Ed's Tech Tips

Tivo, On-Demand, digital cable, fiber optic and high definition television are all the rage, but my wife and I have decided to switch to basic cable much to the disappointment of my teenage children for the following reasons:  Cost, Quality (what they watch) and Quantity (how much they watch).

Cost:  Cable, beyond the basic is rather expensive. The basic service cost $8.99 a month and get me about a dozen channels. I get two of each of the network channels and a couple news channels and a couple home shopping networks and TV Guide to show me what I am missing. Standard analog cable is $53 and digital packages start at $65 plus the set top box and remote you need for each television to decode the signal. New on-demand movies are $3.99 and are only available for 24 hours. Yes, there are free movies but most of them are ones you do not care to watch or have seen numerous times already. Add a premium channel and you're at $84 a month. 

I have Internet access through my Cable company at $50 a month. The alternative is dial up or DSL. DSL cost about  $40+ a month and is slower than the cable. As a network administrator and web master I need the Internet access and dial-up is just too slow.

I've looked at DirectTV and while it cost a little less, there is the issue of the local broadcast stations, quality of reception and the additional cost of the set top boxes which are required. At least with cable, the boxes are optional for now.

Quality: My teenage daughters are drawn to some shows I would rather not have them watch, such as, "I Love New York" on VH1 which features a rude, ill mannered loud-mouthed woman from the popular "Flavor of Love" series. This is not a woman you want your daughters to imitate. Another I do not like and they love is "My Sweet Sixteen" which is about ridiculous birthday parties for spoiled rich kids. Then there are the various dating shows that feature shallow narcistic individuals.

There are means of blocking shows on the cable set top box or built-in vchip, but that is somewhat haphazard. You can block by show title (if you know the title and new titles are always being created), channel or ratings. Some shows have no TV ratings and the rating system is inconsistent. If I'm going to block half the shows, why am I paying for them?

There are some good shows on. I love the Discovery channel, History channel, TLC and Animal Planet, but my kids seldom watch those unless they are watching them with me. I am also a big fan of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi channel. It has no real redeeming educational or social value, but it is a cool sci-fi action drama. However, a new show will not be available until 2008. If I can wait that long I can wait for the show to come out on DVD.

Quantity: My kids watch way too much television. I encourage them to read, write or do other hobbies, but they almost always gravitate to the television, the path of least resistance. I am not home in the afternoons when they are after school and cannot switch off the TV. Plus, they will watch the same shows over and over again. The Disney Channel constantly runs re-runs of their shows and they the reason they can do so is because kids will watch them over and over and over again. I would think they would get bored of watching Zack and Cody again and again, but they don't.

In lieu of total television deprivation we will retain basic cable which guarantees good reception and subscribing to Netflix with which we can be more selective and still be able to watch televisions series that have made it to DVD. I like the fact that there are no late fees and that there is a wide selection to easily choose from. There is almost every concieveable category of videos.

My avoidance of set-top boxes may change in February 2009 when analog tv may no longer be offered since that is the deadline for over-the-air analog signals to cease to exist and only digital signals will be broadcast. This is a move that is being subsidized by the federal government. 

I am hoping that DVD will be around for a while or at least until Blueray or HD-DVD players come down in price to the same levels as DVD players.

As far as sports go, I am not a big sports fan. Actually I am not much of a sports fan at all. I tried to follow basketball, but to me it is hard to be loyal to a team that switches players all of the time which happens in any major league team sports today. Gone are the days when a person could spend their whole career on a single team. Could you imagine Larry Bird playing for anyone else besides the Celtics? My wife is a huge Bost Red Sox fan, but she is content to listen to the games on the radio or on the Internet.

Spring is here and with the warmer temperatures usually comes an urge to do some house cleaning. I guess after after being cooped up indoors all winter you get tried of the clutter and feel a need to get things organized. At least I feel that way sometimes when I have the energy.

A couple weeks ago I cleaned out my inbox, which contained over a thousand messages to nothing, zip , zero, nada. To some of my co-workers, a thousand is nothing, while to others it would be horrendous. To me it was becoming overwhelming and some what out of control. Many of the messages were deleted, but many were stored away. In the past I tried to keep numerous folders or labels (in Gmail which is what I primarily use for email), but they were rather tedious to maintain. Do you organize by sender or subject? What if a single email covered multiple subjects or was a email discussion from multiple sources?  Many times I would not do anything and leave it in the inbox, but unfortunately messages could get overlooked once they fell off of the front page of the inbox.

I searched the web and found some guidance.  Gina Trapani at LifeHacker (which btw, is great site for useful tips and how-to's) has developed a system which I have adopted and has worked very well for myself. It allows me to get my inbox empty and helps me stay on top of my messages. Items are less likely to get lost. I'm better organized and can better prioritize my tasks, since almost all of my work tasks has at least one email associated with it.

Here is the system, almost verbatim, with a few minor changes, from LifeHacker. 

I keep three types of labels in Gmail: permanent/manual labels, permanent/filter-based labels and temporary labels. Each has certain naming conventions.

Permanent labels (underscore, all caps): There are four main buckets or folders: Action, Archive, Later and Hold. Gmail has a built-in ArchiveThe underscore keeps these labels - the most important ones - at the top of the list, and the all caps is just for emphasis.

Explanation of the three buckets: 

Action: These messages represent tasks you must complete; whether that's a response that will take more than two minutes (anything less than that, just respond on the spot!) or some sort of an action. All these messages represent an item on your to do list.

Examples of messages that might go here include: a request to update the web site, or a message from a long-lost high school friend who you haven't spoken to in years that you want to spend some time writing with updates on your life. This folder should be reviewed on a regular basis and cleared out as tasks are completed.

Archive: The Archive folder is your long-term email reference library. Place all the messages that contain information you may want to retrieve at some point in the long term future in Archive. Any completed threads, completed requests, memo's you've read, questions you had answered, and completed project email goes into Archive. Basically, whenever an email is "closed" but you may find it useful at some point in the future place it in Archive.

Dumping everything directly into Archive may seem scary to dedicated filers . It was to me at first. However, the archive is your "pile" versus "file;" Just remember it's completely searchable, and any message you place there will be retrievable using a well-crafted query. If you use Gmail, the advance search functions make finding messages easy.

Later: Those items are ones you would like to read or follow-up on but do not have time for now. They do not require any action or immediate attention and you can review them at your leisure later. 

Hold: The Hold, which could also be called WAITING folder is a temporary holding pen for important messages you'll need quick access to within the next few days. If you're waiting on someone else to get back to you with crucial information, or you're maintaining a thread about a time-sensitive topic, keep it in the Hold folder.

Examples of messages that would go in Hold are: a FedEx confirmation number for a delivery that's on its way, or a message from a co-worker that says, "I'll get back to you Tuesday re: The Big Project."

This folder should be reviewed on a regular basis and cleared out as the message contents are no longer needed (ie, that FedEx got delivered or your co-worker gets back to you.)

I considered a Reference label, but anything I keep in archive or in projects is kept in case I want to refer to it later, so it appeared to be redundant and I wanted to simplify my inbox and streamline it. 

Filter-based labels (parens): I've also got a few longer-term labels for automatically shuttling messages out of my inbox: like tips email, mailing list messages, and unwanted messages that might very well be spam. I use parentheses to sort them below the above main labels. I do not think many people take advantage of  the automatic filters built  into your email client. Messages can be sorted according to sender, subject, content and then be deleted, moved, forwarded and so forth. A little bit of time spent upfront can save time later.

Short-term labels (asterisk): Last, I keep a couple of short-term labels for current projects sorted at the bottom of the list using an asterisk (like *Reunion) These labels will be deleted at some point when I don't need them anymore.

In order for this system to work you have to apply it every day to every message, Once a message is read do not leave it in the inbox. Put it where it needs to go. I use Gmails "Star" feature to highlight important messages across multiple categories so that I can easily list them all at once. It works well with the ACTION folder because I can star the next action item. When an action is complete I remove the action label, remove the star and the message is archived. 

Here are some other helpful links for managing your mail:

• In-Box Makeover
• Five simple rules for keeping an empty inbox
• Inbox Zero
  

A while back I wrote about how we have turned to Skype  to reduce telephone communication costs for long distance, as well, as conference calls. Skype is not open source, however the software is free and the costs are minimal. However, hearing some one's voice is not always enough. You need to show them something wile you talk to them at the same time, such as, a PowerPoint presentation or a spreadsheet. There are some add-ons for Skype like Convenos and Unyte. They look promising, but they are not free (Unyte is free for 1:1 communication) and not necessarily easy to install or use. Browser-based services like WebEx and GoToMeeting are interesting, but do carry a cost, usually in the form of a subscription fee and require both a computer and a phone, although I guess you could use Skype as your phone.

A new open source application that simplifies web meetings and is free to use is Dimdim. It supports desktop and application sharing via a web browser. The presenter can send a video stream of himself and all of the participants can either speak via their microphone or headset. There is also a text chat option. As long as the attendee has Firefox 1.5+ or Internet Explorer 6+ and Flash 8 or greater plugin nothing needs to be downloaded. Attendees can be invited from within Dimdim and they just click the link in the email message to be transferred to the online meeting. Attendees can be running Windows, Mac or Linux. At the moment the presenters must be running Windows 2000, XP or Vista. There is a small browser plug-in for presenters to download which weighs in around a megabyte in size.

I installed Dimdim on our web server. It is a self-contained Java Tomcat/Apache application. Once I had Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0 installed, setup was rather painless with root SSH access. There is also a Windows version that you run from your desktop or Windows 2003 server.

The program is still in alpha development, but very functional. We did some informal testing at the Association. With six people connected, Firefox stopped responding and I had to restart the dimdim server. I am not sure if the fault was with the Logitech camera, browser or server. I later tried IE 7 and it seemed to work better, but I did not have more than 4 people at any one time in my second round of testing. Audio and video quality were pretty good, as were the display rates for the applications. It can work behind firewalls if port 80 is open, which is the common port for web browsing. 

Dimdim looks very promising and you should keep your eye on it. Besides presentations, it could work very well for training. I do not know how well it scales, meaning how many can connect at one time for a given amount of memory, bandwidth and CPU resources. The program is still being developed, but if I was working at WebEx I would be concerned.   

Microsoft has a new ad campaign showing various life experiences where the participants says "wow" to themselves and then at the end it equate Windows Vista 3D windows display as something to say "wow" about. I like the ad. It is very well done. It got my attention, however, Windows Vista does not wow me.

I stopped by Best Buy the other night and checked out the numerous notebooks on display running Vista. It is very shiny and glossy, but not necessarily any more intuitive. I was looking at Sony Vaio with a built in camera. I was looking for a way to see the results of the camera. At first I went to Control Panel thinking I would find a camera settings applet there to let me play with the adjustments and see a preview. I was wrong. I had to scroll through a long list of applications on the Programs menu to find the Vaio video camera program.

Being a long time Linux and Mac users, virtual screens and transparent windows have been around for a while.  3D windows displays have been available in third party applications, but I never found them any more useful than the Alt+Tab command or Apple's Expose feature. I do not think many other people will find it much more useful either, especially when you consider you need at least a gigabyte of RAM and a separate video adapter. Apparently the integrated Intel video chipsets will not cut it with the Aero interface. 128 MB of video memory is the recommended minimum.

A gig of memory recently use to be considered luxurious and now it is the recommended minimum. Actually, I am old enough to remember when Bill Gates said that we would never need more than 640 KB. My current cell phone has 10x more memory than that. Vista is like a pig with lipstick.  

Then consider the confusing multiple packages: Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, Business and Enterprise. Then there are 64-bit versions of those. There is the upgrade price and then the full price. Considering the hardware requirements, I would would wait until purchasing a new computer that comes with Vista. However, personally I would wait for the new Mac OS X Leopard.