Scargill

Archive for July, 2009

You have to wonder about good old BT…  in the middle of the worst recession for years and with a potential for 25% of the population to be off sick with the flu, BT decide to put up their daytime rates by a whopping 17% – which will apparently bring the cost of a daytime call to a minimum of 5.25p.  They have to be NUTS.

Personally I’ve not used BT for years and if it were not for the need to install a BT line initially when moving to some new houses, I’d never use them again.

Most folk out there will be familiar with Skype – though it never ceases to amaze me that there are still some who’ve never heard of it. Skype on the surface of it is a simple PC program for sending messenger-type messages to other Skype users or perhaps talking to other Skype users via microphone and speakers (or headset) – but in fact it is far more than that. At the first level you can buy “Skype out” credit and make calls to real phones – and at the second level you can pay a quarterly fee and have an incoming number – and that’s what I chose to do some 3 years ago now.  I use this for all my calls and have never looked back.

SkypeIn and SkypeOut
Of course you don’t need a PC to use Skype, you can buy dedicated Skype phones and so in my office in the UK I have one of the better Logitech cameras with built-in mic – and over in Spain I have a USB unit that plugs into the laptop over there and lets me make calls over a wireless phone – I think it was about £29 at Maplins – you can also get dedicated phones that need no computer at all, just a wireless connection.  I think I pay about £2 a month for the privilege of all-inclusive landline calls all day and all night, paying only for calls to mobile phones – and even then the cost is quite low.

So – did the BT announcement annoy you as much as it did me? Yes? then do something about it!! GIVE THEM A MISS.

Have you noticed how much cleaner the IE8 interface is compared to the past – well that is if you ensure abominations like the Stumbelupon, Yahoo and other toolbars are closed?

Nice – but there is still clutter there – and if you’re not on a high-res screen – perhaps you have one of those little EEE computers, the info at the top of the browser can end up taking up much of your screen… so I set about looking up ways to minimise the clutter. I’m increasingly a Firefox fan and here’s my new Firefox setup.

As you can see, pretty cleaned up – but what happened to the menu??? I simply reduced it down to a pop-up as you see on the left. And how did I do that?  Simply go get this add-on and follow the instructions for a nice, clean Firefox menu. It’s worth the effort.

But… what about the rest of it? Simple – once you have the compact menu – there is a lot of space to it’s right! Simply right-click your menu area and click CUSTOMISE – not only can you drag items from the options given but you can drag any icon from any OTHER toolbar over to the top – including the back button and anything else – then when you are done – hide all the other toolbars and you end up with something like the image above – but customised to suit your tastes…

I love it. Oh and if you’re into customising Firefox – check out out iMACROS and FoxTab.  No more filling in passwords for me!

Last night I sat down for the first time and watch Google’s “preview video” for Google Wave and I’m very excited.

I don’t know about you but I have NEVER thought email was very good.  For credentials, I’ve been using emails since before they were emails, every day of my life – by the hundred (it’s not unusual for me to process over a hundred non-spam emails a day) so I’m no stranger to the concept. I use Exchange mail for work – and privately having tried just about every email system on the planet I’ve settled on Google mail.  I also have several blogs, a Twitter feed and presenses on Facebook, LinkedIn and a thousand other social and business networks. I maintain all of my images on Flickr and Google Web album – and videos on blip.tv and Youtube.

Wave goodbye to email?
So why would I say that I believe the age of the email could be coming to an end thanks to Google Wave?  Well, for several reasons – firstly let me explain what I think is wrong with email – then I’ll go on to briefly describe Google Wave and what I think is right with it.

Email is a MESS. You have various formats even to this day, so anything but the most plain and boring email is likely to upset someone using Linux. Embedded images sometimes work (showing inline) and sometimes show as attachments. Any lengthy conversation is a pain in the bum to re-assemble – especially if some clever Charlie changes the title… and if you add someone into the conversation you have to go through all your old emails on the subject and forward them on – it just does NOT work well at all apart from the simplest SEND/REPLY scenario.

But of course, email was invented before the Internet really took off – long before in fact. I was one of the old school using Fidonet and running a Midnight line LONG before the public knew about email. Meanwhile we’ve all become used to the likes of Skype, various Messengers, social networks and other ways of interacting with people.  Email has severe legacy issues in trying to maintain compatibility and… well, it’s not ideal.

And then along comes Google Wave (which at the time of writing is not out yet) – like a breath of fresh air.

I could point you to their video but the tech-types doing the video might put you off – indeed even this email is possibly long enough to put you off – but if you’re still here let me dive in and try to explain.

Imagine starting off an email – perhaps an invitation to a party, by opening a NEW email, sending to one of your pals and CC’ing a bunch of others. A couple of days later the replies start to pour in. You can’t simply group them together to see who’s coming because some clever Charlies have changed the subject line! Some simply reply, some send additional emails with questions about what booze to bring. Before long you have lots and lots of emails to contend with – oh and you had to keep the email plain because Fred down the road is using an old email client that doesn’t like formatting.

Now imagine a better way, in Google Wave, simply open a new CONVERSATION and drag in various contacts from your address book.  Your contacts who are also using Google Wave (there is a hurdle there but bear with me) see a new conversation has opened from you. They open the conversation and put in their reply… they may at a later date add comments.

As soon as someone puts in a reply, on your computer the conversation turns BOLD indicating there is something new in there – open up and you see the replies – all in ONE place. At any time you can drop in an image or video… again, changes make the conversation come up in bold for everyone involved. They can choose to respond every time this happens – or just occasionally look in. People can reply anywhere on the message, not just at the end.  Think of it as a permanent Messenger thread organised by subject.. As soon as you start editing, others will see the WAVE turn bold and if you want could interact there and then. This makes Google Wave potentially MUCH faster and more convenient than email.

If you’re not seeing this, some images might help – I grasped it almost immediately and I simply can’t WAIT. The issue of course is that we all have to buy into this to make it work – and there are only a couple of companies with enough clout to make us do this – one is Microsoft – the other is Google. I think it might just succeed.

Here’s a screenshot – click on the image to see the full screen – if this doesn’t sell the idea to you – I can’t help   And this is just the preview – what else will they think of by the time it is introduced.

Here’s a Google Wave form to fill in if you want to be kept up to date – I certainly do. Oh and the plan is to make it open-source – and Google are openly saying you could put the code on your own servers to make a “private” wave system!

If you want to see this in operation INCLUDING AT THE END AS-YOU-TYPE language translation…. here’s the video. It’s a little cheesy but if you can stomach it, their explanations are far more interesting than mine! See the stuff near the end – amazing.

I just don’t believe this government – and WHY have we gotten to the point wherein “we could see over 100,000 cases of swine flu a day by the end of August” ???

Why the HELL as they’ve seen things rise like this, haven’t they been stopping travel, testing people at all airports and stations etc… 100,000 a DAY for heaven’s sake.

I just hope the politicians are the first to go down followed by civil servants.