Information Research Weblog

I can't think of much that is more pointless than the recently launched Google Pack. It is simply a combination of readily available third party software, such as Firefox and Adobe Reader and Google's own offerings, such as Picasa and Desktop. All of this stuff is already downloadable as needed - what's the point?

By coincidence news popped up on Slashdot to the effect that Dell is installing Firefox on machines it sells in the UK. Interesting move.

On 12/27/05, Tom Wilson said:

>I was quite surprised to discover that the beta version became the
>release version about a week later.

Tom, that's just not true. There were numerous beta versions, and three
"release candidate" builds that each lasted for more than a week. I was
using a 1.5 beta versions for *months*.

Part of the problem with the extensions is that the developers (of the
extensions) have moved on. All platforms (and in this case, Firefox is
a platform) go through this: people write software for the platform,
achieve some recognition and think they've found the key to riches and
fame. When the money doesn't start rolling in ("Why isn't everyone
paying me to write custom extensions? My tab-enhancer rocks, surely
everyone can see my talents!?") they come back to reality. From that
point on, the extensions that were being developed so feverishly in the
past are now maintained and updated with a lot less enthusiasm.

When the Mozilla team made some important and much needed changes to
how extensions interact with Firefox, they didn't really give the
extension authors any renewed hope for fame and riches. (Ok, I'm being
slightly sarcastic with the 'fame and riches' reference, but not
entirely.)

It wouldn't have mattered if Firefox 1.5 stayed in beta for another
year, with zero changes. Many of the developers *never* would have dug
into Mozilla's notes to find out what needs to be changed.

(There's another problem. Lots of these "open source" extensions are
only developed by a single person who's being paid by another single
individual who needed a particular feature. If that person doesn't pony
up the cash to pay for the extension to be updated for compatibility
with Firefox 1.5, then the extension will languish. This happens all
the time.)

Having said all that, could you tell me which extensions you were
missing? I'm still 'involved' with Mozilla, and may know of suitable
replacements.

Seth

In the reviews I've read about desktop search programs, Copernic seems to come out top. I ditched Google Desktop some time ago, since it seemed to consume a lot of system resources. Copernic is certainly as fast, but has the disadvantage that the only mail it can search is if you use Outlook - which I don't. However, Google's own mail search is good enough in these circumstances, although I did find it occasionally useful to have an attachment to an e-mail message pointed out to me by Google Desktop.

I've been trying both Copernic and the relatively little known Filehand and find the latter very interesting. It ouputs the results with extracts to show the context of the search terms and you can vary the amount of context you get. Consequently, it is very easy to tell whether or not the item found is the one you are looking for - not always the case with Copernic. However, Copernic is easier to use, in my experience, if you are looking for, say, an MP3 file rather than all files. I haven't quite figured out how the equivalent in Filehand works, which suggests that it is not very intuitive.

At present, however, the probability is that I shall keep Filehand on the computer - unfortunately, the originators have had to go back to full-time jobs: as they say, they couldn't develop a free desktop search program in opposition to companies with multi-million dollar research budgests. However, they keep an eye on the program and if, one of these days, someone comes up with an offer for them (how about it, Sun or an open source agency?), development will be resumed. For now, however, it is free, and worth considering.

A couple of magazines of general interest to Information Research readers have come to my attention today.

First, the Free Software Magazine, now in its eighth issue and, appropriately, free. The current issue includes a review of a free anti-virus program. Many interesting articles in the previous issues - all of which are available.

The other freebie is O3: the open source enterprise data networking magazine—quite a mouthful, and I'm sure there should be a comma in there somewhere, but where? "open source enterprise, data networking magazine" or "open source, enterprise data, networking magazine"—who can tell? Still, the first issue has some interesting items, including one on the perils of letting Google's spider into your servers.

The State of Masachusetts is not the only place in the news in relation to open source - I see that the City of Paris is leading France into the open source future.

Microsoft's battle with the State of Massachusetts seems to have raised interest, yet again, in the open source alternatives to the Office suite of programs. Newsfactor Magazine Online, which I hadn't come acros before, has an article, Can Open Source Defeat Microsoft?, which discusses some of the Windows and Unix/Linux alternatives. The answer to the question appears to be, 'Not yet', with the alternatives still lacking some of the features used by disabled persons, for example. However, the battle is hotting up, with the cost of office software being driven down to zero through open source.

Big news in the world of office systems these days, is that the decision by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to opt for the Open Document Format in preference of Microsoft's de facto industry standard. The Commonwealth's aim is to have a common format for all agencies that is not bound by commercial constraints. See the latest from ZDNet on the subject.

Thanks to Charles Knight for drawing my attention to an article about the beta version of the new Microsoft Hotmail. Personally, I would no more think of using Hotmail than I would think of jumping into a vat of molten lead, since it is such an horrendous spam attractor and the article doesn't address that problem. The author suggests that the beta points to an e-mail system that will be better than GMail, with which it obviously competes, but I don't see it, myself. The three vertical panes of the layout look very clumsy and poorly designed.

Why can't Microsoft do decent conversion from Word to xhtml? Their conversion programs are rubbish and don't even take note of properly formatted Word documents using different levels of heading - everything is converted into mindless tags with lots of mso (Microsoft specific) tags. Even the so-called 'filtered' version is crap.

For example, I had a paper recently which had used MSoft conversion: one table had 10,542 characters whereas my 'clean' version had 1,545. I know that file storage is supposed not to be an issue these days, but a ten-fold increase in file sizes would quickly cause problems. One shudders to think what MSoft's implementation of xml in its next version of Office is going to do!

Google

You just know that anyone who could write:

As a company, Google has done wonderful things: it has re-architected knowledge with its search; it has taken the cooties off citizens' media with its ads on blogs.

has to be a 'media commentator and consultant'. "re-architected knowledge" for Heaven's sake - what's that supposed to mean? As for the last bit - it might was well be in Klingon. However, the rest of the article about Google is written by others and is quite interesting. It's a pity the Editor's pen didn't go far enough.

Moving files

I always read the 'Ask Jack' column in the Guardian's Online supplement - lots of useful tips. And this week he has some very useful advice on transferring files to a new PC

Skype

Vanity Fair is not the place I'd normally look for articles on technology but, in this month's issue there's a piece about Skype and it just happens to be one of the articles you can read online for free. To call it a technology article is stretching things ("Night is getting on when three Korean girls in negligée cocktail dresses slip through the crowd, carrying electric violins on their way to the aft stage.") and the writer seems to imagine himself as a cross between Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe - he has a style that is not easy reading but continually straining for effect.

Managing the Internet

Why am I not surprised that the commission set up by the UN to enquire into managing the Internet has come up not with one solution, but four?

Skype killers

With Skype so successful (at any one time, when I use it, there are more than 2.5 million other people using it) it seems inevitable that there will be competition. Two have recently been launched:

The Gizmo Project

This looks very much like a Skype copycat - even the layout of the interface is broadly similar and In and Out services are provided (i.e., you can call out to land lines and have a land line number that others can use to call in to you). I'm in the process of trying to test this one and will let you know what happens.

VoIPBuster

This one didn't get as far as testing! For several days I tried to register but kept getting a message to the effect that 'an unexpected problem' was preventing registration and 'try again later'. Well, there's only so much I'm prepared to put up with and I gave up on it. Others may have more success. [Just in case things had been resolved, I've just tried again, with the same result.]

Google in the dock

Thanks to Charles Knight for drawing my attention to this one. This is a rather complicated story which hinges upon the Internet Wayback Machine archive and a law case in which old Web pages were proving embarrassing. Mmm. You can shred old documents, but when you've put them in the public arena on the Web, that's a little difficult. It will be interesting to see what the Canadian legislators come up with. Of course, it all relates to corporate greed and misdoings—when things go wrong companies will always try suppression and if they can get the legislators to help them, they're laughing and the rest of us are weeping. But aren't parliamentarians supposed to be the representatives of the people? Ha, ha!

This week's Computer Weekly has more items of interest than usual for me. On the front page is an item about problems with a big merger project involving the clearing house system for the banks. Accenture has been called in to try to sort out the problem, and LCH Clearnet is looking for a new IT director. A box on the page points out that 60% to 70% of similar projects fail to hit budgets and deadlines and up to 40% are total failures. You'd imagine that by now some lessons would have been learnt, wouldn't you.

Also on the front page, a short item about Tony Blair's intention to monitor the government's top twenty IT projects. Amazing—he's running the country, invading Iraq (and possibly, Iran, Syria and North Korea), sticking his finger into every ministerial pie and he still has time to do this! Perhaps he should focus.

Inside, we have an item about the Prudential insurance company's hopes of saving £26 million through an outsourcing deal with Wipro (an outfit in India), while two pages further on we have an article on how Bedfordshire County Council is in trouble with an outsourcing deal! Mmm - are Prudential's hopes optimistic, I wonder?

Also in the news: Google's new 'Mini' - an 'integrated hardware/software search appliance' for searching corporate intranets and Websites, while on another page, another article about the use of desk-top and enterprise search engines.

Next, a questioning item as to the delivery of promises about Java, and a different item on how Java is bringing benefits to British Airways. Did the editors plan these coincidental items, I wonder, or did they just happen to happen?

...and, finally, an item about early adopters of technology.

Netscape has beaten MSoft to the punch by releasing its new browser, Netscape 8.0. Still officially in beta, it looks a pretty polished product, with features that are now becoming expected - tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, better security, etc. etc. Plus the ability to add RSS feeds It has a pretty slick looking appearance and, although developed in partnership with Mercurial Communications, obviously owes something to Firefox. In particular, when you click on Themes and Extensions in the Tools menu, you find yourself presented with the pages from Mozilla.org

Attention was drawn, a little while ago, to the fact that Firefox was not as immune to security problems as claimed. Well, Version 1.0.1 has now been issued (not yet in all languages—so English English is not yet available). This version "fixes a few security holes and some other bugs", particularly the security problem relating to Internationalized Domain Names:

The IDN vulnerability allowed an attacker to create a fake Web site on a non-Microsoft browser in order to pull off a phishing scam. A spoofed link would seem to be a legitimate URL in the address bar of affected browsers. But instead of taking the victim to the trusted site, the link would lead to a phony Web site with a domain rendered as the same address under the IDN process. (ZDNetstory)

Mention of languages reminds me—is there any way at all of getting rid of English (US) in Microsoft Word? It causes enormous problems for a journal editor because people use the package without changing the language setting and, even when the default is set to English (UK) it always returns to English (US) as the default when you re-launch.

Interesting news on the progress of FireFox as browser of choice, which comes in an article about a flaw that could encourage 'phishers'. It notes:

A survey at the end of November found that Mozilla-based software, including Firefox, accounted for 7.4 percent of browsers in November 2004, up 5 percent from May.

This is interesting, because, as I have noted previously, IR readers appear to be ahead of the game. Currently, i.e., today, FireFox and Mozilla account for 9.7% of the hits on the top page of the journal

Google has been much in the news as a result of its venture into the digital library - on a huge scale. Today's Observer (one of the so-called 'broadsheet' Sunday papers in the UK, for those who don't know it, and part of the Guardian family) has an article in its business section on Google's latest venture, in which John Naughton refers to Howard Reingold's seminal work on the virtual community:

Many years ago, Howard Rheingold, who was one of the first people to understand the social potential of cyberspace, posed an interesting question: 'Where is the Library of Congress, when it's on your laptop?' To most people at the time, it seemed a meaningless question. What lay behind it, however, was an attempt to think through a profound consequence of a networked society - what Frances Cairncross later dubbed 'the death of distance'.

Naughton also notes:

Once upon a time, being learned involved holding a lot of knowledge and information in one's head. Are we moving towards a world where the important thing is not what you know, but how to find it?

an idea expressed many long years ago by Dr. Johnson (as reported by James Boswell—in 1791):

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."

which is also a very neat definition of the difference between 'knowledge' and 'information' :-)

Google was also the subject of one of Fortune's long articles last week, too. The focus was on the share price and the probability of investors getting their return (the verdict seemed to be, 'Be cautious'), but, among other things it has some interesting stuff on the competition.

Thanks also to Gerry Mckiernan and the ASIS-L mailing list for bringing another Google item to my attention; this time in the New York Times (you'll need to register to read the article, but registration is free).

The article contains a nice story about the irreplaceability of the physical book – for some purposes:

Mr. Jimerson said, 'A scanned image will only tell you some things, and the sheer volume of records makes scanning everything difficult'. But he added that he supported Google's plan in theory. 'I recall the story of a gentleman being in a library and watching a researcher sniff books', he said. 'It turned out that the aroma of vinegar was still embedded in those that had been treated with vinegar to prevent cholera during an epidemic'.

Thanks to Gerry also for another item in the New York Times – this time on Firefox. With Pennsylvania State University telling everyone on campus to switch from Internet Explorer, it would seem that Microsoft has a little problem on its hands – one that may result in a policy switch, unless arrogance holds sway in Redmond. If there is a policy switch it would require IE to be re-written from the ground up, so Firefox may go ahead by leaps and bounds. Try it—my guess is that, if you are an IE user, you'll need less than ten minutes with the new rival (well, not so new, if you've been using it for the past couple of years in its development phase) to convince you to switch.

On 11/15/04, Tom Wilson said:

>Opera has many of the same features as FireFox (and had them
>earlier) and it does some things better; but I like the way
>FireFox does tabs better, even though its inability to stop sites
>from launching windows without the navigation bar is frustrating.

Actually, it can do that, but it's a hidden preference.

In your browser, go to this url: "about:config". (No http: or
anything, just exactly "about:config".)

At the top of the long list of preferences that it shows, there is
a textbox. Paste this into that checkbox (without the quotes):
"dom.disable_window_open".

Double click on the line that says
"dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar". That will change the
value from false to true. From now on, when a web page opens a new
window, it will be unable to hide the toolbar.

Seth

I tried that Skype and even put some money into being able to use it to ring
someone, but tried it once and have never got back to it. Mostly because
I'm used to using all the free methods and only occasionally make the effort
to talk to someone on a phone anyway. Guess I wasted a bit of money, or I
need to get back to using it.

And on the general lack of interest in the IR Weblog, I guess I would be
really disappointed if the IR Weblog disappeared. But I guess it's not
being a proper weblog so I guess I won't fight it. I get enough mail and
info as it is and that's part of why I haven't chased why I'm not getting
more!

The decision of Google to get into e-mail has provoked mountains of comment - mostly relating to the advertisement policy. The strategy appears to be that GMail will use automatic analysis of the text of messages to put ads at the side - much as Google now does for searches. CNN.com has a longish article on the subject, while ZDNet UK reports that the UK's Information Commissioner has been presented with a claim that the policy of retaining even deleted e-mail would infringe the UK's privacy legislation. Today's Guardian Online reports that GMail is now open for testers - however, that's not evident from the GMail site, which simply records your e-mail address to send you more information.

Spam is the electronic equivalent of the bubonic plague, spewed forth by rats in Florida most of the time, it seems. However, the fight against it is on and I note that Yahoo! Mail, which I've been using as my secondary e-mail address pretty well since it started up in 1997, is getting its act together. One good thing about Yahoo! Mail is that you can mark an item as spam without opening it and then click on the 'Spam' button - this not only removes it, but transfers it to Yahoo's anti-spam team so that learn more about how to counter it.

Yahoo! Mail is free, up to a limit of 6MB of storage - after that you pay. And if you pay, for Yahoo! Mail Plus, you can now have a variety of addresses so that you do not need to reveal your primary e-mail address. Other mail providers may well think this is a good idea and, indeed, ISPs often provide the possibility of multiple e-mail addresses. Yahoo! Mail Plus starts at $29.99 a year.

Found a long article today in Fortune - not available at its Web site, unless you are a subscriber, unfortunately - but you can read the first page there - about a start-up Internet telephony company called Skype. These are the guys who brought you KaZaa, so peer-to-peer communication is their game and what is telephony other than P2P? However, unlike KaZaa, which was funded out of their savings, Skype has attracted the attention of the venture capitalists who believe that their software for Voice Over Internet Protocol (otherwise known as VOIP) is a winner - to the extent of investing $25 million in the first round, with the second round of funding over-subscribed.

This is serious enough for the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to be saying that telecom as we know it is finished:

I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype. When the inventors of KaZaa are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic... - it's over. The world will change now inevitably.

The key is that phrase, 'the quality is fantastic' - VOIP has been around for some time now, but it's been a hassle and the time delays were dreadful and the quality was poor - with broadband use growing and the quality problem apparently solved... well, I'm now among the more than 7 million who have downloaded it, and I'm looking forward to getting set up to use it.

Coincidentally, this week's Time magazine has an article called 'Back from the dead', devoted to the resurgance of interest in, among other things, VOIP. [Thanks for drawing this one to my attention, Alistair... and thanks, Charles, for the link to the inevitable.] The separate bits of the article are on the Time Europe Web site - and the VOIP bit is here.

It looks as though this could be the next big thing!

Ah! A trade mark dispute - a pity really, the Phoenix metaphor that started it led naturally to Firebird - and I've never even heard of the database group that was objecting.

However, from a hint on the discussion forum, I discovered that Firefox will launch if you also have Firebird running and it nicely picks up the Firebird bookmarks and add-ins. Tab Browser Extensions are one of these, so I'll see if disabling them results in Firefox launching every time.

Keep tuned to this station for further announcements.

On 2/9/04, Tom Wilson said:

>Don't ask me why, but the new version of the Firebird browser is called
>Firefox

The reason is explained here
Seth

It's Tom, actually, Rishi - unless you got another message from a Tony :-)

Given the situation you described, with an outsourced IT Department then it would seem that a resolution of the situation is their responsibility, not yours!

As for how you achieve full participation, once a system is designed and installed, that is down to the general management of the organization. If a system of the kind I suggested is approved, given the go-ahead, and supported by management, then management must act in ways to encourage the system's use. With a document management system in place, it would be their job, not yours, to ensure that everyone in the organization used the system in ways that enabled everyone to gain ready access to the shared files.

I find PowerMarks extremely useful for managing bookmarks - it imports from most browsers; you get space on a server so you can backup the list, and download it from another computer. I've stopped using bookmark lists directly since I found it. (I hasten to add that I have nothing to do commercially with PowerMarks!).

Stephen Gourlay

Kingston Business School, Kingston University, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, KT2 7LB, UK

A couple of days ago, I mentioned Mozilla Firebird as a desirable browser and my liking for it grows. I found that it is delightfully easy in import one's bookmarks from other browsers - IE is very straightforward, but even for Opera, all you need is another very useful open source program, BookMark Bridge. This checks what bookmark files are one your system and then merges them under the desired system. There's some tidying up to do, but it works very effectively.

A list member, Carol Cahill, draws my attention to a couple of items worth looking at:

• PC magazine Feb 17 issue has an article about the value of public library subscription databases "Your library online" by Janet Rubenking
• Today's Seattle Times has an article about Joe Janes' new ischool class on Google: "Google for a grade: UW class to study popular search engine"

A good read from Peter Jasco of the University of Hawaii on the ups and downs of 2003.

...and some guesses from various persons about what 2004 might hold for us.

Finally, IST Results e-bulletin has the following item:

• Need help navigating the Internet? Maybe Mayva can help. Mayva, the first implementation of the AsAnAngel project, is a conversational and customisable virtual assistant for Internauts and cellular phone users.

I'm very impressed by the Mozilla Firebird browzer. It may even displace Opera as my preferred system.

One of the big features is the extent to which it can be customised through 'Tips and Tricks' which allow you to do practically anything by inserting code into one or another of three text files: user.js, userChrome.css, and userContent.css

Try it out, I think you'll like it.

Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru, has a nice piece on 'information pollution' as his first 'Alertbox' of 2004. Much of what he recommends was recommended by David Allen and myself following our project on 'information overload' - in fact, 'information pollution' is a significant element in overload, in our view. Worth reading, and noting!

You'll notice a new button on the page - an orange one with the letters 'XML'. This is the standard button used by sites to indicate the source of their RSS feed. When you click on the button you get the feed for the page as it is at present - but that's not the important thing. All you need to know, if fact, is the URL for the page, which appears in the address bar. Do it now and you'll see that the URL is <http://www.free-conversant.com/irweblog/index/rss>. You need that for your news aggregator, assuming you have one. The aggregator will have some routine for adding new news feeds and will ask for the URL. Once in place, the aggregator will keep you up to date with what's happening on the log.

If you don't yet have an aggregator, you'll find a list of them at Haiko Hebig's Weblog I use NewzCrawler. If you use a PDA in a serious way, you might try MobileRSS

It's been a little while since the last posting here, because I've been in Lisbon for a week, with very little in the way of Internet contact - just a few minutes on the hotel connection.

However, here's an interesting site, brought to my attention by Current Cites - where you will always find something interesting.

The site is that of the 2003 Dublin Core conference It's interesting for two reasons - the content, of course, but also the mode of presentation, using Siderean's proprietary "Seamark" navigation system.

Reflecting on Terry Brookes's Web services column:

Amazon tools will let Office users access Amazon information from within an Office document, using the research pane included in most applications. A writer typing a bibliography in a Word document, for example, could click on the name of a book to get catalogue information or cover art from Amazon.

Microsoft is making a major effort to encourage partners to build online services that exploit the new Office's XML capabilities, with service providers looking at Office as a familiar interface that will encourage greater consumption of Web services. Early backers include Factiva, a Dow Jones-owned online research service, and online payment services from eBay's PayPal.

Another major digital resource - The Lancet - is going digital (with its entire archive) but:

People will still have to pay to access the electronic version, and it is likely to be available in major reference libraries at universities and in cities rather than affordable by private individuals.