Is It Back To Basics For The PDA?

By | November 24, 2011
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What do you want in a PDA? The Register carries a story that seems to belie the conventional wisdom that folk want everything in one device. It quotes Jupiter Research as saying that vendors are getting it wrong by focusing on the high-end, convergent devices, when actually they should be looking at the low-end, just-give-me the basics, market. “The adoption of portable devices increases as their size and complexity of use decreases,” the Jupiter report says.

But on closer inspection the report’s not just saying that folk want a basic PDA. It’s saying that basic PDAs will remain the core of sales, but will gradually be taken over by phones that offer those same functions. This is the market’s “sweet spot for handhelds”, it says, where untis offer voice (read telephone), personal information management, or a combination of the two, ditching other integrated functions. By other integrated functions it means game play, playing music, that kind of stuff.

The figures seem to back this up: They show pretty low — 7% — penetration of the U.S. market. Jupiter forecasts a U.S. installed base of handheld PDAs will number just over 14 million at the end of 2003 and will only grow to 20 million by 2008.

I think on the whole they’re probably right. Extra bits and pieces just tend to make things go wrong, and if the machine goes wrong, and you have to send it off for repairs, you’re stumped. On the other hand, no mention is made of cameras, an area where I do think both PDAs and phones are going to see strong growth (see my column in FEER — subscription required). But I also believe there are other add-ons which are useful: Good voice recording — not just short memos, but a proper voice recorder that can store several hours of conversation — is useful for your modern thrusting exec (or journalist like moi).

Still, I think Jupiter have a point. Most folk I know just want something they can store their stuff on, and maybe check email in the office. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc: They’re all nice to have, but let’s face it, most people won’t use them. And given that ordinary PDAs are getting cheaper by the minute — fellow Jupiter analyst Avi Greenhart recently spotted the Palm basic Zire model for $43 at Best Buy — why bother going for the high-end stuff?

Google News Discovers There’s A Reason Why Journalists Exist

By | November 24, 2011
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Here’s an interesting take on Google News I hadn’t thought of before, from Dana Blankenhorn, an Atlanta-based writer. He’s mad at Google for apparently allowing in to its news trawl clearly partisan sites that aren’t news, but opinion. At the same time, he says. Google is separating out blogs from its news searches — possibly because it may launch a separate search engine, as part of its buyout of Blogger, former host to loose wire. So anything that uses blogging software is out, sites that don’t, but have some kind of ‘news’ on, are in.

As Dana points out, this leaves a very skewed picture of the news at a sensitive time in American politics. With so many candidates and activists running blogs — especially among the Democrats — the apparent decision to leave blogs out but others in is being used by Republican webmasters to push political views into what is a news site. “Given the current intensity of American politics, this has a real effect, and seems to give Google a real ideological bias,” Dana writes.

I haven’t explored this allegation more fully: It will be interesting to see what Google have to say. I guess the broad lesson from this is that Google News is a news site, and therefore has to abide by certain rules whether it likes it or not. But Google is not a news site, in the sense that it has journalists, editors and photographers out there making editorial decisions about what is news and what isn’t, since it automates its news searching and presentation. Indeed, it proudly acknowledges there are no humans involved.

So Google will have to make a choice: include everything in its news trawl to avoid accusations of bias (at the moment it numbers 4,500 news sources), restrict the news to only bona fide news outlets, or install a team of editors to ensure the material that appears on the website, and the way it appears, are balanced.

In the end, of course, news is not something computers do well. I know: I’ve seen big news agencies try to do it. Even simple stock market reports require some human distillation to make them meaningful (and not look silly). Google, perhaps, is just finding out that there’s no really cheap way to enter the news business.

More Phishy Emails

By | November 24, 2011
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Another year, another sea of phish. And such scams — called phishing, where scammers steal your personal and/or financial data by pretending in an email that they are your bank/credit card company etc — aren’t just about money. Here’s one I got this morning from ‘Microsoft’:

Dear Registered Microsoft User,

Due to validation issues with your Product Key for your Windows OS Platform, we need you to validate your information so we can insure nobody else is using your product key. Each computer must have a unique Product Key, this problem usually happins if you install Windows twice on the same machine and use the same product key.
We need you to verify your information so we can send you a New Product Key VIA USPS. This also includes a information packet including ways to secure your Windows Platform from malicious hackers. Your reply is needed so you can continue to receive updates from Microsoft and always be up to date with the newest Service Packs. Please follow the directions below to complete the process.

1. Click Here to be redirected to Microsoft Secure Server
2. Fill all the required fields and press “Continue”.
3. Insure your information is correct, and then fill in the required fields and press “Submit’.
4. Please print the final page to keep reference to.
5. Your done! Please except the package in 4 to 6 weeks.

Please do not reply to this e-mail confirmation. It was sent to you through an automated system that is not monitored. If you have additional questions, you can call Microsoft Customer Service Monday through Friday, 8 A.M. to 10 P.M. (Eastern Time), at (888) 218-5617 (toll-free in the United States).
Microsoft highly recommends that users with Internet access update their Microsoft software to protect against viruses and security vulnerabilities. The easiest way to do this is to visit the following website: http://www.microsoft.com/protect

The ‘Click Here’ link goes to a website called http://badkeymicrosoft.ch which doesn’t look to be too well hidden. But I’ve passed the email on to Daniel McNamara over at Codefish Spamwatch who says it’s a new trick he hasn’t seen before, and although the URL is visible in my email program some (read: snazzier) email programs might do a better job of hiding it.

So what do scammers want with your Microsoft profile? Not a lot, probably: Daniel reckons they’re after your bank account numbers, address etc. He says the site is down now, probably after complaints to the company hosting it, but that such sites only need a few hours to do their work, catching a few people unawares.

Are Computers A Waste Of Our Time?

By | November 24, 2011
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Here’s a story to illustrate a conundrum: If computers are such productivity boosters and time savers, how come we spend huge amounts of time trying to make them work? Marshall Brain, a writer, former teacher and consultant, tried to figure out how much time we spend on fixing computer stuff but timing it: Last month he spent 11 hours and 20 minutes solving computer problems, from fixing Mom’s printer driver (1 hour) to solving a daughter’s Christmas trauma resulting from a bad Cheerios game CD (15 minutes).

Now first off, that’s a lot of time, but I’d say not surprising. I run a small home network and am forever trying to get things working (even the Wi-Fi seems to have a life of its own.) But is it acceptable? Marshall compared it with his house repairs for the same month: replacing 2 light bulbs, zero problems with the car. “In other words,” he concludes, “there is nothing else in my life that comes close to the time being spent maintaining the computers in my home.”

So who’s to blame? Marshall has some suggestions. His main target: Microsoft. “Personally, I feel that a good bit of this waste and vulnerability is caused by Microsoft. Even more frustrating..is that Microsoft has the resources to fix the problems.” I think he’s right. While he also takes aim at boring and complex user agreements, dealing with spam and installing drivers, I feel that Microsoft, as the dominant software player in practically every field, has cavalierly ignored the problems that users have to deal with. Marshall points to the need to reboot after installing many different types of software — which if removed could “save the nation millions of man-hours per year”, the silly procedure for loading drivers (I still don’t understand exactly what Windows is searching for when you allow it to search for drivers; it never finds them unless you tell them which directory to search in, which is a bit like playing hide and seek with all the closet doors open).

I’d add my bugbear: software bugs. Microsoft, I suspect, just doesn’t fix most of the bugs that it finds. When I asked a senior MS guy about this, complaining about some Word bugs that haven’t been fixed for years, he said I was “missing the big picture”. But if I buy Word for that feature, surely it should work? That’s my big picture: I use that feature (large tables for big chunks of text) and it’s supposed to work. Who should I be sueing if it’s not fixed (answers on a postcard, please.) My suspicion is that we waste a lot of our time not just fixing stuff, but working around stupid bugs that, somehow, we’ve accepted.

As Marshall concludes in his post: “The amount of time we are all wasting on our computers right now is unacceptable, and our machines are far too unreliable.” Which brings me to my final question: Just how productive are we in the face of all this repair time? Are computers wasting our time?

The New Windows And Organising Your Stuff

By | November 24, 2011
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This month’s PCWorld gets hold of an early prototype of the next Windows, which, apart from the usual ‘interface enhancements’ illustrates what I think is going to be the most important change in how we store and retrieve files.

The magazine says that the new ‘Longhorn’ version Windows Explorer — the program which lists what files you have, and which folder there are in — “routinely displayed much more information about files and computer resources than it does in Windows XP”. There’s a panel in the program that “let users and/or applications associate search keywords, comments, and categories with files, data within files, or objects stored on other devices, computers, or networks.”

This basically means that, instead of lumping all your files in a specific directory, or folder, where they languish, you can give your files dynamic order depending on what keywords you assign them. Say you assign the keywords ‘home’ and ‘flubber’ to a file: you can then create ‘virtual folders’ using either, or both, those keywords which will turn up all files of whatever kind which contain those same keywords. This is called WinFS and in theory will allow you to find related resources regardless of their physical location or object type. If you’re interested, there’s more here on the Microsoft website.

I think this is a great innovation and one that is long overdue. The whole folder metaphor is tired and irrelevant to how we use data these days. However I have some worries: Given that most folk today still give their files less than helpful file names, and have yet to discover the joys of creating subfolders to give order to their hard drive, isn’t the ‘dynamic approach’ going to just make things messier? It will largely hinge, as far as I can see, on folk spending an extra few minutes entering keywords into each file’s properties box. Given we’re able to do that now in programs like Microsoft Word, but rarely actually do, what are the chances of that happening? Great in theory, I just worry about the implementation.

In the meantime, I use dtSearch to find stuff, and it works like a charm. It ain’t pretty but it’s sturdy and very configurable. Otherwise, check out X1, which is on the cusp of releasing a new version. Other good search programs: 80-20 Retriever and Enfish Find. Personally I couldn’t live without one of ’em.