Navigate itwriting.com using a cloud-based tool:
http://affiliates.quintura.com/itwriting/quintura.html
Is this anything more than a novelty? I’d be interested in opinions.
Quintura is presenting here at The Future of Web Apps.
Category Archives: software
Ubuntu Desktop not used in business
I got a telling reponse from Canonical when I approached its Public Relations team looking for case studies of businesses that had switched from Windows:
… we find that the businesses using Ubuntu tend to use the server edition right now and so a windows comparison is not relevant. Ubuntu desktop is largely in the consumer space not business.
It hardly comes as a surprise to discover that most businesses use Windows, but I did think there would be a few examples. I’ve been running Ubuntu, mainly on my laptop, and find it perfectly solid and useable. In fact, it is possibly better suited for business than for consumers. The problem with Linux is that you always seem to run into one or two problems that require intricate, non-obvious steps to resolve. Well, they are obvious to Linux geeks, but not to the rest of us. In a business this can be mitigated by standardizing the hardware and providing a channel of support, but home users are more likely to get frustrated. Furthermore, in my experience home users install a greater variety of software. They get CDs from ISPs, or with their new scanner or camera, and expect them to work. They want to play games and enjoy DVDs. All these things can be problematic for home users, but are less relevant and more easily managed for business users.
I don’t mean to minimize the problems facing anyone switching to Linux. In the business world, that includes custom or niche software that is likely to be Windows-only. Every small business I encounter seems to have an Access or VB application that has become business-critical. Another snag is doing without Microsoft Office. Yes, Microsoft Office is over-priced (unless you are a home or academic user), but it is on the whole better to work with than Open Office, and if you are bashing out documents all day that makes a difference (I make an exception for Outlook 2007, which is infuriatingly slow). There is also the thorny problem of document compatibility, recently made worse by the format wars.
Another factor, under-appreciated by the media, is that Windows has a mature and very comprehensive administrative infrastructure for managing any number of desktops. For larger organizations this makes Windows the obvious choice.
Therefore I was not expecting very many examples, but I thought there would be one or two case studies, particularly as Canonical offers a table of prices for desktop support. I doubt many home users are taking this up. Of course Linux is mainly popular on the server, but Ubuntu has a particular desktop focus.
I am hoping that someone will read this blog and say, “this is nonsense, we use Ubuntu in business”. If that is the case, please contact me, especially if you are in the UK, and willing to be quoted. I’d also be interested in hearing from those who tried and failed, or explored the possibility and gave up.
Why Open Office does not import/export Microsoft Office Open XML
Interesting opinion [Slashdot] from someone who says he is one of the founders of NeoOffice:
Yes, OpenXML import and export could be integrated into OOo [Open Office] today but engineering politics and Sun’s manipulation of the project to foment a document format war have kept this functionality out of OOo, doing nothing except harm users that need to seamlessly integrate with MS Office environments.
I’m inclined to agree. If niche player DocumentsToGo can implement this feature, is it so hard for Open Office? I doubt it. Now, I am sure that any such feature would not be perfect – but import/export features never are. Equally, I’d expect that it would work fine with the vast majority of documents that people email back and forth every day.
See also A Plague on both your houses.
PS Microsoft could also do a much better job with ODF import/export. These problems are more political than technical.
Update: note that according to this document “Office 12 import” is planned for the 3.0 release of Open Office, which is due in September 2008. There are no stated plans for export.
Technorati tags: open office, ooxml, odf
Fixing Bluetooth on a Toshiba with Ubuntu
I’ve been running Ubuntu Linux on my Toshiba laptop. One of the few things that did not work initially was the internal Bluetooth adapter. Ubuntu knew it was there: it shows in Device Manager as “Platform Device (bluetooth)”. But all the utilities behaved as if no Bluetooth adapter was available.
It looked like a driver problem so I ferreted around looking for a driver. That wasn’t it though. The problem is simply that by default the Bluetooth adapter is turned off. It can only be turned on in software using a Toshiba utility. Toshiba does not provide this for Linux, but fortunately it has been reverse engineered. So the solution is to install toshset, which you can do easily from Synaptic Package Manager. Then you open a terminal and type:
sudo toshset -bluetooth on
and it all starts working. I installed gnome-bluetooth and successfully sent files to and from my mobile phone (Samsung i600).
Not difficult once you know; but it wasn’t obvious what to do after the initial install failed to give working Bluetooth. The pain of being in the minority.
IBM’s new Lotus Symphony
I’ve had a quick look at the beta of Lotus Symphony, IBM’s new Office suite. It’s built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP), which is interesting in itself, and is another salvo in the office document format war.
Why would anyone want to use the new Symphony? I presume it makes some kind of sense in the context of an integrated workflow and collaboration platform based on Notes. Considered purely as an office suite, it does not yet come close to Microsoft Office, or even Open Office.
The FAQ claims some compatibility with “Microsoft Office files” (though there’s a long list of things that might not convert correctly), but studiously avoids any mention of the 2007 Microsoft Office document formats. It should say: compatibility with old Microsoft Office formats. Note that if you install Office 2007, save a document, and try to open it in Symphony, it will not work at all. Nor will Microsoft Office (any version) open Symphony documents, unless you take the trouble to export to a format other than Open Document. What a mess.
When I searched for Lotus Symphony on Google, I was amused to see what came third and fourth in the list:
New iPod locked more tightly to iTunes, will not work with Linux
Apple has apparently made some changes to the iPod that make it increasingly difficult to use with anything other than iTunes. Since iTunes does not run on Linux, this affects Linux users more than anyone.
I wrote a piece a while back on Linux multimedia, and was impressed at how well my old iPod Photo works with Amarok on Linux. I have this iPod formatted for the Mac, since iTunes seems to work better on OS X. The only change I needed was to turn off journalling on the HFS+ file system. So what’s happened now?
According to this post, Apple has encrypted the iPod’s database. If you write to the database other than with iTunes, the iPod firmware will report that it is empty.
How about replacing the firmware completely, say with Linux? Bad news there as well – Apple has encrypted the firmware too. See ipodlinux.org for more details. In consequence, you can only hack the firmware on older models.
The change to the song database is more significant. Only a tiny geek minority would be willing to replace their firmware, but there are more people who like the the iPod but not iTunes. This may be damaging for third parties like J River, which offers iPod-compatible media center software.
See also Mike Elgan’s article on Is Apple the New Microsoft; and also note how the piece has over 1000 “Do not Recommend this story” votes from enraged Apple enthusiasts.
There is also a discussion on slashdot.
Update: more commentary from Miguel de Icaza (of GNOME, Mono fame) and Cory Doctorow – the usual suspects, I guess. “This has nothing to do with preventing piracy — this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store,” says Doctorow.
Ninja Gaiden 2 announced
Ninja Gaiden 2 is on its way for XBox 360. A few snippets of info and screens here.
I mention this only because its predecessor on the XBox is my favourite game ever.
Technorati tags: xbox 360, ninja gaiden
Tried Vista speech recognition yet?
I had not, but gave it a try today. It is almost a hidden feature, but if you go into Control Panel and double-click Speech Recognition Options, it all starts happening.
I have a few advantages. My microphone is of high quality, I use an external mic preamp, and my office is relatively quiet. After half an hour of so going through the tutorial (which also does basic voice training), I was ready to go. I have no complaints about the ease of setup. Once speech recognition was enabled, I simply opened Word and started dictating.
There are two ways to look at speech recognition. You can consider it an accessibility feature for users who prefer not to type, for whatever reason. For example, RSI is a common problem for writers and computer programmers. Alternatively, you can consider it as better way of entering text. After all, most of us can speak faster than we can type. Ideally I would like to use it to assist with transcribing interviews.
I had a simple question. Can I get a chunk of text into Word more quickly with speech recognition than with typing? To try this out, I used a few lines that are indelibly imprinted into my brain, since they make up the first stanza of Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils which I learned at school.
The test
First, I typed it. It took me about 25 seconds, which means I type at over 50 wpm (about 70 wpm according to this test).
Next, I tried speech recognition. I tried it several times, to give it the best possible chance. I found I could do the initial text entry in around 15 seconds, but correcting errors took longer. The best I managed for the entire stanza was about a minute – twice as long as typing.
The problem is that certain words and phrases seem to be difficult for speech recognition to get right, and correcting these takes so long that it wipes out any gains from the easy ones. In my case, the line that Vista struggled with most was this one:
That floats on high o’er dales and hills
As I repeated the experiment, I got different variations:
That floats on high powered tables and hills
That floats on high on the walls and hills
That floats on high ideals and hills
The speech engine will always try to make sense of what you say using its dictionary and who-knows-what clever algorithms, but this can work against you. In this case, it is really just the the word “o’er” that trips up the engine. If I dictate instead:
That floats on high over dales and hills
it usually transcribes perfectly. Unfortunately, in trying to make sense of “o’er”, it usually messes up several other words as well.
Does this mean that a poem with elided text is just a difficult case? Possibly, but unfortunately technical writing seems to pose the same kinds of problems. Everything is fine for a line or two, and then a difficult word or phrase causes garbage to be inserted into your text. Speech correction in Vista is nicely implemented and works well, but it takes time.
Pros and cons
I don’t mean to put you off. I’m actually impressed with Vista’s speech recognition, though it is early days and I’m not sure how well it compares to alternatives like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I could definitely get some work done, and considered as an accessibility feature, it seems pretty good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem quite good enough to be useful even to a proficient typist – at least, not without more time spent voice training and learning to get the best out of it.
Technorati tags: vista speech recognition
Windows Live: why doesn’t SkyDrive integrate with Office?
Dare Obasanjo blogs about Windows Live, and refers us to get.live.com where you can sign up for a number of free services.
I think Spaces is great, except that performance seems sluggish (though it’s getting better), and Live Writer is my blogging tool of choice. So there’s stuff here I like, but what is of most interest to me is Sky Drive. I’m a big fan of web storage, because it means you can work from several machines and everything stays up-to-date. It is also an effective off-site backup. Currently I use a subversion repository on my own site for this. I also use Amazon S3. Both are excellent, but saving and loading documents is not quite a seamless process. To see what I mean, consider the steps you would have to explain to a non-expert user. Then compare this to what most of us do every day: open a document, work on it, then hit save.
The puzzle is why Microsoft has not built this feature into Office. This is meant to be an advantage of the Microsoft platform: a single vendor stack in which everything plays nicely together (Apple does this better, of course).
One of the first things I did with SkyDrive was to copy an Excel file into it. That works fine, either through browser upload, or by drag-and-drop if you install the upload ActiveX control. Just for fun, I then went back to SkyDrive and “opened” the Excel document from it. What this really does is to download the file to a temporary location, and opens it from there. Everything seems fine until you hit save. Then you get:
Your changes could not be saved to ‘somesheet[1].xls’ because of a sharing violation. Try saving to a different file.
Click OK, and then I get a weird message about a file with a meaningless name having the wrong extension – because apparently Excel automatically saved to another temporary file without an extension. Bizarre behaviour.
Ok, I admit, I knew this would not work. But isn’t this how it ought to work? I think this would be a killer feature for Office and Windows Live: foolproof open and save from/to web storage.
I also think Office should cope better with what is, from the user’s perspective, a rather obvious sequence of steps.
Zoho has a plug-in that nearly works right, though it has two major flaws. One, it did not work properly for me at all, but just threw errors on saving. Two, it converts Office into Zoho’s online format. I understand why this is the correct thing for a Zoho plug-in to do, but I’d rather keep documents in their native format and forego true online editing.
ODF vs OOXML: A plague on both your houses
I’ve been writing a piece on Linux/Windows interoperability, and broached the tricky matter of file formats.
It struck me forcibly how much the situation has changed for the worse, for the average user who could not care one jot about XML or ISO for that matter.
Prior to Office 2007, at least a Microsoft Office user could email documents to a Linux Open Office user and they would most likely open OK. Now that’s no longer the case.
I guess Open Office users have always had to make allowance for Microsoft users by doing Save As or setting their defaults to compatible formats, when emailing documents the other way or sharing them on a network. That’s no better today. Open Office defaults to ODF which a default install of Microsoft Office will not open.
Both sides would probably say that this is the problem they are trying to solve. Nevertheless, from the user’s perspective we have gone backwards.
What a shame that Microsoft, IBM, Sun and so on were not willing to engage with each other to adopt a common standard acceptable to all parties, instead of treating document formats as a competitive weapon, never mind how much users suffer.