The LangaList 5-Aug-99 A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa About BrowserTune, HotSpots, Columns, Tips & Tricks, and Other Activities In This Issue: Thanks! You're Making BT2K Great! High-Tech Hypocrisy: Pot, Meet Kettle (or: the ICQ Fiasco) Seven Outstanding Office2000 Reader Tips New Kick-Butt Search Engine? Free Palm III Just For Grins More! Thanks! You're Making BT2K Great! You folks are the best! Thousands and thousands of you have tried the full BT2K beta--- with, I'm happy to report, a very, very high success rate. Some of you who did discover bugs have reported them to me, and they're all on the to-do list in priority order: I'm working through the list each day, and posting newly- refreshed versions of BT2K. Many of you also had great, constructive suggestions for making BT2K look and work better--- not bug reports, but great user feedback on the interface, organization, navigation and so on. I was (and am) blown away that so many people would take the time to figure out how BT2K could be better, and then to write it down and send their suggestions to me. You folks really are amazing! There are a couple of things that (frankly) puzzle me. I state in the intro that if anything goes wrong, anywhere, to use the "Problem With This Page" link that appears on literally every page of BT2K. But I'm still getting some email from people writing "My browser failed the such-and- such test. What happened?" Of course, the answer usually would have been found if the writer had followed the "Problem With This Page" link. It's a little frustrating: BT98 had a minimal help system of just a few pages. But between the basic "Problem" links and the context-specific links that appear in the custom reports, BT2K offers help and additional information on about 30 different topics. I wish I could find a way to get people to actually use the links! 8-) In any case, if you ran the beta before, check back to the BT2K home page to see the date the current version was posted: If it's after the date of your last visit to BT2K, it might be worth a fresh run of the Two Minute TuneUp. And if you sent me a bug report or suggestion (or send me one in the future) watch for your suggestion to be implemented: many of them will be, and soon! Thanks again for all the great feedback! The BT2K full beta is at http://www.browsertune.com/bt2k/ The BT2K demo (think of it as "BT2K Lite" is still available at http://www.browsertune.com/bt2kdemo/ And the tried-and-true manual version of BrowserTune (BT98) awaits you at http://www.browsertune.com/bt98/ -----------( Please Visit This LangaList Sponsor!) ------------ >>>>>>>>> Job Hunt? Time to update YOUR resume? <<<<<<<<<< Do it ONLINE! It's fast, easy, and FREE! Create an online resume -- YOU control who sees it! Get in front of progressive companies and check out thousands of great jobs available NOW. More than 150,000 have ALREADY posted their resume on JobOptions.com! http://www.joboptions.com/penn AOL Users: Click Here --------------( the above is a paid advertisement )-------------- High-Tech Hypocrisy: Pot, Meet Kettle. Or: The ICQ Fiasco You probably know about---and even use---"Instant Messages:" a form of email that can be exchanged by PC users in near real time: If I send an IM to you, a few seconds later a little text box opens on your screen. In the box, you'll see my message to you, along with a place to type your reply. IMs are a great way to get and share small bits of information, to quickly ask a question and to get an immediate reply, or to communicate faster than email and less expensively than by telephone. AOL is the undisputed king of Instant Messaging. Its two main forms of IMs include "AOL Instant Messenger" which is bundled with the AOL online service software and with Netscape browsers, and "ICQ" a standalone application that AOL acquired last year. Some published reports claim the users of AOL's IM services send in excess of 700 million messages per day! (Each line of text in an IM counts as a "message.") IMs have become so important to so many people that the Internet Engineering Task Force is working on a standard so future IM applications can interoperate. But that standard is some time off---and that's where the trouble starts. Right now, AOL holds a virtual monopoly on instant messaging, and they want to lock out other players. Microsoft, for example, recently launched its own free "Messenger Service" (http://messenger.msn.com/) and did something interesting: It figured out how to let Messenger Service users talk to AOL IM users. AOL was not amused, and found a way to block MS users. MS found a way around the block, and MS and IM users could communicate again. AOL then blocked that. And so on. I found the whole thing darkly amusing: Just a few weeks ago, AOL was in a federal court whining about how evil Microsoft tried to use its market power to hinder AOL's and Netscape's competitive efforts. And yet now, in a totally brazen way, AOL is doing exactly the same thing in an area it dominates. Talk about hypocrisy: While AOL is chest-thumping about "the fight for web standards" over on http://developer.netscape.com/, it's actively resisting standardization in instant messaging. In fact, AOL's moves are so brazen that other companies such as AT&T and Yahoo have joined with Microsoft to try to get AOL to stop acting in such a counterproductive manner. I don't see how anyone who has felt disgust at some of Microsoft's tactics can turn a blind eye to AOL's. With its proprietary online service, its proprietary email system, and now a proprietary IM service that is working to retain, AOL in many ways is the antithesis of the move towards open standards and interoperability. I guess AOL only wants open standards in selected areas---where Microsoft is strong. But what's your take? Do you use instant messaging? If so, which one? Would universal and interoperable IM systems be a benefit? Do you see AOL's moves as a justifiable attempt to retain control of a huge part of the web-communication market, or is AOL engaging in exactly the kind of behavior it accuses Microsoft of doing? Is sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? Join in the week-long discussion now going on at http://www.informationweek.com/langaletter ! Seven Outstanding Office2000 Reader Tips Did I mention how good you folks are? (See the first item in this issue! 8-) ) Every week, I try to pass on what I've learned, but every week, I also end up learning lots of useful and interesting things from you. Take this note from Carol Anne Ogdin (http://www.deepwoods.com/ ) for example, who's obviously been wrestling with Microsoft's Office 2000 long enough to offer these tips---all of which have the hallmarks of being hard-won information. But by her choosing to share this information, Carol's pain is our gain: 1. O2K is Nazi-like in its insistence that you MUST maintain the configuration it has chosen to install. If you attempt to correct O2K setup idiocies, then every time you attempt to use help, it will not allow you to get to help until you've let it reinstall! (You can, however, hit Cancel, each and every time it appears, to bypass this nonsense). Here are a couple of the kinds of things it does: A. It installs a bunch of fonts. If you don't want them, and remove them from the \fonts directory, it will insist on reinstalling them. B. It installs Office Assistant, even if you've explicitly deselected it in the Setup configuration stuff. Turns out there's a tool, in the Settings / Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs called "Customizable Alerts". This is apparently the program that monitors the installation. Actually a cool idea, but MS hasn't documented it in the box. It's downloadable from http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/downloadDetails/alerts.htm 2. Word2K isn't quite compatible with old templates that contain macros. In several cases, starting from scratch with a blank page and rebuilding the template from the ground up has made it possible to restore my configuration to stable condition. 3. VBA isn't ready for prime-time. We have lots of crash problems during Debug: If you make a programming mistake, it can accumulate memory errors until it finally reboots the system without warning. 4. Word2K perpetuates an apparent error in which formats of an entire document start changing when you attempt to make a change over a selected part of text. (Proves they kept some code, eh?). The only cure is to reboot the system so Word has a fresh RAM to corrupt. Often, reboot is not enough, and I've actually had to cycle power! 5. On the bright side, the "signed security" for macros is super. It keeps us from inadvertently accepting viruses. 6. A Setup tip: Always go through the custom setup options and make every option either fully installed or not installed at all; avoid that "Install on first use" option, or you'll find yourself having to leave the CD-ROM in the drive all the time. I suspect that "feature" was put there in MS' eagerness to avoid piracy...most of which is in multiple installs of the same CD-based product. Like most MS stuff, this is great in concept, but lacking in execution. I went back to Add/Remove Program / Microsoft Office 2000, and discovered that many of my selections had been ignored (many things were set to "Copy on First Run"; some I'd selected were set to "Not Available!"). However, re-installing after having selected all of them the way I want them seems to have cured the problem. 7. All-in-all O2K Professional is a good- quality final Beta. I'm hoping for "Gold" code...but, with MS' track record, I don't expect SR-1 until next Spring. Wow! Thanks, Carol! ----------( Please Visit This LangaList Sponsor! )--------- InternationalTimes.com -- The World's FREE Daily Print Newspaper. Eight pages covering news from around the world. Online delivery means it's as up-to-date as possible! Available two ways: Download from our web site or receive it through e-mail. Adobe Acrobat format allows reproduction on any computer and printer, or read it from your screen. Try it today! http://www.internationaltimes.com -----------( the above is a paid advertisement )---------- New Kick-Butt Search Engine? Everyone uses search engines from time to time--- but it seems that search engines have become almost commodities lately. Some do a better job of trying to keep up; some are faster than others, and some offer additional services that make them stand out. I've always liked AltaVista, for example, even though it's not the most popular search engine. But last week, I saw a press release that caught my eye: World's Largest Web Search Engine Over 200,000,000 unique URLs are in the FAST Search database, which is more than twice the catalog size of Inktomi, which provides the search engine for Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo, among many others. It is also up to 4X larger than search solutions from Excite and most other portals. Within one year, the *entire* Web - currently estimated at 800,000,000 URLs - will be indexed on FAST Search and it will thereafter scale with the growth of the Web - FAST is the first company to undertake this challenge. FAST Search comes from Fast Search &Transfer, with R&D facilities in Norway and over 10+ years of research into search algorithms and software. While this is the World's Largest Search, it is also the fastest, as it runs on a unique and fully scalable parallel processing architecture based on PCs as opposed to supercomputers - 200 top-of-the-line Dell systems manage and maintain the entire search catalog. FAST Search is available on the Web at http://www.alltheweb.com I've played around with it, and it seems pretty good. For example, I did a kind of solipsistic search for "Fred Langa" (will I go blind if I search for myself too often? ) Alltheweb returned "4105 documents found - 8.0190 seconds search time" and most of the pages were relevant--- they were pages from sites I've done, places where I've posted columns, or places (such as some Apple and Linux sites) where others have posted comments and articles about me or my columns. (Some of the folks there who think I'm anti- Apple or anti-Linux or something have very, er, colorful --- if misinformed---opinions of me.) In contrast, AltaVista was faster, but returned only returned 1394 pages--- and almost all the top pages were simply from various iterations of BrowserTune. So FAST seems promising. I'm not quite ready to abandon AltaVista--- but I like what I've seen of FAST so far, and have bookmarked Alltheweb. ----------( Please Visit This LangaList Sponsor! )------------ Have WE got YOUR number? http://www.web-4life.net If we do, then you can have LIFETIME Internet Access for a one-time fee of $149.95 Get out from under your Internet Landlord. WEB 4 LIFE is webCOMBO's largest distributor. Hurry, price is going to $179.95 on 8-15-99. Why rent & pay monthly? 1-888-267-1122 -----------( the above is a paid advertisement )----------- Cross Your Palm With An Organizer. Just use this link to recommend the LangaList to a friend, and you'll be entered in a drawing to win a Palm III organizer (full details also available via this link): http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=143182 Recommend-It is an ad-based site (you'll see banners and such). The advantage to you of using the Recommend-It service (above) is that (1) you can win a Palm III and (2) you can add a personal message to your LangaList recommendation. But if you'd rather use the tried-and-true, ad-free recommendation form, you'll still find it at: http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm . You can't win anything there-except my thanks for helping the LangaList to grow! In fact, either way, thank you! Just For Grins: Reader Jonas S. Madsen sends along this guide to understand software version numbers: 1.0: Also known as "one point uh-oh", or "barely out of beta". We had to release because the lab guys had reached a point of exhaustion and the marketing guys were in a cold sweat of terror. 1.1: We fixed all the killer bugs ... 1.2: Uh, we introduced a few new bugs fixing the killer bugs and so we had to fix them, too. 2.0: We did the product we really wanted to do to begin with. Mind you, it's really not what the customer needs yet, but we're working on it. 2.1: Well, not surprisingly, we broke some things in making major changes so we had to fix them. But we did a really good job of testing this time, so we don't think we introduced any new bugs while we were fixing these bugs. 2.2: Uh, sorry, one slipped through. One lousy typo error and you won't believe how much trouble it caused! 2.3: Some jerk found a deep-seated bug that's been there since 1.0 and wouldn't stop nagging until we fixed it!! 3.0: Hey, we finally think we've got it right! Most of the customers are really happy with this. 3.1: Of course, we did break a few little things. 4.0: More features. It's doubled in size now, by the way, and you'll need to get more memory and a faster processor... See you next issue! Best, Fred ( fred@langa.com ) --------------( your ad here?)------------ It costs less than you think! See http://www.langa.com/rate_card.html --------------( )--------------