For those of you who aren’t familiar with “unified communications,” you might be wondering what exactly it means. It’s a term used in business to signify the simplification and integration of all forms of communications – video conferencing, e-mail, phone, chat, etc. Office Communicator 2007 is an example of a unified communications application.

Available for large and medium businesses, Logitech for Business webcams enhance the promise of unified communications by helping business users communicate with offices worldwide while saving on travel expenses.

Logitech for Business webcams available as Optimized for Microsoft Office Communicator products include Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 for Business, Logitech QuickCam Communicate MP for Business (Logitech QuickCam S5500 for Business in Europe), Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks for Business and Logitech QuickCam 3000 for Business. While the specs and design of each of the webcams varies, they all ship in packaging made from the most recyclable materials available and offer great features, including ultra-wide field of view, superior Carl Zeiss optics, Auto Focus, RightLight, RightSound, and more.

For more information, visit www.logitech.com/business.

On Wednesday, Gizmodo announced the winners of their Photoshop contest, which was to insert technology into historic scenes (that they obviously don’t fit into). We got a kick out of seeing our G35 headset on Franklin Roosevelt, submitted by Marc Shackelford. Thanks, Gizmodo and Marc!

Courtesy of Gizmodo and Marc Shackelford

• 106 Historical Scenes Rendered Hilariously Inaccurate by Technology – Gizmodo
• Logitech announces Comfort Wave 450 – Fudzilla
• Logitech Comfort Wave 450 Keyboard for Business – iTech News
• Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard Review – TrustedReviews
• Ultimate Ears 700 Noise-Isolating Earphones Review – I4U
• Logitech MX1100 Cordless Laser Mouse – WebUser
• Logitech Launches Notebook Riser for Comfort – Tech Tree

One of my favorite new features is called Device and Printers. The beauty of Devices and Printers is that it provides one place where you can see all the peripherals attached to your computer, including your mouse and keyboard. You’ll be able to click on the picture of a device and configure it, and you’ll even be able to access Logitech software through Device and Printers. I think this will make it much easier for people to customize their mice, keyboards, webcams and other hardware attachments to their liking – and to take advantage of some of the features you might not have known how to configure in the past.

There will be much more to share as the official Windows 7 launch draws near, but for now I just want to let you know that we’ll be ready when Windows 7 is ready!

As I talk to IT professionals and employees at companies around the globe, one of their top priorities is comfort, defined as a sense of well-being and flexibility in their work spaces. This anecdotal information is validated by the results of a survey conducted by Herman Miller, Inc. (PDF), in which 500 office workers ranked “’having an office that is comfortable to work in” as the most highly valued workstation attribute across all worker types.

Logitech for Business’ recommended line of mice and keyboards is designed with comfort in mind – whether you are at your desk or on the go. Providing employees with products that are well-built, precise, and efficient is an important part of worker comfort. Tools with those attributes are also linked to productivity and job satisfaction.

For the past three months, I have been using a Logitech Comfort Wave 450 keyboard at my desk. I absolutely love this keyboard. The forward tilt under the cushioned palm rest keeps me comfortably positioned and the wave design of the keys cradles my fingers as I type away. I can honestly say that by the end of the day, my arms, wrists and hands feel much less fatigued and strained.

Check out the Learning Center on the new Logitech for Business site, where you’ll find innovation briefs: Design of Keyboard Comfort (PDF) and Delivering Comfort for Busy Professionals (PDF), which includes a study conducted on the Comfort Wave 450. And, if you have any questions, I’d love to hear from you.

Many Logitech products are purchased for home use, but, not surprisingly, our products are also used in businesses around the world. To make decision making even easier for our business customers, we’re excited to announce that we’ve just launched the Logitech for Business Web site. This Web site is devoted to business users, managers and IT professionals, providing:

• Recommended products for business
• Solutions for your business needs
• Where to buy (locate resellers)
• Learning Center (innovation briefs and customer stories)

Whether you’re an IT manager, purchaser, group manager, or working professional, we have solutions that are right for you at the right price. Visit Logitech for Business and please let me know if you have any questions.

Napster, as we all probably know, now provides users on-demand access to a music library of roughly seven million tracks. It’s available to Squeezebox users in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. Classical.com serves up classical, jazz and blues music anywhere in the world. Mediafly does for news and talk radio what the others do for music. Available worldwide, Mediafly streams interactive, personalized channels for leading news and talk shows from the major media outlets around the world.

These services are available now and will work with every Squeezebox product ever shipped (going all the way back to the first SLIMP3!). How’s that for lasting value?

While we have many active contributors on our forums, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge our star contributors – those technical whizzes and enthusiasts who are seemingly omnipresent on our forums.

In November, we rolled out Kudos, a new feature that empowers our forum users to vote on the most useful answers to their questions. In conjunction with the rollout, we launched a contest to determine the top-five Kudos recipients. In November alone, 500 Kudos were awarded to 200 contributions. The top-five Kudos recipients (and winners of the contest) were:

• WannabeActuary and hhatkin worked together to field inquiries from the U.S. and U.K. and are particularly valued for their ability to answer questions about Logitech Harmony advanced universal remotes.
• Patboy’s generous contributions from Canada helped many customers connect and control their audio systems.
• KachiWachi’s advice about the best ways to use video and audio equipment for seeing and talking to friends and family members received an enormous number of Kudos.
• And it was no surprise that rlowens used his exceptional computer knowledge to advise our customers on making the best choice of Logitech keyboards and mice, as well as to provide tips for using them.

On behalf of Logitech, and in particular our Technical Support group, we would like to thank these members for their continuous feedback and advocacy on our forums. Keep up the great work, and happy holidays.

When all of this started for Logitech back in the early ‘80s (PDF), the mouse was primarily a tool for CAD (computer-aided design applications). Since then, the mouse has become something much more – it is truly the key to the kingdom – the device that unlocked the power of the computer. The mouse opened up computing to the average person by providing a simple, intuitive way to interact with the computer.

As we look to the future and what it holds for the mouse, I’ve tasked our product-development team with continuing to assess new technologies and how they might enhance the human-computer interface. No idea is too far-fetched, from touch technology to mind control. If you take a look at some of our ideas that never made it to manufacturing (PDF), you’ll see that our engineers can be pretty creative. In conjunction with next Wednesday’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first public demonstration of the computer mouse, I’ll be blogging more about what the future holds for the mouse.

Until then, I want to thank you for your support. We couldn’t have reached this milestone without our customers, so to celebrate, we’re inviting you to follow the journey of our billionth mouse from the factory to its final destination for the chance to win some great prizes.

Related Links:
Firm makes one billionth mouse (BBC)
Logitech Timeline of Mousery is Full of Memories, Logitech Advertising (Gizmodo)
Logitech Ships One-Billionth Mouse (Gearlog)
Logitech has shipped its billionth mouse (CrunchGear)
Logitech Ships Its Billionth Mouse (Ubergizmo)
One billion mice from Logitech (Computer Weekly)
Logitech Ships One Billionth Mouse (ExtremeTech)
Logitech celebrates its billionth mouse (Tech Digest)
Logitech Ships Billionth Mouse (CE Daily News)
Logitech serves one-billionth mouse (Engadget)
Logitech ships billionth mouse (SlashGear)
Billionth Logitech mouse scampers off assembly line (CNET)
Logitech Ships Billionth Mouse (TWICE)
Logitech Celebrates Its One Billionth Mouse But The Party Might End Soon (Wired)
Logitech Produces Billionth Mouse (Digital Trends)
Logitech Celebrates Its One Billionth Mouse But The Party Might End Soon (ABC News)

Because of the sheer accuracy of the physics model that Polyphony Digital and Logitech’s engineers have put into the GT5 game and its matching force-feedback mechanism, you can actually experience how it feels to drive the GTbyCitroen. The game accurately models how the torque and power curves are delivered to the road, and how the spring and damper rates translate into its handling dynamics on the streets of London or though Laguna Seca’s famous Corkscrew. And what’s more, you can then (virtually) step out of the Citroen and into a Lotus Evora or a Ferrari 599 Fiorano for a back-to-back comparison of these dream cars.

Kazunori Yamauchi, the charismatic genius and studio head who created the game, has been a long term collaborator in the design of our racing wheels. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to spend some time with him in Tokyo during a promotional shoot for GT-TV. Kazunori turned up for our meeting in his (then) brand-new red Nissan GTR, the model of which you can see being driven in that movie. Incidentally, in another case of life imitating art, he also designed the instrument display in the real GTR. No wonder Motor Trend has said he is more influential in the car industry than the CEOs of Honda or Ford.

And on the subject of Nissan, the much awaited new 370Z is due to be unveiled at the LA Motor Show this week. However, if you have a Wii and you want to drive it while you await delivery, just pick up a copy of Need for Speed Undercover – the 370Z already in there waiting for you, motor running.

As you must have realized, I’m a self confessed car-junkie (or “Petrol-head” as us Brits would endearingly say), so amongst all the current woes of the automotive industry, it is exciting to see the growing convergence of car-culture with possibly the most influential strand of modern pop-culture, video gaming. And it gives me an immense amount of personal satisfaction to see how we’ve played our part – through our passion for improving the simulation accuracy of Force Feedback over the many years.

Drive safely!

If you’re non-technical like me, you’ve likely experienced a lot of frustrating moments when trying to get your uncooperative computer peripherals to, well, cooperate. These frustrations can be dealt with in a variety of highly productive ways like, screaming at them. Sometimes I pound. Sometimes I just need to vent.

Luckily for us, Logitech provides dedicated communities where we can tap the collective intelligence of more than 94,000 registered users (including passionate members like our control devices enthusiast, rlowens, and Harmony aficionado, WannabeActuary) via the Logitech Community. You can also sign up to be a part of our online community, where you can interact and engage with our internal subject matter experts, as well as with other Logitech enthusiasts and users, or you can tap into Logitech Technical Support.

We’re consistently looking for ways to improve not only our own customer support, but the ways in which our customers can support each other. With that in mind, we launched Accepted Solutions, a new feature that allows you to differentiate a helpful answer to a troubleshooting question from others that may not be as good, whether the answer comes from another Logitech customer or someone from our staff. Over the next couple of months, we will be introducing other exciting features and enhancements, and would love to have your input. Participate in our survey for a chance to win a Logitech product, and share your knowledge and experiences with us.

I look forward to receiving your feedback through the survey and interacting with you directly on our blog and within our online community.