For some reason, the auto-update feature of many software programs fails from time to time. On my computer, the number one culprit is the Thunderbird email client. I don’t think it properly tries to get admin permissions when it should and therefore the update doesn’t work. I think this is particularly true if Firefox (another Mozilla product) is already running. Whatever the recovery mechanism does, doesn’t work any better.

It gets so boggled that when I try and manually install it, from inside the program via the Help menu, or by downloading and re-running the installed from Mozilla, it STILL doesn’t work.

Ninite Review – Online Software Install Service

Enter Ninite. I can go to www.ninite.com and click Thunderbird (and a bunch of other software, if I want) and get an installer. When I run the installer, it checks to see if I already have the software, and if so, it updates the installation. Whatever process Ninite uses, it doesn’t get hung up in the same way as the official Mozilla installer, most likely because it does not bother with whatever version check or recovery file the original erred installation generated. It just goes in and updates all the files, without any checking or asking.

Which, brings me to the other amazing thing about Ninite. The installers are all fully automated. There is no user interaction required. The defaults are all used for a new install, or the update leaves all of your previous settings intact. Obviously, if you want to do some customizing, this isn’t the route for you, but in 90 percent of the cases when I install software, I just click Next, Next, Next, Finish, anyway.

There is one exception. When I install software with toolbars, or that wants to make Bing my default search engine, or whatever, I click NO. Sometimes, developers get tricky and that isn’t enough. Foxit Reader, a PDF reader, pulled a stunt like that a while back where you had to make some very unintuitive clicks to avoid getting some junkware toolbar with your installation. Fortunately, Ninite is run by good guys, for good guys. All toolbars and other extra software, no matter how “valuable” are automatically declined with a Ninite installation.

Ninite Tips and Tricks

At this point, Ninite is already a golden member of the Go-To online service club, but wait– there’s more

Ninite does more than just install one software program. Using the super simple check box interface, you can select one, two or even dozens of software packages to install. The file Ninite delivers will install all of the selected software with a single execution and not a single second of user intervention. This comes in very handy to install lots of software on a new computer or to re-install a ton of programs on a restored machine.

It gets even better. Remember how I said that if you already have the software installed then Ninite will just update it for you? Well that works for multiple software installations as well. So if Thunderbird is updating, but Spotify is new, Ninite knows enough to update Thunderbird and do a new installation of Spotify, again with no user interaction.

Now, here is the best software upgrade method you will ever use. Create a Ninite installer of all your usual software programs. Save that file to your desktop, or other handy spot on your computer. Now, just run that installer every so often to keep ALL of your software up to date, with no hassle and no junk toolbars other other garbage. Any software already running the current version is just skipped. You don’t have to create a new Ninite installer file. The installer automatically connects, downloads and installs the most recent version of software available.

For example, if you update Java via the package from Oracle, you’ll get a vampire process installed on your computer that runs at startup and keeps running 24 hours per day, seven days per week. It’s sole function is to occasionally check for Java updates. Turning it off takes a lot more than you might think thanks to a bug that prevents you from turning off the Java updater unless you manually launch it with admin privileges. The problem is, once you kill it, it will come back with EVERY SINGLE UPDATE. But, if you update via Ninite, they’ll keep that little junkware app from re-installing on your computer.

Obviously, Ninite only works with free or open-source software, but that covers a lot of ground on my machine, ranging from web browsers to email clients, to image viewers to developer tools. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Windows Live suite isn’t available which means you’ll have to watch out for seaport.exe getting installed and then kill Seaport on your own.

Give Ninite a try, you won’t be sorry.

Easy Software Installation Online is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

When Google Chrome first came out, the first thing people noticed was how fast it started. The chorus of users claiming that Firefox had gotten too big, too bloated and too slow grew louder. Firefox developers worked hard to streamline the code and make Firefox faster and more efficient, but for some users, the improvements were not enough. Much like me, they began to use Chrome as their quick browser and Firefox as their power browser. Of course, the constantly running googleudatetaskuser process annoyed me enough to keep it from leaping to the front of the good resource usage pack.

It turns out that Firefox’s slower loading may not be its own fault. Users who load their browser down with numerous new addons and plugins are adding not just functionality but more code to run at startup as well. The result is a slow loading web browser that cannot be fixed by making Firefox faster.

No longer willing to take the blame for slow starting web browsers, Mozilla’s Firefox development team began calling add-on developers out by publishing a listing of the most popular Firefox addons showing how much they slow down the boot process of Firefox.

One popular developer plugin, called Firebug, slows the startup time of Firefox by 74 percent. Put another way, the load time of Firefox is nearly twice as long if you have Firebug running. This is sobering news, both for Firebug developers, and Firebug users.

As a website developer and freelance technology writer, I both publish and write for numerous websites. I have the Firebug extension installed on my Firefox browser because I occasionally need some of its features. For example, Firebug can show me which links on a webpage are nofollow links. It is also necessary to run Google’s Page Speed plugin which analyzes how quickly a webpage loads and provides suggestions to make it load faster.

I do not need to use Firebug all of the time, however. In fact, I only use it a few times each week. But, with Firebug installed, my Firefox browser starts slower, much slower. By disabling Firebug and only re-enabling it when I actually need its functionality, my browser starts much more quickly. (I have long disabled unused add-ons to make Firefox snappier, but I never suspected Firebug of being a big speed killer.)

With this new spotlight on add-on speed, developers may refocus some attention on making their plugins more efficient. As a result, Firefox will start faster and load more quickly. In turn, some users may find the startup time of Firefox so quick without numerous bloated add-ons installed that they don’t need a “quick browser” anymore and they can just use Firefox all of the time.

It’s a win-win situation for Mozilla and users. For developers, it’s time to re-evaluate how well their code is written.

Of course, this is only half the problem. Since Firefox is still the only major web browser that requires a full restart to enable or disable an add-on, users are forced to decide what functionality they want to enable ahead of time or wait for a Firefox restart when they change the state of a plugin. No matter how fast Firefox starts up starting (or restarting) it three or four times to get the right functions working makes is slower and less usable than its competition which already allow on-the-fly enabling and disabling of add-ons.

Firefox Calls Out Slow Loading Add-ons is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

A blog post announced that Google Chrome beta is getting a built-in PDF reader. That means that I will no longer have to have a temporary directory to download PDF files into manually just so that I can click on the downloaded file to open it up in my PDF viewer. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have been able to handle this for years via useful, easy to use, extensions and plug-ins.

The developers of Chrome no doubt claim that their browser lacked such basic functionality because of security reasons. I never like this answer. As the user, I should get to make the decisions about how I do or do not want such things implemented. It’s the same reason that I hate how Microsoft IE has no option to automatically re-open the last browsing session for "privacy reasons." But, it is what it is.

Now, Chrome has a PDF viewer installed by default. When I click PDF links, they should just open and display within Chrome instead of having to open them later in Foxit Reader. According to the blog, the PDF files will be sandboxed. That means that today’s run of the mill PDF exploits won’t work when the file is viewed in Chrome. Guess the hackers will have to come up with something new. In the meantime, it would be nice if Adobe could pull their heads out long enough to make their reader more secure. Oh, and lighter and less bloated would be nice too.

With a PDF reader built into Chrome, the last major feature missing that is keeping Chrome from becoming anything more than my "lightweight" browser is a Print Preview function. Nothing prints with less consistency or more waste than webpages, which makes print preview a critical function for anyone who prints anything off of the Internet more than once in a blue moon. As a freelance technology writer, I need to be able to not only find data and information, but to digest it, compare it to other data, and then keep that data should anyone ever raise any questions about it. Something like Zotero, or OneNote, or a bunch of screenshots helps, but nothing makes an editor feel warm and fuzzy like good old paper.

The ongoing irony about Chrome is that as a browser by the techies and for the techies, it has managed to produce some amazing features, functions, and speed, but it has some glaring holes that are very big deals for the average computer user that Google insists should just be fixed by an extension, or when they really don’t like it, that you "don’t really need it anyway."

Here is to the new PDF viewer. May you be as stable and garbage-free as the built-in Flash support. In fact, may Google build in all Adobe products and extensions so that finally someone can do so in a way that isn’t overstuffed, unsecure, and instable.

Google Chrome Built-In PDF Viewer is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

At least that has been my thought regarding new software programs, operating system upgrades, and even most online services or web-based programs that have come across my radar in past decade or so. This has served me pretty well even though I long ago left the computer industry to spend some time (maybe too much time) in the financial industry where I was a Certified Financial Planner — which comes in handy when I put on my freelance financial writer hat.

Lately, however, some programs have begun to elude me and my intuitive grasp. A large part of that comes from how the computing paradigm is changing from Windows-based programs, with “versions” for other platforms, and the increasing complexity possible with online services or cloud-based programs. I have reluctantly had to hit the books on some programs.

That being said, I usually get the gist of most new software and computer programs pretty quickly. While I may no longer be able to anticipate their functionality on a consistent basis, I am seldom left scratching my head and wondering where to even start.

And this brings me to Rapid Share. For those of you who are not familiar with RapidShare, it is one of the first, and biggest, of the online file storage and sharing websites. Unlike online storage products primarily designed for you to store your own files to be retrieved primarily by you and your friends and family, RapidShare is setup to allow you to store files and then let anyone download them. No login or permission is needed (if you choose to store your files in that way). All that someone needs to get your files is to know what the address to them is, which is often provided by a link on a website or in a forum.

As you might expect, this method of distribution can, and is, used to enable illegal file sharing. However, RapidShare avoids any shutdown threat by quickly and efficiently removing any file reported as a copyright violation almost immediately. As such, some pirates and hackers have moved on to greener pastures.

Paying for RapidShare Premium Account or RapidShare Pro

If this sound like the kind of thing that just about anyone can do, you are not wrong. RapidShare has flourished by being one of the first movers in this space. Once someone learns to use RapidShare as their go-to file sharing service, they stick with it, because not only is RapidShare easy to copy, there isn’t really anything to be added or improved either. Thus, whenever someone finds a new file hosting service, there really isn’t any reason to switch, so they don’t.

The basic model of all file host sharing services is that you allow users to download files for free. Otherwise, it makes it not worth the uploader using the service because not everyone they want to share the file with is going to pay for the service. However, in order to make money, the file hosting service restricts how many files you can download or how much traffic you can use before you have to wait for some time period. Furthermore, you have to use the “slow” download instead of downloading as fast as your computer can suck down data.

For most casual users this is acceptable because they only download one or two files anyway, and the difference between getting the file in three minutes and downloading the file in eight minutes is moot. Obviously, for users downloading a lot more files, or bigger files, this won’t do. To get around the restrictions, they pay for a “premium account” or a “pro account.”

I’ve been paying for a RapidShare Premium account for a long time, mostly out of habit. The JDownloader utility largely makes paying for premium accounts a waste, but there are just enough times when I need the extra speed and ability offered by a Premium Rapidshare account that I keep renewing.

One cool thing is that you get points when people download your files and every so often, I earn enough RapidShare points to get a free RapidShare premium account for a month or two.

Lately, however, the service has changed how it looks and how it works. They made some changes a while back that were very unpopular with most users of the service. The company backtracked and fixed whatever those issues were before I even became aware of them. I guess I wasn’t a power enough user to notice. Recently, instead of my RapidShare files just downloading automatically once I was logged in and a cookie was set on my computer, I started having to pick “Fast Download” every time I downloaded a file even though I was logged in. Apparently, this was a new setting that was part of some other upgrade or service update.

I don’t even recognize the RapidShare website anymore. I did find my settings and change it to stop displaying the RapidShare screen every time I tried to download a file. This seems pretty suspect. After all, what possible reason could ANY paid user have for selecting whether to use fast or slow downloads? Wouldn’t you always want to choose fast?

While changing the download setting, I noticed two others. These settings really rub me the wrong way. They are set to automatically renew your RapidShare Pro account and to buy more traffic when you run out. I HATE THAT!

I think it is fine to offer, but it should ALWAYS be an OPT-IN thing, not an opt out. Crap like that is why I use temporary disposable credit card numbers that are offered on some of the best credit cards like my Citibank rewards Elite Mastercard that I have. I stopped bothering to generate a temp number for RapidShare because it was always on the up and up. That will be changing.

Even more infuriating, in order to change those settings to “do not charge me whenever you feel like it, I’ll decide if the service you provide is worth sending you more money or not, thank you”, I had to first “Unlock” my account. The Lock feature of RapidShare is actually a good security move. It keeps people from messing with your account even if they manage to get your username and password as is prone to happen by phishing scams. But, I find it VERY hard to believe that anyone who compromises my account will turn off my auto-renewal feature. What would the motive be? The might want to turn it ON so that they can keep using my account, but I doubt they would try and turn it off.

Finally, I guess I need to go read the manual or RapidShare FAQ, or something, because I really do not understand what is going on any more. I paid for a Pro account, or so I thought. Now, it looks like I am actually paying for Rapids which are points that I can use for a Pro account. Seems like an extra step, but if it is a transparent one, then who cares. On the other hand, maybe things don’t work the way they used to and I won’t like the new way.

Also, I can’t help but wonder what the auto-buy more traffic option was about? I’m pretty sure my old RapidShare Premium account had no traffic limits, which was kind of the point of the premium account. Now, it looks like that might not be the case and I need to start budgeting my traffic.

Actually, if that is the case, it looks like I’ll need to buy a Hotfile or Fileshare premium account instead, because I’m pretty sure that they haven’t changed the rules on their paying customers.

Grandfathering For Existing Customers

A very important consideration for companies to look into is the viability of grandfathering your existing users under the old rules of your service. Some times, this business strategy is the only way to keep a loyal customer base from abandoning your product in droves.

As I pointed out above, there are many competitors to RapidShare that are just as fast, just as stable, and just as cheap. There is little to keep a user from jumping ship at anytime. However, an established enterprise like RapidShare has a certain number of customers on auto-pilot. Like me — until today — these customers are likely to keep renewing and keep paying without comparison shopping with your competition. However, that only stays true if you don’t change too much on them. Draw too much attention to yourself with updates, features, and limits that weren’t there before and your loyal customers will suddenly wonder if they are not so much loyal, as dupes who were asleep at the switch.

When that happens, you better have the best service out there, because you better believe that they will go looking to find out, and what they will be looking for is not the newest, the latest, and the greatest, but rather what they had before.

Better make sure no one else is offering that before you pull the plug.

RapidShare Changes Confusing Users is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Webmonkey reports that Google Chrome has released a new beta version of the Chrome browser that runs ALONGSIDE of the regular full-release version of the Google Chrome browser. The idea is that instead of having to commit to either the beta channel or the dev channel of Chrome as your one and only Chrome browser installed on your system, you could choose to have both a bleeding edge installation of Chrome with all of the latest features and functionality, while at the same time having a completely stable version of the browser installed as well.

This is such a great idea, it is a wonder that all beta software is not offered in this manner.

It wasn’t that long ago that beta software was something that was carefully controlled and offered only to specific partners who installed it in a testing environment. In this case, the only one model of software installation made perfect sense. Ever since Microsoft used mass beta and pre-release distribution and testing to go from releasing the embarrassing and widely hated Windows Vista to the almost complaint free Windows 7, software developers have been increasingly realizing the power of wide beta testing to virtually eliminate bugs and other issues before release. In this model the side-by-side beta version of software makes much more sense.

The developers of the Chrome Browser will no doubt see much wider adoption of its developer-level browser with the new Canary version that allows users to run both the "real" version of the browser and the new leading edge developer beta version at the same time. That broader usage will in turn allow bugs to be discovered and fixed more quickly and that will in turn allow Google to release updates to its Chrome browser faster than its rivals.

Like I said, some business strategy ideas are just so good, you wonder why they haven’t been used before.

Good Software Development Ideas Google Chrome is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Today, however, two of IE 8′s many shortcomings popped up in my face again and I figured that I would write this post in hopes that a growing chorus of user voices might just get Microsoft to pay attention to what is really wrong with Internet Explorer instead of what they think is wrong with Internet Explorer.

First and foremost is the Apple Computer-like arrogance that keeps IE from offering a way to choose your own setting for how IE 8 handles browser sessions. In every modern web browser out there, except for IE 8, you can choose to restore your last browsing session by default. That is, you can tell the browser to open all of the same tabs and webpages that were open during your last browsing session automatically the next time you start your browser.

Internet Explorer offers the ability to restore your last browsing session, but requires that you do it manually. The stated reason for this enormous deficiency in browser functionality is  privacy. Microsoft thinks that the possibility that someone might inadvertently see the website you were looking at last time is more important than you (the user) wanting to be able to pick right back up where you left off. Or, in the case of yours truly, not only pick right back up where I was online last time, but also to BE REMINDED of where I was last time without having to jot down notes or send myself a reminder or whatever.

While privacy is important and a worthy goal, allowing the user to use the software in the way that works best for them is WAY more important. It makes perfect sense that for privacy reasons Microsoft does not set Internet Explorer 8 to reopen the last browsing session by default. It makes NO SENSE whatsoever that Microsoft will not provide that option as one of the settings that can be customized in IE 8. I guess this feature wasn’t widespread enough during the development of IE 8 for Microsoft to bother copying it into their “revolutionary” new browser.

Spell Check Missing From IE 8

There is also no spell check in IE8 by default. In a world where more and more is done online on the Internet, being able to spell check your entries into fields and forms is paramount. Of course, at the time, although everyone else had a spellchecker, and Microsoft has access to arguably one of the most complete spellcheck programs anywhere (the one in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office), they didn’t bother to include it. You have to download an addon called ieSpell in order to get spell check in IE 8. I guess that they wanted to make sure that at least someone downloaded an IE addon since as we discussed above, anyone willing to go download add-ons would have long ago downloaded a better browser instead.

Password Saving Wrong Time

Finally, IE 8 has a very annoying flaw in the way it saves and remembers passwords for websites. Apparently when Microsoft sent down the command to copy the password save and remember function from better browsers like Firefox, they didn’t actually pay enough attention to how it was done to copy it right.

When you enter a username and password in Chrome, Opera, or Firefox, the next page continues to load behind the dialog box that asks you whether or not you want to save the password. This is critical because all webpages hide the password you enter behind astericks which means that you can never be sure that you got the password right until the login page loads and sends you on your way with a successful login. On good web browsers, you enter your username and password, and then, if there is any doubt in your mind about whether or not your login will be successful, you just wait and see. If the login works, THEN you click Save or Yes to Save your password. If not, you click No and enter the password again and the browser correctly offers you a chance to save THAT password.

The jack#ss that designed Internet Explorer 8′s password save and remember functionality makes you answer the question BEFORE the next page will load. That means that you have to say Yes in order to see if the login was successful or not. If it was not sucessful, then you have already saved the WRONG password thanks to this bassackwards feature.

The worst part is that when you re-enter your login information and actually get it right, IE may not even offer to change the wrong information it already saved, especially if you fat-fingered the username. Now that website has TWO username and password combinations saved and one of them will be wrong forever unless you go manually dig into the guts of the IE settings menus to find and delete that wrong information.

Microsoft, while you are building functions and support and speed into IE 9, if you could please fix these things that you got wrong in IE 8, we would really appreciate it. Of course, it isn’t really that big of deal. Those of us that know better only use IE for two reasons: to get stuff off your own website, and to make sure that our websites look right for the chuckleheads who use your browser.

Internet Explorer Flaws to Fix for IE 9 is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Custom Windows 7 Sounds

When installing a new theme, you probably look at the pretty background images, the colors, and maybe how it does or does not support Aero. But, don’t forget that different themes can also come with different sounds.

After weeks of being annoyed by a banjo sound as my windows default beep, I finally went into the Personalize control panel for Windows 7 to change it. I was surprised to find so many sound themes inside. I thought everyone just basically left the default Windows sounds alone with the exception of one or two tweaks here and there.

To save you some time, let me tell you that the best way to search through the Windows sound themes is by selecting the Default Beep sound and then clicking on the little speaker to play a sample of what it will sound like.

Take a little break and read Citibank rewards catalog information.

The Default Beep is what you will hear more than anything else while using your computer. It is the beep that you hear when you get an non-critical error message (like when you click the wrong thing), or the beep you hear when you get a basic status message like print job completed, or software updated or whatever. In other words, you had better like the sound of the default beep.

Go through the available Windows 7 sound themes and find the ones that have a default beep that you like, or that you can at least live with. THEN, you can check out the other sounds and pick your favorite customized Windows 7 sound theme. Otherwise, you are just wasting time because you’ll be back trying to fix that annoying banjo sound beep in no time at all.

Enjoy your customized Windows 7 installation. You deserve it.

Happy day.

Customize Windows 7 Sound Themes Personalize It is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

When you spend a lot of time in the world of technology it is easy to get jaded. New features that are promoted (self-promoted, and then echoed by lazy writers) are almost never as useful as they are supposed to be, and half the time, they are not even new. I almost ruined my eyes looking at computer monitors full of accolades for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7′s “new” tabbed browsing feature, especially since I had been a power-user of tabs in web browsing since they came out in Firefox years before.

When new features are both truly useful and actually new, like the Ribbon Interface in Office 2010 (updated from a partial integration in Microsoft Office 2007), they are often met with initial resistance.

As a freelance technology writer I not only spend a lot of time in the tech world, I am actually forced to look at and use new software features regardless of how useful I could possibly find them because a client needs a review of new software utilities or a customized newsletter could benefit from a comparison of program features.

Check out a review of Citibank Thank You network rewards program.

The other thing that happens to us technology types is that we stop reading about what a program does. We most certainly do not watch videos that show us how to use new features. (How many seconds of your life does it waste to watch someone show you how to click File then New on a training video?) Fortunately, most of the time it works out just fine because when you are used to how software works, you know where to look for functions you need. However, from time to time, I miss out on a cool new feature or a great new function that would increase my productivity.

Firefox 3.6 Coolest New Feature

When it comes to software development, there are two kinds of functionality. One type of functionality affects the usefulness of the product. These functions make the software, better, faster, easier to use, and so on. The other type of functionality makes the computer software more fun to use, or just makes it look nicer. These days, it seems like there is a lot of action in the latter category.

Most of the “improvements” in the user interface design realm are actually just ways to make a software product look nicer, or most commonly, to make it so that you can superficially customize the application. Think of it as the equivalent of being able to add bumper stickers to your software.

For the most part, I don’t have much use for these beautification features. A computer is, what a computer is, and while using my own wallpaper is fun, it doesn’t really matter what the wallpaper is when I’m switching between eight full-screen windows in a desperate race to beat an important deadline.

As you can imagine, I haven’t played around much with Firefox’s personas feature.

This morning, however, I was bored (actually, I was procrastinating and rendering my ADD planner worthless) and I ended up on the Firefox Personas page after re-installing the Firefox NoScript Plugin.

While I don’t have much need for a new persona for my web browser, I was clicking around to see what was on the Mozilla website when I noticed something happen to my default Firefox browser.

When you hover over the sample picture graphic of a Firefox persona, it previews what that persona would look like if you installed it on your Firefox 3.6 installation. Tons of applications do previews like this, but the fun part is that Firefox previews the persona on your real installation. That is, the browser you are currently using to browse the available personas actually changes when you hover your mouse over the preview.

Now this is fun.

Normally, would have to download and install the browser extension or browser skin in order to “play around” with what it would look like. Then, when I am finished wasting time, I would switch back, and if I remembered, uninstall all the different personas I downloaded to check out. Hopefully they all uninstalled cleanly and there were no residual effects, although that is never a guarantee.

But, with the Firefox persona preview functionality I can see what my browser would look like with a hundred different personas, all without downloading or installing anything. So, I can see what my Firefox would look like if I installed the Kelly Brook persona (First, calculate the odds of the wife using my computer and Firefox…). Or, for a more whimsical (and socially acceptable at a client site) persona I can check out the Snoopy persona.

Here is my usual Firefox (the default) persona:

Here is the Kelly Brook persona:

In the end, personas are a play thing, like putting up a Go Buffs sign on my home office wall, but sometimes, playing is good. After all, all work and no play make Jack go crazy and try to chop up his family at the Overlook Hotel.

Firefox Personas Preview Feature is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The vendor that the library chose to deliver its new library website, which includes searching the card catalog, managing your library account, reserving items, and renewing check out materials, is called Aquabrowser.

The biggest problem with selecting a good, quality, vendor to work with is figuring out before you buy their software offerings and sign a multi-year service contract whether or not their system is a good one. Typically, vendors provide what the industry calls, "dog and pony shows," in which the vendor demos their software. These demonstrations are obviously crafted to show off the strength of the vendor’s offering and to downplay any short comings. Unfortunately, a great many software services purchases are made on the basis of these carefully scripted and artificial demos and big design flaws only become known after installation.

In the case of Aquabrowser and the Denver Public Library the flaws stem from what must be a one-size-fits-all library management system that the company markets as widely as possible to maximize sales and support revenues. In order to limit the resources necessary to install and maintain its library computer system, they resort to any number of cheap programming tricks that degrade the usability of the system in order to maximize its standardization.

The main issue with the new Denver Library website system is that anything beyond superficial interaction with the website requires a pop-up window to open. This requires accessing a new domain name (aquabrowser). Advanced users have blocking software that prevent new websites from randomly opening for no reason, and in this case, aquabrowser will be rightly blocked. This is, of course, a cheap web development hack that keeps the vendor from actually having to support the library’s own website infrastructure. Instead, users are redirected off to the generic systems run by the vendor.

In order to prevent supporting multiple browsers or window sized, the vendor makes the pop-up window static preventing the user from re-sizing the window. This is amateur design at best. With a fixed window, users with bigger monitors cannot take advantage of their larger size by viewing more rows at a time. The number of rows supported for something like viewing your checked out materials is only a dozen or so, far less than the number of items library patrons have checked out on average. Furthermore, the list cannot be sorted by the user’s choosing. Only a due date sort is possible leaving users to scroll individually through a small, unsortable, list to find a specific item.

Making windows that cannot be resized is the hallmark of design decisions made with the software in mind above the user’s needs. By making the windows unresizable, the vendor need not do any coding to dynamically resize columns nor to add additional rows (or vice versa) to larger or smaller windows. The fact that the library card account holder might need something different is of no importance.

The icing on the cake in this instance is that the vendor cynically places their own company information ahead of the library’s information. The windows opened whenever the user hits the vendor’s systems have titles that say, "AquaBrowser Library – Discover Denver Library". That way, the vendor can point to its "successful" installation at the Denver Public Library with easy, proof that it is their system "behind the scenes." As an added bonus, title tags are the key to search engine optimization, so the company has ensured that it will be present in as many web searches as possible.

Time will tell if the Denver Library bought into a bill of goods based on a dog and pony show that leaves the beloved Denver attraction with an uncustomizable user experience that people will just have to "get used to" or if this was only the default installation and that the library will be able to once again deliver a high-quality experience to library patrons.

Factors For Choosing Vendors

Whenever viewing a vendor presentation, look for things that never change, or that are not indicative of a typical experience. Software that looks great with 5 records displayed at a time may be worthless with 20 records shown. Ask to see more.

Also, ask to see less. What happens if there are only 50 records as opposed to the 5,000 in the demo? Is the system too bloated and cumbersome then?

Contact the vendor’s references BEFORE the presentation. In addition to asking what they think, ask what the main complaints were when the system was first installed and how they were dealt with. Then, ask about those same things in the demo. If the vendor starts hemming and hawing, you have a system in front of you that may not be all that it is cracked up to be.

If, on the other hand, the vendor has ready, acceptable answers, then you have a fully workable system.

There is more to vendor selection than just money. Choosing the low cost vendor may prove to be a high cost decision if too many workarounds are required or too many customers disenfranchised.

Tips For Choosing A Quality Vendor is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Unfortunately, that does nothing to secure all of those applications on laptops that log-in automatically by remembering usernames and passwords. It is also all too common to be in the middle of something, get in the flow, and end up entering a username and password before even thinking about whether or not there was a HTTPS in the URL.

The only reasonable solution is to setup an encrypted connection that captures all incoming and outgoing network traffic from the laptop so that there can be no mistakes or slips in security. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of options available in this arena. This is especially true for WiFi hotspot security protection that can be setup on the fly without pre-configuring a server somewhere to be waiting for your call.

Hotspot Shield by Anchor Free offers a free VPN connection that provides the fully encrypted security solution needed to safely use WiFi hotspots. However, it is “ad supported” which means that not only will part of your precious laptop screen real estate be eaten up by ads, thereby making your viewable monitor area even smaller, but it also means that your connection ends up being slower because those advertisements are given first priority by the VPN application.

WiFi Guardian Wireless HotSpot Security

I was excited to find WiFi Guardian, a free wireless hotspot VPN encryption program that connects to its own third-party servers to provide network security. Like HotSpot Shield, WiFi Guardian provides complete network interception making by web surfing and email secure as well as closing off the ability to hack in via installed software programs that automatically update.

The best part is that WiFi Guardian comes with a free 3-day trial. After three days, you have to pay $49.95 per year, but even a one-day free trial is good enough to secure your laptop for an impromptu coffee shop office setup. Most other VPN software comes with a specific data limit trial instead. That means that you have to make sure your computer isn’t doing anything behind the scenes that could be eating up your free trial period like downloading CD covers or synchronizing your bookmarks or files.

There is one bizarre thing that concerns me. The VPN application requires you to register a username and password to create an account. No problem there. However, the password field can only contain letters, no numbers or symbols.

What kind of security is that?

The most basic of all security is using strong passwords. Anyone setting up special software for security purposes would already be very familiar with using strong passwords. It begs the question about how seriously the WiFi Guardian developers take security when they not only allow, but require users to setup weak passwords on their accounts.

Needless to say, I will be uninstalling the software after my free trial period is up.

Has anyone else used WiFi Guardian? What have your experiences been like? Would you trust a security company that uses weak passwords?

Leave your answers in the comments, or shoot me an email.

Wi-Fi HotSpot Security Wireless Guardian Secure is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC