There is a big myth around: IT exists for such a long time now and there are so many companies and software pieces around that quite everything can be done.
Nope! I hear this often by customers who sometimes believe it is just a matter of price to solve every IT problem nowadays. And it's either the IT consultants and some vendors that tell this. The sad truth is: We are still in bronze age of IT.
I agree that much is possible yet - an on one hand much has been done. That creates a large scale of possible file formats, protocols, standards etc.
On the other hand for example many software pieces suffer from legacy and some newer are very similar - "me too" products driven by the requirement of a short "time to market".
From my point of view there are still many construction sites. Just to reinstall and reconfigure all the applications I need when reinstalling my PC is a nightmare on Windows. At least on Linux it got better (therefore I said we are in Bronze age and not in stone age ;-) ). Software development gets more and more complicated because of the very different interfaces, technologies and languages. The new arriving programmer faces a jungle of things. I like diversity but too much is too much.
Probably Internet is the most important thing that had lead us out of stone age. Now we have at least the possibility to connect to each other finding solutions thinking globally and not reinventing the wheel many times.
But the most sad thing I see these days is not the technical possibilities - it is the behavior of companies. They just want to produce software cheap or refuse to give support or buy and buy other companies destroying organizations and products.
Related posts: Economic crisis and IT, IT project costs explosion, The hardware, Reinventing the wheel.
2009-03-26
2009-03-17
Document file format
Yesterday my wife received a request for a poll by email. She confirmed to participate and received ... - a Word document. Not a link to a website, not a PDF form, not a text file - no, a Microsoft Word document with form fields. And we are on Linux.
Although Open Office does a great job on importing Word documents some form fields (meant as a pull-down menu) did not show up the available alternatives). My wife told me and said she thinks that initially somehow something showed up for a moment. I have to say, that I had no interest in investigating this problem, because of a single reason:
I had an interested talk a few years ago with a project manager who also teaches and trains other project managers about the format of documentation created during a project. He told me that prior to a project start they analyze the environment at the different partners involved and if they use different versions of Microsoft Office products then they estimate higher project costs due to compatibility issues because different versions of Microsoft Office behave differently and display contents differently. They often use the RTF format to overcome different drawbacks. However, using RTF reduces available formatting features.
I know these problems also. Not only once a co-worker wasted half a day correcting the layout of a concept that has been written as a Word document and has been edited by a customer.
So already years ago I switched to Open Office for every project relevant documentation. After evaluating the options that sounds the best alternative for me using the Open Office formats ODT, ODS and ODG.
The major advantages are:
Especially in IT or more technic/industry focused companies there are other types documents also to be written that cannot be written efficiently using Open Office. For those cases I recommend looking at OSALT.COM. That site helps finding alternative Open Source software for different commercial products. - E. g. DIA as an alternative for Visio (although - with some limitation - Open Office Draw can be used also). The Open Source alternatives do not always offer the same huge feature set as some commercial product, so there are sometimes relevant limitations. But in other cases the
Related posts: Data file format, Why I hate ribbons, Stationary under Ubuntu, Ignorance of the different, Popular Ubuntu desktop myths.
Although Open Office does a great job on importing Word documents some form fields (meant as a pull-down menu) did not show up the available alternatives). My wife told me and said she thinks that initially somehow something showed up for a moment. I have to say, that I had no interest in investigating this problem, because of a single reason:
People should write documents in a portable, platform independent standard format.Especially when intended for large amount of people it is important to use a format that can be displayed (and edited where necessary) by everybody.
I had an interested talk a few years ago with a project manager who also teaches and trains other project managers about the format of documentation created during a project. He told me that prior to a project start they analyze the environment at the different partners involved and if they use different versions of Microsoft Office products then they estimate higher project costs due to compatibility issues because different versions of Microsoft Office behave differently and display contents differently. They often use the RTF format to overcome different drawbacks. However, using RTF reduces available formatting features.
I know these problems also. Not only once a co-worker wasted half a day correcting the layout of a concept that has been written as a Word document and has been edited by a customer.
So already years ago I switched to Open Office for every project relevant documentation. After evaluating the options that sounds the best alternative for me using the Open Office formats ODT, ODS and ODG.
The major advantages are:
- Platform independency
I can read and edit the documentation at work under Windows and at home with Linux. - No (or at least very few) compatibility issues.
Using different platforms or versions of Open Office does not raise display or layout issues - or at least not with the amplitude known from Microsoft Office.
In the past for major changes in the document features Open Office did change file extension keeping compatibility and transparency. - No license fees
Open Office is free and would also help companies saving a lot of money. - Direct PDF creation with bookmarks and links
Open Office can directly create PDFs (without the use of an external PDF printer driver) Preserving links from table of contents or other links within the document. Further (when using appropriate heading format templates) bookmarks are automatically created in the resulting PDF which makes navigation easy when reading the document online.
Especially in IT or more technic/industry focused companies there are other types documents also to be written that cannot be written efficiently using Open Office. For those cases I recommend looking at OSALT.COM. That site helps finding alternative Open Source software for different commercial products. - E. g. DIA as an alternative for Visio (although - with some limitation - Open Office Draw can be used also). The Open Source alternatives do not always offer the same huge feature set as some commercial product, so there are sometimes relevant limitations. But in other cases the
Related posts: Data file format, Why I hate ribbons, Stationary under Ubuntu, Ignorance of the different, Popular Ubuntu desktop myths.
2009-03-02
Social networking sites
There were several events and discussions that caused me to test several social networking sites over time. Finally I got to some conclusions.
I tested the following sites:
More social networking sites can be found on Wikipedia.
My focus was on the following features:
For staying connected with friends you either see only once a year or even less, Facebook is IMHO the best choice. When you meet you can focus on the most important or interesting topics to talk and you can save a lot of time by "just bringing your friend up to date about a lot of minor changes your life". Those things can be published on Facebook. I would only keep attention not to publish too private and personal details. One good thing is also the availability of a mobile app that is available for most mobile phones - so you can post at Facebook what you are doing while on the road (I use this because while on train or waiting somewhere is the best time for such activities - you don't loose other important productive time then).
For business it may depend on your location what is more relevant for you - it might be XING or LinkedIn - both have business focus features, so it makes sense to have one private and one business focused social networking site in use. However, all the business focused sites do offer only limited features without payment - logically (you want to make business using that site so they also want to get their part of it).
Regarding personal information posted into social networking sites:
This is an often discussed issue, therefore I want to give a short statement on this. People often warn about the use of social networking sites and post too much private information.
If one use drugs or is alcoholic (s)he won't publish such information anywhere - not on paper nor somewhere on the internet (exceptions given for people who want to show in public how to quit).
I also had a discussion regarding "bad-will" of others. There are always people who don't like you even if you wish love, peace and success to everybody. As you can't satisfy everybody, there will be people who don't like you. The more information they can get about you the easier it is for them to harm you. - However, if somebody really wants to harm or nag you, phone number and address is the most important information. Most social networking sites allow particular privacy settings. In Facebook for instance posted information is only published to those who you confirmed as friends. If somebody does not like you and wants to talk bad about you to your friends, it's not your friends if they believe it without at least asking you also for a statement to hear both sides.
On the other hand, you would like your old friends to re-find you, you want to keep in touch with friends you see only seldom because you have not much time and you also might want head hunters to find you for offering a good job. So being present on the web and on social networking sites has also a lot of advantages. But anyway, you decide whether and where to be present - just remember: A big part of success is "showing up".
Related posts: Why I don't need Twitter, The mobile device, Surveillance, privacy (NSA, PRISM, ...) and encryption.
I tested the following sites:
More social networking sites can be found on Wikipedia.
My focus was on the following features:
- Keep the contact
I have a lot of work and a family - both needs much attention. I don't have the time for regular meetings with my friends. I do know many people that I would like to have contact more often but usually I see my good friends only once in a few months. So one big challenge is to not completely get the people out of sight that I do see very seldom. - Efficiency
As I have no time and as I am a life hacker using GTD methods, efficiency is a major priority for me. If the application does not bring big benefit with a minimum effort I will not use it. - Annoyances
It is easy to nag me with additional necessary clicks or time used to search for a specific feature (e.g. password change, write to others wall etc.). I looked for the tool that minimizes those annoyances. - Security
A https-Access to the site at least for the login is a must. If the whole site can be used https then either better. - Members from your network
It is somewhat important how many of the people you know are already using the particular site. Although some people have their account on several social networking sites, they are barely really using them all. And if you can convince somebody to sign up for a different site it will not be clear if this person will continue to use the site. So it is better if your contacts are already actively using the site.
- XING (Business focus):
Good:- Complete navigation can be done in https.
- Many of my colleagues, partners and customers do have an account there (talking about Austria/Europe).
- The available features can be used quite easily.
- Very annoying that many features are only available to the one that pays. Status updates and so on are limited to a certain number of messages. So if you want to stay informed you have to look at XING at the very least once a day - very annoying.
- Facebook (Private focus):
Good:- What I like most is the fact that you can easily stay in contact with your friends and feel still connected somehow even if you see them very seldom. You get notified, what they like most, what they are currently interested in and doing. You can discovered shared interests you didn't were aware of. Many of my friends are already there - many are not (but from those most can't be found either anywhere else).
- If you use Facebook, you IMHO don't need Twitter - such a feature of micro-blogging is included by status updates.
- Login not https if you do not manually type it into the address link. Can be solved by saving the appropriate link in your bookmarks.
- What I hate most on Facebook is the spam. There is a lot of stuff like karma, snowballs, pets that gets thrown at you. Similar problem with those huge amount of unwanted applications - I have no other word than spam for this.
- LinkedIn (Business focus):
Good:- Focus on finding the right business partners - appropriate features like recommendation of others.
- Tries to avoid adding people you do not personally know (well, also can be an advantage).
- Limited features for those who don't pay.
- Recommendation features are basic and do not reflect uncommon situations (e.g. I have a friend who is also a business partner and he runs two separate businesses - both combinations are not supported).
- Orkut (Private focus):
Good:- Tightly integrated with GMail/Google as part of Google applications collection.
- Poor feature set.
- Quite nobody of my friends/contacts is there.
- StudiVZ/MeinVZ (Private focus):
Good:- Focus on main features to link contacts (so it has not the spam level known from Facebook).
- Very annoying separation of StudiVZ and MeinVZ. What if I run a business and do study? How to change later when I first used StudiVZ and then finished studying? - Maybe a change is easy but I currently do not know if this is well supported. Then when searching a friend I have to consider whether to search StudiVZ, MeinVZ or both.
- Needs certificate exception added to firefox to somehow get https to work.
- Ning (Different focus):Ning has a little bit a special status - it is not one common social networking site, instead it offers the possibility to create more specialized networks. For instance to get all the Star Trek fans together or to create a community for all vendors and customers of a certain product or even to create communities for a specific hobby.
Good:- Completely different areas for different communities can be created.
- Combines social networking, forum and blogging features.
- If I have multiple networks I may need to write some common personal information twice.
- The forum features are quite limited although I think that for more specialized communities the forum features are the most important.
For staying connected with friends you either see only once a year or even less, Facebook is IMHO the best choice. When you meet you can focus on the most important or interesting topics to talk and you can save a lot of time by "just bringing your friend up to date about a lot of minor changes your life". Those things can be published on Facebook. I would only keep attention not to publish too private and personal details. One good thing is also the availability of a mobile app that is available for most mobile phones - so you can post at Facebook what you are doing while on the road (I use this because while on train or waiting somewhere is the best time for such activities - you don't loose other important productive time then).
For business it may depend on your location what is more relevant for you - it might be XING or LinkedIn - both have business focus features, so it makes sense to have one private and one business focused social networking site in use. However, all the business focused sites do offer only limited features without payment - logically (you want to make business using that site so they also want to get their part of it).
Regarding personal information posted into social networking sites:
This is an often discussed issue, therefore I want to give a short statement on this. People often warn about the use of social networking sites and post too much private information.
If one use drugs or is alcoholic (s)he won't publish such information anywhere - not on paper nor somewhere on the internet (exceptions given for people who want to show in public how to quit).
I also had a discussion regarding "bad-will" of others. There are always people who don't like you even if you wish love, peace and success to everybody. As you can't satisfy everybody, there will be people who don't like you. The more information they can get about you the easier it is for them to harm you. - However, if somebody really wants to harm or nag you, phone number and address is the most important information. Most social networking sites allow particular privacy settings. In Facebook for instance posted information is only published to those who you confirmed as friends. If somebody does not like you and wants to talk bad about you to your friends, it's not your friends if they believe it without at least asking you also for a statement to hear both sides.
On the other hand, you would like your old friends to re-find you, you want to keep in touch with friends you see only seldom because you have not much time and you also might want head hunters to find you for offering a good job. So being present on the web and on social networking sites has also a lot of advantages. But anyway, you decide whether and where to be present - just remember: A big part of success is "showing up".
Related posts: Why I don't need Twitter, The mobile device, Surveillance, privacy (NSA, PRISM, ...) and encryption.
2009-02-19
Update Age
In the last two months I faced a task again and again that continuously consumes time: Software Updates.
Not, that this is something unusual on a PC, but two years ago updating software was a task only limited to computers.
Yesterday I had to got to the mechanic because of a security software update for my car!
Without thinking too much I have the following items to maintain with software updates to keep them secure and (hope to) fix annoying bugs:
This is very annoying! When the economic crisis has passed we will be in the middle of the Update age. I am just waiting for our washing machine to need a bugfix update because not stopping to rotate any more "under some circumstances".
And I don't see a real solution: I can choose between keeping everything secure or being hacked and having an incident while driving home.
My humble suggestions to minimize the effort:
Not, that this is something unusual on a PC, but two years ago updating software was a task only limited to computers.
Yesterday I had to got to the mechanic because of a security software update for my car!
Without thinking too much I have the following items to maintain with software updates to keep them secure and (hope to) fix annoying bugs:
- Computer at work
- Computer at home
- Mobile phone of my wife
- My own mobile phone
- Our car
- SAT receiver
This is very annoying! When the economic crisis has passed we will be in the middle of the Update age. I am just waiting for our washing machine to need a bugfix update because not stopping to rotate any more "under some circumstances".
And I don't see a real solution: I can choose between keeping everything secure or being hacked and having an incident while driving home.
My humble suggestions to minimize the effort:
- When planning new IT systems take into consideration how easy to maintain and update.
- Prefer simple and easy solutions - those have less (security) issues.
- Reduce the amount of needed systems.
2009-02-05
Why I don't need Twitter
Lately I read a lot about how useful Twitter is. I can't see much sense in this web application and I have mentioned that earlier in "What is useful software" talking more generally.
Now I want to go a little into detail regarding particular use cases:
Now I want to go a little into detail regarding particular use cases:
- The main reason why Twitter was started was - as far as I noticed - to answer the question "What are you doing?".
There are plenty of other applications and services that can be used to do the same. I noticed that Facebook can be used to do quite the same. The advantage of Facebook is that it has more features and combines networking with chit-chat like Twitter without the need to go to a separate site. Even on Skype you can set a current message containing an information about what you are currently doing. - Let others know what you think.
I think, that blogs are much more important and useful to let others know about my opinions. Twitter messages are limited to a few characters - not enough to explain personal theories or philosophical opinions. - Chat
For real chat (with single persons or particular groups) there are also plenty of other applications, this is nothing new. And again the limited message length reminds me to old days when data transfer rates where veeeery slow. Those were the times abbrevations like ROTFL or ASFAIK were invented to make the text short (and surely also to save time and effort). This is such annoying as when you want to add data in a database field and you notice it is too short.
2009-01-27
Why I have chosen Fedora
There are plenty of Linux distributions available and a few years ago when I changed to Linux at home it took me a while to get an overview and choose a distribution. I have chosen Fedora and I am still convinced that I did the right choice (note from 2009-08-18: I have switched to Ubuntu ;-) ). Here are my top reasons (in the order of importance for me) for choosing Fedora (mostly applying also for Ubuntu):
You can find a comparison of distributions at Wikipedia. On second place there was Ubuntu - which I would probably also choose if I would have to choose now.
See also: The sad thing about Linux..., The operating system, Why I switched to Ubuntu, Why Linux?.
- There is no special focus on client or server features.
I looked for a distribution that can be used as client workstation, for software development as well as for a server efficiently. It is so nice with Linux that I don't have to choose one single language at installation - I can choose several language packs, so fine. The other thing that is really annoying with Windows is that after you chose the language you have to choose whether to install a server or a workstation. I wanted to get rid of this decision either. How the hell should I know what I want to use my machine for half a year from now? - So I need an allround-distribution. - The distribution is kept quite up-to-date containing new packages.
When I chose to go with Linux there were many things important for me that were only supported with some of the latest libraries and components - for example the support for my Canon photo printer. - There are quite a lot of packages included in the distribution.
The number of available packages in the repositories has been also an important issue for me (this is related to point 2). As it would have been annoying for me if I had to recompile a lot of software from the sources it was important for me to have ready-made packages. - Easy maintainance.
As I share the computer at home with my wife and I probably want to support friends with their computer issues I searched for a distribution that was more easy to handle even for a person that is not a commandline freak. - Defaults to gnome desktop environment.
From current view this really depends on the personal favor and I liked Gnome more than KDE. Although I had also some philosophic concerns against KDE. I do not really follow the discussions and changes any more regarding this - I think to remember that I heard about some changes here. However in the meantime there is either a version of Fedora that defaults to KDE.
You can find a comparison of distributions at Wikipedia. On second place there was Ubuntu - which I would probably also choose if I would have to choose now.
See also: The sad thing about Linux..., The operating system, Why I switched to Ubuntu, Why Linux?.
2009-01-13
What is useful software?
After continuously reading about Twitter I created an account and tried it. Even after reading "A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly" at Zenhabits, I cannot really see the benefit.
I was used to face a problem and then create a solution for it. Looking at IT developments of the last years I think that a lot of software is created and used many times without either knowing why. I have read comments from people trying hard to figure out the deeper sense of using Twitter. Instead of just letting go they spend hours trying to find a sense in using it. I find that strange.
Apart from the fact that there are particular special features in Twitter other than being a micro-blog with some character of an RSS feed, there is no particular focus and that's the worst. If I would seek out for new employees, would Twitter be a starting point where to seek? Nope. Would I look at Twitter to read peoples opinions? No, I would read an RSS feed of a blog where I know that one takes more time to write a blog article than chit-chatting on Twitter. Would I look for solutions to technical problems? Neither.
There are already Instant messengers, Wikis, Blogs, RSS feeds, forums and mailing lists. All those things have been created to solve particular problems and - sure - later have been used in a wider area also for other purposes.
Software is a tool, it should help me - or the user - to get something done, faster or better.
There are enough areas in IT where still big mess is happening - Backup & Restore, Privacy & Security, Information management and document management, customer relationship management just to mention a few. So there are enough opportunities to improve.
When creating software we should keep in mind that
Twitter is doing chit-chat to the world - whoever is listening (or not). As soon as something is going to be all and nothing the question for the purpose should be asked.
Related post: Why I don't need Twitter.
I was used to face a problem and then create a solution for it. Looking at IT developments of the last years I think that a lot of software is created and used many times without either knowing why. I have read comments from people trying hard to figure out the deeper sense of using Twitter. Instead of just letting go they spend hours trying to find a sense in using it. I find that strange.
Apart from the fact that there are particular special features in Twitter other than being a micro-blog with some character of an RSS feed, there is no particular focus and that's the worst. If I would seek out for new employees, would Twitter be a starting point where to seek? Nope. Would I look at Twitter to read peoples opinions? No, I would read an RSS feed of a blog where I know that one takes more time to write a blog article than chit-chatting on Twitter. Would I look for solutions to technical problems? Neither.
There are already Instant messengers, Wikis, Blogs, RSS feeds, forums and mailing lists. All those things have been created to solve particular problems and - sure - later have been used in a wider area also for other purposes.
Software is a tool, it should help me - or the user - to get something done, faster or better.
There are enough areas in IT where still big mess is happening - Backup & Restore, Privacy & Security, Information management and document management, customer relationship management just to mention a few. So there are enough opportunities to improve.
When creating software we should keep in mind that
- there are people who want to get their work done quickly and then go outdoors and have fun (those people are not willing to play with fancy features),
- there are people having difficulties using a computer (they are not very familiar with it and even not very interested to change this) and
- there are people - power users - who want to get the most out of the computer by trying to solve everything with the help of the computer - those are also focused on achieving a lot of particular goals.
Twitter is doing chit-chat to the world - whoever is listening (or not). As soon as something is going to be all and nothing the question for the purpose should be asked.
Related post: Why I don't need Twitter.
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