Desktop Apps for Online Storage: Ubuntu One, Windows SkyDrive, and ASUS WebStorage Part 2

Windows SkyDrive

Love or hate Windows 8, Windows SkyDrive's improvements makes it a strong and viable competitor to popular services such as Dropbox. The online web interface is clean and extremely simple to use. Many users have decried integration with the newly dubbed "Microsoft Account" but these same users forget that Microsoft's all-encompassing account has a smaller influence compared to Google and Facebook's login system. SkyDrive is integrated so well with Outlook.com that if you're using the web interface, it's easy to share files between the two services and even run Microsoft's Office Web apps.

The SkyDrive app for Windows is efficient and fits so seamlessly on the Windows desktop I have a feeling it would be almost invisible in Windows 8. Unlike Ubuntu One, the interface is unobtrusive, hiding in the System Tray or in your Start Menu, syncing files quickly in the background. The service itself doesn't have the fancy features of ASUS Webstorage, but unlike Webstorage's app, the SkyDrive app for Windows works perfectly and doesn't crash the system. Although I have yet to try the iPod/iPad app, if the SkyDrive app works as well as the desktop app then it deserves a download.

One note I'd like to mention about SkyDrive and using Microsoft Account is that it is extremely easy to link accounts and delete the Microsoft service. Unlike Yahoo and Google, who have a somewhat circular process of removing their accounts, Microsoft lets you delete your account without much fuss (just click Overview on the Account Settings screen). Deleting the account removes your Outlook.com mail (or Hotmail as in my case) and all your SkyDrive files. If you're planning to go the way of Jason Bourne, you won't have to Bing the instructions - it's right there. Having deleted my AOL and Yahoo Australia accounts before, I think the steps are a little bit too easy. But it seems like Microsoft has been listening to their users. SkyDrive was clunky, slow, and unusable when it was first released years ago (it had a silly bouncing ball game while you uploaded files) but it's come a long way.

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openSUSE 12.2 is just around the corner!

openSUSE's next release, delayed by developers for quite a bit now, is less than a week away. Like most openSUSE users, I'm stoked. As an Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE user, I find openSUSE a more complete and functional experience compared to the other two. Fedora requires more hands-on than Ubuntu or openSUSE. In addition, Fedora occasionally has unusual issues such as problems with touchpads (there are still issues with X for tapping and dragging on some machines like my EEEPC 1000H). Ubuntu's mainstream release is great for casual users but is "crippled" out of the box compared to openSUSE's huge amount of features/services that can be accessed via Yast. Moreover, the Unity desktop isn't everyone's cup of tea - I've tried to force feed myself with Unity and nearly choked. openSUSE's KDE release has gone a long way from the buggy initial build of KDE4. openSUSE developers still go overboard with too many KDE applications, but the desktop has evolved to a powerful, full-featured, and surprisingly beautiful interface.

 

 

There are two issues for openSUSE that I already expect to face if I'm to install the lizard distribution. One, openSUSE's servers are blocked in China (it could be my ISP or the government), severely limiting access to software and updates. The openSUSE DVD should be able to address most software requirements but not all of them. Two, I don't have an extra machine to install openSUSE at the moment. As nice as it is having any Linux OS on a virtual machine, I need a full physical machine to take full advantage of one of my favorite Linux distributions. Still, I can't wait to run tests on openSUSE 12.2. Everyone out there who has tried Fedora or Ubuntu should give it a try when the final build is released!

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Five Superheroes that endorse Linux Part 2

Spider-Man (Happy 50th Anniversary!)






















CAMERON (Summer Glau)



***Cameron just revealed that Skynet was built by Apple (they sued all the companies and their iPads/iPods started taking over the world. . . ***

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Five Superheroes that endorse Linux Part 1

Category: Techtoday

A recent article on Wired.com annoyingly proclaimed Linux as dead and buried due to OSX. The forum discussions were even worst as Apple users heaped praise on their OS of choice and urinated on both Windows and Linux distributions for being difficult and unusable. As a longtime Linux user and self-proclaimed Linux evangelist, I called on my friends from high places (particularly Peter who was sticking on the 36th floor of the Empire State Building) to show their love for Linux.

IRON MAN



BATMAN



CAPTAIN AMERICA

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Linux on Film: True Blood Season 4 Episode 6

Category: Techtoday

Although this is a long shot at best, there's a very brief scene with Bill Compton making a Skype call using a desktop in his home office. The workstation is clearly not an iMac and the absence of the Dock (and the use of a standard mouse and keyboard) is pretty obvious. However, the mounted drive and the icons indicate a Linux-based distribution. Skype, which is recognizable through the sound when Bill makes his video call, can of course be installed on Ubuntu, openSUSE, and other Linux distributions. It could still be a hidden Mac Mini, but most shows actually love showing off their Macs.






If accurate, True Blood (a supernatural and sexy series with various types of monsters) is one of the more unlikely candidates of a cameo from a Linux distribution.    

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Samsung vs. Apple: No opinion

Category: Techtoday

The patent battle between tech heavyweights Samsung and Apple was a big deal in many ways. Will it drastically change the landscape of consumer electronics as we know it? How will it affect the fallen titan Microsoft and other manufacturers who intend to compete with Apple? There are so many aspects to the case that is downright controversial, including a questionable jury, the nature of patents, and the overall U.S. justice system.

Like many things in this great age of technology, it's very easy to fall into biases and preconceived notions. There is no doubt the outcome of the Apple and Samsung debacle will affect the consumers and the industry in general. Each and every person on the Internet out there has every right to vent for/against either party.  Forums and news sites are rife with cat-and-dog fights about how evil Apple/Samsung is and how badly one behaves over the other. It's easy to get swayed with the weight of the remarks and comments online. The discussions around the Internet the last few days have ranged from incredibly well-informed and intelligent to spats that degenerated to name-calling (which reminded me of the good old days when Apple and Microsoft users digitally slapped each other in the message boards). It's great to see some energy being put to use that isn't relevant to the elections and global economic downturn - the EU, Greece, Gu Kailai, China, Syria, and Obama should be thankful there's something else to be talk about.



I wish I could side with either camp just so I can join in the heated discussion. Although I have an iPad and an iPod Touch, I've never tried any of Samsung's phones or tablets.  I'd love to say I have a law degree and understand the nuances of patent law and the U.S. jury system, but I don't. Clearly,  I don't have a deep insightful view of the trial nor do I have a strong opinion for either company in the same way I don't have an opinion of Prince Harry's nude photos.

I do know one thing. Apple and Samsung both make great products. It's too bad one has to fall to the other. Moreover, as a future consumer of either company (hopefully!), the legal battle between the two will not impact the industry's progress negatively - tech regression is horrible. Like Church and State, technology should always function independently and move forward, unimpeded and unsullied.

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Desktop Apps for Online Storage: Ubuntu One, Windows SkyDrive, and ASUS WebStorage Part 1

Category: Techtoday

Should you use desktop online storage apps or should you just access the web interface? Although physical storage is still superior to cloud storage in a lot of ways, there are plenty of reasons to take advantage of the free online storage provided by many companies. Even casual users (like myself), can take advantage of these benefits:

1. Uploading documents and images in lieu of using USB flash drives
2. Backing up extremely important documents in case of hard drive failure (even 2GB is plenty for accounting books, workpapers, and scanned images)
3. Syncing files to different computers and devices such as tablets, netbooks, and even smartphones

Everyone who has a Dropbox account already know just how useful their service and their cross-platform utilities are. Their success triggered many companies to up their game and provide both cloud storage services and a desktop utility to sync files across computers and networks. This article takes a look at online storage utilities provided by a Linux-based cloud storage service, a free windows and Mac storage service, and a commercial service  provided by a hardware manufacturer.

Ubuntu One

Ubuntu One is a free storage service initially aimed at Ubuntu users but is now available for Windows, Android, and iOS. Ubuntu One has made huge leaps and bounds over the years - integration with the desktop is better than ever and like most of Canonical's products, looks slick and professional.



Although the service started with a small offering of 2GB, users can now get up to 5GB and increase their storage size via referrals. Linux users running an Ubuntu-based machine like Lubuntu would have no problems installing the Ubuntu One desktop application though setting up folders and profiles are still made through the Ubuntu One Dashboard.



Ubuntu One's desktop application isn't perfect even on a fully-updated Ubuntu 12.04 LTS machine. The desktop utility has a bad habit of stalling and crashing on first run though it does sync folders as designed. The errors will somewhat put off users, though the web interface works fine (which is one of the reasons why I didn't test the iOS and Windows Ubuntu One apps yet). Although Canonical has extended Ubuntu One to Android, Windows, and iOS, I'm surprised they haven't released any applications for other Linux distributions like openSUSE and Fedora. Although I recommend using the web interface anyway, I wouldn't mind trying out an Ubuntu One Desktop utility on my other Linux machines. 

ASUS Webstorage

The commercial service ASUS Webstorage provides an anemic 2GB for free though users satisfied with the fairly sophisticated service can always upgrade. ASUS Webstorage works best with ASUS machines like the popular Transformer series of tablets, but is great for users looking for some storage to stuff their files in and make them available to other devices. ASUS Webstorage offers a Sync Agent and Remote Drive utility for desktop users and a separate app for mobile devices. The applications are fairly straightforward with Sync Agent setting up folders for backup/sync and Remote Drive setting up your ASUS Webstorage as a remote drive.



The Remote Drive utility installed properly on Windows 7 and I was able to access the main folders of my ASUS Webstorage account. It only displays specific folders initially - you would have to log in on the web service to set up your created folders (or move the folders) to the remote drive if you want to access them. Thankfully, the Remote Drive has an option do disable it from being loaded on startup. One thing users will notice immediately is that uploading files using the web site was faster than using the Remote Drive utility.



ASUS provides a .deb file for installing the Sync Agent utility for Debian-based Linux distributions. I tested this on my Ubuntu 12.04 machine and off the bat the Ubuntu Software Center warned me something was amiss with the ASUSWebstorage.deb file. I installed it anyway but found the utility wouldn't even run via the Terminal as Root or even via the Unity launcher. I rooted around a bit and found it actually installed properly on the usr/lib folder but actually had a .exe file (Oh no!). However, I was grateful that the utility was cleanly removed via Synaptic Package Manager.

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Checking your EPUB with ePubChecker

Category: Techwriter

So you've finished your EPUB and you want to test it. However, you're not comfortable with working on the command line or using text editors and XML validators. Although it's often much more effective to test an EPUB using the hardware and software of the target end-user, validating an EPUB just like any XML or web document ensures a wider compatibility across devices and platforms.

A failed validation process doesn't necessarily mean the EPUB won't display on a device, app, or software - it just means certain basic tenets or rules of XML, XHTML, and EPUB weren't followed. At the minimum, errors may probably trigger layout issues when the EPUB is viewed on a device such as an iPod or Galaxy Tab.

The ePubChecker App is a free standalone EPUB utility designed to check your EPUB for errors. It's fast and easy to set up and can be downloaded from Rainwater-soft. Although the epubcheck tool from the Google Code web site is more updated in terms of EPUB standards, it's somewhat less friendly to users unaccustomed to the command line. The ePubChecker App, however, is sufficient for most writers intending to publish their EPUB file.

To install ePubChecker, visit Java.com to install Java first as the tool requires Java to function properly. Although the Java download can be somewhat slow on regular broadband, it's well worth the time to get ePubChecker up and running.




As an example, the following screenshots displays an EPUB created and validated in Sigil and was checked a second time successfully in ePubChecker.


The EPUB was created in Sigil and checked for problems.


The EPUB was cleared a second time in EpubChecker.

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Self-publishing an ebook and the Chicago Manual of Style

When using InDesign, DocBook, or even Sigil to create ebooks, it's always good practice to follow a style guide. Your product will not only look more professional, but saves publishers in Amazon or iTunes store from requesting you to follow a certain structure or edit your manuscript. The classic Chicago Manual of Style is one of the most evolved resources for publishing a book or journal with its attention to detail and tried and tested approach to structure and layout.



Publishing an ebook has different rules from a printed book especially when it comes to the nuances associated with digital content. Ebooks in many ways share the same characteristics as web pages (which is literally true for those who write ebooks using Docbook or via XHTML directly). When self-publishing for the first time, it's good to take note of the following points:

1. As per Chicago, you aren't required to identify the recto and verso pages of a book since the eventual output would be as EPUB or PDF. For a more traditional feel, you can simulate the recto and verso by placing the folio (or drop folio), running headers, or running footers flush right or flush left as outlined in Chicago. As the writer and publisher, take advantage of these small embellishments before sending that book to Amazon Publishing.

2.Since your final output is either EPUB or PDF (or both), there's hardly any limitations to pages and illustrations so in most cases you only adjust gutter, margins, and bleeds because of aesthetic reasons or for commercial printing. Even the page size, whether you use Legal or A4, is largely irrelevant because of the nature of digital publishing - hardware and software renders the page for you. However, it's important to follow online guides for best practices when producing documents for iPads, iPods, and Android devices (a good guide for the iPad can be found at the Adobe web site). Take note though that you can't really create a perfect EPUB file - each device and software will display EPUB differently. GoodReader, Stanza, BlueReader, and iBooks will all display your output with marked differences. Even if you can't test your ebook in all platforms, you should at least try it on your own device. It's important to test it on currently popular hardware such as Kindle, Kindle Fire, or ASUS Transformer, all of which are excellent ereaders and serve as an alternative to the iPad.



3. EPUB and PDF are so well designed that a few additional pages (or even a hundred extra pages) will hardly put a dent in the file size. That said, don't get tempted and go berserk with unnecessary Front Matter. Chicago lists Book half title, Series title, frontispiece, Epigraph, Dedication, Foreword, Preface and several other items that can be placed on the Front Matter. If you're self-publishing your ebook, pretend you have a publisher that is telling you to put only what's important - that dedication for your cat Crowley can be placed on the next edition when you've become the next J.K. Rowling.

4. One of the strengths of EPUB and PDF is that it is extremely easy to navigate around the document/book. When self-publishing, keep this in mind as there are several ways to incorporate navigation controls in EPUB and PDF apart from a table of contents in the Front Matter. Software such as Sigil creates an EPUB navigation table for you. Using markup language such as XHTML or XML gives you plenty of power for linking text, but if you prefer a WYSIWYG approach,there are commercial applications such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe Acrobat, and Corel WordPerfect that make creating navigation controls quick and easy.

5. Typography and fonts are important. Smashing Magazine has tons of advice for typography, white space, and fonts. Chicago will give you structure but presentation and readability can make or break your next Great American novel. If you're writing using XHTML, you don't have the luxury of using the full power of CSS in ebooks, but you do have to consider line height, font-size, and text positioning. Currently, fonts in ebooks is almost a non-issue, however, as not all applications really support embedded fonts. Apple's iBooks, for instance, doesn't display fonts packaged in an EPUB file, while some readers do. There are hacks to the Sony Reader series where you can add fonts, but don't expect readers to know how to do this. So use CSS that is only relevant or if you're using InDesign, use the Paragraph options judiciously.



6. Forget about expensive commercial software such as Adobe InDesign if you're a writer not a coder/tech. There's a huge number of free and open source software for creating EPUB and PDF which doesn't involve learning code or even configuring settings. Consider LyX, an open source LaTeX word processor that can export to PDF, HTML, and other formats. The aforementioned Sigil, on the other hand, is an exceptionally easy and efficient EPUB editor (and WYSIWYG to boot). Those accustomed to coding can get to work with just any text editor and use XSLT and CSS to format HTML, XML, and DocBook. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to go out of the box and learn web technologies just to self-publish. Microsoft Word is surprisingly well-accepted in the industry especially now that it can export to PDF. Hate Microsoft Office? LibreOffice and OpenOffice can both support PDF and EPUB (and most Linux software as well). For the lucky Mac users out there, iBooks Author and Pages produce content and documents that are optimized for iOS. Finally, PDF/EPUB converters such as Calibre can get you up and running without much effort if you're more focused on writing than the technicalities of desktop publishing - just write using any format and convert it to EPUB.



Although there are considerations to digital publishing such as copyright and distribution that deserve some attention, putting the words into digital format doesn't need to be difficult. The wealth of applications and technologies, free and commercial, should make short work out of creating a PDF or EPUB in no time. Just don't forget to pick up a style guide like The Chicago Manual of Style before writing the next erotica and publishing the next Fifty Shades of Grey.

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Tech Flashback: Nintendo Power

Category: Techtoday

With Nintendo Power ending their publishing run, there are people all around the world who are heaving a nostalgic sigh as one of their long-cherished memories is finally nailed shut in the coffin of time.

My brothers and I actually used the "Family Computer" and not the American NES in the 80s. The 8-bit games were the same though the Family Computer profited from various revisions in the huge library of selections (and the smaller sized cartridges). My brother, an avid gamer, had requested for a Nintendo Power subscription from a family friend during our time in Los Angeles, who shipped the issues regularly to our address in Southeast Asia.



Suffice to say, I loved Nintendo Power not for the reviews and gaming tips but for the brilliantly rendered artwork and funny articles.  As a casual gamer, I never got to play 1/10th of the games featured in the issues we had, but it was nice to flip through the magazines anyway just to see a colored Megaman or Simon Belmont drawing in the interiors (or read tips and tricks I would never use). Most of the illustrations were from Nintendo Japan and were brilliantly done. The American covers were a hit and miss, but there were pretty memorable ones including the Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania issue.  Surprisingly, Nintendo Power avoided the cheap ploy of featuring sexy characters on its cover (unless you have the hots for Luigi and his mustache), unlike its contemporary comic book counterpart Wizard (which was cancelled just last year after a run that included the fall of the comic book industry in the 90s).



Death of the Printed Magazine

The end of printed magazines is a logical repercussion of the rise of ebooks, tablets, and digital media. Periodic content can never match the rapid and real-time updated content of blogs, social media, and web sites. Publications like FHM, Men's Health, and Esquire have taken steps to migrate permanently to digital media to remain current. Even their old issues will stay relevant to their testosterone-filled, macho audience. The sad reality is that unlike the aforementioned publications, Nintendo Power dealt with content that easily became obsolete and served a readership composed of players/readers from a limited time period and gaming platform.  

Revisiting Back Issues

The truly nostalgic can search online for stores that carry back issues of Nintendo Power, but they can also be found in torrents (with a depressingly low number of seeders however) and devoted fan sites. You can better satisfy your nostalgia by running NES emulators than rereading back issues of the magazine, but the articles and illustrations from the publication are irreplaceable - a reminder of days long gone when innocence and bruised fingertips were mixed in an 8-bit virtual reality.

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Captions and Easy Callouts with Corel Draw

Category: Techwriter

Complex technical illustrations designed using CAD software require judiciously placed callouts, requiring precise tools from CAD software to achieve visual and mathematical consistency. For technical documentation for a more general audience, however, callouts are a necessary evil that occasionally ruin a beautifully rendered illustration, art, or drawing with misplaced lines and poorly positioned text references or captions.

There are no strict rules to placing arrows that point to a specific part - it really depends on the manual style, the subject, and the type of image. Vector images are the easiest because they can be broken apart for a "magnified view." Photographs are the least effective in technical documents because they don't fit very well when mixed with renderings and text.  Bitmap images, such as screen captures, are all right as long as they were taken at a high resolution.



Technical writers are occasionally hard-pressed to find a good angle to point to that small button, control, or feature. Even more of a challenge is adjusting the text caption to fit an already cluttered page. Callouts aren't really that difficult to create in Adobe InDesign and Illustrator via a combination of the Pen tool, Line Tool, and Text tool. However, when you're working with an graphic intensive manual/document which requires more than half a dozen callouts (with labels) per screen capture and image, it can get very tiring. Although I spend more time with Adobe Creative Suite products than I do with CorelDraw X3, one of the tools I sorely miss in Adobe InDesign that CorelDraw has is the Callout Tool, which draws lines and inserts text.

To access the Callout Tool:

1. Open the Curve Flyout and click the Dimension Tool. For CorelDraw X5, there's a separate flyout for all Dimension Tools, including the 3-point Callout Tool.



2. On the Property bar, click the Callout Tool.
3. Click once to set a start point and drag. Hold down the CTRL button to restrict the angle of the arrow. Press ESC to cancel the callout.
4. Click a second time to create a second line segment if needed. Double-click to end the callout and begin typing the text.



Like all vector objects, the created callout can be broken apart and edited as two objects: the text and the line segment. However, the callout properties can easily be changed without having to break apart the object.  Text at the end of the callout can be selected using the Pick Tool, but much more useful is selecting the line segment to select the whole callout for editing color, thickness, and other properties.

To change the color of the text and callout, select the callout line segment and left-click a color swatch. To change the outline of the text and callout, right-click a color swatch.

To change the properties of the line segment only, open the Properties Dock by click Window, then Dockers. Select the Properties docker.  On the Outline tab, change the width, color, and style of the line.



Often, callouts would have end markers to clearly identify what it is pointing to. CorelDraw saves users from having to draw separate boxes, arrows, and parallel lines and Group them with the line segment. On the Outline tab, select a Start arrowhead (or even an End arrowhead) to customize your callout.

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Toucan, SyncToy, and File Syncing Freeware in Windows

Surprisingly, it's difficult to find a simple and stable utility to sync files across folders in Windows. My personal choice for file syncing, Linux's Grsync, was ported to Windows but didn't work out as well as the original.  It's no secret that syncing files between external storage and networks is quickly being supplanted by cloud storage/services (e.g. Dropbox.com and Live Mesh) and cheap NAS hardware (e.g. Synology and Western Digital NAS). 3rd-party software like those included with Seagate, Buffalo, and Imation drives also pretty much solve backup and syncing processes with consumer storage (if you're willing to use proprietary software). Still, there are still users like me who like to backup files manually without the aid of any of the above.

Having "retired" somewhat from Windows to migrate to Linux, I was surprised how the freeware landscape has changed in Windows. Software sources I used a decade ago such as Downloads.com and PCMag are no longer as dependable (or as popular) as before. It had been years since I had used Microsoft SyncToy, an exceptionally well-designed utility originally released for Windows XP. Thankfully, it's still around and works as well as before. Microsoft even improved the interface somewhat since its original incarnation so many years ago.

 

Still, I needed an alternative after trying out GoodSync, a well-received application that crashed when I attempted to sync a huge bundle of files. I visited dependable PortableApps for options. PortableApps listed Dsynchronize, Synkron, and Toucan. Dsynchronize Portable also crashed on its second run - a disappointment considering that other portable apps such as Lightscreen had never failed me. The website redeemed itself with Toucan, a simple but powerful file sync utility.



Quick Toukan Review:

1. Toucan has a pretty good help file - a lost art in today's generation of iOS and Android apps.
2. It's a PortableApp - which means I can keep it in my Flash drive and run it without installing it.
3. Toukan can back up to 7-Zip and GZip - Although I urge Microsoft users to try Windows 7 (and Windows 8)'s backup features, it's nice to see an application that makes use of 7-Zip (which I've preferred over Zip for years) and the Linux compression format GZip.
4. Advanced features - Toukan has several tabs including Variables, Script, Secure, and Rules which are generally for the enterprising user who loves to customize. The Sync and Backup tabs, however, was all I really needed.

Although Toucan's Sync tab is straightforward, users should fully understand the five Sync functions listed on the Sync tab before using the utility on their precious files. Copy, Mirror, Equalise, Move, and Clean are all very different - other file sync applications either use a different term or has a totally different meaning. The Help provided in the Settings tab explains these options clearly. In my case, I just used Copy, preferring to delete files in my Source and Destination paths manually.


SyncToy uses the terms Synchronize, Echo, and Contribute

Tip: If you're archiving files using Toucan, always check the Retain Timestamps option if you don't want to lose track of file chronology. Also, tick Use Recycle Bin to ensure that none of your files get deleted if you make a mistake syncing folders. 

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The Two Sides to Wikipedia - Fact and Entertainment

If you ever, ever, want to lose credibility in a discussion, technical or otherwise. Quote Wikipedia. In fact, if you encounter any review, article, or blog that begins with a reference to text found in Wikipedia, click fast and away from that URL - as far away as the Internet universe can take you.
 
Now, don't get me wrong. I read through Wikipedia as much as anyone else. It's educational and most of it is well-written. In fact, Wikipedia is what makes the Internet the greatest man-made creation ever.  What works with Wikipedia is the ability to pull so much information about an entity, term, or idea in one place. It's updated by companies and professionals from all over the world and encompasses almost everything under the sun. That said, it should never be your primary reference for anything at all. And you should always read through it with a certain amount of reserve, skepticism, and outright humor.


 
Nothing is perfect
 
No reference is ever perfect. During the time of Collier's Encyclopedia, Funk & Wagnall's, Grolier's, and the original British editions of Encyclopedia Britannica, readers (like me) thought it was the be-all and end-all of information. Despite yearly updates to published encyclopedias, the text was mostly static. For example, an article on "demonology" in Collier's in 1995 was the same article in 1996 though the encyclopedia was a trifle thicker with new entries to the letter "D".  
 
Television, radio, and printed news evolved into the Internet and proved that information can be recorded real-time and can be "complete". The Internet isn't complete (try looking for the Japanese audio, English subtitled Power Stone series aired in AXN online), but it's very close to being damn omniscient. And Wikipedia.org has its finger in all of the pies. However, because of the very movement of change, time, and progress, nothing can ever stay current and human fallibility ensures that a paragraph, text, or item in an entry in Wikipedia can be grossly wrong.  
 
I was a huge fan of the now-defunct Encyclopedia Britannica Reference Suite and Microsoft Encarta, but even I read their articles with a grain of salt. It's the same with Wikipedia.org - multiplied by 7. The sad truth is that many students pull up articles on TCP/IP or RAM in Wikipedia rather than crack open an O'Reilly ebook written by IT professionals or visit reference sites from IBM, Cisco, RedHat, or Oracle. Even if they get the basics right (and Wikipedia has more than a 1000 lines of text on the subject), isn't the point. The point is that when doing any type of research, you have to refer to the best source and visit multiple sources. Although TCP/IP isn't as subjective as say, the works of Elizabeth Barett Browning, RedHat, Oracle, Microsoft, and Cisco approach TCP/IP from different perspectives much in the same way critics analyze "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" differently.


Do not use Wikipedia as your primary source for tech stuff!
 
One point of View
 
Wikipedia.org is just one point of view on any serious topic and even trivial ones. Due to its very public nature, Wikipedia is tops when mentioning trivial information about a Chinese weapon or a Korean pop group like SNSD. Linux users can find a brief outline of IBM's contribution to open source or the criticisms leveraged against Novell. The small bits of information that is left out in most books and other serious references it what makes Wikipedia awesome. But it is definitely not fool proof.
 
Entertainment - Encyclopedia style
 
Wikipedia is also a great source of entertainment because of its all-encompassing nature, brevity, and formal writing style. Tired of BBC or New York Times but no time to pick up an ebook? Hate the severely biased comments about a celebrity on the Soup or in some blog? Hit Wikipedia. I occasionally look up articles on Marvel characters like Hulk or Dr. Strange on Wikipedia.org just to keep up with recent storylines and character changes (though nothing beats a devoted fan site when it comes to accuracy). Wikipedia is great for trying to catch up on the significance of historical events in Mad Men, or figuring out if the fourth season of Fringe is worth watching (not without Joshua Jackson it isn't).   Movies, directors, and video games like Zelda and franchises like James Bond are all in Wikipedia. The article writers are enthusiastic, comprehensive, and wonderfully superfluous.
 

"Don't you know I'm in Wikipedia.org, my dear?"

Looking for a good Japanese work written during the Meiji era? Pull up the entry of Japanese Literature on Wikipedia - but hit Amazon.com or Japanese literature sites for more facts before purchasing the book. Ditto for electronics and consumer products.  
 
Two Ways
 
If you're a serious researcher/shopper, there are two ways to use Wikipedia properly. Visit Wikipedia first and get an idea on your target then move on to better and more reliable sources. Or, visit Wikipedia after you've done hardcore research from reliable sources - you're sure to find additional tidbits you never thought existed.
 

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Using Hidden Characters to Organize text in InDesign

Category: Techwriter

InDesign is not a word processor. It is much, much more powerful than a word processor and learning how to use the Paragraph tools and understanding how it handles text takes time. InDesign, contrary to a new user's belief, doesn't just involve pasting text and images and moving frames around.

In this short tutorial, we'll look at how hidden characters behave in InDesign and how hidden characters can be used in organizing text.

Note: Screenshots and instructions are for Adobe InDesign CS4

To show hidden characters, press CTRL+ALT+I. The screenshot below is a fictional example of a poorly formatted chunk of text. There are three hidden characters that are now visible:



1. An improperly used Line Break which the writer accomplished by pressing SHIFT+Return.

2. The standard Pilcrow character that identifies a Paragraph.

3. A Tab character.

Hidden characters can be copied and pasted just like any character!

A useful trick veteran InDesign users regularly take advantage of is moving hidden characters to avoid overset text. In the screenshot above, the writer had used a Line Break because she wanted to avoid oversetting the text. However, this is poor practice at best and results in disjointed, messy page files. Instead, she could have inserted a Pilcrow by copying and pasting it to the end of the line.



Even Tabs can be copied and pasted on to locations in a line - this is especially useful when working inside tables where pressing Tab moves the cursor to the next cell in the table.




Use the Tab dialog box - not the Tab button

Hidden characters also tell you if the InDesign user just typed away rather than using InDesign's robust features. In the screenshot above, the writer used multiple tabs to create a list. This can be accomplished more efficiently (and with cleaner code) by selecting the text and using the Tab dialog box to drag the markers and create indents.



The screenshot above no longer shows any Tab characters because the Tab dialog box was used instead to create the same list without having to resort to pressing Tab to create an Indent.

Hidden Characters in Story Editor

Although you can't use advance features like the Tab dialog box in Story Editor, you can still view and copy hidden characters in the Story Editor though you should always verify the results in the Pasteboard after finishing your edits.

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Online Storage, Clean Installs, and backing up your Spank Bank

Category: Techtoday

Online storage, one of the first manifestations of "the cloud," is unavoidable. If you have an iOS or MacOSX device, you have iCloud. If you have a Microsoft product such as Windows 7 or Office 2010, you have SkyDrive and LiveMesh. A Google account merits you tons of storage space via Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Docs. The most popular cloud storage service today is arguably Dropbox, which is lauded for its cross-platform features. However, I have a strong feeling iCloud is tops due to the proliferation of iPhones and iPads.

Some power users are incredibly dependent on their cloud storage, shelling out money to backup their computers to remote servers located elsewhere handled by third-party who-knows-who. Personally, I would rather scrape for a Buffalo NAS or Western Digital external drive than upload all my files to the  cloud (or burn them to DVDR).

Unnecessary

For my part, photos, projects, documents, image scans, and my journals are the most essential files in my storage. What isn't essential? Sure, I love my ebook library and my collection of MP3s but they can be easily replaced given time and some money. If you have a few "legal" copies of movies/TV series on your hard drive or a "spank bank" (not that I know anything about that stuff), you don't need to back that up, do you? (Unless you suffer from withdrawal symptoms when you're too long away from Maria Ozawa or Sasha Grey)


"You're going not going to delete me, are you?"

Clean Install

While working as technical support for Dell a decade ago, I remember instances when the situation called for a "clean install". That is, you had to guide the customer to wiping out the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system and drivers (sometimes debug the HDD, too). Now, this scenario normally comes up when the customer thoroughly killed his system or was infected with a virus or just felt the system was too slow. What surprised me was that some customers actually didn't care if they lost all their files. In fact, they were enthusiastic about doing a clean install despite my advice to back up all their files first. In a hundred "clean install" calls, I would probably get maybe 2 or 3 people who told me they'd call back after backing up their files. The rest of the time, the user calmly/cheerfully tells me there was nothing important in the hard drive anyway. I would then spend the next  5 minutes trying to convince the caller that maybe your wife/girlfriend/brother/sister saved some precious files on the system - you should at least check. Back then, hard drives and cloud storage weren't cheap nor were they easily accessible, so I felt worried they were losing a huge chunk of data impulsively.

Today, I like to think users are more sophisticated when it comes to backing up their files.  After all, people today spend more money on non-concrete and immaterial purchases such as apps, MP3s, and downloadable movies than ever before. Online storage would be perfect for online consumers because it just makes perfect sense.

Online Storage

My paranoia prevents me from syncing folders (even files) on a regular basis but for moving huge files, online storage is a great alternative to SD cards and flash drives.  I've long forgotten my login and password for Mediafire, but I do have a few places to park my files on the Internet:
 
1. Ubuntu One - As a long-time Ubuntu user, the free storage was just icing on the cake. The storage provided for me when I signed up awhile back was 2GB, but the synchronization feature has improved quite a bit, making it more useful than I thought it would be. I mostly use Ubuntu One to sync Tomboy notes, Evolution e-mail, and backup text files.



2. ASUS Webstorage - ASUS Webstorage, which comes with many ASUS products, has a fairly functional interface and is pretty fast on a good connection. ASUS has apps for Windows, iOS, Android, and even a beta one for Windows 8 though the online web access is pretty friendly and fantastic on its own. ASUS Webstorage is pretty good for archiving compressed projects of a large file size.



3. SkyDrive - With the recently revamped interface, I'm looking forward to using SkyDrive more often though again using too many cloud services is overkill for my simple needs.



4. Dropbox - I signed up for a Dropbox account back when it had the dowdy and plain interface and didn't have much functionality yet. I've been meaning to access it again because it has been gathering cobwebs. I think the free storage will be useful when I decide to do a "clean install" on my Linux or Windows machine.

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