Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

If you own a laptop or a notebook equipped with an Intel Centrino processor, you need to manually install a patch NOW, or your computer could be taken over by anyone with some technical savvy. Oh, by the way, if you have already installed the patch, keep reading. You are not out of the woods yet.

Over the past week, a vulnerability has been exposed in Intel’s PROSet wireless networking software that comes preinstalled on all notebook computers equipped with an Intel Centrino processor. Apparently, there is a security flaw in the PROSet wireless software that can allow an unauthorized user to take complete control of a laptop or notebook computer that is equipped with an Intel Centrino processor. You can download the Schrock Innovatiosn “Detect and Patch” utility here to see if your system is effected.

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In April of 2005 I brought you a story on our radio show Compute This (Saturdays from 10-11 in Lincoln, NE) about a small Fremont law firm that managed to successfully sue Microsoft for 22.6 million for anti-competitive practices in the state of Nebraska.You can listen to the archived interview here.

Microsoft settled the class action suit and agreed to pay 50% of any unclaimed funds from the settlement in the form of technology vouchers to Nebraska’s public schools. Schools were awarded the vouchers based upon need as measured by participation in the Federal School Lunch Program.

Based on those calculations, the Omaha World Herald reported today that Omaha Public Schools was awarded $4.05 Million after filing some grueling paperwork to prove that they were qualified to receive the funds under the settlement.

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Today on Compute This I had the opportunity to speak on the air with Jeff Schwartz, of the Law Offices of Manuel H. Miller from California. Jeff is the attorney who is working to assemble a class action lawsuit against the makers of the MovieLand, MoviePass, and Popcorn.net spyware infections.

For those of you who are not aware, these three software programs solicit people on the web to install a “free” 3-day trial service that allows them to download movies and other media files from the Internet. However, unless you cancel the 3-day trial before it expires, you will be haunted by continual pop-ups that nearly debilitate your computer until you pay their subscription fees.

If you missed the show, you can listen to the entire interview here.

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With everything going on this past week, Microsoft’s visit to Omaha for a technical seminar was unfortunately buried in the news. However, our own Blaze was in attendance and asked the questions our customers have passed to us about Office 2007 and Vista over the past few months.

The question I have been asked more often than not is how much the products would cost. The question caught the presenter off guard, as he seemed very qualified to speak to the technical aspects of the software rather than the business and supply channel plans. He told Blaze that he was not absolutely certain, but he could not imagine Vista costing more than Windows XP does now.

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As many of you heard, Schrock Innovations began accepting E-waste (old computers and computer equipment) at no cost early this month from businesses and consumers. Many people believe that we are making a profit on sending E-Waste to recycling facilities, despite my comments to the contrary.

Unfortunately circumstances which I did not anticipate are forcing us to make changes to our recycling program. Some of these situations include two of our local Lincoln competitors who took advantage of our recycling program by dropping more than 10 truckloads of computer waste in front of our door in the dead of night. Additionally, we have had two prowlers and two attempted burglaries in the past week alone. Because of situations like this, we must take steps to limit the scope of what we will accept in our recycling program.

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I was just informed today that Schrock Innovations was voted the #1 Independent Computer Repair Company in the 2006 KFOR Best of Lincoln Survey for the 4th year in a row! Thank you to all of our radio show listeners and KFOR fans who voted for us.

This year we will be trying something new with the radio show. Typically we move to Sunday mornings during the Husker season to avoid any potential conflicts with football game coverage. this year we are going to buck that trend and stay on at 10:00 on Saturday mornings. Listeners have told us that they lose track of our show for a few weeks when we move to Sundays, and again when we move back to Saturdays after the season concludes (hopefully in January this year!).

We understand that priorities are priorities, so we will continue to make our previous radio shows available free of advertising on our website. In addition, we will be having special “Game Day Only” sales that offer products and services at drastically reduces prices, but only on that Saturday from 12-5.

I had the opportunity to listen in person to Steve Pederson talk about the outlook for the Husker season off camera, and he managed to get me fired up for this year’s team. Go Huskers, and thank you for making Schrock Innovations #1 in Lincoln again!

Channel 10/11 stopped by the Lincoln Service Center today to interview someone about Dell recalling 4.1 million batteries that could overheat and explode. The batteries, made by Sony, span more than 4 years of Dell notebook computers.

I was giving prepared remarks at the LIBA Luncheon, so Blaze filed in for me and did an outstanding job. You can watch the entire interview on the Schrock Innovations website.

Today the Lincoln Business Journal ran an article on how to pick the right e-commerce consultant or company for your business. We have done some e-commerce work for our clients, so the Lincoln Business Journal asked me to answer a few questions.

The article is full of useful information if you are planning on establishing an e-commerce presence on the web. Pick up a copy if you get a chance!

Schrock Innovations is sponsoring August’s LIBA Lunch meeting next Tuesday. I will be addressing the membership about the often underestimated value of a website as part of a well rounded marketing plan. I also had a corresponding article published as part of this month’s LIBA Magazine that is mailed to the membership.

Although the majority of my prepared remarks have been ready for well over 2 weeks, I will have an 8 lb 12 oz. helper who will help me drive home the value of a well constructed and deployed website.

My wife and I adopted our son, Jacob nine days ago. Jacob’s birthmother found us by doing a Google web search for Nebraska Open Adoption. Our website was the first result – ranking higher than adoption.com and the state of Nebraska adoption pages.

After Jacob’s birthmother looked over our website, she decided to give us a call and introduce herself. We were shocked and thrilled that our website had attracted a birthmother for us. In fact, at first we thought this was some sort of scam. Our fears proved to be unfounded and 8 days later we were parents.

Now when prospective clients mention Search engine Optimization, I smile and tell them if it was good enough to get me my son, it should be good enough to generate a few sales leads for your company too.

Steve Pederson is the guest speaker at the luncheon on Tuesday. I strongly encourage LIBA members to attend the lunch if possible this month. Steve plans on giving us a Husker update, which should be interesting given all of the recent excitement on the team.

Easton Herd and Andrew Garroni, the men behind the MoviePass spyware infection, have spun their software off under a new name in an attempt to lure more unsuspecting victims into 3-day trials of the new Popcorn.net Download Manager service. You can view complete Popcorn.net removal instructions on the Schrock Innovations website.

MoviePass has earned a reputation across the Internet as deceptive software that collected unreasonable information about the computers on which it was installed. The MoviePass software was distributed by luring visitors with a free 3-day trial of the movie and video download service. If the user failed to cancel their subscription before the end of the trial, they would be billed for the service whether they wanted it or not. Those who refused to pay were haunted by near continuous pop-up messages that plagued their PCs and slowed their productivity.

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