Rich's Random Thoughts

I’m happy to see that Microsoft is finally getting into the on line office market. There is nothing better for inovation than competition between two companies with a lot of money, and a lot of smart employees. I’ve been a heavy user of the Google Docs wordprocessor and spreadsheet apps since 2006.  The Google Docs apps are not as powerful as the desktop Microsoft Office programs, but now have enough features that I have almost stopped using Microsoft Office desktop products.  The thing that drew me to Google Docs in the first place was it’s excellent collaboration features, like real time multi-user document editing and a strong version control system – all essential features for college students.

Here are my thoughts on Microsoft Word Web App (live.office.com). Before you test drive it yourself, you’ll need an active hotmail.com or live.com account.

Word Web App Pros:

• The look and feel of the Word Web App is very similar to Word 2007.  Similar, but not as many features, which is to be expected at this point in it’s product development. If you use Word 2007 you have a very small learning curve.
• Sharing a document with others is easy to do.  Having the document on the internet makes collaboration simple… no more worrying about whether or not you have the most recent version in your email inbox or not.
• The built in version control looks solid.  It is now a trivial task to revert the document back to an earlier version if necessary, or see what was deleted by accident.
• 25GB of file storage is excellent. I’m not sure what the limite is in Google Docs to be honest.
• You can edit documents in any web browser, not just Internet Explorer.  I’ve been working in Google Chrome on a Mac, and the experience has been good.

Word Web App Cons:

• No printing.  This is huge.  You cannot print unless you open your document in the desktop version of Microsoft Word, or a compatible word processer like OpenOffice.  I can understand that they still want people to buy their desktop version of Office, but not being able to print makes Google Docs look very good.
• No footnotes or endnotes. For students this is a problem.  You can add footnotes and endnotes in the desktop version of Word, but you can’t edit them or even see them in the online version.  Hopefully this will change soon, as this is a big problem for students who need to cite their references.  Google Docs started out without footnotes, but added them in October of 2008.
• While you can edit documents just fine in any web browser, if you want to edit the file in your desktop version of Word you need to be on a Windows computer in Internet Explorer.  Not a huge deal, unless you need to add footnotes, or want an easy way to print.

Whether you end up using Microsoft Office Web Apps, or Google Docs, we’re all going to benefit from Microsoft getting into this market.  Overall this is a good first effort from Microsoft.  Hopefully they’ll quickly add printing and footnotes to their otherwise excellent product.

Here’s a short Google Apps video that shows how useful real time collaboration on a document can be… no more emailing a document back and forth between collaborators:

Tired of being asked to shell out cash for the anti-virus software that came with your new computer last year?  If so, then look no further.  I’ve been using Microsoft Security Essentials for almost a year now, and it has been doing an excellent job. Here is a recent review if you’d like to see an more in-depth comparison.  If you want to make the switch now just do the following:

1. Uninstall your current antivirus software – Do this by going to your control panel, and uninstall your current anti-virus software.
2. Reboot your computer.
3. Download & Install Microsoft Security Essentials.

Your’re done!  No more anti-virus software asking for $50 or more every year.  Enjoy!

How can you make your iPad more useful?  Velco!

iPad + Velcro = Amazing

Yes, there is such a thing as too much computer security! If password rules that make passwords too difficult to remember, and people will write them down and leave them under their keyboards…

From the Desk of David Pogue – Online, How Much Security Is Too Much? – NYTimes.com.

In short, yes.  If you quickly want to see how much information on Facebook you are making public, go to the ReclaimPrivacy.org website, and follow the easy instructions there, and you’ll know in less than a minute how much of your information on Facebook is now available for the general public to view.

We should be concerned about how Facebook is handling information that we assumed would be private when we signed up.  The problem isn’t so much that some of the information we put on Facebook is available to the public, it is that Facebook has repeatedly changed the default rules on what it makes public.  When I signed up on Facebook 2 or 3 years ago, virtually all the information I posted there was private by default.  That was one of the big selling points of the site: Connect with friends and share information in a private fourm.

If I signed up today, virtually all the information I post would be public by default.  Not only that, but if I clicked “OK” on the different “information dialog boxes” that appeared over the past year telling me how the Facebook’s default privacy setting were changing, virtually all my information would be public now as well.  That is very concerning.

To find out what you’re exposing to the public internet, go to: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Skype makes my life easier once again, and does it for free!  Most people know that it is a great tool for making free voice and video call from computer to computer, and that it allow people to make very inexpensive calls to land lines and cell phone around the world.  What most people don’t know, and what I didn’t know until recently, is that Skype will also allow you to share the desktop of your computer with other people.  So why is this so great?  Let me explain.

As someone who ends up helping co-workers, family and friends with computer problems, there are few things more frustrating than trying to talk someone through a series of clicks and windows on a computer that you cannot see.   Not only that, but I am also typically relying on rather sketchy description of a problem that more often than not is hazy at best.  That is where Skype comes in.  The person I am helping shares their desktop with me, and I can see what they are doing that triggers the problem.  At that point I can tell the person exactly what to do to fix the problem, and then correct them if they make any mistakes.  A win-win and time saver for everyone.

Here are some other potential uses for Skype Screen Sharing:

• Demonstrating Software.
• Collaborative Editing of Documents (especially if you insist on using Microsoft Word instead of Google Docs).
• Desktop computer support (as we already discussed).

Enjoy!

“How can I save a YouTube file and save play it on my kids iPod on our next 12 hour road trip?”  Believe it or not, this is a question that I get fairly frequently as systems administrator at the UVic Law Library, and as the neighbourhood technology guru.  Here are a couple of tools that can make downloading flash videos from YouTube (or other video websites), a fairly easy task:

Step 1: Open Firefox, and download the Video Download Helper plug-in.  This plugin will allow you to save Flash Files to your desktop.  If that is allow you want to do, then you should be able to view the video using a video player like VLC Player.  If you want to convert the flash video into something playable on your iPhone or iPod, then on to the next step.

Step 2: If you are running Windows and want to convert the flash video to an iPhone compatible format, or Windows media format, then I’d suggest you download and install Format Factory.  If you are running Mac OSX, then I’d download Handbrake, to do the conversion job.

DVD Conversion: If all you want to do convert some DVD’s to iPhone or iPod Touch format for the road trip, then install Handbrake on your computer and rip the DVD’s into MP4 files.  This will take a while to convert the videos (almost as long as it would take to watch the video itself), but can be worth while if everyone is able to keep their sanity on the trip.

Have fun converting YouTube videos for your kids iPods for that next long family road trip!

Like flossing your teeth, keeping track of your all your user accounts, passwords and digital assets is not easy to remember to do.  So why is it important to keep an organized record of information like this, when you can simply keep it all in your head?  Because if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you want someone close to you to be able to access all this information in order to wind up your affairs and pass along your digital legacy to people who are important to you.

What digital assests are we talking about?  Things like:

• Online Account Information: Facebook, Blog’s, websites, Email, and Shopping sites.
• Hardware: including computers, thumb drives, backup drives and DVD’s… Any hardware that you have personal data stored on.

What got me thinking about this?  I saw a thought provoking article on the American Bar Association’s web site, called Estate Planning for your Digital Assets, by Dennis Kennedy.  Here are 3 important steps taken out of his somewhat lengthy article:

Step 1. Inventory Your Digital Assets: After the inventory is complete, put the list (including user names and passwords) in a secure place, possibly in a safety deposit box along with your will.

Step 2. Identify Appropriate Help: Let one or more people know about your inventory, so they know it exists and where to look for it when it will be needed.

Step 3. Provide Instructions:  You may want friends on social networks like Facebook or Twitter to be notified of your passing.  Make sure you’ve provided a message to post (along with the passwords you’ve already written down). You may want to close up your blog with a parting message, or pass along specific information to individuals (like photos or journals).

Introduction to the Survey Results

In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic law students over the past seven years, we decided to ask some extra questions about the increasing important mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with.  One major change to the methodology of this survey compared to past years is that we sent the survey to all students at the law school, not just first year students.  The response rate was 25% this year rather than close to 100% in previous years.

[Note: if you have problems seeing any graphs on this page, please look at the underlying Google Doc's page for this blog post]

Executive Summary:

• 30% of students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet.
• 97% of students own laptops, and over 60% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 39% of student laptops are Mac’s.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,200 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• All students now report having high speed internet in their homes.
• 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 86% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 54% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 18% use UVic email and 15% Hotmail.
• 58% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing.  27% chose Google Docs, 5% OpenOffice Writer & 10% “Other”.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 86% of students use Facebook and 65% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.

Read more…

How much do law students spend on books and materials every semester?  CALI lessons are free at www.cali.org.  From the CALI website:

• Study using over 800 interactive tutorials in 33 law school subjects.
• Lessons are sritten and edited by law professors.
• Ask your librarian for the CALI authorization code to register at the CALI website.