Archive for the 'Software' Category

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Outsmarted by your smart phone

Published on Saturday, October 21, 2006 in Smartphone, Software, Tech and Trend. 0 Comments

I have read various articles about how you should not leave your old PC with just anybody, more specifically your hard drive, and use software like cyberscrub myself. I was not surprised to read that Smartphones retain extremely sensitive information about you, even after a reset. WashingtonPost explain how a Smartphone user had encrypted banking details but that emails, pictures and contacts were not properly deleted.

It seems understandable since the procedure of deleting files on a hard drive with a 3+7+3 type method or the Gutmann method to stop even hardware recovery are unknown to most people. Smartphones work in the same way as hard drives in that they use pointers a type of File Allocation Table to indicate where a file is. Deleting a file doesn’t actually delete the data, it deletes the pointer that indicates where the file is in the memory. This means the file is still there and some clever software can retrieve it.

BlackBerry devices are in theory among the most secure of smart phones, Schroader said. However, those used by consumers lack the same security features as those used by government and private companies, Laudermilch said. “Even though there may be some security features on the device, most people don’t know how or when to use them,” he said.

Checking the specific Smartphone company support site often reveals how to properly erase your data should you want to part with the phone. Don’t let your smart phone give away vital information about you !

What is next in blogging, please…

Published on Sunday, September 10, 2006 in Blog, Software, Trend and Web. 0 Comments

Taking a look at the online photo industry may well give you the answer…

If you look at the new battle between Flickr (Yahoo) and Picasa (Google) then you could be faced with what will be happening soon in blogging.
Google is putting the heat on Flickr with its Picasa 2 beta that I have recently been testing. This is a trend setter in online photo sites…

Picasa 2 is not on their web site ! It is Windows based application/software we are talking about (also available for Mac OS X 10.4 or later). You download it and install it on your PC. The current stable version allows you to organise, edit, share your pictures (using extra software called hello) via email, instant messaging etc. It is extremely easy to use. If someone told me it was Apple software ported to PC I would understand better why it was so user friendly. It has been available since mid-summer so Picasa 2 beta is not the news here.

The version 2 beta of Picasa lets you upload pictures from your PC to your Picasa web album.

So you’re thinking that sounds cool and all, but what does this have to do with blogging ? Well everything. As I’ll explain now the ease of use and simplicity readily available on your computer is a real winner…

I realised when I opened an account at Flickr for my Dad that it was far too much for him. He looked on, wide-eyed, trying to follow the steps I indicated to him about uploading pictures and then organising them in sets. I knew he used the current stable version of Picasa and loves it. I understood I was faced with a dilemma.

Do I create a Picasa web account and show him how to use it and drop the advantages of Flickr ?

  1. I can use the static images in my blog, directly from Flickr, I can’t with Picasa
  2. I can use them in a photo gallery, directly from Flickr, I can’t with Picasa

Or do I continue with Flickr, knowing that my Dad will probably not feel courageous enough to use it ! Hint to Picasa here about changing this maybe so that I will have no reason not to use Picasa ?

As you can see below I have the set of photos I selected in Picasa on my PC, and in less than a minute my pictures are up on the Picasa web site !

This is the initial Picasa page with my set of travel images, I click on “Web Album” :
Picasa Image Sets

Then I log into my account (you can ask Picasa to remember this) :
Picasa Web Log In

Next, Picasa starts uploading all the selected photos (you can choose what size to upload) :
Picasa uploading my photos

And here are the uploaded photos on Picasa.

This is where the comparison hit me !

Blogging is the same. Until there is an application to create blogs which is as easy to use as Picasa, people will shy away from great systems like WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger etc. Note I said “as easy to use”. You need to have used Picasa and see how easy other people find it to use.

I’m not talking about changing the look of your blog, nor about the Tiger Admin from orderedlist.com which does wonders for the WordPress admin panel. I’m talking about a piece of software that you can download and runs on your PC, allowing you to create your post, preview it and then upload everything to your blog.
What is needed is a piece of software like Picasa 2, very stylish and trendy, but most of all, simple to use and understand. My Dad took to it and likes using it, he was really enthusiastic about it, so it is something worth writing home about !

Making blogging easy will be a winner. People like me, who design sites, code new stuff into their blogs and use beta versions of skins/presentations for blogs like K2 are a small percentage of the population.
A successful system will need to think about the majority of the population that will find the WP admin panel or any other web based panel system currently available so daunting they’ll rarely use it so they’ll rarely blog.

So I’d like to call on Google, Yahoo or Apple to create a piece of software for blogging (for PC, Unix & Mac) as described above, with maybe a spell checker, saving draft versions and uploading everything automatically to the blog of your choice. You’ll find people will not only blog but they’ll blog about your cool software and tell all their friends about it. We’ll have a blogging star system. For the VC lot among you, yes this means either a star or maybe even a cash cow !

Je me demande à quoi sert ce bouton ?

Published on Friday, August 4, 2006 in Français, News, Software, Translation and Writing. 0 Comments

Mon premier article en français n’est pas de moi. Il s’agit de la traduction d’un article très intéressant en français, écrit par Mike West ! Mike évoque tout l’intérêt d’utiliser le logiciel Subversion pour gérer le contrôle des versions de fichiers dans la gestion d’un projet avec workflow. Il a été publié par le prestigieux magazine A List Apart ce qui montre l’intérêt de l’article. C’était un plaisir de travailler avec Mike qui s’intéresse à la traduction. Nous avons conversé plusieurs fois sur le choix des mots afin de restituer le mieux possible ‘sa pensée’ dans la traduction.
J’en profite pour remercier François Blanc Patin et Hélène Wokowski. Hélène a passé du temps avec moi pour proposer des tournures différentes de phrases, tout en restant aussi fidèle que possible au texte d’origine.

Allez donc voir ce texte que je vous saurai gré de lire…

Outlook refusing to start Word

Published on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 in Personal, Software and Tech. 0 Comments

Well this morning I was set to write to Mike to say that it was a pleasure working on the translation of his great article at ‘A List Apart’ and Word refused to start :

Microsoft Word is set to be your e-mail editor. However, Word is unavailable, not installed, or is not the same version as Outlook. The Outlook e-mail editor will be used instead.

Google provided me with some links to Microsoft support and suggested re-installing Office ! Then I realised that a) Suse is just such a nicer experience all round, b) Microsoft often seems to take the long road to all solutions and c) my memory is getting bad since I had already come across this issue.

So I changed my Google query slightly and found my joy ?!
It’s weird since I had also just downloaded and installed Nero 7 to try it out and after the thing crashed on me multiple times and left me with a half burned backup DVD (i.e. useless), I uninstalled it !

So when you get the above message you can either re-install Word as suggested by MS or just run this line of code in DOS :

Start > Run > Open (and type in the field the following code) : Regsvr32.exe %Windir%\System32\Ole32.dll

which saved me maybe an hour or more of uninstalling and reinstalling Office !