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April 10, 2008

Software love affairs

One of the questions that we at the Bleeding Edge Software Dating Agency continually wrestle with, is what precise ingredients – the chemistry if you like – are the catalysts for a successful relationship between the parties in a relationship.
We do our best to promote a successful match, but it's generally impossible to predict whether that shy, retiring little piece of software will spark the light of love in the eyes of, say, an extroverted Windows XP user of advancing years, or possibly a young Vista enthusiast who's looking for fun.
Our latest research project, in which we asked readers to nominate their three favourite pieces of software – apart from the operating system, browser, word processor, spreadsheet, torrent client etc. – certainly gave us a some encouraging pointers.
Some of our clients, for instance, simply have wandering eyes, and are unlikely to settle down with any two or three steady partners. They're conducting wild flings with a harem of attractive programs.
Take Geoff, for instance. He sent us a list of eight programs that he's bought and installed for his dalliances. His particular favourite seems to be Roboform2Go ($US39.95 from tinyurl.com/mddlb). Install it on a USB key and it will memorise your passwords and log you in automatically to Web sites, complete long registration and check-out forms, generate secure passwords, encrypt data and combat phishing scams and keyloggers.

RoboForm also comes in a Pro version for a PC at $US29.95 (plus versions for Palm and PocketPC). Meanwhile, Geoff is also dating its cousin, GoodSync ($US29.95), which synchronises and backs up emails, photos, MP3s and other important files … when he's not conducting an affair with StorageCrypt2 ($US29.95 from tinyurl.com/2yoflw), which can encrypt a 100GB portable hard drive, flash memory disk etc in a few seconds.
We proposed to turn a blind eye to his other assignations – including one with Account Xpress, a personal finance manager that at $US29.98, is a lot cheaper than Quicken, and gives you a quick view of your expenditure by category or payee, and also allows you to set up a budget plan with comparison reports of actual expenditure versus the budget figure – but he also included a list of eight freeware, umm, companions, including a free competitor to the SnagIt screen capture software we mentioned last week, called FSCapture, from faststone.org. Frankly we're thinking of setting up a bulk software dating software to cater for Geoff's appetites.
Another user, Robin, is clearly the more faithful type. He seems to be very attentive towards Startup Inspector for Windows, a free program at tinyurl.com/29zu9r which tracks and manages programs that run when you start up Windows. It tells you if the program is a system necessity y, or if its spyware, and it can remove harmful or unnecessary programs that can slow your PC's performance.
He's also fond of TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) which is free software that does much the same job as StorageCrypt2, and even provides two levels of what it calls "plausible deniability", in the event "an adversary forces you to reveal the password", and the free DriveImage XML at tinyurl.com/22yepj which allows you to back up logical drives and partitions to image files, which the user can browse to view and extract files and restore the contents of a drive. He's not the sort of person who consorts with just anyone, however. He checks the character of his companions at Tech Suport Alert, which lists "the 46 best-ever freeware utilities" at tinyurl.com/2adgs

Matt, who is an audio professional, has found a common interest with the free version of Audiobook Cutter (audiobookcutter.com/en/), which is a great way to quickly and easily split MP3 audiobooks and podcasts to into smaller files. He lives two lives, however, and on the Mac, he consorts with a program called Pssst (tinyurl.com/2ykhtq) which mutes or quietens that irritating boot-up sound, Senuti (tinyurl.com/zhfru) which backs up the music on an iPod to iTunes, and Speed Scheduler (tinyurl.com/59jys), a plug-in for the Azureus BitTorrent client that enables scheduling of Torrent downloads.
Anthony is similarly smitten with Launchy (launchy.net) – a free Windows utility which indexes the programs in your Start menu, and can launch documents, folders, bookmarks etc with a few keystrokes.
FileZilla, a free, open source, cross-platform FTP program at filezilla-project.org, allows fast files transfers between computers over the Internet, seems to be a perfect companion for Peter, when he's not recovering precious hard disk space with a program called NoClone 2007 (noclone.net), which finds and removes duplicate files.
Rob seems completely faithful to NoteZilla 7.0 ($US29.95 at tinyurl.com/2lu57u), which allows you to create and retrieve virtual sticky notes on your Windows desktop and organise them in folders. You can stick the notes to Websites, documents or windows so they pop up when you access them, reminding you of To-Dos, etc. We're going to have to use it to remind ourselves that we've had so many recommendations, we'll have to go through the exercise again some time in the future.

Posted by cw at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 09, 2008

Skype's the videoconferencing limit

Bleeding Edge has reached that stage in life where our kids and their partners have become much smarter than we are. We’ve been trying to ignore the tell-tale signs of intellectual relegation, but it’s now all too obvious. The early evidence suggests, indeed, that our brain power is rapidly being overtaken by our 10-month-old grand-daughter.
This particular life passage does have its compensations. Rather than having to keep up with the advance of technology all by ourselves, we're at last starting to get some help.
Take Skype, for instance. We've played with the internet-based
phone service from time to time, but we've largely avoided its free and paid services. While we've embraced VoIP as a tool to slash our phone bills, we've relied on specialists like MyNetFone or PennyTel, and the business provider Mytel, which we still regard as a much better bet for local and long-distance voice calls.
And when Skype introduced videoconferencing, just over two years ago, we weren't all that enthusiastic. We much preferred the Mac's iChat service, and the group chat rooms of PalTalk.

Then our eldest son moved to Shanghai, and started a video production
house, making commercials for some of the world's best-known brands.
Despite the at-times-patchy quality of Chinese communications networks, by getting his clients to open Skype accounts, he has been able to conduct free, quite acceptable videoconferencing sessions via his MacBook Pro, linking three continents.
Eventually he convinced us to take another look. Now the entire Bleeding Edge family seems to be keeping in touch through Skype video calls.
While we still think there are better alternatives than Skype's paid
services, we have to accept that the sheer ubiquity of Skype accolunts makes it a great way of defying distance – provided all the participants have good ADSL or cable connections and the right hardware.
We made our first calls on the Linux version of the Asus Eee PC, which could be – at $499 with webcam and microphone built in – the cheapest and most convenient mobile Skype platform.
The reception at both ends of a link between the Eee PC, a Windows PC and a MacBook Pro was quite acceptable, largely because all the participants had high-speed ADSL.
It takes a bit of fiddling to get videoconferencing up on the Eee PC,
because the webcam is turned off by default, and you have to install the beta version of the Skype Linux package. We adjusted the Asus Eee PC interface so that it started up with a webcam icon which allows us to turn it on and off with a mouse click. You can find out how to do that by searching the wiki and the forums at eeeuser.com.
While we were quite impressed by the performance, there’s no doubt that you’ll get the best possible results using the Windows version of Skype, a 384kbps or higher internet connection, and one of Logitech’s three High Quality Video webcams – the QuickCam Pro 9000, which also comes in a notebook version, and the top-of-the line QuickCam Sphere AF. Those models have Carl Zeiss lenses, and an autofocus system that refocuses images in less than three seconds. We were impressed by their ability to get the best out of available light conditions.
HQV, which gives you 640x480 resolution and up to 30 frames per second video, is the result of an alliance between Skype, its video-compression provider On3, and Logitech to tune their technologies.
Our passion for gadgets, which doesn’t seem to have aged at the same rate as the rest of the brain, attracted us immediately to the Sphere AF, despite the $199 price tag. It has a telescoping arm to adjust the camera height, and motorised tracking. We couldn’t find it when we went shopping, unfortunately, but we picked up a couple of Pro 9000s for $149 apiece at OfficeWorks, and tried them out on several Windows PCs, with different ISPs.
While the performance was better than average even with an older Windows PC and an Optus cable connection, we got by far the best results using PCs with dual-core CPUs and the ADSL 2 services of Internode and iiNet.
Logitech ships its HQV webcams with version 11.1 of its software. Our advice is not to bother installing it. For the best results, you’ll need to install version 11.5. It’s a 29MB download..
You have to complete the Logitech installation before you connect the camera. It sets up the video then tunes the inbuilt microphone. After that you can exit the Logitech software and fire up the latest version of Skype.. Make sure you set your video options from Skype’s Tools/Options menu before trying it out.
If you don't have an HQV webcam, you can probably maximise the resolution and frame rate of your particular hardware using the information at the Skype Developer Zone.
We expect our grand-daughter Indigo will be joining the developer team in a year or two. She really likes videoconferences.

Posted by cw at 12:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 06, 2008

Benefits of digital "piracy"

What was it we were accused of when we suggested that downloading of copyrighted material benefitted the music and video production industries? Oh yes, "the most inane comment and lamest attempt at justifying the download of copyrighted material I've ever seen."

Well it looks like we're not the only idiots. Oxford University economist Karen Croxson has done research that indicates that the word-of-mouth (WOM) promotion or "buzz" created by Internet users raving about their finds stimulates latent demand. She says that "WOM's significance for economic outcomes has received little attention from economists, but this is remiss." She quotes other researchers looking at online chatroom conversations to understand the implications for TV show success: "WOM appears to be especially important for entertainment goods."

Posted by cw at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mouth. Money. Melb PC

I've been thinking about my criticism of Melb PC's leadership, conscious of the fact that for years now I've been frustrated by the group's lack of direction. From time to time I've thought about standing for the committee, but I've told myself that I'm too busy.

This morning I've realised that if I want to see change, I've got to be prepared to be a part of the process. I've got to be in a position to argue my case, convince others, and demonstrate what I firmly believe can be achieved.

So I've sent off an email to the president, Lyn Goodall, expressing my interest in one of the two casual vacancies on committee. If I'm accepted - and I can't see why they'd knock me back - I'll be looking to concentrate on the group's online presence, and possibly its public profile. These are areas in which I have professional expertise.

If my offer is accepted, I'll also be looking for able, enthusiastic helpers. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of them around this blog, so let me know if you're willing to pitch in.

Posted by cw at 09:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 05, 2008

Melb PC - a timeline to failure

Anthony Caruana, one of the freelancers members of Melb PC are paying to contribute to the club magazine, PC Update, and I have got into a debate about the future of user groups, in the comments on the post below.

There was something about Anthony's comment about the inevitable collapse of user groups that rang a bell, so I went on a bit of a search.

'What I discovered was that it's almost exactly a year since I advised the president, Lyn Goodall, to do something about the group's online presence. Nothing has been done.

It's two years since I warned about the lassitude of the group's leadership, and its decline into a corporate-style administration, rather than an active, energetic leadership. Nothing seems to have changed.

Two years since I warned that "It's time for tough decisions. A time for action. A time not for despair and excuses and finger-pointing and groans about problems, but a time for energy, wisdom, good faith and enthusiasm ... Melb PC has some incredible minds and resources available to it. We have people who are not prepared to stand by idly, while the group moves along its all-too-obvious trajectory towards irrelevance and extinction. Time is running out." The clock seems to have accelerated.

It's three years since I met with a sub-committee and gave them my professional advice on the need to do something about PC Update. That, at least, they've finally got around to tackling.

It's six or so years since I warned them that if they didn't come up with a broadband offering, they'd lose their main source of revenue. I think the clock has run out on that one now.

Getting back to Anthony: if you look at the link contained in that first blog entry I mention, you'll notice that Anthony Caruana, former president of iMug (he's a Mac man), raises his suspicion there that "the era of the local user group is coming to an end". I don't happen to agree that it's inevitable. The greatest threat to user groups, in my opinion, is the continued promulgation of that attitude, and poor leadership.

Posted by cw at 04:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music industry rethinks file sharing

They've made life a misery for who knows how many people, and bleated continually about the "theft" of their products, but now the music industry is beginning to admit that file-sharing may even be a good thing.

"There is academic research that shows file sharing is a good thing for artists and not necessarily bad," says Glen Merrill, whom EMI recruited from Google EMI to oversee the company's digital strategy, innovation, business development, supply chain and global technology activities. "We should do a bunch of experiments to find out what the business model is."

Might we suggest looking at their opposition - those Russian music sites that sell music for a fraction of the cost of iTunes. Like AllTunes, for instance. The software it uses to manage its catalogue, and allow users to manage their balance, place orders and download files is highly impressive.

We'd expect they wouldn't be matching their prices, but even if they doubled them, they'd be making reasonable profits. And we're confident sales would boom, so the bottom line would be impressive.

Posted by cw at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 04, 2008

User - and PC User Group - hell

Spare a thought for the average Aussie computer user. He's trapped in some hellish time warp, his techno-skills lagging as much as a decade behind what's required to cope with the technology that's moved into the house.

That's the arresting verdict of a survey conducted by Galaxy Research for the computer support company Gizmo. Galaxy questioned 514 local users to discover that they think their computers are too slow to boot up, and when they do start, drive them crazy with frequent pop-ups and error messages. They also can't make them talk to other devices, like printers.

"Consumers are buying up big on new technology, but many are struggling to get the most out of these investments," said Gizmo chief executive Brett Chenoweth.

Of those who had two or more computers, 40 per cent did not have file sharing enabled and while one in three had two or more printers, only 46 per cent were able to print from all computers to all printers, without swapping files or cables.

That indicates, surely, that there's a vast, untapped demand for the services of Melbourne PC User Group, which has a lot to offer the troubled user. If only its leadership can end a decade or so of completely ignoring the need to get pro-active, make the group more relevant to prospective members, and advertise its presence.

As we explained to this week's monthly meeting, the Melb PC blog is a complete shambles: Scarcely ever updated. Dull. Irrelevant. Poorly designed (it uses a template that shows a bunch of grapes and vine leaves for God's sake), to the point of ugliness. And it's hidden in a walled garden, so the public can't even access it. Actually, they can access it here, although that appears to be a largely defunct site for the PC Update magazine, and it's not where you'd think to look. Talk about precious! The committee hasn't noticed. Or just doesn't care. Or thinks it's too much effort to try to fix.

No wonder membership is now down to 7500 - steadily approaching half the size it was when I resigned as president - and the finances aren't looking so good. The treasurer resigned. They've appointed a new vice-president, and on Wednesday night there were still two casual committee vacancies.

My advice: get some people with new ideas. People who can inspire - even excite - the membership. People who might - God forbid - challenge the status quo. People who might rock the boat. Rather than just allowing it to sink.

It took previous committees far too long to grasp the nettle and do something about the magazine, and the current one might have done better at getting the first issues to members on time, but it isn't easy to manage a project like that, and I do give them credit for taking a tough decision and seeing it through.

And while I don't like the fact that most of the freelancers they're using are from Sydney, and the editor lives in Perth, which doesn't suggest it's going to be addressing local issues, I think it's an improvement. I'm prepared to give it a go, and see how it settles down.

They actually even seemed to have acted on my suggestion that the type face had to be bigger, given the average age of the readership, which is a nice change. A succession of committees has studiously ignored most of my suggestions over the years, and massively increased expenses while failing to protect the revenue stream, and find new sources of income.

I don't think I've got an axe to grind, although I should publicly acknowledge that I feel hurt by the public snub the magazine represents to me.

Has anyone noticed that they haven't bothered to consult me on content (why would you want to talk with your own ex-president and life member who happens to be your city's best known, most popular and most experienced technology writer? The bloke who launched The Age's lift-out computer section. The one who launched the Financial Review's daily Information section. Tough jobs which he tackled, coincidentally, while he was president of Melb PC, personally driving decisions like turning it into an ISP, talking companies into donating equipment, opening the training centre, introducing volunteer of the month, Saturday special events, giving the SIGs proper resources. It's been very amusing to watch others take the credit for those steps, over the years.

And I've clearly been judged an inferior writer to the ones they've gathered for the magazine. Hell, why would you want to tap someone most of your members read avidly every week, whose personal recommendation in The Age and on the ABC brought the club more members - thousands more members - than any other source. Someone who actually knows something about the club. Gave years of service to the club. And cares about it.

I don't need the magazine. I would certainly never have accepted payment for writing for it, and God knows I've precious little time to do so. But it would have been nice to have been asked. It would have been nice to think that the club's leaders were just a touch more gracious, and acknowledged what they'd inherited from my vision, and my work.

So, they're you go. I do feel hurt. I feel let down by people I thought were friends. I don't think that has anything to do with my criticisms, but you're entitled to know.

Posted by cw at 09:05 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 02, 2008

They call it "collaboration"

Leon Gettler has a way of spotting and analysing trends that makes his Just Management column worthy of a bookmark. Today, for instance, he's taken YouTube's announcement of its Insight tool as the launching point for an exploration of collaboration in the new world.

Leon reflects on Yochai Benkler's concept of peer production, using the examples of Linux and Skype among others, and concepts like "ideagoras", which companies like Procter & Gamble use "to reach beyond the corporate walls and invite solutions from outsiders or adapt ideas generated by other companies".

The column itself is a conspicuous example of your typically journalistic collaboration, drawing heavily on the 2006 book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams - Wikinomics, which lays out strategies that allow the reader "to prosper in a world where new communications technologies are democratising the creation of value".

Regrettably, Bleeding Edge has failed completely to master the tricky business of turning this immensely attractive new edition of democracy into the sort of value that would stop our Chief Financial Officer in her tracks, and convince her that we're a Peer Pioneer - one of the seven trends Tapscott and Williams identify in their book - or possibly a New Alexandrian.

From our Old Alexandrian perspective, it looks awfully like the old edition of democracy, in which the rich and powerful prosper from the ideas, devotion and toil of the less powerful, except that in the Wikninomics world, they don't even pay wages and those irritating perks like superannuation and maternity leave etc.

Leon's brief is to explore the implications of these trends for management, so he doesn't look too closely at how the average punter might benefit from them. And he's not completely starry-eyed about the impact, observing that "the authors are a bit too breathless when they claim this is the shape of things to come".

But we'd like to see some collaborative thinking from our readers on this new era of collaboration. For a start, is it really collaboration: "the process by which people/organisations work together to accomplish a common mission"? Is it the mission of the YouTube community to make profits for its owner, the Google corporation? Obviously, some individuals will attract a little cash from their video efforts if Insight gives advertisers sufficient data to target new markets. But it will be Google which does the lion's share of the prospering. Call us old-fashioned, but the word we have in mind is not "collaboration". It's "exploitation", you know, "improper use of an individual or the individual's resources for another's profit".

We don't begrudge Google its enormous success. They have created a succession of tools that millions of people find highly useful. If, for instance, Google Maps completely reshapes the GPS industry and spoils Nokia's plans to make a lot of money selling direction services to its customers, we'll be overjoyed for them.

They've had the idea, made the investment, and come up with the product. If we get something for nothing, and their "monetising" strategies don't inconvenience us greatly, they're welcome to whatever they can make out of it.

It seems obscene to us, however, that online communities like MySpace are being ripped off by people like Rupert Murdoch. And the Wikipedia scandal makes one wonder whether Tapscott and Williams might possibly explore an eighth trend: New Altruism.

Tonight we're going to be talking to the monthly meeting of the Melbourne PC User Group. The subject - which was the last-minute idea of the meetings co-ordinator Ray Beatty - is supposed to be blogs, which to our mind is very much old news. Instead we might explore the idea of collaboration, and whether a group whose membership and revenue base seem to be declining at an alarming rate, might harness its own community for mutual - not necessarily financial - profit.

Any ideas?

Posted by cw at 08:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack