There are only two problems with it, one, it isn’t available yet and two, when it is available it will be $895USD.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to do so I phoned their help line, no luck, the offices were closed. This was a Saturday, so I had to wait till Monday. I checked through the forums and found some hope; some people had moved from Windows to Macs and the company had allowed them to download OS X versions for free.

Finally, I stumbled across a technical help forum where I could post my problem. By Monday morning, one of their reps had posted a link where I could download the Mac version. Thanks guys.

In addition to being very helpful, e-on offers an amazing way of moving through their software. At the bottom they have Vue Easel. I don’t recommend it as it has to many limitations. Next in line is Vue Esprit. I purchased Easel while it was on sale for $49.00 and quickly found its limitations. I was then able to sidegrade to Esprit for $99.00, the purchase price is $199. So I was able to save money.

The next product in line is Vue Pro Studio, priced at $399. However, if you can’t afford 400 dollars, you can purchase Esprit and slowly upgrade. Esprit’s base functionality can be expanded through the use of 5 add-on modules. Once you have all the modules, you have Pro Studio. Now upgrading via the modules is more expensive then a straight sidegrade, but it does allow you to do it over time.

Once you have Pro Studio, the jump to their Professional level software, Vue Infinite, is a mere sidegrade of $299 ($795 regular price). In the end, you probably end up spending more, but it does allow for a nice upgrade path over time. Also, the company has a habit of putting their software on sale on a regular basis, making it even easier to break into the world of 3d animation. A field that is notoriously expensive.

Imagine if more companies offered this kind of flexibility with their products. It would probably cut down on the amount of warez and illegal downloading of software that goes on because people could afford it by buying the lower end products and then slowly working their way up as they learned the application.

For a .ca domain name, the process is a little more involved. Once you find the name you want, you have to prove why you want it. Apparently, .ca names must maintain a very direct connection to Canada. This means you have to be a Canadian company, part of the government, a Canadian non-profit organization or a Canadian citizen. The next step is to register with CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. This involves going to a completely different website and agreeing to five (5) pages worth of agreement policies.

At the end of the five pages, they have a paragraph which basically says that even if you didn’t read the preceding five, very long pages, you are still agreeing to them, and therefore, legally bound to whatever the five pages said. As you can tell, I did not read any of what I as agreeing to.

Once you register with CIRA and complete that insanely long process, then you can complete your registration. Eventually you pay them some money and you are done. Well, almost. Nowhere during the registration process are you asked to enter DNS information (at least on the webnames.ca website). This you have to figure out for yourself after the fact.

This is the part that infuriated me the most. I think this is Webnames.ca’s attempt to trick you into hosting the website with them. If searched around and finally found the spot to enter my DNS info. This was less then obvious. This ensures that .ca names must be registered by knowledgeable web professionals.

Bottom line, find somewhere else to register .ca domain names with other then webnames.ca. Or better yet, just get a .com domain and keep life simpler (and cheaper).

I use Google’s Gmail client. I have not opened a desktop email app in about a year. I originally made the switch because I was using several different computers and traveling a lot. Using Gmail allowed me to send and received email wherever I was on whatever computer I was using. The downside to this convenience is that I do not have a local backup of all my emails. A problem that is easily fixed for email, but not so easily done for things like calendars and news readers.

In addition to Gmail, I use — 37signals’ Backpack and Highrise, Google reader, and Google Calendar. The data in the apps is not as easily replicated without entering it twice.

The last area I have been thinking about is online backups. I have looked at two companies; Mozy.com (I am trying their free account now) and ElephantDrive.com. Both have very attractive plans at reasonable rates. The upside is that they provide offsite backup which is good to have. The downside is that if I ever loose my data locally, I may have to download 50 Gigs of data one file at a time. It almost makes more sense to buy a terabyte drive, fill it up, and store it in a bank vault.

The question I would like to pose is what do people think, do you use online applications or do you put all your data on your computer? In this age of online computing, does it makes sense to have all your data online, or is there still a place for desktop email clients and news readers?