Normally, when I fill this space with great gadgets, I talk about devices that are useful to mobile business professionals. I’ve discussed a laptop, a flash drive, and a digital camera, among other things. Seeing how today is a holiday — Thanksgiving here in Canada and Columbus Day in the States — I figured I’d have a little more fun and go for something distinctly casual.

The Wi-Fi Detector T-Shirt from ThinkGeek is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a basic black cotton tee, but the emblem on the front is fully animated and illuminated, indicating the relative signal strength of any Wi-Fi network in the area. Unlike many handheld WiFi sniffers, unfortunately, the t-shirt won’t tell you the name of the network, what encryption it’s running, or even if it’s connected to the web. But hey, if you want to be completely geeked out, it doesn’t get much geekier that showing the world if there’s a Wi-Fi network in the area.

The animated emblem, along with the pack that holds the three AA batteries required to power the device, can be removed when it comes time to put the shirt through the wash. The Wi-Fi Detector Shirt probably isn’t the most useful gadget you’ll come across, but it certainly is one of the most fun.

Buy it from ThinkGeek for $29.99.

We are currently evaluating various Enterprise Open Source software soluions. Every host out there seems to be jumping on the Exchange/SharePoint wagon as the be all end all Software as a Service (SaaS) hosting solution. BlueFur.com is going to take a different approach. We are going to look into the other Open Source solutions that can run on Linux and then pass those savings on to businesses.

Some of the software we are currently testing are…

Coloboration/Groupware Solutions
- Open-Xchange
- Zimbra
- WordPress and WordPress MU
- Trac

Customer Relationship Management
- SugarCRM
- XRMS
- vtiger

Content Management Solutions
- Joomla
- Drupal
- Mambo

Enterprise Resource Planning
- webERP
- ERP5

eLearning
- Moodle

Streaming Content
- Shoutcast
- Icecast

Once we have these tested these solutions we will be adding it to our site with more details. All of these will be run on managed dedicated servers. They will include free install and upgrades to the software.

What do you think? If you have any feedback or suggestions let us know.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Christian who scored on our Movie Geek of the Week questions. This weeks questions are Star Wars related:

1.  What tiny life forms communicate with the force in one’s body?

2.  What color is Mace Windu’s lightsaber in Episode II: Attack of the Clones?

3.  Who was Luke’s father?

4.  What is the first Star Wars film in which Yoda is completely computer-generated?

5.  What was Luke’s call sign during the Battle of Yavin?

I know every site owner thinks that they could improve their own site. Your content could be more compelling to convince visitors to buy or visit more often. The look of your site could be a bit more polished. The functionality of your site could improve with various scripts. Also if only your site was search engine friendly to get more traffic to your site.

When you decided to make improvements to your site which one is more important?

Depending who you ask I am sure you will get a different answer on which one is a priority. When it comes to sites I believe that order of priorities are functionality (programming), design, content and then search engine optimization in that order.

What order would your priorities be and why?

If you are just starting out then it is a key to your success to not choose a generic name for your business. Avoid a name like Langley Mortgages or Vancouver Meat Packers. These names are a recipe for disaster for your business. I know your thinking that these business names tell you exactly what our business does and that makes my marketing easier.

The problem with these generic company names are that they are very hard to brand. The other problem is that although you would think they are easier to remember, where in fact they are easier to forget. The human brain will skip over generic company names and seek to remember company names that stand out. Do any of the following business names sound generic to you?

• Ford
• Coke
• Microsoft

Okay so your not a large company with a large budget to do branding. Well believe it or not creating a unique business name is not really that hard. It just takes a bit of time and research. If for example you were to find out that Langley is known for horses you could maybe name a Mortgage business as ‘The Mortgage Whisper’. Can you think of any unique names that would work for a mortgage business?

When choosing our own name Blue Fur we went through many business names that could have worked. For example we considered; Tiny Hosting, Totem Hosting, Ocean Side Hosting. All of these names seemed very generic and were again hard to brand. Also looking at the top competitors globally none of the top 10 had the word hosting in their business name.

If you already have a generic business name then I would suggest you consider finding a new name and start your rebranding today. Need help choosing a unique business name? Post your current business name and maybe our community can help.

Ah yes, it’s another Friday, but this Friday is special. Why? Because it’s the last working day before the long weekend! Up here in Canada, Monday is Thanksgiving and down in the United States, the same day is Columbus Day. Whatever the case, most people are going to have the day off to spend with family, eat some turkey, and probably fall asleep on the couch afterwards. It’s going to be a good weekend, so let’s kick it off with five great posts I found in the blogosphere this week.

The Roberto Luongo Official Fan Blog has unearthed a whole smattering of pictures showing Roberto Luongo’s new hockey mask. For those of you who aren’t into hockey, Roberto Luongo is the star goaltender for the Vancouver Canucks. On his new mask, you’ll notice that he has an “angry” Johnny Canuck featured on his forehead, flanked by the Vancouver skyline on either side. It’s also notable that Roberto has ditched the Pink Panther altogether, saying that it’s “time to move on.” On a related note, Slap Shot Squad launched yesterday, so check that out too.

Bob Buskirk has officially declared that AGLOCO is dead. When the firm behind AllAdvantage first announced that they would be jumping back into the ad toolbar game, people were saying that they might actually make it this time around. John Chow was one of AGLOCO’s biggest proponents, signing up thousands of users for them. Unfortunately, the payout scheme has really worked out and that’s why Buskirk has given up on the toolbar.

Become An Affiliate usually tells you how you can succeed through that style of marketing, but in a more recent post, the blog dishes out 3 ways to fail at affiliate marketing. I guess the first part of knowing how to succeed is knowing how to avoid failure. There’s more to selling than convincing people to buy.

Google Lady has some good news for Adsense publishers who don’t have the patience to wait for a cheque (check) in the mail. The popular CPC advertising network has now teamed up with Western Union to provide near instant payments to its publishers. The downside is that this new service isn’t available to everyone. Check the Google Lady’s post for a list of countries.

The Thinking Blog doesn’t want to do all the thinking himself. It can be pretty draining to constantly have your mind running a mile a minute and that’s why he’s on the lookout for thinking writers. It’s a call out for guest bloggers who want to write about just about any “thinking” topic. The only restriction is that you cannot guest blog about religion or politics. You can, however, give yourself as many backlinks as you’d like… within reason.