The Other Man's Opinion!

Well my first experience with our new telephone company was bad – we now have Frontier instead of Verizon.  I tried to pay my bill.  After fighting with one of the worst automated systems that I have seen in a very long time,  I wound up talking to a CS rep who took lots of information, tried to sell me additional services for 15 minutes, and then told me that he couldn’t take my payment. He then told me to try the online payment system - I had to tell him that his online system was down - he was unaware of it as he was outsourced and his job was really sales and not customer service. Was then sent to an automated telephone payment system but failed because I needed a number that I couldn’t get because the online system was not working and I don’t get paper bills anymore. Can you say “Catch 22!”

Just reading an article about the usage of different operating systems on personal computers. It is interesting that when I went to define a personal computer it pretty much these days is defined by a computer using an Intel or AMD processor running the x86 command set. That would include Window’s PCs, Macs, and most Unix based systems running Linux or BSD.

It wasn’t that long ago we had alternative systems from Motorola, TI, and other processor makers that ran operating systems that have either disappeared, been converted to work with the x86 set, or have been beaten into obscurity (see recent articles regarding the 25th anniversary of the Amiga). Since I think that the current set of operating systems is probably providing as much flexibility as the market will bear in the arena (I lived through the years of Babel and it wasn’t pretty) then maybe this isn’t all bad. There is enough consistent competition among, Microsoft, Apple, and Linux to keep everyone honest and enough consistency of applications to keep us from rebuilding that Tower of Babel. Unfortunately it does make some things somewhat homogenized and despite claims to the contrary – there isn’t a huge amount of difference between the various graphical interfaces for these products. Part of this is due to the fact that there is just so much variation that the more global market will bear. They may be open to other formats on other devices – I give you iPhone/iPad, Android and Windows Mobile 7, but when we sit down to our desktops and notebooks, we expect things to be familiar. This may or may not change as we introduce devices that are now pretty much upscale toys into the serious business of workaday computing but it will take something new with all of the right features to upset the current apple cart.

The last big jump we did was when we went from the text based screens with a few graphical applications to the graphical interfaces on Windows and Mac OS. Unix had X-Windows and other offerings from graphical workstation companies like Sun, DEC, IBM, and others and later came out with Gnome and others on Linux. Keeping in mind that the total personal computer market right now exceeds 1 billion units, some of the current wannabes like iOS and Android (which is really a modified Linux) have a tough road to hoe to grab a significant market share of those users.

For those of you who would like to see the current numbers for operating system usage on PCs – here is the article I referred to:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-7-up-mac-os-x-down/9157?tag=nl.e550

I have been working with SharePoint 2007 for a while now and have used a variety of tools to customize the product, but for some reason have avoided using an obvious one – SharePoint designer.

SharePoint Designer has a significant amount of power but has a number of foibles that make it somewhat less than intuitive to use. I have recently decided to use Designer to modify some forms – specifically to use linked lists (two or more lists that are joined to incorporate data from each into a single entity) – I knew it was possible but was having some difficulties in figuring out exactly how to do this in Designer.

Fortunately the world has provided a plethora of books on just about any subject – Designer included. Found some of the answers I needed in Microsoft Press – Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Step by Step.

I also have the SharePoint Designer 2007 Bible – unfortunately for the items I was looking for, this book was biblical in the use of parables. I was unable to decipher the process for doing what I needed.

My brief experiences so far with SharePoint designer 2010 show that it has been re-written and is much easier to understand. Again, unfortunately this product cannot be used with SharePoint 2007 due to the structural differences between 2007 and 2010.

Some of these processes are obscure enough that I think that I will be doing  a couple of white papers on the subject.

Just upgraded my notebook to 8GB of memory – doing more work with virtual machines so the additional memory is a must. When I attended the SharePoint 2010 Intro a couple of weeks ago the presenter had 16GB in his notebook and was running 6 or 8 virtual machines – most of them servers and while not blazing or capable of supporting 200 users – they did quite well in being able to demonstrate the capabilities of the new systems. I don’t think we are far from essentially having all of our systems delivered with a virtual machine manager and then we just load our virtual machines onto the new hardware. Hardware breaks or you are upgrading hardware, grab a new system copy on the backup of the virtual system from the previous one and you are up and running in short order. The virtual machine manager would not care what operating system you wanted to run – you could even run a copy of Windows, Linux, and Mac OS (only on a Mac since they wouldn’t deem to run the OS on someone else’s hardware) at the same time and depending on what you had for resources do it pretty reasonably.

Doing a system software upgrade – create a new virtual system – get it checked out – migrate programs and data onto the new virtual system – turn off the old one and away you go. Something isn’t running right and you are critical – bring back the old system until you can troubleshoot the new one. Desktop and server hardware is now at the point where we can afford to loose a couple of CPU cycles and not overly suffer for it.

Virtual systems are not new although we are just now using them more on the desktop. IBM had virtual machines running commercially back in the early 70s (see VM/MVS). But that was big iron then, not something you could tuck under your arm or even put in the back of a pickup for that matter – portability was not part of the feature set of the 370/390 series but virtualization was. So we are looking at 40 years of working with Virtual Machines and it is becoming clearer that we can do some very interesting things with this technology. We can cut the number of systems in a server room – though we still need to consider failovers for hardware failure – if a system running 6 virtual machines has hardware problems that takes it down – you had better have someplace else to bring up those 6 machines. But in the meantime you have saved on energy, cooling, and overall complexity of the server site.

On the desktop we are using virtualization to run multiple operating environments in one system – you need to have multiple versions of Windows or want to run Windows and Linux at the same time you can pretty much do it. Macs virtualize Windows to run apps that were only written for Windows.

It appears that Apple may be taking queues from congress – I just tried to download an app on my iPhone and was confronted by a terms and agreement document that I had to agree to before I could proceed. It seems that this document was published to make me aware of changes to the season pass and multipass items for the iPad. Therefore, we  must put out a large unreadable document so that you will never really understand that with which you are agreeing. (Sounds like recent activity on Capital Hill in Washington)

This document was 35 pages long on my iPhone in relatively small type. Not only that, but the section regarding the changes was not formatted to be read on the iPhone – appears that we are passe – should have my iPad with a bigger screen to read this.

I managed to scan and slog through and believe that they haven’t really made any major changes to the original agreement for iTunes which was egregious enough, so I will agree to it and hope that the next app that I download doesn’t require a lawyer consult. Let’s see  $.99 for the app – $500 for the lawyer. Cheap at twice the price.

Turns out, not quite surprisingly that the apps we carry around on our iPhones do tell a  bit about ourselves. Road warriors tend to have a number of apps that tell th em about things around them when they arrive in a strange environment, places to eat, places to stay,  things to do, etc.

We tend to use our phones to entertain and inform ourselves so we have apps for reading, news, games, and TV and movie watching. We have apps that work with our hobbies and lifestyle – there are many different cameras and photo packages, there are many packages that will help you with exercise or sports.

There are some general apps that just have a whole bunch of useful functions that come up on a regular basis, such as unit conversions, monetary conversions, even things like a bubble level when you are hanging that picture that never  seems to be right.

In my case I have become a mild app junky – I have about 6 pages of apps – was just reading about someone who had reached the limit of 11 and was hacking his way around to get more. Some of the apps that I have I use regularly – others not so much.

A quick rundown. I have been an avid amateur photographer for most of my life so I have several apps around that activity. I have a few different cameras including Camera Plus, Gorilla Cam, and Pano, because they each do something a little different from each other and the included camera that came with the phone. Camera Plus comes with a nice zoom feature and a simulated flash for low light. Gorilla Cam has several features including a level, self-timer, anti-shake, and a burst function that I use. Pano is a panoramic picture maker – it allows you to take up to 16 pictures and stitch them together in the camera producing a very nice panoramic view. One nice feature in this app is that it produces a ghost image from the previous shot to allow you to align the panorama.

After taking the pictures, I have found an app called Photogene that I like for making those little touch ups that make the picture that much better. I have all of the horsepower applications on my computer, but it is nice to be able to take a quick shot of something, fix it up and send it out while at the scene.

Other apps that I have found useful:

HP iPrint – prints photos wirelessly to my HP photo printer.

AppBox Pro – a Swiss army knife of applications that cover a batch of daily uses and gets used alot.

AroundMe – an app for finding stores, food, coffee etc. around the GPS location where I am located

Facebook and Twitterific – need I say more

Several Google Apps – tie directy into maps, mail, calendar, etc.

BigOven – recipes galore and ties into the package on my computer

Print and Share, DocsToGo, and iFile – Have my issues with these (will do more on this later) but they allow for carrying work with me

Mall Maps – strange little app for finding your way around shopping malls

Evernote – Syncs notes with my computer – handy to have and used alot

Skype – need I say more

Code Reader – reads barcodes and then checks the web for the best price on the item

Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, Amazon, etc  - fast way to find items on these sites

WSJ, NYTims, Seattle Times, Fluent News, British News, USA Today, CNBC, PopSci, Engadget and others – Keeps me up to date

GPS Drive – best GPS for the money

Stanza, Barnes and Noble, and Kindle readers for taking my reading on the road

I have a number of others that I will cover at another time but this gives a flavor of the usefulness that I find in the phone.

From my blog you know that I have recently purchased an iPhone and that I have been having fun with it and even found that its limitations were in some way a plus. Now we are presented with a really BIG – iPhone  called the iPad. Somewhat of a misnomer as it has a few features not on the iPhone and at this point seems to not have the camera or calling capability of the iPhone – it hasn’t been clear to me that if you have the 3g coverage you can make calls.

The limiatations that I am willing to live with on the iPhone such as no memory expansion, no interchangeable battery, limited mechanical connectivity are something that I would not live with on a computing platform such as a tablet or netbook. The keyboard issue is something that can argued pro and con, but the lack of a USB port, web cam, memory expansion, Adobe Flash, etc. are issues that really need to be addressed in a more universal platform.

The Flash issue is even one that I am starting to be upset about in the iPhone. Flash has become somewhat ubiqitous on the web – like it or not – and to not have support for it does limit your ability to get to things non-Apple. Artificial limitations such as this will be the factor of people moving to another platform or in the case of the iPad – not going there in the first place.

That said, lets look at the iPad as an expensive e-reader - I have said from the beginning that e-readers will have their place but will not take over the world until two things happen – the first is that there has to be a universal e-book format with enough flexibility in the licensing of the e-book to use it like a regular book – I am a voracious reader and can go through a reasonable sized book in a couple of days – and then if is interesting enough it is read by family and friends and finally donated to a library or charity for others to share (I think this is a subject that I will deal more with in the future). This  is not addressed by the iPad – if nothing it is now more complicated because Apple has introduced thier own format for thier bookstore in iTunes.

The second is the lack of color – there is a huge amount of print media that require color to deliver its message – sorry but monochrome e-ink doesn’t provide that impact and will never be a good platform for much of the news and magazine and even the textbook world where color photos and illustrations convey a great deal of the information.

There are many arguments over viewability of the backlit screen vs the e-ink page and the longer battery life that the e-ink provides. May be true but I like the backlit screen personally because I wake up in the middle of the night and do not have to disturb anyone with turning on a light. I also have found this useful on planes on a night flight. I don’t find the backlit screen that bothersome to my vision and have been known to read off on for several hours – btw – how many of us look at our computer screens for many hours of the day - and don’t seem to be overwhelmingly suffering from eyesthrain (except for those sitess that use really small type ). So here the iPad has an advantage over the Kindle in that it can provide that color and multi-media experience within the publications that it provides – well – except for the Flash thing!

So I have – tht of rambled here, but the bottom line is that while introducing an interesting concept, I believe the iPad’s failings may outnumber its sucesses and its fate will decreed by the market. There are millions of iPhone users who will love having a bigger screen to run the apps that are now relegated to the pocket but will they be ready to give up the flexibility of a more functional computing platform for the limited functionality of the iPad just for that compatibility – we shall see!

Waiting to see what Google and Microsoft (or the PC makers) will provide in this arena!

The other man’s opinion!

Decided to change the title of the blog for a couple of reasons – the first was that I thougt is was a little dry – the second is that I am branching out into areas that are not specifically IT or small business related – so let’s tell it like it is.

John McHugh