Tag Archives: Software

Software, Technology

Windows 8 – designed to annoy CIOs?

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OK, so the Windows 8 first look is out and – on the face of it – kind of cool. Finally, Microsoft has worked out what a touch screen interface should do differently! Although it does feel like a very early look – judging by the fact that when they showcase non-Windows 8 HTML5 apps – it looks exactly like Windows 7…

My comment about CIOs is not so much to do with the specifics of the platform – of which we’ve seen too little to say anything other than ‘oooh, shiny’ – but the speed of the refresh cycle. Thanks to the mediocrity of Windows Vista, most enterprises that run Windows (even smaller ones like the one I work for) skipped it, and are probably in the midst of a migration from Windows XP to Windows 7. That was the best part of a 10 year gap.

The migration – especially in smaller enterprises, although I know of larger ones doing this too – will let happen naturally with hardware refreshes.

Now: it’s partially my obsessive tendencies, but I’d really like a uniform OS estate across my company. It’d make management and training so much easier. Ditto rollout of new services. So every three years for a new OS? Too fast, if they’re going to change as much as it looks like they might in UI and usability. And even though hardware refreshes tend to take place every three years or so – they tend to happen in waves, especially in growing companies. Not everyone gets a new machine at the same time…

Also; touch in the enterprise? Wonderful for marketing and useful on tablets (or ‘slates’ as Microsoft bizarrely insists on calling them) – but really not useful for knowledge workers. Well, maybe on a Microsoft Surface machine – not on a desktop, for reasons I’ve gone into before – as long as we need to type, touch is a secondary interface for most people.

Regardless, will watch with interest. I’m afraid my home-life slide into Jobs-land is probably irreversible (for the moment) with any incremental upgrade but will watch with interest.

Gardening, Software, Technology

Weed or plant? A new game…

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weedorplantThis is a picture of a weed. Or possibly the leaf of a Lapland potato I brought back from Finland for planting. I have no idea.

My plan is to leave it for a bit until there is more discernible growth and to try to make a less than completely arbitrary judgement then. That’s when I read of LeafSnap – Leaf recognition software developed by Columbia University in the US. You take a picture of a leaf and it pattern matches against a database to tell you what it is. Could this make the difference?

Reviews of the app are not good on the Appstore. “Only works on US trees,” “Primitive pattern matching that returns dozens of matches”… and then there’s the fact that it only makes claim to cope with tree leaves.

But it’s a start. Technology will find a way to help my garden grow…

Software, Technology

Trialling Disqus

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I’ve been thinking for a while that this blog needed tighter social integration into Facebook etc., and came across Disqus ("discuss") whilst researching commercial spam filters for a client. Am trying it out here – it’ll allow you to comment on posts by logging into your Facebook, Twitter or Disqus account and hopefully diminish barriers to commenting marginally, not to mention make for a slicker, more interactive commenting experience.

Thoughts appreciated.

So far, all I’ve really had opportunity to notice is that the set-up process was fairly seamless and I had to do remarkably little hackery to get it to take the place of the native WordPress commenting engine, and that it syncs into the WordPress DB so even if Disqus someday goes bust (always a worry for Silicon valley start up services) – I’ll still have all the comments here.

Internet, Software, Technology

Windows Live Writer for Mac? Blogging clients for Macs

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I’m learning a few things about Macs these days, and one of them is that free blogging clients are not quite as easy to find as they are for Windows. Marsedit, one of the major options available through the App Store, costs the best part of 30 pounds!

Thanks to the WordPress Codex, though, I’ve found Qumana. Nowhere nearly as powerful as Windows Live Writer and I need to work out the keyboard shortcuts… but its a start, and free!

 

Internet, Software

Jetpack.me & WordPress support

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Given the ludicrous traffic levels I’ve had over the last few weeks I’ve been a bit more than usually interested in my traffic stats, and check both Google Analytics and WordPress.com stats (enabled via a plugin) to get a sense of what people are reading. A bug disabled the WordPress stats and a forum post suggested I email WordPress support – which I duly did, received prompt, polite, accurate responses from a few admins there, and was pointed in the direction of a new plugin set – Jetpack.me – which adds an HTML5 stats dashboard (checkable on iPhone/iPad) and a bunch of other features to a WordPress self-installed edition, powered by the cloud – including URL shortening, sharing tools, embed tools and more.

Good on ya, WordPress folk – thanks! And if you run a WP self-install, you should check out Jetpack – a very useful package!

Internet, Software

Guerilla browser warfare

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Other than moderate contempt for Internet Explorer, which I’ve found to be slow, tedious bloatware since about IE4, I’ve always tried to be even handed in recommending browsers to people. “Try Chrome or Firefox or Opera, whatever suits you…” I’d say. And people ask me, because, well, that’s the kind of thing I tend to have a view on.

I’ve realised something over the years. People don’t want a choice. Some people do, sure, but most people are happy with the status quo. This is one of the reasons why the Microsoft antitrust ruling giving people a ‘browser ballot’ choice was so meaningless – what’s the bet that the vast majority of people just chose the one they’d heard of – so mostly IE? It’s ronseal name helps it too – after all, why would you think that “Chrome”, “Opera”, “Firefox” or “Safari” had anything to do with browsing the web?

Whilst I do continue to have a fondness for Firefox (and a polite indifference to the nice people at Opera, who I’m sure make a very good browser), I now pretty much just tell people to use Chrome. And when I’ve been fixing my parents’ machines, I’ve:

  1. hidden the desktop shortcuts to IE
  2. set up browser syncing with Chrome across each of their desktop/laptops
  3. set up the browser toolbars with vital shortcuts that I know they’ll use daily
  4. installed the IETab extension so if any website doesn’t work they can still sort it
  5. set default search to Google and activate Instant on the smartbar
  6. imported their IE bookmarks

…and so the guerrilla browser warfare kicks off. We’ll see what happens, if they get stuck or even notice…

Why Chrome? Well, it’s amazingly fast, browser sync is awesome if you use a Google Account, password saving actually works, and you get a bigger browsing area than most. It has an intuitive interface, is regularly and automatically updated so easy for people like my parents to use, and supports the latest web standards. In addition, the extensibility of Chrome (as with the add-on capability in Firefox) amps up its potential massively. The fact that new Google Apps / Google features tend to work first in Chrome is a nice bonus.

Why not Safari? Well, in truth, I haven’t used it that much. The lack of a ‘smart’ search bar offends me since every other browser now does have one, and I wouldn’t know where to start with extending it or browser sync (short of Xmarks, which I’m sad to say I abandoned when news of its closure hit (but before news of its salvation a few weeks later). My general principle against the Jobs behemoth has definitely wavered of late, so it’s not a matter of principle – interest to know if other people would knowingly choose Safari over Chrome…

Disclaimer: My agency represents Google’s Enterprise division in the UK. I’m not directly involved and don’t have any special insights. These views are all my own based on years of being unofficial tech support for people and my general deputy CIO experience.

Software, Technology

App request for Google

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Can Google please upgrade the Google Translate iPhone app to include OCR so it can do this, but just for plain text on images? I don’t need a video feature or AR capability, or the clever editing that provides the illusion the translated text is on the billboard, sign or whatever, but it’d be awesome if it OCR’ed the text, translated it, and spat out a plain text English (or whatever-language) version of the sign, bit of paper, etc.

I’ve mentioned the coolness of the OCR video translation app (at least as far as the demos go) before, but if you haven’t seen it, check it out. A step towards Star Trek’s universal translators!

Software

Sparrow for Windows?

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One of the other things that trigger my newfound Mac envy was seeing Chris use Sparrow, a lightweight Gmail client for OSX. Now I’m a big fan of the cloud and a big fan of the Gmail UI, so was impressed that an app had been developed that actually made me want to try something else.

Of course, it doesn’t do a great deal more than the web app, especially if you use Chrome (at least as far as I can tell without a Mac to try it on properly), and it would probably be hard to justify the $10 price tag as such, but it does look slick, productivty-lorious and it’s on my WANT list for when I eventually break and go the Mac way (ETA for Armand on Mac – about 3 years).

I’m not the only PC fan to think so, either.

Video here if you’re on Mac / use Gmail.

Sparrow – The new mail for Mac from domleca on Vimeo.

Software, Technology

Evernote-tastic

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I’m something of a productivity fiend. If something seems fiddly when I’m working on it, in real life or at a computer, I hunt for a simpler workaround, or hack, or shortcut, or whatever’s the appropriate shorthand for it. Hence being a big fan of the Lifehacker blog and Videojug.

I’m also a massive advocate of the cloud. Most of the day-to-day personal productivity tools I use live on the Internet in some way.

So really it’s a mystery that I’ve gone so long without Evernote, a sort of DropBox-like service for text and audio notes and pictures that syncs across iPhone, iPad and any number of PC or Mac endpoints. It took Chris showing it to me on his Macbook to get me thinking I needed it.

Having been resoundingly and repeatedly convinced of the inadequacy of the iOS WordPress, I’m now writing these blog posts on it using my foldaway bluetooth keyboard on the commute home. The posts will save locally into a text file which will sync to my other devices when I fire up Evernote on there. Wonderful.

Now, unlike Seinfeld, when I wake up with an idea in the middle of the night and scribble it down, I not only won’t have to worry about illegible handwriting and losing the punchline, but it’ll pop up on my desktop later on when I’ve all but forgotten I wrote it down in the first place.won’t have to worry about illegible handwriting and losing the punchline, but it’ll pop up on my desktop later on when I’ve all but forgotten I wrote it down in the first place.

The product, for those interested, is intuitive, designed for touch, and works seamlessly. A joy.