It shouldn't happen to an IT consultant
Spend your time doing business, not IT.
Tuesday 30 December 2008, 6:32 PM
Do Open Office's troubles matter?
Should the news posted by Michael Meeks claiming that the Open Office (OO) Project is in trouble affect the decision to use it?
Excel PowerPoint and Word have evolved pretty slowly. The last version saw very few new features added. When Microsoft conducted a customer survey asking what users wanted from the new version “more than 90 percent asked for features that were already available in Office.” (quoted from here). Microsoft concentrated on making things easier to find in the 2007 version by moving away from menus to enlarged Toolbars (‘Ribbons’). Great for the inexperienced, a pain for those who already knew where features live.
A major reason for not switching to OO, familiarity with Microsoft Office, went away. Open Office is more like the MS Office most users know (if not actually love) than Microsoft Office itself. We’ve not seen any radically new ‘killer-app’ features added to Word, Excel or PowerPoint for some years. Unless Microsoft significantly improve Office, OO shouldn’t have too trouble much keeping up. If security flaws and bugs are fixed plus new file formats supported chances are it’ll continue to compete effectively.
There are though other barriers to switching. OOs occasional failure to perfectly decode complex Word and PowerPoint documents was a frequent concern. That’s no longer an issue, every tricky document I’ve thrown at OO 3 looks exactly the same as it does MS Office. The exception is that OO, not surprisingly, can’t handle MS Office macros, something that most seriously impacts some Excel users. Another missing feature, critical for some but ignored by most, is MS Words handy ‘Split Windows’ capability enabling two parts of the same document to be viewed and edited simultaneously. Something I would hate to be without.
Would I be happy running a business on Open Office? Well there’s still no getting away from the need for Outlook, it may be a recourse hungry monster but it is the de-facto standard. Every mobile phone and PDA syncs with it, you know every other email clients' messages will display properly in it. But its available separately from around £35 so that’s not big a deal. Similarly Microsoft Access, for which the is no OO equivalent can be had from around £80.
I’d certainly install OO, if only as an easy to way export files as documents PDFs and as a handy backup should the occasional file disagree with MS Office. Nonetheless In practice most business never know when a vital Excel spreadsheet or Word Document chock full of macros will drop into an inbox. But if you really don’t need the things it can’t do, then it is simply down to how comfortable staff are with OO. I would encourage them to give it a try.
Excel PowerPoint and Word have evolved pretty slowly. The last version saw very few new features added. When Microsoft conducted a customer survey asking what users wanted from the new version “more than 90 percent asked for features that were already available in Office.” (quoted from here). Microsoft concentrated on making things easier to find in the 2007 version by moving away from menus to enlarged Toolbars (‘Ribbons’). Great for the inexperienced, a pain for those who already knew where features live.
A major reason for not switching to OO, familiarity with Microsoft Office, went away. Open Office is more like the MS Office most users know (if not actually love) than Microsoft Office itself. We’ve not seen any radically new ‘killer-app’ features added to Word, Excel or PowerPoint for some years. Unless Microsoft significantly improve Office, OO shouldn’t have too trouble much keeping up. If security flaws and bugs are fixed plus new file formats supported chances are it’ll continue to compete effectively.
There are though other barriers to switching. OOs occasional failure to perfectly decode complex Word and PowerPoint documents was a frequent concern. That’s no longer an issue, every tricky document I’ve thrown at OO 3 looks exactly the same as it does MS Office. The exception is that OO, not surprisingly, can’t handle MS Office macros, something that most seriously impacts some Excel users. Another missing feature, critical for some but ignored by most, is MS Words handy ‘Split Windows’ capability enabling two parts of the same document to be viewed and edited simultaneously. Something I would hate to be without.
Would I be happy running a business on Open Office? Well there’s still no getting away from the need for Outlook, it may be a recourse hungry monster but it is the de-facto standard. Every mobile phone and PDA syncs with it, you know every other email clients' messages will display properly in it. But its available separately from around £35 so that’s not big a deal. Similarly Microsoft Access, for which the is no OO equivalent can be had from around £80.
I’d certainly install OO, if only as an easy to way export files as documents PDFs and as a handy backup should the occasional file disagree with MS Office. Nonetheless In practice most business never know when a vital Excel spreadsheet or Word Document chock full of macros will drop into an inbox. But if you really don’t need the things it can’t do, then it is simply down to how comfortable staff are with OO. I would encourage them to give it a try.
Sunday 28 December 2008, 10:39 PM
Riches snatched away at any time
I’ve recently heard from a depressed client with an online mail order business selling Outoor equipment. His Google ranking has dropped. Onlines sales crashed by over 90%, literally overnight. Lucky the man has a high street shop too.
It happens, Google tweaks their rankings, quite rightly too. It’s a constant battle between Search Engine Optimisers (SEOs) paid to push web sites up the list, and the Engines. Google and its users want the most ‘relevant’ pages at the top, not the best SEOd. My guess is his SEO will put get him back up there soon enough.
Nonetheless he shouldn’t rely on it. I did the warn the man to never ever rely on online income depending on one third party. Google Rankings change, eBay / Paypal accounts and the like can and are frozen or closed at any time. Assume almost any other source of online business that is not 100% under your control can be taken away at the snap of an Ethernet connector.
It happens, Google tweaks their rankings, quite rightly too. It’s a constant battle between Search Engine Optimisers (SEOs) paid to push web sites up the list, and the Engines. Google and its users want the most ‘relevant’ pages at the top, not the best SEOd. My guess is his SEO will put get him back up there soon enough.
Nonetheless he shouldn’t rely on it. I did the warn the man to never ever rely on online income depending on one third party. Google Rankings change, eBay / Paypal accounts and the like can and are frozen or closed at any time. Assume almost any other source of online business that is not 100% under your control can be taken away at the snap of an Ethernet connector.
Saturday 27 December 2008, 9:35 PM
If it takes ten minutes why not add blogs and social networking to a site?
Earlier this month Google announced Friend Connect, hosted, very easily added social networking web applets that add blog comment and (at present, basic) social networking facilities to any web site for free.
Totally un-coincidently Facebook launched Facebook Connect at the same time. - Facebook’s service is aimed at developers integrating sites with Facebook, so will in the main appeal to larger or largely web based companies.
For the smaller business with a web site attracting enough users create online discussions, but who are not doing so, Google’s offering is appealing. Within ten minutes I added blogs hosted by Google to a client's site. Marvelous, unless of course your business has other problems causing customers to frequently complain. Sort that out first before inviting public comment.
Because Friend Connect supports OpenID, an open-source identity management system backed by amongst others Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo, those or a Google login can be used by visitors to ‘join’ a site and leave messages.
Very soon I expect more functionality. Developers are encouraged to create more Friend Connect gizmos using Google’s Open Sourced OpenSocial API/. An early example crafted by Google is a user generated ratings and reviews applet. A key feature of social networks, the ability for members of a group (your site) to message each other (as well as OpenID friends) isn’t there yet but, I don’t expect it to take long to arrive.
The upside of OpenID is that without visitors having to register for your site you’ll attract more user interaction, the downside is you don’t get to grab demographic and other marketing data as they register. I expect future Friend Connect gizmos will provide the ability to conduct surveys, though as ever you’ll have to bribe your web users to take part.
Of course it may take ten minutes to get a blog or forum up and running, how much time you spend moderating posts and interacting with customers is another matter, but time spent talking to them is rarely time wasted, though I do admit to very occasionally saying that through gritted teeth.
Totally un-coincidently Facebook launched Facebook Connect at the same time. - Facebook’s service is aimed at developers integrating sites with Facebook, so will in the main appeal to larger or largely web based companies.
For the smaller business with a web site attracting enough users create online discussions, but who are not doing so, Google’s offering is appealing. Within ten minutes I added blogs hosted by Google to a client's site. Marvelous, unless of course your business has other problems causing customers to frequently complain. Sort that out first before inviting public comment.
Because Friend Connect supports OpenID, an open-source identity management system backed by amongst others Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo, those or a Google login can be used by visitors to ‘join’ a site and leave messages.
Very soon I expect more functionality. Developers are encouraged to create more Friend Connect gizmos using Google’s Open Sourced OpenSocial API/. An early example crafted by Google is a user generated ratings and reviews applet. A key feature of social networks, the ability for members of a group (your site) to message each other (as well as OpenID friends) isn’t there yet but, I don’t expect it to take long to arrive.
The upside of OpenID is that without visitors having to register for your site you’ll attract more user interaction, the downside is you don’t get to grab demographic and other marketing data as they register. I expect future Friend Connect gizmos will provide the ability to conduct surveys, though as ever you’ll have to bribe your web users to take part.
Of course it may take ten minutes to get a blog or forum up and running, how much time you spend moderating posts and interacting with customers is another matter, but time spent talking to them is rarely time wasted, though I do admit to very occasionally saying that through gritted teeth.
Saturday 27 December 2008, 2:06 AM
Unlimited storage???!!!!!
Backing up data online, has many clear advantages. But till now I’ve not found an affordable way of storing enough data to make it worthwhile. Is Livedrive the answer?
Currently I recommend that my clients’ data is backed up to local hard disks whether that’s via USB, Ethernet and/or on separate drives in each machine. Ideally drives should be removable or portable, that way backups can be regularly swapped with one that's off-site. I use Acronis TrueImage to create encrypted incremental backup files of the drive image. It is though far from perfect, I’m still looking for something more reliable. I would dearly love to at least supplement it with an online backup.
So far I’ve not found a way. Limited upstream bandwidth is in part an issue but the greater problem is cost, a 1TB SATA drive is available for around £80. It’s not unusual to find it costs well over £1000 per month for the same online backup. Of course they’re not charging to cover the costs of storage, it’s the bandwidth you are paying for.
Livedrive, still in beta, offers, they say, unlimited storage. with web and mobile file access plus other claimed cleverness. The cunning bit though, if it works, is the caching and intelligent background syncing of files designed to minimise bandwidth and maximise speed.
It looks good so far, their terms of service don’t mention fair use or other restrictions, the man behind it set up Fasthosts, so he should be a somebody who understands a hosting service’s business models. Whilst there’s no mention of pricing it appears be pitched at least in part at consumers, “Access the same iTunes music library from all of your PC's” and “Publish to straight YouTube coming soon” so I expect it will be affordable.
Online backup has to be just that a backup, assume that at any time your host may go bust or delete all your data due to a billing error (or have it stolen –make encryption your job). It is though excellent to have. Nothing else prevents so many potential IT disasters becoming a crisis. Lets hope this is a model that proves to be as revolutionary as on first sight it seems. I’ll give it a go and get back to you.
Currently I recommend that my clients’ data is backed up to local hard disks whether that’s via USB, Ethernet and/or on separate drives in each machine. Ideally drives should be removable or portable, that way backups can be regularly swapped with one that's off-site. I use Acronis TrueImage to create encrypted incremental backup files of the drive image. It is though far from perfect, I’m still looking for something more reliable. I would dearly love to at least supplement it with an online backup.
So far I’ve not found a way. Limited upstream bandwidth is in part an issue but the greater problem is cost, a 1TB SATA drive is available for around £80. It’s not unusual to find it costs well over £1000 per month for the same online backup. Of course they’re not charging to cover the costs of storage, it’s the bandwidth you are paying for.
Livedrive, still in beta, offers, they say, unlimited storage. with web and mobile file access plus other claimed cleverness. The cunning bit though, if it works, is the caching and intelligent background syncing of files designed to minimise bandwidth and maximise speed.
It looks good so far, their terms of service don’t mention fair use or other restrictions, the man behind it set up Fasthosts, so he should be a somebody who understands a hosting service’s business models. Whilst there’s no mention of pricing it appears be pitched at least in part at consumers, “Access the same iTunes music library from all of your PC's” and “Publish to straight YouTube coming soon” so I expect it will be affordable.
Online backup has to be just that a backup, assume that at any time your host may go bust or delete all your data due to a billing error (or have it stolen –make encryption your job). It is though excellent to have. Nothing else prevents so many potential IT disasters becoming a crisis. Lets hope this is a model that proves to be as revolutionary as on first sight it seems. I’ll give it a go and get back to you.
Thursday 25 December 2008, 6:02 PM
FTP not VPN
In the unlikely event you are missing the office this Christmas, this is how I like to arrange remote file access. The standard method is via a VPN. It’s not a solution for smaller businesses I favour. Aside from the security of the VPN connection itself, it is inherently risky to allow the staffs' home PCs, that are out of sight and mind, the total trust of office LAN. Any malware has an easy route into the office.
Even the lowest risk user is at a much greater risk of when working from home. They may only use their PC for work, not visit porn sites (the quickest way to infect PC with malware), and have no idea how to install applications, but if you can’t keep an eye on the PC, updates may be missed or anti-virus and firewall failures go unnoticed. And who’s using it? Well meaning house guests with access to the PC are I find, a frequent cause of malware. Teenagers are the worst, it’s not a surprise they are they are malware makers favourite target. Kids know enough to get infected via infested peer to peer files sharing applications, free games, porn sites, fake security software, pirated applications and files swapped with friends. Few know enough to know what is and isn’t risky.
Because most remote users only want to access their files my favoured and free FTP solution is the free open source FileZilla server and client. Using FTP to transfer files may be mildly less convenient than saving to a drive letter, it is though inherently much safer.
FileZilla Server isn’t perfect. The server doesn’t update or prompt for updates automatically (the client does) so it needs regularly checking for updates. It also worth remembering FTP isn’t encrypted, so using public networks can be a worry (though no more than email).
Gina Trapani’s clear to use guide to setting up the server is here. For security reasons I also recommend removing details of the server name from the welcome message, replace it with ‘Unauthorised Access prohibited’. Do not include a company name. Also note that logging is disabled by default. Enable it. If your net connection doesn’t provide a fixed IP use as a Dynamic DNS service as I’ve mentioned before in the second from last para..
With the minimum firewall fiddling, that is enabling forwarding ports 20 and 21 to the server via Windows’ and the router’s firewall (which also means giving the server a fixed local IP address) clients will only manage to connect in ‘active mode’. To force them to do so open FileZilla Client’s Site Manager on the File menu, This is where connection details are managed. Enable Active mode on the connection’s transfer settings tab. More details of the difference between active and passive mode are here.
A nice bonus of FTP (though often less reliable than using the client) is the ability to access the server via web browser. Connect using the format: ftp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOSTNAME.X.Y Obviously replacing HOSTNAME, USERNAME and HOSTNAME.X.Y with the appropriate details. There’s also of course the ever trusty and pervasive command line FTP client.
Happy season to all, now back to face-stuffing.
Even the lowest risk user is at a much greater risk of when working from home. They may only use their PC for work, not visit porn sites (the quickest way to infect PC with malware), and have no idea how to install applications, but if you can’t keep an eye on the PC, updates may be missed or anti-virus and firewall failures go unnoticed. And who’s using it? Well meaning house guests with access to the PC are I find, a frequent cause of malware. Teenagers are the worst, it’s not a surprise they are they are malware makers favourite target. Kids know enough to get infected via infested peer to peer files sharing applications, free games, porn sites, fake security software, pirated applications and files swapped with friends. Few know enough to know what is and isn’t risky.
Because most remote users only want to access their files my favoured and free FTP solution is the free open source FileZilla server and client. Using FTP to transfer files may be mildly less convenient than saving to a drive letter, it is though inherently much safer.
FileZilla Server isn’t perfect. The server doesn’t update or prompt for updates automatically (the client does) so it needs regularly checking for updates. It also worth remembering FTP isn’t encrypted, so using public networks can be a worry (though no more than email).
Gina Trapani’s clear to use guide to setting up the server is here. For security reasons I also recommend removing details of the server name from the welcome message, replace it with ‘Unauthorised Access prohibited’. Do not include a company name. Also note that logging is disabled by default. Enable it. If your net connection doesn’t provide a fixed IP use as a Dynamic DNS service as I’ve mentioned before in the second from last para..
With the minimum firewall fiddling, that is enabling forwarding ports 20 and 21 to the server via Windows’ and the router’s firewall (which also means giving the server a fixed local IP address) clients will only manage to connect in ‘active mode’. To force them to do so open FileZilla Client’s Site Manager on the File menu, This is where connection details are managed. Enable Active mode on the connection’s transfer settings tab. More details of the difference between active and passive mode are here.
A nice bonus of FTP (though often less reliable than using the client) is the ability to access the server via web browser. Connect using the format: ftp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOSTNAME.X.Y Obviously replacing HOSTNAME, USERNAME and HOSTNAME.X.Y with the appropriate details. There’s also of course the ever trusty and pervasive command line FTP client.
Happy season to all, now back to face-stuffing.
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