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Category: Computer Interface

Tech Update

Computer Interface

Most of you may have read the various news reports about
results of the financial stress review recently concluded in the European Union.
The primary aim of the review was to assess the strength (or weakness) of banks
to meet the challenges prevailing currently. Fortunately, the results brought a
fair amount of cheer for all and the sundry. All but 5 of the banks passed
(quite opposite to the recently announced CA final results in which less than 5%
passed). But while the various members of the finance ecosystem were doing an
assessment exercise, members of the mobile ecosystem were doing some
housekeeping themselves. The media was filled with reports of certain emerging
trends, setbacks, projects / ventures being shelved.


Emerging trends :

The word ‘trend’, in general, means the popular taste at a
given time, a general tendency to change, a general line of orientation or a
general direction in which something tends to move and then again it
also means to turn sharply, change direction abruptly. It’s funny
when you stop to think about it, how the same word conveys different messages,
in this case more or less opposite meaning. Trends for some is the most
obvious thing which makes choice easy and then there are others who would say
they never saw it coming. Not convinced ? Look at the state of the US financial
system and the arguments on the current scenario . . . . many say we went hoarse
shouting bloody murder and the Feds says we never saw it coming.

Coming back, here are some fairly interesting developments
(trends) that may interest you:

Broadband service a legal right in Finland :

Apparently, Finland is the first country in the world to make
access to broadband services a legal right for its 53 lakh citizens. Under the
new law, which came into effect earlier this month, telecommunications companies
will be obliged to provide all citizens with broadband lines that can run at a
minimum of 1 Mbps (megabites per second). While making this announcement, the
Finnish Ministry said “Internet was part of everyday life for Finnish people and
it was the government’s priority to provide high speed Internet access to all.
Internet services are no longer just for entertainment, Finland has worked hard
to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not
everyone had access”. It is believed up to 96% of the Finnish population are
already online and that only about 4,000 homes still need connecting to comply
with the law. The government has also promised to connect everyone to a 100 Mbps
connection by 2015.

You may recall, the Indian Government had also made certain
promises (among others) when it unveiled India’s broadband policy in 2004.
Instead, all we’ve got so far is more dug-up roads and the ever-increasing
frequency (not to mention duration) power outages. Suffice to say we have a long
way to go for now.

E-reader Kindle outpaced sales of hardcover books on Amazon :

Earlier this month Amazon.com, one of US’ largest
booksellers, announced that for the past three months, sales of books for its
e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books. In that time, Amazon
is said to have sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books (including
hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition). Amazon.com added that in the
past four weeks sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies.
Apparently the pace is quickening. It may interest you that Amazon has 630,000
Kindle books, which is a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the
site.

Meanwhile, Penguine launched the first electronic book with a
video tie-in. Penguin Group and Liberty Media’s Starz Media began selling the
first version — for Apple’s iPad — of a novel with accompanying video from a TV
mini-series based on the same tome. News reports suggest that the deal may serve
as a model for other cross-media partnerships. Priced at $ 12.99, above the
$ 9.99 industry norm for e-books (read Kindle books), Penguin’s iPad
version of Ken Follett’s 12th century England epic ‘The Pillars of the Earth’
will let users read the novel and watch scenes from the mini-series.

While book lovers mourning the demise of hardcover books with
their heft and their musty smell, publishers may need a reality check. Here’s
why. A CEO of media company, which advises book publishers on digital change
said that “This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to come”. He
even predicted that within a decade, fewer than 25% of all books sold would be
print versions. Another CEO commented that “the shift at Amazon is
astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15
years, and Kindle books for 33 months”. (there you have it, the obvious
and the oblivious — and they coexist in the same business).

India unveils prototype of $ 35 tablet computer :

It looks like an iPad, only it’s 1/14th the cost : India has
unveiled the prototype of a $ 35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students,
which it hopes to bring into production by 2011. “This is our answer to MIT’s
$ 100 computer,” Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal told the media
when he unveiled the device.

In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte — co-founder of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab — unveiled a prototype of a
$ 100 laptop for children in the developing world. India rejected that as too
expensive and embarked on a multiyear effort to develop a cheaper option of its
own. Negroponte’s laptop ended up costing about $ 200, but in May his
non-profit association, One Laptop Per Child, said it plans to launch a basic
tablet computer for $ 99.

News reports indicate that the tablet can be used for
functions like Word processing, web-browsing and video-conferencing. The tablet
doesn’t have a hard disk, but instead uses a memory card, much like a mobile
phone. The tablet design cuts hardware costs, and the use of open-source
software also adds to savings. It has a solar power option too, though that
add-on costs extra. Without discounting the cost, it seems like a real blessing
when one considers the ever-increasing frequency, not to mention the duration,
of power blackouts in India. A Ministry spokesperson, said falling hardware
costs and intelligent design make the price tag plausible. Apparently, several
global manufacturers, including at least one from Taiwan, have shown interest in
making the low-cost device, but no manufacturing or distribution deals have been
finalised.

India plans to subsidise the cost of the tablet for its students, bringing the purchase price down to around $?20. Kapil Sibal turned to students and pro-fessors at India’s elite technical universities to develop the $?35 tablet after receiving a ‘lukewarm’ response from private sector players. The stated goal is to get the cost down to $?10 eventually.

If the Government can find a manufacturer, the Linux operating system-based computer would be the latest in a string of “world’s cheapest” innovations to hit the market out of India, which is home to the 100,000 rupee ($?2,127) compact Nano car, the 749 rupees ($?16) water purifier and the $?2,000 open-heart surgery. But given the past, one doesn’t know whether this project will die a quick death within this year, or a painful government-funded one over the next two.

Tax returns on Twitter:

Before you jump to any conclusions, it ain’t happening in India yet. Savvy politicians are no strangers to Twitter and Facebook, using it for their own political ends (Obama, Shashi Tharoor, Lalit Modi to name a few of the celebrated users).

Incidentally, Filipinos are among the most prolific users of social networking and text messaging in Asia. Earlier this month, the Philippines’ new government turned to social networking, using it to meet some serious social and economic ends for the country. When most nations are fretting about their fiscal deficits, Manila thought of an innovative way out to bridge the gap: enlisting Twitter and Facebook to boost tax collections. Honest citizens will be allowed to complain about tax evasion and corruption, by posting an update on Facebook or Twitter, when they smell a tax cheat.

No prizes for guessing if this would work in India. After all, India is not just growing to be the land of enthusiastic tweeters, but also the very land of tax evaders and Swiss bank account holders. The question that begs to be answered is, are Indians morally outraged enough about cheating the government that they start telling on their neighbours or will they continue to remain mute spectators? (Jaago re!!!…….)

(The concluding part of this write-up will be printed in the next issue of the Journal)

Social Networking: boon or bane

Computer Interface

For the uninitiated, initially, social networks were networks
or meeting places set up by people who wanted to ‘keep in touch’ or team up
after starting their career. Facebook as we know it today, was akin to a
school/college yearbook — a photo album, the only difference being that it was
in the form of an electronic billboard, where one could look up old colleagues
and exchange information. With added impetus from technological advancement,
developments in networking technology and mobile phones, over time this
electronic billboard evolved to social networks as we know them today.
Presently, social networks, among other things, are :

à Forums for sharing materials;




à Virtual market places — to meet like-minded people,
share videos, pictures, thoughts, etc.


Social networks are unique in the sense that, while they
serve ones personal needs, they are equally useful in meeting one’s business or
professional needs. The following examples would illustrate this :



à
Social networks allow you to keep in touch with family members staying in a
different city (Yes, I am aware that we have the old & faithful postcard,
telegram, and yes the telephone rentals have dropped drastically so we can
always call our friends or send an sms or chat with them on the net, but
imagine reaching out to all your friends and relatives at one go with added
interactivity);


à
Social networks give you an impression of being in a space of your own. They
allow you to mingle with like-minded communities
(discussing ideas or experiences on your latest trek, purchase of new
camera, car, etc.);


à
Enhance social and political communications (Apparently social networking
contributed significantly to President Obama’s campaign);


à B-
Schools using it to send out information to its students

(IIM Calcutta took its first step in Dec. 2008, from
breaking news, blog links to CAT and campus-placement updates, the tweets on
‘IIMC’ reflect a broader use of Twitter than most celebrity users seem able
to comprehend).




Having understood this background, lets get on with the
basics.

There are various types of online social media — from social
networks of friends and professionals, to microblogging services, to video
sharing sites. To name a few:

Online friends networks:

Facebook:

The world’s largest social network, with hundreds of million
users, began when a small group of Harvard students, led by Mark Zuckerberg,
decided to keep in touch with each other. It soon opened out to other US
campuses and eventually in 2006, to everyone.

Orkut:

At one time Orkut India’s most popular social network, this
Google-owned service was set up by former Google engineer Orkut Büyükkökten in
his spare time. Once a hit with users, it is far behind in the global popularity
stakes. Orkut has faced some issues because of its previously open nature. After
legal problems in 2007, Orkut substantially cleaned up the network, but by then,
the damage was done — ‘high-end’ users had begun switching over to Facebook.
(Incidentally have you tried google buzz ?)

MySpace:

Quite popular with musicians and actors, who use the site to
host music and movie clips, this site was picked up by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp
a few years ago and its immense popularity made Google give it a lucrative
advertising deal.

Video sharing:

YouTube:

YouTube has started a video revolution — it’s as simple as
that. The service — which allows anyone to upload video clips on to the net —
from your baby’s first steps to a music video that you recently shot — commands
a big chunk of Internet traffic today. According to estimates, every minute of
the day, over 10 minutes of content is being uploaded on to the service. (In
fact, you can watch IPL3 matches on this network).


Other video sharing services:

Hulu is a video service promoted by US TV network NBC and has
high-quality online broadcasts of their shows. Apparently, users from India
cannot access Hulu.

Other sites include Vimeo and DailyMotion.

Online professional networks:

LinkedIn:


According to last year’s statistics (current number would be
higher), there are 41 million users on LinkedIn, of which two million are from
India (the second-largest user base after the US). Virtually every large company
and executive has a LinkedIn account and there are examples galore of how India
Inc. is using LinkedIn to find talent and do more. Extremely popular among India
Inc. and growing by the day. This site is possibly unique among social networks,
in the sense that it claims to be profitable (i.e., Linkedin is showing profits)
through advertising and ‘premium’ membership.

Blogging:

Most blogging sites are also ‘social media’ by definition —
they allow anyone and everyone to create a blog. Also, if the blogger allows it,
anyone with net access can post a comment on the blog, which can be moderated.
Blogging is the oldest form of ‘read-write’ online social media, but has now
reached a stable phase. The most popular free blogging services online where
anyone can set up a blog are :

  • Blogger/Blogspot


  • WordPress


  • LiveJournal

Microblogging :

Twitter :

This is a blazingly fast-growing service : one estimate put Twitter’s growth at a staggering 1,382% a month with an estimated 100 million users. (A Harvard study estimated that 10% of these users, by and large, cre-ated 90% of the content.) Twitter essentially allows users to send out their thoughts in 140 characters or less. Only a third of Twitter users are active, though, and India has an active ‘Twitterati’ of an estimated 10,000 people. Several Indian companies are now embracing the service. Immensely popular and highly useful during breaking news events such as 26/11. Some of the users who have left their indelible mark using this tool — Sashi Tharoor and of course Apro SRK.

While some dismiss them as a waste of time, Internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have exploded in popularity, giving easy access to a potentially huge amount of new business.

Business and social media :

The ultimate transformation that is taking place today is within the business landscape, worldwide— and increasingly so in India — where compa-nies are beginning to leverage informal social net-works to engage customers, soothe ruffled feath-ers, strengthen their brands and even hire people. For companies in India, the reasoning is simple : While Indian PC and Internet penetration rates are relatively lower than the West, India has one of the largest Internet population in the world — some 60 million regular users (not including mobile access). Moreover, these users are the most sought-after customers with high disposable incomes, and companies with clear online media plans are waking up to the fact that they can reap the benefits of engag-ing with this audience. Those that don’t, risk losing the customers that they already have or slipping behind their more savvy competitors.

Here is a real life instance of how social media can influence change :

Take a look at the interactive digital marketing site that Tata Motors built when the Nano was launched. This site had games built into it, where people could customise colours and pick their favourite ones —thereby (ahem) sneakily helping the car company figure out which ones to use on the Nano. (A clever idea, but far removed from a social media forum.) However, when Tata Motors did launch the Nano, there was no mistaking its intention to use a full-fledged social media strategy. The company set up groups on Facebook and Orkut hoping to target the numerous official ‘Nano’-centric groups that had parked themselves on the site. To its complete surprise, it found that one unofficial group on Orkut dwarfed the official ones — and it would have been a fatal mistake to ignore members not under the official Nano fold. A spokeperson for the company said “We engage with people on these sites, too. We react to criticism of our car and try to explain our position. Also, we often find that before we can react to the criticism, there are other members who come up to defend the car.” As a matter of fact even presently, the official groups on these two sites, at around 17,000 members, are much smaller than the largest un-official group on Orkut with around 52,000 members.

Here’s another example :

Maruti Suzuki India is, strangely enough, a pioneer in online social marketing. Realising that there are several online communities for the highly popular Swift, it has created an online platform to bring together the 2,500 disparate online Swift users’ clubs in India. Earlier this year, the company actively enlisted bloggers and talked to the community during pre-launch activities for its latest Ritz.

There are others — Herseys, Dominos, Apollo Hospitals, Nokia — to name a few.

Avoiding traps :

Its important to understand that social media isn’t for everyone and should not be used for everything. For instance, the Chief Marketing Officer of a large corporate group shared his experience saying online social media is not an ideal platform for business to business (B2B) interactions. “It is a great way of getting messages about your company across, but I would neither buy nor I would sell anything using social media,” she says. Also, having a presence in online social media or running ads there doesn’t mean that the company will emerge an overnight success. In fact, far from it. “It is a misconception among many that this is a procedural thing, which it’s clearly not. It is a highly creative space that requires that marketers identify the space, the nature of stakeholders involved, what makes people tick within that space and, importantly, to listen to people—and not try and sell things to them.” According to experts, the biggest mistake that anyone can make is to use the medium to push their products.

Another problem is that of measuring success. Even though there are advanced analytical tools available on the Internet, classifying a ‘successful campaign’ in social media is extremely difficult and can also be manipulated using something called ‘click fraud’. There are few benchmarks to measure success online unlike television adverts. A company can claim any number of sign-ups for a digital campaign, but never release how many were translated into sales. Also, beware of social media experts. The landscape is littered with them, many of whom have no legitimate professional experience in the field. Much like the Internet company era, social media is the new in-thing and these hucksters are simply surfing the next big wave, hoping to get rich.

The second part of this article will be printed in the next issue of the BCAJ. Watch this space for the pitfalls and the dark side of social marketing.



Tech update

Computer Interface

(This is the concluding part of this write-up. It has been
continued from previous month’s Journal)

 

Other recent developments in the mobile ecosystem :

iPhone 4’s antennae problem. Apple Inc received a lot of bad
press this month. There were several customer complaints about the design of its
phone antennae.
Some complained that the smart phones, which were launched a week ago with
block-buster sales, when cupped in a way that covers the lower left corner,
strangles telecom service signal strength.

Apple Inc, had to (publicly) accept that its iPhones
overstate wireless network signal strength. Apple apologised to customers in an
open letter and said it was “stunned to find that the formula” it uses to
calculate network strength “is totally wrong” and that the error has existed
since its first iPhone. The letter also said that “Users observing a drop of
several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an
area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are
erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars,”. Apple shot down users and outside
engineers who said the signal problems were due to faults in its new antenna
system. The antenna is incorporated in the casing. The company stated that “big
drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place”.
Further adding that when users were noticing a dramatic drop in the number of
signal strength bars on their phone’s display, it was likely due to weak network
coverage in that area.

The company said the incorrect formula was present in the
original iPhone — released in 2007 — and promised to fix it by conforming to
AT&T guidelines for signal strength display through a free software patch that
would be issued within a few weeks. The software update will also be available
for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. Apple maintained the iPhone 4’s wireless
performance remains “the best we have ever shipped.” It also reminded user
they could return their smart phones within 30 days of purchase for a full
refund.



A direct result of this issue is that






  •   a suit has been filed against Apple for the poor reception.



  •   Another class action suit has been admitted on the issue of restrictive
    trade practice—Apple and AT&T’s marketing tie-up.



  •   A major (reputed) consumer goods publication in the US refrained from
    giving iPhone 4 the much coveted ‘Buy’ recommendation.



  •   A senior member of the team (directly) responsible for the antenna has put
    in his papers. Its being called Applegate’s first casualty.

An indirect consequence of this issue is that


  •   Apple has “earned” the dubious tag #fail on twitter.



  •   Sales of Android phones are picking up.


As per latest reports, they are higher than iPhone 4.





Microsoft discontinues Kin after 48 days. Just 48 days
after Microsoft began selling the Kin, a smart phone for the younger set, the
company discontinued it because of disappointing sales. The swift turnabout for
the Kin, which Microsoft took two years to develop and whose release was backed
with a hefty ad budget, is the latest sign of disarray for Microsoft’s recently
reorganised consumer product unit. While neither Microsoft nor Verizon Wireless,
which sold the phone exclusively, disclosed the sales figures, media reports
suggest that sales were disappointing. In fact, Verizon is said to have slashed
the prices of the phones to $50 from $200 for the higher-end model and to $30
from $150 for a stripped-down version. Microsoft said it would cancel the
pending release of the Kin in Europe and would work with Verizon Wireless to
sell existing inventories. Microsoft indicated that it would shift employees who
worked on the Kin to the team in charge of Windows Phone 7, a coming revision of
Microsoft’s operating system for smart phones, which is due in the fall.

Kin, according to the grapevine, was dubbed an absolute
failure. It surprised many that Microsoft, often regarded as a company known to
sticking with new products and improving them over time, killed a product so
quickly. Microsoft’s consumer products unit has been struggling to offer a
credible competitor to other Apple products. It has chased the iPod with its
Zune for several years with little effect. Apple’s iPhone, as well as an array
of smart phones powered by Google’s Android software, are more recent
challenges. Microsoft also recently cancelled a project to develop a tablet
computer that would compete with Apple’s popular iPad.


IBM endorses Firefox as in-house web browser.

New York State-based IBM, known by the nickname “Big Blue,”
has a corporate history dating back a century and now reportedly has nearly
400,000 workers. Firefox is the second most popular web browser in an
increasingly competitive market dominated by Internet Explorer software by
Microsoft. Despite this fact, technology giant IBM wants its workers around the
world to use free, open-source Mozilla Firefox as their window into the
Internet. All new computers for IBM employees will have Firefox installed and
the global company “will continue to strongly encourage our vendors who have
browser-based software to fully support Firefox”.

Making Firefox the default browser means that workers’
computers will automatically use that software to access the Internet unless
commanded to do differently. Rumour has it, that going forward, any employee who
is not using Firefox will be strongly encouraged to use it as their default
browser. The feeling with the management is that while other browsers have come
and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and
standards-compliant browser should be. Open-source software is essentially
treated as public property, with improvements made by any shared with all.


While Firefox is the second most popular web browser, Google Chrome has been steadily gaining market share. Last week, it replaced Apple Safari as the third most popular web browser in the United States. The take away from this is that we will continue to see this or that the browser become faster or introduce new features, but then another will come along and be better still, including Firefox.

At the cost of repeating myself …. (refer to BCAJ Jan 2010 issue) the survival in the new mobile ecosystem is going to be really very tough. The losses listed in this battlefield as of now :

  •     Kin — Microsoft’s smart phone
  •     Google is planning to hang up on Nexus 1 and plans to shelve Wave
  •     Nokia is looking for a new CEO
  •     Applegate’s first casualty
  •     Blackberry is battling shrinking market share (losing to iPhone and Android phones) and is trying to crawl back in to the limelight has recently launched Blackberry Torch.

The hunter is now the hunted.

C’est la vie.

Social Networking: Boon or Bane

Computer Interface

Part-2

(I would like to clarify at the outset that this write-up
does not seek to malign or discredit anyone/any site in particular. My
observations and comments are merely a reflection of what is already available
in public domain.)

In part 1 of this write-up, we briefly discussed the growing
importance of social media and networking in today’s business and personal
environment. While there are many who swear by this recent (and a highly potent)
phenomenon, there is a growing number of users who after having burnt
themselves, speak in hushed tones about the disasters that have already struck
and the ones that are waiting to happen.

The hype :

Notwithstanding the perils, most people are happy to join the
bandwagon. In general, if you ask anyone the real reasons for him or her joining
Facebook or Twitter, the responses you get will range between the standard of
“keeping in touch with friends”, “it’s hip”, “you have got to be in the groove”,
etc. Many are on the network for the heck of it (which in reality translates to
— due to peer pressure). Largely the popularity is due to the hype about social
media (including “if you are not on it, you are toast” types), and the fact
remains that most new joiners are clueless about what they are signing up for.

Interestingly, one recent statistic (which was proudly
reported in all leading forms of news media) suggests that teenagers, who (for
the record) are the most prolific users of social networking sites, post as many
as 100 status updates on their social networks.

Hmmm ! ! ! . . . 100 status updates . . . Considering that in
a day you have 24 hours, out of these 24 hours you eliminate 8 hours for your
natural instincts for food and sleep and . . ., the remainder is 16 hours.

In these balance 16 hours the user would have 960 minutes to
post these 100 odd messages. If that is the case, to send out 100 updates, the
required (run rate) frequency would be one update every 9.6 minutes. Wow ! ! ! !
That calls for an ‘AWESOME ! ! ! !’

No wonder these teenagers turn around and question the very
existence of life beyond Twitter and Facebook. There just isn’t any time left
for them to do anything else.

Any sane person would equate this awesome feat with
obsession. You may not believe this but do a search on Google (or Bing or Yahoo
for that matter) and you will find reports about the death of a toddler (there
could be more). Apparently the toddler died due to malnourishment. Apparently a
Japanese couple was so busy raising their virtual child on a social
network game that they forgot to feed their child in the real world. Surely now
the only word coming to your mind would be ‘SHOCKING’.

The perils :

Here’s another example : Hordes of people while registering
with such sites, part with personal details (and that to in amazing detail mind
you). Details which by any rate are sensitive and of a personal nature. These
sites ask you who you are, where you live, what you do, when you do it. They
want to know how-when-where — with who . . . . blahblahblah . . . . They want
details of all your friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc. They will even do
the good thing of asking the same from all your connections. Without these you
are not ‘assimilated’ (sounds like the Blog in Star Trek — NG) or not a
‘part of the gang’. The depth of the information sought is more detailed than
some of the best KYC (know your
customer) checklists I have seen in the recent past.

You know what the best part of this is . . . . the user
concedes with most of these details (which are very sensitive personal)
willingly. So whats wrong with that ? ? ? ? Well for starters, nobody reads the
disclaimers, even worse most people can’t comprehend the perils of not doings so
before signing up . . . . yes It’s the part where the users accept the terms and
conditions without reading (let alone understanding the consequences). If you
ask me its only a matter of time before this information falls in the hands of
all those wrong sorts of people. Mind you this information in one form or the
other, at one time or the other, can fall in the hands of telemarketers,
scamsters, your boss or bosses and ofcourse (since this magazine is read by a
lot of tax practitioners) u know who. You’re thinking “THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE” or
“THAT’S EXAGGERATING IT A BIT TOO MUCH” . . . . is it ? ? ? ?

Lets take a simple example, say, Mr. A is also Mr. Popular on
the social network. He starts updating (speaking his mind). All the updates
instantly reach all the people connected to him. Similarly there would be other
people on his network who update their status. The natural response would be
that . . . . That’s the intention, they are my friends, colleagues, family . . .
. they wouldn’t do me any harm.


That, my friends, is the proverbial weakest link in the
chain. While Mr. A may have some control who is connected to his network
and who accesses his information, but the same cannot be said about the people
on his network. It may be that he is not very friendly with someone (could even
be his boss) and that someone is very chummy with someone else on A’s
‘controlled’ network. Mr. A may or may not be aware or might not even approve
(or for that
matter disapprove) of this. Needless to say that even a single slip-up by Mr. A
or his connection, would (very harshly) change their opinion about ‘the theory
of six degrees of separation’. Still don’t believe me, do you ? ?

OK here goes nothing . . . . if you read all the recent
reports on the ongoing spat between a certain Member of Parliament and the head
of a popular sport venture. Several media reports suggest that the entire
episode would never have assumed the proportions that it did, had it not been
for the ‘tweets’ between the two parties. Whats more these tweets (and many more
related to the other alleged misdemeanours) are likely to be used as evidence
against them (as I recall, one of the articles cited a similar spat about a
decade ago and how the parties involved could get away by denying everything,
but not this time, all due to the provisions of the Information Technology Act,
2000). The OUTCOME — the media now calls one a twit who tweeted too much while
the other party is waiting for the decision of the third umpire.

The scams :

As stated earlier, depending on who has access to this
information, the user can be scammed, used and abused, taken advantage of, taken
to task —or all of above. Here’s another instance :

I’ve Been Robbed ! Western Union Me Money !

When you accept someone as your friend on the
net-work, he has access to most of your updates, your profile, your
pictures, adventures, friends, etc. Surely you trust someone as a friend
when you accept his invitation on Facebook or Twitter or else why would
you give an absolute stranger or an acquaintance access to your
personal information— you cant be that naïve ! ! ! ! Then one fine day,
you’re browsing around social networking site and suddenly one of your
friends IMs you to tell you that they’re stuck in another country,
they’ve been robbed, don’t have a wallet, and need money to get out of
the country. It’s a horrible situation, but what are the odds that they
found a computer to log on to in order to in-stant message you ?

So
what do you do . . . . you ask him for the details and do the good
thing (ahem ! ! ! not the smartest thing) and wire him the money. At
that moment you could be singing praises about how social net-working is
a boon, but it is more likely that when the true picture is revealed
the you may horrified by the fact that it was your folly due to which
you were scammed (i.e., scammed in one of the oldest scams on the
Internet).

How is it possible ? ? ? ? Its fairly simple actually.
All the scammer needs to do is (a) access to one account on the social
network, (b) collate all possible personal information, (c) list out all
the (gullible) ‘friends’ and then he can start the ball rolling.

In
this instance a hacker/scammer gains access to the account of a
(trusted) friend. He would know through the frequent status updates what
you and your friend are up to and how he can exploit you. The scammer
would thereafter, using one of the most common ways, manipulate others
for financial gain. This also called the London scam, or Western Union
scam. In most cases, users get fooled because the scammer (being
proficient in his art) will portray a very convincing picture about his
predicament. The scammer uses all the personal information (available on
the hacked user account as well as your account) to gain your
confidence (and not to mention. . . . your money).

Don’t believe me ? Run a search on Facebook or google, you will find that there are lots more like you.

While
these were limited examples, news reports are littered with other
‘disasters’ (reset password, sign up for contests, etc.) — you can
search Google for Facebook and Twitter scams to learn about more scams.
There are several examples of successful businesses shooting themselves
in the foot with social networking if one is really seriously
considering investing money on social media-based marketing.

Having
digested the above reality (not a reality show mind you or is it
reality show — cant tell the difference these days), the moot question
is whether social media and networking is as good as its cracked out to
be or is there something more than what meets the eye ? ? ? Is it really
worth all the time and energy or is this a big scam ? ? ?

While I
don’t have any definite answers, I do have these glaring instances
which force me to think twice (no connection to a book with the same
title— published by Havard Business Press) which bring out the darkside
of social networking and provide some basis as to why one should be
cautious of the brouhaha that’s being raised about social media and
networking.

Tech update

Computer Interface


Computer Interface

Samir Kapadia
Chartered Accountant

Tech
update

While change is inevitable, keeping up with change is also a
challenge. This month I have chosen three hot topics (while there were many more
to choose from) I thought would interest you more than the others. The topics
are :

(1) Social networking

(2) 3G auction and rollout

(3) Microsoft launches Office 2010

Social media and networking — To be or not to be :

“To be or not to be — that is the question”. While many would
immediately recall these words quoted straight out of Shakespeare, some (movie
buffs like me) would think about Mel Brookes performing on the stage and
delivering his version of Shakespeare in the movie “To be or not to be”. The
scene where he repeats these words (over and over again) is one of my all-time-favourites.
No matter how many times I watch the movie, I keep coming back for more. But for
many netizens, this is a very peculiar question to ask when one is discussing
the merits and demerits of social media and networking tools.

While there is no doubt that social media and networking have
changed the very face of marketing, recently (particularly last month) social
media and networking have been at the receiving end. Popular sites like Facebook
and You tube faced a lot of flak, in some cases faced bans.

Facebook was in the media for all the wrong reasons last
month. Here are a few instances

  • Facebook faced public
    lash-back and was banned in Pakistan and in Bangladesh over a controversy
    related to a certain drawing. The fallout began in Karachi (Pakistan) where
    people took to the streets protesting against the social networking site.
    These protests culminated to a ban being imposed on the site. Bangladesh was
    quick to follow suit. Needless to say that emotions ran high that week. In
    fact six tech-savy Pakistanis following the furore launched a halal version of
    the Facebook by the name Millatfacebook.com. The question that many are now
    asking is — do we really need another Facebook and what’s next gender
    seggregation ?


  • Facebook was also under
    the spotlight on account of privacy concerns. Facebook’s growth as an Internet
    social networking site has met criticism on a range of issues, especially the
    privacy of their users, child safety, the use of advertising scripts, data
    mining, and the inability to terminate accounts without first manually
    deleting all the content. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had to
    respond by saying that the Internet social network would roll out new privacy
    settings for its more than 400 million users, amid growing concerns that the
    company is pushing users to make more of their personal data public. A google
    search on this issue gave some very interesting insights related to this
    controversy.


  • May 30-31 went down in
    history as the “quit Facebook day”. There has been a lot of angst amongst
    users on account of the privacy issues, frequent changes in personal settings,
    etc. While the response was hardly noteworthy (some 27000 people quit facebook),
    it appears in India it passed almost unnoticed.


  • Limit on number of
    friends. For many the lucky number is 7, for others the lucky number is 5000
    (Yes, it is Facebook). In case you didn’t know, you cannot have more than 5000
    Facebook friends. While there has been some amount of outcry against this
    ‘arbitrary’ limit, recent news reports suggest that the popular site is likely
    to enforce the limit, much to the disappointment of its loyal followers.


To summarise, while social media continues to grow as a
popular medium, there are questions being raised regarding its unintended
consequences. Hence the question that begs to be answered — “To be or not to be
?”

3G auction and rollout plans :

The recently concluded auction for 3G spectrum has brought in
a lot of cheer for many parties —the winners of the auction, the Government (the
budget deficit may be more manageable) and the subscribers. There is a lot of
excitement about the rollout plans. Equipment manufacturers have already started
dolling out 3G-ready phones and the consumers are lapping the new models. The
noteworthy issues which need to be considered are :

  • In spite of the amounts
    being so large, the entire licence fee was paid by the winners, in one
    instalment. In fact none of the winners asked for an extension (that includes
    MTNL and BSNL — however there are reports of BSNL asking for a refund). A lot
    is at stake. One could say that it is a make-or-break scenario, especially for
    the telcom service providers.


  • When one pays such high
    licence fee, it is natural that the cost of the service is likely to be
    impacted. There are concerns regarding the pricing strategy and how the
    winners would recover these amounts. The pricing strategy is being watched
    very closely. Unfortunately for the subscribers, it is likely to take at least
    6-9 months before any of the winners launch the 3G service.


  • In the meanwhile
    subscribers are going about upgrading their phones. As mentioned, equipment
    manufacturers have already started dolling out 3G-ready phones. The price of
    the new instruments ranges from (as low as) Rs.3500 to (as high as) Rs.35000.
    Naturally, one needs to be aware about what is being offered. While these
    phones may be 3G-ready, performance i.e., download speed, quality of the
    content (picture, sound), battery life, memory can vary significantly. Hence
    be careful, all that glitters may not be gold.


  • As expected (read my
    columns for January-March 2010), the investments and developments in mobile
    technology ecosystem have started gaining momentum. There are a lot of media
    reports about tie-ups for content, new investment in R&D, etc.


There is a lot more action waiting to happen, just wait and
watch.

Microsoft launches Office 2010 :

While I have not been able to check the new offering myself, I did some digging. News reports on this product say the following :

    Microsoft Office 2010, brings a set of important incremental improvements to the office suite. Among them : making the Ribbon the default interface for all Office applications, adding a host of new features to individual applications i.e., video editing in PowerPoint, improved mail handling in Outlook, introducing a number of Office-wide productivity enhancers, photo editing tools and a much-improved paste operation.

    What is being touted as the most important change to Office in years — a Web-based version for both enterprises and consumers and access to Office for mobile phones and other mobile clients. Reportedly, Microsoft has also strengthened the links between Office and various Microsoft communication server products. Apparently, if you use Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 with Office 2010, you’ll be able to see the availability status of other people with whom you work and ways to contact them, such as e-mail and instant messaging. SharePoint is even more intimately tied to Office, and lets people collaborate on Office documents.

    The Ribbon feature was introduced in Office 2007, but in Office 2010 a major change has been made to Office’s interface — it has replaced the old menus and submenus with a graphical system that groups buttons for common tasks together in tabs. But apparently, Microsoft didn’t go whole hog with it back then; Outlook, among other applications, was not given the full Ribbon treatment. In this version of Office, all applications now share the common Ribbon interface, including Outlook, OneNote and all other Office applications, and SharePoint. Love it or hate it, the Ribbon is here to stay.

    Email/Outlook users are most likely be pleased with the new version of Outlook, which adds a variety of features designed to help solve the most common productivity problem — e-mail overload. One of the most useful new features is called Quick Steps, which speeds up mail handling considerably. Right-click on a message, and you can choose from a variety of actions to take on it — moving the mes-sage to a specific folder, forwarding it to your manager, setting up a team meeting with its recipients, sending e-mail to an entire team and so on. This new version of Outlook also tackles one of Outlook’s perennial problems

— how poorly it follows threads of messages. There’s a related feature that helps cut down on e-mail clutter — the ability to ‘clean up’ a conversation. When you do this, you delete all of the unnecessary quoted and previous text in long e-mail threads; only unduplicated versions remain. However, once you do that, all of the quoted and previous text and e-mails are actually deleted, not just hidden, so use this feature carefully. It would be more useful if you were given the option of hiding the text, not completely deleting it.

    Not much new in Excel though! Excel hasn’t been touched as much as the other major applications in Office 2010, but its not a total loss, there have been some useful additions. The most important is called ‘Sparklines’ — small cell-sized charts that you can embed in a worksheet next to data to get a quick visual representation of the data. For example, if you had a worksheet that tracked the performance of several dozen stocks, you could create a Sparkline for each stock that graphed its performance over time, in a very compact way. Conditional formatting — the ability to apply a format to a range of cells, and then have the formatting change according to the value of the cell or formula — has been improved as well, including the addition of more styles and icons.

    PowerPoint apparently has entered the video age. 2010 introduces a slew of enhanced video features, although in the Technical Preview not all were working properly. Key among the new features is a set of basic video editing tools built directly into PowerPoint. They’re not as powerful as full-blown video editing software, but work well for common tasks such as trimming and compressing videos and adding fade-ins and fade-outs. Highlight a video you’ve embedded in a presentation, and the tools appear in the Ribbon. Also useful is a set of video controls you can use during the presentation to pause, rewind, fast-forward and so on — something that the previous version of PowerPoint did not have.

I am hoping that I get an opportunity to test this new product soon.

Smart phones a cyber security risk

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Computer Interface

Proliferation of smart phones :


To say that we are constantly surrounded by advanced
technologies would be a cliché. What would be even more clichéd is the fact that
every day we see, hear and read about some new development in the field of
information technology. This may be about the next generation televisions or the
newest Apple ‘i’ product or the latest handheld device or other
products/services. These developments have not only made our lives a little bit
easier (A LOT easier if you ask me), they have made us more efficient at the
things we do best (or ‘handicapped’ due to technological innovation as a
naysayer would prefer to say).

In this connection, mobile phones have become increasingly
popular and more affordable over the past few years and thanks to Android,
Blackberry and the iPhone, smart phones are in demand. In fact, a majority of
the mobile devices that are purchased worldwide are a type of smart phone.
People have now started realising that these smart phones are in fact miniature
computers. They run a variant of computer operating systems such as Linux
(Android), Mac (iPhone), and Windows (Windows Mobile), and can do pretty much
anything that a computer can do. Most smart phones also pack powerful
processors, a hefty amount of RAM and a lot of storage space — in some cases up
to 48 Gigs ! (it all depends on the size and depth of your wallet). The downside
is that even though a smart phone is a handheld computer, most users don’t treat
it the same way as their computer at office/home.

Duh ! ! ! ! So what’s the point ? ? ? ?.

Well, to start with, bet you didn’t know :



  • More than 54 million smart phones were shipped worldwide in the first three
    months of this year, a 57% jump from a year ago, according to research
    reports.



  • Less
    than 40% of the users (as per recent surveys) follow the practice of securing
    their smart devices. As a natural corollary, the vast majority doesn’t even
    bother securing their mobiles, PDAs or smart phones by using, and regularly
    changing, a password or PIN.



  • The
    information that many of us keep on our mobile phones : phone numbers,
    addresses, birthdays and even bank account numbers, is the just the kind of
    information which, in the wrong hands (half-robinhoods), can be used to
    perpetrate frauds (which would include re-creating your identity — please
    refer to my write-up on Facebook frauds — Stranded in London).



  • It
    isn’t just the user of the phone who is at risk, but also the organisations
    they work for (especially since many of us use the same device in both our
    work and personal life). The reality is that any gadget that has access to the
    Internet presents a risk to an organisation if the user doesn’t secure the
    device properly.




  • Smart phones are very susceptible to being hacked and catching viruses, in
    some ways even easier than a computer.



  • All
    of the above facts are not lost on cyber criminals.



If you still think the above is the stuff we see only in
Hollywood thrillers, then read on.

Smart phones the weak link :

Most people purchase their mobile devices solely based on the
number of ‘cool’ applications that it can run. The more apps the better,
right ? Wrong. Cyber criminals love this idea of an ‘Application
Market’, ‘Store’, or whatever one may want to call it, because now they can
transmit malware easily throughout the world without having to put forth any
effort at all. All you need to do is download an infected app and BAM ! Your
phone is infected.

In January 2010, a mobile application developer (who goes by
the name of ‘Droid09’) uploaded a malicious application to the Android App Store
that posed as the ‘Official First Tech Credit Union’ banking application. This
application was nothing more than a way to steal personal information like
banking logins and passwords. Eventually, the application was removed, but not
before a few customers felt the effect of this rogue application.

Similar to this a Trojan malware virus directed at smart
phones running Google’s Android operating system. The Trojan, named Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a,
infected a number of mobile devices. Once installed on the phone, the Trojan
begins sending text messages, or SMS messages, to premium rate numbers — numbers
that charge a fee — without the owners’ knowledge or consent, taking money from
users’ accounts and sending it to the cyber criminals.

In both instances of a Trojan on the Android platform was
mainly affected only by spyware (a software that obtains information from a
user’s device without the user’s knowledge or consent), and phishing attacks (a
process used by cyber criminals to acquire a user’s personal information by
masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication). Needless
to say that the motive behind this attack was profit.

(while I have cited 2 instances of Trojans on Android, let
me assure you there are equal or more on the other systems. Press reports
suggest that there are as many as 500 viruses and many which are capable of
attacking the all the popular platforms.)

News reports suggest the proliferation of smart phones is the primary contributor (thats like saying marriage is the root cause of divorce). And now with smart phone use becoming more widespread, the bad guys are looking at web browsing and the downloading of web applications (apps) as two ways to attack Android handsets, iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile smart phones and spread those malicious web apps. Some of these viruses are rumoured to have the capability of harvesting or erasing stored phone numbers and text messages and retrieving information that can be used to disclose a user’s location.

The rising tide:

According to a well-respected security firm, the reason there haven’t been more mobile phone attacks is because Windows XP computers are still the easiest devices to exploit. And although Microsoft no longer supports it, the Windows XP operating system is still extensively used throughout the world. But as XP disappears, the cyber crooks will begin looking to smart phones, because it’s easy to make money exploiting them.

While smart phones running any operating system can be targeted, speculation is that those running the iPhone, Android and Symbian operating systems will be the targets of choice for the criminals. This is because they are the most commonly used. So far attacks on smart phones have mostly involved tricking users into clicking on a link and divulging personal information. But one can expect to see mobile smart phone worms, a form of malicious software, that replicate and automatically spread to everyone listed in a phone’s address book. Such a worm could spread an infection worldwide in only a couple of minutes.

Mainstream security firms are predicting that in 2011 smart phones are likely to be attacked by more malware, sophisticated data stealing Trojans. These attacks could be launched by targeting social networks, HTML 5, stealing digital certificate (like Stuxnet), among other things.

In conclusion one can say that viruses and other malware have long been a threat to computers only. But as smart phones become too smart (for their own good), the bad guys are likely to target them more and more with viruses. And as has already happened with computers, the smart phone assault is expected to be led by cyber criminals aiming to turn a profit. Characteristically, there seems to be a lag between adopting new technology and taking the appropriate action to secure it. Simply put, first we embrace it, then we become aware of the potential risks it may bring, and only after that do we make the effort to secure it in order to better protect ourselves. We went through the same cycle with the introduction of email and learning the value of anti-virus and anti-spam protection, and more recently with social networking (and the need to be careful about what information you make publically available). We are now going through that cycle with Internet-enabled mobile devices.

The risk increases significantly when you consider that a vast majority of employees in any company use at least one self-purchased technology device at work.

The sad part is that many organisations have not yet caught up with the security protection and policies that the latest mobile gadgets require.

As a parting shot, just think about it: There are more phones on the planet than computers. And it’s easier to steal money from phones. Are you prepared to deal with this eventuality?

Enough !

Computer Interface

Information is rushing out to you from all directions —
letters, newspapers, magazines, phone calls, voice mails, SMS, twitter tweets,
facebook alerts and of course — emails on Blackberry and your PC.

There is enormous amount of content flowing in from all
directions. Just look at the developments at Twitter and other social media.

It was named Twitter by its founder, Jack Dorsey, because the
company wanted to capture the feeling of buzzing the world. With a limit of 140
characters, no one could have predicted the success of a communicator of
‘inconsequential information’.

It is estimated that 7.8% of Twitter users come from India,
making India the number 3 user of Twitter after the US and Germany.

Many famous personalities have a large number of followers on
Twitter. Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs has around
3,00,000 followers !

Youtube claims to have more than 350 million monthly visitors
and more than 3 billion photos and videos have been tagged on Flickr.

And what about emails ? For any professional around the
world, it is THE most critical form of communication. If your email server is
down, you might as well take a coffee break !

But, how do you manage the large traffic of emails which
inundates your inbox ? Do you feel overwhelmed ?

By pushing emails into handheld devices like Blackberry, the
ease of access has increased. However, it has also created some societal
problems. Children who are desperate to regain their parents’ attention from
Blackberry are often called ‘Blackberry orphans’. In some cities in Canada,
citizens have been requested to voluntarily turn off their Blackberry after 6.00
p.m. in the evening.

There is a way to manage this information overload.

Technology can help. There are software tools to help you
manage your inbox. It can prioritise your emails by importance, sort them by
senders and filter them. These tools can help you to personalise your email
settings.

Microsoft is now working on a futuristic application
(‘Priorities’) to sense work patterns and modulate the flow of emails — e.g.,
it will force a time lag in delivery of email depending on the urgency of the
email and the time of the day based on work pattern of the recipient.

Help is also available from personal productivity tools. You
can effect a change in your working habits. Some examples :



  •  Don’t start
    the day with powering on your PC and checking your emails. First, work out
    your plan for the day.



  •  Remove the
    mail alert. You will avoid jumping on to the Inbox as soon as you hear the
    alert, irrespective of the urgency of your other work.



  •  Make
    distinction between mails which are urgent, important and a combination of
    both.



  •  Have a few
    hours of ‘email downtime’ in a day when you engross yourself fully in your
    other work.


We live in a knowledge economy and information is the most
valuable commodity. Rather than be overwhelmed with it, you need to figure out
how to ‘tame the beast’. Enough !

levitra

Browsers — Part I

PowerPoint presentations

Computer Interface

There are many ways that PowerPoint can be used. Some are
common, some less so. In this write-up we will try to deal with some of them
with an eye on how they can help users. But as always, there may be more than
just what this list mentions, so don’t limit yourself to the standard uses
listed below. The more common uses of PowerPoint are :




  • Presenter-based slide show



  • Independent slide show loops



  • Informational kiosks



  • Interactive training/testing software



  • Web design



  • Combinations



Presenter-based slide show :

Most of the time, presentations are designed to supplement a
meeting. The meeting may be just a few people, or thousands. In this type of
show you have a person or people giving a talk to a group. Sometimes the
presenter will run the PowerPoint via a podium PC or a remote control, while at
other times a person will be dedicated to just running the PowerPoint, but in
each case the primary focus of the meeting is the presenter and the information,
not PowerPoint.

Independent slide show loops :

Sometimes an independent slideshow is used. This is most
common at mega events, wedding receptions, anniversaries and reunions. This
style of PowerPoint presentation can also be used for company introductions,
product information, etc. Here the slide show is the sole focus and the
informational content will tell the whole story. Because there is no live focus,
the PowerPoint presentation will have to keep the viewers’ attention through the
use of graphics, sounds, animations and content, for instance, the electronic
scoreboard in a cricket stadium churning out animations at the fall of a wicket
or when Dhoni hits a six.

Informational Kiosk :

PowerPoint can also be used to run billboards, checkout line
advertising, information centre displays, and even trade show info booths. In
some cases there will need to be information collected from the viewer (for
post-meeting follow-up) and in others, self-updating information (weather, stock
reports, event scheduling). Drill down information may be available by having
the viewer touch a button on the screen or click on a button. This allows a
viewer to select what information they are interested in.

Interactive testing/training :

PowerPoint is a great testing program and can be either
web-based or machine-based. A single user or group is shown a question and must
respond to advance the presentation. The presentation may branch to different
learning paths depending on the users’ choices, giving additional information
for areas where the users do not answer correctly. Often the scores are recorded
for later evaluation.

Web design :

PowerPoint can be used to design web-based presentations.
These can be exported to a code that is more web-friendly (HTML), but is limited
to the abilities of the users’ browsers. It can also be used to supplement a
web-based meeting, similar to a presenter-based slide show. While PowerPoint can
be used to design a website from scratch, it is not the best tool for this job.

Combinations :

Most of these groups are not exclusive, meaning that you may
combine aspects of one with aspects of another. In this way, PowerPoint may
become what you need it to be.

Planning a PowerPoint presentation :

The first step always, always, always, in planning a
PowerPoint presentation should be to turn off the computer. OK that was meant to
be a joke. Let’s take a step back and collect some of what you know by answering
a few questions :

  • Who is this presentation for ?
  • Who is your intended audience ?
  • What type of presentation method is best suited for this type of audience ?
  • What should have the audience’s attention ?
  • When is it needed by ?
  • Will this be a one-time or a presentation that will need updating regularly ?
  • Who or what am I dependant on to complete this on time ?
  • Who is responsible for the presentation content/script/storyboard ?
  • Will it need to run on all computers, a specific computer or my computer ?
  • What version of PowerPoint do I have (or will the other computers have) ?
  • What basic steps can I break up the project into?

The first question leads to the second, which should answer the third. This is the most critical part of the show-building process. Write it down if you have to and tape it to the monitor, but knowing your audience will help everything else fall into place.

It’s not that presentations are used in the business scenario only. There are non-business uses also, for example:

You can do a Power Point photo show for a birthday or an anniversary, wherein a photo album type loop will run during the whole party. So, you know that your audience is family members and friends, it should run as an unassisted Kiosk loop, that will be one of several focuses for the party as people drift over to watch it for a bit. You also know that the anniversary party is in 5 weeks, and will be a one-time show. You will need to get pictures from dozens of relatives, and will need to decide yourself which ones get included and what music to set it to, but she wants to see it before the party. It will need to run on their computer, which has Power Point 2003, but will also be distributed to anyone that wants a copy. You have her permission to ask for some help from your cousins with the following steps: collecting pictures, sorting pictures, scanning pictures, inserting pictures into slides, rearranging slides, finishing presentation, copying to CDs, labelling CDs. Wow, this is a lot of information, but it defines what you will need to do.

In the next write-up we will cover how to power your presentations using animations.

You can post your comments to me on sam.client@gmail.com


Kal, Aaj aur Kal

Computer Interface

In the previous article I wrote about technological innovations which shaped our present. Continuing from where we stopped, we know what the past is …. what everyone wants (usually) is what’s the future gonna be like ? . . . . well I can’t tell you that, but what I can talk about is what to look out for.

Some of the trends (according to me) to watch out for are :

  • Open document formats

  • XBRL

  • Mashups

  • Virtualisation

  • Convergence

Open Document Formats (‘ODF’) :

They say change is inevitable and with newer versions of software released in the market, we migrate to them like fish to water. But the trouble with change is that not everyone can change at the same pace and when that happens, then you are faced with the question posed in the movie — whats wrong with the old format, why do we have to change — so on so forth….

Using open standards like ODF ensures that the users’ information is accessible across platforms and applications, even as technologies change. Organisations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business, raises its prices, changes its software, or changes its licensing terms to something less favorable for the user. Adoption of open standards is particularly important for governmental applications because it can effectively ensure that a government document saved today will not be technologically locked tomorrow.

ODF is likely to become a whole lot bigger in future (to learn more about open document formats read my write-ups in the Jan-Mar 2006 and May 2008 issues of the BCAJ).

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (‘XBRL’) :

As Chartered Accountants one thing we know better than most people is that — compliance is a huge part of our practice. We are always faced with the issue of shrinking deadlines and ever-increasing requirement to report information. Such reporting may not be limited to tax filings — it would also extend to financial, legal, statutory reporting, etc.

Part II

But reporting is one thing and analysing and interpreting i.e., using the reported information, is another thing. Interpretation and analysis is the real deal and as we all know, unless everyone follows the same set of rules the interpretation and analysis could lead to different results. In general we usually report the information in a generalised/resultoriented summary. These summaries are usually accompanied by a whole lot of notes (to help the user understand the summary). Nonetheless, users still spend humongous amounts of time trying to normalise data.

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an XML-based technology standard, it is a language for capturing financial information throughout a business information process that will eventually be reported to shareholders, banks, regulators, and other parties. The goal of XBRL is to make the analysis and exchange of corporate information more reliable and easier to facilitate, in that it can help business in increasing the business value and provide reliable, and transparent financial data. The adoption of XBRL may permit stakeholders to access, compare and analyse data in ways that are at this time impractical or unreal. The reason is that the language is robust enough to boast of capabilities like :

  • Drill-down facility for abridged data

  • Reduced preparation time, effort and cost

  • Enhanced analytical capability

  • Standardised and simplified international access and acceptability

  • Platform neutrality ensures wider acceptability

  • Leverages the efficiencies of the Internet.

I am looking forward to the day that we will be able to file (upload) tons of information at a single click— hopefully this experience will be less painful as compared to what we face today. (learn more about open document formats — read my write-up in the Jan-Mar 2006 and May 2008 issues of the BCAJ).

Mashup tools :

In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated tool. An example of a mashup is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. Mashups and meshups are different from simple embedding of data from another site to form a compound page. A mashup or meshup site must access third-party data and process that data to add value for the site’s users. Mashups typically ‘screen-scrape’ or use other brute-force methods to access the untyped linked data; meshups typically use APIs to access typed linked data. A mashup or meshup web application has two parts:

  • A new service delivered through a web page, using its own data and data from other sources.

  • The blended data, made available across the web through an API or other protocols such as HTTP, RSS, REST, etc.

Our methods of collecting and sharing information have evolved over a period of time. Mashup tools hold the promise of an intelligent information collection as well as a collaboration tool. Watch out for more on this tool.

Desktop  virtualisation  :

Desktop virtualisation is the decoupling of a user’s physical machine from the desktop and software he or she uses to work. Most desktop virtualisation products emulate the PC hardware environment of the client and run a virtual machine alongside the existing operating system located on the local machine or delivered to a thin client from a data center server. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a server-centric computing model that borrows from the traditional thin-client model, but is designed to give system administrators and end users the best of both worlds: the ability to host and centrally manage desktop virtual machines in the data center while giving end users a full PC desktop experience. The user experience is intended to be identical to that of a standard PC, but from a thin-client device or similar, from the same office or remotely. Installing and maintaining separate PC workstations is complex, and traditionally users have almost unlimited ability to instal or remove software.

Desktop virtualisation provides many of the advantages of a terminal server, but (if so desired and configured by system administrators) can provide users much more flexibility. Each, for instance might be allowed to instal and configure his own applications. Users also gain the ability to access their server-based virtual desktop from other locations.

Advantages:

  • Instant  provisioning  of new desktops

  • Near-zero downtime in the event of hardware failures

  • Significant reduction in the cost of new application deployment

  • Robust desktop  image management  capabilities

  • Normal 2-3 year PC refresh cycle extended to 5-6 years or more

  • Existing desktop-like performance including multiple monitors, bi-directional audio/video, streaming video, USB support, etc.

  • Ability to access the users’ enterprise desktop environment from any PC, (including the employee’s home PC)

Convergence:

This is one development that has been talked about for as long as I can remember. Telecom Media Convergence is about crossing multiple industries. Fixed, mobile, and IP service providers can offer content and media services, and equipment providers can offer services directly to the end user. Content providers are consistently looking for new distribution channels. Convergence is the combination of all these different media into one operating plat-form. It is the merger of telecom, data processing and imaging technologies. This convergence is ushering in a new epoch of multimedia, in which voice, data and images are combined to render services to the user. I am waiting for the day when 3G/WIMAX will be a common thing and your mobile phone will be more than just a communication device – it would be your TV, your travel guide, your office away from office (yikes – strike that out), your wallet.

Well that’s all for now. Just to share a small secret, as I was penning this write-up, it gave me a chance to go thru my earlier articles and it made me realise what seemed outrageous then seems like a no-brainer today, innovation is so much a part of our life today, that, changes in the last few years also seem so significant.

I will probably revisit this write up next March to see where we stand……….

Virtual Data Rooms — Part 2

Computer Interface

The previous write-up was about the importance of information
for decision making, specifically in mergers and acquisition. Sensitive
information can make or break the deal or tilt the scales either way. As
mentioned, the confidentiality is of prime importance, given the fact that the
target is laying bare his soul (literally). The dilemma is how to make
information available, simultaneously, to a selected large group of
individuals/experts, within the limited time and costs while maintaining control
on the flow and the use of the information provided. See picture 1.

Virtual Data Rooms (VDRs) are online repositories, providing
an infrastructure for uploading and sharing digitised data. These data rooms can
contain documents — files, letters, records and transcripts —but may also
include other relevant information in any form, from audiotapes to soil samples.
The data in the data room are resources that represent legal proof of the target
company’s asset value and reveal its earning potential and ultimately its value.

Before entering a data room, potential buyers typically have
a good understanding of the target and its business, and have a preliminary
opinion on the consideration they are willing to pay for the target. In these
cases, potential buyers inspect documents to discover hidden earning potential
that may be capitalised upon or to uncover hidden risks that are not publicly
known. The potential buyer sends its team of experts to verify their known
information about the target with the contents of the data room and to gather
new information.

The prime objective of review is to act diligently and verify
in detail the information presented by the target. In a well executed due
diligence process, an expert in the field would inspect each document in the
data room, regardless of whether the information is obvious.

A Virtual Data Room has several advantages over a Physical
Data Room such as :

Text recognition :

Offered by some VDR providers; allows text in scanned
documents to be recognised by a computer program, effective for searching and
spell-checking.

Search function :

A key feature of a VDR; enables users to search documents for
specific words and phrases, similar to Internet search engines. A significant
improvement over PDRs, where document searches are done using the document index
and are only document-level searches that do not allow for searching of specific
words and phrases.

Q&A function :

Buyers are permitted to ask sellers, questions related to the
data room and its contents, securely and efficiently. VDR users may ask
questions through the VDR screen interface by clicking on a ‘Q&A’ icon; some
VDRs may allow for routing of questions directly to the appropriate operations
team member. While asking and replying to a question, both buyer and seller
representatives may easily refer to the document in question by simply clicking
on its icon.

Audit trail function :

The target can in real terms track the documents, including
viewing access by frequency, date and user; enhances transparency of the data
room process. This gives the target the ability to profile and rank potential
buyers, based on their level of interest and indicates the most frequently
accessed documents; this is important in ascertaining the buyers that should
proceed to a second round of due diligence, which usually involves disclosing
sensitive company documents. In the event of legal proceedings or misuse of
confidential documents in the VDR, the audit trail provides proof that a certain
user acceses specific documents. Alternatively, the buyer may use the same tool
against the target if documents are not made available to the buyer.

Dynamic indexing :

Allows sellers to upload ‘late’ documents to the VDR by
efficiently placing them in their appropriate position in the VDR index; allows
the seller to quickly reorder documents in the index and to inform potential
buyers through email or SMS of changes to the index and data room contents. A
complete change of the index however may not be possible. This is a significant
improvement over the paper-based, manual indexing system and filing of PDRs,
which were prone to errors and sometimes resulted in buyers not being informed
of updates to data room contents.

Restricted use :

In a PDR, the data room supervisor has to physically manage
documents that may or may not be permitted to be copied; as against this, in a
VDR, digital documents are flagged as restricted with respect to copying,
printing, downloading or viewing. Further, restrictions may be placed on certain
portions of documents, and may allow for contingent restrictions, such as
allowing a legal expert to download only legal documents, but not financial
documents. Viewing restrictions may be placed on sensitive documents available
only during a second round of due diligence.

Watermarking :

A security feature for digital documents in a VDR;
watermarking is the printing of certain words (such as the user’s name) across
the face of a document as identification and allows tracking of the document in
the event of illegal distribution.

Variety of file formats :

VDRs can usually store files of varying formats, including
PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, GIF, MPEG, JPEG, and TIFF, eliminating the need to
convert files to a specific file type or the VDR system will transform the files
into a specific format required by the system.

A basic SWOT analysis between the Physical & Virtual Data
Room can be summarised below :

Advantages of VDRs to buyer :

  • Cost savings
  • Tune savings
  • Comfort
  • Transparency
  • Fair playing field


Disadvantages to buyer:

  • Additional work
  • Competitive price
  • Reading documents online
  • System speed
  • Non-digital information


Advantages of VDRs to seller:

  • Simplicity
  • Ease of setup
  • Cost savings
  • Competitive price
  • Legal compliance
  • Time savings
  • Security


Disadvantages to seller:

  • Security


So the next time you are involved in a due diligence exercise, do make it a point to assess the positives and negatives highlighted in this write-up. Probably the next time you could add value by advising your client on how to manage risk in the process.

Windows 7

Computer Interface

This write-up is about Windows 7 operating system and the
objective is to highlight the pros and cons about the new operating system.
Generally users in their zeal to keep up with the latest technological
developments, rarely look ahead before leaping towards the unknown and
thereafter blaming others for their folly. This article has been written keeping
such average user in mind and for the record I consider myself to be an average
user too.

Once upon a time there was an operating system called Windows
95 which dominated most of the tech-world/desktop PCs. Windows 95’s dominance
continued when its new avatar i.e., Windows 98 took over. And then there
were others (Windows CE, Windows ME & Windows NT—CE ME NT?????), but none like
Windows XP. Windows XP was a wonderful desktop operating system and it ruled
over desktops for a very long time. Even today after it has (officially) passed
on the reins to Vista, Windows XP continues to overshadow its predecessors as
well as its successor. This is true because many buyers still ask for XP instead
of Vista. As a matter of fact many even sought to uninstall the preloaded
version of Vista in favour of XP. However, with newer applications and
technology being developed every day one needs to move on. With XP being more
popular than Vista and people preferring to downgrade from Vista to XP, what did
Microsoft do ? ? Did it infuse better code in Vista ? Was XP resurrected from
the dead?? . . . . on the contrary it announced the launch of Windows 7.

Microsoft has announced that the launch will be in the last
week of October 2009. In fact, Microsoft has already begun dishing out trial
versions to users in order to get a feedback and plug any bugs. The reactions of
the users however, have been guarded.

While other operating systems came and went, sometimes in the
blink of an eye, yet there were others like Windows XP which stayed firm. But
the question that begs to be answered is WHY ? ? ? An industry expert points out
that what many neglected to figure out was that Vista needed a different machine
and hardware to function properly at its optimum, not an XP designed machine.
It’s like when Bill Gates announced the launch of Windows 98, he said it was
faster than Windows 95 and better to use. What he failed to mention was that it
needed a different machine to work on and not the old machine itself. Oops, a
minor detail ! ! !.


Another fact about Windows Vista is that it gave
dedicated Windows users a tough time. For instance Vista takes up hogged
gigabytes of space, users had to interact with the machine saying ‘yes’ (as
someone put it) a million times before it starts to even contemplate copying a
small file from one place to another.

So what did Microsoft learn from all this (and after a couple
of million dollars down the drain) . . . looks like very little because (once
again) . . . they have forgotten to mention that e-mail, address book, calendar,
photo management, movie editing and instant messaging won’t be available with
Windows 7. These have to be downloaded from Microsoft’s website. What’s more, in
some cases, additional requirements are needed. For instance, the Windows XP
Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard
disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualisation with Intel VT or
AMD-V enabled. OOPPSS ! !

There are news reports stating that while designing Windows
7, users were asked, if it were up to them, how would they make XP better ? What
would they want from a new OS ? The feedback was anything that combines
simplicity, sleek design, ease of operation and interactivity sits pretty much
at the top of a ‘to own’ list. The result ? Windows 7. In fact, the marketing
hype from Microsoft says, “To create the next generation OS, which would make
everyday tasks faster and easier and make new things possible, Windows 7
simplifies things with a more streamlined design and one-click access to
applications and files. It has a faster boot-up and shut-down time and comes
bundled with improvements in terms of reliability, battery life and fewer
alerts.” What’s more, Windows 7 promises not only to be faster but in fact
intuitive. Features like multi-touch, JumpLists and HomeGroup have been built in
to enable consumers to interact with their PCs in faster and more intuitive
ways. Enhancements to the Windows taskbar, JumpLists and search are designed to
make navigation much easier. Also, InPrivate browsing in IE 8 prevents browsing
history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies and usernames and
passwords from being retained by the browser. Controlling the computer by
touching a touch-enabled screen or monitor is another core Windows 7 user
experience.

But the fact is that these features were always available in
MAC OS. For those who’ve used Apple’s systems, it’s easy to see what has been
borrowed. The taskbar looks and works like the Mac OS X’s Doc :
big square icons of your favourite programs. Other Apple borrowings include the
sticky notes programe, multi-touch gestures like rotating an image by twisting
your fingers and pinch to zoom. Aero Shake allows you to get all but one window
out of the way. One needs to grab the top of that window, shake it and all the
other open windows minimise to the taskbar. Shake the window again, and they all
pop back on screen.

Didn’t we see something similar in Vista as well —it was felt
nice initially, but then eventually I used to turn it off because the feature
would either slow down the PC or would result in disrupting other programs.
Whats the point of an enhancement which cannot balance user experience with
costs and performance degradation issues.

Another feature in Windows 7 is Snap. With Snap, one can
simply grab a window and pull it to either side edge of the screen to fill half
of the screen. If one wants to quickly see gadgets or grab a file from the
desktop, all one needs to do is move the mouse to the lower right corner of the
desktop. Peek makes all the windows transparent and one can view the desktop.
Windows Flip is a feature similar to Mac OS X’s Expose. The rate at which
they are borrowing the feature may be… one may want to wait for the Snow
Leopard (new OS announced by Apple) before switching to Windows 7.


There is also the issue of cost of the software. The cost remains unclear, though initial reports had indicated that the estimated prices for the full Windows 7 package in the US for the premium, professional and ultimate versions would be $ 199.99, $ 299.99 and $ 399.99, respectively. The hype however says that “Firstly, the price for the retail versions of Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional will reduce in the range of 15-25%. Secondly, India pricing for these two versions is lower by 25-40% in comparison with developed markets like the US. Pricing for other retail versions of Windows 7 remains the same as Windows Vista.” Of course this does not include the additional requirements in terms of RAM/CPU, etc. It’s still a wait and watch for me.

After all the cribbing readers may wonder whether its worth the upgrade … maybe … maybe not. Wait for the next write-up before you leap.

Cheers! ! .

This article is merely an attempt to give the readers a bird’s-eye view of the reactions. This article is not intended to be either an endorsement or critique of any particular software or feature.

Templates in Excel

Windows Phone 7

Computer Interface

This month’s tech update is about the recently announced
Windows Phone 7. In December 2009 itself Microsoft had announced its intention
to release this version (and the latest offering from Microsoft’s stable) by
November 2010. Needless to say, this was one of the most eagerly awaited
announcement of this quarter. This write-up merely summarises some of the
stories on this new software.

Behind the scenes story :

For the uninitiated, Windows Phone 7 Series is Microsoft’s
reboot of its mobile platform previously named Windows Mobile. Even though
Windows Mobile had the first-mover advantage as the smart phone operating system
of choice, the platform last year suffered significant losses in its market
share. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform ate into Microsoft territory
by offering better user experience, a more robust platform and offering phone
apps.

The development team at Microsoft was clear that they would
be rethinking a lot of things and that there would be a sea change in the
approach to the development process itself. They revamped just about every
aspect of building the phone software, ranging from how they perceived customers
to how they would go about engineering for the product. An obvious course,
considering that they were attempting to regain their mobile groove by offering
a brand new user interface integrating applications and multimedia into ‘Hubs’
(i.e., software experiences organised into main categories or menus) as well as
a tidier platform for third-party developers to create and serve apps.

For development the plan was that, Windows Phone 7 Series
would employ the Silverlight and XNA programming environments. Silverlight would
serve as the coding toolkit for ‘rich Internet applications.’ (As Microsoft’s
alternative to Adobe Flash, this is not surprising, and potentially gives
Windows Phone 7 an edge over phones that don’t support Flash or Silverlight —
namely, the iPhone). XNA, on the other hand, refers to a set of programming
tools that makes it easier for game designers to develop games for multiple
Microsoft platforms, including Windows XP, Xbox 360, Windows Vista and Windows
7.

Simply put, it meant that most mobile apps would be made with
Silverlight, while more graphics-intensive 3D games would most likely be
developed with XNA. The objective was that Microsoft would make the tools
friction-free for developers and to enable them to get in as easily as possible.

The user interface (UI) while similar to iPhone was intended
to be different from any other smart phone in the market. The phones would
support the same touch gestures seen on the iPhone: pinch or double tap to zoom,
and swipe in a certain direction to pan. For hardware, each Windows Phone 7
Series phone would include seven standard physical buttons for controlling
power, volume, screen, camera, back, start and search.

Comparison of some innovative and unique features :

With the lucrative mobile ecosystem getting crowded, the
existing players are battling hard to retain their market share (in some cases
to remain relevant). Up to 2009, developments were not as fast-paced as they are
today. In fact, while Microsoft took the lead over the other mobile/ phone
operating systems, iPhone and Google Android devices took a few years to refine
their user interface and features, giving them plenty of time to get ahead of
Microsoft’s ailing Windows Mobile OS.

Once they got in to the fray, the only way out for Microsoft
was to come up with a totally new user interface i.e., Windows Phone 7 OS, that
too without the luxury of time. Add to this, Microsoft had to build the system
from scratch and that it could ill-afford significant delays in release, the
likelihood that they would leave out several features that we now take for
granted on our smart phones was pretty high. Nonetheless, Microsoft brought in a
few interesting new elements to the table with Windows Phone 7, elements that
they thought would be preferred over the usability of an iPhone or an Android
phone.

All this has generated quite a bit of chatter on the pros and
cons of some of the features, the more popular topics of discussion are as
discussed below :

  • Microsoft’s new mobile OS doesn’t have copy/paste capabilities :

    Some of you may recall, the first, the second, and even the third iPhone did not initially have copy/paste functionality as well — but that was over a year ago (copy/paste for the iPhone arrived later as a software update). Interestingly, Android had this capability from day one. Besides this, both iPhone and Android have office apps that work a lot better than Microsoft’s. On Windows Phone 7, office work is impossible due to lack of Copy & Paste.

    Microsoft reportedly revealed during a Q & A session at its MIX10 conference that it believes that people don’t need copy-and-paste on their phones. Instead, the new OS offers new functionality the company believes people actually want. For example, the new Microsoft handsets will identify addresses and phone numbers, and you will reportedly be able to send this information to different applications such as the phone or your contacts manager.

    Notwithstanding, the exclusion of copy/paste in Windows Phone 7 doesn’t earn the new OS any gold stars for functionality.

  • Second on the list of missing Windows Phone 7 features is true multitasking :

    Windows Phone 7 does not allow third-party apps to run in the background, but pauses them until you return to the app. Apparently, multitasking was something that Android had from day one, and that was later introduced for the iPhone. This puts the OS in the same situation the iPhone was over a year ago, when only Apple’s apps could run in the background.

    It is interesting to note that one of the most highly criticised points against the iPhone is its inability to multitask, which prevents you from using more than one third-party application at a time. You can’t for example, use Blip.fm, while reading something on your Kindle or New York Times app. Apple’s solution to this problem was to create a push notification system where the content provider pushes information to your phone, instead of having applications on your phone you can call the content provider to get it. One reason critics are able to live with Apple’s strategy is that the iPhone can switch between applications fairly quickly, and most developers make sure their iPhone apps can open up from where you left off. So the downtime between closing and opening different apps, and finding the content you need, isn’t that significant on the iPhone.

    If Windows Phone 7 apps aren’t as equally fast and smart as their iPhone counterparts, Microsoft could end up being heavily criticised for its no multitasking-push notification system.

        The third debated feature oversight for Windows Phone 7 is the lack of Adobe Flash, Silverlight, or HTML5 support in the browser:
    Steve Jobs squashed any ideas of running Flash on an iPhone, so Android is the only one left in this round. It took Google and Adobe over a year to come up with Adobe Flash support for Android, but now the latest generation of Android phones has the feature. If Microsoft really wanted to have an edge over the iPhone and fight Android, it could have at least supported its own Flash-competing technology, Silverlight, on Windows Phone 7 devices. It is surprising considering that Silverlight was supposedly part of the original plan.

        Android and iPhone have equivalent of hubs:
    Android has notifications. iPhone has folders. While Windows Phone 7’s hubs are touted to be dysfunctional because it only notifies you with Microsoft messages. In effect, there are no notifications for third-party apps that you use, because those third-party apps cannot multitask. The apps are frozen, or tombstoned, and can’t notify you of anything. The moot question is “So what, then, is the point of the tiled hub interface if you can’t get notifications from the things you want (rather than what Microsoft wants)?”

    For the benefit of the readers, I have compiled a small list of what’s missing and what’s new.

    Features available in either iPhone or Android phone (but not available in Windows Phone 7):

        Copy and paste
        Multitasking
        Flash support
        HTML 5 support
        Unified inbox
        Threaded email
        Visual voice mail
        Video calling
        Universal search
        Limited removable storage
      Not enough applications (Microsoft 1000 plus as against over 3 lakh offered by iPhone and about a lakh by Android)

    Features available in Windows Phone 7 (but not available in either iPhone or Android phone):
        Limited removable storage
        Facebook integration
        Microsoft office support
        Widget tiles on home screen
        X-box live integration
        Panorama view of hub content
        Animated transitions
        Unlimited music download from Zune, unlimited video download from U-verse
        XNA game developer platform

    While it is too premature to say whether Microsoft was right or wrong, Windows Phone 7 has (may be rightly) received a lot of flak from reviewers for not having some features that many owners take for granted on their current smart phones. The next write-up will have more on the story as it unfolds (Windows Phone 7 is scheduled for launch on 7th November).

Technology news this week

In spite of the current downtrend, the investment and development in newer technology continues unabated. This month, I have pieced together some of the latest developments in the Information Technology industry to gain some insight about the recent developments.

Pirate Bay verdict and file-sharing

    The internet has always been a symbol for knowledge sharing. Among other things, countless users have been sharing much more than just knowledge i.e., personal information, music, movies, etc. Sharing music and movies first began hurting the entertainment industry at large, that’s when law enforcement agencies started cracking down on such sites. Pirate Bay was one such file-sharing sites and is the latest casualty of the cause. The verdict against the founders of The Pirate Bay is being hailed by many as a triumphant win against illegal file-sharing. The four men involved in the BitTorrent tracking site were found guilty of being accessories to violating copyright law. A Swedish Court sentenced each of them to a year in jail and a collective fine of $3.6 million. In the long run, though, the verdict may not be as significant as some suggest, when it comes to the battle against online file-sharing. Other players have opined this because, just like Napster, The Pirate Bay doesn’t actually host copyrighted files — it simply allows users to post links to material hosted on third-party servers. That’s why, incidentally, prosecutors ended up dropping the initial charge of ‘assisting copyright infringement’ and pursuing only a ‘assisting making available copyrighted material’ charge instead.” The Court said even if you are distributed, you are nevertheless encouraging your customers to violate copyright, and we’ll hold you accountable.

Stealthy Rootkit

    Countless websites have been rigged to deliver a powerful piece of malicious software that many security products may be unprepared to handle. The malicious software is a new variant of Mebroot, a program known as a ‘rootkit’ for the stealthy way it hides deep in the Windows operating system. An earlier version of Mebroot first appeared around December 2007 and used a well-known technique to stay hidden.

    Since Mebroot appeared, security vendors have refined their software to detect it. But the latest version uses much more sophisticated techniques to stay hidden. The new variant inserts program hooks into various functions of the kernel, or the operating system’s core code. Once it has taken hold, the malware then makes it appear that the Master Boot Record (MBR) hasn’t been tampered with. The rootkit infects the computer’s MBR, as a result it’s the first code a computer looks for when booting the operating system after the BIOS runs. If the MBR is under a hacker’s control, so is the entire computer and any data that’s on it or transmitted via the Internet. Then, each time the computer is booted, Mebroot injects itself into a Windows process in memory, such as svc.host. Since it’s in memory, it means that nothing is written to the hard disk, another evasive technique. Mebroot can then steal any information it likes and send it to a remote server via HTTP.

    The infection mechanism is known as a drive-by download. It occurs when a person visits a legitimate website that’s been hacked. Once on the site, an invisible iframe is loaded with an exploit framework that begins testing to see if the browser has a vulnerability. If so, Mebroot is delivered, and a user notices nothing.

Nokia’s new E75 phone

    Nokia has unveiled a new addition to its E-series range, the Nokia E75 with Nokia Messaging Service which provides e-mail solutions on Nokia devices with the pre-installed Nokia Messaging push e-mail service. According to a press release the E75 is the first device from Nokia that offers complete integration of e-mail and messaging services and provides an easy process for instant e-mail set-up and supports up to 16 e-mail accounts. Among other things, the Nokia E75 boasts of full desktop e-mail functionality along with both standard keypad and QWERTY keypad. It is also touted to be capable of supporting all features of Nokia Messaging Service — a number of third party e-mail solutions, namely, Gmail, Yahoo, Rediffmail, Sify, Indiatimes, Net4, Hotmail and In.com amongst others.

    Of course the Nokia E75 comes with the usual stuff i.e., an intelligent input feature with auto-completion and correction, a 3.2 megapixel camera, autofocus, flash, and comes integrated with a music player, media player, FM and internet radio, an integrated A-GPS and pre-loaded maps on the memory card and last but not the least, the device includes a built-in mobile VPN for intranet access. In case you are wondering . . . . it also comes with a price tag of approx 27K.

The most vulnerable browser

    Firefox fans take note : News reports circulating on the net suggest that Firefox is far more vulnerable than Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer — and by a wide margin. In 2008, it had nearly four times as many vulnerabilities as each of those browsers. The rumours suggest that Firefox had 115 vulnerabilities reported in 2008, compared to 30 for Opera, 31 for Internet Explorer, and 32 for Safari. That doesn’t mean, though, that Internet Explorer is off the hook for security concerns. Far from it. ActiveX remains the browser plug-in or add-on with the most number of vulnerabilities.

New iPhone 3.0 Beta software

Apple has released a third beta build of the iPhone 3.0 software, taking developers one step closer to the final release in June. One of the most significant additions to the latest beta of the iPhone 3.0 software is the way individual apps will be able to notify users of updates or additional content. At the moment, individual apps flag users only in iTunes of new events, but with the 3.0 build, they will be able to do so right on the phone via badge, text or sound notifications. Spotlight (phone-wide search) will now let users save the last search they made, and can set restrictions for inside-application purchases and location data. An interesting fact about the third beta of the iPhone 3.0 software is that the Skype app no longer works on 3G. With previous builds, Skype allowed 3.0 beta software users to place calls via 3G, unlike the same app on the current 2.2 platform, which can make calls only over Wi-Fi. Apple seems to have fixed this ‘bug’, so no more wishful thinking for cheap VolP in the 3.0 final release. This third beta of the iPhone 3.0 software indicates the imminent arrival of a final 3.0 software in June, just like Apple promised. However, the question remains whether we will get some new iPhone hardware as well, especially as rumors intensified over the last weeks, detailing hardware components and features.

That’s all for this month, I hope to have more interesting developments next month.

Open document format

Computer Interface

History :


Documentation became a part of our culture ever since the
written word was invented. Documentation as we all know, is the simplest method
of allowing understanding and referencing. The methods of documentation have of
course evolved over the years along with the formats in which the data
was stored. So also, data formats have been around for as long as
computing. They reflected the varying capabilities and functions of different
computing systems and have evolved as these computing systems have evolved. In
the decades since, a wide range of formats (TXT, PDF, HTML, and DOC, just to
name a few) became popular because they meet specific user needs and tap into
new computing capabilities as they evolved. Then came the increasing
expectations and demands and technology met them by changing at a scorching
pace. Advances were being made in the field literally on a day-to-day basis, to
the extent that redundancy actually became an inbuilt attribute.

With such advances and the passage of time, the ones who
don’t match the pace, fade away in the dark corners of technological redundancy.
Many of us have experienced disappearance of older formats. For instance : Punch
cards were once commonplace, but you wouldn’t think of using them today.
WordStar was once what everyone used as their word processor; now, even filters
to read the format are less and less common. (More closer to heart Tally 4.5 to
Tally 9, Windows 3.11 to Vista and so on so forth). Luckily, WordStar format is
similar to ASCII and is thus mostly recoverable. But there are times when I
can’t read some important PowerPoint 4 files in today’s PowerPoint, only 7 years
later. This has come to a point that a file you created in a software less than
half a decade ago is no longer usable. This because the software/application no
longer accepts (supports) it.

Today




  •  When you buy a music CD you know it will fit in your CD player.



  •  When you buy canned food, you know it will work with your can opener.



  •  When you buy a toaster, you know it will work with the power plugs in your
    house.



  • When you visit a website, do you need to know what software that website runs
    to create the web page ?



  •  When you send an email, do you need to know what email client your friend
    has ?



Then why should it be different for your documents ? You
should be able to send your documents to your customers without knowing what
office software they run and be confident that it would work. Have you ever had
trouble opening a document that someone sent you ? Have you ever bought a copy
of an application software that you didn’t want because you have to read
documents that only work with that version of an application software ? Have you
ever wondered why there is so little choice in office software ?


  •  What if you could send a file to anyone and know that they can read it ?



  •  What if you could buy any product you want and know that you can still
    communicate with your customers ?



This is where the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an open,
XML1-based file format for office documents comes into the picture.
OpenDocuments include text documents, spreadsheets, drawings, presentations and
more. An OpenDocument is freely available for any software maker to use and
implement and does not favour any vendor over all the others. The creation of
XML-based document formats continues this evolution, and even within this
category a number of formats are being developed, including ODF2, Open XML3 and
UOF4. We should expect the creation of new formats in the future as the
technology evolves, and, as has always been the case, users should be able to
choose the formats that work best for them.

Recent developments :

One objective of open formats like OpenDocument is to
guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers, and some
governments have come to view open formats as a public policy issue.
OpenDocument is intended to be an alternative to proprietary formats,
including the commonly used DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by
Microsoft Office and other applications. Up until Feb. 15th 2008, these
latter formats did not have documentation available for download, and were only
obtainable by writing directly to Microsoft Corporation and signing a
restrictive non-disclosure agreement. As of Feb. 15th 2008, Microsoft
offers documents for download claiming to accurately specify the aforementioned
document formats (although this claim hasn’t been independently verified yet).
Microsoft is supporting the creation of a plug-in for Office to allow it to use
OpenDocument. The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. has created a similar
plug-in that will allow continued use of Microsoft Office.

The OpenDocument format (ODF, ISO/IEC 26300, full name :
OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications) is a free and open file
format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts,
presentations and word processing documents. While the specifications were
originally developed by Sun, the standard was developed by the Open Office XML
technical committee of the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured
Information Standards (OASIS) consortium and based on the XML format originally
created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite (see OpenOffice.org
XML).

Case for the Governments to adopt open document formats:

Case for the Governments to adopt open document formats:
In all humility, with whatever limited knowledge I have about technology and of the trends that are taking shape, I am now getting paranoid about the whole e filing process and the initiatives adopted by the Government.

Although the process was in bits and pieces (fits and start is more like it), the process adopted by the Government has been rather haphazard. Instead of learning from each other’s experience, every department has tried to do their “own thing”.
 
For instance : the e-filing process was kicked off by the Government in 2004. At the time text files were in vogue (still is with the etds process), then came the PDF- (MCA 21 and ITRs for Corp orates in AY 06-07). The last year it was Excel and XML and the story will go on.

This year the Government is pushing for efiling not only for Income Tax, but also for Service Tax, VAT . and other laws. Even here, there is no uniformity. The Income-tax Department is using XML format, VAT authorities seem to be following suit, but the Excise & Service Tax authorities are still depending on an HTML format (EASIEST), the MCA relies on the PDF format.

The concern stems from the fact that governments don’t create office documents, so that they can be tossed in the shredder. They often have to be accessible decades (or centuries) later, and many of them – have to be accessible to any citizen, regardless of what equipment they use or will use. Having said this, the question that needs to be answered is has the Government given a serious thought to the fact that although, PDF is a very useful display format, it has a different purpose – while it’s great at preserving formatting, it doesn’t let you edit the data meaningfully. HTML is great for web pages, or short, but it’s just not capable enough for data mining and data retrieval. Both HTML and PDF will continue to be used, but they cannot be used as a complete replacement.

The writing on the wall suggests that the taxpayer, along with dealing with the many intricacies in law, will now be saddled with the additional burden of dealing with multiple data formats. Nobody knows what will happen 5-7 years down the line when presumably better formats are in vogue. Unless the Government realises the pitfalls and makes conscientious efforts in developing/adopting standardised/ open standard software, we will all have to save our old software packages and the files generated thru them, on floppies/CDs/DVD, etc. and pray that they still work when the sleeping giant wakes up.

Smart phones — the next biggest thing ever to happen

Computer Interface

While 2009 was a year of slow down (in many respects), the
year 2010 has started off with a slew of launches and teasers. When I started my
research for something interesting, I was overwhelmed by the results of my
search. I was literally buried under the information overload. As a result, I
just couldn’t settle on the theme for this column. After much dithering and
scrapping several ideas, I finally settled on this topic.


Trends in the past:

Initially I thought that I was generalizing it a bit too
much, but after taking a relook at the trends, it seemed evident that the most
significant developments in the area of personal computing, happened during the
nineties. Similarly, the use and dependence on the Internet grew considerably in
the millennium years. It appears that the industry now believes the mobile phone
to be the next “biggest thing ever to happen”.


Smartphones:

Smartphones are a (near) perfect example of a dichotomy.
While there are some phones which tickle the fancy of a consumer (i.e. iPhone
types) and then there are others which would be the choice of an enterprise or
would be the proud possession of a yupee (BlackBerry). Needless to say, the
iPhone is not too popular with the enterprise and the
BlackBerry is not popular with the consumer.

The convergence

Going forward, one is likely to see many attempts to make the
mobile phone a one-point access for both basic and social activities. For
instance, one of the focus points this year, appears to be integrating all
social media under one platform and simplifying the user interface. Connectivity
will play a key role in shaping the future of the mobile industry. Real-time
information and analytics, coupled with strong networks, will lead to the
creation of utility-based services for consumers. Developments like mHealth and
mEducation, will be coined as the key growth areas of the future.


Rise of the application market

‘Context’ will soon become an important addition to basic
search-based functions (by using analytics). Existing features of the device –
such as GPS, voice-based telephony and in-built cameras – will be used to bring
in context. The trend indicates that the applications market will rise
considerably to bring about the biggest development for the mobile industry. The
focus will be on creating ubiquitous services. This will be instrumental in
evolving the app economy into a successful business model. The growth in the app
economy will power the vision for the mobile ecosystem (which among others
includes telecom operators, content providers and original equipment
manufacturers).

A much tighter integration between application developers and
service providers will ensure greater consumer experience and the next one and a
half years promise to be an interesting phase for this industry.

Armed with this background, it is interesting to see who is
doing what?

Microsoft’s strategy

Microsoft, whose phone operating systems have not been a big
hit with either of these groups, is launching a mobile operating system that
could (ahem!) appeal to both the consumer as well as the enterprise.

Over the past two decades, Microsoft has seldom rewritten a
piece of software from scratch and while each Windows version made substantial
changes, the core has in most cases remained the same. With Windows Phone 7,
Microsoft is apparently making a clean break from the past. It is a software
that supposedly has been written from scratch. The Windows Phone 7 is aiming to
provide a user experience that is completely different. It is as minimalist as
it gets. On the screen are several hubs around common themes: people, pictures,
music, videos, Microsoft Office, etc. The Phone 7 also uses Bing maps, which
would probably provide the same experience as Google Maps. Windows phone 7 is
supposed to work seamlessly with your PC software such as Outlook, OneNote and
SharePoint.

It is interesting to note that Apple wanted to merge the MP3
player and the phone, hence the iPhone. (Microsoft seems to be emulating the
idea—Zune Player and Windows Phone 7). It seems that Microsoft intends to bring
the phone close to the PC hence their mobile operating system has been designed
to work seamlessly with the PC.

The phone will have just three hardware buttons: home, search
and back (and you thought it would be CTRL + ALT + DEL—they have written the
software from scratch remember!!!!). The phone resembles a Zune Player
(Microsoft’s answer to Ipod).

One of the greatest strengths of Windows phone 7 is the way
its phone works with a PC. But that could be Google’s strength too, if the PC
world starts shifting to the cloud (Web-based computing world. Microsoft is
expected to reveal more about applications for the phone in the upcoming MIX
conference at Las Vegas. The next two years will see an interesting battle for
the enterprise smartphone.

Google’s strategy

Just like Microsoft, rival Google, too feels that the ‘mobile
phone’ is at the heart of the internet giant’s future. According to Google CEO,
Eric Schmidt, internet mobile devices will overtake PCs by 2013 and ‘Mobile
First’ will be the key focus for Google. At the World Mobile Conference in
Barcelona, he outlined how the web giant’s top programmers were now
concentrating on mobile phones. By taking search to mobiles, Google wants to
create an open platform that brings together location-based search with voice
and pictures.

To illustrate, let’s say you are in Barcelona and you are
looking for Indian food. The search platform would recognize that you are in
Barcelona and throw up the most relevant search results — Indian restaurants in
the city. The search recognizes your location and while you ask for options for
food, identifies your speech and sends you the desired results. This technology
goes further. For instance, if the Indian restaurant’s menu has some parts in
the Devanagri script and a non-Hindi speaking person does not understand it, all
the user needs to do is, focus a phone camera onto the script and within
seconds, the search will recognise the characters and send out intelligent data
on the meaning of the words with corresponding pictures for better clarity.

Schmidt also said that three unique areas had now converged on the mobile device: Computing power, interconnectivity and the cloud. To quote “The phone is where these three all interconnect and you need to get these three waves right if you want to win.” Using the examples of Spotify, Facebook and, of course, Google, he highlighted how the cloud concept is being used in both fixed and mobile communications. He also mentioned that recent trends indicate that in Indonesia and South Africa, more and more users are preferring searches via mobile phones than PCs.

RIM’s strategy

Not too far behind Microsoft and Google, IBM in collaboration with RIM said that they will bundle the Lotus collaboration applications on BlackBerry. While this would seem an innocuous announcement, the move assumes added significance when you look at a series of related developments in the smartphone world.

A smartphone is generally looked upon as a consumer device, thanks to the large number of applications developed for the consumer, particularly on the iPhone. Typically, a smartphone was used mostly for voice in the enterprise, and recently for email too. Though email is the killer smartphone application in the enterprise, two other sets of applications have emerged now: collaboration and document viewing.

The IBM-RIM partnership announced at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando — that Lotus Connections will be loaded on to BlackBerry devices. (There would be no fee as the applications are preloaded). BlackBerry is already integrated with Lotus Sametime, a messaging and calendar application that also tells you who else is online. Users will now be able to collaborate and view documents using the BlackBerry.

Enterprise software firms find that for many applications that they sell, companies ask for a mobile solution as well. This is on account of the fact that workers are on a routine basis spending more time on the road. They need to access documents as well as collaborate. Most users of the smartphone in the enterprise now use it for email, contact management and calendar. Viewing documents comes next (the smartphone will be used only for viewing and not creation), followed by collaboration applications.

Collaboration comes last, not because employees do not use them, but because they are not being made available. You need to pay, for example, for the BlackBerry applications. This is precisely why smartphones with bundled Lotus Connections will make a difference.

Observers think that conferencing is the next hot smartphone application in the enterprise. Till the advent of 3G, it was difficult to both talk as well as connect to the Internet at the same time on the smartphone. Even with 3G, Web conferencing still does not work perfectly in many places including the US, with many users complaining about call drops and delays. These technical issues are likely to be solved in the future, and meetings over smartphones would then become commonplace in offices.

This means several companies will now be working on a mobile solution for smartphones as well. That would also mean a new wave of applications for the smartphone. One major hurdle that needs to be crossed here is that each handset is different, it takes considerable time to develop applications for one handset, and then this has to be developed all over again for another one. While we will have to wait till the end of the year to see the outcome of this trend, the three traditional rivals — Apple, Google and Microsoft are in for a tough battle for market share. No matter who wins, one thing is for sure that the smartphone landscape could change dramatically by next year.

Cheers!

Kal, Aaj aur Kal — Part I

Computer Interface

Kal, Aaj aur Kal is the name of a movie released during the
70s. Befitting its name the cast consisted of three generations of the Kapoor
clan viz., Privthviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor and Randhir Kapoor — represent
Kal (the past), Aaj (the present) and Kal (the future). In the movie each
generation felt strongly about the genre of culture in which they were born and
brought up and couldn’t comprehend how the others could survive without it or
why the others had no respect for it. Taking a leaf from this theme, I have
pieced together past trends which changed our present and are likely to shape
our future.

Today, life without a cell phone, a laptop, or an Internet
connection seems unthinkable. Technology has infiltrated the daily life in so
many ways that it’s hard to remember entire generations found ways to reach
others, stay up-to-date, and do their jobs without the technology innovations we
take for granted. This write-up is about innovations that may seem standard now,
but whose creation changed the way business is conducted, directly affected
quality of life, broke new ground, and more. The list is not organised in any
particular order, however some of the biggest contributors to the present
technology are listed in the paras below.

The first among the trendsetters is Graphical User Interface
(‘GUI’). The first graphical user interface was invented by Douglas Englebert in
1968. But thanks to companies like Apple, who popularised the same, GUI design
advanced significantly in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Because of these
pioneers, we can take it for granted that we interact with our computer using a
mouse and have easy-to-understand icons and other graphical controls instead of
having to remember a bunch of computer commands.

Of course without the Personal Computer — PC/ laptop
computers, our progress would have been stunted. 1981 was a big year for
computers: IBM launched the 5150 model (which it called a ‘personal computer’)
and the Osborne 1 became the first portable computer. Weighing in at 24 pounds,
it challenges our current notion of laptop. Not to forget that it was MS DOS,
yes, a Microsoft product which opened up new possibilities.

Internet/broadband/WWW is an equal contributor. Our slavery
to Google, our addiction to Twitter. Not to mention our penchant to keep
up-to-date on any given news topic, our ability to send and receive far too many
e-mails. The Internet enabled so many other phenomena that it’s startling to
realise the Internet as we know it only arrived in the ’90s. But it didn’t take
long to change our lives forever.

Online shopping/ecommerce/auctions are also responsible for
turning the fortunes of many. Where would we be without all the Amazons, eBays
and other online stores ? Thanks to the Internet being
opened up to commercial use, the ability for companies to capitalise on
electronic transactions took off. As did our hunger for a more peaceful shopping
experience. Today, ecommerce is a given, we book our tickets for
travel or for movies online. It’s obvious
why those wonder years were called the ‘Roaring 90s’.

Mobile phones, take a look at your tiny little cell phone and
be thankful. The first mobile phones, which Motorola unleashed on the market in
1983, were confined to the car (until a few years later when they became more
mobile) and were the size of a briefcase, in fact my first handset would very
easily measure up to a remote control. I am absolutely speechless when people
say that they would be lost without their mobile phones. Come to think of just a
decade ago, most people survived with fixed telephones (apro MTNL). I still
prefer the old school — don’t call me, I’ll call you. In fact, the thought that
soon I will be forced to carry a Blackberry device is unsettling . . . .

Social networking via Internet. This is one trend that I
haven’t adjusted to as yet. Internet-based social networks really are very new.
SixDegrees.com (1997) is one of the earliest social network site. They say that
it wasn’t until MySpace, which launched in 2003, that social networks began to
appeal to the masses. Now, of course, there’s Facebook, which gives you endless
opportunities to have worlds collide, and Twitter, which empowers you to become
your own paparazzi by dropping life tidbits, wisdom, and your comings and goings
to your anxious followers. If you haven’t done it already do check out
SecondLife — (for some it is a second life . . . . literally).

In the next part I hope to cover some innovations which I think will shape
our future . . . .

levitra

Headers and Footers

Computer Interface

The aim of this article is to help the readers work
effectively by using automated tools built into the application software. This
article would be useful for beginners as well as intermediate level users.


Most of us have a tendency to underutilise the resources
built into the older versions also. Come to think of it, most of us use the PC
more like a typewriter thus leaving the computing power utterly untapped. I have
commented on this far too many times in this column and it is for this reason I
chose to write an article on a difficult aspect like headers and footers.

I’m often surprised to find that certain Word users are
completely unaware of the headers and footers feature in Word. In part, this is
because Word’s designers hid it. Word has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and the
Insert menu is home to most of them. Some of the useful things that Word has to
offer can be found on the Insert menu: page numbers, date and time, AutoText,
fields, symbols, comments, footnotes and endnotes, cross-references, indexes and
tables, text boxes, pictures, frames, diagrams. However, Header and Footer
is hidden on the View menu. Users who come straight from a typewriter to Word
don’t think of using headers and footers, because they’re used to manually
typing text at the beginning or end of a page. It may not occur to them that
there is a better way. But the header/footer feature in Word is one of its most
useful tools, one that users need to learn how to take advantage of.

Headers and footers in a document :

Headers and footers are areas in the top and bottom margins
(margin : The blank space outside the printing area on a page.) of each page in
a document.

You can insert text or graphics in headers and footers — for
example, page numbers, the date, a company logo, the document’s title or file
name, or the author’s name — that are printed at the top or bottom of each page
in a document.

The question one would ask is when should I use a header
or footer ?

Headers and footers are used in the following instances :

l
Repeated text


Whenever you need to repeat text or graphics on a page.
Usually such text will be a ‘running head’ or ‘running foot’ at the top or
bottom of the page, but header and footer content is not confined to the top and
bottom; it can appear anywhere on the page — in the same place on every page
(but some content can be dynamic; for example, a page number can change on every
page).

l
Text that stays put


Whenever you need to put text at the beginning or at the end
of a document that will stay put and be out of the way.



Repeated text :

One of the most common elements of a header or footer is a
page number. You may already have figured out how to number pages using the
Insert | Page Numbers command. For simple documents, this feature actually
offers a great deal of power and flexibility : you can omit the page number on
the first page, you can choose where you want it to appear (top or bottom, left,
centre, or right — even inside or outside for facing pages), and you can choose
from a variety of number formats. You can choose to include a chapter number (see
picture 2), and you can choose a starting page number. With care, you can
even use this feature in documents with more than one section. If you know what
you’re doing, you can edit the page field that Word inserts for you, to add text
such as “Page” before the number.

Usually, though, in anything but the simplest type of
document, page numbers inserted this way become difficult to use (especially if
you want to combine them with other text). Moreover, if you decide not to use
them, there is no way to “turn them off” from the Page Numbers dialog, and if
you remove them incompletely (failing to delete the frame the page number is
in), you can have puzzling problems down the line (see “Text at the top of the
page is unaccountably indented”). In any situation where you need more than a
simple page number (even something as simple as “Page 1 of n”), you should use a
header or footer (see picture 3). This includes book and chapter titles
(or the name of the author) in books, section titles in reports, logos and
letterheads in letters, watermarks, and so on.

Text that stays put :

The most common example of text that belongs in a header is a
letterhead. You want to put that at the beginning of a letter, and you want it
to be out of the way of other text you will add, so that it doesn’t get pushed
down the page. Usually you don’t want it repeated on every page, so you use a
special kind of header for it. Another example is the text you want to stay at
the end of a document, no matter how much text you add to the document. You can
put that in a footer. Again, you don’t want it repeated on every page, but there
is a way to achieve that too, as will be detailed below.

Creating a header or footer :

As mentioned above, even if you think your document doesn’t
yet have a header or footer, you have to use View | Header and Footer to create
one. This may seem illogical to you, but in fact, the header and footer already
exist; they’re just empty until you put something in them.

Unlike Word Perfect, where the header and footer are at the top and bottom margins, and you have to add space between them and the document text, Word reserves space for the header and footer outside the top and bottom margins (as shown in picture 1) They have their own distinct margins, which you set from the Margins tab of File I Page Setup in Word 2000 and earlier and on the Layout tab of Word 2002 and above. In order to insert headers and footers click on Header and Footer on the View menu.

Once you have created a header or footer, you can open it for editing in Print Layout view by double-clicking on the existing content. To open it the first time, however (or to access it from Normal view), you must select View I Header and Footer. When you do this, Word opens the header pane and displays the Header and Footer toolbar (see picture 4). This toolbar offers a number of useful buttons that will be discussed throughout this article. The first one you should find is the Switch Between Header and Footer button. If you are trying to create a footer rather than a header, this is what you need to get to the footer pane.

(The concluding portion of this write up will be published in the next issue of the BCAJ)

Bing — the new kid on the block

Headers and Footers — Part 2

The OS war — Episode-II

Computer Interface

Circa Oct. 2009, Amazon was booking orders for copies of
Windows 7. What it didn’t know at the time (or may be it did, but didn’t
publicise it) was that the bookings were going to be the biggest ever, and would
gross even more than the latest book of Harry Potter.

Windows 7 is now more than a month old (since it hit the
stores on 22nd Oct). According to the grapevine, users are not entirely unhappy.
Early adopters report they’re mostly happy — and that is true for Vista users
even more than XP users, and rightly so. After all Windows 7 is all that its
predecessor, Windows Vista, was expected to be.

For instance :

  • Unlike Vista, Windows 7 hogs lesser resources, making it
    a far better performer, capable of running on lesser powered net-books that
    currently have to use leaner Linux or Windows XP operating systems;

  • PC users are enjoying almost the same kind of performance
    and services that owners of Macintosh and Linux computers have long taken for
    granted.

Of course there are users who ask — why they had to wait so
long — and then have to pay for it. A few of Microsoft’s harsher critics even
argue that many of the improvements that wound up in Windows 7 could have been
released as a free ‘service-pack’ a year or so ago, that is if Microsoft
wanted to salvage Vista. After all it wouldn’t be the first time ! ! ! ! !

Still, there are others who don’t want to upgrade to Windows
7 because a good majority of the users are happy with Windows XP. There are some
who cite cost as a deterrent, a whole bunch of users are waiting for the Windows
7 service pack (already ! ! ! ! ! It’s barely one month old).

Windows XP was popular because it gave to all its users the
right to change all sorts of things (and accidentally leave back-doors open for
mischief-makers). Vista’s ‘user account control’ (UAC) technology clamped
down firmly on the user’s ability to change settings, download software or even
run installed programs. To gain the right to do so, users had to get
authorisation from an administrator. Even then, they were bombarded by UAC
interruptions, asking for all sorts of permissions and validations to continue
with whatever they were trying legitimately to do. It was enough to drive most
people insane and deem Vista’s iron-clad security feature an absolute no-no.
Just as bad, the locked-down nature of Vista made it run as slow as a sloth,
soaking up lot more computing power than XP, to perform similar tasks. The extra
security also led to instability and compatibility problems. In short, Vista
came short on a lot of expectations (that people took for granted with XP). As a
consequence, four out of five XP users (out of an estimated 800m PC owners
around the world) refused to upgrade to Vista. Incidentally, the vast majority
of those who use Vista today acquired it by default when they bought a new
computer.

But there are good reasons for XP users to upgrade. Greatly
improved security is one. Apart from being snappier and more modest in its
needs, Windows 7 is a good deal friendlier than and almost as secure as Vista.
The lack of technical support is another good reason. Microsoft ceased providing
mainstream support for Windows XP last April (though it will continue to offer
bug fixes and security patches for the venerable operating system until 2014).

Without getting into the nitty-gritty of the installation
process and the hardware requirements, let’s get on with what Windows 7 has to
offer :

Better User Access Control and security features :

Ideally the UAC was supposed to keep the users safe from
malware, but instead its constant prompts and validations prevented users from
accessing those controls. Microsoft has apparently learnt from this experience,
Windows 7’s UAC has improvised the security feature by giving the user the
option to choose the level of intrusiveness (see picture 1).

While Vista users had no choice in using the UAC (except, of
course, turning it off ! ! ! ! ! — see pic. 1), Windows 7 allows the user to
choose from two intermediate notification levels between ‘Always notify’ and
‘Never notify’.

The control is in the form of a slider containing four
security levels. As before, you can accept the full-blown UAC or opt to disable
it. Not only can you tell UAC to notify you only when software changes Windows
7’s settings, not when you’re tweaking them yourself and you can also instruct
UAC not to perform the abrupt screen-dimming effect that Vista’s version uses to
grab your attention. Naturally, the convenience comes with a caveat. The slider
that users use to reduce its severity, advises you not to do so if you routinely
install new software or visit unfamiliar sites, and it warns that disabling the
dimming effect is ‘Not recommended.’

Other than salvaging UAC, relatively few significant changes
have been made to Windows 7’s security system. One meaningful improvement :
BitLocker (courtesy of a feature called BitLocker to Go) lets you encrypt USB
drives and hard disks. However the drive-encryption tool comes only with Windows
7 Ultimate and the corporate-oriented Windows 7 Enterprise. It’s one of the few
good reasons to prefer Win 7 Ultimate to Home Premium or Professional.

Internet Explorer 8, Windows 7’s default browser, includes
many security-related enhancements, including a new SmartScreen Filter (which
blocks dangerous websites) and InPrivate Browsing (which permits you to use IE
without leaving traces of where you’ve been or what you’ve done). Nonetheless,
IE 8 is equally at home in XP and Vista (and it’s free) so it doesn’t constitute
a reason to upgrade to Windows 7.

Applications fewer, better :

It’s rather common for an OS to come with paraphernalia
applications bundled along with the main OS. However, Windows 7 has taken a
different approach (for that matter Google’s Chrome OS has gone even further).
Rather than bloating it up with new applications, Microsoft eliminated three
(ahem ! ! !) non-essential programs : Windows Mail (née Outlook Express),
Windows Movie Maker (which premiered in Windows Me), and Windows Photo Gallery.
Users who don’t want to give them up can find all three at live.windows.com as
free Windows Live Essentials downloads. They may even come with your new PC,
courtesy of deals Microsoft is striking with PC manufacturers. Ironic as it
may sound, first they say that they are non-essentials and then they add it to
the list of Windows Live Essentials, they even strike deals with PC
manufacturers — strange folks these software companies or is there something
else going on in the background ?


Still present — and nicely spruced up — are the operating system’s two applications for audio and video, i.e., Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.

Windows Media Player 12 has a revised interface that divides operations into

  •  a Library view for media management; and

  •  a Now Playing view for listening and watching stuff.

There is a lot more functionality that’s been built in Media Player 12. Minimise the player into the Taskbar, and you get mini-player controls and a Jump List, both of which let you control background music without having to leave the app you’re in. Microsoft has also added support for several media types (currently not supported by Media Player 11) including AAC audio and H.264 video — the formats it needs to play unprotected music and movies from Apple’s iTunes Store.

Media Center, however, which comes only with the pricier versions of Windows 7, is most useful if you have a PC configured with a TV tuner card and you use your computer to record TV shows à la TiVo. Among its enhancements are a better program guide and support for more tuners.

(to be continued)

Internet Browsers — Part II