Archive for October 2005

The October issue of the notes newsletter is out. The intro, of course, mentions Halloween. The neighborhood party starts soon, but I think I’m going to miss out on the fun as the endoscopy (have one every two years because of Barrett’s Esophagus) has taken more out of me than I expected… it probably doesn’t help that it’s cloudy and rained. I think it’s Mom’s fault!

I went to sleep when I came home from the procedure and Mom woke me at 10 because she wanted me to eat something. Kidding, kidding. No, the story is true, but I am kidding about blaming her. That tells you how all together I am today, eh? So I have the dangerous job of handing out candy. After all, if I fail — I’ll be tricked! Oh my, I’m ignoring the doctor’s instructions which say not to operate machinery or do anything dangerous.

Parents enjoy Halloween. It’s the time after that becomes a problem… kids asking for candy every day until the loot is gone. Some trick ‘r treaters manage to get enough candy to last them till the next Halloween. What parent wants to deal with that or be tempted to steal a few for herself?

The solution? Trade candy for a prize. The more candy the child turns in, the bigger the prize. We did this with my oldest and started it last year with my middle child. It’s worked well. They only keep about five pieces, if that much … eat a couple of them after trick ‘r treating (hey, they walked a lot, so they gotta refuel!) and then save a couple for the next day. Then it’s over. Thank goodness.
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But you have to register first …

I found a great article and forwarded it to a colleague who might benefit from it. The colleague emailed me and said he couldn’t access it because he didn’t have a login ID. He didn’t want to mess with registration, even though it was free.

My list of IDs and passwords is huge. When I open the list, its contents take several screens to view, with each screen having multiple columns. I bought software to help me manage this giant mess. Some sites require email as an ID while others use a name of your choice as long as it has the minimum number of characters required, and someone else hasn’t already claimed it.

With each site having varying rules, it’s impossible to limit my choices to two or three login IDs. Microsoft works around this with its Passport, but many sites don’t use it, and people don’t trust having one login for multiple sites. It’s funny how some people don’t want one global login account, considering many use the same password for everything.

Why torture with registration?

If many people dislike memberships, even when it’s free, and won’t sign up unless it’s information they need, then why bother? For one, it provides the company with your information. Any shared information is gold to a business and its marketing department. The more they have, the better they know you and your needs so they can provide them through paid products and services.

Sign-ins also help businesses track their membership activities to determine what works and what doesn’t work, which articles are popular and which stink. On the plus side, it ensures the members get content they want and keeps out the topics that are “bad apples.”

For one of my columns, I studied the statistics to see which articles did well and which fell flat. I also reviewed the best articles on the site. Using the data I collected, I modified my column, and the first one after that received the best results ever.

On the other hand, how effective are these registration-required sites? Many users have gotten wise to the registration process and enter phony information along with a BugMeNot entry or a junk email address, which users enter whenever a site asks for an email address that they don’t want to provide (typically free accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail or IDs like Mickey Mouse and Charlie Brown).

The frustration of teasers

Once a person enters a site and clicks on a link to an article that sounds interesting, three things often happen:

1. The site indicates membership is required, so the visitor must sign in or register for a free account.

2. The site provides a paragraph of the article and says, “Want more? Sign up or log in.”

3. The article appears in its full glory without the user having to do anything.

Obviously, number three would be the best choice, as it has no barriers stopping the reader from accessing the content. Number one is upfront about requiring membership and gets right to the point. Number two is obviously a teaser, and those don’t go over well with many users. Number two wastes more time than number one because of the time you spend reading the partial content (if it’s not immediately obvious that the complete article isn’t available).

When referencing an article requiring sign up, providing that information with the reference saves the user time. For example:

Watch Me Do That Online [Free sign-in required]
Vlogs struggle to come up with fresh programming
by Sarah Boxer, The New York Times

This tells the reader that the article requires registration to view it, and it’s from The New York Times. So, based on whether or not the user is registered on the site or takes the BugMeNot approach, it’s easy to make a quick decision about whether or not to bother. However, not everyone takes this approach. I sent an article from a registration-required site thinking it didn’t require sign-in because not all content on the site requires signing in; however, I was mistaken.

Preventing “walk aways”

When newsletter publishers like InternetVIZ select “Best of Web” articles for a newsletter, we avoid pointing to sites requiring registration. Some sites don’t require it when an article comes out, but after a certain amount of time has passed, it requests your login ID. We avoid those, too, because they may not be registration-free by the time the newsletter goes out, or they won’t be accessible from the archives.

Sites that charge for content, on the other hand, are not typically an issue. Subscribers of fee-based content know the content is not likely to be accessible and wouldn’t post such references in their newsletters, blogs or Web sites.

The Internet has miles of information free for the reading. We’re overwhelmed and overloaded. So whatever barriers get in the way are likely to incite more “walk aways” than new members.

A few smart e-commerce sites, aware of this barrier, don’t require the user to register to add things into the cart. Some offer the option of signing up with the benefit of remembering your information the next time you visit, or you can check all the way out by providing the basic data of shipping, billing and email addresses (sometimes optional).

Putting it in their hands

With registration sites receiving phony information or BugMeNot IDs, will the trend change either way? Not likely. Even if all the publishers in the world teamed up and said, “We’re going to create a law that registration shall be required on every site so we’re all on equal ground” — an utterly ridiculous idea — there will be many who refuse to implement the barrier.

The least we can do is let people know when an article requires registration. That way, the decision about whether to sign up or not is in our readers’ hands.

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net, helping companies by massaging words into content that inspires action. Contact her to discuss how your business can boost its profits.

Just when you thought Chip and Elisa were no more, we sneak in one more article. Some of you wrote, “Nice story, but what’s the point?” The epilogue gives you the security tips for each episode. You can find the complete story here.

With all the natural and man-made disasters happening in recent years, planning for disasters has become fashionable. Unlike fashion, however, crisis plans are very important and must be tailored for your company. Has your organization created a disaster recovery plan? Have you already had to put it to work? We hope not, but if you have — it’d be a great learning tool for others if you share your experiences, since such situations are (we hope) rare. Again, we value your privacy, so you don’t have to disclose your name, company’s name or any proprietary information.

Read it all in the latest issue of The Remediator Security Digest.

Macromedia has a brilliant tool for its products. A thumb drive containing related documents. Unfortunately, when I plugged it in, my computer doesn’t recognize it. The USB is working fine as I plugged in my card reader with no problems. It’s small and fits anywhere, so you don’t have huge books of documentation taking up space.

The picture is exactly like the product packaging. There is one drawback — it might require pulling out the item in the USB port next to it because it takes up a little space. My iPod is plugged in next to it and I almost Macromedia drive in without unplugging my iPod, but finally got it in.

I still prefer reading from paper, but the reviewer’s notebooks are typically larger than the books that come with the packaging and difficult to control (large and flimsy). The packaging did come with a book — a normal-sized one.

Forums (aka message boards, bulletin boards, discussion boards), wikis (aka has nothing to do with anything Polynesian), chat rooms (where the worst pick up lines come to life) and blogs are great tools for building community on your Web site. You might use one, two or all of them. It just depends on your target market’s needs.

By regularly adding new content to your site, you not only keep people coming back, but also help to optimize your site’s search engine results. This article shows how to build a thriving community on your site using wikis, blogs, forums, and chat rooms. Though many of these tools exist, this article should help you determine which ones you need.

If you’re interested in this from an enterprise perspective, your company may have a CMS (content management system) that has some of these tools. But even if it doesn’t, that’s OK. Plenty of open source and third-party apps are available for the taking or buying. [ Read the article ]

I started hearing about Web 2.0 about a year ago. Probably shortly after the first conference of the same name. Since then, when someone writes about it, O’Reilly is almost always mentioned because the company puts on the conference. But in reality, what is happening on the Web isn’t something called Web 2.0.

I wanted to write this article last summer, but there was little information on Web 2.0 and I didn’t understand enough to write one. Since then, numerous articles and blog entries have come out, so I thought it was time to try it again. When I started writing this article, I initially mentioned O’Reilly, Ajax, and all that stuff everyone talks about. I read too many articles and threw something together.

I asked Digital Web’s Nick Finck for his opinion as I value his input. The guy straightened me out and I shocked him with a draft that took a 180 turn from the original. If you want to stay in the loop on this topic, I recommend following the writings of Richard McManus and Joshua Porter. The two are currently working on a book about this topic.

Anyway, here’s my take on this Web 2.0 bidness.

For the past year or so, there’s been lots of chattering about this Web 2.0. The term came to life when Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media brainstormed with MediaLive’s Craig Cline.

Is it just another term that Web experts and personalities are spreading to drum up followers and business? If nothing else, many (resources at the end of the article plus we’ll skip quoting the ones that have been quoted a hundred times already) agree the Web is still maturing and it’s changing from “I go get” to “come to me,” says Thomas Vander Wal.

The term is hype. That is all it is. Hype. Cry and scream, if you want, but the Web can’t have a label like this. It’s not a project with a start and finish timeline. It evolves. When the first phone came to be, it didn’t get names like Phone 1.0 or Phone BC (before cell). The phone industry evolved and now the lines are blurring between phones and Internet connections, even cable television.

But, the thoughts and ideas behind it are important.

Poster children for 2.0

The Web is no longer static and one-way — visitors read content and play no role. Instead, we’re seeing users who participate and connect to each other using services as opposed to Web sites. Applications are no longer limited to desktops or even the Web site itself as more Web-based applications come out.

Sites are becoming more interactive so users aren’t simply sitting and watching the Web go by. They can do something with the content they see, even if it’s not their own and it happens instantly.

Zimbra, Netvibes, Writely, CalendarHub, ObjectGraph Dictionary, TuDu, and a Periodic Table of the Elements are examples of two-way communication that occur in real-time. Go to these sites and play with them. It should be easy to see why these (and few other obvious that don’t need another mention) are the epitome of where the Web is going.

Repeating themes

In most Web 2.0 articles, the following are recurring themes:

*Semantic markup.

*XML.

*Portable content – content crosses paths, appears in multiple places, and connects.

*Users get real-time control.

*Adding metadata, tags, keywords to anything and everything.

Content can go anywhere thanks to RSS feeds and API (application program interface). Feeds allow people to subscribe to a Web site’s content or port them into their own Web sites or mobile devices. Google, Amazon, and eBay have APIs to let developers build applications that use these Web site’s tools. An example of API is adding a Google map to your Web site that shows how to get to your location.

All of these are indicators of the big steps forward we’re seeing on the Web. They should not be grouped and labeled.

I still don’t get it. What is 2.0?

Forget Web 2.0, but not what it represents.

It represents the change in how people and information interact on the Web. It represents designers and developers are thinking about how people use information and that users add value. It represents different approaches for making this happen.

To be honest, writing this article has been difficult. Read the many definitions of Web 2.0 on the Web and no two say the same thing. It’s yet another buzzword. As Rick Segal writes in his post on the topic, “Don’t look for the buzz words to get you into the game or get you a check.”

The term isn’t important. It’s about seeing a change in the Web as users enjoy more real-time control and participation while connecting to each other through many means. So to heck with the “label” and just know the Web is growing up and a lot of things are happening in terms of the advances made to make it a more interactive experience that puts the user in the driver’s seat.

“The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs me. It’s not a real concept. It has no meaning. It’s a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness,” writes Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software.

Vander Wal says, “There is more hype in Web 2.0 than great steps forward.”

Amen.

Special thanks to Nick Finck of Digital Web.

When I first met Sudoku last June, it was Writer-On-Line.com’s puzzle for the month. It took me time to figure out how the game worked. Since then, the puzzle has appeared in more and more places.

Here’s a daily puzzle from Sudogo and Astraware.

The Dallas Morning News publishes one every day (it’s rated one to five stars with one being easy and five is challenging) and that’s the last thing I do before I get to work. Thankfully, the challenging ones appear on the weekend otherwise I’d get little work done. Yesterday was the first time I correctly completed a five-star puzzle. I took my time and I was determine to beat it.

Wikipedia definition.

American Scientist on Sudoku.

Sudoku enumeration problems says there are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible solutions.

Wall Street Journal article on the puzzle.

Variety Sudoku brochure [pdf file] from 1st World Sudoku Championship.

Javascript Sudoku Puzzle Solver – for Web geeks who want to take their Sudoku obsession a little further with JavaScript.

Sudoku Tips

marckillian.com has two tips.

Before, I used to put a little number in the corners of the boxes to help me stay on track. Thanks to a tip from The Dallas Morning News — I look at each box like phone’s buttons. A dot in the upper right-hand corner to represents ‘1′. A dot in the middle is ‘5′ and lower left-hand corner is ‘9.’ Less messy!

Sudokulist – resources on the game including links, hints, competition, and a helper.

Solve Sudoku without Thinking provides details on how to solve the most challenging puzzles. Rather than entering numbers in every box, save time by not entering numbers of items appearing within the quadrant, row, and column. I suggest completing the square instead of circling to indicate you’ve checked the number. Also, use the aforementioned phone number suggestion instead of writing numbers.

Solving Sudoku tips

Solving Sudoku Puzzles

Sudoku tutorial

Here are several places where you can download an Excel-based Sudoku helper or solver.

* oceane.co.uk

* Su Doku Solver

* Sudoku-Help

* Microsoft’s Sudoku Solver for Excel

Sudoku Solver

Su Doku Solver

Sudoku Variations

Info on Sumdoku – killer Sudoku for sadistic Sudoku lovers. Sudoku variations, Killer Sudoku, aand Killer Samurai Sudoku.

BlogOn Sudoku: Sudoku with pictures.

Want to *really* make yourself crazy? Try Kakuro, Sudoku on steroids.

Daily Sudoku posts a puzzle every day, has archives going back to January 2005, and has a daily puzzle for kids.

EdHelper has an easier version for kids plus smaller variations (4×4, 6×6).

Now TV Guide has joined the craze. Except, it doesn’t use numbers. It uses nine letters with most, if not all, of the letters spelling a TV show. The first one was NUMBERS with the extra letters AT. Already, Amazon has a load of products. My dad likes to get everyone a desk calendar every year. I hope I don’t get a Sudoku calendar otherwise I’ll be in trouble in 2006.

Cell phone Sudoku – Can’t run away from it either.

Sudoku for kids

Hamsters

Online Sudoku

Sudogo provided the above puzzle and also has one online for you to play.

SudokuPuzzlesOnline.com offers Sudoku puzzles in varying degrees of difficulty as well as a community page where players can post their own Sudoku puzzles.

Number Logic has plenty of Sudoku and plans to add multi-player online gaming, member scores: Harder puzzles earn more points, and real-time scores and times of top players. It also has a two player game.

Web Sudoku – lots of puzzles you can do online.

The online Sudoku speed challenge

Guardian Unlimited archive of puzzles, published six days a week.

USA Today

Sudoku San – “Proudly destroying productivity since 2005″ indeed!

Sudoku.org.uk

Games for the Brain includes Sudoku and other brain exercises.

Sudoku Savior provides hints and lets you enter a puzzle. And it’s a site built without tables to boot!

Sudoku for Devices, Handhelds, and PCs

My dad gave my mom a Nintendo DS for Mother’s Day. We gave her Brain Age and pre-ordered Big Brain Academy. Sudoku is included. Man, it’s a good thing I sent it home before Mother’s Day instead of have her open it here. Then my son or I might’ve stolen it from her.

I also bought my first extra for my Sidekick II because I kept going somewhere without my PDA or a book when I needed to pass time. Guess which game. Sudoku indeed.

Dr. Sudoku and Sudoku Fever for Gameboy Advance. Sudoku Gridmaster (not one of the better versions) and Sudoku Mania for Nintendo DS.

Astraware also has Sudoku for handhelds. Of course, I got it as soon as it was on sale. I will NOT be buying it for my computer otherwise bye bye work. Mike Miller has a nice version known as SuperDoku.

As judge for Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards 2006, I discovered too many versions of Sudoku. Luckily, I had a deadline to prevent me from spending too much time on the games. And these are just the nominees for Windows Mobile devices.

* Astraware Sudoku from Astraware Limited

* Fast Sudoku from PPCLink Mobile Software

* Mastersoft SuDoku V2 from Mastersoft Mobile Solutions

* Pocket Sudoku from DKM Software

* Resco Sudoku from Resco, Ltd.

* Sensible Sudoku from Ludimate

* Sudoku Master from Real Dice

* Sudoku Pack from Filao

* Sudoku Rules Extreme! from Spiral Mile

* The Sudoku Collection from Pocket Adventures.com

I find the best electronic Sudoku games have the following traits:

* ability to pencil in numbers
* option to delete pencil numbers when you enter a number
* ability to switch between pencil and writing in the number with ease
* different skins
* non-numeral versions
* no distracting animation
* readable interface (some were hard to see)
* option of installing help file (on handhelds, this should be a standard to save space – some are huge)
* offer a free trial (believe it or not, one didn’t)
* minimize toggling

Free Sudoku game for Windows

[Links: C|Net Science Blog and Steve Bass ]

Updated: September 26, 2006

The target market for this phone is kids ages 8 to 12, although I recommend it more for the younger half of the group. 6 and 7-year-olds might be able to use it depending on the child.

We know how kids are reckless about making and receiving too many phone calls. Firefly lets parents control who they call. The phone comes with a PIN so parents can program the phone and kids can’t change it unless they figure out the PIN. The female button is typically the button for calling mom. The other one for calling dad. I programmed it so the female calls home and male calls Dad’s cell phone.

The address book only shows phone numbers for the people that the parents entered into the phone. The child also can’t view his phone number, so it’s possible to make it a one-way phone (calling out). I am comfortable with technology and I couldn’t figure out how to program it without reading the instructions and this is a rarity for me.

But it’s easy to do once you get it figured out… a little tedious as there are no numbers on the phone. But that keeps it very lightweight. Besides, once you’ve entered the acceptable phone numbers — you won’t need to deal with entering phone numbers again except to add someone new.

It might be a good phone for my 6.5-year-old because it would let him get in touch with us should anything happen. For my 11-year-old, I far prefer her sidekick since she can type to me (I’m hearing impaired) and besides — it’s better letting her get calls from friends on her own phone so she doesn’t take up our phone line.

This comes in multiple colors. I read some kid reviews who said it was an ugly phone. I think the male / female icons should be something else. But it’s a simple phone — how can it be ugly? When I was in the paging business, jellybean pagers (similar to the Firefly phone — oval, different colors) were a hit with kids. So I can’t imagine the issues with the looks.

It also has a useless, but cute and fun feature where you push a button and it does fireworks — the phone lights up, makes music, and shows a cartoon in the screen. It will probably get old fast even though there are about five different choices. You can also program the keys to have different colors in the screen. Kids like that stuff.

All in all… it’s a good starter for the younger set. Nothing fancy. Give it about 3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Price: USD$99.00

Colors: USD$12.99 except white glow-in-the-dark is $9.99 (bubblegum pink green limeade clear x-ray white glow-in-the-dark skin)