Posts in category "software"

I usually hate posts that start

Apologies in advance but I am going to be offline for 10 days because...

• I am going to a Web 2.0 conference in Dallas
• I smashed my hand into a glass window
• I am going on vacation
• I am really busy at work
• Personal stuff
• I am getting married
• I am going to an Oracle conference in Scotland
• The RSI is killing me
• My boss/wife/dog discovered this blog
• I am having a blogging crisis of confidence
• Family matters

Mainly because the author inevitably pops up the very next day without any further explanation.

Apologies in advance but I am going to be offline for 10 days because the postman delivered a package today. Well, more like a suspect device, actually.

A couple of months ago, I foolishly purchased a digital camcorder and now face the unenviable task of transferring the footage to DVD. I have procrastinated for long enough. My long list of excuses is exhausted. 'No - we can't simply to transfer to VHS tape because we now own a digital camcorder. What on earth would the neighbours think ?'

I thought I had stumbled upon the perfect excuse. Not one of our modern computers is equipped with a Firewire port to connect the Sony camcorder to the PC. But no. Even that was rejected so I was forced to research all the options and finally purchase a Firewire PCI card and cable.

This means I am going to have to open the lid on my computer. However, I can approach this particular task with a great deal of confidence. Last week, I surmounted this hurdle to check that my aged computer has an available PCI slot. It only took me 25 minutes.

So, after I have finished work tonight, if I am not too tired, as long as no-one invites me to the pub and if there is nothing on the telly, I won't be donning a anti-static wrist strap but touching wood (and the metal PC case). However, it is likely that I'll still manage to blow the power supply.

The recent storm in the anti-blogosphere about Google acquiring Feedburner, the frightening prospect of Google placing ads in your precious feeds, capturing all your personal data, monitoring your every movement (online and offline) and logging your brainwaves into the Google data warehouse is starting to irritate me.

Despite the corporate motto, please remember Google is evil and 2084 is just around the corner, folks. Be aware that Google just announced a partnership with global law enforcement agencies to upload all CCT footage to YouTube.

Thankfully, some intelligent people are able to distance themselves from the hype and present a more balanced viewpoint.

Another irritant is idiots bleating, ironically enough, in Google Groups about the lack of monthly reports in the revamped Analytics and deficiencies in Reader.

If you don't like Analytics V2, go back to Site Meter to track your e-commerce site. Let me know how you get on.

If you can't stand Reader, shut up and go back to Bloglines and moan about that instead.

If you can no longer tolerate the unreliability and limitations of Docs and Spreadsheets, upgrade to Office 2007 and use Word and Excel. The choice is yours.

I use a lot of Google products (Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Analytics, Notebook, Desktop, Bookmarks, IG, Docs, Groups, Webmaster, Adsense oh and, err that Search thingy). My view is that all are excellent, innovative software products and, best of all, completely free of charge.

I really don't care that Google has stored every single keyword related to my searches from October 1991.

I honestly don't care that Google has copies of my homework excuses and letters to the Inland Revenue. Believe me, the contents are really not that earth shattering.

I truly don't care that Google has copies of every single email I have ever sent and received because, surprisingly, I have nothing to hide. I only wish Google could get behind corporate firewalls and retrieve the remainder as I have lost some magnificent blogging material over the years.

If you are genuinely worried that Google is going to tell you what to 'eat for tea', maybe you should do the world a favour and start a protest on behalf of all Interweb users by going on an indefinite hunger strike. Immediately.

If you are a child molester or jumped the turnstiles last night in Athens, then, by all means, please disable all cookies, use Ask.com or give your computer to charity.

As for me, I am putting my money where my mouth in. The next purchase in my SIPP will be the purchase of £7,000 of GOOG stock. Tomorrow.

Many years ago, in a parallel universe, I created a Web page that proclaimed:

'The fastest, most comprehensive Web search engine - AltaVista'

With the increasing domination of Google, it really is difficult to remember life back in the days when AltaVista was the only search engine in town and you were even considering sinking 500 quid of your hard-earned into the rumoured IPO. Maybe one day, another startup will come along and usurp Google's #1 position but somehow, I sincerely doubt it.

And if that search engine company turns out to be Ask, I hereby pledge to eat my underpants and buy everyone a season ticket at Manchester City (with complimentary powder blue and white scarf).

Duncan Riley of TechCrunch already posted an excellent summary on Ask's current, abysmal marketing campaign in the UK.

Listen, if you want to get ordinary people to use your search engine, don't use some subtle, understated, pretentious campaign ('Evolve Your Search') with pictures of Neanderthal man, costing millions of dollars, dreamt up by new media luvvies, wearing black shirts and no ties.

Ordinary people don't say: 'Ooh - that looks very interesting indeed. I wonder if that advert is a cryptic reference to a new, exciting search engine technology which will undoubtedly to help me find relevant stuff quickly on the Interweb. The Ask brand has now been subconsciously planted in my mind and I simply must remember to discuss this topic with the lads at work tomorrow.'

Ordinary people say: 'God there's some rubbish adverts on TV these days. Fancy a cup of tea, love ?'

Believe it or not, technically minded people have already heard of Live, Ask and Google and all those niche search engine players (incorporating Web 2.0 semantics).

Believe it or not, those technically minded people are in a tiny minority. They don't know it but they are.

You are not trying to get their attention. There's no point. They look down their nose at you. The only time they use Ask.com is the final choice to determine how many inbound links their tiresome blog has this week.

No, you are trying to get the attention of millions of desperate housewives, builders and silver surfers who have never heard of Google and have to ask their 12 year old son to dig up that Web site for holiday cottages in the Dordorgne. These people don't use IE7 and type their searches directly into the address bar.

A much better campaign would have been:

'Trying to find something on the Internet ? Go to ask.com.'

Black text on white background. Short and to the point. Quicker and therefore considerably cheaper and it probably would have delivered better results than this report from Hitwise suggests .

Well, let's face it - my campaign couldn't have been much worse; 3.69% market share and a staggering 13% down year on year). Come on Ask, only another 62% before you overtake Google.

So, don't Ask, just Google. Like everyone else.

Not content with writing excellent books, helping Oracle customers, maintaining his blog, presenting at technical seminars, traveling around the globe, family commitments and managing asktom.oracle.com, the workaholic Tom Kyte has now released a streaming media player.

Publish your metrics as a colourful chart in Google Spreadsheets or upgrade to Thunderbird 2.

Looked good but you forgot the cardinal rule of CRM.

It takes 3 years to win a new customer and a mere 3 seconds to lose a customer.

I was away for two weeks so didn't have time to follow the 'soap opera'.

You are supposed to be unobtrusive software.

On two computers, you have spontaneously stopped working.

No changes to Windows Media player.

Plonk.

I was staggered to read on TechCrunch that Yahoo! Mail has 250 million users while the much younger and rapidly growing Google Mail (beta) service currently has a paltry 51 million users in comparison.

I wonder what proportion of these users, in these impressive headline (marketing) numbers, actively use the respective services on a daily basis.

However, I was not surprised at Yahoo's offer of 'unlimited' email storage which gets a cheap headline and was pretty inevitable. A tiny minority will gleefully claim they really need infinite storage and think of inventive ways to upload the entire contents of their PC to a server. Yahoo! will then ban them for uploading copyrighted material.

While I have a longstanding but rarely used Yahoo! Mail account (which I was scanning tonight funnily enough searching for my Flickr credentials), this announcement won't be tempting me back to Yahoo! just yet. I await with interest Google's response though.

I think the Yahoo! Mail screen is incredibly cluttered and the adverts on the right hand side are incredibly intrusive and consume valuable screen estate. As you scroll through Yahoo! emails, the banner ads actually change which is slow and very distracting !

I know this type of thing is very subjective and, in many cases, ones preference simply reflects what you are used to and familiar with but I honestly don't know how Doug tolerates it. Also, Google's spam filter is far more effective which is important.

Also, Yahoo! have a irritating tendency to overuse the exclamation mark as part of the corporate branding. Look at any personalised Yahoo! page and shriek as you count the shrieks. I suspect you will be unpleasantly surprised.

Unfortunately, I appear to have mislaid (or Yahoo have inactivated) my Yahoo! credentials for my world famous Flickr stream so let's try some inline thumbnails. Apologies for the quality.

Note the MASSIVE banner ad on RHS (no I didn't photoshop the red border) and the more subtle ads bottom left.

I continue to use my ISP email account for personal stuff but am starting a gradual migration to Gmail which started around a year ago. Apart from spam, I hardly ever delete a Google email. Consequently, I am barely scratching the surface of my 3GB allocation (35 MB - 1% - of the allocated 2833 MB).

I also like the security of having messages and email address stored on a server (and not my PC).

The ads on Google Mail seem much less noticeable and intrusive to me (yeah I know I'm a Google whore). I can honestly say that I barely notice them. I think this is because of the text (not banner) ads coupled with the white background although I am not sure what advertising men in new media glasses would make of this.

Extracted the shiny new Dell PC from the tall cupboard yesterday. Pretended this PC was for homework only, would solely use Google Docs and wouldnt connect to the Interweb.

Lasted two minutes before yielding and plugged in Linksys USB wireless card. Briefly marvelled at the quality of the flat screen, then downloaded drivers for Windows Vista, followed the instructions on the Linksys technical support site and successfully connected to the burgeoning wireless network first time.

Finally, Norman Junior III has his own PC, so now I will actually be able to use my own computer whenever I please.

Expect a barrage of varied, humorous, exciting and detailed technical blog articles and, yes, the frequency will be doubled, Kenneth.

Or maybe not.

Curiously, after reading about the Picasa upgrade, a related article about photo management software popped up in Google Reader, courtesy of Robert Scoble's excellent link blog.

Robert Scoble had published a couple of podcasts featuring a product demo and an interview with Gibu Thomas, CEO of Sharpcast. Sharpcast is yet another photo management software tool and appears to offer a number of advantages over Picasa:

• Unlimited free storage
• Automatic synchronisation between PC and Web albums
• Original images are preserved

The unlimited storage seems too good to be true and is very useful because, at some point in the near future, I am likely to exceed Picasa's storage limit unless Google follow suit. Secondly, if I ever edit an image or perform any housekeeping, I will have to manually replicate those changes to Picasa Web Albums. As I am very lazy, that is unlikely to happen.

Finally, I have always presumed that Flickr and Picasa are compressing the images to degrade the quality of my professional photographs to save space and bandwidth. However, that is fine as you get what you pay for and I am paying nothing. Obviously, it is preferable to have the original, unmodified image available without having to continually burn another CD/DVD.

So I signed up for Sharpcast, downloaded the desktop software and quickly synchronised the 'My Pictures' folder to the server.

Sharpcast was very fast and easy to use. I was able to synchronise and upload 1,062 photos with a single click. This took less time than uploading the same content from Picasa. Although you can upload multiple albums in Picasa, one album is uploaded at at time and the remainder are queued.

Sharpcast is a genuine competitor to Flickr and Picasa and in the podcast, Gibu talks about extending the range of files to include documents. Sharpcast also includes support for Mac users and mobile phones.

My only reservation is that Sharpcast really does seem too good to be true. I am also a little hazy about the business model. It is not clear if this is Web 2.0 beta software which will subsequently charge or whether Sharpcast will attempt to make money from additional services. Currently the only paid service is photo printing.