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C O N T E N T S
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**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
EU to outlaw spam - official
An EU Directive from 2002 outlawing spam and other unsolicited communications comes into effect on 11th December 2003. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations declares that recipients should only receive communications for the purpose of direct marketing if they have given prior consent, so-called 'opt-in'. The ruling is controversial in as much as its enforcement is still in question and also that the majority of email spam orginates from outside the EU.
Intel gets lippy
It is Intel's intention that computers really will be able to "read your lips"! As part of its open source computervision library, called OpenCV, it has released under an open source licence the code for its Audio Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR), to help developers build applications that overcome the interference cause by background noise levels by analysing the shapes formed by a speaker's lip movements.
Microsoft Longhorn: biggest release of this decade
That's how Bill Gates described Longhorn, the next version of Windows due around 2004 at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Emphasising the input of many developers, both inside and outside Microsoft, he veered on the borders of open source philosophy, a different tack to the giant's hitherto proprietary commercial stance. This next generation operating system is built upon a database-structured WinFS filesystem, for fast searching, a new Avalon graphics sub system and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). To encompass older and third-party software, Microsoft's Next Generation Secure Computing Base initiative aims to run those packages in isolation to prevent interference with the core operating system. The Web services side handles automatic authentication, whether on a local network or on the Internet and is driven by a new communications technology called Indigo. More on MS Longhorn site.
bxxxxx 118xxx
The new 118xxx enquiry numbers are expensive to dial and have complex and varying charging structures to rival that of mobile phone rates. Alternatively, you could just side-step all the hassle and surf to BT's directory enquiries service at www.bt.com/directory-enquiries/ where you get up to 10 free lookups per session.
Free seminars on Office roadshow
Microsoft's round-Britain roadshow continues, explaining the key technologies available within its new Office System. Intended for IT Professionals the "full day technical drill down" is free. The recent release of Office Small Business Edition 2003 bundles a basic Customer Relationship Management system called Business Contact Manager into the classic Office suite.
Home Office to fund small office
The Home Office Active Community Unit plans to spend £80 million on Voluntary and Community Sector Infrastructure by March 2006, including £10 million on IT, according to their Consultation Document. Implementations will include negotiations to reduce hardware and software prices for the sector, educating funders about IT and providing information on the web. The consultation deadline is 22 December. Source: lasa.org.uk
More into less = smart
Continuing the rise of the smartphones,
SonyEricsson has launched its latest successor to the P800, logically enough, the P900. Achieving 'more of the same', this sleeker package somehow squeezes a larger screen area into a smaller physical size. The standard PDA features - contacts, task list, SMS messaging - are still there, but video is added to the previous stills-only recording for its camera and media handling capabilities, as well as keeping the tri-band GSM/GPRS, MMS, Bluetooth phone of course - a sort of '2.75G'. The much-demanded T9 predictive text input is at last included. On the corporate side, a secure network client allows encrypted access to office networks. Read a P900 review here.
Music sharing - everyone's a winner
PlayLouder MSP has announced a music service provision network by taking the peer-to-peer idea of sharing music and implementing a registered scheme of users, while still employing standard file sharing clients like Kazaa. The company will pay royalties to the UK independent record labels who have already signed up. Subscribers will receive downloads as 128Mbps-encoded MP3 tracks, although they need to sign up for a braodband connection with Bulldog Communications. The commercial launch of PlayLouder is due next year with trials starting 1st November 2003.
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1. Speech recognition software - are you listening?
Few of us are born typists, but most people can yak away to their heart's content. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Voice-recognition software or speech-recognition applications can be a lifeline for those who are disabled or impaired in some way that prevents them using a computer keyboard efficiently.
While you can't simply mutter away and expect the computer to make sense of your gibberish unaided, virtually any graphical-based application can take in what you say at speeds up to 160 words per minute, if it's clearly pronounced; it's continuous speech so you don't have to clip off your words either. The software analyses your speech on-the-fly and makes contextual adjustments. Thus it will sensibly construe the 3 similar-sounding words in : The software may do some backtrack editing to achieve this, but since it's live, your flow of speech conversion is not affected. It's also pretty amazing to watch! On the job trainingHow does the software recognise what you say?Applications often have a predefined tutorial where each user reads a passage of text into what becomes their 'profile', prompting with typed corrections along the way. This training normally requires about 15 minutes of solid speech to get used to each person's voice and, although it seems like a bit of a chore after the first 5 minutes, the Good News is that profiles continue to improve each voice profile the more they are used.
The Really Good News is that for more than a few paragraphs or half a page of text, it's faster to talk than type it in. Unlimited EditionsExpect to find packages that come in different editions - basically with vocabularies altered to suit specialist sectors, eg :
How much?Entry level packages come in at under £40. Even professional stand-alone versions only peak at around £130, so it's not a prohibitively expensive commitment anymore compared to the early days when the software cost as much as the PC hardware, but the hardware you needed to run it on could only be had for £2500 or more.Text to speechAdded benefits are that packages often read text into speech for you too - although with a characteristically digital-sounding reproduction and often an American accent. With this you could be doing something else while:
Drawbacks
How to make it happenCall us for a quote.Contacts
-IB-
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Training is best done in the location you're going to frequent the most, because background noise can affect the accuracy of text output - so there's no nipping between different rooms that have varying noise levels - although 
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2. Computers and retailer service - Which is best?
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Independent retailers are twice as good as the average on helpline services, according to a Which? report on computer shopping.
Like Co-Operative Systems, such smaller companies are not tied to one computer manufacturer, and scored 44% for being rated "very good" by readers, double the 22% average. On the sales advice front, the independents came first again by a similar margin.
The best single independent, John Lewis, scored 32% and 24% for help and sales respectively. Of the manufacturing firms Apple, Evesham and Sony were in the top five. Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq brands were favourites in the desktop reliability stakes, having clocked up the fewest repair requests among the 8000 readers. Unlike many premium rate advice lines, Co-Operative Systems operates with easily accessible local rate phone numbers, fax and email for support and sales. SummaryAlthough a subjective survey, in that it is readers' perceptions that are being measured, the Which? October 2003 report shows that independent dealers provide a better service than you can get in the high street or even direct from most manufacturers.Contactswww.which.net-IB-
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3. Domain scams
Quite a few renewals for domains come up at this time of year (clearly a popular Christmas present for those of a geeky nature) but do you know if the right company is charging you? | ||
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Domain renewal scams are becoming more common now and since many customers take out a 2-year subscription, it's not always easy to remember who the registrar was that long ago, especially if you haven't had any contact with them since.
Your registering company will quite likely contact you, with a marketing gush of all the benefits your own domain has rendered, to persuade you to renew for another 2 years or so. Indeed, many of them have automated this procedure, for example, by sending an email to the account you gave them at purchase time. In fact they may typically automate the reminders to trigger at 90, 60, 30 and 10 days before your domain registration actually expires, just so you can't possibly overlook it.
Doh-mainHowever, scammers and spammers have started cashing in on the opportunity to swindle domain owners with a big rise in Summer 2003 when the new additions of .biz and .info domains came up for renewal.The would-be renewers inform you that your domain is about to expire while actually trying to pass off a transfer to their own registering service as a straightforward renewal, often at a higher price. Typically such deceptive emails will emphasise:
How to find your registrarIf you can't find the emails or paperwork laying out your original domain registration, don't worry, it's quick to look up.Many domain registrars like NetNames and UK2.net have domain search boxes where you can just type in your domain and bring up the details. You don't need to go your own registrar's site to get these results, anyone will do. This will show who your domain is registered with. The one bit of information you won't find this way, however is the username and password you will have been allocated for your account at the time. Any web-based administration you want to effect, like redirecting your email or web site address, will require this username and password first, so contact your registrar direct. As for any bogus renewal demands your receive - well, you could try forwarding them on to your bona fide registrar, but don't expect a swift response - they may be swamped by such scam alerts. ContactsThe .BIZ Domain Renewal ScamRegistrars: -IB-
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4. Web Content Management - Part 3
In the final part of this article Lawrence Griffiths looks at some of the advanced features of Web Content Management (WCM) Systems. | ||||
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Content and Presentation (Accessibility)In Part Two of this article I created a mythical NGO - well we are back to that example again. Our NGO's web site is 'accessible', but the site's web editor is considering how to make the site even more so.There are a number of approaches to this challenge and our editor has decided on text-only pages. Text-only pages assist visually impaired visitors who use screen readers to access a web site. HTML code in web pages may cause problems for screen readers since the logical flow of text as 'spoken' by a screen reader is interrupted by underlying HTML tags, especially table formatting tags. The golden rule of Web Content Management (WCM) systems is that they should separate content from presentation. Which means (in theory a least) that it should be a simple task to create a new presentation template that displays a text only page where the only HTML code being used consists of paragraph (<P>) tags and hyperlinks.
Now imagine if the NGO site was built of 100 static pages.
Each one would have to be re-edited for the new text-only version. The result, your site has doubled in size and you have two versions of each page to maintain! Content accessAs part of the site development strategy, our NGO wants to create a secure partner area enabling them to share useful but confidential information, say with contributors. Most WCM systems have some form of user and group management that can be configured to restrict or allow content access privileges.Once a user from a partner organisation has been set up with these privileges, they can logon to the WCM system and view both public- and partner-specific content. Furthermore, if the WCM system supports browser-based editing, it should be possible for a partner to contribute content to a given area of the site, thus providing a collaborative means of information sharing. With a static site its hard to envisage granting this type of secure access to specific web content. Firstly the site would have to support a directory/folder structure that lends itself to specific group access, secondly the security settings would have to be applied via the operating system (OS), not a suitable task for your average web editor or administrator. What's more this OS-based approach assumes that our NGO has their own dedicated server; if the site is running on a web host, this management of privileges is impossible with conventional web accounts. Content summariesWe've all visited some form of news web site.What sets them apart from other types is the constant churn of front page stories and content. These changes can be achieved manually, but more often a WCM system automatically updates a home page by using content summaries. Content summaries are created from extra information (meta data) provided for a web page (eg news article). The elements that makeup a web page typically consist of a title, main and sub headings and body content. For a news article you may require a Headline, a By-line and possibly a short Summary or Abstract - all of which can displayed on the site home page but not in the page (article) itself. Now for automation to take place the WCM system needs to support a policy for displaying and retiring home page summaries. A typical policy would be to display the top ten news stories; this would work as follows:
Content SchedulingIt's Friday afternoon and our web editor has made a number of updates to the NGO's home page concerning a major announcement.The problem is that s/he is away on holiday and the announcement needs to be made halfway through their holiday. Now s/he could login remotely (from the beach) and either :
Other FeaturesOther advanced features of WCM systems include personalisation - where content is filtered and selected for a given site user type - and categorisation, which enables a site visitor to navigate and search for content in a more specific way. If designed to do so, WCM systems can support and manage the demands of multi-language sites and enable the syndication of content for use in other web sites through the use of Really Simple Syndication feeds (RSS is a simple document XML format).In summaryHopefully in these three articles I've given you some sense of the scope, features and applications of Web Content Management systems and tools.Contacts-IB-
Lawrence Griffiths, is a freelance consultant specialising in Web content management, e-services and business process management. You can contact him at: |
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5. Writing PDF files: the alternatives
Is the almighty Adobe the sole choice? | ||
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Adobe describes its proprietary Portable Document Format (PDF) as "the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world" and provides a free downloadable reader to view those PDF files.
The Alternatives
Jaws 5
One of the longest-established products in this alternatives category was called 5D Creator Pro in the mid-1990s, but is now relabelled Jaws PDF Creator since being purchased by Global Graphics in 2000.
The basic principle works by printing from any windows-based application (like a word processor or image manipulation package) to a PostScript (.PS) or encapsulated postscript (.EPS) file, by selecting "Print to file". A simple drag-and-drop will execute this operation just as easily. Such PostScript driver type applications get around the Adobe Acrobat licensing on the premise that the PostScript printing driver already has Adobe's licence embedded.
At £52.67 for a single licence for PDF Creator and £26.00 for the PDF Editor product, these represent excellent value. PDF conversion online
The ps2pdf site provides a free online conversion service.
All you do is install a PostScript printer driver (you don't need an actual PS printer) and print to it selecting "print to file" as mentioned above. Uploading this file to their website (maximum upload size 8 MegaBytes) initiates their servers into converting the .PS file to a PDF file. When it's done, you will have a hyperlink to your new PDF file, which you can view or download. We found that a 100 KiloByte PostScript file took about 10 seconds to convert to PDF over our 2 Megabits per second ADSL link. Hence this is definitely a service for broadband users. PDF files tend to be on the large side and if you were converting a maximum-sized 8 MB file via an ISDN link, you'll be waiting 20 minutes or more, plus the same again to download it. So modem users would want to limit themselves to say, less than 1 MB. There is a useful FAQ for more information. www.ps2pdf.com/convert/index.htm Desktop package
FinePrint's pdfFactory is the most conventional of the alternatives we present here, with a standard package you install on your PC. Allowing users to:
These can be purchased online, but astute computer magazine buffs will find the package bundled among collections on front cover CDs. Contacts-IB- Acknowledgements: Mark Curtis, Ken Flury, Paul Craig |
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People trying to create the PDF files, however, might describe the format in less triumphant terms when they discover that the per-user | ^ Back to contents ^ | ||
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6. Oven-ready chips
Wean your desktops and servers away from a life of grime. | ||
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The hot summer caused a dramatic rise in the number of failures of PCs, laptops, printers and related equipment. Surely they are built to withstand the odd hot flush? High rise means low tempLook inside any PC these days and you will barely be able to make out the processor chip because it is dwarfed by a towering black office block - the heatsink. This stark, black, modernist-looking construction is basically a piece of moulded aluminium designed to have as many heat-dissipating fins as possible and is literally clamped to the face of the overworked processor chip.But that's not enough. Fins needs fansSimply radiating away the heat stills leaves the processor in a sweat. So a fan is clamped to the top of the heatsink and forces air down through the fins, ultimately cooling heatsink and the processor.So far so good, but this assumes that the air has somewhere to go - and somewhere to come from.
Now look at your grubby, unloved mini-tower sulking amongst the debris on the floor. It scoops up all the carpet fluff, dust, hair and human skin cells and lodges them firmly in its air intake. Even the rubbish that passes through those vents may get stuck at the outgoing end - usually the one where power supply fan tries to extract heat. A maximum operating temperature of 85ºC is typically allowed on the outside case of a processor package. Add a non air-conditioned room ambient of 30ºC to a rise of 30ºC inside the PC box for all the other chips, power supply, etc and that's 60ºC. Blocked vents could add another 'last straw' 25ºC to this taking the processor to its 85ºC limit. Inside its black hermetically-sealed carapace, a temperature of 150ºC must not be exceeded on the actual junction of the chip; at 50% over the boiling point of water even processor chips start to forget their mission in life. An efficient fan mounted on the processor is essential these days but suffers to an even greater extent from a blocked flow of air through the PC's case. Notebooks suffer inherently because they have few openings in the case. How to make it happenFloor-standing PCs attract dirt where they stand on carpets under desks. An awkwardly-sited power switch means they commonly switch off unexpectedly when banged with a knee!
ContactsThe science bit:How to Size Heat Sinks for Semiconductors and Microprocessors -IB-
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7. Competition - grab a bit of Flash
Another IB give-away! | ||
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We have another give-away competition for November and this time we are offering you your own personal storage in the form of a 128MB USB Flash Drive! These versatile devices hold more than enough for everyday documents and files and are essential if you roam around a good deal.
The first three customers to email infobulletin@coopsys.net with the correct answer will win a branded 128MB memory stick. So the question you need to answer is :
Which size memory stick would you need to hold all of the Co-Operative System's web site ?Hint: A good first step would be to put some appropriate keywords into our FusionBot search engine on the InfoBulletin archives page. We hope you'll learn something about storage devices along the way. However if you are of a much lazier disposition, you can find the answer in this article on personal storage devices. Our USB memory stick features
Email us when you have the answer.
Competition rulesThe competition is restricted to customers of Co-Operative Systems and subject to these rules as laid out by Co-Operative Systems.ContactsMore on personal storage.-IB-
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8. Clicks of the Trade - Multiple sheet printing
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! --- | |||
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-IB-
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