PubSub

Came across an interesting new service called PubSub that does real time searches for keywords and phrases. Unlike a search engine, it does active scanning. They are currently claiming over 9 million sources and 925 new items per minute.

Many years ago, I used to subscribe to a news digest service that sent a daily fax with headlines based on keywords you provided. This seems to be the same sort of thing, but using computers instead of editors, and in real time. You can add a widget to your browser (either Firefox or IE) to get results that way, or use Atom/RSS/XML and get the results in a newsreader.

The Wall Street Journal picked up PubSub as a source being used by day traders to trade on momentum by picking up early notice that something was being discussed.

Interesting and free - give it a try.

Book Recommendation - The Company

Contemplating a start-up has me thinking about the building blocks, including what form the organization should take.

We think of companies as being something pretty obvious, but the modern conception of a company can be traced back to pre-Industrial Revolution Britain. The impact they have had has been enormous.

"The Company - A Short History Of A Revolutionary Idea" is an enjoyable and brief overview of how the idea for joint-stock companies came about, and the impact they have had since their invention.

The authors take a light and fast paced trip through history, leaving the reader with the opportunity to learn more if interested, with extensive footnotes and an extensive bibliography.

The chapters covering the modern period examine the issues that companies present society:

• Do companies have an obligation to support the communities they operate within? This is often referred to as CSR or corporate social responsibility.
• Do companies owe their primary duty to stakeholders? And are those stakeholders the shareholders, managers, or customers?
• Do companies have too much power? Are they the cause or the effect of globalization?

Such meaty topics do not allow much more than a cursory treatment in a book covering so much history, but it does get one thinking.

Highly recommended.

Why Using Windows Is Like Being A House Cat

A lifetime of using computers has left me with the ability to click the Start button. What happened and what does it all mean?

One of the more surprising findings of a study of cats found that their brain shrinks the longer they are house pets.

This got me thinking with what is left of my brain.

I have been using computers since university, and personal computers since they were invented. From poring over articles in Popular Science about the IMSAI Altair, to lusting after a SOL 20, to actually owning one of the first Osbornes, I have been acquiring and using the machines for more than 30 years.

Along the way, I have learned many languages (FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, APL, dBASE) and any number of operating systems (CP-V, CP/M, DOS, Windows). I was very comfortable with the ins and outs of batch files, memory managers, and other arcane skills need to get things to run. I actually made my living as a programmer for some period of time, and wrote commercial packaged software for managing contacts back when that was unusual.

Today, my computer runs Windows. Why? Because after a while, it was just too hard not to. As my favourite applications fell by the way side, and as the hardware I wanted to run evolved, there was really no choice - one had to run Windows.

One of the professed design goals of Windows is to hide complexity from the end-user. No need for config files, no need to understand or learn, just click on things until something happens. And I suppose it is hard to argue with the approach. Why should you have to have a degree in rocket science just to boot a computer?

Which brings me back to the cat.

I don't think I can actually write a program to save my life anymore. Like a well-fed house cat, my skills have atrophied and shrunk to the point of vestigial memories.

I have moments of lucidity when I attempt to recapture the glory days, when slinging code separated the men from the boys. I try and install the latest greatest Linux distribution on an old PC, and settle in with some 1000 page "Learn LINUX in an hour" bible.

Many times, I actually end up with a working system on which it is possible to start one of the included applications. A very old version of Netscape. Or a Tetris clone.

When I try and install some new application, it usually doesn't work because I haven't put some file in the right directory or edited some obscure configuration file. Right now, I have lost the taskbar on my GUI interface. I don't know why, and I sure don't know how to get it back.

So I switch back to my comfortable Windows XP machine and use it to look up tech support for Linux. The irony is not lost on me...

But even house cats have frustrations.

I mourn the loss of skills, but I also mourn the loss of functionality. When I was running DOS and WordStar and dBASE, I had no trouble writing letters and using mail-merge to send out our annual Christmas letter. In fact, WordStar even had a dictionary (not spell checker) and thesaurus which contributed to better writing. Today, one is left with American dictionaries and a mail-merge process that is a frustrating series of compromises that belie the progress we are supposed to have made.

Now we have the all conquering Microsoft Outlook and it's hideous mishmash of menus and rigidity. Want to store data with your own labels and field types? Forget it. Want to figure out where your data is? Good luck. Need to export to another program? No chance. Unless of course it is a virus that wants access to your address list. That apparently is easily done. Want any choice of programs to use to accomplish a task? Forget it. All innovation has ceased if Microsoft has released a program in that category.

But I am a house cat, and my brain hurts from all this thinking. Better roll over and go back to playing Solitaire.

Bell's Law

Way back in the 1980's in Hong Kong, a bunch of expats and old China hands met on Friday nights to eat too much, drink too much, and to talk about computers. It was an odd bunch of people with nothing in common except a love of food, drink and computers.

They managed to start the first computer club in Hong Kong, HKFOG (later SEAnet), and to put up the first bulletin board system (BBS), running a pirate Apple II and salvaged 8 inch floppy drives. This eventually became the Asian link into the world-wide FidoNet.

During one of these bacchanalian feasts, a blinding truth became obvious, and was dedicated to the gentleman who first managed to distill it into a Law.

"There are only two reasons to buy a new piece of equipment: Your friends have it, or your friends don't have it."
Bell's Law

This one's for you Dexter.

Book Recommendation - Beginning PHP5, Apache, MySQL Web Development

My interest in web publishing has bumped into the limits of the hosting service that I use - Homestead. First the good news. If you want to get a web site up quickly and without learning anything new, use Homestead. They have a genuinely WYSIWYG editor that completely shields you from having to learn HTML or FTP or anything you would normally have to do to publish.

This simplicity of use has served me well for years, when I didn't have the time to attempt creating my own web site from scratch. I had two main objectives in publishing a web site - personal use, and information sharing regarding projects I was working on.

The personal use came from extensive business travel. While bookmarks work well if you are on one computer, they don't work when you are travelling or switching computers. I wanted an easy way to reach web sites that I regularly used for work and personal reading. Thus was born Hanafi's Haunt, my website. I have pages for Business News and Technology News, as well as pages covering projects such as computerizing my hi-fi.

The limit of Homestead is that it only supports rudimentary pages. One cannot create a database, RSS feed, or publish many types of files. To do so, it really is necessary to get down and dirty and create a web site from scratch.

Looking around, it became clear that the most common combination of tools was AMP - Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Apache is an open source web server, MySQL is an open source data base, and PHP is a scripting language.

I reviewed a number of different books to find something that catered to an absolute beginner. Many of the books published are reprints of manuals available on the web, or assume that the reader is already knowledgeable about the subject. I wanted something that took me through the steps of setting up the software and using it.

I am happy to report such a book exists. "Beginning PHP5, Apache, MySQL Web Development" published by WROX is readable, accurate, and has downloadable source code so you don't need to type in all the examples.

Highly recommended.

Podcasting

The confluence of MP3 audio files, RSS newsfeeds, and portable MP3 players has resulted in something called podcasting.

Any audio content can be recorded in MP3 format, not just commerical songs from CD's. With the spread of portable MP3 music players, there is now a critical mass for distribution of content to people owning such players. I should hasten to add that podcasting does not require an iPod - these are just MP3 files that can be played on your computer or any MP3 player.

The final piece is the use of RSS to distribute the files. Instead of having to troll for files through peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa with all the attendant issues regarding legality and spyware, there is a new class of software that looks like an RSS reader, but which knows about audio.

An excellent example of a podcasting client is iPodder, available here. Just like RSS, you add URL's for the sites that you want to receive content from. iPodder has a list of sites that will get you started. You can schedule iPodder to download on a regular basis, and then transfer the files to your player.

The CBC has already made two radio shows available as podcasts - Quirks and Quarks, the long running science show, and /Nerd, a technology show.

Datsun 280ZX Fairlady

Datsun 280ZX Fairlady

My favourite car of all time - the Datsun 280ZX, known in Hong Kong as the Fairlady.


Bought this car used with my first pay cheque after entering the private sector. It had four different tires, and almost killed me when I spun out going around a corner on my way home from the dealer in the New Territories. After putting Michelins on it, performance was fantastic.

The engine was the famous "Iron Maiden" straight six, with a manual 5 speed. The only problem I ever had with it was the low ground clearance - going over speed bumps was likely to remove critical parts from the underbody...

Picture was taken in 1987.

Good Morning Silicon Valley

One of my favourite newsletters is the daily round-up put out by the folks at Good Morning Silicon Valley. With a mix of tech news, a touch of the bizarre from around the net, and good writing, it is an always welcome arrival each day in my in box.

A little gem they highlighted today is this post from what looks like a personals ad on Craigslist. Funny!

Book Recommendation - High Crimes

I try never to see a movie based on a book until I have had a chance to read the book first. It is really irritating to have an actor's voice and image in your head instead of deriving the image from your own interpretation of the author's words.

I started reading High Crimes by Joseph Finder because I really enjoyed his novel Paranoia. I had the nagging feeling that the plot was familiar, and the further I read, the more it dawned on me that I knew what was coming. A quick check with the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), and fears were confirmed - I had already seen the movie.

So this is a tainted review. I actually was enjoying the book until the deja vu hit, so I can recommend it. There is a nice twist at the end, and enough detail to keep one entertained.

When Old Software Is Best - Sidekick 98 and Phillipe Borland

I am one of those people who gets classified as an "early adopter". I have an enduring optimism that things get better over time, and that the next great thing is just about to be discovered. I love the thrill of getting a new toy, figuring out how it works, and then spreading the news.

Hard experience would indicate that this optimisim is not well founded however. Gartner has what they call the hype-cycle, the various phases that people go through when evaluating technology and its potential impact. I can simplify this into two phases - anticipation and reality.

Anticipation is wonderful because it is unconstrained by reality. All desires are satisfied. All features work. Nirvana is at hand.

Reality, as some others have observed, is a bitch.

Which brings me to software. Microsoft's Borg-like domination of the planet has extinguished innovation in the core areas of word processing, spreadsheets, personal data bases, and email. Yes, there are still efforts going on, but the look and feel seems to have been locked in concrete, with most competitors releasing "me-too" products rather than real innovation.

The Open Office folks are doing a great job of providing an open source Office suite, but the goal seems to be duplication, rather than extension. You do not have any tools at hand for managing and moving lists, unless you are managing names and addresses in Outlook.

Shortly after I took delivery of my first IBM PC in 1984, I came across a marvellous program called Sidekick from a company called Borland. This magic piece of code was the first commercial use of something called a TSR or terminate and stay resident program. Running on DOS, the program would pop up when a key combination was pressed, providing an editor (with WordStar keys), a calendar, and most importantly, a little flat file database.

I can't describe how powerful it was to have all those capabilities at the touch of a key. Instead of having to insert a floppy and wait for the program to load, Sidekick was memory resident. The ability to quickly and easily create a database and then export in .dbf or .csv or pretty much any format was something I took for granted.

Windows came along, and the very thing that made Sidekick cool (TSR) became a liability. Borland the company was going through changes as well, getting broken up and sold in pieces. Eventually, Phillipe Borland started a new company called Starfish which was dedicated to reducing bloatware and writing software that was small and functional.

Starfish came out with a Windows version of Sidekick that had all the original features, plus the ability to synchronize across the Internet. The best version of this software became Sidekick 98. Subsequent versions were released, but they were actually worse. I was really happy that Sidekick was back, and used it to create contact lists, account and password lists, CD and vinyl lists, DVD lists, you name it. I didn't really care about the collaboration features.

Flash forward to today. Starfish got bought by Motorola during one of their periodic "software vs. hardware" moments of doubt. Getting bought by Motorola is usually the kiss of death for a team, which rarely survives Motorola's "special" corporate culture. Indeed, all traces of Starfish disappeared. The web site hung around for a while, but then in April 2003, it started pointing to Pumatech, the people who were selling the Intellisync product. Pumatech has since changed their name to Intellisync, and appears to be concentrating on selling to enterprises and carriers for phone and PDA synchronization.

A new PC user will inevitably conclude that his only choice for managing data is Outlook, since that seems to be the only program with which vendors concentrate on synchronizing. Unfortunately, Outlook is a primary example of bloat-ware, with rigid formats (you cannot define your own fields), and endless menus and options. Ugh. Add to all that the fact that people like Palm didn't even include a proper database with their device, and you find yourself in the wilderness when it comes to managing anything other than names and addresses.

Anyway... what this is all in aid of is the fact that Sidekick 98 is still the easiest and most flexible piece of software out there for managing information on the fly, and for formatting it to move between different programs and devices. I have been able to take data originally entered on an Osbourne 1 running dBASE II under CPM, and move it to DOS, various laptops, Windows, Psion PDA's, and most recently, a shiny new Nokia Communicator 9500.

I am happy to report that Sidekick 98 runs fine under Windows XP, a testament to Phillipe Borland's design goal of simplicity and usability. I just wish he was still making great software.

Update: September 26, 2023

So we are 25 years past the release date of Sidekick 98, and the old girl is still running.  I haven't been blogging for quite a while (life) but I still use Sidekick 98 and have managed to get it running on Windows 7, Windows 10, and now Windows 11.  

There still isn't anything out there that comes close.  It is particularly noticeable for those who grew up with dBase II that there doesn't seem to be much/any software for individuals to organize data privately and personally without being on a cloud-based system.

Long live Sidekick 98!

MP3 Streaming Devices - Squeezebox2

The folks at Slim Devices have released the latest generation of their network-connected digital music player. Called the Squeezbox2, it features wireless connectivity as well as digital optical outputs.

I first came across this company when I was building my own compturerized hi-fi. At the time, they were selling a product called the SliMP3, which had a display, ethernet port, and RCA phono jacks. It was a simple and elegant solution to integrating MP3 music with a conventional stereo system.

I went further and added wireless capability by plugging the SliMP3 into a wireless bridge, which has worked just fine, though things can get a bit hairy when somebody is surfing on a wireless laptop while the music is playing.

The new Squeezebox2 has 802.11g, so bandwidth should no longer be a problem. I like the addition of the optical ports, and the server side software has been updated to support Internet radio, and a host of other features.

Highly recommended.

Book Collection Goes Live

Books

After evaluating a number of different book collection management packages, I decided to go with Book Collector from the folks at Collectorz. The software allows export to HTML, and so the fruits of my first data entry session are now on view here.

It is going to take some time and the right mood to bang in all the ISBN numbers and do the lookups, but the results are quite pleasing. The template I used shows all the books in Title order, with thumbnail cover shots, and click-through screens showing all detail information.

Book Review - The Nudist On The Late Shift

Continuing to mine the backlog of books on my shelf, and considering getting involved with a startup, I decided to read Po Bronson's "The Nudist On The Late Shift". It is an autographed first edition which I got through one of my periodical bulk orders from Amazon.

I can still remember the incredible energy and sense of inevitable success that defined Silicon Valley in the late '90's. I was lucky to be working for Visa in Singapore, and made regular trips to head office in Foster City. I would always take advantage of the travel to prowl around the Valley, visiting companies I had heard of and looking for solutions to problems we ran into building and maintaining Visa's networks.

The growth between visits was measurable, and it seemed like the centre of the universe had shifted to that endless collection of office parks scattered along Highway 101 between San Francisco and San Jose.

Bronson's book is really just a collection of articles he wrote for Wired, in which he attempts to capture what made the Valley work by telling the stories of people he interviewed and followed. He has given the book a structure by giving each of the individuals a thematic role in explaining the mysterious magnetisim of the Valley.

How does it stand up post bubble, post 9/11?

As with any attempt to write history while being surrounded by events, one risks missing the big picture and being buried in the detail. Bronson was clearly taken by certain companies and people he met. Not all have prospered in the way he assumed they would. But the book is still a good way of re-capturing the sense of the possible that pervaded everyone involved.

The Economics of Piracy

Daniel Gross has written an article in Slate commenting on Hollywood's decision to sell DVD's in China at a low price to compete with the pirates. He thought this would lead to people in the US importing the discs because they were so much cheaper than the ones sold in the US.

As he soon realized from reader comments, Hollywood thought they had the grey market covered by imposing region coding, which means that discs sold in one region should only be playable on DVD players sold in that region.

Like any other commodity, consumers of DVD's have rapidly discovered that there is a difference in quality and price between the various region releases. Code 1 discs released for the North American market are better quality, with more features (sound choices, special documentaries) and come out first. The result is the availability of multi-region players, first under the table, and now openly from legitimate retailers.

In the face of instant information, it is almost touching that Hollywood believes they can release a movie in one market months before another, and then stagger release of the DVD.

Anyone interested in supply chains must give credit to the incredible efficiency exhibited by the pirates, who can obtain a copy of a new movie from (say) a "voter" copy given out to Academy members and have it duplicated and in full distribution within a week.

As Gross points out, you really need to look at value pricing instead of costs when discussing piracy. Whether a Cartier watch or a DVD, the raw material inputs and manufacturing labour are a small fraction of the eventual selling price. In Singapore, a blank recordable DVD-R costs more than a pirate DVD from China with full packaging.

And that is the whole point. Piracy is theft, clear and simple. But it is also an indication of market demand at a certain price. Why is Hollywood so ignorant of economics? The market is saying that there is near infinite demand at $2 a disc. Why spend a fortune on regulation and bullying customers when they clearly want to buy your product?

The exact same reality applies to computer software. Why does Microsoft charge $500 for Office and then complain about pirates? The market wants the product, but at a much more realistic price. Piracy only exists when there is a pricing mis-match.

The real answer is that you don't get to earn $20 million to appear in a film and live like a king if discs sell for $2. You get to earn a decent living like everyone else doing a job and making a margin on their labour.

And where is the fun in that...?

Hotmail Being Attacked By Large Spam

About a month ago, I noticed that I was starting to receive very large spam messages of more than 130K each in my Hotmail account. Although the spam filter was picking them up, the messages were counted against my disk quota (2mb), effectively rendering my account unusable within 24 hours.

I attempted to report this problem to Hotmail tech support, but only got bot replies saying they were too busy to reply right now. Pop quiz. When can you tell a company has lost the plot?

Thank goodness for Gmail.

Web Site Monitoring

Came across this company called SiteUptime that provides monitoring for web sites. They have a free service that lets you monitor one site, and then fee-based services at very reasonable rates for more sophisticated statistics and multiple domains.

If you ever wondered how often your hosting service actually goes down, this is a quick way to find out.

Former Tech Executive Segues to Trucker

There have been any number of times while sitting through yet another incompetent vendor presentation (why don't they ever ask what I need?) that I have had fantasies of completely changing careers again and taking up long-distance trucking.

No, I am not a closet CB-radio fan or country music junkie, just someone who remembers fondly the freedom and peace of driving cross country.

This article in My Way, covers the story of the guy who sold Mosaic (which became Internet Explorer) to Microsoft and then ended up unemployed in the early 2000's. He got his big rig driving license and went on to start a small trucking company. He is still applying tech to the business, and sounds like he is having fun.

Stopping Hollywood Before It Is Too Late

The clash between content owners and everybody else is coming to another critical juncture. The ability to make money from ideas has always been problematic. When innovation was primarily expressed in physical inventions, the patent system was introduced to provide protection to inventors.

When innovation is creative, we have copyright law. When the methods of publishing and distribution were restricted to the few (priniting, celluloid film, broadcast music), it was relatively easy to enforce collection of royalties through organizations such as ASCAP.

As the technology genie escaped from the lamp, it became more and more difficult to enforce creator rights. Xerox machines and scanners, VCR's and DVR's, ripping and MP3's, have all destroyed the old gatekeeper and control mechanisms. Add in the Internet to increase the reach and speed of distribution, and you have the meltdown of businesses based on the medium instead of the message.

Like a wounded animal, the studios and music publishers are striking out at those they percieve to threaten them. Their latest demand is that hardware (the medium) be legally obliged to incorporate piracy protection of their choosing.

While at first blush this may sound reasonable, the unintended consequences are manifest. It will become impossible to make backups of material you have legally licensed (already the case with DVD's). Innovation will be stifled as every new advance will have to seek permission from the content industry before it can be released. The kind of home music and video distribution systems that I have been playing with become illegal. There is already a case where the studios have sued a company called Kaliedescape, which makes a high-end home entertainment system with a DVD jukebox, over a product that streams material you already legally own.

Amid all the fear mongering and extreme warnings of the death of creative industries, some well written and thoughtful papers have been written as amicus curiae briefs in the case of the studios against Grokster. The National Venture Capital Association has a paper here, and the Free Software Foundation has their submission here.

Book Recommendation - Skin Tight

After enjoying Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip", I decided to try another of his novels, this time "Skin Tight".

Released in 1989, this is a much earlier work, also featuring Stranahan, the main protagonist of "Skinny Dip". We learn a lot more about why he is the way he is, and meet the other characters who make up the rich and weird citizens of South Florida.

"Skin Tight" tackles the plastic surgery industry and the vanity and greed of those involved, including corrupt cops, politicians, and actors. The book is a good detective thriller in its own right, with a hard edge. Add Hiaasen's layer of the bizarre and farcical, and you get a very enjoyable read. The fact that the book is still in print attests to its enduring appeal.

Be All That You Can Buy

Came across a great parody of Apple's original "1984" ad, made by an improvisational comedy troupe I had never heard of before called The Royal We. You can see the film here, or download a copy here, from Bored At Work. Great stuff.

Blog People and Michael Gorman

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, has written a rant about bloggers, Google, and the role of librarians.

I quite enjoyed the rant, especially as Google refuses to index my web site, but then I started wondering about the implications of Gorman's assertions.

The current method of publishing books, with authors, agents, publishing houses, printers and booksellers cannot be viewed as the "right way" any more than blogging can claim the title. The former is just as much a result of technology (printing) as is blogging (web and Internet).

One begins to suspect that Gorman's assertion that his concerns have nothing to do with job protection for librarians rings hollow, and is an elitist attempt to maintain control over access to knowledge.

I have witnessed the same painful transition in computing, where the old IBM priesthood of programmers and system administrators fought bitterly to prevent the widespread dissemination of information that led to their becoming irrelevant. The phrase "real men program in Assembler" while humorous, has at its root the vain attempt to keep things hard so that access is only possible through the professional intermediaries.

Where were the librarians when the world shifted and such wonderful new tools as the web, and search, and essentially free storage became available? I have no disagreement with the assertion that current methods are anarchic and ineffective, but they are still dramatically better than trying to educate by assuming that all knowledge should reside in books organized by librarians and accessible only by physically going to book storage locations.

The real debate should be about the inability to judge veracity of information without context or bona fides. Google's approach is to assume that popularity (number of linked pages) equates with importance. It is the digital equivalent of mob rule.

The "dead trees" brigade relies on self appointed gate keepers - editors, publishers, distributors to determine what gets published. While one can perhaps accept that this ensures quality, it does guarantee that most material is not published. Since sales ultimately determine success and therefore subsequent access to distribution, the same result we see with Google obtains - a rush to the lowest common denominator, and those with the most money for promotion (or search engine advertising placement) take dominant placement.

There is also a very real concern about monopolistic control over the channels of distribution. There are few librarians happy with the prices charged by scholarly journals. Given the archaic system of publish or perish in academia, the inevitable logjam of those needing to be published has run into the decreasing number of outlets controlled by large publishing houses.

Do I want my news and information to come from some illiterate blogger? Obviously not. But I do want my news and information to be available conveniently and instantly. Gorman should be questioning why librarians have failed to keep up with technology and the potential it offers to revolutionize their profession, not trying to protect books and libraries. Most libraries use computers only to make the distribution and tracking of books more efficient, not to access their contents.

You are doomed if you do not understand what business you are in. Libraries are not useful because they store books in one place. They are useful because they provide a thoughtful and useful indexing framework for the retrieval of information.

To use another analogy, libraries are like fixed line phone companies attempting to compete with mobile phones. The fixed line companies thought they were in the business of providing physical connections and handsets to customers. Experience has shown they were actually in the communications and indexing business. The value comes from the phone number and the ability to access any other subscriber.

The technology is irrelevant.

A Genius Explains

The abilities of savants and autistic individuals have fascinated and intrigued people for years, but there has been very little explanation of how and why the extraordinary capabilities work.

The Guardian has an article describing Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant. What makes him particularly interesting is his ability to describe how he thinks.

Good article that makes one wonder about the amount of unused capability we are all carrying around on our shoulders.

The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

As an inveterate gadget buyer and tinkerer, this list of the top 100 gadgets of all time naturally drew my attention. Some of the highlighted items I had never heard of, but other favourites are listed.

Who can forget the ETCH-A-SKETCH, released in 1960? The first time I came across this marvelous machine, it confirmed my suspicion that I had no artistic talent or hand-eye coordination. The first conclusion has stood the test of time, while the second has improved with age.

For on-going impact, I have to select the TREK THUMBDRIVE, released in 1999. I received the first one of these as a promo from a vendor who cleverly put the invitation to an event on the drive. It was a real "wow" moment, and has completely changed the way I move and store data.

Top 100 Gadgets Of All Time

Western Digital - Great Moments in Customer Service

I have often been left gobsmacked by just how badly companies manage customer service. Thank goodness for the Internet which reduces the need to interact with counter drones.

It is with considerable surprise and pleasure that I am able to say that Western Digital has just delivered the best service I have ever had from a manufacturer.

While building a high performance gaming machine last year, I had purchased two Western Digital 120 Gb Caviar SE hard disks. Using the onboard RAID controller, I set the drives up in a mirroring configuration. Everything installed, and the machine was in use for a month. Suddenly one day, I got a disk error, and it turned out one of the drives had died.

With previous experience of trying to get warranty service on a hard drive (can you spell I B M...), I reluctantly decided to just buy a new drive rather than have the PC out of service for an extended period of time. The new drive was identical, and installed quickly. Once I had figured out the arcane Chinese English error messages, the drive was synchronized, and everything has run fine since then.

The dead drive has been sitting on a shelf waiting for a day I was both in a good mood and had become so bored I was prepared to tackle a manufacturer's RMA process. Having finished preparations for Chinese New Year, it seemed appropriate to attempt the return of the drive.

I logged onto the Western Digital web site, followed the links to end user warranty, filled in the form, and was issued an RMA number. There were extremely clear instructions on how to pack and ship the drive, and a local Singapore address. There was a menu choice to track your RMA, just like a FedEx or UPS package. Finally, there was the statement that drives could only be mailed, and that walk in service was not provided.

Fantastic! Every other time I have tried to claim warranty service, I have been told to take the drive personally to some obscure industrial estate in deepest Singapore that is open for 45 minutes on alternate Wednesdays. The taxi fare alone would be equal to half the cost of the drive, and having to go back to pick it up makes the whole exercise pointless.

The day before Chinese New Year, I packaged up the drive according to instructions, and dropped it off at the local post office. The postage came to the grand sum of S$2.50. I expected that nothing would happen for a few weeks due to the holidays and past experience. Imagine my surprise 7 days later when a courier company called me in the morning and asked if they could deliver a hard disk.

Great service, great experience, congratulations to Western Digital.

Stopping Spyware

Like the debates about gun control, "guns don't kill people, people kill people", there are strongly held views about how to stop or at least control spyware and spam. The very mechanisms that are supposed to protect endusers are being used to create and deliver spyware.

This article by Ben Edelman makes the point that those charged with running the Internet are not doing enough to protect us, and are in fact allowing the problem to get worse.

V-Gear LanDisk

As home networks become common, the same issues that plague businesses arise - the ever increasing need for storage, and managing backups and the backup window.

I have been on the lookout for simple Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices to use as bit buckets for storing everything from MP3's to system images. In the corporate setting, there are a number of low-end, Windows Server-based NAS appliances that work just fine. I have put Dell PowerVault NAS appliances into a number of different office and development environments with great success.

For home use however, the price point, power consumption, noise, and heat become issues. There are a number of products from Linksys, Snap, Iomega, and Buffalo, but they all tend to either be too expensive or too complicated. I don' t want a whole new server with email, DHCP, and LINUX apps running just to get network storage.

And so to the V-Gear LanDisk. Sold by a company in Taiwan I had never heard of, this little box does exactly what the name implies. It is a stylish little enclosure in which you install the 3.5" hard disk of your choice. Connection and setup are incredibly simple. After inserting your hard disk into the space provided, it is just necessary to attach the included power and IDE cables. Two screws secure the cover, and then it is just a matter of inserting an RJ-45 cable to connect to your switch, and the included power which comes from a wall wart.

Administration is just as simple. Using a browser, you type http://landisk and the admin page comes up. There is a very sparse set of choices which basically come down to formatting the disk (FAT32), creating the share permissions, and setting the identity of the device for Windows networking. Immediately, all other computers on your network can see and map to the share.

The unit can also act as an FTP server, and there is an administration menu to set that up. The web site makes reference to firmware updates, so it looks like any bugs will be taken care of that way.

To try the unit out, I inserted an old 20Gb Maxtor that I had lying around. It had been formatted as NTFS under WinXP in its previous life, and the LanDisk was not happy when it tried to display disk statistics. I clicked the format button, and a few seconds later, the drive showed up as an empty 20Gb drive. I moved files on and off to make sure that everything worked as advertised, and created folders and shares. Confident that it all worked as advertised, I decided to splurge on something significantly bigger, and bought a Seagate 200Gb drive. Again, after clicking format, it was less than a minute before I had a usable system.

Wonderful, simple, and reasonably priced (S$175 from South Asia at Funan), I am very happy with this unit.

V-gear
LanDisk

Getting a Gmail Account

Google has done a great job of creating demand through scarcity by dribbling out invitations for free Gmail accounts. These email accounts are desirable for the huge amount of disk space that comes free (1Gb), and the clean user interface.

Since Hotmail is apparently not upgrading users outside the US, I am still stuck with my 2mb limit. This is exhausted daily, with spam that now seems to be growing in size. Although the filters work well, you are charged disk space for your junk folder, so quickly run out of space.

Unless you know somebody who has an account already, it is tough to get a Gmail account. However, there is a solution. The folks at isnoop have created an exchange point where people can donate their invitations, and people can pick them up for the asking. Go here to get your account.

RSS feed available for this blog

If you find it more convenient to have stuff come to you instead of browsing for it, this blog is available as an RSS/Atom feed. Just add http://whanafi.blogspot.com/atom.xml to your RSS reader.

The Illusion Of ISP Speed Claims

An article in the Straits Times covers what broadband users in Singapore had already figured out - the speed ratings used by the ISP's are a joke. At best, speeds are only applicable to local sites, which are practically non-existent. Bandwidth to reach overseas is never specified or explained.

To put this all in context, Singapore realized early on that having a wired infrastructure to the home was going to provide economic benefits. The government put in place policies to subsidize connections and to encourage infrastructural roll-out. A significant amount of fibre optic cable was installed, but much of it remains dark.

A basic flaw also exists in the government's failure to regulate use of the existing in-ground conduit network. Other jurisdictions have realized that forcing new entrants to dig up all the roads to create a new distribution network is pointless. Since those conduits were created while the dominant telco was a monopoly, it makes far more sense to separate the physical manholes and conduits from the wires. The conduits are on public land and represent a public good. Access should be open to all licensed telcos so that competition is real and possible.

With a small market and a dominant, government owned telco in place however, progress has been slow. The original broadband offering was from the cable monopoly, SCV. Speed was advertised at 1.5mbps, but that was only for local sites, and download only. Upload was capped at 128kbps, which made it next to useless for connecting back to corporate LANs using IP VPN.

SCV was encouraged/forced to merge with Starhub, leaving only two primary suppliers of ISP services to retail users. Unlike Japan or Korea where true 20mb speeds are on offer at low cost, Singapore continues to limp along with 512K ADSL from SingTel, and the 1.5/6.5 mbps notional speeds offered by Starhub, at relatively high cost.

And the economic results are clear to see. Korea has seen an explosion of Internet based services and companies because of the ubiquity of high speed connections. Although Singapore professes to want to be an IT hub, the high cost of local and overseas connectivity discourage firms from making Singapore their base of operations.

I doubt there will be much change to this comfortable duopoly until either the government uses regulation to force meaningful competition, or disruptive technology enters the scene. With the track record of the IDA to date, I have little hope of the former, but there is a glimmer of hope that broadband wireless will allow a new operator to bypass the strangle hold on homes that now exists. That will solve the last mile problem, but the overseas access problem remains in need of a solution.

Employing the "Elderly"

There is a debate going on in Singapore about what to do with all the old people now that citizens aren't dying conveniently on schedule within a year of the official retirement age. In Singapore, the retirement age is only 62, so with life expectancies going up, the need to continue to earn an income is a pressing issue for many people.

Suggestions have been made to reserve jobs for old people.

sigh.

Is it fear of one's own mortality that causes people to have dumb ideas? I was moved to write to the paper...

My letter to the Business Times:


Business Times - 02 Feb 2005
Tackle retirement by tempering expectations
I REFER to the article, 'Not yet time to retire' (BT, Jan 31).

Treating those of a particular age as if they belong to a single homogenous group is at best confusing. A complex modern society is composed of many different people with widely varying skills, education, and work experience. Why is it that as soon as someone becomes 'old', all his other attributes are forgotten and he becomes a nameless member of an amorphous group united only by their age?

Are we really to believe that two individuals, one a CEO and the other a clerical worker, are the same because they are 'old'? The problem of employment equity and opportunity is not one of age: it is one of expectations and compensation. As other correspondents have mentioned, a seniority based compensation system is going to price the older worker - whether blue collar or white - out of his job eventually. What really needs to be addressed is the assumption on the part of the employee and employer that earnings should only go in one direction over a career - up.

In today's society, it is close to impossible to suggest that pay for performance or pay for value be applied across the board. It is somehow embarrassing for both the employer and the employee to suggest that someone take a wage cut and not see it as a demotion or penalty. It is easier to just fire the older employee and replace them with someone younger and cheaper. Both parties need to come to a more mature understanding, and realise that with life expectancies reaching into one's eighties, retirement at a fixed age is no longer needed or welcome.

Waleed Hanafi
Singapore
Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

The link is here, but it goes away quickly.

Great Moments in Business

I don't know whether to be depressed or to laugh at this round up of the dumbest moments in business for 2004 compiled by Business 2.0. The usual cast of characters turns up, and the quote from Bill Gates is sadly in character.

Book Recommendation - Skinny Dip

It isn't often that you read a book where somebody is murdered on the first page, there is corruption, blackmail, people getting shot, and you find yourself laughing out loud.

This is the first book by Carl Hiaasen that I have read, and now I am hooked. There must be something about South Florida - like Lawrence Sander's novels featuring McNally, Hiaasen paints very broad portraits of some truly weird characters.

A breezy, entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Book Recommendation - Paranoia

Paranoia, by Joseph Finder is a great read. It has all the elements of a good thriller, with the added detail of corporate politics, technology, and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing to the end. I enjoyed it tremendously, and was motivated to find his other novel High Crimes, which is on my "on the shelf, waiting to read" list.

Highly recommended

Book - State of Fear

This is a review, not a recommendation. State of Fear, by Michael Crichton is not a novel, nor is it a thriller. Rather, it is a thinly disguised attack on the science of global warming, and by extension, the role of media in propogating received wisdom instead of critical comment.

One has come to expect slickly written stories from Crichton, with little character development but intriguing science and plot. In this case, the reader is drawn into the book anticipating a good story, but realizes quickly that this is in fact an extended essay which talks down in a patronizing tone to the reader.

Why didn't Crichton just write a non-fiction book covering the same material? He obviously feels strongly about the subject of global warming, and the fact that there is an extensive bibliography at the end speaks to his extensive research. Is he right that the current focus on global warming is misguided? I need to read his sources to make up my own mind.

I can say that great chunks of the planet are poisoning themselves through uncontrolled development. One only has to visit China to realize that a blue sky and clean air are only memories for the people living there.

Book Recommendation - The Broker

I am a sucker for thrillers, particularly ones that involve politics and technology. Although I have gotten rather tired of the "lawyer as hero" and the plot holes in Grisham's novels, the cover blurb for "The Broker" sounded interesting enough to invest the bucks.

As a bonus, you get to learn a little Italian, a fair bit about Bologna, and you need to ignore the technology as a mix of the improbable and the out of date.

"The Broker" is a fast paced story, the writing style is terse, and it is an easy read. It definitely makes me want to go back to Northern Italy. A great way to spend an afternoon.

Tracking Your Book Collection

I have been having "unfortunate" moments when buying books. I happily purchase something I have been looking for, only to find that I had already bought it some time before.

In my own defense, this is less the onset of senility than the realities of living in Singapore. I often read about a new book in the Economist, Wall Street Journal, or from an Amazon recommendation. I clip the article, add the book to my Amazon wishlist, and then try and find it in a local bookstore. There are two major retail stores, Kinokuniya and Borders, but prices and availability are affected by the distance and small market. There is usually a lengthy delay before new books arrive here, and we get product from the US and UK, often with very different covers. I also tend to prowl bookstores while on busines trips.

All of which is to excuse my bad habit of buying duplicates.

I solved this whole problem with CD's by computerizing my collection, and gave up and manually entered all my DVD's into a data base. Books however are a different problem, because there are so many, and so much information to track.

I have been looking at an interesting program that promises to solve the problem. Like CD tracking programs that are able to look up the track and artist data by downloading from the Internet, Book Collector from Collectorz uses the ISBN as a key to look up information from a number of different sources, including Amazon, the Library of Congress, and various national libraries around the world. A company called Intelli Innovations Inc. apparently has a similar product that ships with a hand scanner to eliminate the need to enter the ISBN manually.

The result is an entry for every book with cataloging information and a picture of the cover. With the Pro version of the program, you are supposed to be able to export the data, something I need, so that I can put a copy on the Nokia 9500. It is all very well to have a list, but it is only useful if you have it with you when you are buying. The trial version does not allow exporting, and the web site only refers to a third party program called ListPro for Palm and CE devices. Nothing for Symbian. I would be happy with a dBASE format export...

Scanning Books

With Google's announcement that it will be working to scan in the Harvard library, and Amazon making books searchable on-line, I was wondering about the technology behind all this.

This article from Boing Boing has a reference to work at Stanford, and this article from USA Today has a description of a couple of different machines and how they are used.

ResearchBuzz

Interesting web site/blog that covers the world of search and online research.

ResearchBuzz

Replacing Windows

I have more than the average number of Microsoft battle scars, having used PC's since they were invented, then having to manage them in large corporate environments as a CIO. Until XP Pro, the word stability and Microsoft only occurred in sentences with the word none.

With XP, things calmed down enough to actual use one's PC for work instead of just cajoling and threatening the damn thing to keep it running. And then something pretty predictable happened from a convicted monopolist. While the price of the hardware has come down from an average of US$4000 to US$1000 for a fully loaded PC, the price of the operating system has gone up instead. I paid $49. for my first copy of Windows, and the price now is more like $300.

So, what are the alternatives? And don't tell me Apple because I prefer to have some choice in my vendor and I don't value the apparent benefits of belonging to a cult.

LINUX is constantly being promoted as the great hope. I have been trying various distros since Red Hat first came out. I really wanted to like it, and I kept loading each subsequent version on whatever old PC I had lying around. Each time though, I would get going, only to be stumped by some completely arcane procedure I was supposed to know to do something simple like looking at my files on a network share. Too hard.

And then I read an article about XANDROS. The article claimed that this was Linux for the desktop, ready for Windows users, easy to install, completely compatible, and with the right version, you could even run legacy Windows apps. With high hopes and deep skepticism, I fired up BitTorrent and downloaded the free ISO CD image from their web site - XANDROS Open Circulation Desktop. It took a while to get the whole thing down, then a few minutes to burn the image to a CD.

My test unit this time was an old Dell Dimension with some wrinkles to disturb any installer - an old Adaptec SCSI card driving a Pioneer SCSI CD-ROM, ATI video card, 768Mb RAM, and a couple of ATA hard disks. I popped in the CD and reset to let it boot from the CD. About 15 -20 minutes later I had a fully functioning computer that looked very familiar - sort of windowish.

Everything worked. I could see all my other computers on the LAN, could read my Windows files on the XANDROS machine and on the network shares, could surf the net, everything. Wow.

Just for Christmas, XANDROS has announced their latest release, version 3 which has been getting rave reviews here and here.

Highly recommended.

Book Recommendation - 1968

It seems impossible to be reading about 1968 as history. It seems like yesterday, until your kids look at you blankly when you talk about hippies, sit-ins, summer of love and so on. Kurlansky does a good job of looking at 1968 as a pivotal year around the world, though his personal political biases regularly interfere with the reporting.

If you lived it, or if you are trying to figure out what somebody is talking about, this is a good place to refresh and learn.

Book Recommendation - Eastern Standard Tribe

I had heard of Doctorow through his work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but didn't get around to reading his books until recently. I'm hooked, and it is not just because he is Canadian...

Very original writing that extrapolates from current trends - my favourite kind of social science fiction. Highly recommended.

Book Recommendation - Altered Carbon

Wow! Cyberpunk meets noir detective story.

Richard Morgan's first novel introduces so many believable concepts that one is drawn into the whole thought process that treats bodies as so much meat to be replaced when damaged or inconvenient.

A fast paced read that gives you a whole new way to think about where society and bio-engineering is heading.

Book Recommendation - Baroque Cycle

A long favourite author, Neal Stephenson, released a huge book called Quicksilver and indicated it was volume 1 of a trilogy called the Baroque Cycle. I hate waiting between books, so I bought it and put it on the shelf. This was followed by The Confusion, which met a similar fate. The final volume, The System of the World, came out in October 2004.

With my new found time schedule, I was able to tackle this massive trilogy. And what a ride. First off, though Stephenson is known as a science fiction writer, these books are set in the late 1600's and end in the early 1700's.

Some immediate impressions:

• You have to be more interested in the journey than the destination.
• I now know more about London than I ever expected to know.
• Names I mostly knew from school, such as Newton and Hooke are now very real to me.
• I love these kind of books.

So, here is the Amazon reference if you want to give it a try:

Updated history of Hutchison Mobile Data Limited (HMDL)

Finally had time to add some more detail to the HMDL history that I have been meaning to complete for years now. Never have time when working, and it is getting harder to remember the detail and order everything happened in. Definitely something I need to get done once and for all.

As I look for new business opportunities, it is interesting to try and draw some lessons from past successes. Was it just easier in the early 80's to start companies? Was it Hong Kong? Was it the fact that the dinosaur telcos were not involved and they are now? Or was I just too young to know better...

The History of HMDL

Nokia 9500 Review Posted On CNet

"Psion meets communications"

whanafi on 13/12/2004, 03:28 PM

As a long-time Psion user, I was always smugly content to know I had the best PDA in the biz. While others were pummeled into the Microsoft vice of contacts and nothing else, I had a device that allowed me to have custom databases, document readers, games, Office compatibility and a vibrant freeware community. Oh, and the Psion Series 5MX ran for a month on double As.

Now Nokia has brought (most) of the wonderful EPOC operating system and applications to the 9500, and it is a real treat to be back in business with the added convenience of Web browsing and email. The Wi-Fi works but don't expect to be able to browse a LAN network. File transfers are easily accomplished with the MMC card which runs a native FAT file system. Pop it into your PC, copy files on or off, then back into the 9500.

As a phone, it is pretty primitive and I really miss the joystick from the Nokia 6600--the round button on the 9500 is imprecise and you mostly end up in the wrong menu. As a PDA, it is excellent. As a phone, it is tolerable. 9 out of 10.

Nokia 9500 Communicator - The Psion Lives!

After managing to abandon the PDA market to inferior devices, the Psion has been resurrected as the Nokia 9500 Communicator. Just in time too, as my Series 5MX recently died. Better than the Treo, and much better than the iPAQ devices, the 9500 is a delight to use. Details here.

Book Recommendation - The Monster in the Machine

This book is by my sister, Zakiya Hanafi, so it must be good.

Moving On

Time for a chapter to close, and a new one to begin. After two very long years at BEHRINGER Holdings as Chief Operating Officer, the job is done.

http://www.whanafi.com

Getting Blogged

After waiting years for Homestead to offer blogs or something interactive, I have given up and decided to put a blog here. My homepage remains at http://www.whanafi.com.

How to find my stuff

It seems my hosting company is blocking search engines. After 4 years of having a web site with some unique content, I still don't get listed.

Annoying.

I tried to get my surname as a domain, but some Korean guy is squatting on it, so I have http://www.whanafi.com and http://www.waleedhanafi.com.

Here are the relevant links.

My home page is Hanafi's Haunt

My home page using my whanafi.com domain which re-directs to the hosted site.

A redirect page to hold the waleedhanafi.com domain

A redirect page built on my Singapore ISP account

Why are there advertisments on this page?
I do not have a financial interest in any of the companies I review. In order to help defray the running costs of the site, I link to Google Adsense, which provides the ads. Please click on the advertiser if you find it useful.