the data center … pretty much everywhere, and you accumulate footage by the gigabyte every day.

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If you had to pick a technology, excluding software, that has caused the biggest transformation of personal productivity, what would you select?

Microsoft Office? Nope, I said not software … come on people!

Laptops? Possibly. Definitely a leading transformer for freeing us from being desk-bound, but the leading one? I think not.

OK, how about GPS? Nope, definitely huge but not the biggest. Pad- or tablet-style computers? Too soon to tell.

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Online privacy is a hot topic and the accuracy and detail with which you can be tracked as you bounce from Web site to Web site should be an issue of great concern to both consumers and corporate IT.

Many people say they don't really care about being tracked, arguing that they have nothing to hide about where they browse and with whom they communicate, so nothing needs to be kept private.

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A few weeks ago I discussed drawing tools and reviewed SmartDraw 2010 Professional. At the time I wrote that the only significant problems I had with SmartDraw were that it was fussy about where it allowed you to install it, and that to import Visio diagrams, Visio had to be installed. I awarded SmartDraw a rating of 4.5 out of 5 but I hereby reduce that to a rating of 4.

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In last week's exciting installment of Gearhead I mentioned PhraseExpress published by Bartels Media GmbH and I need to correct something I wrote.

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This week it's time to start the New Year by clearing out the cobwebs from the corners of the Gibbs Universal Industries Secret Underground Bunker.

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