This month, the regular NPUG Monthly Meeting is going “On The Road.” This month’s meeting is being held at the Goodlettsville Branch Library, in Goodlettsville, TN. [Google Map] Will that be a bit of a drive for most of our members? Sure, but it’ll be a welcome relief for our members that live north of Nashville and drive down south for every other meeting. We have quite a few that drive 30+ minutes to attend each meeting, so for once in the 7+ years we’ve been having meeting, they’ll have the shortest drive. 🙂
Category / technology
Recommendations For Windows HTML Editors
Being a web producer, I often run into situations where a client wants me to recommend a tool that they can use to edit their web site. If they are a Windows user, the most common software that they have on hand is Microsoft’s FrontPage, but I have to say that this is one of the worst HTML editors you can use. I do everything I can to try and talk the client out of using it and when I’m successful, then they ask me what I recommend instead. That’s a tough question to answer, but here’s a few recommendations you might find helpful.
What’s Wrong With FrontPage?
The reason web professionals loathe FrontPage is because the software sucks. There’s no easy way to say it – it just sucks. FrontPage is notorious for polluting your pages with extreme amounts of additional code. Code that isn’t needed nor functional. You pages may work in Internet Explorer, but more often than not, your pages wont look right, or even work in other browsers.
The biggest gripe though is that after a web professional has spent hours creating your site, FrontPage will redesign your pages/site completely un-doing all the work that’s been done. If you’ve hired someone to create a web site for you, the last thing you want to do is destroy all the work that you just paid for.
My Take On Metrics For Blogs
I had a client ask me recently about what metrics existed for blogs. I hadn’t really thought about that topic as it relates to weblogs before, so I had to do a bit of research on the subject. As a former Director of Marketing and a confirmed chart junkie, the idea intrigued me considerably. After digging into though, I quickly came to the conclusion that metrics and blogs don’t mix well.
Creating metrics for a blog is a really tough problem. In fact, I haven’t found anyone that has found a clear cut solution regardless of what side of the fence you happen to be on. Fence? Yes, there are two sides to this issue. Some feel that trying to measure the success of a blog can’t be done and that it’s futile to attempt to do so. The other side believe that without metrics, there can be no real understanding of a blog’s success. As the weblog “scale|free” put it, “I think measurement is essential, otherwise all you’ve got is a warm fuzzy story that may actually be completely incorrect.”
The Sprint PCS Coffee Bar
My Treo 600 had an unfortunate accident again and this time it didn’t survive the fall. The screen was cracked and the microphone no longer functioned. Being a smart user, I have insurance on the phone and I run a backup routine every nice with BackupMan. So all I had to do is go down to the local Sprint store and swap out the device. As anyone who has gone into a mobile phone store knows, the wait is never short, so I came prepared.
Well This Sucks
I’m a big fan of desktop weblog clients. They make it really easy to publish and manage a weblog and my favorite for Windows has been Zempt. It’s an open source project, which means that it’s free to use, and it strikes the right balance of features and simplicity. Great little app that I recommend […]
What Podcasts Do You Listen To?
The holidays kept me running a good bit and now with the start of the year, I’ve been going 100 miles an hour and haven’t had a lot of time to write. In playing with the free music streaming service Pandora (http://www.pandora.com) and having a quick chat with a friend about podcasts we listen to, I thought of a quick post that I thought I could squeeze in with today’s hectic schedule.
If Beggars Could Be Choosers
There are days where I SO wish that I was a programmer and today is one of those days. However, I’m not a programmer, so all I can do is make a wish and hope that some smart programmer will come to my rescue, or some other user will know of a program that will solve my problem. So this entry to a desperate cry for help for a solution. Can you help me?
I need two programs that basically do the same thing – beam text to a Palm OS device. One program would be for the PC and the other would be for a Palm OS device. All this program would do is push text to a Palm OS device via InfraRed. It would really just simulate an IR keyboard and retype the text via IR. Sound simple enough right? 🙂 Well, to make things clearer, here’s a user story.
I was writing up an entry for posting today and I ran out of time, so I had to save it for later. Pretty usual stuff for me. I have tons of entries saved on my Dana Wireless because I tend to run out of time, so they’re there for finishing at a later date. What’s great is that I can instantly turn on the device and pick up where I left off. Unfortunately, I didn’t compose the entry on my Dana, I composed it on my laptop.
A Little Something I’ve Been Working On
I’ve been a huge fan of Natara Software’s award winning program Bonsai. It’s an outliner program that runs on your Palm OS device, but it also sports an excellent Windows desktop application as well. For the vast majority of clients that I consult with that say that they want to learn Microsoft Project, do much better with Bonsai. It’s much easier to learn and to use and for most projects it’s all you really need.
That’s really how I stumbled on to Bonsai years ago. I had tried MS Project, but found that I spent most of my time fiddling with the software and not doing the work. There were just too many options and variables to deal with and it made the overall experience cumbersome. In looking for a Palm OS based solution, I came across Project @ Hand, Natara’s other project application that allows you to work with MS Project files on your Palm. I saw Bonsai and thought, “Maybe that’s all I need?”, and sure enough it was! So for several years I’ve been using Bonsai to keep track of tasks and projects. It’s a wonderful tool and syncs like a dream with my desktop.
As I began working with more and more distributed teams, I found that I needed to find an online solution. Sure Bonsai was great for me, but there wasn’t any way that I could share the data with anyone else easily. You can beam outlines back-and-forth, but there’s no way to “sync” them should either of you make changes to the file. Bonsai is simply not designed to work in a collaborative environment.
Innovate, Don’t Litigate
Awhile back, I wrote a pretty in depth article on the subject of BroadCATCHING, which is basically downloading television content to your computer via BitTorrent. At the time I wrote it, the MPAA was focusing on BitTorrent sites that offered movies. Since that was patently illegal, I stayed clear of that kind of activity, but since television is broadcast over the airwaves for free, downloading television shows seemed perfectly legal. Unfortunately, if the MPAA has their way, downloading television programs are no different than downloading movies.
The RIAA versus Napster was the precursor to what the MPAA is going through now. Although Nicolas Negroponte made it perfectly clear in his 1995 book, “Being Digital“, not everyone have been listening. Mr. Negroponte basically said that any product, or service that could be distributed digitally, would be. If the current distribution channel doesn’t provide it, then someone else will. That was the case with Napster. First it was illegal and then Apple figured out a way to make it legitimate with iTunes. Since then, Apple’s little side business has all but taken over their primary business (making computers).
Unfortunately, governing organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA don’t understand market demands and how to adapt. Their only course of action seems to be lawsuits. When Napster was all the rage, the RIAA issued a flurry of lawsuits, citing that they were going after “thieves”. Regardless of where you stood on the issue, hearing about Grandmothers getting sued for supposedly downloading hard core rap music by Ol’ Dirty Bastard made you question the entire process. There was a lot of hype and speculation, but when it was all said and done, the lawsuits didn’t amount to much.
You Can’t Get There From Here
Working in the technology industry can be very frustrating. Every day it seems that I’m wading through a quagmire of information to find the “needle in the haystack” that will solve the problem at hand. If it’s an obscure glitch, or a quirky solution, I expect that there will be some pain and suffering in trying to find a solution. However, often times it seems that I do nothing more than beat my head against a wall for even the most basic of needs. My current “pain du jour” is e-mail. You’d think that given it’s popularity that anything you’d like to do with e-mail could be done with a number of software applications, but unfortunately I’m finding that it’s not. I feel like after asking for directions, I’m being told, “you can’t get there from here.” >(
I’ve been using Thunderbird for well over a year now and have been quite happy for the most part. All of my e-mail accounts are IMAP based, as discussed here, and Thunderbird is one of the best IMAP e-mail clients I’ve found. The SPAM filters are top-notch, the program runs quickly and handles large amounts of e-mail with aplomb, yet there are two features that I’m looking for that simply don’t exist. These two features have sent me on a quest to find a new e-mail client and I simply can’t find a proper solution.