Ten Minutes With Highrise March 20, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in calendars, collaboration, contacts, organizers.add a comment
Intro: Highrise is another product from 37Signals, who make project-organizing, collaborative websites like Basecamp, Campfire and Backpack. Highrise focuses on organizing your contacts in a more imaginative way than an address book: “Highrise is your homebase for everyone that’s important to your business. It puts together all those little points of contact so you can see the bigger picture. It makes one history out of many interactions. Highrise helps you make sense of it all.”
Exec Sum: Quick to figure out, useful if you’re having problems keeping tabs on the people your company is dealing with. Not, though, if you don’t like paying for stuff, or hate entering data.
My tenminut.es: Having used 37Signals stuff before it all looked familiar, perhaps too much so. At first I thought it looked too much like their other services to be, well, different. But it doesn’t take long to figure out the distinguishing marks: Basecamp builds itself around projects and collaboration; Campfire is group-oriented chat. Backpack is a dumping ground for stuff. Highrise is a group database of who your business is dealng with. It’s built around “cases” – closing a sale, getting a jaded and elusive journalist to write about your product, etc.
To make it work, of course, you have to add your data. It’s easy enough, with all the AJAXy niceness you’d expect, but it could be easier. There are separate fields, for example for first and second names. That’s one extra step I don’t want to make if I’m dragging or copying from somewhere else. I could upload a vCard instead, but if I can do that, why not let me import my whole address book, or at least select from a list?
Once you’ve entered a few key contacts you can add notes, tasks and other information about them and about your dealings with them. Great if more than one of you is dealing with them. You can group these notes around “cases” as well as people; so, say, you’re trying to woo a WSJ columnist you can build a case called “WSJ wooing” and have colleagues involved in the wooing share their information (including emails) on one page. I couldn’t test this because the free version doesn’t allow you to add cases (prices go from $12 a month to $150 a month.)
Verdict: As usual a quality product from 37Signals that is intuitive and well-thought out. I’d like to see more generous features in the free version, and less legwork to get it up and keep it running.
Score: 7 out of 10
Update March 23: Impressively, 37Signals have listened to feedback and changed some of their plans. The free option now includes 1 case open at any one time, and increased the number of contacts from 25 to 250. More details here. I’d still like to see easier uploading of contacts, and of course synchronizing with other programs and devices. But this is a good start.
Ten Minutes With Belkin’s Cablefree USB Hub March 19, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in connectivity, usb, uwb, wireless.1 comment so far
Intro: Belkin’s CableFree USB Hub and Dongle ($130) A USB hub with four slots and a difference: no wires. “This Hub,” the blurb says, “allows people to place their laptop anywhere in the room while still maintaining wireless access to their USB devices, such as printers, scanners, hard drives, and MP3 players.” The CableFree uses a new kind of wireless connection called Ultra Wide-band, or UWB, designed to allow devices to move wireless data between them more quickly than infrared and Bluetooth. Indeed, Belkin has touted the hub as “the industry’s first USB Hub to enable wireless connectivity between a computer and its USB peripherals.”
Exec Sum: Requires patience, but a useful device if your peripherals are far from your computer.
My tenminut.es: The device combines a hub, a USB dongle and a USB dongle stand (not pictured). Also included is a power supply.
Unlike ordinary USB hubs you have to install drivers and a controller that sits in your XP system tray.
Once that’s done you still need to pair the hub with the dongle, a fiddly and unsatisfactory affair.
Why? Well, first off the dongle is too big to fit most multiple USB ports — meaning most computers. Which is why Belkin shipped a dongle stand. Meaning more cables. Add to that the power unit you have to attach to make the remote hub work and you’d be forgiven for thinking that you actually have more wires now than if you’d just stuck with the old USB hub.
The other problem is actually getting the thing connected. I did indeed place my hub across the room, but it’s a small room — about three metres across, as the crow flies — which should be well within range of the device. But it never stayed connected for long, flitting in and out of signal strength and connectivity. Eventually the connections settle and remain stable, but it’s an annoying initial period.
Frankly this may explain why this thing has taken so long to get to market. (Belkin says its original chipset manufacturer stepped away from the CableFree USB business, hence the delay.) UWB technology sounds like a great idea, until you try it.
Verdict: Great idea. But this device — and possibly UWB itself — isn’t ready for prime-time. Don’t buy if you’re not ready for a bit of a bumpy ride.
Score: 5 out of 10.
Postscript (a couple of months later): To be fair, this device has not given me any subsequent problems, and seems to connect quite well after these initial teething troubles.
Ten Minutes With Nanoscan March 15, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in antivirus, malware, security.1 comment so far
What is it? Nanoscan is an online ‘Web 2.0’ scanning engine run by Panda, which claims to be able to verify whether a computer is infected with viruses and other whatnot in les than a minute. NanoScan is a small ActiveX download which scans the active programs on a computer against a malware database of more than 600,000 threats. It also uses Panda’s TruPrevent system to detect unknown threats that have not yet made it into the virus library.
Any good? A good quick check if you’re worried about infection, but undermined by confusing scaremongering in deeper scans.
My 10 minutes: Loading is very simple and Web 2.0–ey, although for now it only works in Internet Explorer (you can use a Firefox extension like IE Tab, and indeed Panda suggest this and helpfully provide a link.) The scan in my case took less than 20 seconds, which is fast, although I must confess I don’t have a knowingly infected computer to try it out on. But if you’re clean on that probe you can at least rest easy that not everything is kaput.
Once that is done you’ve got the option of going for deeper probes for improved satisfaction.
My five minute Quick scan ran into trouble because of my Internet connection (an occupational hazard in these parts) which ended up crashing my browser. But I was back on track quick enough and the components loaded themselves in less than a minute. The scan itself took only five minutes as promised, but this is where the problems began.
Nowadays it’s hard to tell between a purely malicious and evil virus and something less damaging but equally sinister — malware that may be turning your computer into a botnet, or simply a cookie from a site that isn’t very pleasant. The cookie isn’t going to really ruin your day, whereas a virus or trojan might.
My Quick scan showed up 32 examples of “less dangerous malicious software”, all of which turned out to be cookies, but the big red alarm sign and the big red lettering “PC Infected” might make the user think their computer was severely compromised. Mine wasn’t; most of the cookies belonged to StatCounter, a web tracker that doesn’t seem to figure large on anyone’s hate lists:
At the bottom of this list you are asked whether you want to “disinfect” and told you have to register first.All these “infections” are pre-selected, and the important information about their origin is hidden from easy view (although there is a button allowing you to save all this data to a text file, which is a nice touch), so chances are you’ll click on the big green button:
You’re then asked for your email address and password. A few seconds later, in my case, an error message comes back saying:
So I tried again. Same result. Twice. By then my time and patience had run out. As the program has just been launched I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t have time, because the whole point of this blog is that only 10 minutes are allowed to review each product, to take in the full scan which promises to do a full scan of your PC.
Verdict: Keep the page bookmarked. An excellent tool for a quick scan; does what it says it will do. Misleading when it tries to sucker the user into registering.
Score: 5 out of 10
Ten Minutes With MailBigFile March 9, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in file sending, file sharing.4 comments
Intro: MailBigFile is (in its basic version) a free service to send large (up to 512MB) files to other people without any hassle.
Executive summary: Lots of competition in this space, but as good as any, and remarkably hassle-free. Blessedly uncomplicated and apt name, but should be more transparent about who is behind it.
My 10 minutes: As with all these services, it’s pretty straightforward. There’s no need to register for the basic service — you can put your own email address and a message if you want, but you don’t have to. In this case, there’s no software to download, which is good. Just load the file and enter an email address and you’re off.
The “Send File” button changes to “Please wait” and that is the only indication you’ll get that something is happening. It doesn’t say ‘Don’t navigate away from this page” or anything like that, which it probably should. Once the file has been sent the page refreshes with a notification that the file has been scanned for viruses and is now ready for pickup by the recipient.
This is the free version. The Pro costs $20 a year and the Business version $50, which both offer faster uploads, multiple recipients, up to 2GB in file size and, in the case of the business account, a branded version.
The thing about these services is that it would be nice to know who it is you’re dealing with. First off, you’d like to be reasonably confident the file will arrive. So is this one guy in his bedsit, or a company with a decent server? Secondly, you want to be reasonably sure the file will not be intercepted on the way, and read by a bunch of people with bad ideas in mind. Thirdly, the person you’re sending the file to won’t be happy to find that their email address has found its way onto spam lists. So mailbigfile.com loses serious points on that front, in that their “about” and “press” pages don’t tell me anything about who they are.
Their WHOIS reveals that the service is the baby of a Suffolk, UK, -based company called Design Solution Limited, which have also launched a few other services including DocMonster, which lets your store and share your documents securely online. They sound to me like an OK company, but I shouldn’t have to dig for this information.
Their blog, which hasn’t been updated since December, calls mailbigfile “Web 2.0 compliant tool with AJAX-powered progress meter”. I must confess I didn’t see the meter.
Marks out of 10: 6
Ten Minutes With Calgoo March 6, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in calendars, organizers, social networking.3 comments
Intro: Calgoo is a service that a free online/offline software that lets you organize, synchronize and edit your calendars, whether they’re in Outlook or Google or iCal. Designed for business and family, it offers a way to coordinate disparate calendars, either those you own or those you want to share with others. In the fast-moving world of shared and public calendars, it offers a way to compose and coordinate schedules when you’re offline in a free standalone program that runs on Linux, Windows and Macs.
Executive summary: Nice idea, come back in six months when it works better.
My Ten Minutes: Things didn’t get off to a good start. Strangely the terms of use and privacy policy page didn’t load:
but that didn’t stop me signing up. (Who reads those things, anyway?) I wasn’t crazy about the problem signing up — it didn’t like my first two choices, but with the second one didn’t really explain why — which shaved another 30 seconds off the clock. The registration email came through nice and quickly though, and it’s then when you have to download — yes there is a Mac and a Linux version.
It was then I had to temporarily stop the clock to wait for the 14.7 MB file to download. A little large for my tastes. Anyway, once downloaded the software installs smoothly and then prompts you for your Calgoo and Google details. Then you’re in. Well, sort of.
The software itself isn’t exactly pretty. In fact, it’s pretty ugly. It’s the bog standard interface, with some stuff on the left (monthly calendar and lists on the left, and an unimaginative array of calendar views on the right (day, week, month, no customized views):
After you’ve synchronized your calendars — meaning Calgoo has downloaded the events to your computer, or imported them from Outlook — you can view and edit them in Calgoo. Supposably. In fact, I couldn’t. I loaded one of my Google calendars and couldn’t see anything. Nothing. It said it was loading, and it said it was it loaded, but not for me. I tried the same thing with my Outlook calendar, which it identified correctly, but then didn’t load anything. As far as Calgoo was concerned, I had a free month. Then it crashed.
Same with two other shared Google calendars I have. Calgoo figured I had the calendars OK, but didn’t load them. Then it crashed again. Finally, when I clicked on a month button for the fifth time, my appointments from some of my calendars suddenly appeared. In a violent shade of maroon and crimson. Or something.
The color scheme was awful. I mean, really awful. Seems the best colors had all been taken by the preloaded public holiday calendars, so all I had left were horror flick tones. The colors were so dark I couldn’t read the black writing on the labels. “I’m afraid I can’t attend any of my appointments this afternoon, because I can’t read them. I know I have some, and I know they’re today, it’s just that my calendar has been designed by someone who is color blind, so I’m going to have stay home.” (Yes, you can change the colors, and no, the feature doesn’t seem to work.)
I’m not saying Calgoo is a bad idea. I’m just not quite sure why one would use it. It really only makes sense if you don’t have something like Microsoft Outlook, or better Personal Information Managers (were they to exist) but who doesn’t have at least one of those? The real hole in the market is a decent tool that synchronizes all your online calendars with your offline calendars, not an interface that makes you think you’re back in the 1990s. (See SyncMyCal for an effort in this direction.) Calgoo’s best feature is being able to add Google calendar items when you’re offline, so that they can then be synchronized when you’re online, but it doesn’t make sense to do this in a single application (that doesn’t boast any features beside the calendar thing.)
Adding calendar items is straightforward enough, and you can add them on the fly from within the calendar itself (avoiding the old school way, with lots of fields to fill in.) I like the way you can quickly copy an item between one calendar and another with a right click. Synchronizing back to your online and Outlook calendars is just a question of clicking a button on the right hand corner of the screen. Still my default Google calendar wasn’t visible.
The interface needs a lot of work. And folk have gotten used to nice looking calendar interfaces, offline and online, so Calgoo needs to get with it and come up with something nicer. If they can they may be onto something.
Marks out of 10: 3
Ten Minutes With Zorpia March 5, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in photo sharing, social networking.42 comments
Intro: Zorpia is a social networking site that, according to a very ‘official’ sounding description on Answers.com allows members to upload photos, journals, the usual stuff. It was originally called Photopointz but was renamed in 2003. There are no addresses given on the website, but it appears from this press release to be Hong Kong-based. The article claims there are more than four million members mainly concentrated in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Mexico. More on this at the end.
Things don’t start well with Zorpia. Invited to join by a friend, I click on the link to find that, as usual, I have to sign up before I get any idea of what the site and service is all about. Neither am I impressed by the blatantly nudging to spam my friends when a page appears not only inviting me to add all my Gmail contacts, but filling in my password for me. (Does it know I have a Gmail account because that’s the email my friend used to send me the invite? If so, creepier still.)
Signing up looks Web 2.0 but isn’t. First off, there’s no AJAX to tell me whether the username I give is already taken, and when the page reloads to tell me it is, I have to fill in my password fields again. In this attention deficit age, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have given up by now. If I was still going, I would for sure have dropped out on the next page, which invites me again to spam my friends. This time, it’s not just my Gmail friends, but my Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL.
And less savvy users might think they have to do this, since the button at the bottom of the page ’skipping this step’ is grey, as if it wasn’t active. I’m beginning to loathe Zorpia by now. It’s not as if you can skip the next step: You must enter a first and last name, your gender, your birthday and your country. Try to skip that and you get lots of red messages alongside the field. You’re also encouraged to add a photo, with the ’skip this step’ virtually invisible.
Finally I’m in. Not too much that is exciting about the Zorpia page, except for the ads. Having been told not to click on a box next to the upload profile photo box that says “I agree not to upload photos with pornography, violence, racism or copyright infrigement.” [sic] I find the Google ads are very much slanted that way:
And of course there’s the tried and tested indicator of a site’s willingness to make cash at the expense of its members: the inevitable smileys ads. And still Zorpia is encouraging me to spam my friends.
Weirdly, given I’ve only just started, I’m told that two people have visited my homepage already! Given I haven’t put any information in my profile, or any pictures, or a profile photo that may attract attention (mine’s a Skype button), I’m kinda surprised, and perhaps a little skeptical. Perhaps the explanation lies in the message alongside that says I “have 7 days to enjoy this feature for free. Upgrade to royal membership now.“
Given I was invited to sign up by a friend with the words: You must be a special person, your friend [deleted] just invited you to her online photo albums and journals at Zorpia.com. You should go to Zorpia, and see why [deleted] thinks its such a great site! I must say I’m kinda surprised that I can’t find her automatically on my list of Friends, or Requests from Me, or Relationship Change Requests (the mind boggles there.)
By now I’ve pretty much had enough. Zorpia’s ten minutes are up, and I’m pretty disgusted.
Footnote: I was puzzled not to find anything on Zorpia in Wikipedia, until I found the page in question (from which the Answers.com article above is taken) has been marked for deletion. This usually happens if the article has caught the attention of the editors. In this case, they were suspicious of the talk of 4.6 million members, which they say is not verifiable, found that much of the Wikipedia entry on Zorpia had been written by someone with the profile name, er, Zorpia (a conflict of interest, in Wikipedia’s and my book) and that since January the domain zorpia.com had been blacklisted by Wikipedia for spam. For Wikipedia and me, Zorpia no longer exists.
Marks out of 10: 1
