Posts by Techwriter10

I don't think it has to be necessarily an absolute situation. It may be that many people use the internet to conduct most of their business and access most of their applications and information, but there will still be a need and a market no doubt for people like you who want to continue to have a stand-alone OS and all that entails. I just think that it's like the internet model will be dominant.

I'm not saying it's necessarily going to be Google, but having an online back up of your files makes a lot of sense to me. If you want to look at this as a mainframe model, I suppose there's some truth to that, but it's certainly the bigger than any network ever imagined in the early days of computing, that's for sure. I think it's more about convenience and having access to your applications and data wherever you go. While you raise a valid concern, I think Software as a Service vendors (Saas) have shown that the data is safe and the service has been reliable. What I'm talking about is taking the SaaS model and applying it across the spectrum of tools that we use on a daily basis and I don't think that's so far-fetched.

I’ve found myself using online apps more and more lately. Whether it’s Google Reader, the Daniweb blogging tool, my online calendar or Facebook, I’m spending more time in my browser and less time using desktop applications. This got me thinking if more and more of our work is moving online, what role will the OS play in the future?

Just recently, in the continuing onslaught of announcements that come from Google, it announced the launch of Google Gears, a tool that enables you to use Google Docs (and other Google tools) offline, then sync online automatically the next time you connect. As I’ve written here before, offline access is imperative to maintain productivity during those times where you don’t have an internet connection, and it gives more credence to the idea that desktop applications as we’ve known them are taking a reduced role as online applications develop increasingly sophisticated functionality.

I’m strongly considering buying the Asus Eee, a light-weight sub-notebook that comes equipped with Linux. The fact is, however, the operating system matters little to me because my main purpose for using this elegant little machine is to access my online applications when I’m on the road. In this context, I don’t’ care if I have Windows, OSX or Linux since most of my work simply requires an internet connection.

If this is the case, as we move forward, it’s worth considering what role the OS plays in our computing lives. …

Well there’s nothing to lose
And there’s nothing to prove
I’ll be dancing with myself
~Billy Idol, Dancing with Myself.

Microsoft is 30-something and that’s an elder statesman in personal computing terms, and maybe it’s feeling a bit old. The desktop is so yesterday. The future is on the web, so like many folks in their 30s Microsoft went looking for a partner, a company that could fill in the missing pieces of a successful, but increasingly dull corporate life.

Microsoft took a look around and Yahoo! looked kind of cute and surely it would find a company like Microsoft to be a highly attractive suitor. Microsoft, after all is rich and distinguished with a big bank account and a huge market share. What’s not to like? But Yahoo! proved difficult. Sure, it took a few phone calls and flirted a bit, but Yahoo! was never really interested in Microsoft (or so it seems) and Microsoft could only take so much rejection.

Finally, Microsoft had enough. As Rafat Ali reports on PaidContent.org, Bill Gates is saying it’s time for the two companies to pursue separate paths. If there were an E Entertainment channel for technology (how about the T Technology channel), they would be putting this front and center of the evening gossip news. Forget Brittany’s latest hijinx, Bill Gates reports
”the company put a lot of effort into those talks and has decided the two companies should pursue independent paths.” …

I'm not clear how taxing an MP3 player is gong to help the record companies. Instead of looking for ways to stop the bleeding on the web, the record companies need to get creative and find new ways of distributing their music. Unfortunately, they just cling to their 20th views of ownership and try to buy the politicians (who understand technology even less than record company executives) to do their dirty work for them.

It’s good to be king and have your own way
Get a feeling of peace at the end of the day
~Tom Petty, It’s Good to be King.

It’s often been said that marijuana is the gateway drug, but an article in this week’s BusinessWeek, The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit, suggests that perhaps the iPod is a gateway gadget to more expensive hardware. That’s right, employees who love their iPods (and iPhones) are beginning to demand Mac hardware at work. Imagine that.

I keep having this image of Steve Jobs sitting on the steps of a large corporation in a trench coat. As an employee approaches, he throws it open revealing row upon row of shiny new iPod Nanos and Touches. “Hey kid, wanna buy an iPod. It won’t hurt you to try it just once.” But like those bad health class videos, you cut to the employee weeks later, shaking and sweating, begging the IT department for a Mac Book Pro or an iMac, swearing he has his Apple habit under control.

This may be a fun exaggeration, but the article quotes some eye-popping growth for Apple over the last five years:

"…Apple's total sales have surged from $5.2 billion in fiscal 2002 to $24 billion last year. Its share price has risen 2,300% over the past five years, giving the company a market capitalization, at $154 billion…”

So it seems that the elegant little iPod …

Hendrawan,
Thanks for the comment. I'm waiting for fiber myself. I'm hoping Verizon find its way to my neighborhood soon.

Joytech22,
Thanks for the comment. I'm not sure that's what Matt is suggesting, nor do I expect it's in the best interest of anyone to let traffic slow down significantly. My guess is that there will a big government push around this to make sure that businesses have the incentives they need to build the necessary infrastructure to keep us moving forward in the coming years.

There has certainly been a lot FUD being spread around lately by the likes of Comcast about how P2P networks are filling up the Internet pipes. Just a couple of weeks ago, fellow Daniweb blogger, Davey Winder wrote (with tongue firmly in cheek), The Internet is Full, please get off, for his InsideEdge blog. I asked Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, if he believed the internet was running out of capacity in an interview on Friday and his reaction was, “That’s just silly.”

I’ve always felt if the internet were truly filling up, why not just build more capacity. Seems simple enough, but is there more to it than that? To answer this question, I interviewed Matthew Crocker, who owns Crocker Communications, an internet service provider in western Massachusetts and I asked him to sort out fact from fiction. Crocker provided me with some answers from his perspective as an independent ISP. I’ve included our Q&A and below:

RM: Comcast and others having been spreading a lot FUD about P2P. In your estimation, what affect is P2P activity having on ISP network traffic? Are you noticing any effect on your networks?

MC: P2P can be bad for a network, but there are many elements involved, and not all of them are P2P applications’ fault.

P2P encompasses many different applications. Some P2P applications are 'friendly' and some are not. The Internet is a shared network and the …

The other day in a short period of time, I came across two seemingly contradictory pieces of information about Google's ability to adapt to the mobile ad space. On one hand, CRM Daily published an article called Are Cell Phones a Threat to Google, and then almost immediately afterward, I got an email alert from IDC called 'Google's New Mobile Search Ads Offer Image, Scale and Uniformity.'

As a journalist, nothing pleases me more than when I find two sources of information that completely contradict each other because it gives me the opportunity to compare and contrast them and then add my own opinion. Ben Kunz, the CRM Daily reporter who wrote the article, believes the smaller screen size is a threat to Google's dominance when he writes:

"Google can now fit about 10 ads on a standard computer screen. [If you look at Google search results on a PC monitor, paid ads are the listings at the very top and along the right.] But on your cell phone, if you type in a search query at google.com you get only one or two paid ads in response."

Well, yes, that's true, there is less real estate, but the mobile web space also offers a tremendous opportunity to Google and to publishers because it offers another place to display the ads, even if the screen size is admittedly smaller. As Caroline Dangson, an IDC analyst points out in her …

Sometimes you're the Louisville Slugger
Sometimes you're the ball
~Mark Knopfler, The Bug

Technology moves so quickly it's a bit like the weather in New England. If you don't like it, wait five minutes. To prove this, not long after I published my post last week, Microsoft Misses the Boat in Albany, in which incidentally I asserted that Microsoft completely failed to grasp the idea of web-based computing, it announced the Mesh Platform, which if I understand it correctly, shows that Microsoft in fact, does get the web (at least, in its own way). And yes, the Microsoft engineers did read that 2005 Ray Ozzie memo I alluded to.

The Mesh Platform, which is explained nicely in this Beta News article, Microsoft Mesh Platform aims to Become the Universal Window to the Web, is a series of tools that in its final manifestation should give users access to information wherever they are, regardless of device. It’s ambitious and it is forward-thinking, but it is also something that Transmedia Glide Digital offers today. The difference, however, between a small company like Transmedia solving the riddle of seamless, device-neutral computing, and a company with the reach of Microsoft is enormous. If Microsoft can pull this off, and that remains to be seen, it will achieve a major transformation, something I will admit, I suggested it was incapable of doing in my Albany post.

Just to show that I’m not wrong all …

When I researched an article on multimedia search last year for EContent Magazine, (The resulting article was republished on Streamingmedia.com last December.) I learned in the course of my research that it's hard to search for non-text elements because they lack the contextual language of text. Seems logical enough, but the way most search engines get around this is by using the text-based metadata around the image or video to get searchers in the right neighborhood. It works in a 1990s sort of way, but what the world really needs is more advanced multimedia search.

That's why my eyes popped a bit when I came across this NYT article this morning while scanning today's technology news. It seems Google is experimenting with image recognition to provide a more advanced way to search for images (and one assumes eventually videos). The problem is that this is so resource-intensive, according to the article, that Google can only work with a small sub-set of its huge image repository. And if it's too resource-intensive for Google, you know we are talking about some serious resources.

Google is hoping to do for images, what page rank once did for text with its original search algorithm that rocked the world all those years ago. We shall see where this goes, but for now, it's interesting to see that Google is at least playing around with this, and as processor power and computer knowledge increases, we should begin to …

Hey Eddie:
Good post. I wonder even if Microsoft got Yahoo! if the resulting company would work or not. It's one thing to make the purchase (if that were to happen), it's a whole other thing to find a way to combine the two companies in a logical way that results in tangible products that combine the best of both companies. Even if Microsoft and Yahoo! make it to the alter, can they survive the marriage, especially if Microsoft makes it a shot-gun wedding? Ultimately, I'm with you. I hope it doesn't happen.

Yes and no. We have the best of both worlds through the syncing capability. Most of us don't really use advanced functions in Excel. Those who do will probably continue to use Excel, but for the vast majority of users, the browser is a fine place to work and the ability to work online and offline means that it isn't the same at all by virtue of the fact that your documents will follow you regardless of device (mobile, desktop, laptop) and you can work on them even when you don't have a connection. This automatic syncing and online backup is the big differentiator here I think.

Thanks, Eddie. Much appreciated.

In what might be characterized as a big ‘Duh!’ Mac World reports that Google and Adobe cited a trend at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco this week, toward enabling offline access for online applications. Gee, you think?

In my article last month in EContent Magazine on online office applications (not available online without a subscription), one of the key success factors cited by Kyle McNabb, an analyst at Forrester Research was offline access. Enterprise users don’t want to be locked into having an always-on internet connection. What happens when they are on a plane or outside of a hotspot? Is productivity supposed to stop?

Donald Leka, CEO at Transmedia, makers of Glide Business, an online operating environment which includes office productivity tools for word processing, a spreadsheet and a presentation program (among other tools) says enterprise customers need a way to work on or offline. “Enterprise customers need a reliable bridge between the online and offline worlds that they can count on. The enterprise customer must be able to work locally or online on spreadsheets, presentations and documents and files must be automatically saved and synchronized to both local hard drives and to online servers for anytime, anywhere access from a PC or mobile handset," Leka says.

Actually, many of the key online office suite vendors including Glide, are offering this at this point. Google is in the process of introducing offline …

35 sites to download free and legal MP3s: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/31/35-places-to-download-free-legal-mp3s-music/

It seems the record companies have caught with ProjectPlaylist and are suing it for copyright infringement according to this article in the NYT today:http://tinyurl.com/627mte

I just wanted to let you know that I checked the Pandora FAQ and they do pay into the various royalty organizations such as ASCAP and BMI, but there are other restrictions in the international licensing rules that prevent them from being available in many areas outside of the U.S. See http://blog.pandora.com/faq/#25 for more information, but it's clear they completely respect copyright, licensing and ownership.

But you're still reading, so I'll take that as a good sign.

My goodness, scru, I've only posted four times so far on this blog. How often could I offend your sensibilities? :)

I also think it's possible to set up a system that would work for both parties where a small company like Pandora could pay a fee based on its size and pay a percentage of sales to the record companies. There are ways to work within the system to make it happen, rather than just blocking the site altogether or suing people for playing music. Here's another viewpoint about how the big recording companies would be smart to use the internet more to their advantage, rather than seeing it as a big threat. http://tinyurl.com/6eku46

For once? Do you usually disagree with me scru? :)

Well, that's open to a big debate. They aren't selling the song or making profit from it. They are only promoting it and offering to sell it if you want to buy it. You can't actually download it. It sounds like a win-win situation to me. I personally think it's time to move beyond 20th century notions of content ownership and make the rules fit the new means of content delivery.

Sorry for the cultural insensitivity. :)

I find it surprising that Pandora is blocked in the UK. Whatever for? It is truly a great tool and doesn't infringe on copyrights because it is considered nothing more than a radio station.

Even though RIAA executives will probably spit out their coffee if they happen upon this post, I’m going to give you a round-up of some of my favorite free (and completely legal) internet music services.

WE7:
This free site delivers free tracks from mostly unknown artists (although you will find some oldies here if you look often enough). You can play the tracks online on the site by building a playlist, download a free ad-supported track or you can pay .70 British pounds ($1.35 US as of today) to get the song ad-free. Given the unfavorable exchange rate for those of us in the U.S., this is not much of a bargain. I would take the free track. The ad is really brief and plays before the song. You have to dig, but you can find some good songs on here and you can play them in any MP3 player after you download them.

Free Stuff on iTunes
Every Tuesday, iTunes updates its free section, which typically includes the Song of the Week (different genres and mixed quality, but what do you want for free, your money back?). You’ll also usually find a Latin track and several free videos, some of which are full length TV shows, which typically sell for $1.99 US. I’ve discovered several shows this way including New Amsterdam on Fox (a show I can heartily recommend). All you need is an iTunes account and you can grab the …

Microsoft is not old by corporate standards, but in the world of technology it is down-right staid. That’s why it takes a while for it to make major changes (or five years to roll out an OS). A few years ago when Bill Gates was still in charge, he recognized that Microsoft had to embrace the internet in a big way or get left behind. That’s one of the reasons he hired Ray Ozzie.

By now, nearly everyone has heard of the Ozzie Memo, a treatise that “leaked” out and outlined Microsoft’s plans to transform itself into a “modern” company. At the time, Ozzie, who has the title of Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, recognized that Microsoft had to shift its focus from traditional desktop and server-based deployment to an internet model.

Fast forward to 2008. Under pressure from free services like Google Docs, Microsoft surveyed the landscape and came up with an attempt to take Office online, sort of. But instead of introducing a pure software as a service like Google Docs, it decided to straddle the line between desktop and online and come up with a hybrid service. Aimed at the consumer market, the service, which is code-named Albany for Beta purposes, is the same old desktop client with a convenient installation program, automatic incremental updates delivered in a subscription model along with some online services such as Windows Live One Care and Windows Live Mail. Like so many of its …

Zoho, makers of an online office suite and business tools, aimed mostly at small to medium sized businesses, made its best effort to make a big splash last week when it announced it was introducing an enterprise version of the Zoho CRM product. Unfortunately, Zoho’s announcement was timed in the same week that Google and Salesforce.com announced their partnership and Microsoft was having its MVP meetings. As a result, it got lost in the shuffle.

Zoho hopes to take on SalesForce in the Software as a Service-CRM space, and to hear Zoho tell it, it has a competitive product. I reviewed Zoho Office as part of an online office suite round-up in the April issue of EContent Magazine (requires a subscription to view online), but I was concentrating on core office functionality and didn’t get a good look at the CRM. At the time, Zoho told me it was taking aim at the small to medium size business market, and although Zoho had some nice features, my take was that it lacked the security controls for the enterprise.

That seems to be changing, however, at least where the CRM tool is concerned, because one of the primary enterprise features is the introduction of role-based security along with customization and data administration enhancements, both of which are designed to give enterprise IT departments greater administrative control over users and data. The controls appear to be well designed and enable …

Fair enough. Leaked was probably a poor choice of words for the Ballmer part of the piece. The Ars Technica article links to a Seattle Post-Intelligence reporter's blog.

I'm no Microsoft basher, but I've never hidden my personal loathing for Vista. Yet even I was surprised to learn this week just how cynical Microsoft appears to be regarding Vista.

It started the other day when a Steve Ballmer speech to the Microsoft MVPs leaked out. According to several news sources including this one from ArsTechnica, Ballmer called Vista "a work in progress" at a Microsoft MVP meeting. Well, I could have told you that. It's slow, annoying and smacks of a less than stellar effort by the Microsoft development team, but people have paid big money for this OS and they have a right to a product that's not in progress, but one that's ready to go from Day 1.

To be fair, according to Char James-Tanny, a Microsoft Help MVP who was there, most folks, in her view, weren't buzzing about this comment after the speech. In fact, she says she was impressed with Ballmer's energy and after seeing Vista in use all week, saw Ballmer's comment in a more positive light, that there would be more changes and improvements on the way.

Maybe so, but it certainly didn't help the cause when an internal Vista sales motivational video leaked the other day and was posted on YouTube. The video, which is supposed to be a spoof on Bruce Springsteen's 1984 Dancing in the Dark video makes fun of Microsoft Sales messages. Not only …

Simply go the individual blog you want to subscribe to and click the RSS link next to the RSS button.

The Subscribe page opens.

Click the drop-down list at the top of the page and choose your RSS reader.

That should do it.

Ron Miller
<snip fake signature>

I don't think it helps in terms of SEO, but it does the following:

* Makes it easy to set up a way to subscribe to your blog.
* Manage subscribers.
* View detailed stats about subscriber activity.
* View detailed stats about non-subscriber/visitor activity including most popular posts, most popular links in and out and so forth (when it worked, which it doesn't for me any more).

Ron
Ron Miller
DaniWeb TechTreasures by Ron Miller blog

Thanks to everyone who has responded. I will definitely check these out. Hoping to have a one stop source for subscriber management and analytics as I did before Feedburner broke, but I may have to break it down into two if need be.

By the way, I wrote about my experience with Feedburner today in my DaniWeb blog. Please check it out and feel free to comment there:

Google Torches Feedburner Account Transfer

Thanks again for all of your ideas. If anyone knows of any other services, please leave a response.

Ron Miller
DaniWeb TechTreasures by Ron Miller blog

Check out DeepBurner. It's an excellent tool for creating ISO images.

I'm looking for an alternative to Feedburner to track my blog stats and manage subscriber information. Can anyone recommend a similar service. I would be willing to pay a fee for a reliable alternative.

Ron Miller
DaniWeb TechTreasures by Ron Miller blog

I'm surprised nobody has suggested social networking. The social bookmarking response is the closest I've seen. I would suggest you join Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and get to know people on those forums. As you become a part of their community, you can begin to drive traffic to yours.

The thing to remember about social networking is that you have to give as well as take, so that means participating, sharing links and tips and responding to people's questions and so forth. You can use a community like DaniWeb too to help you grow your own community.

Promotion takes work, but if you work hard, and build a community of people, they will know you and therefore want to see what you're doing on your forum.

Good luck with it.

Ron Miller
DaniWeb TechTreasures By Ron Miller Blog
http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/blog313540.html

Apple's quarterly earnings report came out the other day and in spite of the economy and Steve Jobs' health and everything else, Apple blew away their quarterly projections.

How do you think they keep doing it? What makes people keep buying their products in spite of the economic climate that would suggest people wouldn't be spending money on luxury gadgets?

I plan on blogging about this in the next few days, but I would love to her your opinions on how Apple keeps on going and going like the Energizer Bunny.

Ron Miller
DaniWeb TechTreasures by Ron Miller Blog
http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/blog313540.html

Firefox is better than IE, do doubt, but it is not flawless by any means. It still has memory management issues. The person who only has limited RAM needs to be careful having too many tabs open. Check out the Task Manager Processe Tab (Ctrl-Alt-Del > Processes) and you may shocked by how much memory Firefox is using.

I've been experimenting with Chrome. Still not quite ready for prime time, but it is super fast on certain sites. I mean blazing fast. It lacks the add-ons, but eventually it will compete strongly with Firefox.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Firefox fan and I think it's great that Catweaszel has written this manual and is distributing for free (in the true tradition of open source), but you should be aware that as good it is, like any software, it ain't perfect.

Ron Miller
DaniWeb TechTreasures by Ron Miller Blog
http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/blog313540.html

Was worth a shot. After re-reading your original post it makes sense that it's a dead battery issue, and being a Sony, it's of course expensive to replace. Ah well, you have to do what you have to do. Good luck.

Unplug it. Try pulling the battery. Then put the battery back in and plug it in again and see if that does it. I've had a couple of Vaios laptops over the years, and although it's been some time, I seem to recall resolving a similar issue in this fashion. Good luck.

Will do.Thanks for your help.

My standard procedure when I'm having issues with my connection is to unplug the modem and the wireless router, then wait a minute or two. Plug the modem back in first and wait until it goes through all its startup tests. When the tests are complete (on mine all four of the top LEDs are green and not flashing), then and only then plug in the router. You should see it go through its startup routine and then begin to communicate with the modem. Then you should see a good strong connection indicator in your wireless connection icon. Occasionally, I have to choose my wireless network again after I go through this procedure. If everything seems fine after this and I'm still having issues, then I try plugging directly to the ethernet port. If none of this work, it's time for a call to the ISP.

Watching You Tube or Bloomberg TV feed is a frustrating experience.Download begins and will play for 5 seconds when it stops and recommences download of next section.Is there any way of watching without all the stop and start?Am using Mac OS X.

I think it really depends on your hardware and your internet connection. If you're on broadband, you really shouldn't be experiencing regular delays. If you're on a phone line, that's a different story and it would account for delays. If the problems continue on a broadband line, I would recommend calling your provider and having them take a look at the connection and see if there is an issue.

Hi everyone, I am working as a research analyst in a laboratory that deals with developments in the area of plants and nature. I have to look on the net to assist me in my research but as I don’t access it frequent I find it difficult to get the right things online. Can anyone help me to find any kind of tool that will help me to get results better and faster?

The search tool you use really depends on the types of information you are searching for. I have the feeling a general Google search might not help you, but a tool like Ask, which parses your query and gives you access to other possible searches might. Librarians have a lot of experience on searching tools and techniques are usually happy to help you. If your company has a staff librarian, i would start there. If not try your local library. BTW, most libraries have specialized online databases you can access for free with a library card and you might want to check and see what your library offers in your area.

Thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome.

When I try to run the Administrative Tools in windows Vista Business from the start menu there are no items and it just shows empty. When I try and run it from the control panel I get the following error message. "C:\Program...Admin tools refers to a location that is unavailable...". These tools are are there but I cannot access them from these obvious places. Does anyone know why or have you had this problem?

I know that Microsoft hid these tools in XP. I don't have Vista installed in this machine, but you can do this in XP by right-clicking the task bar and clicking Properties > Start Menu > Customize > Advanced. Then scroll to the bottom of the dialog box and select System Administrative Tools > Display on the All Programs menu and Start menu. It's worth a shot to see if it still works this way.

I have pruchased a e-book (text book for training) which is a PDF document with security settings that stop you from cutting and pasting. I tried to use adobe acrobat 8 pro to change these settings, but I need a password to change the security settings. I think it is unfortunate that I have purchased the book and cannot copy paste items for my own study notes.

You could also try saving it as a text or Word document. It won't be perfect, but it should be enough for studying.

Welcome!

Thanks!

I'm a tech writer and technology journalist and I've just joined the Daniweb community. I'll be blogging in the TechTreasures blog. I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think.