ICT rants and raves from Sue Hutton

INWI in Morocco - mobile broadband with flair

2012-01-07T22:54:00.002Z

Did I tell you I'd succumbed to smartphones? Not one, but two! I bought an HTC Desire in April 2010, but got completely fed up with it within a year because the battery failed, AND it complained of low memory whenever I tried to access Twitter.

So I bought a Samsung Galaxy II. What a phone! I can't imagine being without it now. And it never complains about shortage of memory.

I have been obliged to take a contract with 3mobile, as 3mobile was the most competitively priced at the time. But then I also have to put up with dilatory speeds and frequent lapses of coverage.

Which is what makes my experience with mobile broadband provider INWI in Morocco so remarkable. Friends, if you are travelling to Maroc, be sure to look for the INWI booth in the arrivals hall. I hope your experience will be the same as mine.

No problem about providing a 3G mobile broadband SIM for just 5 days' use. The guy switched the SIM in my Galaxy for me, and got the phone working. I had constant, unfailing mobile broadband coverage the whole time I was in the Tangier area last October, even when out in the middle of apparently nowhere.

No British mobile service provides this level of service in my experience. And it was only £6 for 5 days' use. Terrific when you're visiting for short periods.

The SIM will still be valid when I return, (I hope), and I can simply recharge it. YEESS!

A partial apology to Google!

2011-06-06T09:56:00.004Z

How it grates!

Yesterday I posted about how Chrome does not display my RAW images edited in Lightroom as they display in Explorer, and every other browser.

Well, it was me. I hadn't chosen the Export command from Lightroom which generates a jpg image, because it wasn't obvious to a simpleton like me. Instead, because there is no Save As command in Lightroom, I had opened the edited image in CS5 and used Save As from there.

Save As is not the command to use for RAW images. Choose Export.

When you choose Export, the resulting jpg looks absolutely fine in Chrome. See the example above.

The fact remains that Chrome does display colour differently from other browsers, as is documented elsewhere on the web.

Colour management FAIL in Chrome and Android browser

2011-06-05T09:49:00.005Z

Yes, I know it's been a while since I posted. Put it down to a life phase crisis.

But the flat in Morocco is finished and available for rent. During the quieter months of the year, it's heaven to lie in bed at night and hear the waves slapping on the shore.

Mobile broadband has not improved particularly for visiting tourists. Several hotels have free-ish wifi connections. Don't look for widespread free wifi in Tangier. Nor, am I told, is installed ADSL reliable. I haven't asked for a broadband connection to my flat as a result. Check out McD's opposite my flat for free wifi - sometimes.

But this is not the point of this post. I have been taking my photography much more seriously over the year and have installed Lightroom 3.4.1 and Photoshop CS5 with Adobe RAW Converter as a result.

Delightedly, I have started taking photos in Camera RAW, tweaking them a bit in these two programs and saving them as jpgs for upload to Flickr.

Imagine my horror when on viewing them in the browser, the colour balance was totally wrong and the photos looked dreadful.

At first I thought it must be me. I'd done something wrong in the processing, or not altered a crucial setting somewhere.

And then, in desperation, I opened the flickr page in Internet Explorer, which rendered the photos exactly as I had seen them in CS 5 and Lightroom after editing. As does Firefox, and FF and Safari on a Mac.

So it is NOT me. What then is the culprit?

Google CHROME. I use the Chrome browser all the time. A Google (ahem) search brought up results instantaneously. Google does not support colour management. Whereas other browsers do.

Not only that, the Android browser on mobile and tablet devices doesn't seem to support colour management either. I had a quick look on my Xoom to check.

This is awful Google. I don't even know whether I'm seeing any of my other photos on Chrome as others see them.

I did try this tip for adding 'enable colour profile,' but it didn't seem to work.

How can this have been allowed to go on for so long. It's not as if I'm the first to howl with rage.

Please, please Google, get some colour management into the act for your browsers. Or somebody else out there tell me what I could have missed.

Mobile in Morocco

2010-06-17T14:35:00.007Z

View of the Mediterranean from my flat in Tangiers

I'm investing in an apartment in Tangiers, 100 m from the beach and in a prime position overlooking McD's. Look to the right out of the window and you will see not only the new train station but also the site where Tanger City Center will rise.

I'm excited about Tanger City Center. My experience of both Muscat and Dubai City Centers is that these developments are nice places to shop, with lots of outlets, including Carrefour. They attract lots of footfall.

I hope it will also offer free wifi connections where I can go and sip coffee and check my mail and Google Reader, whether on my new Android phone, yes, I bought one, or my netbook.

Although I will have net connection in my flat across the road.

I'm very happy with my new HTC Desire, albeit I have to put up with 3mobile in the UK, but it's a 30 day contract, so I could, theoretically, switch to a new provider at any time.

Don't you just feel for the guys in the States who are locked into service providers with the iPhone? Their gain is that iPhones and Android phones are so much more ridiculously cheap there than in UK. Undoubtedly because it's a bigger market.

I still haven't actually found out if an HTC Desire bought in UK would work in the States with a US provider. When I visited Florida in 2006, I had to buy a different phone for my US sim because, as they would, the Americans use a different transmission protocol. CDMA/EVDO instead of UMTS/HSPA.

So what about mobile net surfing in Morocco? Phone charges are high from your provider and extortionate for data transfer. 3mobile would have charged £5.50 per Mb for data roaming.

The solution is to buy a local sim for your phone and a USB Internet modem for your laptop. Foreigners can buy on showing their passports.

Both Maroc Telecom and Méditel offer a European compatible modem at £22 ($33) with one month's unlimited Internet. I chose Maroc Telecom because that was the nearest shop when I was looking. There are outlets all over Tangiers. The 3G signal was great in Tangiers and also halfway up a hill around 30km to the west. But the signal dips when you're in the valleys. This is also a problem with a plain old ordinary sim in your phone. For one night, I was connected continuously to Movistar of Spain. I suspect that Maroc Telecom may have a more comprehensive network than Méditel. In both cases, connections are likely to be more erratic in rural areas.

The newly rebranded company INWI (formerly WANA) does not offer internet data sim-only deals, because its phones and modems use the American CDMA/EVDO protocol and won't work on European networks. In May, INWI was charging around $57 for a Huawei USB modem including one month of free Internet access.

Only Maroc Telecom offers a 3G prepay Sim card (Menara) to enable your mobile for the web. Read this extremely informative article about where to buy and how to set it up.

It's an internet only service, so you need a Jawal sim in another phone to be able to use voice services. Complicated, I know. But in country charges are reasonable, you can top up, and if are going to be visiting regularly, as I intend, then you can keep the number going.

Just one thing, iPhone is not officially supported in Morocco at the time that I write. I shared tweets with a young Moroccan lady who commutes between Casablanca and Florida. She sold her iPhone to her cousin and let him get on with unlocking it to insert a Moroccan sim.

Buzzed off with control freak business

2010-03-06T13:59:00.006Z

In my previous post, I conjectured that my 3mobile mi-fi might be able to provide a wifi signal for an iPad, should I buy one.

Not so! Cunning Mr Jobs has put the dampers on that one. First thing I saw on my twitter list this morning was a link to a headline: Jobs: iPad can't tether to iPhone.

And if it can't tether to an iPhone, it can hardly be expected to work with a 3mobile connection - I guess.

As Mr Jobs explained so glibly, Apple are producing the 3G version of the iPad to provide constant net access, so there won't be a need for tethering.

That's another idea fallen by the wayside.

Did you see that headline earlier this week saying that big business in America thinks that open source should be banned, because, presumably, it's unbusinesslike and offers unfair competition. That includes such staples as Apache web server software, MySQL database software, Linux operating system etc

At least SourceForge reversed its earlier unpopular decision to block downloads of open source software to users in countries on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control sanction list, which includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. There's quite a few in these countries who are glad to be able to get hold of software which enables them to participate in the global community, despite their governments' best endeavours.

Should we actually be grateful to American and other multi-millionaires for creating an infrastructure that increases wealth and money supply? It certainly isn't because they're providing goods and services at a fair price if they're blocking potential demand and access to information.

Oh yes. Buzz. I'm still using it but am SO frustrated at the confusing lists of comments, most of which are dross. This means that I am not following a load of people who are following me, because there's just too much to scan and read. It puzzles me that Google doesn't reverse the policy and let users choose whether they want to see comments rather than displaying them by default. And how about putting tick boxes by posts so that you can mute all those you don't want to see any more in one fell swoop?

Mobile broadband blues

2010-01-30T16:44:00.006Z

I was so excited about my iPodtouch. Then increasingly I realised that its value was compromised because I could hardly ever find a venue with free wi-fi connection that would make it work as a web connected tool.

The BTFon network proved to be totally useless because it didn't recognise my username and password. I can't say that FON went out of its way to explain clearly whether you need a different username and password for BTFon than when you sign up to a FON network.

So I have this iPodTouch, which I want to use for checking email on the move, sometimes, because most of the email that I get is totally non-essential. And I want to be able to check my calendar and contacts which of course are up in the Google cloud somewhere. Occasionally, I might check BBC news. It's an interesting revelation that the majority of websites do not have a mobile version, including 3mobile, but the BBC does.

That's one of my objectives for this year, to build a mobile version of my website.

Paying horrendous monthly fees for telecoms costs is anathema to me. I'm a great user of email and the landline rather than mobiles. Why? Writing comes more naturally to me and use of my landline within UK is free, other than the rental.

Not even the offer of a free, or reduced cost all-singing, all-dancing do-it-all mobile phone is tempting.

I've only moved over to one of the cheaper Virgin Mobile contracts within the last six months, and I still don't use all the minutes, let alone the texts. I much prefer the option that I had in Oman. Buy the phone and pay just for what you use.

I once had a stand-up row with the manager of the local Orange shop, telling him that mobile phone contracts were a rake-off for the companies. He laughed and said that people preferred it that way. Phooey. They were just not given any other option at the time. He even brought the shutter of the shop down on my head as I was leaving.

And then there's the mobile broadband issue. I'd been an early adopter of the 3mobile broadband plan meaning that I had paid £15 monthly for the privilege only to discover that I couldn't get reception in the places that I most needed to use it. I rang 3mobile to say I didn't want to renew at the end of the contract. A very nice Scottish gentleman made me an offer I didn't think I could refuse, monthly broadband at half the price with a new dongle. It seemed fair enough.

Until I found myself on holiday up in the Yorkshire Dales last November without any 3mobile connection at all. But my Orange phone had a fairly good signal. Which gave me an idea. Since mid-year, I had been holding on to a brochure advertising Orange mobile broadband for £4.89 a month, only for 500kb, but that was enough for what I wanted. I took the Settle-Carlisle railway line one rainy day, because walking in the Dales was out of the question. Lo and behold, just around the corner from Carlisle station, I found the Orange mobile shop. I signed up and got my dongle. And it worked. In places 3 can't reach.

So if you've been following me so far, you will have worked out that I now have two mobile broadband contracts.

And then I saw the 3mobile mi-fi advertised. What's that? It's a little device that generates a wi-fi signal from a 3G connection. You can link it to up to five devices.

Well, I didn't want the contract offering an iPodTouch at £23 a month, because I already have an iPodTouch.

The no-strings Mi-fi on Pay-as-you-Go seemed a good option. Reader, I bought one.

Oh dear me. PAYG? It's a joke. You have to pay £10 a month to use it. It comes in the small print as an Add-On, which of course I had overlooked. You might think that sounds reasonable, but I can tell you now that I wouldn't get the use out of it.

Two protracted phone calls to 3mobile in a bid to try and return the thing failed totally. How is it that people simply cannot refer you to the right department??!!

I have to say, that I am enchanted that the mi-fi actually works. I was going to use it for as long as I could before the data allowance ran out and then forget about it.

However, the man Jobs, and you really should take a glimpse at the cover of The Economist for this week 30th Jan 2010 which bears the inscription, The Book of Jobs, has just launched the iPad.

Thinks. There will be a wi-fi version and a 3G version. If I have a mi-fi, would I need the 3G version.

Crucial question of all, will the mobile phone companies lock down the iPad to a contract. I do hope not.

No, I haven't mentioned Google's Nexus phone. Not in UK yet and it will be tied to a contract.

Here's Wavin' at you Kid!

2009-11-12T23:05:00.001Z

Thanks to Foamcow, the only real web developer I know, I got an invite for a Google Wave account.

Rubbing my hands with glee, I signed in. And then what?

Pete was the only listed contact, and he's far too busy working and tweeting to indulge in a spot of Google waving.

Happily, one of my Omani contacts saw my plea on Twitter and added me. She, Deepak and I got seriously stuck into a Wave conversation. Goodness me, how quickly the wave scrolled. We added maps and videos and ended up knowing each other somewhat better, but I haven't seen them on Wave since. Probably because the conversation could be carried out as effectively using Twitter or Live Messenger.

There's quite a Twitter community in Oman, and the majority have protected their tweets. There may be a feeling that Wave is not as 'protected.' Oman has only one ISP at present, Omantel, which is heavily censored. Neither can you be sure that the security services are not reading what you're writing. The filter even bans gmail from time to time.

Does everyone have to be online at the same time to participate in a Wave? Tweeting is more independent. You can pick up a tweet and reply when it suits you, rather than being constrained to follow a conversation in real time.

My five 'wavers' never seem to be online. So that avenue of enquiry has expired.

I have yet to work out how to incorporate Twitter and Facebook into Wave as Mashable suggested.

I had had an idea of how I might use Wave with my toastmasters group. I have to build a mini-website to inform my co-members about developments in a topic that I'm to present as the last project in the Technical Presentations manual. I thought Wave might be a suitable way of bringing people up to speed, particularly as I could use Wave to build a wiki, load photos, documents, maps etc.

Some hope. The club members won't even sign up for Google email accounts so that we could share Google Calendar and Google Docs. And if they don't have a Google account, there's no way they can be offered a Wave account in the future.

Enter the Google Wave cheat sheet. and a welcome clue. If you enter with:public in the search box, you see what everyone else is waving about.

Whoaaaaaaaah! An endlessly scrolling list of Waves that disappear out of the window in less than 3 seconds, most of which look as if they're junk. Too many Waves offering to check if your link works. That looks like spam. Honestly, it was disheartening.

I did follow two Waves. One on learning Swedish, since I did work in Stockholm as an au pair between 1969 to 1970 and learnt a bit of Swedish, and another for women in social marketing.

Love and bless them, the Google engineers have created something, essentially, because they can. We proto-Wavers are the sandbox. How many of us will survive the evolution of Wave?

Lovin' my iPodTouch

2009-08-09T16:15:00.003Z

Last week, a study showed that the British valued their communications tools more than holidays and buying clothes. Only buying groceries, toiletries and cosmetics rated higher than having a phone at home and a broadband subscription.

Mobile subscriptions were also deemed to be essential, rather than desirable. Only 19% of respondents put mobile subscriptions 1st, 2nd or 3rd in a list of items they would cut down on in the recession.

Now I happen to think that mobile phone charges in UK are extortionate. No wonder mobile phone companies appear to be doing so well. I, for one, would not countenance paying £40 a month for 24 months, just to get an all-singing, all-dancing phone such as the Nokia n97, which will be out of date by the end of the contract, irrespective of the generous allowance of minutes.

I just don't talk on mobile phones that much. Having said that, I managed to exhaust my humble £12 a month tariff in only one week whilst I was stuck in hospital in July. I haven't used the mobile since, and won't until the new monthly allowance of minutes becomes available. There are other ways of contacting people.

I did look at that £40 a month contract, I must admit. The Nokia n97 is an exceedingly powerful pocket machine with 32Gb memory and a 5 megapixel camera. But my new Nokia 6220 has a 5 megapixel camera too, and I have a little netbook which is easy to carry around and easy to use for someone of my ilk with arthritic fingers.

What finally turned me off the n97 was that the mobile operator would not carry Skype. I could have bought the phone and gone with a SIM from 3mobile, but I'm wary of 3 after I had to get REALLY angry when the call centre simply refused to let me not renew my contract. I gather I'm not the only one. I had to let off steam by writing to head office. They haven't replied.

I suppose the carrier might not be able to do anything about using Skype on the Nokia n97 when it's connected to wifi, but I didn't want to pay all that money just to find out.

Quite by chance, I discovered that Apple's iPodTouch 2nd generation enables web browsing, and Skype, when it connects to a wi-fi connection.

Reader, I bought one. Not new, mind you, but a refurbished model offered on the Amazon website. I wanted to find out what it would be like before committing to expensive mobile technology which I might not be able to use.

What is there not to like about the design of Apple products? Sleek, slim, futuristic, even holding the ipodTouch gives one a vicarious thrill. The screen resolution is brilliant.

I still have a problem with the keyboard. I can't imagine typing in emails other than one-fingered and slowly, and it's easy to hit the wrong button, which holds things up even more. Perhaps someone has made an app which provides a virtual keyboard on the desk. I shall have to find out.

So at the moment, my new gadget is a gimmick. I haven't found a wifi network I can connect to yet, other than at home, which rather defeats the object. I want to be Skype-able on the move.

But I've just checked back with FON and discovered numerous BTFon connecton points which should make life rather easier. This was what I was hoping for almost two years ago when I wrote about BT and FON teaming up. Check out BTFon and what it offers.

I've even found directions on how to connect to a BTfon hub on the ipodTouch. So there!

I'm digitally distinct! Sort of.

2009-06-17T20:29:00.003Z

Trawling through Google Reader, I found a blog post preening of being Digitally Distinct, thanks to the Online ID Calculator.

The Online ID Calculator reckons it can assess how distinctive you are on the net. More specifically, how well does Google recognise you? Because, if Google hasn't a clue who you are, you're not going to show up in its search results.

Canny, really. You part with some personal information, answer some questions about the number of valid results that Google returns about you, and hey presto, the calculator shows your position on a graph.

The graph plots volume of results on the y axis against relevance of results on the x axis. There are four quadrants.

High volume + low relevance = Digitally Disastrous
Low volume + low relevance = Digitally Dissed
Low volume + high relevance = Digitally Dabbling
High volume + high relevance = Digitally Distinct

And you get a nice little badge which you can post on your website, if you choose. But I guess only the Digitally Distinct WOULD choose to do that. I mean, would you tell the world you were Digitally Disastrous?

The calculator has been devised by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson, who are partners in Reach, an online personal branding club.

While your data may be protected, the terms and conditions suggest that the statistics may be used to devise a personal branding model and could be used as part of a database in the writing of a book on the subject.

Why could the Online ID Calculator be instructive? If you look for yourself on the net, you can bet your bottom dollar that people like recruiters or potential business partners will be looking too.

How do you want your personal brand to come across? What would you want people to find out about you?

I too can now display the little red rectangle. But I did learn something. In my quest to be a world acknowledged expert, I need to focus more on getting a higher volume of relevant results. I'm just a little too near the Digitally Dabbling quadrant for my liking.

Open Source resources to liberate libraries, enabling users to share - Web2.0 style

2009-06-16T12:11:00.002Z

This SlideShare Presentation from Richard Wallis of Talis, a library system producer, suggests how Jangle and Juice can enable libraries to tap into resources on the web. Library users will be able to find many alternative resources when they're seeking information about books and authors. Since there's no sound, I can't actually tell you a lot more.

Open Source: Liberating your systems

View more PDF documents from Richard Wallis.

Inventive ideas for using twitter - stock feeds and alternative websites

2009-04-26T14:27:00.007Z

The trouble with web pages is that they stick right there on the net. You revisit a website and nothing seems to have changed. Except maybe for the blog. SEO advice is to maintain a blog so that Google will be constantly challenged by your addition of new content.

I have three main blogs, plus two or three others on the side. Often, I don't have the time to think through what to write. Sometimes, I'm just not inspired.

Hey ho twitter, although I conclude many of my days having to admit that I haven't had a single, brilliant, original idea to share with the twittersphere.

I love the interaction on twitter. I pick up stories and useful links to tips. I can ask questions. I can reply to questions. It doesn't really take up that much of my time. Tweetdeck runs quietly in the background (I turned off the sound alerts) while Twhirl also enables me to post and monitor content as well as upload a twitpic.

I'm not a mobile net user, because I spend so much time in front of a computer, that I want to get away from it while I'm out. There are other things in life.

But I was impressed by a twitter use that was tweeted today. An article in today's Washington Post describes how you can set up your Twitter account to follow market news. Surely better than having to download a desktop ticker. And you would be able to follow your customised twitter stream on your net enabled mobile.

It had to happen. I came across the profile of someone else who has revised the home page of his website to consist entirely of his twitter updates. Too busy, one presumes, to write something truly rational or descriptive about his life and work. So far, it details travels to meetings in exotic locations.

I'm always wary of people who list meetings as their principal activity. There is precious little evidence of anything useful coming out of meetings. All those summits that statesmen go to? The discussions have been held in advance by subordinate ministers and officials who phrase the final communique. If no-one is present at a meeting to minute its content, who knows if there is an effective outcome?

Mind you, I was wondering how to incorporate a FriendFeed page into my website yesterday. I haven't sorted it out yet, but Facebook friends will be able to click the appropriate tab in my profile.

Using Google to advertise your Twitter feed

2009-04-05T13:36:00.004Z

Google is allowing Adsense users to define ads marketing their Twitter profiles. Instead of being directed to a specific web page selling a product, the ad clicker ends up at the advertiser's Twitter profile.

Apparently Intuit has spent a pile this way, promoting their TurboTax software. TurboTax spokeswoman, Colleen Gatlin, said that using Twitter humanises the company's interaction with potential customers. As well as being able to answer customer questions about the product quickly, it also gets customer feedback via Twitter.

I wonder if Intuit will publish the results of this advertising campaign as opposed to more traditional approaches.

Intuit's marketing department is analysing the results. As the marketing director says, it's not just the customers who subscribe directly who are the target, but their followers.

The same article also mentions newly launched Tinker. Tinker aggregates conversations from Facebook and Twitter relevant to 'event streams.' Oh and by the way, there'll be associated advertising.

WiMax in Libya

2009-01-22T23:20:00.004Z

Libya is launching its first commercial WiMax service next week. It will serve 300,000 customers and have a mobile component.

While reasonably priced by British standards, the cost is likely to be rather more than the average Libyan can afford, at least for now.

Apparently, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria already have limited networks.

WiMax does not depend on wired infrastructure, which, frankly, simply does not exist in Africa. All you will need is a USB dongle to plug into your laptop, providing you're within 50km of a WiMax tower. Ultimately, this will be a very cost-effective communications solution.

I was enthusing about WiMax over a year ago. I was looking forward to its arrival in UK, hoping that it would make it a lot easier and cheaper to use VoIP.

I guess vested interests have squashed that one. We're still in the era of mobile 3G - which does not work everywhere. 3, take note. There is no way that I can depend on your mobile broadband,

FON seems to have stymied. BTInternet, which was supposed to have partnered with FON to provide local wireless networks, doesn't seem to advertise it.

I've even become disillusioned with Skype. My Skype telephone number will expire within the month. Why am I not renewing? Voice quality was atrocious when I picked up calls on my laptop, even if reception was very clear when the call was diverted to voicemail.

Whether that's down to Skype, or the sound settings on my computer, I can't be sure. I had intended my Skype phone number to be my business number. When it came down to it, it didn't work. While you may forgive dropped calls and poor sound quality at a personal level and try to dial again, it's not at all acceptable for business purposes.

All the best to Libya in its new telecommunications era. I was in Libya in 1977 and I remember what it was like!

To Twitter, or not to Twitter? And THAT inauguration

2009-01-21T12:11:00.004Z

Do you use Twitter? I bet anyone reading this would know that it's THE micro-blogging service. What's more, it forces you to read what other people write rather than putting it off to another day.

I only follow 60 people. 72 poor souls have opted to follow me. Twitter cognoscenti aim for thousands of followers, which rather makes me think they're following the 'stack it high and sell it low' principle. Establishing a global reputation as an expert of sorts.

The online marketers are the worst. Floods of tweets hog the timeline, often with @ responses to people who I don't know and don't know what question they asked and probably wouldn't want to know anyway.

I hate the hashtags and text-type language. If it were about usability and accessibility, some twitterers would fail immediately. The main protagonists are trying to build their own corporate profiles so that they can convince companies that they are the Twitter 'experts.' I wonder how much money I could charge per day to show other people how to use Twitter for marketing?

But then there are many positive benefits to being a Twitterer. I get some very good tips simply by following people who link to new information resources and techniques. I've also been following a friend of my son who is travelling the States and was in D.C. for President Obama's inauguration. I asked him to bring me an inauguration souvenir.

Just this morning, Karen Blakeman twittered about a Wordle analysing the words used in Obama's inauguration speech.

I'd love to reproduce it here, but Blogger won't let me insert the code. Here's the link to Wordle: Obama Inauguration Speech.

What's a Wordle? An online graphical representation of the emphasis given to words on a web page. It's useful for keyword discovery.

And if you'd like to watch the speech all over again and read the transcript, then this BBC page preserves the inauguration for posterity. There's even a glimpse of the Wordle!

Has eBay had its day?

2008-11-26T10:51:00.003Z

My eyes were opened this morning to the troubles that eBay seems to be in. I strongly suggest that you read down all the comments. There's some interesting stuff there.

I've used eBay since 2003 for occasional purchases and selling. I even managed to sell two vehicles, notably Bertha, my lovely camper van, which Len and I used to support our son George and his friends on his bike ride from John O'Groats to Lands' End last year.

I've been fortunate in my experiences, other than buying a fourth-hand car which was little more than a wreck. That appeared as a classified ad and I should have gone to inspect it beforehand. So that was my fault.

I'm not in the market for buying branded goods, other than for photography. If I look on eBay, the search invariably takes me to shops located in Hong Kong which promise to deliver goods free of custom duty. I tried it once, and got stung by the customs charge. So I don't buy from eBay shops anymore if I can help it.

I think it pays to keep checking the listings for the real second hand bargain. There's no point on clicking on just anything in the listings. And ALWAYS read the small print and the description in detail.

Having said that, a friend and I are considering setting up an ecommerce store and thought that it might be a good idea to use an eBay shops as a taster. I went to a seminar about selling on eBay, but quickly decided that the cost of 'renting' the store space far outweighed the highly inconvenient methods of listing and the rather tacky image that most shops have.

If I were looking for something a bit more exclusive, I would not personally go to look on eBay. I would, however, look on Amazon. I buy a lot from Amazon, in the way of books, classical music CDs, photography accessories and kitchen equipment when it's on special offer.

I still would not put my ecommerce offerings on Amazon. I want to present an exclusive image for that.

So what's the problem with eBay? Website traffic is plummeting apparently. People are scared off by fraudulent tales and experiences. Did they really expect to buy a Gucci, or Armani or Nike for next to nothing?

You're mostly locked into PayPal for payment. Not everyone wants a PayPal account although in my experience, you can still use a credit card when going through the payment process. For large payments, I specify BACS.

Just maybe, the novelty of online auctions is wearing off? You might have thought that eBay would be a destination of choice in lean economic times, but somehow the concept of eBay being a source of things cheap and cheerful has gone.

My own impression is that eBay has been trying to reorientate the perception of its image, with one that's more up-market. Is that what its potential customers want?

What should eBay actually be?

See figures for eBay web traffic in the USA.

Feeling like an Android

2008-11-13T19:17:00.003Z

Is it really September since I last posted? My eco-button tells me that I've saved £18 since I installed it.

I gave one to Len for our 35th wedding anniversary, but his laptop powers down automatically so he handed it on to our son George, who's attached it to his mega computer - used essentially for playing WoW.

Naturally, George forgets to press the button, so periodically, I peep into his room when he's out and bang the button for him.

Yes, the Google Android phone has been released. I'd love to try it, but I really can't justify £40 a month, when I already have another mobile contract and 3 broadband as well.

Besides, with arthritis in my hands, my little Advent computer is much more convenient to use. I never have got used to texting, preferring to use my Skype account to send SMS instead. Not only mostly cheaper, but I find it much, much easier to use the Qwerty keyboard.

With luck, the monthly cost will come down and I shall be able to try out Google's new phone.

I've been attending lots of workshops about online marketing, pay per click, SEO and selling online in October. The result? I'm changing my business focus.

Must dash. The toad-in-the-hole will be burning for supper.

Eco-button - my little bit for carbon saving

2008-09-26T08:26:00.010Z

I went to the Recycling and Waste Management Exhibition at NEC with Len and Rosie last week. It was a glorious day.

We had to walk through an outdoor display of giant crushers, shredders, loaders and diggers on the way to the hall.

Len had his own itinerary, but Rosie and I sat down for a coffee to research who we wanted to visit. Rosie was targeting media stands in a bid to get a job and I was interested in the domestic recycling displays.

Naturally, we picked up loads of hemp and cotton bags, pens, pencils, sticks of rock, stress balls and a mug for Len to take back to his new desk in Kazakhstan.

We also bought a Green Cone. That involved Len digging a three foot hole in our clay-bound garden, into which to install it. Some good physical exercise. It isn't quite straight but it is sort of in the sun, where it needs to be in order to digest all the waste food we shall be throwing into it.

None of us relish the prospect of recycling the contents of the Bokashi Bin over the winter! The Green Cone seemed an eminently more welcome prospect.

While Rosie and Len were lugging our green cone to the car park, I made a last-minute diversion around the stalls to find the Ace stall where I hoped to discover where I could recycle tetrapaks.

On the way, there was a gadget stand. One of those companies that specialise in marketing all those knick-knacks that businesses like to hand out as freebies to customers.

And that is where I spotted the Eco-Button. I bought two.

It was rather profligate of me really, since all it does is put your PC into Stand By mode, and the promotional cost was £13.95 each.

Normally I would snort at these 'I want one of those' devices, which you don't really need, but I have to admit that it is so much, much more likely that you will hit the green button when quitting your desk for a while, rather then going through the two clicks needed to put your computer into Stand By.

There's a nice little touch. When you resume your position at the computer, a display shows you how many carbon and power units, and cash savings, that you've made.

I've had it installed for a week, and to date have saved £2.61, 11.86 power units, and 5.10 carbon units. At this rate, it will take me six weeks to get back the cost of buying it.

Nice eh? Mind you, I don't know how much carbon was used to make it in the first place. Would that have been incorporated into the price?

A week later, I have spotted the Eco-button for sale in my local Coop supermarket for £14.99 each.

Made my peace with Firefox 3

2008-09-11T19:48:00.003Z

Frustrated beyond measure at not being able to install Delicious buttons on the Firefox 3 toolbar, I finally got round to doing the necessary research.

I looked for 'Unexpected installation error' on the Mozilla support site.

Corrupt extension files seem to be the issue.

You need to quit Firefox, find your Firefox profile, then delete extensions.ini, extensions.cache and extensions.rdf.

Restart Firefox and these files are automatically regenerated.

Advice on how to find your Firefox profile.

I was SO happy when Firefox blazed back with my Accuweather forecasts, delicious buttons and Colorzilla dropper, along with the developer toolbar.

Business has returned to normal.

Writing in Google Chrome

2008-09-04T12:28:00.004Z

Yes, I've downloaded the app and am trying it out right now while I write this.

One of the toolbars looks suspiciously like the one on Flock with Share Facebook, Furl It and Mark in Magnolia. And looking for addons takes me to Firefox.

But all I have to do now is to click the star next to the address bar to add a site to my favourites, which is all I have to do in Flock really, to add urls to delicious.

It is fast. I'll see how I get on.

Just tried to install delicious addon. At least I got a message that Windows does not recognise an xpi file. But why now? It's always recognised xpi files for Firefox extensions in the past.

Really, REALLY peeved with Firefox 3

2008-09-03T15:54:00.004Z

Since the beginning of this week, persistent reminders have suddenly appeared on my monitor screen urging me to upgrade to Firefox 3. It did point out that certain addons, such as Google tool bar and Autocopy, would no longer work.

So I ignored the exhortations.

When the frequency of these notices increased, I decided that there must be something to the claim that FF3 improved security, so I upgraded.

I SO wish that I hadn't.

I have lost ALL of my addons, and if I try to install them again, such as Delicious buttons for bookmarking pages, I get a message that Firefox cannot install the addons because of an error 203 and that I should check the error console.

"Error: e.location.getItemLocation(e.id) is undefined
Source File: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/components/nsExtensionManager.js
Line: 4007"

Has anybody ANY idea what that actually means?

I uninstalled FF and hoped that I could find an earlier version to download, but no, version 3 is the only one on offer. Reinstallation didn't improve anything about FF3 performance with addons.

Firefox is now virtually next to useless as far as I'm concerned. It was all the addons that made it so valuable.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I have Flocked off to Flock.

The pitfalls of getting my videos on to YouTube

2008-08-17T14:45:00.006Z

I have a JVC Everio GZ-MG37E camcorder. I came by this natty little HD camcorder while in Fuerteventura, hob nobbing with conmen. I found reason to rue the purchase when I discovered that JVC, for indecipherable reasons, uses its own proprietary file format with which to record the video files.

Although software was provided, it didn't suit me. The guidance notes looked awfully basic. It didn't take me long to find out that the files I transferred to my PC wouldn't play in standard media programs.

I discovered that Adobe Premiere supported the file format. I installed Premiere on my little laptop and downloaded files taken in Paphos, Cyprus to work up. But the laptop memory didn't seem adequate to handling the app with any sort of speed.

What next? Obviously, a little online research. To my horror, the results show that it's a real pain in the backside to work with JVC files, both in Windows and OSX .

It's taken me a year to get round to sorting out this mess. I used the JVC Everio to record clips of the Great Jogle last year, but never got round to downloading the video. I went online again last week to search for solutions, and bless him, someone called rukhsana photograpy had posted all the information that I needed, to the moviecodec forum.

For Windows XP (yes, I haven't changed to Vista yet), you need to download and install a converter named SUPER © v2007.build.23

Then you may well need k-lite which is also downloadable from this site. Installation warns you that Real Player will be uninstalled, and that the k-lite 3-2-1 media player becomes the default on your computer.

After installing these programs, I converted the JVC .MOD format files to .avi and the soundtrack to .mp3, and successfully put together a video subsequently uploaded to YouTube.

However, there's always a however. I can no longer edit movie clips taken from my Canon G9 camera in Windows MovieMaker. Whenever I try, Visual Studio homes in with an error warning about debugging, and if I cancel, MovieMaker closes immediately, saving absolutely nothing.

All the video files on my super laptop converted automatically by virtue of the codec pack. Fortunately, I have backup copies of the more important ones elsewhere.

I have yet another option, which is to use iMovie on my Mac Book, but wouldn't you know, iMovie does not natively support the JVC file format.

The solution is to use a Mac OS X droplet called DropDV. Something I have yet to try out.

I am seriously inclined to uninstall Super and K-lite from Windows now that I have got my essential files sorted out, and providing DropDV works on the Mac without any problem.

In the meantime, I also finally imported video from tape on my mini-DV camera into iMovie and was relieved to be able to broadcast two videos of me singing at 'How to Get On In Society!' in Leicester last year just yesterday. It's only taken me 11 months!

East Midland Speakers with WebJam

2008-06-06T15:03:00.004Z

I signed up to Webjam a week ago. You won't see anything terrific on my personal webjam but that wasn't the main reason that I joined.

Webjam does what I had hoped Google Sites would do. It offers a collaborative system using modules and themes which enables a group to build and maintain a website.

And it works.

I've created the East Midlands Speakers Club website using Webjam, with a blog and bulletin on the front page. I've been able to add a Google map showing the location of our meetings and also a Google calendar.

Because of the faffy way Google goes about things, I couldn't just drop and drag a calendar. I had to copy the code and paste it into the html, but Webjam still made that process easy.

Parts of the website can be limited to group members, which might have its uses.

Two members of our club have signed up as co-editors. I just need some information to write up now.

SOSIUS - online networking tool for business

2008-04-26T08:11:00.006Z

I might, at last, have found the app that will enable me to establish a working, user-friendly, social network for East Midlands' Speakers Club.

I found out about Sosius from scanning my RSS feed for Gulf News. Fancy that. I had to read something published in the Middle East to get the lead.

It does everything that I had hoped Google Sites would do, but incomparably more efficiently. The only hitch is that I have to persuade other people to sign up in order to use it.

East Midlands' Speakers' Club hopes to charter into full Toastmaster International status in July. A gradually increasing number of us meet on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month to support each other in our bids to become more confident and interesting public speakers. We shall be able to set up our own website under the auspices of Toastmasters only once we are chartered. Meanwhile, we have a Facebook group which I use to remind people about meetings and to create more awareness of the club.

East Midland Speakers came into being as a result of my erstwhile colleague, John Cox, wanting to join Toastmasters himself but being aghast at finding that the nearest clubs were either in Birmingham or Leeds. That's a lot of travelling for a quasi-social event.

We are social, despite following precise guidelines for meetings, speeches and time-keeping and Toastmaster International programmes of Competent Communicator and Leadership. It's definitely a new group of friends.

But back to Sosius. The sign-up process is pretty painless, and membership is free providing you use no more than 200Mb of online storage. You can collaborate with an unlimited number of other users.

The dashboard is an instant guide to what you can do, with inbuilt calendar, content and template creation tools (eg blogs, web pages, documents) email, site customisation, workflow management and so forth. You can even use SpinVox which converts your spoken words into text entries.

It has also introduced me to XFN and FOAF which I'm going to have to look into more thoroughly, since these are technologies which will enable you to create your own friends' network from any pages which link to people you know.

An East Midlands Speakers Club on Sosius would enable us to share information, log our progress through TI programmes, advertise meetings - generally creating a community.

Sosius really does seem to offer the facilities for innovative groups with online members to collaborate and work together, but oh my, most people I know don't live online like I do - yet. And many still don't find these online services sufficiently intuitive.

And oh the eyebrows that rise high when I mention using Facebook for networking! Get real. Social networking apps are powerful.

Google Sites - Hold it!

2008-03-23T18:24:00.002Z

I've been disappointed with Google Sites.

I wanted to set a site up for the East Midlands Speakers Club and duly registered an account. I got only as far as writing some text on the Home page.

I set up a second page on which I wanted to insert a calendar gadget, and that's where the trouble started. I'd have thought that would have been easy, but oh no. It seems that I have to register independently for yet another Google account in order to create a calendar.

It's all needlessly complicated. Obviously if I want to create a collaborative site, I want to insert a common calendar.

And there's no help for untutored people like me. Google Sites is classed as a Google app, which suggests that only developers have a chance of working out what is required.

Another issue I have is that the interface is clunky. Several themes are offered which enable you to change colour schemes, but how about improving the layout?

All in all, I am not tempted to persevere, and will abandon the project.

Then I discovered MS Sharepoint, which appears to offer the same sort of service. The amount of supporting information is overwhelming, and I haven't a clue how to start. Neither have I seen any statement which shows me how much the service costs potentially. Since this is Microsoft, it will cost.

How sad that I have been reduced to studying for MCTS 70-528 on Easter Sunday, but believe me, it's been raw, cold and snowy.

Online teamwork with Google Sites. WOW!!

2008-02-29T19:58:00.004Z

I received an email today reminding me that I had asked to be told when JotSpot was updated and relaunched.

To be honest, that was so long ago that I couldn't even remember what JotSpot did, but the big news is that it has been relaunched as Google Sites.

So?

I think it is big news, although I have to admit that I haven't tested it yet. Nonetheless, the concept is very exciting.

At no cost, small companies, schools, project managers, groups and so on can have access to a welter of online apps that will enable them to work collaboratively online, without having to pay for hardware, networking or software licences. Which would have been the way to do it otherwise.

Create your own intranet using the web page builder. Share team calendars. Send mail. Post and review documents, upload photos, videos, files for common use. Prepare online presentations. Update events for internal notice with a blog.

Using Web 2.0 technologies, Google has aimed to make it as simple as it can be at the moment for the ordinary office to make all its admin tasks electronic and increase efficiency.

And because it's so simple, the learning curve should be relatively small. A godsend for companies that have been having to pay for software training.

I suspect the reservations will be about security. After all, anything that's online can ultimately be hacked, but how many people really suffer that, unless they've been extremely lax about use of passwords or even indiscrete about what is shared within the team.

And there will also be the core of people who resist doing anything on computers. Are you still employing them?

I only wish I had a project on which I could test this out. I'm already making plans ...

Gone mobile

2008-02-18T08:26:00.002Z

I finally took the plunge and signed a contract with 3 for a Skype enabled mobile phone. I simply wanted to try out the technology and was persuaded that a monthly contract would not only enable me to make free calls Skype-2-Skype but that I would also benefit from free to 3 phone calls and a monthly allowance of free minutes to any network.

Have I used the minutes in the first month? No. On an economically rational basis, I have made a bum decision, and should have stayed with my Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go but pay-monthly-plan, which averages around £5 a month. The person who I speak to most on my mobile Skype is my daughter, who I can also call for free using 3.

Still, I have demonstrated the use of mobile Skype-2-Skype to her. She has chosen a phone upgrade which also uses the facility, enabling her to speak with her admirers across the globe via Skype. I wish there was rather less admiration and a more focused effort on earning money rather than asking for handouts to keep afloat. But there you are, we can't force people to be economically rational, even though it is a fundamental premise of Economics that people are economically rational.

I also, oh goodness me, subscribed to another 3 contract, for mobile broadband. It works on my Mac Book Pro as well as my PC laptop. It's a liberating sensation to feel that I can take a laptop anywhere to connect to the net, and I only wish that I had had the facility at John O' Groats last year, when I wanted to send a photo of George and his friends at the start line, to the local press. But is the 3 3G network available in the very north of Scotland?

So far, this, too, been an economically irrational decision. I haven't made the use of it that I could. If I were more mobile doing business on the move, I could justify the expense, but being at home most of the time, I'm a heavy user of wireless broadband.

Sadly, the FON/BT partnership for mobile broadband doesn't seem to have caught on, such that I could login for free to FON wireless mobile hotspots wherever I went. And Skype seems to be in the doldrums too. If more people subscribed, then we could be considerably more inventive in our use of cheaper telecomms technology.

The latest issue of Web Designer reckons that Wimax will be with us, in certain locations, within two years.

Yeah, right!

Three wheels on my wagon

2007-12-01T14:01:00.001Z

The only justification for including this video on this blog is that it is a Google Video. It appears on Mr Motorvator's website, to demonstrate the efficacy of attaching a Cyclone motor to a Pashley powered tricycle.

Mr Motorvator (aka Tony), wearing the Valkyrie wings on his cycle helmet, personally delivered my trike to me last year. He specialises in customisation of bikes with motors.

I am the supporting actress.

YouTube - in defence of human rights?

2007-11-29T17:21:00.000Z

Today's issue of Global Voices Online featured YouTube's removal of the account of Wael Abbas, a well-known and respected blogger in Egypt.

In one stroke, this arm of the mighty Google has removed the ability of Egyptian human rights' activists and journalists to broadcast to the world the inhumanity and brutality of the Egyptian police, who are presumably working with the cognisance of the Egyptian authorities.

Why? Because, strictly speaking, Wael Abbas has broken the rules.

Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it.

Wael Abbas had posted video clips of Egyptian police torturing and abusing people in custody.

Whether YouTube will provide a fuller explanation of its censorship remains to be seen, but the ironic explanation of its action is that it was reacting not to pressure from the Egyptian authorities, but to the squeamishness of American users, who really don't want to see the very nasty side of life endured by ordinary, poor people in this token democracy, heavily subsidised by American aid.

I did watch one of these videos a few months ago. It's not for the fainthearted I agree. But where else can people post full, factual information about abuse and corruption?

One of the strengths of YouTube is that it is universal.

The video service is caught between a rock and a hard place. Scenes, for example, "of an Egyptian bus driver, his hands bound, being sodomised with a stick by a police officer" are not what I would want my kids to watch, even if I could understand the genuine anger and motivation of the blogger who posted it.

On the other hand, my kids would complain if I didn't give them the space to view what they wanted.

Even if the blogger was able to post and stream his own videocasts on a server elsewhere, it's quite likely that someone would object to his ISP about the content, and the offending items would still have to be removed.

Overall, however objectionable the material, its removal does seem to me to strike at whichever Amendment it is that defends free speech.

I do have just one query. How did Abbas get hold of these videos in the first place? Presumably he is not a police officer. I can't help but suspect that his motivations may be mixed. He probably wouldn't be able to say since that would compromise his sources.

Also see The Hub.

Free wi-fi hotspots throughout the UK!

2007-10-04T14:13:00.000Z

Yes, it really might happen - providing you subscribe to BT Broadband, or are a Fonero.

Fon has been around a little while now, starting in Spain where the network is pretty good, even with hubs in Corralejo, Fuerteventura.

You buy a small Fon router, plug it into your existing router, and hey presto, you get your own secure Fon network PLUS an unsecured network which anyone in the neighbourhood can use, as well as your existing network.

If you've registered with Fon and operate your own Fon router, you can access anybody else's unsecured Fon network for free. If you haven't signed up, you can still pay for Fon network access, at a cost rather lower than that of The Cloud.

BT have combined with Fon to extend the range of wi-fi hotspots in UK. It's got to be a great idea, at least until Wimax gets here.

I'm not sure if Wimax has met technical problems or if there is a major hitch with the economic model. Keep hoping it will work. VoIP could knock the socks off mobile networks.

Who's watching you?

2007-09-24T12:51:00.000Z

There you are, gaily adding all those little apps to Facebook, which Facebook says it doesn't support. Throwing sheep, buying drinks for your friends, battling it out with Zombies and Vampires and telling the world how you feel every five minutes.

Originally, Facebook was aimed at college kids and professed to confer privacy in a way that MySpace couldn't. Then its reach widened, so that even wizened, well, not so wizened, but certainly elderly people like me could join up too.

I've been amazed to see what some of my peers get up to on Facebook.

You thought you were safe didn't you. It was all harmless fun and a bit of jollity between friends.

Think again. Facebook is opening up to Google search, so anybody could find anybody. Which means that when you apply for a job somewhere and you get offered an interview, the company can undertake reverse research and find out all about you online. Just like you're supposed to research the company ready for those trick questions face to face.

Think of all that personal information in Facebook and MySpace. Is that the image you would want to present to your employer? It's already forced me to revise my profile, hoping against hope that the searcher doesn't use The Internet Archive as well.

Oh, and before we get on to targeted advertising from Google, both Facebook and MySpace intend to do it too.

THANK YOU Microsoft!

2007-06-01T17:14:00.001Z

Microsoft has been awfully nice to me. I had participated in online surveys about Microsoft Office for over a year with the prospect of receiving a reward.

But I never realised just what a reward it would be. Free copies of Windows Vista Ultimate and Microsoft Office Ultimate!

The only problem was that I didn't think my current PC could take them, even though the upgrade tool says it could. It's awfully slow to power up, and sometimes complains when I have several apps open at once, so I gave the software to my daughter who has a more up-to-date PC.

Today I discovered that the combination of software costs £777 on Amazon. Hmmm.

Was I TOO generous?

Boys in Blue

2007-03-29T08:18:00.000Z

No, no, not the quintessential English bobby, but the Microsoft lads who wear a uniform of a pale blue shirt over a whiter than white t-shirt.

I went to the MSDN roadshow presentation in Nottingham a few weeks back. I'd realised when I signed up that much of it would be over my head. Which meant that I was very pleasantly surprised when I did get the gist of the first presentation showing streamlining and tidying up of Visual Basic and C# 3.

I imagine that the Technet Day was probably more my level, but frankly, I don't want to find out about Windows Vista yet. My systems won't be able to operate it effectively and I hear that there are incompatibilities. It's a beast in terms of size. Neither do I intend to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 in the immediate future. Other than when I got my Microsoft Office Master certification, which required me to use a wide range of options in Office 2000, I make very little use of the 'gadgetry' other than basic word processing.

I use dedicated freeware or shareware apps for building websites, having given up Front Page three years ago.

All in all, the MSDN content appealed to me more with presentations on Ajax and XAML, even if I didn't understand it fully.

I was very taken with the potential of Visual Studio, which seems to offer an entry point for building some quite complex Web 2.0 applications without having to get buried by coding.

And it was useful to see a demo of Windows Expression, the successor to Front Page, even if it was still in beta format.

I continue to be concerned, though, that using Microsoft products will add an inordinate amount of code to websites. I like the lean approach of minimal coding.

I had to admire the presenters who were missioned to show off products which even they admitted were not truly ready for the market. And I like the way that when the MSDN emails arrive, I recognise the name of the chap who wrote it, thinking, Oh yes, he talked about that at the roadshow I went to.

The air conditioning system at the East Midlands Conference Centre was extremely efficient. Perhaps the benefit was that, although one risked getting a chill, one wasn't inundated with the aroma of The Great Unwashed, which has been the case in gatherings of this nature in the past.

I am supremely impressed with Microsoft's civility. Not only did I receive reminders before the event, but also an email afterwards thanking me for attending. Old school gentlemanliness. It makes me rather wistful.

And I made a discovery. Between each presentation, some very enjoyable music was played, which sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn't know the artist. Sitting with Rosie in the champagne bar in Leicester the following week, one of the tracks was played. "Oh, that's what they played at the Microsoft event. What is it?"

"Oh Mum," replied Rosie, "That's Jack Johnson. It's easy listening." I now have the CD.

Quark! Quark!

2007-03-14T22:36:00.000Z

I've been pretty pleased with myself over the last month or so. I'd bought a copy of QuarkXPress 7.0, the self-proclaimed king of desk top publishing and print preparation software, and actually produced an issue of a magazine.

I had to learn to use the software on the hoof, and was very grateful to Lynda.com for its structured online training exercises. I'd never have got the hang of it with the manual, nor a book.

The basics are quite easy to learn and implement. It's the more 'advanced' features that are going to take some time to master. And version 7.0 is supposed to be able to help you build websites.

I've been running the software on a PC with XP. I haven't found the software particularly intuitive. Formatting that you could do so easily in Microsoft Word seems to involve going round the houses in Quark.

Perhaps it's easier to implement on a Mac. My Mac Book Pro is in the post and I intend to transfer the licence from the PC to the Mac.

Ten minutes ago, I got an email from Quark advertising a series of free seminars at Apple stores throughout UK, which would highlight the new features introduced in QuarkXPress 7. It was a bit late. The nearest seminar was in Birmingham yesterday. OK, so I could go to Sheffield on Friday, but I've got another engagement that day. No mention of Nottingham. Perhaps the company's gone out of business.

A link invited me to find out more. I clicked. I could hardly believe it. Problem loading page in Firefox, so I looked at the domain name in the status bar. email.quark.com Well, that doesn't seem right, particularly when the published text says euro.quark.com

I put euro.quark.com in the address bar, and hey presto, I get offered the option to choose between English, French and German.

Once at the English Language site, I was apalled at the very poor quality of the text (have they never heard of anti-aliasing?) and the mixed fonts. The navigation is a travesty. Hover over a main heading such as Training, and a sub-menu appears. Move the mouse to click on a sub-heading, and the whole menu disappears.

For a company that professes to market top-notch software, this is amateurism in the extreme.

I suppose we're stuck with Quark because no other software provides quite the right kind of flexibility for the task of desk top publishing. But I would never use it for web design, if they used their own product to build their website.

I've discovered that there is an open-source version of DTP software called Scribus, but I haven't loaded it yet. Could be worth looking at.

Not altogether Yahoo!

2007-02-12T19:02:00.000Z

Yahoo! did reply to my emails with the headers of the offending spam messages. Yahoo! also wanted me to send copies of the emails themselves.

Well, if I had done that, my own email account would have been declared spam. Spam catching software usually filters out the kind of stuff I'd been receiving. If I had forwarded it, I would have been identified automatically as a spammer.

Much to my annoyance, I felt obliged to remove the Contact form on my website and substitute an encrypted email link.

Guess what, since I did that, the spam from civics@geocities.com has petered out. I STILL am not sure whether it was the email address or the script that was vulnerable.

Useless Yahoo!

2007-01-26T14:57:00.000Z

I am TERRIFICALLY fed up with Yahoo! so-called support services.

On my very first website hosted at Geocities, I have a contact form based on a script that Yahoo! has provided to divert enquiries to my named email address.

Within the last four weeks, I have been receiving spam email from civics at geocities.com. My login name is in the message body along with lots of links to websites I certainly don't want to visit.

Will I be able to stop this? It certainly won't be as a result of trying to contact Yahoo! "support" services. I drilled down on the Help page through to the point where I had to fill in a contact form. You can't telephone or message anybody.

I tried, believe me, to explain the situation. I received what appeared to be a personalised email, fairly quickly, informing me that action had been taken to rectify the situation.

The next time I downloaded my email, I received another two spam messages supposedly from civics at geocities.

I wrote back, receiving an inane reply referring me to an online document about terms and conditions which was absolutely no use in my situation, because I don't think we're dealing with a phishing page on a website, but a possibly compromised script supplied by Yahoo!.

I wrote back again. I seriously question whether the people at the other end in the Yahoo! offices can be bothered to actually read the complaints. Either that, or they are simply ignorant about anything beyond what is in front of their noses. The woman, because it was the name of a woman who signed, told me to explain fully what the problem was. All she had to do was scroll down the email for goodness sake. AND I'd included the headers of four offending messages.

I wrote once more. This time, the reply wasn't even individually signed. I was told that the support service I needed related to email. Get this Yahoo! It's not my Yahoo! email address that's compromised. It's YOUR script! Or is someone picking on me? Now that would be paranoia!

I was about to give up when I realised that there might be a different way. And I'm hoping it will work.

The messages also contain the Remote IP.

Thanks to that, maybe I've got their number. I'm using Visual IP trace to track down the souce of the spam, which apparently is Japan and China. The software enables me to report the abuse to Yahoo!, producing a nicely formatted email including the offending headers and asking Yahoo! to let me know what they've done about it.

Let's see if it happens.

Galapagos Galloper, or how I came to love social networking

2007-01-16T09:49:00.000Z

I first heard about ARPANET, an ancestor of the Internet, while I was taking a postgrad library course at the end of the 1970s. The US government funded research in the 1960s into how to establish a communications network that would work regardless of damage inflicted in a global nuclear war.

By 1993, not only had academics caught on to the use of ARPANET and its descendants in communicating scientific progress and discoveries, librarians had recognised its potential too, as a vital tool to finding and sharing information.

I am reminded of that famous line in 'The Mummy', when the character Evelyn Carnahan rises in front of the campfire in a state of intoxicated euphoria and declares, "I, am a librarian!"

Inspired by news from the library world about this marvellous information medium, I subscribed to CompuServe and was one of the first to experience the delights of using http:// Librarians had become accustomed to using tools such as FTP and Gopher.

Let's come up to the present, when a whole new sphere of commerce and creativity has been unleashed by the Internet. Let alone using a computer, today's kids probably couldn't conceive of a world without a net connection.

But it's what you do with it that counts.

The first net users would probably have taken the notion of networking entirely for granted. Now, the emphasis is all on social networking media. MySpace, Live Journal, YouTube, del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, and so on.

Google has got in on the act with its involvement in Blogger, Picasa and YouTube, while I see strong legacies of Yahoo! in Flickr, MySpace (uses Google search) and del.icio.us. I have found the services very useful at times, and have even made one or two contacts as a result. It's people like my daughter who use the 'social networks' ruthlessly to raise awareness of both themselves and their ventures.

This is by the by. My little tale concerns a blog which I have created and defined myself using open source software. Last week, I posted about the absurdity of the price and concept of three days' bed and breakfast in a rather beautiful outpost of Arabia. I ruminated on the alternatives and value for money. Quite by chance, I had been reading an article online about the Galapagos Islands and visited the website of the company used by the journalist. The Galapagos, and its rich haven of wildlife which has evolved separately on the islands, appears to be quite enchanting. I mulled online about whether I should go. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity could put you back a mini fortune, particularly if there is more than one in the party.

Next day, I discovered that John Gallagher, based in the Galapagos Islands, had left a comment on the post announcing that he could help adventurous people with trips around the Galapagos, accommodation and advice on cheapest fares. For one thing, how soon would that type of communication ever have happened without the Internet.

I sent him an email to thank him. Your eyes should widen even more at this point. At 3.30 pm the same afternoon, my Skype phone rang. John was calling me from the other side of the world via Skype having used the Call Me function on my website. We chatted for half an hour. I became truly inspired.

I asked him how he had come across my original posting. He uses Google alerts. Every time someone, somewhere in the world writes 'Galapagos' in a newspaper article or blog, Google sends him the link.

Ten years ago, this COULD not have happened. My ambition would have waned into wistful memory.

Now, this trip is on my mental itinerary. The stumbling blocks will be my husband and my son. My husband, who spends a lot of time abroad, will remonstrate because I intend to travel to the other side of the world without him. "It's too expensive!". I can hear him saying it already. I can't really leave my 16 year old son on his own for two weeks or more. I asked him if he'd like to come with me.

"How far away is this place and would I have to fly on a plane?", he answered. "You know I don't like flying."

Why do the men in my life have to be such wimps?

Gothic bellydance and Gothla UK

2007-01-06T18:40:00.000Z

I know this video is very dark. It was taken at a Goth nightclub in Leicester in December 2006, and shows my daughter Rosie performing gothic tribal fusion dance to 'Kiss them from me' by Siouxie and the Banshees.

Those of us who are not really in the know, and don't really care, would say, 'Ooh look, she's bellydancing!' There's nothing more calculated you could say to stir up the 'bellydance police', who have a very purist idea of what bellydance is. The moves should be slow and controlled. The emphasis should be on erect posture and isolated control of muscle groups.

But hey, Rosie is dancing and performing well and evidently enjoying herself.

Why, you may ask, was she dancing in a Goth nightclub? Rosie and her friends are putting on a Gothla UK weekend in Leicester in mid-June. Three exemplars of gothic fusion bellydance, Sashi, Tempest and Ariellah, are coming over from the States to perform and to conduct workshops in aspects of core control, muscle isolation and dance.

They will perform at a hafla (hence gothla) on the Friday evening and will be joined by performers from UK. The wonderful thing about haflas is that ladies can dress up extravagantly and dance themselves between performances. It's a very egalitarian affair.

The workshops will take place next day, and in the evening, participants can try out their workshop-learnt skills at a Goth disco.

The action will take place at Darkscape in Leicester, the Goth nightclub where Rosie and her friends exhibited their talents to raise interest in their venture, and to spread awareness of the universality of dance. (Sorry if that sounds pretentious - was a bit stuck for words.)

You can sign up to keep informed of what is happening at Gothla.UK. You can watch more videos of the Gothla team and exponents of gothic and tribal fusion dance at GothlaUK on YouTube.

To YouTube, or not to YouTube?

2007-01-01T20:51:00.000Z

Now that Google has taken over YouTube, it would be remarkably easy to add a link in a blogspot to the unofficial video showing Saddam Hussein's execution. Google offers to link any YouTube video for you.

I hesitate to do so. I will not say that I am deeply concerned by the so-called morality of whether it is appropriate to increase the visibility of the event. I'd be more inclined to admit that I would not wish to be accused of prurience to see a man in his death throes. On the other hand, I would have turned away at the point of execution if I had been there. Violent killing of any kind is totally repugnant.

Debate has continued all day on BBC Radio 4 as to whether it was appropriate to:

film the execution
screen the execution
watch the video of the execution

Dismay has been expressed about the taunts at the dictator in his final moments. I believe it is this which detracts from what was portrayed in the official video. The unofficial version could be accounted as the most truthful. It only highlights the widening differences between Sunni and Shi'ite in Iraq. It doesn't pretend that the event was in any way truly dignified.

Some say that Saddam appeared calm. Some say that he could not believe what was happening right up until the end. Some say that he wore a great coat to stop himself shivering. Some say that he was shaking in fear.

Given the way he responded to his tauntors and his recitation of the Muslim prayer as he fell, I would doubt the latter.

I did see the photo of Saddam hanging on the rope which was printed on the front page of the Gulf News website yesterday. He seemed to me to look as if he were at peace. He looked much younger.

We judge by what we think are our standards, without acknowledging that standards are different between people and between cultures. We won't even admit that we could shift our standards only too readily if circumstances changed.

I admit that I was puzzled that the Iraqi authorities carried out the execution on the first day of Eid al Adha, the holiest day in the Muslim year, rather as Good Friday is in the Christian year. This is the day when the pilgrims on the Haj return from Muzdalifah where they have gathered stones to throw at the devil at Mina.

It's quite menacing to consider that it was the first day of the Eid for Sunnis, but the day before Eid for Shi'ites.

It doesn't matter who responds in the US, and nobody has so far as I know, they will not be able to contradict the belief of many Arab citizens that the execution was carried out at the behest of the US Government as one more strike in its 'war against Islam'.

Just in case anyone reads this, consider this paragraph from an article in the Washington Post of 2nd January 2007, which would appear to counter that last suggestion:

"Shiite leaders have begun to push harder for more independence from their American backers. Most recently, the government ignored U.S. objections to hanging Hussein too hastily. He was executed, amid jeers from Shiite witnesses, four days after an appeals court upheld his death sentence."

And Reuters published this yesterday:

'A senior Iraqi official told Reuters that U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had urged Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to wait another two weeks, until after the long Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, and had insisted on a variety of documents including approval from Iraq's Kurdish president.

U.S. forces had declined to give Saddam to Iraqis for fear of abuses of his prisoner's rights. They only agreed to hand him over for execution hours before the unannounced hanging. Apparently, the prime minister's office provided all the documents they asked for and the Americans changed their minds when they saw the prime minister was very insistent.

An advisor to Iraq's prime minister said that the government would look into how guards in the execution chamber had smuggled in a mobile phone camera.

He said: "They have damaged the image of the Sadrists. That should not have happened. Before we went into the room we had an agreement that no one should bring a mobile phone."'

Santa Google

2006-12-26T13:30:00.000Z

After beefing off about Google in my last post, I have to get down on my knees to thank it for its data policies during this Christmas season.

This morning, I discovered that the blog, Sooz Nooz, appended to my main website, had disappeared. Aghast, I checked the files on the server. They had gone. The admin files were still there but the entries and the photos had disappeared.

Now whether this was down to a server error, lax site security on my part, or a hack attack, I still don't know at this point.

It's a bit of a grind, but I can restore the templates and the CSS. It was the entries that I had lost. Of course, I hadn't backed up. BIG mistake.

But Google had. I have recovered all of the entries thanks to Google's inestimable thoroughness in caching the pages that it has crawled. Sooz Nooz disappeared at some time between 23rd December when it last cached the site, and today.

And I have recovered the changes that I had made to the source code in the sidebar.

The other Christmas present from Google was for my son George. He had received 3 Warhammer games as presents. When he loaded the first one, it froze in the DVD tray because it had detected emulation software on his PC which he uses to mount a virtual drive with the game software.

Half an hour of Googling brought him the solution. By downloading Demon Tools and a patch, he's been able to install and play these games without problem.

'What,' he said, 'would I have done without Google on Christmas Day?'

Peeved with Google

2006-12-23T10:05:00.000Z

Google data servers don't just sit there you know. They busy around tidying up links and reclaiming spare space.

I had evidence of that this morning.

Three days ago, I uploaded my Christmas photo album to picasaweb. Picasa on my computer had seemed a bit jittery and before I knew it, I had two Christmas albums uploaded, one of which was superfluous to requirements.

So I deleted it.

The correct Christmas album had the index title of 200602. I circulated my Round Robin Christmas greeting by email with a link to that album.

This morning, shock horror, when I was checking the link to copy the url to someone else, I got the dreaded 404 error page.

What had happened? Software on the server had discovered that the first album had been deleted. That would probably mean that the link was deleted, but the album was still taking up valuable space somewhere. Efficient housekeeping not only deleted the link, and the space that the album was occupying, it ALSO changed the link to the REAL Christmas album.

Should any of my friends and acquaintances want to review those photos, and click on the link that I sent, all that they will get is Error 404.

I'm not going to re-circulate the link to friends. That leaves egg on my face, but I have had to edit the blog entry previous to this one to correct the links and references.

Hey Google! What about a redirect?

Christmas Greetings

2006-12-17T19:53:00.000Z

Best wishes for the season to you all, and may you have a happy and prosperous New Year.

Review the Hutton year at my Picasa album

Christmas 2006

Egyptian police brutality 1

2006-12-11T09:47:00.001Z

I had a mild confrontation with a group of zealous Muslim ladies a couple of months ago, who seemed not to want to know about the nasty things that go on in Islamic countries.

This was because I had relayed to them posts from Egyptian bloggers reported via Global Voices Online, of attacks on women in the streets of Cairo at Eid al Fitr. The police had simply stood by. Even men out with their families were hard pressed to protect their womenfolk. Shopkeepers had to rescue the women. Read about this and watch a video showing 200 odd men chasing two women.

This morning, thanks to Global Voices online, I happened across some YouTube videos which actually reveal something of what goes on in Egypt. This particular example shows an Egyptian policeman slapping a prisoner repeatedly across the face.

You'll find more examples in the News and Blogs category at YouTube.

Geotagging in Flickr

2006-12-10T14:51:00.000Z

While checking out photos that I took last Friday of Loughborough Christmas market, I discovered that I already had two other sets of photos on my SD card.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to reset the camera after taking the previous set, which had been of barcodes on boxes of Canon photographic equipment -- it's a long story -- so my photos of the market are very poor quality.

I'd taken the set before that while taking a tricyle ride across Garendon Estate from Shepshed to Loughborough in September. The estate has planning permission for new housing to virtually connect Loughborough to Shepshed. All the time that I have lived here, I have never realised that this tractable route to Morrisons had existed, and now I shall lose it.

Probably not the route, which is an established cycle path, but the open countryside.

I upload most of my photos to Flickr these days. Why bother building your own web gallery when Flickr does it for you AND provides a built-in network which people can search to find you? PLUS, Flickr gets high Alexa rankings, showing that it's much more likely that you will get an audience for your work.

Having chosen the photos and worked them up a bit where necessary, I uploaded them.

At which point I discovered that Flickr has introduced geo-tagging. Er? Well, you find the location on the world map where you took your photos, you drag them to the location, and hey presto, anyone looking for photos there will likely see your photos.

It was fast, which was welcome to me after the long delays that I STILL get logging into Yahoo! email.

And there weren't many other photos on the map that I could see, so perhaps I am a pioneer.

The only thing, I think wistfully, is that the largest scales on the map invite individual tags for each photo, since each is taken in a slightly different place. That would mean carrying a universal GPS with you to identify each photo's location.

It's too much Man. So perhaps camera manufacturers should do the job for the lazy photographer, and incorporate that information with each photo.

Why I created yet ANOTHER blog

2006-12-03T13:04:00.000Z

I have far too many blogs.

And I wouldn't have set this one up except that my poor friend Phillip Stallwood got saddled with emails that should really have come to me.

So finally, and at last, anyone who wants to riposte at my cryptic comments on various Blogspots can come here.

My personal blog, which has been neglected for a while, is at The Kitchen Drawer.

My 'professional' news blog is at Sooz Nooz.

And my professional interest blog is at newsbriefsOman.

Oh yes, and you can also see some of my travel videos at The G&T Travel Vlog.