Overcoming IT ennui

For a few days Bleeding Edge had been in the grip of that curious state of weather-worn resignation so often induced by failing technology.

Our iiNet ADSL 2 connection was slowly breaking down, and we didn't have the energy to deal with it. Every second click on a web link sparked a prolonged delay, followed by an error message informing us “The requested web page is not available. The address may not be correct, or there may be a temporary problem with this site.”

Each of these problems was temporary, as temporary, in fact, as the space of a second click, although second time around, the pages loaded only very slowly. And yet we remained in the grip of IT ennui.

The will to deal with the issue arrived only when Bleeding Edge started a LogMeIn IT Reach session to add a new voice recording to the Asterisk PBX box at the spouse's practice and activate it as the Easter voicemail message.

The remote control, file transfer and diagnostic tools of LogMeIn IT Reach have been remarkably responsive using fast ADSL 2 services of iiNet and at the other end, Internode, and we recommend it highly. But with a flawed connection, it kept dropping out. If the spouse practice was to have an Easter voicemail message, we'd have to make a trip. It was more sensible to end our procrastination, and deal with the problem.

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Posted by cw at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The camera world just got more interesting

It’s been building up for months or years now. People have been predicting the end of the DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) dinosaur with the advent of the EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) digital camera. And yes, the Panasonic G-1 and GH-1 have led the charge, with strong support from those who have been fans all along. As well as various thumbs down from people who love the OVF (Optical View Finder) of the classic DSLRs. About yesterday, Olympus released a retro model PEN EP-1. Whilst a smaller company in a camera world dominated in numbers by Canon and Nikon, Olympus has always been a maverick, not afraid to take a tilt at conservatism. Fans may still remember the Yoshihisa Maitani – with his retirement, we thought that his mantle of innovation and willingness to take a gamble had been left to some hand fumbles in the current generation of Olympus engineers. Be that as it may, the PEN EP-1 arouses for those same fans, a feeling of spring and light again. It may not have to sure fire success of something like the OM-1, or the XA, but Y. Maitani didn’t always make surefire successes either.

With the EP-1 now on the scene, and hopefully to spawn a new genre of digital cameras, the camera etymologists will have a fun time classifying camera types. The non photographer layman, however, may just prefer to ask - “How big is it” or “How much does it cost?” and leave it at that. (The latter is often uttered by long suffering spouses (spice?) of camera fans. Let’s review some camera mis-categories…

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Posted by Anandasim at 06:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Let Telstra get on with screwing Australia

I like Kenneth Davidson. Really I do. I don't always agree with him, but quite often he makes me think. I wonder though, if he has the slightest understanding of telecommunications deregulation, monopoly practices and the realities of competition.

His attitude seems to be that Telstra owns the customers in perpetuity; that it's the only body capable of building a network; that it ought to be left to the business of screwing the community, its competitors, the ACCC, the Government etc., which it has done so well, for so long, at everybody else's expense.

That seems to be the point of his column, "Let Telstra get on with what it does best". Or am I missing something?

He claims that the people who are running telecommunications policy are Luddites, that the declaration of telecommunications services is a rort, that advisers on the Government's NBN policies are on a gravy train etc., etc.

I can't see any difference between Telstra's view and Kenneth's view. They're equally myopic and tendentious. Which tends to undermine my opinion of Kenneth Davidson.

Posted by cw at 05:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Pursuing PageRank

What excitement there was in the Bleeding Edge cave recently when we discovered that the Web site for which we assumed responsibility in April - after our promotion to advertising executive for the spouse's small business - had gained a Google PageRank of 3.

The average Web user probably isn't aware of the significance of the Web analysis algorithm developed by Google co-founder Larry Page, and the increasingly manic fixation of an entire industry of search engine optimisation and marketing experts on understanding and honestly (and in some cases dishonestly) exploiting it.

You could remain entirely unaware of the existence of the PageRank universe unless you installed the Google Toolbar and started observed the movements of a tiny green band in the toolbar's central white slot, as you navigate from one site to another.

It's a long way from our paltry 3 to the maximum PageRank of 10, but that sudden elevation from zero was enormously encouraging, if symptomatic of an increasingly obsessive state of mind.

We're beginning to wonder, in fact, if OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) isn't an inevitable consequence of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, which was revolutionised by Larry's eponymous rating system, and Google's multi-billion-dollar AdWords system.

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Posted by cw at 09:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Bridging the gap

I was reading Leon Bambrick’s blog entry on the difference between programmers and communicating – it got me to thinking about how “IT” people relate to “normal” people. I guess an example would illustrate:

Point: You might speed up Firefox if you reduce the the history cache.

IT person’s response: Ok, let’s do it now and check out the effect.

Considered “normal” responses:

If I change that setting could my machine worse?

Where is it in the menu again? Do I need to write this down? What if I forget how to switch it back? Is it in the manual? Does it have a manual? Can I ring you if it doesn’t work?

I wonder whether MYOB will go faster?

Do you think it will work on all my machines? Even the one that my cousin’s son has? You know, the one who just came back from London and is backpacking with around Australia…

I don’t use Firefox. I use the one with the blue e.  Do you think it will work the same way?

Why can’t Microsoft have come out with this discovery? I mean, we pay them enough.

Note to self: make an effort, bridge the gap. 

Posted by Anandasim at 03:43 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

iCyte: Building a library on the Web

The Bleeding Edge Research Library would be ever so much more efficient were it not for the fact that so many of our books suddenly take it upon themselves to disappear from the shelves.

We are speaking figuratively here. Most of our “books” aren't printed and bound volumes. They're Web pages that don't have a physical presence on a bookshelf, and they can spontaneously de-materialise in a way that printed books generally do not, taking with them a good deal of research effort.

One study suggests that the half-life of a Web page is less than two years. And even if the information isn't abruptly removed in a re-design, they can sink in the Google index to the point where they are impossible to track down ever again.

The Bleeding Edge Research Library has had more teeth-gnashing experiences with wandering Web sites than we care to remember, and we have made several attempts at developing a fool-proof retention system. We quickly abandoned bookmarks or “favorites” as a tool. They seem to breed in much the same way as coathangers; they're difficult to organise; they don't provide sufficient detail for easy back-tracking and they have the same regrettably brief life span as the average Web page. Clicking on a bookmark or “favorite” and arriving at a 404 “Not Found” error code can mark the beginning of a tedious and untilimately unsuccessful bout with Google and profound despair.

Too often the browser history sparks another adventure in time-wasting for anyone but the most casual of Web users.

The fact that some researchers apparently default to cutting and pasting to Microsoft Word or PDF documents suggests to us that these people have a level of patience and spare time that is vastly superior to our own.

The flatfile database Info Select (miclog.com) is a much better solution, allowing you to highlight a page and hit a Quick Launch “transporter” icon to save all the links and images. But in recent years InfoSelect has accumulated ever more not-entirely-useful features, and become increasingly costly, to the point where, at $320, we're finding it hard to recommend it.

Enter iCyte, a free service that organises and prolongs the life of Web-based research, and simplifies collaboration and information-sharing.

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Posted by cw at 03:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Your IT advertising executive

Bleeding Edge has been ever so much busier since we became an advertising executive.

Our sudden rise from being an IT person to a position where we're making decisions about promotional resources might seem a dramatic departure from the script written by Madison Avenue advertising types, but it's rapidly becoming a well-trodden path in the world of small business.

You can blame it on Google. As Australians increasingly use the search engine to track down products and services, a Web site has to be more than an idle billboard. We advertising executives are aware that these days, a business Web site should be a vital, dynamic marketing tool, carefully and constantly tuned to at least keep pace with the performance of competitive sites.

If a business has the financial resources, it can hire experts in what is known as search engine optimisation (SEO) to do the work. It will probably also have to hire another expert to develop and manage Google Adword campaigns. But for small businesses like the Bleeding Edge spouse's psychology practice, these responsibilities tend to fall either on the owner, or an advertising executive like ourselves, whose principal qualifications are having more technical know-how than the boss.

Consequently, Bleeding Edge has spent the past couple of weeks tangling with concepts like “metatags” and “keywords”, “impressions” and CTRs (Click-Through Rate), CPCs (Cost Per Click), CPMs (Cost Per Thousand) and QS (Quality Score) – the sort of jargon that didn't exist before the world started moving from “interruptive advertising” to “interactive advertising”, and Google came on the scene.

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Posted by cw at 02:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Some advice for the "new" Telstra

Bleeding Edge wasn't invited to the farewell party for Sol Trujillo, if indeed there was a farewell party for Telstra's departing chief executive, as he slipped out the back door six weeks ahead of schedule.

Former chairman, Donald McGaughie also left without a peep, which seemed fitting, given that he and Trujillo seemed to have been cloned from the same combative, boastful, take-no-prisoners material. That was scarcely surprising. Four years ago McGaughie had popped a little clause into Trujillo's employment contract which declared that a critical element in the CEO's performance review would be “a "close and constructive" relationship with his chairman.

We were probably spared a heated confrontation with both, what with our continued criticism of Telstra in general, and its strategies in particular.

What we did miss, however, was the opportunity to talk with the new chairman and CEO, David Thodey, and pass on some advice. We're sure they would have been eager to receive it, as they takes charge of a corporation that has been acting increasingly like an out-of-control gorilla.

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Posted by cw at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Digital recorder syndrome

It was roughly about the time we stuck our head out the window and started to record the sound of rain and thunder that we realised we'd come down with something serious.
We'd developed digital recorder syndrome, a condition that is characterised by a heightened appreciation for significant sounds and a desire to capture and replay them.
We first became aware of the symptoms after several months of singing lessons and weekly practice nights with the South of the River Community Gospel Choir. We started using a Zoom H4 digital field recorder from the Japanese-based Zoom Corporation to help learn a considerable repertoire of African, North American gospel and original Australian material, and as the choir began appearing at ever more prestigious gigs, Bleeding Edge took on the job of recording the events.
By the time the choir performed at this year's Port Fairy Folk Music Festival, we'd graduated to the Zoom H4's successor, the H4n, and our symptoms started to develop.
Zoom Corporation shook up the market with both its predecessors, the H4 and less expensive H2 digital recorders, which offered the quality and capabilities of more expensive DAT and MiniDisc recorders at more affordable prices.
With the H4n, they've produced something that approaches the quality of lower-end pro audio devices.
The Australian agents, Dynamic Music haven't been able to keep up with the demand from musicians and other users. Earlier this year it was featured at the Pulima 2009 National Indigenous Language and Information Communication Technology Forum, as a tool for preserving Aboriginal languages.

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Posted by cw at 10:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Digital denial

One of the common themes that we at the Bleeding Edge Centre for the Study of Digital Addictions have identified, is the denial by victims of their potential for being hooked.

Mobile phone owners pooh-pooh the very idea that they will be caught up in a compulsion to ring people at every opportunity, or to emit streams of text messages. Pretty soon, however, you observe their fingers twitching over the keypads. PC users who consider themselves quite sober individuals can quickly find themselves spending inordinate amounts of time “futzing” with the things, customising applications and desktops. Internet junkies never imagine that they'll find themselves incapable of going five minutes without checking their email, or “tweeting” with Twitter.

Those who innocently enter the area of “time shifting” with hard disk recorders or media centres are equally unaware of the potential for extreme behaviour. They think they're just going to make the occasional click on an electronic program guide to record a few programs and view them at their convenience, rather than at the commercial whim of the networks. Before long their hard disks are full of huge video files. The worst cases are flouting the law like the speed-obsessed Toad of Toad Hall, downloading movies and TV series.

When two members of the Bleeding Edge family recently took delivery of TiVo boxes – we wonder how many of the things the Federal Government has funded through the $900 tax rebate – we smiled quietly to ourselves as they declared the 160GB hard drive, which can store up to 30 hours of HD TV, or 60 hours of standard definition recordings, would be more than they'd ever use, and declined the opportunity to buy a network package.

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Posted by cw at 12:05 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)