Last night I came to the conclusion that Crystal Reports does not have a report editing tool that you can distribute with your software. This is NOT good news. I may be wrong but this is what my research is telling me. This is really really dumb. It would make sense for a user to be able to edit their reports from within a program. But it appears that this is not the case. It looks like they want you to buy a copy of their software, starting at about $220.

I think they offer a ‘COM REPORT DESIGNER COMPONENT’ but this requires the software vendor to provide a copy of Crystal Reports Developer Edition for each copy of the software. I dont think so. COM is an old technology anyway. I think it would be cheaper to provide a copy of the base crystal reports. Seems like BusinessObjects have a monopoly on their product and are (ab)using it. It is really hard to actually find information on their WWW site… I did find a Feature Comparison List which did help.

I have found instructions on how to make a USB Charger for Nokia Phones. The concept is really really simple. This is a great idea for when you go away, and do not want to take one more power adapter!!!

MSNBC has an article on the Top 10 rules for google. This is a good read. Australian IT has more on the Kazza shutdown for Australian Users, arguing that shutting it down for us is violating the court order. Nothing yet on Groklaw.