Just Enough Technology

A commentary on the usefulness of bright shiny toys and an antidote to computer journalism from Michael fitzGerald,  the largely harmless purveyor of practical advice to the old, impatient and creative.

See the website at BOFConsultants.com

UK National Proramme for IT - Fail

This may come as a shock to people in the IT industry but sometimes the answer isn't bright,shiny and made by them. In a rare foray into the real world IT Consultants have come across a client base that seems to be more interested in saving peoples lives than slick user interfaces into relational databases. IT companies are used to presenting their half-arsed projects made from the computing equivalent of toilet roll centres and sticky backed plastic to rapturous applause from adoring, over-indulgent parents so dont know how to deal with underpaid, over worked health care professionals.
We are a long way from an agreed user requirement for a computer system for the UK National Health Service - but wait, we have already spent £12 billion on it. It has now become a political issue. I assume that a Conservative Party junior research took my ranting on this topic, packaged it for his masters who are now barking about simple, sponsored by advertising, google solutions to accessing information. Ah well.
The surprising thing about this sad episode is pointed out by the Financial Times which states that we can't afford to stop the contracts. Still paying billions to IT companies to do nothing keeps them out of mischief.
But where can these companies redeploy their hyperactive, unstructured clowns (sorry, I mean IT professionals) the circus tent of National Identity card is already full and taking money with an almost embarrassing efficiency.
I know - a real time database of every single banking and retail transaction. It's obvious that we need to profile those people who buy ethnic food with cash. We could have links into the local authority databases to check whether they have a record of their dogs fouling the footpaths. I had better stop there I have an uneasy feeling that I might be taken seriously

Broadband doubleplusgood!

I spent the weekend trying to get my cheap pay-as-you-go broadband to get above morse code speed. Soon I won't have to bother. Once there is broadband in every home with wireless networking to every child's bedroom I will be bathed in a rich soup of bandwidth and able to connect to any access point from across the street. I can guarantee that the majority of access points will still have the default password.
I can also guarantee that people who use obscure passwords will find 20 armed policemen knocking on their door with a battering ram with full media coverage.

I'm still waiting to see how broadband in every home is going to power the economic recovery, solve childhood obesity and decrease our reliance on imported food - to name just a few real priorities

If they called twitter a chat room nobody would use it

In olden times if you wanted to exchange snippets of information on-line you signed up for a bulletin board or forum or chatroom. This was a self selected group of people with a common interest. In the quaint way of old fashioned computing there was a complex hierarchy of topics and sub-topics and an administrator. Conversations ambled along at the speed of a dial up modem and people spent the night sleeping so conversations across timezones were even more leisurely. Joining the community required access to exotic equipment and technical knowledge so the major topic of discussion was computing or science fiction.

Inside all of this structure you would find short abbreviated comments from people with funny pseudonyms - yes it was just like twitter!

Calling twitter a chat room would immediately cause most users to abandon it. Twitter is way cooler than that, twitterers would cry.

Quite simply, twitter has abandoned structure. It is a free form playground of excitable toddlers all jammed on transmit.

The intriguing thing about it is that it has become subject to evoultionary pressure and primitive structures are beginning to appear.

All very philosophical but "What's in it for me?  you chorus

My advice for those whose curiosity has been piqued by their broadsheet twittering on about twitter is

- Only sign up if you know someone already using it
- Use twitter advanced search to select an area of 10 miles from where you live. You can then quickly find out if there is anybody interesting out there
- Treat it like an item of fashion clothing  - fun for the moment.
- Don't use it for important things,  it can be unreliable

You will of course find the bof on twitter mixing it wiv his mates, wicked

Citizens as digital denizens

You can tell that Daniel Toole is a consultant, not a journalist. The full title of his article in the Financial Times is "Citizens as digital denizens - the digerati's answer to the economy" . Don't they have sub-editors on the FT? Anyway if you are not put off by the title you will be put off by the content. Another attempt to breath life into the Carter report on "Digital Britain". This is an interim report with all the substance of an undergraduate essay plan. Let's hope the final report includes clear goals, a timescale and a budget.Gone are the days when organisations or individuals would uncritically fund technology "visions"

Teach your Granny to use twitter

It's easier than you think.
Show her an immediate, practical and continuing benefit. (this may help decide whether you should be using twitter too!)
Although Stephen Fry is everyones favourite grandson being able to follow his every movement is probably not sufficient justification for your Granny. Still hundreds of thousands of followers hang on his every tweet.

I'm looking forward to Stephen following Charles Dickens example and producing novels in instalments, but using twitter. One hundred and forty characters per chapter now there's a challenge!

Electronic Newspaper Delivery cheaper than printing

"Printing the NYT Costs twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle" So says Nicholas Carlson writing in the Silicon Alley insider. ( NYT=New York Times, Kindle= An e-book reader sold by Amazon)
A couple of years ago I took the New York Times to task for using too much technology  How Times change! Or do they? Common sense indicates that if it's cheaper to use an electronic device than to use paper the NYT should just do it.
I trudged through the comments on the article looking for informed quantitative criticism, but in usual manner of Web comments they quickly became dreary. I did like the one by Javik "Imagine how expensive it will be when you have a new puppy and you have to cover the floor with a collection of Kindles while potty training."

Digital Britain - Interim criticism

The British Government has produced an interim report and here is my interim criticism.

Not good enough, needs more detail and less Consultancy speak.Please produce a short report with well defined objectives, a budget and timescales. How will broadband in every home have an effect on the economy?

For a more measured comment on this Government report see Charles Arthur's article in the Guardian "Digital Britain : Who is going to pay?"

Facebook to run U.K. National Health Database

The task of collating and storing personal health data on a computer is too hard for the U.K. Government  and its IT Contractors. We can manage the dissemination of personal data with breathless ease - leave it on a train, lose it in the mail, copy it to tiny storage devices and then can't find the damn things but simple database applications, like the ability to make Roman roads, has disappeared.
The Financial Times reports that Worthing and Southlands NHS Trust are considering reverting to a 20 year old system NHS trust considers abandoning electronic records , their source is E-Health Insider.
Whenever the cost and timescale of the NHS system is "revised" I generally re-publish my post suggesting that Google should run this computer service , here is my most recent. It would be free, it would work and their track record on privacy is better than the Government's. The boring old fart in me applauds the return to a paper based system. This has to be the justenoughtechnology solution, after all we are mainly healthy and visits to doctors and hospitals are infrequent. However suppose our health had the same intensity  as TV medical dramas , what better system to match this than Facebook . All the complex mechanics of running a database with details of hundreds of millions of people are proven and the privacy is better than the Government systems. As well as smiling photos your doctor friends could upload x-rays, your status could be updated to form a list of all the inoculations and illnessses and your partying could be recorded in pictures from the youthful excesses and vomiting all the way to middle aged liver failure.
Obviously you would want to get your privacy settings correct but otherwise this is a system that is ready to go. There may be some concerns expressed by old fogeys but the upcoming generation would welcome it with open arms. Did I mention it was free?

Twitter : a tool looking for a function?

"In the UK twitter traffic has increased by 974 per cent in the past year" So says Robin Goad of Hitwise.
He will be pleased that this appears in most of the U.K. newspapers, varying from the cut and paste of the "churnalist" to a thoughtful  analysis in timesonline.co.uk which highlights an upcoming feature which will make twitter more useful.

It's the useful bit that's difficult. When presented with shiny new technology we have become addicted to trying it so it's not hard to get traffic increasing by 1000%, all you need are a couple of celebrity names and to report that traffic is increasing. But is it useful? At first sight the ability to send cryptic messages of 140 characters to a website which allows anyone who registers to read them on their computer or mobile phone doesn't look promising. In general it would be useful for existing cohesive groups who need frequent updates on what is happening. The only particular examples I can think of are

- Journalists
- Celebrities wanting to send messages to their fans

I look forward to receiving lots of further examples in the comments. You can also tweet me or send a direct message to my twitter profile bof.

Switch off that Blackberry Obama and pay attention!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the intense nerd who pays attention in school will become your boss. And so Obama has become boss of America. A triumph for honest hard work against a not very level playing field. His choice to retain his Blackberry email device is a serious flaw, but not for the reasons you might expect. Leaving aside all the security and legal stuff it sets a bad example. All his staffers and MBA corporate managers will copy every aspect of his fashion sense and this will include the addiction to the Blackberry. Whilst Obama is unlikely to misuse his personal device for Government business his staffers and corporate giants will. At a time when the World economy needs to have its people with their hands full of tools for actually making things that can be sold for money Obama will be sending a message that will encourage the clicking of keys by middle managers instead of them rolling up the sleeves and interacting with real people.

I apologise for criticising the elected head of another nation but do so because we haven't yet started using technology in the U.K. Well, we've made a start.We have employed ineffective people to manage our IT, lost citizens personal data, and wasted billions on IT projects. No sign of overt Blackberry addiction by U.K. Government officials yet but it won't be long before a tabloid journalist bribes a CCTV operator to peep over the shoulder of a prominent minister and read the keystrokes as he or she sends compromising emails from any public place in London

Google public transportation layer, a user interface disaster

Oh dear, I thought this would happen. Google in their constant quest to keep give us useful information have added a "public transportation layer" to some of their city maps. Here is the one for London, England.

It is a mess.

I am a local and familiar with the London Underground and find this representation unusable.

Fortunately we have had a simple and intuitive map which was first produced in 1931 by Harry Beck. The history is summarised in this Wikipedia article called Tube map . A superb example of JustEnoughTechnology

In addition to this elegant piece of design London has a comprehensive and interactive transport website
Transport for London which integrates all the transport options for travel in this city.

In this case Google have produced a technical solution rather than a useful one.

Stop boiling kettles

Alex Wissner-Gross linkedin profile must be contemplating whether he is justified in using 14g of carbon dioxide to make a calming cup of tea following the exciting publicity surrounding his announcement that google searches use energy, as reported by the BBC Carbon cost of googling revealed
As he sips his tea he will doubtless contemplate on the difference between his interesting fact and the way in which it has been reported by "journalists". I think he meant to say that "Environmental physicists are worried about the environmental impact of information technology." and whilst this is quoted in the article it is so diluted by kettles of water, google searches per day, the implication that using other search engines can save energy that the reader is left bemused and contemplating the fact that his cup of tea has produced as much carbon dioxide as an aeroplane and that if he attempts to check this fact on google the lights will go out all over the world.
The BBC have missed an opportunity to direct readers to the excellent Act on CO2 website which will allow individual consumers to put their energy consuming activities into perspective and provide simple, practical things to do to reduce their C02 production

Medical Jewellery

The UTag is a memory stick, stamped with a medical symbol that can be used to store personal medical information which will be useful to the emergency services if you are involved in an accident. A newspaper report by Louise Bolotin in the U.K newspaper The Guardian points out that this is a more efficient way of carrying medical information than clunky old-fashioned bracelets.
I suspect that emergency services consider these devices and the ICE (In case of emergency) phone numbers as a low priority at the scene of an accident. It is when you have arrived in hospital and have been stabilised that this information will be used.

But why limit the amount of data to allergies and next of kin?

The storage capacity of memory sticks increases all the time and the cost is falling. Why not store all your medical information on a personal stick and back it up to a secure location on Google? See here for a previous post detailing this suggestion.This would allow you to be in control of your own confidential medical information. Privacy would be improved and with present capacities of 8Gb even the hypochondriac will be able to store all of their medical history.

Since the NHS are incapable of delivering a working integrated computer system perhaps it's time to, literally, hold our own records

Sir Jim'll fix it - for Consultants

Sir Jim Rose, as reported by the BBC Subjects torn up in school review has been asked by the U.K. Government to carry out a detailed review of what is taught in primary schools.
Happily for those in the computer business he has concluded that the answer is more technology.
Not sure whether it is good news for Primary School teachers who will have to combine the need for more emphasis on play with the need for teaching youngsters how to use the internet for "research", word-processing and the production of podcasts. It's certainly not good news for teachers in secondary or tertiary education who will have to increase the element of remedial teaching as pupils with an overview of understanding, limited knowledge of the basics but great computer gaming skills move through the educational system.

Don't read the manual

Same old story. A company with a vested interest in persuading you to buy their helpline services commissions a "survey" that shows that consumers can't cope with instruction manuals. They then craft a press release with an invented buzzword in the cynical expectation that a journalist will pick it up.
The latest example is Gadget instruction manuals give consumers "read rage"

The survey was carried out on behalf of The Techguys. However I couldn't find the press release or a link to the original study on their rambling web site but hey, this is the internet.

Twenty five years in the IT business has taught me to always read the instruction manual for any hardware or software before using it. However I appreciate that consumers don't do this.

The Justenoughtechnology approach is simple. Don't produce instruction manuals. Make your device or software so that it just works. I have pointed out previously that users don't want a learning curve. Instead they follow a learning cliff. They just leap off in the expectation that pressing buttons will make it work.

Think of all the trees, technical authors and printers that will be left undisturbed

Possession of data sticks to be a criminal offence?

This bit of lateral thinking will save the U.K. Government from looking
totally incompetent and give the appearance of dealing with the
problem. First the problem

"The latest Government Department to admit to losing" personal information is the Department for Work and Pensions. Once again it's the old problem of copying information on to laptops or data sticks. The fact that individuals feel that they need their "own" copy of data shows that they don't understand how multi-user databases work".

The fact that they are able to make these copies shows that their IT
managers are running systems with all the security of free music
download sites. Why not do the simple thing. Hold data centrally,
make sure you employ adults to ensure its integrity. Give your
employees impressive looking devices to make sure that you can control
and monitor who logs into the database and disable the ability to store
information on laptops or data sticks.

I put this in quotes because I use this EVERY time a U.K. Department repeats the SAME basic security error.

Now the solution. The most effective way of dealing with this problem is to
assume that every data stick contains confidential Government data and 
that anyone having one is a criminal. This turns it into a problem that
the Government knows how to solve. Usual routine. Rush through
legislation in the afternoon. By evening have a profile of the offender
( we are talking contractors here so lets go for young,arrogant,male,
BMW, aversion to documentation) and by the next day we can start
producing statistics showing how the police are reaching their target
of controlling the menace of stick crime.

Your family internet

I had never really thought about family members using computers and the internet to communicate. Doriano Carta in the web post for Mashable not only says that "Families have collectively jumped on the Web with gusto" but also lists 35+ Sites Made for Web Savvy Families.

Can you imagine what a web-savvy family is like?

Dad will be the source of all things new, shiny and overcomplicated. Most of which won't connect to any of the existing stuff. Mum will harangue teachers, doctors and tradesmen by frequent emails. Children will loaf about in wireless isolation, emailing their fathers to upgrade their videoplayers and emailing their mothers to do their homework for them. There will be multiple, expensive parental control software systems, all of which will be bypassed.

Is there a JustEnoughTechnology approach to avoid this, you ask?

There is , but you won't like it. Use the traditional chaos of the calendar on the kitchen wall. Use voice with volume and repetition chosen depending on urgency. Use selective deafness and amnesia to decide on and organise joint activities.

Plagiarism solved

The BOF once again ambles into controversy, solves it with the judicious application of JustEnoughTechnology and ambles off looking for new challenges.

The BBC reports that University students are copying work and Universities find it difficult to detect and are indecisive in dealing with it. Upon payment of a Very Large Consultancy Fee the BOF will solve this problem. He will issue students with pen and paper and require all coursework to be presented in longhand.
Previous generations of academics will have drawn the logical conclusion but the BOF fears that present lecturers whose contact with literacy seems to be limited to retakes of a multiple choice questionnaire may need to have it explained.
Academic work is neither copy typing nor journalism.
At university level course work should comprise the gathering of information, reviewing and criticising it and using analytical skills to produce an original, coherent and complete essay. The need to produce a handwritten final draft will ensure that the work is started sooner and uses the minimum number of words. The drudgery of copying the work of another will be a powerful disincentive.

Next!

Internet better than books

....But only in the sense that a fish is better than a bicycle. Need food - eat a fish, need effective personal transport get a bike. I read a newspaper article today which was essentially a regurgitated press release puffing up a new book which claims that even old fogies get more benefit from the internet than books.
Usual story - the scientific approach was the ever-popular "let's look at which bits of the brain light up". Since we are essentially clueless on the details of brain function it's a bit like using television adverts as an experimental tool for understanding how electronics work.
...Anyway back to the point.  You can use the internet to enhance your enjoyment and understanding of books and I have no doubt that whilst you are doing that you will light up similar areas of the brain involved in reading and understanding text.

Can books enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the internet. No they can't which neatly completes the circular argument that if your main source of interest is the internet then the internet is better than books.

The JustEnoughTechnology recommendation is to use the internet as one of a number of tools for interacting with this wonderful world and the people on it

Mind the Gap : Browser basics

The Mind the Gap series bridges the gap between the manic metropolis of the computer enthusiast and the rest of us.

A browser is a software tool that enables you to look at information on the internet. Your computer comes with one as part of its operating system.

If you have Windows it will be called Internet explorer. If you have a Mac it will be Safari.

The JustEnoughTechnology advice is to stick with the browser that you have got. Make sure you install security updates. If you are using Windows you will of course be using virus protection software - keep that up to date too.

There is a global industry of alternative, generally free browsers with an enormous range of add-ons and plug-ins. A very popular one is Firefox.I use this because I use Windows, Macs and linux machines and Firefox works on them all. If I had one computer I would use its built-in browser, I paid for it, it was designed to work with the operating system so unless I had specific constraints, like being a computer journalist, why change?

U.K Government exposes schoolchildren to danger

Now that headline got your attention. Jim Knight is a government minister named in his Departmental press release as introducing a new gravy train to ensure that all children get access to the internet at home. Whilst this is good news for IT suppliers is it good news for children? Suppose the internet connection uses a wireless connection. The danger here is not exposure to electromagnetic radiation but the privacy of the bedroom. Kids and parents will be only too happy to agree that "homework" is better done in private. But previous Government reports have pointed out that this is dangerous and that kids should use the internet in the presence of their parents who have been trained in how to supervise their children's computer use and overseen by software which will restrict and monitor which sites they visit. Teachers will seize on the opportunity to exclude more children because they can do class work from home. So another Government initiative in which the answer is more technology produced by a committee with a vested interest.

Let's put this in a wider perspective. The Government's Foresight initiative has just produced a report on Mental Capital and Wellbeing in which 450 independent experts list the following five areas related to avoiding stress in adults. (The BBC heads this list as "ways to ward off mental illness"  this is naive, or as our internet connected children will say WTF!)

CONNECT: With people around you

BE ACTIVE: Exercise makes you feel good

TAKE NOTICE: Of your surroundings and savour the moment

KEEP LEARNING: Try something new or rediscover an old interest

GIVE: Do something nice for a friend or a stranger

Time for Jim Knight to do his homework "write an essay on whether it is more cost effective to provide school children with a bicycle or a computer"

Why you should stop using email

It's not for the reason that you might expect. I can't bring myself to find out the facts behind the newspaper headlines that claim that the U.K. Government are going to "read" all our emails. I have broken ribs laughing so hard at Government attempts to make effective use of computers and to keep our data safe. No, the reason I hate email is because it is too much technology. Devised as a means of providing (literally) bomb proof communication across a dispersed network it has grown in volume and complexity but our literary gems such as "fancy a coffee?" or "see attached" are still treated with the same importance as military orders. Our one line email is encapsulated within a packet of source information,routing and delivery information needed to transport it through multiple store and forward mailboxes. Following sucessful delivery to an over-complicated email "client' we agonise over where to file it and then need to employ complex software to find it again. Or more likely don't file it so that we can accumulate thousands of emails to show how busy we are.

A popular approach to is keep your email inbox empty. The best example has to be Merlin Mann see here.
My approach is more radical. Dont send emails, use text or instant messaging instead. This is ideal for the back and forth "fancy coffee" , "where"  "when" "OK" for which email is an unnecessary overhead.
This is one thing that the youngsters have got exactly right.

Getting to One : Delicious Bookmarks

"Getting to One" is an on-going series in which I review categories of software and explain why I have chosen a specific product. Today I explain why I use  delicious for bookmarking

All browsers have the same sort of function which allows you to save a shortcut to a web page that you find particularly interesting. This list of shortcuts quickly becomes very long so you can usually collect bookmarks in folders such as "news" ,"travel", "fun" and so on. The disadvantages of traditional bookmarking are

• The list of bookmarks is held on one computer
• You need to have the discipline to collect bookmarks in the correct folder 

 I signed up for the free , web-based bookmarking application called delicious and have found it entirely satisfactory. My bookmarks are held "in the cloud" and I can access them from any computer. I can apply and search on any number of tags so I don't need to remember exactly where I put each item. Now before you get all uppity about your own favourite bookmarking application and its all-embracing technology remember my philosophy is to spend as little time as possible on the nuts and bolts of computing. Delicious is close enough to my requirements so I have stopped searching.

A word of warning. Delicious is very proud of its "social bookmarking" approach which allows you to share your favourites. Coming from a generation who would rather share their toothbrush with a stranger than share  information I was pleased to see that you can set all of your bookmarks to be private.

New gravy train alert - UKCISS

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCISS) is announced. This is a key suggestion from the Byron report (here) , Thanks to a bewildered government that has abandoned intellectual rigour in a desperate search for popularity and a photogenic and intellectually lightweight expert, money will be falling from the skies!

Tanya's report (excuse the familiarity Tanya, but since my taxes went toward the £100,000 you were paid for your study I feel I can name-drop) concluded - well all sorts of things. In summary it reads like a mediocre literature review and statistically insignificant questionnaire, but enough of the detail how does it affect me. 

I have been presented with a large group of fearful parents and grandparents who have been told by the Government that they need training in controlling computer access and in purchasing and using "control" software. Ker-ching!

Now, with the setting up of the UKCISS I can produce scary adverts for my services claiming the backing of a Government Council for all the training courses for parents and monitoring software I can produce. Ker-ching! Ker-ching!

Simple hints for saving time

Computers are good at automating repetitive actions - so, why are you doing all that pointing and clicking?
As you know I don't do lists of applications nor detailed how to articles. The JustEnoughTechnology
approach is that a computer application should be usable within 10 minutes. If it takes longer , get individual advice (the web is full of experts). Don't bother with manuals. However, here are some general hints

• Use the keyboard as much as possible

Moving between pages, between applications, choosing from a list can be done more quickly by tapping the keys than moving the mouse. Look for keyboard shortcuts

• Use your desktop as a control panel

Forget about trying to find obscure tiny icons or going through long menus of programs. All operating systems have  functionality that allows you to set up a big friendly icon to give you immediate access to your emails and frequently used programs and documents

• Search instead of navigate

It all starts with good intentions.... We set up a folder or directory structure so that we can easily find "accounts" "business ideas" "screenplays" Suddenly the directories have multiplied and duplicated. Ask yourself why it has taken 20 minutes to find a letter to your accountant which you thought was in "Accounts" but had ended up in "My Documents" with the name "document1". Contrast this with the web, no directory structure here, but you can find most things instantly. Again all operating systems have a search function. Use this to sidestep all the roaming around directories and sub-directories

• Learn to love rules

You don't store every letter you've ever had on the doormat so why do it for emails. You can get your email program to automatically file your emails for you. A good general rule that will deal with at least 80% of your email is "read then delete"

Which netbook?

Netbook, UMPC (ultra-mobile personal computer) sub-notebooks are all names for the latest gadget that you must have.They bridge the gap between the laptop and the smart phone and have features that are half way between their parents. So, small screen, tiny keyboards and average battery life I suppose. There are no end of comparison sites that will provide every.single.detail.of.every.product.

Although they seem to have missed this one

By now you know the JustEnoughTechnology approach. Let's start with Mike's Rules of Computing

"Don't own more than one computer"  Feel free to comment on this newly discovered natural law.

So, do you really want to have the computing equivalent of a toy piano

Now, that's saved you hours of agonizing

Next!

How to Teach Your Granny to Text

WAWWD , (We Are What We Do) is  a social change group who have produced a book of 30 actions which, if carried out by a million people, would change the world. It is easy to be dismissive of the book because of its title. However I balance the boring old fart persona with the boring old obsessive persona so I looked at the site in detail and the surprisingly comprehensive newspaper article that reported it here.
I suspected that texting was chosen to grab the headlines but I was frustrated that I couldn't find a full list of the remaining actions. The two that were reported "Don't start a war" and "walk your Dad"  certainly sound  more world changing than texting.

Should you wish to teach your Granny to text I have the following JustEnoughTechnology advice - don't.

Firstly you can't use the family emergency as a reason for learning to text. If it is a true emergency she would expect you to sort it out directly with the emergency services and if you think that running out of petrol, or cash, is an emergency she probably won't respond. Secondly, unless you send texts with correct spelling, punctuation and grammar your mother will get a good telling off. The final point is that talking is much more efficient than texting and grannies have sorted out how to be efficient and effective probably around the time you were born.

Squawk: the new Twitter for PR professionals

"Squawk"  is twitter optimised for the busy PR professional.
Well, no it isn't. Since my audience is Public Relations they will be sympathetic to the fact that this bright,new,shiny,free application doesn't actually exist. I invented squawk because I don't understand twitter. Twitter is an application used by about 3 million people. Using a mobile phone or computer the twitterer composes a text message of up to 140 characters and makes it available to the world (or more accurately the 0.05 percent that have are signed up to this service). So what you get is a constantly scrolling selection of telegrams ranging from reports of social and  biological functions to product announcements.
This boring old fart (BOF) admits to bewilderment but once I got into it I could appreciate the huge benefit to mankind. So much so that I have needed to devise another of Mikes Laws of Computing.
"Demand that any press release or PR communication concerning new technology be sent to you in 140 characters or less and be labelled  a squawk"

Everybody wins! I can immediately see that it is a shrill announcement, if I choose to read on it is blissfully short. The PR professionals aren't constrained by the formality of  explanation, have fewer words to spell wrong and can send out hundreds of squawks per day.

I am so excited that I have produced my first tweet - here is a picture of it

Digital photo frames better than computers?

Starting as a device for showing pictures from your computer,  digital photo frames are now in a position to replace home computers. In the olden days we had to make our own entertainment. we wrote the Christmas letters, kept a spreadsheet of the home accounts and a database of collections or hobbies as ways of using a complicated device that we were told would change our lives.
Once the web arrived the emphasis changed to exploring and we started using the computer as a very expensive remote control to flick through pages and channels of information.
We can now replace the complex hardware of the home computer with a digital photo frame and a remote control. The missing link is the browser software and internet connection - it is the the work of moments to  produce this technology and the cost will be pennies.
So is this the JustEnoughTechnology solution to our computing needs?
I'm afraid so, the vast majority of us are passive consumers of content. Even the production of emails has become reduced to an abbreviated keypad for sndg txt.
Generating the content to amuse,educate and titillate the world wide web audience requires a tiny percentage of users to produce the  content. The smaller the number of producers the higher the risk of getting the egotistical and the obsessive. Imagine if the world view of the majority of people could be   determined  by the output of the Hollywood film studios. 

Internet just as stupid as humans

Times online report "Probe into how Google mix-up caused $1 billion run on United" reveals that an old newspaper report resurfaced in the Google newsfeed and was accepted as a new story by Financial Analysts and Investors with a resulting slide in share value. The Internet has an alibi - the news story was selected by an automated piece of software which did exactly what it is told by humans. The humans have no excuse. The JustEnoughTechnology solution is, of course for managers to reinforce training and monitoring of staff who display such stupid behaviour. Human nature being what it is I fear that the technology will be blamed and consultants will rush in to preserve the egos of the embarrassed who are already signing blank cheques for them.

In the longer term I would suggest that people entrusted in gambling with millions of dollars of other peoples money  should be employed on the basis of their correct response to the question "Do you know what day it is?"

Making learning personal

The School of Everything provides a meeting place for  would-be students and freelance teachers to get together.  I am always looking for examples of useful things that grown-ups can do on the internet and this is a potential winner. The concept is a bit like a dating site,  teachers and learners set up profiles and then search for the ideal partner. It is a personal service which is ideal for finding individuals with expertise in specific areas. It is not surprising that a popular topic is Photoshop software. Twenty minutes with an expert is far more efficient than days of reading manuals and roaming the menus of this powerful image manipulation software. It's still at that scary stage of any new social network site - waiting for its shape and direction to be determined by the interests of its participants. Unlike most of these sites it has the advantage of offering specific products and activities which will encourage users to continue to participate in its growth.

Spurious school safety

My School Alerts sounds like a good idea. It is a U.S based  free service that allows schools to instantly pass messages to all pupils,parents and staff.

Lipstick wearing pit bull terriers*  will love it ; teachers will hate it and security forces will want it switched off. Why isn't this an ideal candidate for the JustEnoughTechnology award? For the vast majority of schools nothing much happens which needs to be broadcast to pupils and parents. Whilst it would be nice to be able to press a button and tell everyone that school is closed by bad weather this needs to be balanced by the need to keep contact details up to date and controlling mis-use by computer literate pupils , so it's easy to see that teachers would be uninterested.
But, what parents are really concerned about is the nightmare of wild gunmen , or gunboys. Surely passing instant messages to all pupils would save lives. The sad fact is that we don't live in the movies and policemen don't have magic powers. In "an incident" all that security forces can do is aggressively control a perimeter whose size depends on the range of the weapons being used. Anything else is a dangerous distraction . Having herds of terrified children rushing about driven by text messages not authorised and issued by the on scene commander is the real nightmare. This leaves us with the Moms. School managers will need to withstand the forceful  pleas of control freak parents. otherwise we risk using too much technology to try and solve a problem that just needs training, maturity and common sense to solve.
*Note to non-American readers. My quote refers to the joke  from Alaska Governor Mrs Palin when she said that the only difference between a hockey mum like herself and a pit bull was "lipstick".

Efficient weather forecasting

Umbrella today? Is an American site that shows a superb example of JustEnoughTechnology.
Why is it so good? Because it answers a simple question in a simple way. In the U.K we have the Government funded Met. Office who managed to extract funding for an enormous amount of computing power and justify this expense by issuing very serious and very comprehensive weather forecasts. There are several ways of letting this information trickle down to the consumer, generally involving chunky toddler graphics , like here or skinny young ladies (look for yourself, what else is Google search for).

In contrast Umbrella Today just sends you a text with exactly the correct amount of detail. I'm looking forward to a U.K version. I can live without the "like totally the simplest..." quote

Please charge me more for broadband

The present generation of people who grew up before the internet or mobile phones are an inconvenience to the advance of technology.
Our quaint notion of good quality service was based on the fact that we paid for it.
In order for a broadband supplier to meet the "8Mb for £1.99 per month" he has to economise on service and squeeze as many customers as possible onto what is effectively a party line. With the appearance of TV broadcasts delivered over the internet the already slow speeds will be further reduced.
The good news is that once you remove downloading videos, copying music and illegal file sharing this congestion is removed. The even better news is that modern technology allows a level of helpdesk service which will satisfy even the grumpiest old fart. Imagine a world where your internet connection is fast, if you have a problem a skilled technician will videoconference and show you what to do. The downside is that if you want to receive a TV programme or movie you will have to pay a rental fee for it. ( I leave the completion of this business case as an exercise for the would-be entrepreneur)

Coming soon - another U.K. data privacy breach

The Press Association reports that a "survey" carried out by a couple of doctors asking their chums to empty their pockets has revealed that some of them had patients confidential data about their person. Newspapers have provided the paranoia required by their readership and report that we are all doomed.

There is no need for surveys or letters from the Department of Health. It is time for baseball bat management. It is illegal to have uncontrolled copies of private data, it is unprofessional to have an IT system that allows data to be copied without control. It's not effective management if you can't get people to obey the law and behave professionally.

However we do need to apply some common sense. Doctors have to work in an environment where IT provision is patchy and incompetent. Who can blame a doctor making sure that she has got important information in case the computer goes down.

Once again the JustEnoughTechnology solution is common sense business processes. Please don't pour millions of pounds into more consultancy and IT when the answer is a few practice swings of the baseball bat

How to restore your internet connection

Your broadband internet connection needs a piece of hardware which is usually provided by your internet service provider and generally called a router or ADSL modem. If this fails you will lose your internet connection. You will have the inconvenience of getting another and the disaster of configuring it. You will remember in the welcome pack you were provided with the phone number for technical support and a username and password which are required to allow access to your internet connection.

Step away from the computer! Find these vital pieces of information NOW.  Otherwise you will have all the grief in the world as you try and persuade a busy,expensive and cynical helpdesk to release your password.

Another blood pressure reducing hint from JustEnoughTechnology

Google chrome - best feature

The best feature is the comic book.
The internet will be swamped by comment  on Google chrome the Google-developed browser for Microsoft Windows. As you might expect the JustEnoughTechnology response is a combination of the conservative and the perverse.  I'm going to wait until the initial hysteria dies down, then find a machine that can run Windows and take a look at it. I'll reserve detailed comments until they produce a version for Linux.

Back to Scott McCloud's comic book. It is a triumph. This is the new standard for communicating complex technical aspects of applications. Expanding this approach to user documentation will be the real killer application

Wikipedia and truthiness

I suspect that most people have assumed that  Wikipedia  is a large, free encyclopedia with an over-fussy layout. It isn't . I quote from the Wikipedia:about page

"Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which, in principle, anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles more frequently contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism."

So, not a tool used by journalists then.

This brings us to the ugly word truthiness which can be defined as

"The quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts."

Wikipedia and truthiness can produce a deadly combination. Imagine if politicians had access to it...

Remember privacy?

Another day , another computer data security disaster revealed. Bank Customers details sold on eBay What's scary about this is that journalists have misrepresented the real problem.

 

• BBC take note - It doesn't matter that the computer was sold on eBay. What does matter is that a banking organisation can't control the privacy of its data.
• Daily Telegraph take note - your response of publishing "top tips" to keep your computer safe is the wrong response. All the tips in the world on keeping your computer safe are irrelevant if your securely delivered personal data is then kept on a computer disc with no auditable security system.

Once again it is a failure of people and a failure of basic business processes. 

Falling off the learning cliff

Billions of dollars have been  spent in on-line help and tutorials for software applications. Most of this has been wasted. Software developers  assume that users are just like them (logical, interested in detail,persistent)
In fact users just want to do it. There is real pride in not reading the manual. Most users won't use keyboard shortcuts, won't use templates and will use the space bar to format text in a document. In place of the controlled acceleration of the learning curve users jump straight to the top of the mountain. When things go wrong they fall off the cliff. Helpdesks can't help. Their structured approach doesn't work. "What did the error message say?" "What were you doing when it happened?" even "Which application are you using"  will at best be met by silence at worst by abuse. What's the JustEnoughTechnology solution? It's Mikes 10 Minute Rule. If you can't do exactly what you want after 10 minutes that application is not for you. Forget about troubleshooting and expensive helpdesks. If you must get the application working go to someone who will act as your IT personal trainer and who will work with you on a one to one basis to achieve what you want.

Managing memory sticks - free factsheet

I would like to thank the U.K. Government for making my life easier. I was never sure whether those things were called "memory sticks"  "USB drives" "thumb drives"  "Flash drives" or "cheap cyberwar devices"
Now I know that the whole world is calling them Memory sticks.
To return the favour I am providing a link to one of my factsheets on how to use them. The link is here Normally only provided to paying clients I offer this free of charge and make the modest suggestion that the information contained could take the place of a full blown Government review and recommendations. This will mean that the Government will save an enormous amount of money. They will need as much money as they can get once U.S-based legal firms persuade victims to take appropriate action. The technical term is, I believe "sue their asses"

Possession of memory sticks to be criminal offence?

This bit of lateral thinking will save the U.K. Government from looking totally incompetent and give the appearance of dealing with the problem. First the problem

"The latest Government Department to admit to "losing" personal information is the Home Office. Once again it's the old problem of copying information on to laptops or data sticks. The fact that individuals feel that they need their "own" copy of data shows that they don't understand how multi-user databases work. The fact that they are able to make these copies shows that their IT managers are running systems with all the security of free music download sites.

Why not do the simple thing. Hold data centrally, make sure you employ adults to ensure its integrity. Give your employees impressive looking devices to make sure that you can control and monitor who logs into the database and disable the ability to store information on laptops or data sticks"

I put this in quotes because I  use this EVERY time a U.K. Department repeats the SAME basic security error

Now the solution. The most effective way of dealing with this problem is to assume that every data stick contains confidential Government data and  that anyone having one is a criminal. This turns it into a problem that the Government knows how to solve. Usual routine. Rush through legislation in the afternoon. By evening have a profile of the offender ( we are talking contractors here so lets go for young,arrogant,male, BMW, aversion to documentation) and by the next day we can start producing statistics showing how the police are reaching their target of controlling the menace of stick crime.

"The latest Government Department to admit to "losing" personal information is the Home Office. Once again it's the old problem of copying information on to laptops or data sticks. The fact that individuals feel that they need their "own" copy of data shows that they don't understand how multi-user databases work. The fact that they are able to make these copies shows that their IT managers are running systems with all the security of free music download sites.

Why not do the simple thing. Hold data centrally, make sure you employ adults to ensure its integrity. Give your employees impressive looking devices to make sure that you can control and monitor who logs into the database and disable the ability to store information on laptops or data sticks"

I put this in quotes because I  use this EVERY time a U.K. Department repeats the SAME basic security error

Now the solution. The most effective way of dealing with this problem is to assume that every data stick contains confidential Government data and  that anyone having one is a criminal. This turns it into a problem that the Government knows how to solve. Usual routine. Rush through legislation in the afternoon. By evening have a profile of the offender ( we are talking contractors here so lets go for young,arrogant,male, BMW, aversion to documentation) and by the next day we can start producing statistics showing how the police are reaching their target of controlling the menace of stick crime.

Electronic Music Stands

In order to get the JustEnoughTechnology seal of approval devices don't have to be built from Bakelite and powered by a bucket of sparks. Watching a classical music concert I was intrigued to see that instead of a paper music score each musician had a thin LCD panel showing the current page. This is a triumph of the effective use of technology. How do orchestras cope with paper scores? They need lots of copies for every item in their repertoire. The benefits of ease of storage and retrieval must easily offset the cost of the hardware. In addition  the ease of "printing" new works  and marking up scores with conductors annotations makes these even more useful.

Tools for fools

"Nothing great gets built just because you have the right tools" so says Seth Godin

Using that quote saves me from  subjecting you to an overlong and complicated paragraph in which I try to say the same thing. We all have computing tools that previous generations could only imagine but creativity has not increased. This is why I get exasperated about using computers in the education of children. Too much technology and not enough imagination. Too many facts and no analytical skills. No wonder that the internet has become a passive path to superstition.
Rant ends, boring old fart waddles into distance muttering to himself

Google to run databases for U.K Government?

At least Google have the honesty to admit that there is no such thing as privacy. In the United Kingdom we have a Civil Service that can't practice what they preach. The latest Government Department to admit to "losing" personal information is the Department of Justice. Once again it's the old problem of copying information on to laptops or data sticks. The fact that individuals feel that they need their "own" copy of data shows that they don't understand how multi-user databases work. The fact that they are able to make these copies shows that their IT managers are running systems with all the security of free music download sites.

Why not do the simple thing. Hold data centrally, make sure you employ adults to ensure its integrity. Give your employees impressive looking devices to make sure that you can control and monitor who logs into the database and disable the ability to store information on laptops or data sticks.

I'm getting tired of covering these incompetent, and possibly illegal lapses in security and keep suggesting solutions. see here , and here and here

Localized content caching

Boring but important. The title of this post is the answer to the question "Why the olympics didn't melt the internet" Apparently sports fans world wide have been enjoying high quality video of the olympics delivered to their computers by the internet.
This is in contrast to the usual experience of chunky graphics and long pauses I usually get when watching video on my computer.

The technical details of how the olympics is broadcast is here . Essentially the video doesn't use the internet but is squirted directly into your Internet Service Provider (ISP). In the U.K where people have been forecasting that TV broadcasting will bring the internet to its knees this technology looks attractive. Not least because the ISPs will be able to attach a meter to these feeds and can impersonate a pay per view broadcast service. This will make your ISP very happy and will make me happy too. By keeping all this stuff out of the way it should make my surfing experience more enjoyable. I have my suspicions that it will just reveal a new bottleneck with the ISPs hardware. In my experience advances in computing always ends up as a faster way of rushing from one queue to another

Basic skills - searching

There are a small number of things that you must learn in order to use a computer.
Searching and finding things is one of them. You should be able to find anything on your own computer faster than Google can find it on the internet.
In the pre-history of computing slow processors and expensive storage meant that you had to have formal rules for naming files and storing them in directories. You could actually hear the computer searching as it  roamed through all of the contents of your discs.
Now you can use the search facility of your computer to quickly find all occurrences of any word
Spend a few minutes learning how to do this and you will be able to instantly find "mums advice on pruning roses" without the " was it an email? did I put it in the directory for Family, gardening or household"
You will have noticed that I don't do detailed instructions in this blog. Specific advice depends on your computer set up and skill level. If you can't find things quickly on your computer please contact me and I'll send you a personalised factsheet.

Seeing through the cloud

Let's blow away the swirls of mist surrounding internet based services. What we see is a complex technical infrastructure which, as consumers, we don't need to understand and extremely simple Terms and Conditions  which we do understand but wish we didn't. Starting with Google, their services are generally free, generally "in beta" (a jargon term meaning unstable) and have no guarantee of being available. Moving on to the paying services their Terms and Conditions are as close to the Google model as possible. Now let's look at what is really important - your treasured data whether it be accounts or family photos. Unless you have a copy of this data under your control you should assume that it is not important and can be lost at any time. Never has it been easier to copy and propagate data so all your personal data should be dispersed amongst trusted friends and family. If you are a big company you can hire serious,unsmiling suits to deal with all the commercial and legal  stuff. For the individual creative person in a small, self-owned business it's a lot harder. I have some experience in this field - contact me and we can start a conversation about removing your concerns about computing and result in more time for you to do the real creative work. The world has too many computers but not enough creative people!

New technology makes your childhood disappear

No matter how closely you look at a camera memory card you wont see any photographs.
Your childhood memories are encrypted and can only be unlocked by the exact combination of a specific piece of hardware (card reader) a controlling and viewing device (computer) and a decryption  code (software). How far do you need to fast-forward before any one of these components is no longer easily available?

Consider the case of a UK broadcasting  organisation wanting to mark the 900 year anniversary of the Domesday book. They produced a virtually indestructible video disc and used the latest in computer and software to produce a multimedia celebration of the state of the country in 1986. Now, twenty years later a conservation project is needed to access this data. See here for a summary
How can you keep digital data for longer?  The justenoughtechnology answer is both surprising and interesting. Just make sure everything you want to keep is labelled. Keep notes about interesting events and your collection of gadgets.
It's not worth trying to second guess about which technologies will last.
As long as future generations know what is on that tape/card/disc they will be able to decide whether your treasures are worth restoring and then find an enthusiast with  the appropriate old technology.

How to save storage space and time

Edit.
Took 100 pictures of the wedding? throw away the 90 that aren't much good. Do what the professional picture editors do. Give each picture your undivided attention for 3 seconds if it doesn't immediately grab you just  delete it.
Emails? throw them away. An email is just an envelope  so extract the action you need to take or the attachment you want to keep and delete the email.

Don't overthink.
Let your computer do the tidying up. It will store deleted stuff in a "bin" So if you need to you can recover it. When the bin gets too big you can set it to automatically clear some space

Another useful tip for any computer platform from JustEnoughTechnology