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The
LangaList
5-Aug-99
A Free
Email Newsletter from Fred Langa About BrowserTune,
HotSpots, Columns, Tips & Tricks, and Other Activities
In This
Issue:
Thanks! You’re Making BT2K Great!
High-Tech Hypocrisy: Pot, Meet Kettle
(or: the ICQ Fiasco)
Seven Outstanding Office2000 Reader Tips
New Kick-Butt Search Engine?
Free Palm III
Just For Grins
More!
You folks are the best! Thousands
and thousands of you have tried the full BT2K beta--- with, I’m happy to
report, a very, very high success rate.
Some of you who did discover bugs
have reported them to me, and they’re all on the to-do list in priority order:
I’m working through the list each day, and posting newly-refreshed versions of
BT2K.
Many of you also had great,
constructive suggestions for making BT2K look and work better--- not bug
reports, but great user feedback on the interface, organization, navigation and
so on. I was (and am) blown away that so many people would take the time to
figure out how BT2K could be better, and then to write it down and send their
suggestions to me. You folks really are amazing!
There are a couple of things that
(frankly) puzzle me. I state in the intro that if anything goes wrong, anywhere,
to use the "Problem With This Page" link that appears on literally
every page of BT2K. But I’m still getting some email from people writing
"My browser failed the such-and-such test. What happened?" Of course,
the answer usually would have been found if the writer had followed the
"Problem With This Page" link. It’s a little frustrating: BT98 had a
minimal help system of just a few pages. But between the basic
"Problem" links and the context-specific links that appear in the
custom reports, BT2K offers help and additional information on about 30
different topics. I wish I could find a way to get people to actually use the
links! 8-)
In any case, if you ran the beta
before, check back to the BT2K home page to see the date the current version was
posted: If it’s after the date of your last visit to BT2K, it might be worth a
fresh run of the Two Minute TuneUp. And if you sent me a bug report or
suggestion (or send me one in the future) watch for your suggestion to be
implemented: many of them will be, and soon!
Thanks again for all the great
feedback!
The BT2K full beta is at http://www.browsertune.com/bt2k/
The BT2K demo (think of it as “BT2K
Lite” is still available at http://www.browsertune.com/bt2kdemo/
And the tried-and-true manual
version of BrowserTune (BT98) awaits you at http://www.browsertune.com/bt98/
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Please Visit This LangaList Sponsor!) ------------
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the above is a paid advertisement )--------------
You probably know about---and
even use---"Instant Messages:" a form of email that can be exchanged
by PC users in near real time: If I send an IM to you, a few seconds later a
little text box opens on your screen. In the box, you’ll see my message to
you, along with a place to type your reply.
IMs are a great way to get and
share small bits of information, to quickly ask a question and to get an
immediate reply, or to communicate faster than email and less expensively than
by telephone.
AOL is the undisputed king of
Instant Messaging. Its two main forms of IMs include "AOL Instant
Messenger" which is bundled with the AOL online service software and with
Netscape browsers, and "ICQ" a standalone application that AOL
acquired last year. Some published reports claim the users of AOL’s IM
services send in excess of 700 million messages per day! (Each line of text in
an IM counts as a "message.")
IMs have become so important to
so many people that the Internet Engineering Task Force is working on a standard
so future IM applications can interoperate. But that standard is some time
off---and that’s where the trouble starts. Right now, AOL holds a virtual
monopoly on instant messaging, and they want to lock out other players.
Microsoft, for example, recently
launched its own free "Messenger Service" (http://messenger.msn.com/)
and did something interesting: It figured out how to let Messenger Service users
talk to AOL IM users.
AOL was not amused, and found a
way to block MS users.
MS found a way around the block,
and MS and IM users could communicate again.
AOL then blocked that. And so on.
I found the whole thing darkly
amusing: Just a few weeks ago, AOL was in a federal court whining about how evil
Microsoft tried to use its market power to hinder AOL’s and Netscape’s
competitive efforts.
And yet now, in a totally brazen
way, AOL is doing exactly the same thing in an area it dominates. Talk about
hypocrisy: While AOL is chest-thumping about "the fight for web
standards" over on http://developer.netscape.com/,
it’s actively resisting standardization in instant messaging.
In fact, AOL’s moves are so
brazen that other companies such as AT&T and Yahoo have joined with
Microsoft to try to get AOL to stop acting in such a counterproductive manner.
I don’t see how anyone who has
felt disgust at some of Microsoft’s tactics can turn a blind eye to AOL’s.
With its proprietary online service, its proprietary email system, and now a
proprietary IM service that is working to retain, AOL in many ways is the
antithesis of the move towards open standards and interoperability. I guess AOL
only wants open standards in selected areas---where Microsoft is strong.
But what’s your take? Do you
use instant messaging? If so, which one? Would universal and interoperable IM
systems be a benefit? Do you see AOL’s moves as a justifiable attempt to
retain control of a huge part of the web-communication market, or is AOL
engaging in exactly the kind of behavior it accuses Microsoft of doing? Is sauce
for the goose also sauce for the gander? Join in the week-long discussion now
going on at http://www.informationweek.com/langaletter
!
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Did I mention how good you folks
are? (See the first item in this issue! 8-) ) Every week, I try to pass on what
I’ve learned, but every week, I also end up learning lots of useful and
interesting things from you.
Take this note from Carol Anne
Ogdin ( http://www.deepwoods.com/
) for example, who’s obviously been wrestling with Microsoft’s Office 2000
long enough to offer these tips---all of which have the hallmarks of being
hard-won information. But by her choosing to share this information, Carol’s
pain is our gain:
1. O2K is Nazi-like in its
insistence that you MUST maintain the configuration it has chosen to install. If
you attempt to correct O2K setup idiocies, then every time you attempt to use
help, it will not allow you to get to help until you've let it reinstall! (You
can, however, hit Cancel, each and every time it appears, to bypass this
nonsense). Here are a couple of the kinds of things it does:
A. It installs a bunch of
fonts. If you don't want them, and remove them from the <windir>\fonts
directory, it will insist on reinstalling them.
B. It installs Office
Assistant, even if you've explicitly deselected it in the Setup configuration
stuff.
Turns out there's a tool,
in the Settings / Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs called "Customizable
Alerts". This is apparently the program that monitors the installation.
Actually a cool idea, but MS hasn't documented it in the box. It's downloadable
from http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/downloadDetails/alerts.htm
2. Word2K isn't quite
compatible with old templates that contain macros. In several cases, starting
from scratch with a blank page and rebuilding the template from the ground up
has made it possible to restore my configuration to stable condition.
3. VBA isn't ready for
prime-time. We have lots of crash problems during Debug: If you make a
programming mistake, it can accumulate memory errors until it finally reboots
the system without warning.
4. Word2K perpetuates an
apparent error in which formats of an entire document start changing when you
attempt to make a change over a selected part of text. (Proves they kept some
code, eh?). The only cure is to reboot the system so Word has a fresh RAM to
corrupt. Often, reboot is not enough, and I've actually had to cycle power!
5. On the bright side, the
"signed security" for macros is super. It keeps us from inadvertently
accepting viruses.
6. A Setup tip: Always go
through the custom setup options and make every option either fully installed or
not installed at all; avoid that "Install on first use" option, or
you'll find yourself having to leave the CD-ROM in the drive all the time. I
suspect that "feature" was put there in MS' eagerness to avoid
piracy...most of which is in multiple installs of the same CD-based product.
Like most MS stuff, this
is great in concept, but lacking in execution. I went back to Add/Remove Program
/ Microsoft Office 2000, and discovered that many of my selections had been
ignored (many things were set to "Copy on First Run"; some I'd
selected were set to "Not Available!"). However, re-installing after
having selected all of them the way I want them seems to have cured the problem.
7. All-in-all O2K
Professional is a good-quality final Beta. I'm hoping for "Gold"
code...but, with MS' track record, I don't expect SR-1 until next Spring.
Wow! Thanks, Carol!
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Please Visit This LangaList Sponsor! )------------
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the above is a paid advertisement )--------------
Everyone uses search engines from
time to time--- but it seems that search engines have become almost commodities
lately.
Some do a better job of trying to
keep up; some are faster than others, and some offer additional services that
make them stand out. I’ve always liked AltaVista, for example, even though it’s
not the most popular search engine.
But last week, I saw a press
release that caught my eye:
World's Largest Web Search
Engine
Over 200,000,000 unique
URLs are in the FAST Search database, which is more than twice the catalog size
of Inktomi, which provides the search engine for Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo, among
many others. It is also up to 4X larger than search solutions from Excite and
most other portals. Within one year, the *entire* Web - currently estimated at
800,000,000 URLs - will be indexed on FAST Search and it will thereafter scale
with the growth of the Web - FAST is the first company to undertake this
challenge.
FAST Search comes from
Fast Search &Transfer, with R&D facilities in Norway and over 10+ years
of research into search algorithms and software. While this is the World's
Largest Search, it is also the fastest, as it runs on a unique and fully
scalable parallel processing architecture based on PCs as opposed to
supercomputers - 200 top-of-the-line Dell systems manage and maintain the entire
search catalog.
FAST Search is available
on the Web at http://www.alltheweb.com
I’ve played around with it, and
it seems pretty good. For example, I did a kind of solipsistic search for
"Fred Langa" (will I go blind if I search for myself too often?
<g>)
Alltheweb returned "4105
documents found - 8.0190 seconds search time" and most of the pages were
relevant--- they were pages from sites I’ve done, places where I’ve posted
columns, or places (such as some Apple and Linux sites) where others have posted
comments and articles about me or my columns. (Some of the folks there who think
I'm anti-Apple or anti-Linux or something have very, er, colorful ---if
misinformed---opinions of me.)
In contrast, AltaVista was
faster, but returned only returned 1394 pages--- and almost all the top pages
were simply from various iterations of BrowserTune.
So FAST seems promising. I’m
not quite ready to abandon AltaVista--- but I like what I’ve seen of FAST so
far, and have bookmarked Alltheweb.
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Just use this link to recommend
the LangaList to a friend, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a Palm
III organizer (full details also available via this link):
http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1
Recommend-It is an ad-based site
(you’ll see banners and such). The advantage to you of using the Recommend-It
service (above) is that (1) you can win a Palm III and (2) you can add a
personal message to your LangaList recommendation.
But if you’d rather use the
tried-and-true, ad-free recommendation form, you’ll still find it at: http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2
. You can’t win anything there—except my thanks for helping the
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In fact, either way, thank you!
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Reader Jonas S. Madsen sends
along this guide to understand software version numbers:
1.0: Also known as
"one point uh-oh", or "barely out of beta". We had to
release because the lab guys had reached a point of exhaustion and the marketing
guys were in a cold sweat of terror.
1.1: We fixed all the
killer bugs ...
1.2: Uh, we introduced a
few new bugs fixing the killer bugs and so we had to fix them, too.
2.0: We did the product we
really wanted to do to begin with. Mind you, it's really not what the customer
needs yet, but we're working on it.
2.1: Well, not
surprisingly, we broke some things in making major changes so we had to fix
them. But we did a really good job of testing this time, so we don't think we
introduced any new bugs while we were fixing these bugs.
2.2: Uh, sorry, one
slipped through. One lousy typo error and you won't believe how much trouble it
caused!
2.3: Some jerk found a
deep-seated bug that's been there since 1.0 and wouldn't stop nagging until we
fixed it!!
3.0: Hey, we finally think
we've got it right! Most of the customers are really happy with this.
3.1: Of course, we did
break a few little things.
4.0: More features. It's
doubled in size now, by the way, and you'll need to get more memory and a faster
processor...
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See you next issue!
Best,
Fred
( fred@langa.com )
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