Database society will slow business growth

The forthcoming ID system in the UK will literally imprison 1 million people who for various reasons cannot get one or do not want to reveal past identities or are not entitled.
Because of the compulsive measure of having to have an ID card to get a passport, passports will not be issued to large numbers of people.
It is well known that travel restrictions on large numbers of the population, particularly economically active ones, have a braking effect on economic activity. Look at the old Eastern bloc models.
These people will also be forced into the black economy which will increase in size with more intense government intrusion. Workers will lose their protection from exploitation and wages will fall.

Access to Health and Education services will be restricted to these people as well. The Bill has not taken into account the people who are living in the UK already under a shadow. I personally know a family who have been here working, paying tax for 17 years and have no formal paperwork. These people will be a true underclass with even the status of their children in the hands of a whimsical government that obviously has no respect or care for them.

A general amnesty should be given to all people here already who want to remain.

We are told that this is needed for anti-terrorist purposes but the reality is that more people are killed by falling down the stairs in the UK then by terrorism. The classic purpose of terrorism is to cause a government clampdown on the population and ride the subsequent revolt.

There will be determined opposition to the ID schemes and to government intrusion generally, and this will increase in the future. At some point a line will be drawn and beyond that line is outside the domain of government. The line will start with an assumption that your first thought in the morning is yours, safe inside your head, no business of anybodies. Then it is written on a page and put in a sealed envelope in your pocket, Is it still yours? Does the government have the right to know what it is. Then put it on a website (your private website,)
Is it still your property? Now show it to a like minded friend , and so on..
The current rush by governments to moniter everything will bring this debate to the fore.
I would predict that political movements will appear which will want to limit the power of governments in these areas. Will they be treated as terrorists or heroes?

E-mail marketing

Informing your customers regularily about special offers and your latest pricelist is a great marketing tool and the easiest way to do it is by using an email list manager.
This program should be able to maintain your mailing lists, import your contacts and moniter the list for bounced emails and invalid addresses.

You could use one of the hosted services but it would cost you about 15-20 pounds a month for a small number of lists and low membership lists.

I am trialing a program from Dynamic Software called Dynamic mail Communicator.
You can get a free trial here.

Alpha Five version 7

I have been using Alpha Five for about a month and find it a very useful tool for making PDF files from Access. I like the fact I can watermark the PDF.

Alpha Five version 7 is more then just a reporting tool. It is a wizard led application development environment that is extremely good value for money. It can import from almost any source and although I had some problems with certain MS Access number fields, I reported the problem to the Alpha Five forum and the patch was ready in a couple of days.

I will be trying out the Data to Web side of the program soon and I look forward to seeing the results.

If you would like to try out the program it is available here.

War on Your Desktop

Google courts our trust, in bid for market share consolidation

Google fighting the US Governments request for information (1 week of search terms and 1 million domain names) is their way of saying 'Trust us with your information, including your email, we will keep it private.' We all know the problems that Google have had with the Chinese government , a far nastier animal then the US Govt. and they did roll over for them!.
So Google do not have a philosophical problem with the request. It does however give them a serious marketing opportunity.

This is the essence of the War on Your Desktop . Google have 'inadvertently' told us in this PR effort that MSN,AOL and Yahoo have already complied with the government requests and so they are less trustworthy then the Google team. MSN have already had an own goal this week with the Chinese blogger at the The New York Times - they pulled a site on the request of the Chinese government - hosted and written in the US.

We the consumers will only have stuff on our computer that we control or feel we control and that can trust implicitly not to leak our information out all over the internet. The company that can instill and install the most trust on us and our computers will win the desktop wars.

Anybody who runs search with Adwords can see the sort of searches that are popular I don't think that consumers will really want this search history handed over to Governments.

The question is does the government have the right to know everything about you?
We need a definition of personal space over which no government would have domain nor could claim it. Whoever carves out this space online will have a good chance of winning the prize.

Opensource applications online are a very compelling and successful business model. The same sort of rigour with peer and end-user review driving up excellence, could easily be applied to the workings of government departments, who are now migrating to the online world as well.

It is not OK for the state to have secrets and not us. Internet companies are more influential for good then bureaucrats on the lives of ordinary people. They do that by being honest and committed to the original ideas that made them successful, unlike politicians. Becoming quasi government bodies like banks would be a way for Internet companies to lose the trust of consumers who already to a great extent don't trust politicians and governments.

Use Google as a spam filter

If you forward your me@mydomain.com email to your Gmail account then it will be processed by Googles spam filters. Then set up a new email account me2@mydomain.com and forward your Gmail to it.
Remove your me@mydomain.com account from your e-mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.) and replace it with me2@mydomain.com.
This way you get the benefit of Google's spam filters working for you. This will also give the spammers something to think about, as Google will have a great big list of spammers.

To do this you will need 2 things.
1./ An email account that you can forward
2./ A Gmail account.

Node-net are offering a simple solution whereby you can have a yourdomain.com mail server with unlimited email addresses, including domain registration fees and hosting for £50 per year.
This service is particularily suitable for small businesses with up to 40 PC's on site. For larger companies the fees would be a little higher as traffic would be higher. We will also invite you to join Gmail. If you need help in setting up then we can also do this for you for a small fee.

Forward AOL mail to Outlook Express

I got this instuction from AOL UK today and it works for UK based AOL'ers. It will probably work for Outlook and in fact any IMAP enabled mail client program.

1. Sign on to AOL.
2. Double-click the Outlook Express icon.
3. Click on the Tools menu on the toolbar, and select Accounts…
4. Click on the Add drop-down menu and select Mail.
5. On the ‘Your Name’ window enter the name you wish to appear when you send emails, e.g. John Smith, then click Next.
6. On the ‘Internet E-mail Address’ window enter your email address in full, e.g. jsmith @aol.com. If you are given the below option select ‘I already have an e-mail address that I’d like to use’ and then enter your email address in full.
7. Click Next.
8. On the ‘E-mail Server Names’ window you will see ‘My incoming mail server is a POP3 server'. Change this server option to IMAP using the drop-down menu.
9 Enter the ‘Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server:’ as follows: imap.uk.aol.com.
10. Enter the ‘Outgoing mail (SMTP) server:' as follows: smtp.uk.aol.com.
11. Click Next.
12. On the ‘Internet Mail Logon’ window enter your AOL Screen Name and your AOL password.
13. Click Next.
14. To save the settings click Finish. If you are returned to the ‘Internet Accounts’ window click Close.
15. You may receive the following message if you do not have a default mail client on your computer: simply click OK.
16. If you receive the following message click Yes.
17. Please wait while these files are downloaded.
18. Click on Inbox. Then click on Go to.
19. Again, click on the Tools menu on the toolbar, and select Accounts…
20. On the ‘Internet Accounts’ window, ensure you are on the Mail tab.
21. Click on the Properties button on the right.
22. Click on the Servers tab.
23. Beneath the 'Outgoing Mail Server' section, click on 'My server requires authentication' checkbox.
24. Click Apply.
25. Click OK.
26. Click on the IMAP tab and click to untick the 'Store special folders on IMAP server' option.
27. Click Close.
28. Outlook Express is now ready to use.


I dont know if you need to run the first step.
Outlook Express will download your AOL mail and all your AOL Mail contacts and saved folders. even if you are not logged into AOL.

This is great news for people who are using AOL dialup and want to buy cheap broadband from somebody like Tiscali.

Freedom Of Information Act UK

The government of the UK wants to introduce charges for Freedom of Information requests.
They say that it is costing them too much to answer these requests. This is ridiculous considering the amount of computing power available to them and the spending they have done and are doing. 4 billion pounds on ID card database, 5 Billion on ID card usage database, 5 billion on NHS consultant booking system. ( I personally believe there is massive corruption in the purchase of these systems.)
I might set up a site to allow people to publish the answers they receive under FOI requests. Remember you can request information anonymously.

All government information should be published automatically with an easy to search index.

I notice that the government is considering changing its cannabis leglislation today on the grounds that it may cause mental illness, this is fresh coming from a government that just liberalised alcohol selling rules. Most people under the influence of alcohol ARE psychotic. Cannabis is a very mild drug in comparison.

Google backs Firefox!

As from this week Google is paying one dollar per download of Firefox. This reflects the value that Google puts on our researching our search habits and also puts one over on Microsoft and Internet Explorer.
All you web designers out there make sure your sites are Firefox friendly.
The battle of the desktop is hotting up.
That said Microsoft is also paying for the download of MSN Messenger.

Remote control of your PC

Radmin
Remote Administrator is deployed on thousands of corporate PCs worldwide.
You view the remote computer's screen on your own monitor either in a window or full screen. All your mouse movements and keyboard signals are transferred directly to the remote computer. You work on the remote computer just as if it were right there in front of you.
With Radmin you can work with any remote computer so long as it is connected to the Internet or your local area network. You don't even need a fast network connection! A 56K modem is fast enough to provide 5-10 screen updates a second. On a LAN, real-time speeds of 100 - 500 screen updates per second is normal. Radmin’s speed can be adjusted up or down to save your bandwidth.
Radmin is very easy to learn and use. Most of our users agree that the major advantage of Radmin is its simplicity. By all reports, the interface is intuitive and the program is very easy to use. Unlike bloatware, Radmin has no useless 'value added' features that makes it hard to work with, difficult to learn, or hobbles its performance.
Radmin is extremely secure, employing 128-bit encryption for all data streams. Radmin utilizes the ever-present TCP/IP protocol—the most widespread protocol used in LANs, WANs and the Internet. This means you can control virtually any computer from anywhere in the world. When in "Full control" mode, you have complete, unlimited control of the remote computer so you can launch applications, work on documents, transfer files, even shut it down. Of course, that is provided you are the system administrator or have been granted these permissions by the system administrator.

Get it here.

Record anything you can hear on your PC!

I downloaded this program a couple of weeks ago and found it to be easy to use. I have been able to record playlists directly from Napster and iTunes. Once you set the program it will record all songs to seperate files and even look up the name and details on Gracenote.

Get it here.

Big Brother arrives in the UK

ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras are being used to create a "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that will log the movement of every vehicle on the United Kingdom's roads. Your every move will be retained in the system for two years.
According to an article in The Register, the system will go live in April of next year and will process 50 million number plates per day by year's end. ANPR camera systems are to be placed every 400 yards along motorways.
(ANPR mobile unit)
Besides "denying criminals the use of the roads", the system will also link to other databases to identify vehicles that are unregistered and untaxed. The system will be used in the war on terror; UK police have lobbied for detention periods of up to 90 days without charges for terror suspects. Once police have a tip or a suspect in custody, they can sift records of vehicle movement along with everything else.
This technology was predicted sixty years ago by Robert Heinlein in his 1941 novel Methuselah's Children. The novel takes place in a near-future Earth society that is very closely regulated. The individual's right to privacy typically means little compared to the right of society to take what it needs from citizens. For example, the movement of every vehicle on the road is monitored by roadside cameras, just like it will be in Britain. Some individuals, however, use other technology to maintain their privacy.

The car waited for a break in the traffic, then dived into the high-speed stream and hurried north. Mary settled back for a nap.
When its setting was about to run out, the car beeped for instructions; Mary woke up and glanced out. Lake Michigan was a darker band of darkness on her right. She signaled traffic control to let her enter the local traffic lane; it sorted out her car and placed her there, then let her resume manual control. She fumbled in the glove compartment.
The license number which traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlways was not the number the car had been wearing.

Connect to any database!

I found a great program the other day as I was looking for a solution to import or link Paradox tables to an MSAccess front end. It is called DBExtra.

Major Features

Connect to Your Data

• Create unlimited projects and organize your data by object groups.

• You can connect to:

  • MS Access

  • MS SQL server

  • MySQL

  • Oracle

  • DB2

  • Paradox

  • DBF

  • FoxPro

  • Pervasive

  • Excel

  • Text files

  • Almost any other database through ODBC

• Connect to databases located on a web server.

• Assign friendly, meaningful names to objects and fields and only those friendly names will be shown to users.

• Maintain database objects easily from the DBxtra data explorer.

Explore Your Data

• Create business intelligence from your data with the DBxtra Data Explorer.

• Group your database objects any way that makes sense to find the data you need quickly.

• Filter and sort your data any way you want.

• Assign aggregate functions.

• Send your data by E-mail.

• Send HTML mail.

• Export your data to a MS Excel sheet, pivot table chart and linked data sheet.

• Export your DBxtra reports without losing formatting to PDF, Excel or HTML.

• Upload your data to a web server.

• Store filters for quick and easy future access.

Create Powerful Queries

• Create sophisticated Queries with no SQL or programming knowledge.

• Users who know SQL can add unlimited expressions directly to queries.

• Queries can combine results from different databases, including any of the database types DBxtra supports.

Create Powerful Reports

• Create DBxtra Reports in just seconds.

• Select report data sources from the data explorer.

• Apply DBxtra filters, sort orders and groups to display only the records you need.

• Create a clean, professional format with the DBxtra visual report designer.

Design and Deploy Active Server Pages in juts a few Minutes

Create and deploy Live connected ASP pages - without ASP, HTML or programming knowledge - All that in Just a Few Minutes.

Easy Object Maintenance

• Maintain your objects directly from the data explorer.

• Right click objects to rename, reassign to another group, delete and perform other management tasks.

Schedule Your Reports

• Schedule your reports to send automatically to end users, customers, suppliers or any other interested parties at any frequency.

• Merge e-mails and reports to customers and suppliers.

User Security

• Define groups of users with similar job functions or data needs.

• Ease administration by assigning privileges to entire groups of users at once.

• Assign privileges to specific users as necessary.

Get DBExtra here

PDF Editor 4.2 reviewed!

PDF Editor 4.2 from CAD KAS is a great program for quickly editing those PDF files when you dont want to buy an expensive program like Acrobat. You can download a free version from here which puts a notice of change in the edited PDF file, but at least you can see if it is the program for you.
The full version costs £47.20 and can be bought or downloaded here.

Win on eBay with BidSlammer

Win that item on Ebay with BidSlammer, a sniping and auction management tool. This tool is good because it enables you to not get too excited near the end of the auction and bid foolish money. Instead identify the item you are looking to win and snipe in the price you are willing to pay without having to sit and watch the auction countdown.

VOIP for small business users.

VOIP or voice over internet protocol is starting to come of age.
There are a number of services available to business and home users in the UK now.

Skype
Skype has just been bought by eBay and with the weight of eBay behind it looks like becoming even more popular then it is already. Broadband users can talk to each other for free if both of them have Skype installed. Skype also provide a dial in service called SkypeIn which gives the user a phone number which can be called by a conventional landline or mobile phone. It costs about 30 Euros a quarter. (This is the same price that NTL charges for a voicebox on an existing line.) They also have a program called SkypeOut which allows the user to buy prepaid calls to traditional lines for a very competitive price.
You can get Skype here and
pickup calls on your computer, wherever you go around the world, with a SkypeIn number.www.skype.com

Google Talk
Google Talk is based on Jabber an Open source chat client that is compatible with most online chat clients. It is still in beta version and is only available to people with a Gmail account.
It doesn't allow breakout calls yet but obviously the large numbers of Google users gives this program a very strong backer.
If you don't have a Gmail account then we will send you an invitation if you email nodenet[at]gmail.com and ask for one.

Net2Phone
Net2Phone was one of the original programs used by Microsoft netmeeting for calling out outside lines. It has a large user base and offers very reasonable call charges, so for
International phone calls at great low rates! click here.

Lingo
Lingo allows the user to make unlimited national and international calls for fixed monthly fee. There are some restrictions to some mobile phones. Lingo users attach a USB phone to there computer and use the handset in a traditional way. My friend called me on it this evening and I was very impressed with the voice quality. Get it here at Lingo VOIP

MSN
MSN have incorporated video into their chat client and a new version is now available from here


I would recommend using more then one system to test the various features and see which one you and your contacts prefer.
Happy calling!
and sell your telecoms shares from companies that are dependant on billing by the minute and selling calls, they have some very powerful new competitors that are in effect, giving away phonecalls to their customers. It reminds me of my first experience of business which was selling cardboard periscopes at Princess Diana's wedding. Silk Cut the cigarette company started giving them away with their brand on the side during the afternoon and yes it did put us out of business although as Irish people shouting in the crowd we got a fair bit of disruption from the Metropolitan Police, who were pretty basic in their detection techniques.

Mobile phone that plays iTunes like an iPod

The first mobile phone to double-up as an iPod music player went on sale in the US on Wednesday. It was unveiled by Apple at a last-minute, invitation-only press conference in San Francisco.

The ROKR, pronounced “rocker”, looks like a normal silver mobile phone, weighs just over 1 gram and stores 100 songs and audio-files on a minuscule, removable flash memory card. Files stored using the iTunes music software can be downloaded from a PC by plugging the phone into its USB port.

The idea, a joint venture between phone maker Motorola, Apple and US phone service provider Cingular Wireless, is to merge two popular portable devices – the cellphone and the iPod – into one, while adding the capability to listen to music while texting, instant messaging, playing games or web surfing.

“Fusing iTunes with your always-with-you mobile phone, the ROKR represents the ultimate convergence of mobile communications and music,” says Ed Zander, chairman and CEO of Motorola.

Apple has also released the ultra-slender, flash-memory-based iPod Nano, an MP3 player slimmer than a pencil and capable of storing up to 1000 songs or 25,000 photos. With 2 gigabyte or 4 GB memory options, it is touted as a replacement for the iPod Mini, which comes with either a 4 GB or 6 GB memory, but has a hard drive rather than flash memory.

Lion’s share

Although phones that play music already exist, experts say ROKR is different because it is the first to offer the easy-to-use iPod interface and the ability to play songs bought on Apple’s iTunes, which currently accounts for the lion’s share of UK and US online music sales. “It has what no other music cellphone has,” says Michael Gartenberg, of Jupiter Research in New York City, US.

iTunes enjoys a whopping 80% of the UK market for paid online music downloads, according to the Official UK Charts Company, and a similar share in the US. But phones available until now, such as the brand new Sony-Ericsson W800 and some Microsoft-based smart phones, are only able to play songs bought at other online stores.

“Those other phones were the best kept secret in wireless,” says analyst Roger Entner of telecoms consultancy Ovum in Boston, Massachusetts, US. “iTunes gives the technology a ready-made audience.”

Punishing competition

Many users prefer the iTunes interface for downloading and listening to songs because it is fast, easy and requires no technical knowledge, says New York City-based Peter Rojas of the gadget weblog Engadget.com. “All these aspects positively reinforce each other” while punishing the competition, he says.

The device is equipped with a special, and removable, flash memory card known as Transflash. Tim Bajarin, a consumer electronics analyst at Creative Strategies in Campbell, California, US, says this gives Apple the ability to ramp up the memory when the flash technology improves. Transflash is currently used on mobile phones to add extra memory for games, ring tones and pictures.

ROKR was available on Wednesday online to US customers for $249.99 and Cingular started selling the phone at retail outlets on Thursday. It will be available in the UK, Europe, Australia and Asia from mid-September, with South America following before the end of 2005
First published in NewScientist

I think that the flaw with this is that it is tied to a mobile phone operator. The new phones - coming from Nokia, Samsung, et al incorporating 4Gb harddrives will be be used in conjunction with broadband based music subscription services where the download charges envisaged by the mobile operators do not applly. It also throws serious doubt into the future profitability of the 3G operators.
iPod is going to make the classic MAC mistake of being to pricey to keep up with the growing competition in the music download player arena, including direct competion from mobile phone manufacturers. More open and intercompatible systems will also challenge the hegimony of iTunes.

Node-net launches software download site

Node-net launches new software download site www.most-downloaded.com
This site is a PAD enabled site that allows developers to sell their software or give a free trial directly to their customers. For webusers it is an up-to-date convenient repository of downloadable software with good descriptions, price information, latest version and screenshots

Developers are welcome to add links to their software in PAD form on our submit page.

Google launches Talk service

Google launched its own instant messaging service this week incorporating the ability to talk directly to your contacts as if they were in the same room. It doesn't yet have breakout ability like Skype - to call traditional phone numbers from your computer- , no doubt, it will come soon.
To use the service - which is in Beta stage at the moment, you must already have a Gmail account.
(If you need a Gmail account, please email me. nodenet[at]gmail.com )

At the present time it will not directly interact with AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo or any of the other instant messaging services. It is based on Jabber opensource technology which does allow interaction between all the differant services.

The interesting thing is the instant talk which will provide direct competition for telecoms companies, seeing that Google's user base is so large. Every move that Google does is so widely reported that they barely have to advertise. For how much longer will the pay-per-call model work for telecommunications.

I would sell my shares in telecoms billing software companies if I had any!

The new client can be downloaded here

It looks like this

Guide to current UK mobile phones

Found this great site for mobile phone shopping in UK. Very quick, good prices and comparison features. It is called Onestopphoneshop - 'naff name' but surprisingly good well designed webshop. Very commercial and to the point. I like it!

Just click on the following logos!

MSN Messenger release new version

MSN have released a new version of Messenger that incorporates live video and audio conversation like Netmeeting used to do. Communicate with mobile devices, share files, push webpages,this looks like being a serious competitor to Skype, and the other VOIP companies out there. MSN already has a high customer base for this product with all its installed user base of school kids and share traders.

This might be the basis for Microsoft's response to Yahoo and Google in the upcoming battles for portal control. Microsoft has realised that use of the internet does not have to be html browser based. A html browser can easily be incorporated into the client program. The battle is going to be won by the company that organises our desktops in the most useful and easy to use way.

Try it out here!


I had to update this blog entry seeing as there is an even newer version available in beta version. It is called Windows Live Messenger and is available here.
This version is a fully blown social networking application that will be a serious challenge to Facebook et al.