RHFtech Help Desk

Pictures, music, video, spreadsheets, documents and applications are files on your computer. Do you ever wonder what they are and how they differ from each other? What makes a document open in Microsoft Word and a song open in iTunes? Why do files designed to run on Windows PCs like Word documents or Excel spreadsheets also run on Macs and Linux computers? What makes a file an application that a computer can run, instead of displaying lines of computer code?

File names have two parts, the actual file name and the extension. The file name might be something like “Document1” or “IMG_0317”. This is shown to us whether we are working in Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder. The extension, the second part of the complete file name, might be “.doc” or “.jpg” for the two file names above. Both Windows and Macs hide file extensions by default so you may rarely see the “.doc” or “.jpg”. They show application icons instead. But they hide whether that Word file is a “.doc”, “.docx”, or “.dotx”.

I suggest your reconfigure your computer to show the extensions. This is done via XP’s “Folder Options…” or Windows 7/Vista “Folder and search options” in Windows Explorer. Click on the Folder Options “View” tab and uncheck the “Hide extensions for known file types” box. The Mac Finder is easily configured to show file extensions. Go to “Preferences”, click on the “Advanced” tab and check the box labeled “Show all file extensions”.

Now the computer will show both a filename and the extension. This makes it easier to tell what program a data file works with. You no longer need rely upon an icon to tell you. A Word data file usually has the extension “.doc” or “.docx”. An Excel file has an “.xls” or “.xlsx” extension. A photo usually has the extension “.jpg”. Audio files commonly have the extensions “.mp3”, “.m4a”, “.m4p“ or “.wma”.

File extensions are associated with applications. This is why when you click on a data file it opens in its correct program, whether on a Windows PC or a Mac. Typically a Mac computer associates images with iPhoto, audio files with iTunes, Word files with Word or Pages, and spreadsheets with Excel or Numbers. Windows machines may use Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, Word, and Excel as the associated programs, respectively. Adobe PDFs are displayed by default in the Mac Preview program. Most Windows machines use Adobe Reader to open PDFs.

You can open a file in a program other than its default application. Perhaps you want to open an audio file in the VLC media player, a free media player that works on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, but iTunes is your default music playing application (Windows or Mac). If you right-click on the audio file you can choose “Open with” from the Windows Explorer or the Finder context menus. You then select a program from the list or browse for the application you want to use.

Applications (also called programs) are different than data files. They run when clicked rather than launching another program. In the Microsoft world applications typically have the extension “.exe”. Older DOS apps may use “.com”. The Mac application extension is “.app”. So iTunes on Windows is “iTunes.exe” and on Macs “iTunes.app”.

How does the original program code get turned into an application? Programmers use special applications called compilers to transform their program code in to executable applications. Programs issue commands to the computer and its peripherals. A program might tell the printer to print what you are looking at or, if you are in email application, to send the message you wrote.

It is often useful to know when your computer’s hard drive(s) are accessed. Typical reasons are:

• when your computer is not responding and you wonder if it crashed
• you want to know if that file you are saving is actually being written to the drive

Hard drive activity is usually a sign that your computer is working even when the screen seems frozen. It is common to see a Microsoft Windows dialog title bar with the caption not responding displayed. Many people think this means the application has crashed. Most often it means that the computer doesn’t have resources free to update that window. Seeing that the hard drive is active can tell you if the computer is still working.

Macs are worse. They inform you of nothing. Maybe your application has crashed, maybe it hasn’t. On a Mac you need to open the Force Quit… dialog to find out. Having the hard drive icon on the menu bar may help to answer the question without opening Force Quit…

I use two free utilities—one for Windows and one for Macs—to place icons on my computers that show disk activity. Since MacBooks and iMacs don’t have any lights that display hard drive activity I find this a necessity when using Apple computers.

Windows
The Windows utility is FloadLED from Stone Oakvalley Studios.

Once you download and install it you can configure it from a simple configuration window.

You can drag the icons to place them where you want them on your screen(s).

Macs
The Mac utility I use is MenuMeters from Raging Menace.

Once you download, install and configure it you will have an icon in the menu bar (highlighted in the picture above).

You access the MenuMeters configuration control from the Mac’s System Preferences Other Panel.  

The MenuMeters dialog opens. Since MenuMeters displays other information besides disk drive activity you need to click on the tab (labeled 1 in the picture below) to configure the disk drive activity icon. Then make certain that the Display Disk Activity Menu Meter checkbox is checked (item 2) and that you choose the icon type you want from the drop down control (item 3). I like the Aqua Lights icon. You might like one of the other choices.

You brush and floss your teeth. You bathe regularly. You back up your documents, digital music, and photos, compulsively. These are all forms of hygiene. The cost to us of not doing these things is much higher than doing them. Losing all our email and contact information would be devastating for most for of us.

Two recent events highlighted how important this is. Two weeks ago I received phone calls from clients complaining they could not send or receive email. They all used Cablevision’s Optimum Online service. They thought it was them. Turned out it was Cablevision, who had an equipment failure that took down most, if not all, of their email services for an extended period. Cablevision was slow to announce this problem. My customers who used Optimum’s web-based email client had no access to their contact books. Even if they had another email account, such as @hotmail or @yahoo, they had no way of finding the email addresses they needed.

The second event was more devastating but limited in scope. A distraught woman called me on a Saturday evening and left a voice message that a technician who had worked on her equipment had erased her 955 contacts from Outlook, her iPhone and MobileMe. The technician had neglected to back up the Outlook PST file and export the contact data before trying to initiate synchronization among the three information stores. The result was that he overwrote the good contact information with empty fields, thereby destroying all of the information. We are still working on resurrecting the contact list from a year old Palm device data dump. This has been a painful experience for both of us. I am glad it happened to some other technician and not me.

If you use email and address book (AKA contacts) applications on your computer you can back up this data as part of your normal back up routine. These are applications like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Address Book, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail. You will need to know where the applications store their data files and include them in your back up. Typically these applications must be closed before the data files can be backed up. Otherwise, the application locks the file making it unavailable for copying.

I suggest you also consider finding out how to export your contact list information into a plain text or CSV file. This way the exported information is easily read and imported into other applications, both local to your computer and online.

Many of us use Gmail’s web-based email client for our email. We rely upon Google to be there for us. But what if they suffer an extended outage like Cablevision? Or what if they lock you out of your account? Do you have a back-up of your contacts? How about your email? Email often contains important information we need.

Backing up Gmail contacts is simple.

1. Go to Gmail and click on the Contacts link in the left side panel.
2. Click on the Export link on the upper right of the Contacts page.
3. Select the Everyone (All Contacts) radio button.
4. Select an export format from the three choices.
5. Click the Export button.

Gmail will name the file and ask you where you want to save it. You might modify the file name to be more descriptive than the default.

I use a free Windows utility to back up my Gmail email to my computers. It is called Gmail Backup available for download at http://www.gmail-backup.com/download.

So when was the last time you backed up contacts and email?

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% from the beginning of 2010, with one in 10 contract handsets sold in the UK now running Google’s mobile operating system.

Android’s share of the UK mobile contract market grew by 10.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2010 to the second quarter, from 3% to 13.2%, new figures from retail watcher GfK show.

From the beginning of 2010, most of the UK’s major mobile operators have started selling a number of hotly-anticipated mobile devices running Google’s Linux-based software. The HTC Desire and HTC Legend are among other devices lauded by critics.

Just last week, Samsung launched a direct marketing challenge to the Apple iPhone with its Android-powered Galaxy S device.

Many mobile operators were unable to keep up with demand for the HTC Desire when it launched in the UK in April this year. HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of many devices running Android, posted a 41% global sales increase for the first six months of 2010, with figures from April, May and June reflecting record sales, according to the company.

In the same period, mobile devices running “advanced” operating systems – defined as those able to run independent compatible applications – grew in the contract market from 55% to 66.7%. Figures available from June show mobiles with advanced operating systems now representing 73.5% of the contract market.

“The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name,” said GfK analyst Megan Baldock. “Operating systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Are you overwhelmed with the minutiae of modern life? Who isn’t? reQall is a service that helps us deal with the deluge of things we have to remember and attend to.

You use it by typing text into the application or speaking into your telephone. The speech-to-text facility is surprisingly accurate in my testing. It has been almost letter perfect in every one of my trials. It puts a similar feature in Google Voice to shame.

A moment ago I spoke the following to the reQall automated telephone attendant, “To-Do Sunday July 25th at 3:30 check reQall see if it transcribed this message.”

I got an email a few minutes later that read, “Reminder for 3:30 PM: To-Do: Sunday, July 25th at 3:30 PM, check reQall see if it transcribed this message.”

I am impressed.

reQall has both free and paid versions (AKA reQall Standard and reQall Pro). Pro costs $24.99 per year or $2.99 per month, and has several additional features compared to the free Standard version.  They provide a free 15 day trial of the Pro version so you can test the service before paying them.

You can use it to set up appointments, tasks, reminders, and shopping lists. The Pro version has location awareness so that if you tell it you want to buy fruit at Costco it will remind you when you are near Costco.

reQall works on Windows and Mac computers. It can be accessed via a web browser. They provide free apps for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone cell phones. You can also set up several landlines to work with the service as well.

reQall integrates with Outlook (both versions), Google Calendar (both versions) and Evernote (Pro version only). If you want reQall will send you text message (Pro version only) and email reminders (both versions). They even provide an RSS feed for your reQall items. You can share your reQall items with people in your BlackBerry or iPhone contact list.

Everything isn’t perfect though. The iPhone app is a bit clunky and the web descriptions and tutorials do not do justice to the elegance of the service. They also do a mediocre job of explaining what the service is or how to use it. I suspect the folks at reQall are engineers and not marketers.

I like what I see. My testing indicates that this service is useful and probably worth paying for the Pro version. I suggest you try it out. I think you will agree.

This article was written by Richard Lea, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 23rd July 2010 09.30 UTC

Publishers came face to face with their own vision of apocalypse yesterday, as Andrew Wylie announced that he and his authors would be cutting publishing houses out of the future and teaming up with Amazon to sell their own electronic editions.

Grinning down from the saddle beside him in the first wave of horsemen is a fearsome collection of riders, including Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and John Updike. “As the market for ebooks grows, it will be important for readers to have access in ebook format to the best contemporary literature the world has to offer,” the agent popularly known as “the Jackal” said, cackling diabolically (I imagine). “This publishing programme is designed to address that need, and to help ebook readers build a digital library of classic contemporary literature.”

Odyssey Editions may be launching with just 20 titles, but publishers are hitting back as if their eternal souls depended on it, and you can see why. Slice off the biggest names, the most valuable backlist items from any publisher’s list and the business model is up in flames.

This may be nothing but an Armageddon-style negotiating ploy, as Wylie delivers on a warning he gave publishers late last year when Random House claimed existing contracts already gave them control over authors’ electronic rights. But if Wylie and his lawyers can make this a success – and you only need to glance at his client list to imagine how – then others are sure to follow. Random House, which publishes Roth, Rushdie and Amis in the UK, has written to Amazon already “disputing their rights to legally sell these titles”. It declared Wylie a “direct competitor” and ruled out “entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved”.

It’s the latest battle in a multi-dimensional war over the future of literature as authors, agents and publishers face a horde of technology companies, retailers and libraries, not to mention the pirates, with constantly shifting alliances. As electronic reading devices – the Kindles, the Readers, the iPads, your phone – finally begin to take off, all the old certainties are in flux. Do authors need publishers to take on the might of the retailers, or are publishers part of the problem? Should writers keep their copyrights safely under lock and key, or will that rob them of the chance to take wing?

Once upon a time publishers were the only ones who could find authors, edit manuscripts, print books and distribute them, but new technology from desktop computers to the internet has thrown the doors wide open. As marketing departments have gained the ascendancy over editorial, agents have moved centre stage, filtering submissions and polishing manuscripts. With the messy business of ink and trees and Transit vans receding, Wylie’s latest move is simply the logical next step. None of this will worry those publishers who have made a business out of finding the voices others haven’t spotted, but in the week when Amazon claimed that ebook sales passed those of hardbacks the questions are unavoidable: who needs big publishers? Are the interests of writers and readers best served by big publishers, or the Jackal?

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

This article was written by Tim Lusher, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 20th July 2010 11.15 UTC

He’s used to people hanging on his every erudite word. Now Stephen Fry – actor, author, quizmaster of QI, enthusiastic tweeter and celebrated brainbox – has announced that he is to make a series for BBC2 about language.

“It’s a bit of a secret but the BBC have commissioned me to do a five-part series on language, called Planet Word,” he said. “Language is my real passion. So, I’m going to Beijing to interview the man who invented Pinyin, a phonetic version of the Chinese language. He’s 105 years old … if he dies on me I’m going to be so annoyed.”

Last month, after delivering the Bafta annual television lecture in London, Fry, 52, complained to the audience about the “infantilism” of British TV. He revealed details of his highbrow new project to 14-year-old Eden Parris in an interview for a Radio Times feature that enabled young readers to meet their TV heroes. In a conversation that ranged from Harry Potter to Wagner, darts and porridge oats, he said: “I haven’t seen a good documentary about language, where it comes from, how we speak it, the variations of it, whether languages are dying, whether we are better at speaking than we were. There are so many questions.”

Fry – voted most intelligent man on TV in 2006 by RT readers – said his favourite words were Anglo-Saxon “like bundle – what a lovely word”, although followers of his Twitter feed are used to a livelier, more playful turn of phrase – last week he used “wowser”, “brokenated” and “selfspank”. A devotee of Oscar Wilde, he has presented two series of Fry’s English Delight on Radio 4, discussing grammar and idiom.

He warned Parris that language could shape and limit people’s ambitions: “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” It will have been a powerful message for his young interviewer to conjugate with.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

The personal computer (PC) revolution began in the 1970s. It altered our lives. None of us ever wanted a mainframe or mini-computer in our houses but a PC was different. First it changed how we wrote, with rudimentary word processors, like WordStar, and how we calculated, with the early spreadsheet programs like VisiCalc. PCs changed how we communicated, as they became connected, first by telephone networks like CompuServe and later on the Internet. Telephone calls and written mail gave way to email, instant messaging, chat, and VoIP (e.g. Skype). The Internet would not have been possible without PCs. Today, we use still and video cameras differently than in pre-PC days. We rarely print photos, instead we share them digitally. We listen to music and watch Internet-streamed video that would have not been possible without PCs.

I could go on at length comparing the pre-PC and post-PC periods, but this article is about the next era, an evolution more than a revolution—the rise of the personal appliance (PA). The word appliance is defined as, “A device that is very useful for a particular job.” These are devices like smartphones—Android cellphones, BlackBerrys, iPhones—and tablet PAs, i.e., iPads. Today the tablet-form PA is only available from Apple since there are not yet any iPad competitors. This will change before year-end. Soon there will be lots of alternatives to the iPad. Many of these will be Android devices. HP is supposedly developing a webOS-based tablet since their recent acquisition of Palm, and Microsoft has stated that its equipment partners will have Windows 7 tablets available soon.

What differentiates the PC and the PA? PC devices are general purpose. They can do almost anything. Personal appliances cannot. PA devices are limited in function and feature set. They do a few things very well, some things okay, some things poorly, and some things not at all. For example, you can’t print from an iPad. PAs are primarily communications or consumption devices. They are not designed for producing. I can imagine trying to compose this article on an iPad or a smartphone. I would not want to.

Personal appliances appeal to the general population. PCs, including Macs, are frightfully complex devices. It is amazing to me that people put up with this complexity so that they can surf the Internet and read email. The iPad does away with that complexity. There is only one physical button for navigating the user interface (UI). Contrast that with a PC that has special navigation keys on the keyboard and pointing devices like a mouse or touchpad. Smartphones and the iPad UIs are designed for one finger navigation. Your other nine fingers are superfluous.

One disadvantage to PAs is that we will end up collecting a lot of them. PAs, unlike PCs, are rarely shared. We will end up with cellphones and PA tablets. You may also own a gaming device like the PSP (PlayStation Portable). Many of you have ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle. And you may still want a media player device like an iPod. All these devices come with power adapters and cables to connect them to our PCs. Our future is one of even greater technology clutter than today, more unidentifiable cables and power adapters, and discarded out-of-date PAs.

Curiously, we are not happy with our devices. We complain about their shortcomings. We forget how fantastic they are and all the marvelous things they do. Remember using a rotary phone? Today I can tell my cell phone to, “Phone home.” I don’t even have to remember the phone number. That is real convenience. Incidentally, convenience is a synonym for appliance.

I ran into an unresolvable problem with Google Chrome on a client’s XP machine this week. They use Chrome as their browser, on my recommendation. The computer was an underpowered eMachines T3120 model. Chrome is faster and less of a memory hog than other options so it made sense to me to use it on this slow box.

The error presented as a Google Chrome 104 error, "Chrome is unable to load the requested webpage." We couldn’t access any webpage. Oddly, other browsers—IE6, IE8, Firefox 3.6.6 and AOL 9.1—could access the Internet while Chrome would not.

Although new to me, this is not a new issue for Chrome. See http://bit.ly/bkU4xc . None of the various solutions that worked for others beset with this issue worked here. After wasting several hours trying to fix it, I gave up.

I reinstalled Windows XP and the applications. Fortunately, there weren’t many. I discovered on the reinstall that the Windows XP product key, which had been in use on the machine, failed the Windows Genuine Advantage tests and differed from the product key on the sticker affixed to the computer.

I wasted almost an hour of my time dealing with the product key problem. This reminded me that I NEVER have to waste time with this issue when reinstalling the operating system on a Mac. There are many reasons that consumers are moving away from Microsoft. This is one of them.

That solved the problem. I added Firefox to the reinstalled Windows XP applications list, in case the Chrome problem recurs. I also added 1GB of RAM, which made for a huge improvement in the computer’s usability.

The chart below has been prepared for my talk on disaster planning for small businesses, to the FINE Business Network July 15, 2010, 9am-11am at the Westport Country Playhouse, Westport CT. 

You can find out more general information about disaster planning at FEMA’s Continuity Of Operations Planning pages.

(Click on the chart to see it in a larger, more readable format.)