That Technology Magazine

In my pile of new (electronic) “to read” items, I noticed that Inc.com published a few articles about the pros and cons of using open source software.

Own the Code
The Open-Source Advantage
The Hidden Costs of Open Source

Although, for the most part the Inc.com articles explore open source enterprise software (the stuff you use to run a company), I’m mostly interested in desktop applications. I do think these articles are worthwhile to get a perspective on where enterprise software is going - and how open source fits into the business and technology trends.

Loyal ScrappyUntechie readers know that I’m a big open source software fan. Open source software is typically FREE. Popular open source software usually has a bunch of groupies (developers) willing and able to provide bug fixes, enhancements, add-ons, and customizations - much of it for FREE and some of it for a nominal cost.

Here are a few comprehensive directories of open source applications:

SourceForge.net - Software Map
OSDir.com - Open Source Software Directory
Free Software Foundation - Free Software Directory
Google Directory - Open Source Software

Or, to test the water, here are a couple of the big players in the open source space who have relatively stable, reliable products. In other words, you probably can ditch your current software and still be OK.

Mozilla.org Products - web browsing, email
OpenOffice.org Product Suite - word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, drawing

Here are my pros and cons of open source - oriented towards you making an informed decision when to embrace open source and when to avoid it.

Open Source - Pros (when to consider open source)

* When you or your organization has significant financial constraints…
Open source applications are usually FREE or close to it. For a small business, this can mean saving hundreds of dollars in software licenses - or thousands of dollars if you have several computers. If you can’t afford to spend money on fee-based software, look at the open source alternatives to free up your funds for other purposes.

* When you have a lot of computers or some computers that are used for very generic purposes…
Open source tends to be ideal for large institutions with lots of computers (for example, schools, libraries, or nonprofits) that could not even conceive of allocating so much of their limited resources for software. For smaller entities, if you have a PC as an emergency backup, reserved for guest use, or for classroom training - you should seriously consider whether it is worth purchasing a lot of software for those PCs. Open source software can give you the flexibility to use traditional desktop applications on those PCs without investing a dime in software.

* When you need to use an application infrequently…
When you use an application once or twice, you can usually get away with installing a trial version and letting the trial period expire after 30 says. If you need comparable functionality once a month or so and don’t see the benefit to buying the fee-based application for such infrequent use, open source can be the answer.

* When you’re not afraid (or even like) to ask questions in online forums…
Open source applications tend to attract users and techies who like to help out one another. You’ll usually see busy online forums with people posting questions - and, in many cases, quickly getting answers. Traditional fee-based software doesn’t seem to build the same community of enthusiastic supporters. (If, on the other hand, you’re ok with contacting that big software company in Washington state for help with their applications, by all means… enjoy. I have never found them to be as responsive as the open source community.)

* When you’re not afraid of an occasional bug (or bug fix)…
Don’t let bugs in open source applications scare you. It’s not that there are more bugs; folks involved with open source are more willing to release quick, frequent patches to fix bugs than sellers of traditional fee-based software. You may even find yourself reporting a bug once in a while to help improve the products, once you get the hand of open source.

* When you like to customize your software (or remove quirks)…
Nearly every open source application out there has numerous loyal developers who create add-ins, plug-ins, hacks, templates, and you name it! If something does not work the way you want it to work, there tends to be someone else out there who not only had the same problem, they wrote code to fix it. Bear in mind, when you install this free code, there is no guarantee that it will work. (There is no guarantee that the software developed in Washington state will be flawless either.) Mozilla Firefox web browser is one of the best examples of having numerous FREE, reliable add-ins available.

* When you need to see how your applications or emails open using other programs…
If you or your company design websites, emails, or other content that people view using their PCs, you should have a lot of the most popular open source software on your computer. Why? You need to make sure that the content and formats that you’re using work well with the most popular open source software. Not every software out there… just the big ones at a minimum.

Open Source - Cons (when to avoid open source)

* When you need to prepare content for external consumption…
If you need to share documents or contents with others in specific file formats - with precise formatting or performance, open source alternatives may not be right for you - even if the open source software claims to be fully compatible. For example, if you have to send a resume in Microsoft Word (.doc) format, I would be reluctant to prepare the document in OpenOffice.org Writer and save it as a .doc file. I’ve tried that with resumes and it’s not always pretty. (Sure. You can send everything as an Adobe PDF - only under the assumption that they will never need to edit it on the other end (or have the software to do so). If your company or client uses templates designed for a specific application, be careful about using open source alternatives instead.

* When your clients require you to use perfectly compatible software…
Some clients have requirements related to compatibility, file formats, security, or use of their networks. Make sure you don’t break the rules - because it can only come back to bite you later if there was a problem because you used any software (open source or fee-based) in violation of their IT standards. Ask questions when you start work with a new client to be on the safe side.

* When you don’t want to learn about different file formats…
Although many open source applications use (or can use) the same file formats as their traditional fee-based competitors, the open source applications sometimes also have their own file formats - or the structure of the data they store is different. You may never need to learn about all this… however, if you accidentally save something in the “wrong” format or someone sends you something in the wrong format, be prepared to figure out how to convert it.

* When you’re afraid of change…
If it’s going to drive you nuts that the menus and buttons are in different places than what you’re used to using, stay away from open source (or anything new, for that matter). Often, open source applications either have to do things differently in order to avoid patent conflicts or because they developers are actually trying to make the program easier to use than the fee-based competitor.

* When it will annoy your company’s IT staff or tech support…
Don’t violate company policies or annoy your tech support if you don’t have good reason to do so. They’re willing to help - when you follow the rules. If you rely on internal tech support or you use a PC owned by someone else, check with the IT department to make sure that they will still help you if something goes wrong. (The same could be true, however, with installing traditional fee-based software that the IT department will not support.)

* When you’re scared stiff that a program might crash…
I can’t say that open source software is any less reliable than traditional fee-based software. If, however, you could not stand walking down a different path than those around you (less and less different everyday), open source is not for you. In my opinion, for example, Mozilla Thunderbird crashes more often than Microsoft Outlook. Well, sort of. Microsoft Outlook seems to lock up PCs more often (so you have to completely shut down), whereas Mozilla Thunderbird crashes with no consequence other than reopening the program. Your choice.

Still skeptical about open source? Take a look at what Information Week reported about the European Union finding comparable productivity between fee-based and open source software. No surprise there.

Please add any questions or first-hand observations as comments on the blog. It’s great to hear what your experience with open source software has been.

All is well.

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In my previous blog entry, I mentioned the usefulness of hosted online storage.

The topic was how you could send a self-extracting compressed file to someone else. Many email applications and servers do not like EXE (executable) files - often for good reason. As one option, I suggested uploading the compressed file to hosted online storage and then having someone else download it from there.

There are numerous specialized companies offering FREE and paid online hosting services on the web. Search for these terms and you’ll come up with hundreds of options or more.

Or, if you’re a fan of “single account and single password” (for simplicity on the plus side and possible password security risks on the downside), Google and Yahoo have storage services. Google Docs & Spreadsheets focuses on storing relatively small HTML, text (TXT), rich text (RTF), Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice files. Many folks rely on either sending their files to themselves at their Gmail account (with its nearly unlimited storage capacity) or by using one of many publicly available hacks - such as Gmail Drive - that actually turn Gmail into an online storage system. Yahoo Briefcase, which has been around for many years, provides a robust file storage system for those with a Yahoo account.

My suggestion, particularly if you have not started using any hosted online storage service, is to opt for a specialized provider such as MediaMax. I’ve used services provided by this company (formerly branded as Streamload) for over a year - mostly during my Army Reserve deployment to Iraq - and have been very impressed by their innovation and service.

For starters, you can setup a FREE account to see whether you like what they offer. For many “light” users, the FREE account offers enough capacity - 25 GB of online storage, 1 GB per month downloads, and sending files up to 25 MB in size. I previously had their lowest level pay account - “Premium” - for $4.95 a month, so that friends could download videos from Iraq. For now, I’m back to a free account… though I’m exploring some backup services that leverage MediaMax. (More on that in a future blog. I’m still evaluating the KeepVault automated backup application that utilizes MediaMax storage capacity.)

MediaMax provides all of the basic features that you would want in a storage service - secure uploads and downloads, optional password protection for individual files or directories, and easy ways to email a link to a specific file. (That last feature is great when you don’t want to fill someone’s email inbox with a gigantic file.) You can upload files via FTP. For users who want even more functionality, you can download the free MediaMax XL Beta Software. This gives you the capability to perform batch uploads and downloads, synchronize files between computers, and perform backups of selected files or folders.

2/12/07 Update: I wanted to highlight one additional feature. On the MediaMax home page is a link to “Upload files to MediaMax users.” If you give someone your MediaMax username (not your password!), they can upload large files directly into your account. Once the files are uploaded, they are password protected behind your existing username and password.

Take a look at MediaMax. Its FREE and paid versions can do more than enough heavy lifting for the typical entrepreneur or consultant.

All is well.

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You’re sitting at your PC and find that you need to open or create a compressed ZIP file. You can download the FREE trial of WinZip to solve your problem. After you use WinZip until the end of the FREE trial period, WinZip wants you to pay for the software - a very reasonable request. If you don’t WinZip will keep reminding you that your trial version has expired over and over and over again - when you continue to use the software.

I’m all in favor of paying for software that I use. When software has a price, however, my first step is to look for open source or freeware alternatives in order to make sure that I’m not paying for something that is already available at no charge - without pirating fee-based software, that is.

In the case of WinZip, here’s a doubly whammy. First, a single user license will cost you $29.95. (The leading competitor’s product, PKZIP, costs, $29.00 for a single user license.) Second, that does not include the capability to create self-extracting compressed files - so the recipient of your compressed file will need to find a way to open it. The self-extractor capability costs an additional (yes, additional) $49.95.

The alternative? An open source file compression software - 7-Zip. It’s FREE. It supports multiple compression formats including ZIP files It claims to compress certain types of files better than WinZip. Best of all, 7-Zip enables you to create self-extracting archive files (what 7-Zip calls an SFX file) - so that the recipient will not need a compression software to uncompress (extract) the files. The recipient clicks on the EXE file and the compressed files contained in it uncompress on their own.

The compressed SFX files are executable (EXE) files. So, very few mail programs or even company email servers will let someone receive and open an EXE file. Either the file will be stripped off the email or the email will be rejected. The only ways that you can use these self-extracting files is if you’re (1) putting it on a CD, DVD, or USB memory stick or (2) uploading it to a file sharing server from where the other person will download the file.

(WARNING - Do not open EXE files unless you trust the person who gave it to you and you’ve checked it with a virus scan software.)

My quick comments on using 7-Zip… without having to read the instructions. (1) If you need to create a file in the ZIP format, make sure to select “Zip” with the “Archive Format” menu. (2) If you need to create a self-extracting compressed file, you have to select “7z” with the “Archive Format” menu and then check the box that says “Create SFX Archive.” (When a file is self-extracting, the file format doesn’t matter since the recipient does not need a program to uncompress it.)

In my next blog entry, I’ll explore a reliable, easy to use, and FREE (or inexpensive if you need a lot of storage or download capacity) hosted file storage application. This will work well with your newly downloaded 7-Zip software.

All is well.

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Before starting on tagging today, I’d suggest that you take a quick read of an article from Inc.com - Not Only the Lonely Become Entrepreneurs. Depending on whether you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, the article can be really funny, right on the mark, or both.

Last month, I wrote three blog entires about tags - tagged search, power of tags, and tags + APIs (application programming interfaces). Technology can be a great equalizer for small businesses. Tags come into play in terms of finding, using, and presenting user tagged content - instead of relying on the black box of Google Page Rank and other old school measures of perceived popularity or usefulness.

I enjoy rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty. What better way to explore the state of tagged search than to configure and implement tagged search using TagBulb - one of the new, hungry players in the tagged search marketspace? On its website, TagBulb lets you search (as of today) the tags from 30 different content and merchant sites: Flickr, Amazon, Technorati, Yahoo, 43Things, del.icio.us, and more.

TagBulb is delivering three benefits:

(1) TagBulb is taking the open APIs from content and merchant sites - and integrating them into its search capabilities as fast as possible. Most of us don’t want to learn how to use APIs and also don’t want to deal with any technical quirks (bugs) related to implementing newly released APIs.

(2) TagBulb takes the results and displays them in a reasonable attractive and easy-to-navigate interface. After entering your tagged search term, you select the type of content you want to see (for example, video, audio, or blog) and the site from which you want to view content (for example, flickr).

(3) Like Google Custom Search (at Google Co-op) - which does not support tagged search right now, TagBulb lets you configure your own TagBulb Custom Search Engine (CSE) to create your own search engine. You pick what gets searched. You can then take some relatively untechie code to install the custom search engine.

For my on-going experiment, I created a TagBulb CSE about the annual, month-long Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain. Take a look at Las Fallas Valencia to see the results. (Bear in mind that I used a redirect from my URL to the TagBulb site. This is a slightly kludgy way to do it, as opposed to implementing the code on my site. For my experiment, this will work just fine.)

Las Fallas is coming up soon - in March - so there should be lots of new content. I already knew that there were many entertaining photos, videos, and blogs on the web tagged for Las Fallas. Configuring the CSE takes seconds, including you having the option of providing your Google AdSense ID - so that you can make money off the CSE when users click on the contextual ads.

I changed the search term from “Las Fallas” to “Fallas” because the results seemed to be slightly better. You need to expect that you’ll have to play with search terms in order to achieve optimal results. For my experiment, I left all of the tabs (categories) visible so that you can see what is available, even though some tabs (for example, jobs) are not relevant to my topic.

I have contacted TagBulb a few times to provide feedback and obtain insight regarding their development roadmap. TagBulb has been very responsive.

TagBulb Strengths

* TagBulb has grown the number of content and merchant sites it searches by 50 percent over the past month.

* Even someone who does not understand a lot about search engines can use TagBulb and obtain great results.

* If you setup a TagBulb CSE, you can capture 100 percent of the Google AdSense revenue.

* You can easily select which tag tabs (categories) to show or hide depending on your preferences and needs. You can also pick which tag to show as the default tag. (For Las Fallas Valencia, it was a toss-up between photos and videos.)

TagBulb Opportunities

* Photos and videos link to the content itself - such as showing only the photo - rather than the entire page (on flickr, for example) that show more information about the content. (TagBulb reports this is on their “to do” list.)

* It would be nice to have a way to toggle back and forth between traditional search results (maybe Google CSE?) and tagged search results for comparison and research purposes. Then again, you could always use Google if you wanted to use Google.

* While this is not TagBulb’s doing, the tags for Amazon books and products are terrible. As you can see, the results are barely relevant. Unfortunately for you and TagBulb, you would obtain the same results by searching Amazon tags on the Amazon.com website. That is something for Amazon to think about - with its customers who create the tags.

So far, the experiment of Las Fallas Search using TagBulb has been fun and interesting.

Have you used TagBulb or a comparable application? What are your thoughts? Please post your observations on my blog.

All is well.

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You may have heard of anonymous web browsing in relation to surfing the Internet in “less than free” countries such as China. In a nutshell, the typical method of doing anonymous browsing makes it look like another computer is actually doing the browsing. (That other computer - in this role - is often referred to as a proxy server.) Anonymous browsing can enable people to view websites without someone monitoring Internet traffic being able to track who is doing the browsing.

Anonymous browsing can stop the communication of data necessary for traffic analysis. Some services can also either block cookies and scripts - or they advise you how to do so on the computer you’re using. Traffic analysis, cookies, and scripts, while designed for a useful purpose, can tell websites information about your identity - including your general geographic location, IP address, and your Internet service provider. Depending on what information is contained in cookies on your computer, you may also be revealing information about your identity. This tracking can be used to determine what websites you have visited prior to the site you are currently surfing.

When you are typically surfing the web, it is questionable whether some or all of these technologies present any problems for you. In fact, in some cases they can enhance your web browsing experience.

Here are two easy ways to access FREE anonymous web browsing:

(1) thefreecountry.com lists several services that provide FREE anonymous web browsing.

(2) Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)operates Tor - a software download that routes your web browsing through volunteers’ Internet connections thereby enabling FREE anonymous web browsing.

Anonymous browsing can be a useful tool for you as an entrepreneur or consultant. It’s not just for dissidents, spies, and hackers.

I’m not advocating doing sneaky stuff without a purpose or breaking company policies (if anonymous browsing is prohibited by your employer, client, or whoever pays for the computer or Internet connection you’re using).

Here are the two of the reasonably legitimate reasons for an entrepreneur or consultant to use anonymous browsing:

(1) Competitive Research - If you’re surfing a website or series of websites in order to collect information about a competitor, you might not want the competitor to know that you’re showing so much interest in their websites. Browsing from your company location, without using anonymous browsing, can - depending on some technical considerations - indicate to the browsed website what company you represent, which webpages you looked at, and how much time you spent on each page. If you don’t want the other company to know or guess what interests you, consider using anonymous browsing.

(2) Blocked Webpages - You may find yourself either at a location that blocks access to certain webpages. The reasons for this happening can range from paranoid (or cautious) network administrators blocking access to certain websites to being on a business trip to a repressive country that blocks certain websites. Or, you may simply find that - for some unexplained technical reason - you’re having trouble accessing a website from one specific computer or location. In any of these cases (please don’t get yourself fired or arrested), browsing anonymously through a proxy server will usually enable you to access any webpage. Most website blocking techniques cannot block you when you’re using anonymous browsing.

For more in depth information about anonymous browsing, here are two great blog entries:

(1) Paul Ecroyd explains what is anonymous surfing.

(2) EFF looks at anonymous browsing in the context of writing a blog.

Give it a try and jot down the EFF and t