MICROSOFT DEEPFISH
If you've ever looked at Engadget or Gizmodo, you know there are an overwhelming number of new products appearing all the time. Here's one that looks like it might be particularly useful.

There are hundreds of cell phones and other handheld devices with two inch screens that theoretically can browse the web. It's pretty pointless; the screens are too small and the pages fill in slowly and you can't see more than a fraction of the page.

Microsoft's upcoming product Deepfish might solve those problems in an interesting way. It takes a snapshot of the web page and presents the image of the entire page on the handheld screen, then makes it easy to zoom in to a portion of the screen. You're not seeing the real screen but rather an optimized image of the screen, so everything appears very quickly. There are a lot of hard problems to solve with online video and animated advertisements and the like, but the concept makes a lot of sense. Here's the developers' blog with more information, and here's a video demonstration of how it works.

Labels: Microsoft, mobile

posted by bruceb at 3/31/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

COMPARING PDFS
PDF has become the standard format for most documents exchanged in the business world, and it is increasingly used to exchange documents during negotiation or collaboration. Microsoft Word has well-known tools for comparing drafts of documents and redlining changes, but the process has always been more difficult with PDFs.

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional can compare two PDFs and generate a report that compares the two versions side by side and highlights any changes or deletions. Here's an explanation of the document comparison feature.

It's yet another reason that Acrobat 8 Professional has become an essential program on any office computer - one that should be purchased and installed as readily as Microsoft Office. (Here are some other reasons.) The improvements in the interface are so compelling that it is a worthwhile upgrade from any previous version of Acrobat.

Labels: Acrobat

posted by bruceb at 3/30/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE TEXT LINK ADS
Google announced a new advertising program last week and the reports focused on a new Google policy that doesn't affect us directly. (Briefly: Google sends money to advertisers when a web surfer clicks on a Google advertising link on a web page; the new program only pays the money if the web surfer also takes some followup action on the advertiser's web site.)

There was another item buried in the announcement that might directly affect us in the long run - "text link ads." Currently Google ads appear separately on a web page, easily identifiable as advertising. This new Google program will allow advertising links to be part of the web page text and visually identical to other links on the same page.

Newspapers have wrestled for years with the line between editorial content and advertising. The Los Angeles Times is in turmoil right now over similar issues. The entire newspaper industry was shaken in 1999 when the Los Angeles Times published a special section about Staples Center and shared advertising revenue with Staples Center without disclosing that fact to readers (or most Times employees).

This has the potential to blur that line on web pages. There will be no obvious way to tell that a news page has been paid for the link to an event, or that a blogger was paid for his link to an investment newsletter.

Here's a blogger calling attention to the new program. There will likely be more discussion of it as the word gets out.

Labels: business, Google

posted by bruceb at 3/29/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

PRINTING OUTLOOK MESSAGE HEADERS
Two clients reported problems printing e-mail messages from Outlook 2003 - the message headers weren't printing, the part that shows Date:, To:, From: and Subject. In each case, it was erratic - some messages would print correctly, others would be missing the header info.

Apparently there's a bug in the way Outlook 2003 interacts with Internet Explorer 7 - something to do with the IE7 feature that shrinks pages so they print properly. (Have you noticed that the right side of the page isn't cut off any more on your printouts from web pages?)

Microsoft has issued a hotfix - the information about it is here. Hotfixes cannot be downloaded directly; Microsoft has a rigorous testing process before patches are made available for downloading and hotfixes have not finished that process. They're free but it takes a call to Microsoft.

If you're one of my clients and you notice this problem, call me and I'll get the hotfix to you.

Labels: mail, Outlook, printers

posted by bruceb at 3/28/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

ZE FRANK & THE SHOW
Ze Frank has just finished a year of producing The Show, three-minute video monologues that appeared online five days a week. Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and others are writing paeans to a project that blossomed into something unique and special. The audience turned into a community making creative contributions and The Show became a conversation - consistently interesting and frequently hilarious.

The Show has ended but the episodes are archived - dive in anywhere. The Slate article has a good overview and lots of links to memorable episodes to get started. Personally I'm a big fan of the Scrabble episode, and Fingers In Food makes me laugh out loud every time.

Labels: humor, Internet, video

posted by bruceb at 3/27/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

BRUCEB ON VACATION
I'll be out of town from March 27-31.

I'll be in an area with cell phone coverage, but you'll have to pardon me if I'm a little distracted or if it's hard for me to hear the phone.

I'll also be checking e-mail each afternoon.

Mikel Cook has graciously offered to be available for emergencies. If you need immediate help, give him a call at (707) 823-2002 and see if he can help out.

All my best wishes for a quiet week filled with happy technology!
posted by bruceb at 3/26/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

NSL GAG ORDERS
On March 9 the Justice Department's inspector general revealed that the FBI has been systematically abusing its expanded power to issue "national security letters" and obtain private information about US citizens and residents from telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit providers, and other businesses.

Between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands, without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval, to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. That number was significantly underreported to Congress each year.

Among the problems identified by the report are sloppy and inconsistent recordkeeping by the FBI, which resulted in substantial under-reporting of errors; NSLs that were signed by unauthorized personnel; confusion among recipients of NSLs that resulted in disclosure of private information to which the FBI was not entitled; and a pattern of fabricating "immediate threats" to justify the demands.

I didn't realize that the letters included an enforceable gag order preventing the recipient from telling anyone - anyone - that the FBI was seeking the information. That helps explain how something like this could have been occurring under our noses.

The Washington Post has printed an article that describes what the gag order means for the recipient of such a letter.

"Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled. . . .

"Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie. . . .

"I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

"I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy."

The article is anonymous because the author is still living under the gag order; the Post had to confirm the facts independently.
posted by bruceb at 3/24/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

OUTLOOK 2007 & SLOW PERFORMANCE
Just a quick followup to my whining that the Microsoft Office 2007 suite seemed unreasonably slow - here's an article specifically complaining about the performance of Outlook 2007 and describing widespread grumbling by users, bloggers, and even Microsoft consultants. The article also describes a situation with which I am painfully familiar - the same programs will work fine on one computer and work slowly or crash on the seemingly identical computer right next to it. "Clearly, there are some things I don't understand," says an Exchange consultant quoted in the article.

I've reinstalled Office 2007. It's behaving better. Maybe I was just in a bad mood before. I'll keep you posted.

Labels: Outlook

posted by bruceb at 3/23/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

TIMESLIPS & VISTA FOLLOWUP
Timeslips has updated its web site with information about Vista compatibility - or more accurately, lack of compatibility. Other vendors are working out their Vista issues; Timeslips is beginning to stand out like a sore thumb.

The company reports firmly that Timeslips 2006 and earlier versions won't work with Vista. Okay, lots of software makers are in that position. (Is it true, or is it an inducement to upgrade? Hmm.)

But some good news: "The Timeslips 2007 products will install and run on Microsoft Vista." Great!

There are just a few, teensy, insignificant qualifications to that.

• There's a list of twenty-eight identified issues, including some apocryphal items like "Text on buttons and checkboxes may disappear." At the bottom the company notes that it has no intention of fixing any of these problems.
• The company will not provide any support for anyone using the program on Vista.

Timeslips' reputation has suffered on several occasions when it released buggy upgrades and let customer support slip. Now it's thumbing its nose at anyone buying a new computer for the next six or eight months, which seems like an open invitation to Lexis/Nexis to keep pushing its Time Matters/Billing Matters software and taking over even more of the market.

Labels: law, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/22/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

ONECARE & THE PRESS
Just a brief followup about the damaging OneCare putdown delivered by Arno Edelman, business security manager for Microsoft Europe.

According to Microsoft, it never happened.

Microsoft reportedly issued a statement saying that Mr. Edelman "emphatically denies ever making" any such comments "in the brief time he spoke with this reporter." Microsoft is "shocked and disappointed" by the article. They emphasize that Microsoft is "committed to continued leadership in security... This is a responsibility we take very seriously and something we will continue to invest in."

I'll keep an eye out for followup. It was very hard to imagine a Microsoft exec saying anything like what was quoted unless he had a death wish, a job offer, or a drinking problem - but it was also a strange thing for a web journalist to make up out of whole cloth.

I hope this also reflects a commitment by Microsoft to defend its product and alleviate our doubts.

Labels: OneCare, security

posted by bruceb at 3/21/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MICROSOFT EXPRESSION
Back in ancient times - 4 or 5 years ago - many people tried their hands at learning a little HTML and creating a web site. Microsoft FrontPage wasn't easy to learn but other programs were harder and FrontPage is the only one to develop any name recognition with consumers. Did you know FrontPage has been discontinued? There is no product named "FrontPage" in Microsoft's current lineup.

The replacement is Microsoft Expression Web, part of a bigger suite of programs, Microsoft Expression Studio, aimed exclusively at professionals. Here's a short description of each program in the Expression suite.

I took a five minute look at Expression Web. It's superficially similar to FrontPage 2003 but it's immediately apparent that web design has moved so far beyond HTML codes that nonprofessionals don't have a chance. It's not like my little hand-coded site will disappear or stop working, but there's also no chance that I could redesign it to include the kind of effects that are standard these days. Cascading style sheets, XML, XHTML, Flash animation, Java, ASP.NET, and much more - web site design is a highly specialized world. From the Expression web site:

"Create CSS-based, XHTML 1.0 Transitional-conforming Web sites by default. Work better across browsers, simplifying deployment and maintenance. Configure flexible schema settings to support all combinations of HTML, XHTML, Strict, Transitional, Frameset and CSS 1.0, 2.0, and 2.1 plus browser-specific schemas."

It's more true than ever: a small business can set up a moderately presentable web site using canned templates from a web hosting company, or hire a custom web site designer for thousands of dollars - and there's nothing in between.

Labels: Microsoft, Office, software

posted by bruceb at 3/20/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

ONECARE UNDER FIRE
Windows Live OneCare is under attack from the media, and unfortunately the attacks are well-founded and worrisome.

Last month a terrible, inexcusable bug was discovered in the new version 1.5 of OneCare that could delete or quarantine Outlook .PST files. It is reportedly fixed now. Like many bugs, it only affected a small number of people. The worrisome part was not the bug itself but the inadequate response from the OneCare team, which should have reacted as if its lives and jobs were at stake. Instead, uninformed tech support reps made stupid comments, no official statement was made about a fix, and the solution was long in coming - so long that the press began to pick up on it.

Then an independent lab concluded that OneCare did a terrible job of stopping viruses. The press coverage began growing. The OneCare team responded to the criticism a couple of days ago, but the tone was muted and the press ignored the response.

Now a Microsoft executive has given an interview which further undermines confidence in the product. Microsoft's European business security product manager said that "bits and pieces are missing" from OneCare. He said that OneCare shouldn't have been rolled out when it was. He says (with no particular confidence) that the problems — including basic incompatibilities with other Microsoft products — "are being fixed".

Influential web sites have been having a field day writing stories about OneCare's weaknesses and this interview will escalate the rhetoric. ZDNet's article says "all the signs are that OneCare is a project in massive internal disarray; misbegotten, mismanaged and mismarketed," and concludes:

"Microsoft must withdraw the software immediately. It is poisoning any message the company has about being more responsible about security, listening to customers and being a trustworthy partner. It stands as evidence of incompetence and inability to innovate, of a cynical attitude to the market, of all the attributes Microsoft's competition — and, increasingly, its customers — associate with the brand."

I chose OneCare for myself and many of my clients and friends because it is blessedly light on system resources, it does important chores in addition to antivirus and spyware protection (backup, system updates, hard drive defrag), it is unobtrusive and easy to understand, and its competitors are seriously flawed.

I also chose it because I thought it was safe and effective. If that turns out not to be true, we have a serious problem.

If OneCare is going to survive, Microsoft needs to defend its product clearly and vigorously. It needs to announce a crash effort to fix the problems, improve the security, and rebuild OneCare's reputation. Soon.

Labels: OneCare, security

posted by bruceb at 3/19/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

PROBLEMS WITH 1AND1
Yet another tale of woe.

1and1.com is one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. They established themselves in Europe before making a big splashy entrance in the US a couple of years ago, with huge advertising sections on thick glossy paper in dozens of magazines. They offer rock bottom prices, a wide range of services, and well-designed online control panels.

I started using them and recommending them for domain name registration ($5.99/year), web hosting, and hosted Exchange mailboxes. A year ago I had a couple of reasonably good experiences with customer support.

A client called up a few months ago and complained that he had a terrible experience with an aggressively incompetent tech support person in India. Hmm.

Two friends had so much trouble with the hosted Exchange service that they cancelled the service. Another lost access to his Exchange mailbox for a day and got no satisfaction from his phone calls.

Today a business client learned that 1and1.com had locked his account, turned off his web site, and stopped the company e-mail, with no notice whatsoever - no e-mail, no letter. There was an issue with the company credit card - details are hazy, but let's assume the card lapsed.

The lack of notice was inexcusable. This has the potential to do serious harm to a business that lives by its e-mail.

The reaction from 1and1's customer support was worse. A bored customer service rep explained that the account had been turned over to a collection agency, and nothing could be done until the business "negotiated" a payment through the collection agency - at which point 1and1 would have to be called again to throw the switch on the domain names. There would then be even more of a delay, another 24 hours, before the domain came to life and the mail started to flow.

This is very bad.

Many businesses with millions of customers get treated to web pages like this one full of complaints, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant to run across them, and it's a little hard to find people praising 1and1 recently. There are some anecdotes about support being outsourced and company properties being relocated - and a persistent theme that things at 1and1 have deteriorated fast in the last six months.

Sonic does domain name registration and web hosting. Their mail handling for domains is primitive, their online controls are clumsy - heck, even their sales pitches are a bit confusing. But I don't think Sonic would allow your domain to go dead without notifying you, and so far Sonic hasn't started routing support calls to India.

Hmmm . . .

Labels: domains, Internet, mail

posted by bruceb at 3/16/2007 01:47:00 PM | permalink

FILE SHARING CAUSES CANCER
If you are downloading music with file sharing programs, the RIAA believes you are a thief and a pirate and you should go to a federal prison.

That's been true for a long time. Many people - roughly, the entire population of the world - have decided to live with that guilt and download music anyway.

But how about if you knew that you were encouraging behavior that harms children? I'll bet you didn't realize that you were threatening national security! You swine.

Those are the key points in an 80-page report from the US Patent and Trademark Office released today. Here's an article about the USPTO report and here's the text of the report.

It makes perfect sense. Children might be induced to run file sharing programs to download music, and - unknowingly and unintentionally - the programs will be allowing other people to upload music from the child's computer. The RIAA might sue the children for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and children might somehow interpret that to mean the RIAA was antagonistic instead of their best friend. Therefore - file sharing harms children. Ta da!

Government workers install file sharing software on their home or office computers and are tricked into sharing folders jam packed with classified information, which is promptly downloaded by terrorists who stumble on it during a search for Celine Dion. Therefore - file sharing jeopardizes national security!

I hope it's obvious that the programs don't work that way, the underlying data is misrepresented, the arguments are specious, and the conclusions are just plain bizarre. If you're looking for a good cause, support the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which continues to struggle against this madness.

Labels: DRM, file_sharing

posted by bruceb at 3/15/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MORE PATCH THOUGHTS
I recently reformatted a hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP from scratch, using a CD for Windows that included Service Pack 2.

The next step was to download the patches and updates released since Service Pack 2 - almost a hundred of them, almost two hundred megabytes to download and more than half an hour to install, followed by a restart and another batch, followed by a restart and a few more, followed by a restart and a few more. Just the updates took more than an hour.

Then I installed Microsoft Office 2003 and started the process all over again.

The time required to set up a new computer is going up quickly.

Oh, you folks that are looking at Macs? Apple released a "megapatch" yesterday that plugs 45 security holes. That's the seventh patch released by Apple in 2007, after a busy 2006 and much publicity about the embarrassing "Month Of Apple Bugs" campaign in January by some disgruntled researchers. It would be swell if the grass was really greener over there, but - it's not.

Labels: computers, Office, software, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/14/2007 09:00:00 AM | permalink

LIFE WITHOUT THE NETWORK
From Max Barry's marvelous book Company, about corporate life in the weeks after the computer network goes dead:

"Two weeks ago the network went down; soon after Senior Management assured the company it would have the problem fixed within a few days; now everyone is realizing it is never going to happen. Work-arounds are springing up everywhere you look, like new grass after rain. In the absence of e-mail, employees are discovering the art of speaking into phones. They are realizing that discussions that previously required three days and six e-mails can, with phones, be settled in minutes. Spam and computer viruses, both of which IT claimed were unsolvable problems, have vanished. The plague of e-mail jokes, funny at first and then not, has been eliminated. The pressure to forward chain letters under threat of personal catastrophe has lifted. In-boxes no longer fill with desperate sales pitches from co-workers trying to shift their cars, or kittens.

"To transfer documents from one location to another, workers tighten their shoelaces and stretch their legs. People pass each other in the corridors, papers in hand, exchanging happy greetings. Their brains dizzy from unexpected exercise, they stop to chat and laugh. No one realized there were so many people in Zephyr. Until now, you never saw them. Until now, most people arrived at work, planted their buttocks in a chair, and the twain didn’t part until five thirty. Now the corridors are like maternity ward waiting rooms, filled with excited voices and good cheer. Lower-back pain is clearing up. Color is rising. Workers find each other more physically attractive. And nobody receives suspicious looks for leaving the department anymore, not so long as they’re clutching a sheaf of papers.

"Network – what was that thing ever good for? The workers shake their heads in amazement. Good riddance! Zephyr Holdings may not be the world’s greatest employer, the workers agree; it may have a sadistic Human Resources and an incompetent Senior Management; the company’s purpose may be a complete mystery and the CEO an out-of-touch eccentric whom no one has seen in person – all this may be true, but at least it doesn’t have a network."

Labels: humor, network

posted by bruceb at 3/13/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

PATCH CRAZINESS
Patches/updates/upgrades are a mess. That's nothing new, and certainly some steps forward have been taken - Microsoft's automatic update system works remarkably well. Many of the updates are necessary and important, but it makes it impossible to reach that stable place where things just work.

I'm usually more frustrated than happy when other programs alert me to updates. Java and InstallShield put little icons by the clock and pop up balloons, updates to Quickbooks take forever to install, Adobe keeps sending updates for its "help center" that seem uncompelling, every vendor has its own technique until the whole process becomes a blur. There's no way to tell what's important and no confidence that the update will be a step forward.

Microsoft will not be releasing any patches this week on its normal once-monthly schedule. (Did you know there was a regular schedule? The IT community calls it "Patch Tuesday.") There will be "two high-priority non-security updates through Windows Update and Software Update Services and four high priority non-security updates through Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services." You're not the only one who has no idea what that means. Will our computers reboot on Tuesday night?

Appparently we're not done with the "Windows Genuine Advantage" updates, either, which most recently required an annoying manual install.

On Tuesday, Windows Live OneCare will get its normal virus definition updates - and a support engineer said very, very quietly that the awful bug will be fixed at the same time that caused OneCare to occasionally quarantine Outlook .PST files. (Look on page 8 of this forum thread.)

Windows Desktop Search 3.01 is a significant upgrade to the WDS program, with underlying changes in the technology that make it faster and more stable. It fixes a bug in WDS 2.6 - when the previous version indexed network shares, files would sometimes become read-only for no apparent reason. If you're using WDS, you should upgrade.

But this new version has its own bug that breaks Outlook under some circumstances. It won't affect most of you, but it wouldn't surprise me to be talking about it to someone in the next few months.

It's getting more complex, folks, and there's no end in sight.

Labels: Microsoft, OneCare, Outlook, search, software

posted by bruceb at 3/11/2007 10:53:00 AM | permalink

THE IT CROWD
The IT Crowd is my new favorite TV show. The first season's six episodes can be downloaded pretty freely - here's one collection of links to downloadable files, for example. Much of it is available on YouTube if you don't mind low resolution video - here's the first part of episode 1.

It's a British series about two IT geeks in the basement of a large, abusive corporation who get a new boss, a woman who lied about her IT experience on her resume. It's hysterical, as funny as anything I've seen on television for years. Here's Cory Doctorow's description of it on Boing Boing. Although there are lots of in-jokes for geeks, the appeal should be universal. An American version has just begun filming, following the example of The Office.

Look for it, download it!

Labels: humor, video

posted by bruceb at 3/10/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

UNINSTALLING OFFICE 2007
I finally received a copy of Office 2007 and installed it on my Vista computer a couple of weeks ago. This afternoon I irritably uninstalled it and went back to Office 2003.

It wasn't the drastically changed interface, although it was as jarring as predicted. Here's my writeup about the new look for Word and Excel - no menu at the top and completely redesigned access to all features through a "ribbon bar" that replaces the familiar buttons. I hunted for "Print" for an interestingly long time, for example, and the new look of the Outlook calendar left me cold. But I'm a veteran of interface changes - these are all changes that reasonable people can deal with.

I yanked Office 2007 off my computer because it was slow.

My Vista computer is a brand new Dell Dimension 9200 - Core 2 Duo processor, 2Gb of RAM, beefy video card, fast hard drives. Lots of programs are installed, but I choose programs very carefully and install them conservatively.

The Office 2007 programs should have been flying, and they weren't. Opening Word for the first time took 15 seconds or so. Subsequent starts were a little faster, but there were still delays getting a document onscreen. Outlook was slow to change screens between mail/calendar/contacts. Occasionally there'd be the maddening lag between fingers hitting keys and letters appearing onscreen, in Word or Outlook.

It wasn't awful. It was just annoying. Looking online today (Google "Office 2007 slow") brought up lots of anecdotes from people who feel the same way - and a few defenders who insist that Office 2007 is moving like lightning for them. They're probably right! Many problems today occur on one computer and not on another, for no obvious reason.

I'll go back to Office 2007. It's my job. Someday you'll ask me what in the world Groove and InfoPath are and you'll want me to be able to answer. Just give me a little while, because Word 2003 is starting instantly and Outlook 2003 is familiar and fast and lovable and I don't wanna give that up for a while.

Labels: Office, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/08/2007 12:21:00 AM | permalink

OUTLOOK SIGNATURES
Outlook 2003 occasionally throws up error messages when a message contains a formatted signature. People who have scanned their handwritten signature or want to use a graphic are getting incongruous messages about security and ActiveX.

It appears to be a side effect of Outlook's unusual relationship with Microsoft Word 2003. When you create a signature in Outlook and click on “Advanced Edit,” Outlook launches Microsoft Word to create a little HTML file. Unfortunately, Word does a terrible job with HTML and inserts all kinds of unnecessary codes; as security settings have changed in the last couple of years, something in those codes is generating security-related error messages.

There’s two things to try that have worked for some people. Each one requires setting up your signature from scratch, unfortunately.

• Start in Outlook, click on Advanced Edit, and create your signature in Word. But when it’s time to save it, change the file type to “Web Page, Filtered” instead of “Web Page.”
• It may also be possible to start in Word and create your signature from scratch. Highlight the signature in Word and click Edit / Copy. Then open Outlook, start a new signature, and paste in the signature WITHOUT opening the Advanced Edit window. (To paste, hit Ctrl-V.)

Labels: Outlook

posted by bruceb at 3/07/2007 09:54:00 AM | permalink

VISTA UPGRADES GONE WRONG
By coincidence, I ran into two stories about miserable experiences upgrading from Windows XP to Vista: a tale of woe from a BBC journalist and a similar story from a PC Magazine columnist. They are stories of hardware incompatibility and lack of drivers and system crashes; even if those things don't happen, I've seen reports of Vista running extremely slowly for no obvious reason on computers upgraded from WinXP.

Just a reminder: we're not going to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista on a computer you already own. The process would be much more likely to be successful if Vista was installed on a freshly formatted hard drive, but frankly I don't want to install it on any computer that's been in your possession more than six months or so - the odds are too high that there will be problems with hardware and drivers. Let's all experience Vista for the first time on brand new PCs, fresh out of the box.

Labels: Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/06/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MOZYPRO ONLINE BACKUP
Online backup has been a tempting possibility for years. Your files are automatically copied to safe online storage and kept up to date automatically at a reasonable price. Cool!

Until now the companies offering online backup services have looked a little flaky. I kept running into the name Mozy, though, which just introduced MozyPro as a business-level backup solution.

The idea is appealing. A small service runs on a Windows XP or Server 2003 computer; every two hours, new or changed files are copied to the Mozy online servers. The service relies on Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy service and can successfully back up files that are open; you'll get a good backup of Quickbooks data while the program is running, for example. Files are archived so a deleted file or an older version of a file can be recovered for up to thirty days.

Pricing is reasonable - $3.95/month plus fifty cents per gigabyte.

The web interface is streamlined. What's not to like?

Well, I found it a little troubling that it didn't work, despite my best efforts. Dropped connections, a period of several days where it simply did nothing, and "success" reports where no files appeared to have been transferred.

Anecdotes are a dime a dozen. It might work brilliantly for you. I didn't spend any time with tech support to figure out what was going on, and I'll probably try it again in a few months. I was kind of hoping to have a wonderful success story to tell you about but - maybe next time.

Labels: backup, web_services

posted by bruceb at 3/05/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

WINDOWS DESKTOP SEARCH 3.01
Windows Desktop Search 3.01 is a brand new release of Microsoft's tool for indexing mail and documents for instant searches on Windows XP. There were some growing pains as they prepared this version, but the new release addresses everything on my mind.

• The web site has been redesigned, and links lead to the correct places.
• This version has built-in support for searching files on network shares.
• The program runs as a service with a very small impact on computer performance. (It's still not a good choice for computers with 256Mb of RAM, though.)

If you're successfully using an earlier version of WDS, there's no pressure to upgrade. If you haven't installed a desktop search program and you're getting buried in files and e-mail messages, try it! Many people think it's the best thing they've ever done for their computers.

Labels: Outlook, search, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/03/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MICROSOFT HMM MOMENTS
Two Microsoft things have turned up in the last week that have made me say, Hmmm. There's no point to these and nothing special to do - just odd geeky things that caught my eye.

Microsoft took a lot of heat for rolling out Internet Explorer 7 as a "Critical Update." It had to release a special tool for big companies to prevent automatic installation of IE7 and there was much discussion of whether IE7 should have been optional - IE7 has significant security improvements but a few browser-based programs and web sites are incompatible with it for one reason or another.

I've set up three new computers in the last week and noticed something that hasn't drawn much attention - IE7 was turned into an optional update for Windows XP last week. When you set up a brand new Windows XP computer, IE7 won't be installed until you look for it. I haven't found anything to explain why it was changed. It's not a big deal - IE7 is the default browser in Vista, which is where most people will see it on their next computer. But - why downgrade it? Is it less important now than it was last week?

Meanwhile, "Windows Genuine Advantage" has reared its ugly head again. Once again, Microsoft has pushed a WGA update into the "Critical Update" category. WGA has nothing to do with security; it's Microsoft's antipiracy tool, designed to identify pirated copies of Windows XP and make them annoying to use, inspiring millions to buy licensed copies of WinXP and ascend to a higher level of enlightenment. Or something like that.

Maybe you've installed the WGA update, or the little shield is down by the clock begging for attention. For no particular reason, it's a "Critical Update" but it's not installed automatically; each of you has to go through a short installation routine and click Next a few times.

The unforgivable thing is the checkmark inserted by default in a box that says, "Show me more information about the joys of running licensed software." When you finish the WGA installation, your web browser takes you to a Microsoft anti-piracy web site. Okay, it's no big deal, but installing a non-security related change to my computer and displaying unwanted propaganda is a misuse of the Critical Updates process. I don't want to lose faith in that process - we have precious little to believe in these days.

Labels: Microsoft, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/02/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

NEW PRODUCT OVERLOAD
The post-holiday lull has ended, Vista is out the door, so we're back to a nonstop barrage of new products and services. Here's what stood out in the last week.

• Adobe will offer a free online version of Photoshop in a few months. If the service proceeds as planned, it will be a light version of Photoshop (something like Photoshop Elements, perhaps). The current plan is to support the online service with ads instead of charging a fee.


• PhotoBucket is yet another online service for storing photos and videos - like the rest, it's free but there are lots of incentives to buy a "premium" account. Adobe will be offering Adobe Remix as a free service to all PhotoBucket members to create videos out of photos with special effects and music. I've done projects like this. They're fun and this looks like it will be easy to figure out; the videos will be in the now-ubiquitous Flash format so you can send links to everybody. But hoo boy, you'll be astonished at how time-consuming it is to get it right!


• If you're looking for an easier way to send people an online slide show of your photos with some special effects, it doesn't get any easier than Tracking Shot, which has just added more ways to share movies and more options without making anything more complicated. If you can find your photos on your computer, you can make a movie and share it in minutes.


• Google introduced its line of office applications amidst great fanfare and many earnest articles predicting the death of Microsoft Office. Personally, I don't expect to talk about it much - Microsoft Office has reached that point where it's accepted as a cost of doing business, as much as paying an electricity bill. But there's two potential wedges:

There's still no drop-dead easy way to store documents online and collaborate on them using Word or Excel, which the Google apps presumably handle naturally. (Microsoft believes Sharepoint services are the answer and has built that technology deeply into the Office 2007 apps. Sharepoint has a fierce learning curve and requires steady IT support - I can't see a way to get it into small businesses.)

Office 2007 introduces a new default format for Word to replace the .DOC format. The .DOC format can be restored as the default but it may frustrate people when they send documents that can't easily be opened by Word 2003 users. If that happens while people are still struggling with the new Ribbon interface for Word and Excel, it might cause some folks to throw up their hands and look for alternatives.

• Symantec has released Norton 360, its competitor to Windows Live OneCare. CNet says it's just swell - doesn't slow down the computer, does all of its jobs with style, and has a fresh minty aroma. CNet's reviews have also been wrong about a bunch of other things lately. I have an open mind - I plan to give Symantec products another chance, in five or six years, if I have time.

Labels: Microsoft, Office, photos, security, software, video, web_services

posted by bruceb at 3/01/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink