AJAX and data push make beautiful music together. The value is two-fold: customers get useful, attractive interfaces while ensuring that the data in question — be it numerical or even headline news — arrives on their desk fresh, crispy, and with little latency.

Lightstreamer provides a push engine for data distribution that sends information to any compatible browser. They have four products, seemingly named after Starbuck’s drink sizes (Moderato, Allegro, etc.) The heaviest package, Vivace, includes SDK for web client and .NET developm,ent along with unlimited concurrent users and thick or zero client support, depending on your in-house needs.

The software is free on a trial basis while pricing depends on the implementation (”One Moderato, please, my good man!”) and number of seats.

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Just in from Overstock.com, a Swatch Paparazzi SPOT watch for $59. The kit comes with a one-year subscription to the MSN Direct service, so it might just make some sense.

* News, weather, stock quotes, sports, diversions, lottery, horoscope, daily diversions, glance, traffic
* Swatch city
* 5 different watch faces and animations

Might be fun to get one to play with the potential messaging applications. I’ve used one for just weather and news, but the technology could be pretty exciting when/if MS starts offering APIs for programmers.
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A very helpful tip from The Consumerist for IT guys on the move. If you fly Southwest, give this a try.

Southwest Airlines has passengers board in three groups, A, B and C, with A’s going first. Here’s an at-home hack we spotted for if your boarding pass says B or C.

1) View your boarding pass in Firefox.
2) Click “File” then “Save Page As”. Choose the “Save as Type” as Web Page, Complete.
3) Save the graphic at right.
4) Open the saved page with any HTML editor. Change the boardingB.gif or boardingC.gif to your saved file.
5) Print out your modified boarding pass and bring it to the airport.
This of course only works if you’ve purchased your ticket online.

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If your office road warriors need to keep in touch, consider SightSpeed. I just gave it a try last week and it worked extremely well, even over a wireless connection hooked up to a cable modem. The audio was very crisp and the video - while a bit laggy at points due to the connection - was better than I’ve seen in a while. It’s a free download and works on both PCs and Macs. A Linux version is also in the works.

The service also includes VoIP to POTS service, similar to SkypeOUT. Rates are about 2-5 cents per minute.

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Laplink just released a new migration tool, PCMover, designed to be a fool-proof way to migrate files and settings from one Windows machine to another. There are two versions - personal and business - and a single copy costs $39.95 while a 10-pack license costs $280.

Best of all? It’s fire and forget, so you can set it up on Mr. Trader’s desk and tell him to go to lunch.

Simply install PCmover on both computers and go! PCmover will determine what files and settings need to be moved. You don’t even have to tell PCmover which applications to move or know the location of your programs or files

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