loose wire | blog – Page 523 – Jeremy Wagstaff: ex Reuters/BBC/WSJ etc. Now consulting and writing. Blogging here since 2001

Update: AlphaSmart to go wireless

By jeremy | November 24, 2011

The folk at AlphaSmart tell me that yesterday they showed off the next generation version of Dana, the cool word-processing keyboard I reviewed a few weeks ago, at the National Educating Computer Conference in Seattle. (Their website has no details so far.)

The new model offers built-in Wi-Fi technology (802.11b), allowing Dana users to access email and the Internet wirelessly. AlphaSmart will launch the model before the next school year and hope this will “enhance Dana?s position as a true laptop alternative”. Dana Wireless also offers a better display and additional fonts.

Software: Jot this

By jeremy | November 24, 2011

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Jot+ Notes, one of those programs that never go out of style, is today into its third version. Jot+ Notes is a note/cardfile program with an added dimension: each note can have sub-notes, which in turn can have their own sub-notes, until you end up with a hierarchical tree or outline of notes. Sounds complicated? It’s not.

It’s very simple, and great for any loosely structured information — stuff that’s too important to just leave in a text file, but too vague to put in , say, Outlook. It’s good for address books (it even has an Autodial function), diaries/journals, Internet links/bookmarks, e-books, or just random notes.

A few of the many improvements in Jot+ Notes 3.0:

Improved editor, with more formatting options, plus support for embedded objects and images.
Plugins, to extend Jot+ Notes even further.
Enhanced import/export, with new XML support and enhanced HTML and CSV support.
Modern user interface, with colorful icons, configurable toolbars, configurable keyboard shortcuts, and XP theme support.
Note titles can be displayed in different styles with a choice of icon from a large library.
Notefile compression reduces notefile size by up to 90%.

Jot+ costs $30, or $9 (or free) for upgrades from previous versions, depending on when you bought it. I’ve checked the program out, and it’s good, very good. Gripes? It would replace my address book entirely if only it came with a version I could run on my Palm/Pocket PC.

Update: Wanna virus with your spam?

By jeremy | November 24, 2011

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Intriguingly, spam declined as a percentage of overall Internet message traffic in June, according to the folk who measure this kind of thing best. MessageLabs, a provider of managed email security services, said today that the global ratio of spam in email was 1 in 2.6 or 34.4% this month, a decrease of 35.3% over last month’s figures, which peaked at 1 in every 1.8 emails (55.1%) when I wrote about spam earlier this month. This isn’t necessarily good news, though: spam has continued its dramatic increase in 2003, rising 38.5% on the year to date.

Other depressing features:

Nearly 60-70% of spam is now sent through “hijacked” open-proxy computers: this reflects a disturbing new trend, that viruses are getting more commercially minded, or spammers are getting sleazier, depending on how you look at it. The Sobig viruses, MessageLabs say, “highlighted the growing link between virus-writing and spam techniques in the use of viruses to hijack victims’ computers for mass spam mailings. The Sobig viruses include the ability to install a back-door Trojan on an infected machine that
then renders it vulnerable for use by spammers to utilize the bandwidth of that machine and then send spam messages; this is known as an “open-proxy,” and is a particular problem for “always-on” broadband-type connections.
June saw viruses increase by 13.6% over the previous month: every 125th email was a virus.
In the U.S., Marketing, Media, Publishing and Retail industries saw the largest increases in spam in June.

Software: PaperMaster Pro – worth the wait?

By jeremy | November 24, 2011

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It’s been nearly five years some folk have been waiting, but it looks like PaperMaster, a great program for scanning and organizing your paperwork, is back.

PaperMaster — the last full version was 98, to give you some idea how long this software’s been hibernating — was pretty good. It look liked a filing cabinet, and let you scan and store more or less anything you could squeeze through your scanner. The company was sold to j2, which is basically an Internet faxing service and which were very, very quiet about the software until last year, when in response to public interest (well me, and a couple of other people) they released PaperMaster2002, an upgrade for existing licensed users of PaperMaster98 “who have migrated or are planning to migrate to the Microsoft® Windows 2000, XP, or ME operating system”.

That version wasn’t cheap — $150 — and didn’t do much apart from resolve a few of the features of PaperMaster98 that wouldn’t work under XP (unless you happened to stumble across some tweaks that fans had posted to websites). Earlier this year, when I complained about the cost of what was basically a minor upgrade, j2 told me “the PaperMaster upgrade was completed primarily for a few select users who were figuratively beating down j2 Global’s door to get the new product. The cost of the upgrade was a result of j2 Global investing significant resources to complete an upgrade designed for limited distribution. Based on customer response, j2 Global’s PaperMaster users seem to be fine with the price”. Not what I heard, but there you go.

Anyway, Pro is here. Nearly. You can pre-order and get 15% off the retail price of $199 (once again, not cheap). Still, it sounds as if it has some serious features:

Create PDFs from any office application or scan
Organize fast and easy
Find anything in seconds
Get powerful OCR – Never re-type any document
Fax easier via the Internet with built-in eFax®

All of which sound useful. I’ll review it once I’ve got hold of a copy. Earlier release date was set for today, so that could be soon. If you’re in a hurry, see my recent review of PaperPort, which does much the same thing.

Update: Aliencamel gets another hump

By jeremy | November 24, 2011

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Newly arrived anti-spam service Aliencamel, which I mentioned in an earlier column, tell me they’ve beefed up their service by ‘double scanning’ every email with virus engines from RAV and Kapersky. Aliencamel’s spam technology uses server-based whitelists — allowing email from such addresses to get through — and blacklists — blocking out ‘bad’ email senders — and a spam-filter ranking system from SpamAssassin, letting you select what emails actually reach your inbox. It’s definitely worth a try. I’m still using POP File which adopts a different approach and is free, but some users have found it fiddly to set up with some email accounts. Aliencamel cost $16 for a half-year subscription.