Practical technology for intelligent non-geeks from a consumer perspective, from computing, internet, mobile and blogging to media, comms and digital rights. Making the opaque transparent to over 4 million visitors since October 2004, still averaging over 1000 unique visitors daily.
After looking for ages for a good free Venn diagram creator, to generate Venn diagrams (set diagrams or Euler diagrams) automatically, I finally found an excellent online tool generously made available by the fab Chris Seidel, which will let you generate a Venn diagram for (as the links below say):
2 or 3 lists ie sets of items for whom you want the logical relationships diagrammed (common items, intersections etc), or
4 lists ie when you have 4 sets of items to diagram.
You just paste in your lists of items, one list per column, click "Generate List" and it takes seconds for a nice diagram and tables to be produced. (You'll see there are options to have the diagram in colour or not, etc.)
You can then save the resulting webpage and diagrams and edit the tables etc as you wish. Perfect for my needs! (no, not set theory - just creating good visualisations to explain things more clearly. Picture worth 1000 words & all that). Here's a screenshot of an example:
Just one warning and 3 wishlist suggestions for improvement.
The thing to watch is that the lists of items you paste into the columns are separated by spaces rather than new lines or carriage returns. In other words, if you paste in "A word Another word" in one column, it will treat that as a list of 4 items, not 2. A workaround is to get rid of spaces for the same multiword item, ie paste in "Aword Anotherword" instead (but ensure you make the same changes in each list, if the same multi-word item appears in more than one list that you paste in).
The 3 suggestions are:
if you insert a long list name, it gets cut off in the diagram, so make sure your list names are short, say under 10 characters each (just experiment by trying to generate another Venn diagram with a different list name or title, if you find a name is cut off). It would be good if longer names showed up in full.
The helpful table below the diagram is usually labelled something like a(1), b(1), c(0) etc. However, in the generated diagram itself, the labels are 1, 0, etc. It would be preferable if the diagram labels were a, b, c etc instead (or, even better, a(1), b(1), c(0) etc, so it's easier to match up the diagram with the table - otherwise, sometimes it's impossible to match them up except by comparing against the original lists
Finally, the Venn diagram produced would be even better if the list names (shown in red) were shown in the same colours as the different coloured lines that are used to draw boundaries round each list.
Other options?
I've not found anything better, myself. Other online options I've investigated make you work out or draw the common areas manually, or don't have any Venn diagram options at all. If anyone has suggestions do let me know.
While another Venn diagram generator, the Applet For Drawing 3 Set Area-Proportional Venn Diagrams, looks to be not bad, I couldn't get it to work - and you have to feed it exactly 3 lists, no more no less.
Other free open source Venn diagram creation tools I've found, but not yet tested, are: VennMaster
ConvertFiles.com, which I've just discovered, is a very useful online tool, especially to convert Adobe Acrobat PDFs to editable word processing documents eg Microsoft Word DOC format.
You just give the website the URL of a file (starting with http, https, ftp), or you can upload a local file, and it will automatically recognise the file type and offer you a choice of suitable formats into which it can be converted.
Tip: sometimes it won't recognise PDF files where the URL doesn't end in .pdf - so in that situation just download the file and upload it from your computer.
There's a decent range of formats available (see lists below).
Speed - you can download the converted file quite quickly, even for big files.
Maximum file size limits - it will accept files of up to a very generous 200 MB.
OCR - it will even do OCR (optical character recognition) of image files, ie convert scans of images etc to editable text - and, though they don't mention this (they should!), that includes PDF scans, I tried some.
It converted a massive PDF scan beautifully into an editable Word document, with very few errors.
What's more, it's all free, although in gratitude I've checked out some of their advertisers!
7Z to RAR, TAR, ZIP, TGZ, TAR.GZ RAR to TAR, ZIP, TGZ, TAR.GZ TAR to RAR, ZIP, TGZ, TAR.GZ TGZ to TAR, RAR, ZIP TAR.GZ to TAR, RAR, ZIP ZIP to TAR, RAR, TGZ, TAR.GZ
DOCUMENT
DOCX to DOC, ODT, RTF, SWX, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP DOC to ODT, RTF, SWX, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP ODT to DOC, RTF, SWX, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP RTF to ODT, DOC, SWX, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP SXW to ODT, RTF, DOC, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP TXT to ODT, RTF, SWX, DOC, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP ODS to XLS, CSV, RTF, PDF, HTML, ZIP XLS to ODS, CSV, PDF, HTML, ZIP XLSX to XLS, ODS, CSV, PDF, HTML, ZIP PDF to DOC, PNG, JPG XPS to PDF CHM to PDF, EPUB, FB2, MOBI, LIT, TXT PAGES to PDF
PRESENTATION
ODP to PPT, PDF, SWF PPT to ODP, PDF, SWF PPTX to PPT, ODP, SWF, PDF
E-BOOK
EPUB to FB2, MOBI, LIT, PDF, TXT FB2 to MOBI, LIT, EPUB, PDF, TXT MOBI to EPUB, FB2, LIT, PDF, TXT LIT to EPUB, FB2, MOBI, PDF, TXT PRC to EPUB, FB2, MOBI, PDF, TXT, LIT
DRAWING
ODG to PDF, JPG, PNG, SWF DXF to PDF, JPG, PNG, SWF DWG to PDF, JPG, PNG
IMAGES, PICS, PHOTOS
BMP to GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF, ZIP, PDF GIF to BMP, JPG, PNG, TIF, PDF JPG to GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF, PDF PNG to GIF, JPG, BMP, TIF, PDF TIF to GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, ZIP, PDF
OCR
BMP to DOC, TXT, RTF GIF to DOC, TXT, RTF JPG to DOC, TXT, RTF PNG to DOC, TXT, RTF TIF to DOC, TXT, RTF
AUDIO
AAC to WAV, MP3, OGG, M4A, FLAC, AU, WMA, AMR AMR to WAV, MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AU, M4A AU to WAV, MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AMR, M4A FLAC to WAV, MP3, OGG, M4A, AAC, AU, WMA, AMR M4A to WAV, MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AU, AMR MP3 to WAV, OGG, AAC, M4A, FLAC, AU, WMA, AMR OGG to WAV, MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, AU, WMA, AMR WAV to MP3, OGG, AAC, M4A, FLAC, AU, WMA, AMR WMA to WAV, MP3, OGG, M4A, AAC, FLAC, AU, AMR MKA to WAV, MP3, OGG, M4A, AAC, FLAC, AU, AMR, WMA
Before downloading and installing a new application, whether on your computer, Facebook, iPhone or Android or other smartphone, you can now check reviews of web and mobile apps for their privacy, security and openness.
Reviews on the What App site, by a team of about 15 lawyers, computer scientists, and privacy and security experts from Stanford University and other institutions, were recently thrown open to all visitors (who can request as well as post reviews). "Think Consumer Reports blended with Wikipedia and Yelp, but focused on the narrow issue of Internet security and privacy."
The site also reviews web browsers like Firefox and Safari, social networks including Twitter and Facebook and mobile platforms like Apple's iPhone, Windows Mobile and Google's Android.
According to the Stanford news item, "The reviews come in the form of written comments and badges that award applications up to five green bars for privacy, security and openness. Wikis accompany the reviews to summarize what the app does, and the site immediately serves up a list of links to news stories about an app's privacy and security issues.
The site also allows app developers to sign in and write notes about the privacy and security of their creations."
The BBC What's On Now project displays the name of the song that's currently playing (and the current and next DJ) on BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, 1Xtra or 6 Music.
Not only that but he's tried to pull in the artist bio, album art and lyrics for the current song too, where possible. As well as displaying a BBC webcam.
Note that the page doesn't refresh itself if you leave it open, you'll have to reload it manually to get the most current info.
The "Database list" link lets you see the songs previously played on the supported stations, by date and time, and you can also search the database by artist, title, DJ or date. Obviously helpful if you're not at a computer at the time you heard a song you liked - make sure you note down the radio station and the time so you can look it up later!
(I wonder if an iPhone app or Google app is on the cards?)
Issues
Display. Unfortunately in Internet Explorer 8 some pages are sometimes slow to load or don't load at all and display can be a bit weird, but hopefully that will be fixed (especially given that BBC Backstage are supporting this project!)
Copyright. Being the nervous sort, I'm also a bit concerned about the display of lyrics and album art. If it were me I'd dispense with those bits (and maybe even the bios), at least until I knew that the rights holders had given their blessing and, more importantly, licence to display them.
The album art is pulled in from Last.fm which I assume must have had permission from the copyright owners to both use it and (hopefully) make it available to developers via their free last.fm API. Similarly with the artist bios. But the lyrics are from lyricfly which seems not to have any kind of copyright licence.
It would be a big shame if such an innovative service had to be ended because of issues like this. I think record labels and music publishers ought to embrace BBC What's On, it's a great way to engage consumers and boost sales of the songs being played, but who knows…
When you want to know who's blogged about the webpage you're viewing, just use this bookmarklet to search via Google Blog Search for blog posts that link to the page you're on:
For non-techies: basically a bookmarklet is an item in your browser's Bookmarks toolbar, Favorites toolbar or Links bar (depending on your browser and version), which you can click to do useful stuff - in this case, to search on Google Blogsearch for all blogs that have linked to the web page you're currently viewing. See more on what's a bookmarklet or favelet and how do you use them?
Couldn't find a working bookmarklet for this so I rolled my own. Works on my Windows Vista PC in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. Note that this doesn't search for blogs or links about words highlighted on the webpage, they're just basic searches for links to the web page itself.
(And yes, hurray, Javascript bookmarklets now seem to be working within the body of a Blogger / Blogspot work post finally, thank you Team Blogger! And thanks to Kirk as always for alerting me to this.)
To see what people are tweeting about the website you're currently viewing, you can use a bookmarklet / favelet for your web browser, built using Kynetx Apps.
Then, when you're on a web site and want to check out tweets about the site, just click the Sweetter bookmarklet and wait a bit (be patient, it can take several seconds) for a popup that shows recent tweets about the site or blog you're on.
Here's what it popped up on clicking the link for my blog.
As you can see, it's scrollable for viewing older tweets (there's a limit to how many it can pick up though) and the X is of course to close it. You can't resize or move it, just use the scrollbar.
It does seem to show some repetition of some of the same few tweets though, I'm not sure why.
A useful and fun tool, and it's free too - so no reason not to go get it!
how to copy or import your mobile phone contact numbers into Google’s Gmail contacts, if you have a Gmail / Google Mail account, and
whether you have Gmail or not, how to easily backup or transfer your contacts between different phones, e.g. if you’re moving networks (as your old SIM card will die when your current phone number is transferred across, wiping out any contacts stored on the SIM).
I recently got a G1 Android phone, and finally decided to export contacts from old mobile phone phonebook to Gmail contacts so that I could access them on the G1, which syncs with Gmail contacts.
But the method outlined below works even if you don’t have a G1 and just want to have your cellphone contacts available on Gmail – as long as you have access to a mobile phone which Zyb supports.
What's Zyb? Zyb (acquiredby mobile network operator Vodafone in 2008) is a free online contact & calendaring backup system, which works by synchronising with your mobile phone – as long as they support your make and model of phone. Sadly, they don’t support the G1 yet, so I found a workaround.
Zyb also includes calendar syncing, even SMS in the case of certain models of phone, but I cover only contacts here.
Sync your old mobile (as long as it’s supported by Zyb) with Zyb online – they’ll send you an SMS text message when you add your phone; open the text and save the settings, then find the Sync application on your phone and choose the Zyb profile to sync it (I won’t go into these aspects further, Zyb’s support is pretty good, ask them for help if you need it).
If your new mobile phone is supported by Zyb it’s easy to get your old contacts into it - Zyb can synchronise with more than one phone, so just add the new phone to Zyb (even if it’s on a different number) and you can sync it with Zyb so that the contacts from your old phone which you previously synced with Zyb can be transferred to your new phone. You can of course also edit the contacts online etc more easily than on a phone.
While you’re in Zyb, this is not a syncing point but you might want to tick https on Zyb’s Settings page for better security, and Save:
If your new phone is not supported by Zyb, like my G1, or you want to copy your phone contact details across into your Gmail Contacts, then it’s a little bit more complicated – see below.
How to import or copy Zyb contacts into Gmail contacts
This involves a few steps. Be careful to do them all, exactly in the order I say below, or else you may end up with weird contact details in Gmail, or duplicates or empty contacts – don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Login to Zyb and check your contacts. Some editing is needed here – other methods may work which don’t require this (if you know one please let me know!), but this is what I found I had to do to get it all to work properly. (You could also take the opportunity to use Zyb to Merge Duplicates (link on the right of the Zyb People screen), if you haven't already.)
For a contact, if any phone number happens to be recorded in a “Voice” field or box, then it won’t transfer across at all, unfortunately:
You will have to Edit the contact and copy and paste the number from the Voice field into a Mobile field, and Save it (yes, even if it’s really a land line telephone number – sorry but that’s the way it is):
Do that for all your contacts on Zyb. Luckily I only had a few like that; those didn’t transfer across properly the first time but left blanks for the phone numbers, which is how I knew what to do instead.
Browse to select the vcard file you downloaded from Zyb. Under Format, make sure you pick “Gmail (CSV)” before you hit the “convert” button.
It will offer to save the converted file. Save it – vcard.csv – on your computer somewhere you can find.
Now login to Gmail, and click the Contacts link in the list on the left:
Then click the Import link on the right (outlined in red above), and choose the vcard.csv file you saved earlier (see below), then OK.
Now your phone contacts will be added to your Gmail contacts (and, if you have a G1, accessible via your G1 contacts once you sync them up).
This is of course a copy rather than sync of contacts information into Gmail.
Some thoughts on Zyb
Zyb also offers 1-way import of Gmail contacts into Zyb. If you want to do it the other way round it’s a bit more long winded, as I outlined above, because there’s no full export of contacts from Zyb into CSV format – just VCF (and also JSON and FOAF). Those familiar with other formats can of course play round with the feeds made available by Zyb on their feeds page.
My main wishlist issue with Zyb is that I’d like to be able to turn off the sync or set its direction – what if I want to have some numbers on the phone but not on Zyb, or vice versa? If I delete a contact from Zyb, it tries to delete it from my phone too. I want to be able to set the direction of sync. Indeed, I’d like to be able to keep a master contact list on Zyb and decide exactly which items are copied onto which phone. This seems to be a deliberate design feature, but personally I’d prefer it if it were otherwise. I guess I'd like to have a selective copying than syncing option.
I also feel a bit uncomfortable that if I delete some contacts from Zyb, they seem to stay there forever anyway, according to that link (which is a little out of date – actually, you click on the Phonebook dropdown on the People page in order to find your deleted contacts). I’d like to be able to permanently delete certain contacts, call it catharsis, rather than restore them! I know that if I entrust my contact details to them in the first place that shouldn’t bother me, but it does…
On the whole though Zyb provide a very useful service, as long as your phone is supported, and I'd been meaning to review them for a while.
Hope this post is of help to you if you're trying to transfer your mobile phone contacts from phone to phone.
To convert your movie or audio etc files, a free online media file converter may be the easiest way as it works whether you have a Mac or Linux or indeed Windows - including if you just want to extract the audio sound file from a video on YouTube or another online video service - though if you don't have broadband then obviously it may be a bit slow.
Here are two free online media file conversion services I've tried and suggested to other people who've tried them too, so I know they work.
With both of them, you can enter a YouTube or other video service link to convert the video direct into MP3 or other file formats over the internet; or alternatively you can upload a file from your own computer for conversion and download the converted video, audio or other file.
Media Convertersay they support audio formats like mp3, ogg, wav, wma (only decoding supported), and video file formats like 3g2, 3gp, avi, flv, m4v, mkv, mov, mp4, mpg, mpeg, psp (only encoding supported), rm, and wmv, though I've only tried the flv to MP3 conversion myself. (They also say they convert Office document files i.e. text / wordprocessing and presentation documents, spreadsheets etc: doc to odt or pdf, xls to ods or pdf, ppt to odp or pdf, odt to doc or pdf, ods to xls or pdf, odp to ppt or pdf).
It's free only for file sizes up to 100MB, and you pay for the premium service for bigger files.
Supports a wider range of audio files (I won't list them all, see their list of supported file formats, but they include ringtones and .amr and 3gp files as used on mobile phones) and office file conversions (including html, Open Office files, Star Writer etc) - and also compressed or archived file formats like zip, rar, lzh, tar.
Will convert image files i.e. pictures, photos of different formats including gif, jpeg, png, with the ability to resize and compress them, and produce a screenshot of a webpage in your chosen file format (yes you could use your Print Screen key; but it just saves time with converting the resulting file). It even converts pdf to Flash swf.
It will also create a free webpage (with ads, not surprisingly) with a streaming version of the converted file, which you can link to - though I've found it a bit variable as to how well that works. If you want to download the converted file, do that before you try the webpage option, or else it'll vanish and you'll have to convert it all over again.
Personally, I generally prefer the latter as it provides more options (see pic above) in terms of both file conversions (e.g. it will convert PDF source files whereas the former only converts certain formats to PDFs) and ways of presenting the converted files. But as mentioned the webpage streaming option seems not always to work. They're free, so try them both and see which suits you better.
Here's a tip / howto / review: the free open source PDF Creator is a Windows program which lets you create Adobe Portable Document Format PDF files from any file that you can print – Word documents, Powerpoint slides, JPEG images etc (although note that this program doesn't work so well e.g. with Webpages).
If you wish, you can also require a password to be entered in order to open the PDF file which you create. While no password is guaranteed to be 100% safe and secure, obviously if you're sending a sensitive or confidential document e.g. by email, or storing it on a portable USB drive that you're carrying around which might get lost or stolen, it's probably a good idea to password protect it for security reasons.
Want to password protect an existing PDF file? No problem, this useful tool will do that too.
I'd previously blogged about how you can use the free OpenOffice software to create PDF files from Word .doc or other word processing documents.
PDF Creator also does that, and in addition lets you password protect the PDF files you create, if you wish.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, to use it:
Open the document that you want to convert or export to PDF (which could be a Word document or even an existing PDF file), and choose Print.
In the dropdown list of printers, pick PDF Creator instead of your normal printer:
Click Properties just to check the settings are what you want, and change them if necessary:
Then hit OK.
Note that you may need to switch to the PDF Creator window as it may open just in the background, so look for it:
Change the Document Title if you wish, but don’t hit Save yet…
If you want to add password protection, you need to take some extra steps – click Options, outlined in red above, and you’ll get this window:
Now here’s the tricky non-obvious bit – you need to click on Formats, on the left, outlined in red in the pic above
Then make sure you’ve clicked on “PDF” on the left (outlined in red below), so that it says “Adobe PDF Format” at the top on the right; then click the Security tab (again outlined in red:
Now look at the Passwords section in the Security tab (again outlined in red above), and tick the boxes you want e.g. “Password required to open document”, or “Password required to change permissions and passwords”. Usually the first one alone is enough.
Then click Save to go back to the PDF Creator window shown in step 5 above.
At this point, you can now click Save (or Email as you wish – in which case at the end of the process it’ll open your default email program with a new email ready with your newly-created PDF file already attached to it). Then give it a filename and choose a location to save it to, and click Save again.
If you had ticked to add password protection previously in step 10, a box will now pop up asking you to enter the password you want - possibly more than one set of passwords (user and owner), if you'd ticked both password boxes in step 10. Enter the desired password here, which you’ll have to repeat in case of typing errors (though it doesn't have to be the same for both User and Owner, and it doesn't have to be different, it's really up to you). Then click OK. (Note that if you choose Cancel instead of OK, it will still create the PDF – just without any password protection.)
And that’s it. Anyone who tries to open the PDF file you created will have to enter the password first:
If you want to password protect all PDFs you create in this way as standard, you can do the following:
open PDF Creator itself (search for PDFCreator via your Start menu if necessary)
go to menu Printer, and choose Options
then do steps 8 to 11.
(If you later want to create a PDF document without password protection, just change that bit in the Options, see step 7 above).
How to convert a Microsoft WordDOC document to an Adobe Acrobatpdf file: use the free, open sourceOpenOffice software suite, which is available in many languages on popular computing platforms i.e. Windows (95 upwards e.g. Vista and Windows XP), Mac OS X and Linux (and even some obscurer operating systems).
Once you've downloaded and installed OpenOffice (in version 3 as I write), if you want to "print to" a PDF file (i.e. save your Word document in PDF format), then the conversion method is very straightforward:
Launch OpenOffice and choose Open Document or Open Text Document; or just launch OpenOffice Writer.
Open the Word document you want to change to PDF (menu File, Open).
In the File menu, choose Export as PDF.
That's it, it's that easy! Choose a filename and location for the PDF, and you can then open, email or upload the converted PDF (Portable Document Format) file as you wish.
Another good thing about OpenOffice is that it does the conversion pretty well. Some other free "conversion" tools can mess up the formatting a little. But obviously, it's still a good idea to open your PDF and check it before you send it out etc.
Note that the PDF export in OpenOffice only works for Microsoft Office XP or Office 2003 .DOC documents (or earlier versions of Word / Office), not the latest Microsoft Office 2007 .DOCX format.
As you can tell I think Open Office is good stuff - it's worth trying it out generally as a full free replacement for Microsoft Office; it can save documents to .DOC format as well as its native .ODT format, handle spreadsheets, presentations, etc, and I know a lot of people who use it as their main word processor or indeed full Office replacement suite. Of course you can export .ODT wordprocessing documents to PDF easily from Open Office too.
I was surprised to find out recently that quite a few people - even some very IT-literate ones - don't know about this free conversion method. So I hope this tip helps. (I've also previously blogged a suggestion on how to convert Word DOC, Excel .XLS or PDF files to HTML for free.)
I think this deeplinking is the best of the many enhancements which Google-owned video sharing site YouTube have been rolling out recently.
How to deep link to YouTube video
To deep link to the exact spot you want in a YouTube video, while watching the video just note down the desired time position, and then include the time position at the end of the standard YouTube URL using the format:
(Cleverly, it in fact seems to take you to the video at a second or two before your indicated time, so that you don't miss the start of the spot.)
How to deeplink to YouTube video in a video comment
This works in a comment to a YouTube video too, in fact it's easier - if when posting a comment on a YouTube video you mention a time location in your comment (in format m:s e.g. 0:21 for 0 minutes & 21 seconds in), then the "0:21" becomes a direct deep link to that time location in the video concerned.
So, the syntax for a clickable time position link in a video comment is just:
One gotcha to watch: do not include any punctuation or anything except a space right after the Y, or else it won't work; e.g. "0:21." won't be made into a deep link but "0:21" (without the quotes, of course) will.
Video annotations - the abilityto, as YouTube put it, "add background information on-screen, create branching ("choose your own adventure" style) stories or add links to any YouTube upload, channel, or search results page -- at any point in your video... adding speech bubbles, notes and highlight boxes anywhere you want". Including, now, even for embedded videos.
Hot spots - the ability to get a graph showing at which points in your video readers are leaving (if at all), and which spots in the video are the most popular with your viewers.
Click to buyfeature - some may bemoan this commercialisation (or e-commerce-ialisation!) but let's face it, YouTube aren't a charity, they need to make money at some point somehow.
I actually like the idea of embedding Amazon / iTunes links to songs etc in some YouTube videos, as often I hear a good song in a movie or video soundtrack but have no idea what it's called or how to get it.
I can imagine "product placement" increasing in YouTube videos, with "click to buy" links for products shown in videos too, but as long as the product placement isn't too overt and isn't subliminal conditioning, again I'm quite happy to have the opportunity to buy something I like from a video - I sometimes covet certain jackets I see actresses wear on TV, for instance!
This sort of thing looks set to be a growth area, in my view - for TV, video and film generally, i.e. all things "celluloid", not just Web-based video.
(Note on YouTube blog links: but there's something weird about their site - if you're in the UK, the US link won't work, and doesn't forward properly to the equivalent UK site page. So I've included both links where possible; hopefully if one doesn't work for you t'other will!)
Video / audio wishlist
It would be great if YouTube enabled the deeplinking feature when you embed a video in a blog post or webpage too. I tried it, and adding (e.g.) #t=0m21s to the end of the URL in the embed code just didn't work, the video started from the very beginning. Maybe in the future?
While I'm on it, while YouTube nowallow the upload of higher quality videos, I do which they'd let all users upload videos of more than 10 minutes long. They introduced that limit, theysaid, for copyright reasons (they seem to think most videos more than 10 minutes long are likely to be copyright infringing clips, I'm not sure I'd agree) - but as many of my videos are of (non-copyright breaching!) geek talks, I have to use Blip instead.
If Blip were to introduce the features YouTube have, particularly deeplinking, I'd use them even more!
Speech to text technologies for video and audio
Finally, my biggest wishlist item: automatic speech to text transcription. Google Research's speech team introducedanElections Video Search gadget a few months ago, using their speech recognition technologies to enable searching of politicians' spoken content and jumping straight to the relevant part of the speech.
Given Google's avowed corporate mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", I really hope that working on speech to text for audio as well as video is a priority for them.
I'd love to be able to feed Google the URL of a sound file or a video file (any file, not just one on YouTube, and not just politicians' speeches), and have it automatically transcribe the audio or video into lovely, readable, skimmable, searchable text. And I really don't mind if they want to include contextual ads on the resulting webpage too.
"It is slow. A webclip lasting a couple of minutes may contain just 200 spoken words. You can read 1,000 words of text in the same time... In the beginning of mass communications was the printed word. It will remain crucial until the end, too."
In my view, the audio and video media are both excellent for entertainment. But they are serial, sequential forms by their very nature. If your aim is to extract /analyse any useful information, it's too painfully slow to go through the audio or video of speeches etc, even with fast forward and rewind. Whereas a single page of text gives me lots of words, lots of information, at the same time. It's denser, but much quicker to scan, from an information retrieval viewpoint. And I'm too impatient to listen or watch through an "educational" podcast or video, most of the time - so give me text (with or without pictures) any day!
If you sing in a choir, Cyberbass is a useful growing online "note bashing" resource for choral singers to study and learn their own part more easily.
It provides free MIDI files (playable automatically on most modern computers, but their FAQ includes troubleshooting tips for Windows) which will play out each individual section's part or line against a metronome click, in some cases with the accompaniment in the background. You really need to listen to it in stereo - the selected part will play out of the right speaker or right headphone, a bit more loudly than the other parts.
It has .MID files for soprano, alto, tenor and bass parts (including splits e.g. soprano 1 and soprano 2), for almost all of the most popular oratorio works in the modern choral repertoire - from the Faure Requiem, Bach's Magnificat, Handel's Messiah, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Mozart's Requiem, Orff's Carmina Burana and Verdi's Requiem, to (perhaps more usefully, as they're rather less commonly performed) Britten's War Requiem and Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem. (No Allegri Miserere, though?).
It's the usual - click on a link to play it live, or rightclick to download to your computer. A lot of mobile phones and MP3 players can also play MIDI files. For some pieces you can even play back all parts at once and try to sing your line in context, by clicking "Tutti"; or change the playback speed (tempo) if you have Microsoft's Windows Media Player 11.
They make money from ads & affiliate links and selling learning CDs for the major works, or from donations. Cleverly they provide free concert listings on the site - but only for choirs that have learned their lines for the forthcoming gig using their service!
Very useful if you can't read music or don't sight read well - or just to help you learn your part by playing it over and over again in your earphones on the train.
If the use of technology for music interests you (or just singing generally), see also my other posts on music and on singing, including:
It's a potentially useful bit of kit, effectively providing a digital whiteboard substitute and slides annotation, which may be of interest to you if:
you give presentations, lectures or talks, to promote interest and interaction - whether you use a handwritten flipchart or whiteboard, or you prefer Powerpoint slides or use images, or
you like to create a drawing, sketch or chart with pen on real paper (in a choice of 6 colours and 3 nib thicknesses), rather than using a digital tablet, and save it to PDF or Powerpoint, or
you want to take handwritten notes for yourself (which could include diagrams you draw), on paper, and save it to PDF or PPT or email it - but note that it's used landscape, not portrait, and that this device is primarily designed for presentations not for note taking or handwriting recognition (I've heard of digital pens aimed at note taking like Apcom's Digiscribble, but I've not been invited to test any yet).
What does it do?
Basically, you plug the USB dongle into a PC, pair (link) the pen with the dongle over Bluetooth by keeping them near each other for a few seconds (about 20 seconds the very first time), then write or draw with the digital ballpoint pen on special interactive paper so that the results instantly show up, live in real time, on the computer monitor (or projection screen, if you use a digital projector with your PC) - including a fullscreen view.
Here's a video screencast showing the computer monitor as someone (not me!) draws using the pen - the drawing is in real time, but I've cut out some of the "pauses for thought" in between sketches. You can see the indicators at the top of the screen change as the artist changes colour, tool (e.g. eraser), or nib thickness.
And here's an official video by Paper Show also demo'ing this aspect:
It's to be launched initially on PC only, but should be available for Mac users from around the end of 2009. There are no plans to port it to Linux currently.
You effectively get a digital whiteboard or flipchart on your PC (there's a fullscreen mode too) without having to buy interactive whiteboard or virtual whiteboard hardware. You can choose the background - white, light blue, blue or black, even customized (e.g. with your company's logo).
You can also show a Powerpoint or PDF slides presentation or images (photo or picture) on the monitor, and write notes / comments or draw on them onscreen as you talk, by writing or drawing on hard copies of the slides or image which you'd previously printed out onto special interactive paper (different paper than for a digital whiteboard). It won't work properly unless you write on the special slide printouts - I tried and got "You have written on the wrong page"!
Choose which option (whiteboard or slides) you want from the Quick start page:
And you can save a session in PaperShow (it saves onto the key), or export it to PDF or PPT, even email it immediately to the meeting attendees etc.
I like the fact that just by tapping on symbols pre-printed on the right hand side of the special paper, you can easily use different colours and pen thicknesses and switch between them, draw perfect straight lines, arrows, rectangles or ovals (including filled in rectangles or ovals), erase or "rub out" something previously drawn or written by scribbling over it, undo the last things you did (the "undo" function goes back several steps), add a new page to your whiteboard to make it a digital flipchart, navigate to the previous and next (or first and last) page, clear the whole page, even put it to sleep temporarily and wake it back up from standby.
It works well, subject to a few points (teething issues, presumably?) which I come to below - I sure hope they'll fix them with a future software upgrade.
Fun fact: PaperShow have produced quite a few funny promo videos (as well as their serious demo videos), some of which are already on YouTube - all based on how hard it can be to get people to attend meetings, showing different possible tongue in cheek ways of trying to entice or force people to go - the suggestion being of course that, if you use Paper Show, they'll gladly turn up to meetings without needing any other form of encouragement or compulsion!
Here's one of those videos (sex and chocolate being the lures here!):
Summary
Pros
Works wirelessly; the pen can be as far away as 6 m from the USB key, no line of sight necessary.
Once installed, started up, and paired and connected fully (see Cons below), it works very well; see Tips below for how to cope with disconnection blips.
Clever "controls" (pictures) on the special paper provide speed and flexibility - just tap to quickly change colour, nib thickness, draw shapes etc (see the videos above for demos). Being able to change colours between strokes is especially useful (and fun), and (as far as I know) unique for a digital pen that lets you draw on real paper - my artist friend loved it.
Ability to annotate presentation slides with notes or comments - and to let other people scribble on them too, all instantly visible on the monitor - is great, as is being able to export and email PDF or PPT copies of the whiteboard to other people immediately (e.g. the results of a brainstorming session).
Cons
It's not cheap at over £117 (though for business users, at whom this is primarily aimed, that's usually affordable); and you'll have ongoing costs as you have to buy refills of paper for both writing and printing, as well as refills of the pen (see below for pricing details).
I've found problems with installation and starting it up - so if you plan to use this, make sure you've read my Tips below and that you've installed and tested it out on the laptop you're going to use, and in the conference room concerned, well in advance; and start it up in advance of the presentation too, putting it on standby temporarily if necessary - it won't look too good if you insert the key, open the pen lid and then spend the next 5 or 10 minutes trying to get it to work instead of giving your presentation! It looks so easy and quick in the main promo video, plugging it into someone else's laptop seems to be enough - but in real life it doesn't consistently work like that, alas. Ideally use it on your own notebook computer that you've already installed it on. And still start it up in advance!
The instructions, both printed and from the Help menu, are inadequate in my view - see Tips and Suggestions, below. They really should explain how to use the pen and the printed "controls" more comprehensively; it would only take 1 or 2 pages to do that.
In the box
In an A4+ size cardboard box, you get in the starter kit: 1 digital pen, 1 USB key, 1 AAA battery, coloured plastic rings to slip round the pen to personalise it; 1 fold-out instruction sheet; 1 pack of A4+ paper for writing on (48 pgs); 1 pack of A4 paper for printing presentations or JPEG images on (30 pgs); 3 ballpoint pen refills.
There's no CD - the software is pre-loaded into the USB dongle.
Detailed specs are further down for anyone interested. The main point is that it's PC only, Vista or XP SP2.
Specifications
Here are the specs from the downloadable brochure, I've added a couple of extra things PaperShow told me, which weren't in the brochure:
Bluetooth digital pen
Compatibility: PC only (x86 processor, Windows Vista or XP Service Pack 2) Dimensions: 159.50 x 20.50 mm - quite big but manageable, see the pic below for an idea of the scale:
Connection: Bluetooth (wireless) Working Distance: 6 metres max - OK for most conference rooms or seminar rooms; if you're in a huge hall it'll still work as long as the pen is no more than 6 m away from the computer into which the USB key has been inserted; it's Bluetooth so no line of sight is necessary and it should work even if there are objects between pen and key Working Mode: Streaming Software provided: PAPERSHOW™ application (PAPERSHOW™ USB key) Power Supply: 1 AAA battery (supplied). PaperShow told me that "a full AAA battery should offer around 5 hours continuous use. The battery in the kit is a part-life battery so will do less than this." Warranty: One year
Bluetooth USB key
Compatibility: PC only Pen Connection: Bluetooth Dimensions: 75 x 25.50 mm - like an average USB key, but slightly bigger Memory: 256 MB (you can save other files onto the key too, as with other thumb drives / flash drives) System Requirements: Windows XP™ from Service Pack 2; Windows Vista™; valid USB port Software compatibility: Import - PowerPoint™ (.ppt), image (.jpg, .png, .gif) Export and email - PowerPoint™ (.ppt), Acrobat (.pdf) Warranty: One year
Paper
A4+ and A3 to write on for digital flipchart / whiteboard: 90 grams Recycled Paper, 48 sheets per pack (only the A4+ paper is provided in the box, a 48-sheet pack).
A4 format for printing: to annotate an image or slideshow presentation it has to be printed in colour (inkjet or laser) on this special paper first, and you then write on the printout; 90 grams Recycled Paper, 200 sheets per box (there were only 30 sheets in the "starter pack" box).
Here's what the printing paper looks like, the writing paper's a bit smaller and doesn't have the video camera pic on the right or the calibration symbols on the left, but otherwise is the same:
Tips
Installation, pairing and starting it up
Not necessarily straightforward. It's supposed to open the software automatically after you insert the USB key, and walk you through with popup instructions - but it didn't on my XP Home computer. Whatever I did, it couldn't find the drivers.
The key got recognised on XP Pro and came up with the choice of opening the Paper Show software from the key (as it should), but after installing the software it made me reboot, and I also had some trouble pairing the key with the pen so I had to remove and reinsert the key (see below about "Safely remove hardware") a couple of times before it worked.
On Vista it installed without a hitch, for me anyway.
Sparing you the litany of things I tried, what finally worked for me on XP Home (and if necessary XP Pro) was:
Go to the USB key in Windows Explorer / My Computer (if you can't see it in your file manager, you'll have to remove the key and reinsert it and wait till it's done its thing - normally after it goes on strike it pops up the "Safely remove hardware" bubble anyway, so you know you can remove it safely)
The papershow.exe app is usually grayed out and if you try to open it from there you may just get an error message that the key needs to be reinserted and the key vanishes from My Computer and you have to start all over again, so don't even try it (and don't try boot.exe either!).
Instead, open webupgrade.exe; click Install (make sure you have a live internet connection, and let it through your firewall) and let it try to connect to the Paper Show site and say there's no upgrade needed (or to do an upgrade); then click the PAPERSHOW button to launch the app.
Note: sometimes it has a blip with the pairing and says you have to remove and reinsert the key. If it does that, the key will also vanish from Windows Explorer so don't panic. It'll reappear after reinsertion.
Hunt for bootbw.exe (inside the .bootS subfolder I think), opening that may get it to work worse comes to worse but that was me being desperate, try it at your own risk!
The eagle eyed will have spotted that you'd better have a live Net connection, e.g. via wifi, on the computer you're planning to use, because you can't use the webupgrade route without it.
(NB. if it says you need to reinsert the key, it should pop up with the "Safe to remove hardware" bubble after a few seconds - if it doesn't, select Safely remove hardware yourself - wait for that bubble before you pull the key out or it may all go wrong.)
Once you've got the software open, you can open the pen lid to turn it on and place the pen nearby (ideally right next to the key) for it to pair with the USB key (which it should do automatically). Again, it should walk you through it, with various bubbles reporting on the pairing progress.
If after apparently successful pairing it still doesn't start the application automatically, go back to My Computer / Windows Explorer and do steps 1 to 3 above; 5 if desperate!
Paper
Hold the paper landscape so that the coloured "controls" are on the right, and write or draw on it that way. A portrait orientation doesn't work (well it will, but text will show up sideways!).
Note that the paper for writing and printing are different, not just in size. There are extra controls and (on the left) calibration "controls" on the printing paper.
Use of pen, colours, shapes etc
There's unfortunately no instructions on using the "controls" printed on the paper. There should have been.
Here's my own notes on what they do, from trial & error (click on the pic to enlarge). Note in particular how to do rectangles or squares - trying to draw 4 sides can cause a mess, just draw 2 continuously!:
Importing slides / images
To be able to annotate Powerpoint slides live, before your presentation you need to import the slides into the Paper Show software. You can also import photos or pictures - the brochure only mentions JPG images but it will also import pics in PNG or GIF format. Pity it doesn't seem to import PDF slides.
Don't do anything on the computer while PaperShow then does its thing - it'll run through all the slides live, full screen. When it's ready, print the imported slides out on the A4 Papershow slides printing paper.
Important: Set your laser or inkjet printer to print in colour. Even if your slides are only in black and white, Paper Show won't print them to the Papershow paper except in colour, because even black original is printed in dark blue.
Set it to print in landscape. You can print 4 or 9 slides to a page (as long as you can write on a printout that small) and e.g. if 4 to a page you can tap the lower left quadrant to move to and annotate the 2nd slide (obviously at reduced size), top right quadrant for the 3rd slide etc.
Make sure the paper orientation is correct so that you'll write on the correct part of the correct slide - I put the paper into the printer upside down in one attempt, it still worked though I had to mentally re-locate the slides on the printout!
If it's "out" so that writing on the paper "writes" on the wrong spot onscreen, then use the calibration function - see the instructions, you just have to tap a couple of spots on the left of the paper to fix it.
"Session" and troubleshooting
They don't explain a "session" (they should). Bottom left of the window, it'll say "Session open" or "Session closed". (I've outlined that in yellow in the QuickStart page screenshot above; see below for an example of "Session open".)
Seems to correspond to whether the pen lid is off and the pen ready to go into action (open), or not (closed). I don't think "closed" is the same as standby, as the session can be "Open" even when it's on standby (see the green dot?)
It can spontaneously close the session by itself, sometimes. I know not when or why. Probably it goes into a sulk if you don't use it continuously, e.g. if you have to talk for a while in relation to one slide without using the pen.
If the session is closed you can't do anything - e.g. writing on the paper isn't mirrored on the whiteboard. Hopefully the session should open itself when you use the pen, but sometimes it doesn't.
Fix: to re-open the session close the pen lid and reopen it and wait the usual X seconds. If it still says Session closed, try putting it into standby (tap the moon symbol) then taking it out of standby by tapping it again - this always worked for me.
Menus
Some are greyed out in certain views. The "black blank screen" view provides the most options so close the whiteboard if necessary.
Also, some menu items are not accessible unless the session is "open", see above.
Don't close the application till your session is over over!
If you're having a break but intend to use it again later in the same session, don't close the application down as that will "eject" the dongle and you'll have to remove and re-insert it and pair it all over again before you can carry on.
Just leave it open and switch applications if you need to. Or put it on standby by touching the moon symbol on the paper. (To take it out of standby, touch the same symbol again.)
Replacing the pen
I couldn't figure out how to refill the pen. Instructions from Papershow: "There is a small hole in the clip of the pen top. Put this over the ink refill tip to pull out the refill. Replace with a new refill and push into place."
Suggestions for improvement
Instructions / help
A small booklet-style manual would have been more manageable than the huge foldout sheet (it's huge because the guide, though brief, is repeated in several European languages).
Not enough information or instructions are given. The Help file just reproduces the leaflet (and there's no further support on the website either, that I can find at the date of writing).
More info is needed in particular on how to use the pen to change colours, stroke thickness etc; in particular how to put it in standby and, more importantly, take it out of standby! The paper manual should include a simple but comprehensive guide (e.g. the annotated pic I've shownabove). I had to experiment by touching the different pics to see what they did.
Although some of this in the demo video, and the makers might think it was obvious, they shouldn't assume knowledge - most users will expect to find this basic starting information in the manual or program Help.
You're supposed to be able to start up a WMV video (and perhaps even a sound file - WMA?) from the printed slides, but there were no instructions at all on how to do this; this info should have been in the guide or software Help (including how to attach or link to the video file you want to play, etc).
Similarly you should be able to personalise the whiteboard's background color and even stamp your company logo on each page, but it wasn't clear that those options aren't available from the whiteboard page.
I still have no idea what one symbol does. I thought it would be "Redo" but in fact like the Trash pic it just offers to clear the page.
A "quick start" guide needs to be very very basic and step by step. The instruction sheet missed one step - put the AAA battery into the pen! (and didn't explain how to open the battery compartment - press the button and then sort of prise the compartment open with your nails).
Given the target market is the business / commercial world, in order to sell well the PaperShow has to be absolutely dead simple and fast to install and use, and quickstart instructions have to be pre-printed (which they have been) and include every single step, mechanically and literally, however basic or obvious it may seem to the manufacturer, so that it's very easy for the user to follow the instructions (no matter how obvious) without having to think about anything except doing in order step 1, step 2 etc.
I know senior business people who still don't even know what a USB flash drive is, and they might think the battery goes into the key not the pen! Silly example perhaps, but I'm trying to make the point. I also know a senior City person who thought that a "broadband" connection was not the same as an "internet" connection, till I explained. I'm quite serious. Many geeks just don't realise how non-computer/technology literate lots of otherwise extremely successful and intelligent non-geeks are.
Online promotion / marketing
It's good that the fun Paper Show promo videos can easily be shared, but I think PaperShow should also provide embed code for their demo videos too, so that those wanting publish news or reviews of the product can easily show various features or aspects of it on their websites or blogs. (Yeah I know I included one above, but I'd figured out a fudge; the copy/paste code should be easily available.)
Also, it's a little annoying for someone who wants to embed a PaperShow promo video on their own webpage that on the Survivingmeetings.com site the embed and share code for the videos isn't available from the start, but is only given after you finish watching the entire video (so I tweaked the code in the version I've used above).
Other issues
I think they should have provided a carry box or pouch to keep the pen and dongle together, especially at this price.
The installation and startup issues need to be addressed so it works cleanly, quickly and reliably every time.
Whiteboard use - it's annoying to have to choose A4+ everytime before you can get a new whiteboard up. It would be helpful to be able to save A4+ as a remembered preference, with the option to choose A3 if necessary for a one off occasionally.
Bug? The onscreen pen colour can change suddenly - I've had it flip to the default blue when I chose a different control (like a rectangle, from writing mode). Tap the right color again to change back, obviously - but it can be disconcerting.
A problem with the Import function being available sometimes, and not at other times, needs to be fixed given that a major purpose is to enable presentation slides to be annotated.
Menus - it's confusing that some of the menu items are greyed out. For most of those (e.g background preferences, backup/restore), you can only access them from the blank start screen and not e.g. while you're using the whiteboard. This should be explained or the greyed out menus got rid of completely in the appropriate views. Better still make the whiteboard's background colour selectable from the whiteboard page.
Import - menu item is sometimes greyed out even when it shouldn't be. Closing & re-opening the software and if necessary pen seems to sort it.
Export - a niggle but you can only export to the key or to "My Documents" - not a subfolder within My Documents. It would also be good to have the option to export quietly, full stop - without its automatically opening the exported PDF file or whatever.
The misleading "Online support" menu item should read "Check for software update", because that's all it does!
The DENOS menu item is always grayed out for me. This seems to be related to Oxford's DENOS software for handwriting recognition and management of notes written by hand into their range of digital notebooks and diaries. If those features aren't provided, it should be removed as it's confusing.
PaperShow seems to want to do something to my Screensaver on installation.
I haven't let it (thanks to good ol' Spybot!) as I don't know what it is, but it shouldn't be necessary (it works fine without whatever it is) and it may annoy or inconvenience people if a Paper Show screensaver suddenly replaces their normal screensaver. They should get rid of this or give people a choice before taking over the screensaver (if that's what it does).
Wishlist for the future
The option of getting paper without the visible grid of squares would be good. (The invisible dots are there anyway.)
USB key - I wish it were smaller, it can be a tight squeeze (or indeed impossible to insert it) if something's already plugged into an adjacent USB port; also, ideally the lid should be designed so that it can fit over the back of the key when the key inserted (as with a pen lid) - too few USB drives are designed that way but it would be sensible, to prevent the lid from getting lost while off. Like this Bytestor one:
Add ability to use it portrait; handwriting recognition; and enter "typed" text?
Verdict
A potentially great tool for presentations, especially in business meetings, let down by occasional problems and inadequate instructions.
Follow my tips above (especially advance setup, and making the moon symbol your firm friend) and it should be fine. I'd use it if I regularly did business presentations - and my employer paid for it!
Price and stockists
UK
RRP £99.99+VAT i.e. about £117.49.
Available from mid-October 2008 from Datamind, PaperIQ, Ryman and EuroOffice and from January 2009 from most UK office stationery suppliers such as Office Depot, Banner, Viking, Corporate Express, and Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation (schools supplier).
The prices for refills will be (including VAT):
A4 Printer Paper 200 sheets £17.50 A4+ Flipchart Pad 48 Sheets £11.99 A3 Flipchart Pad 48 Sheets £19.99 Ink Refill pack of 9 £8.50.
US
Available from January 2009 in the USA.
RRP will be $199.00 for the Starter Kit pack.
For refills:
A4 Flipchart Note Pad $12.90 A3 Flipchart Note Pad $19.90 Interactive Letter size paper (200 sheets) $19.90
With thanks to Paper Show and Matt for lending me the starter box for review, and providing further information on the Papershow product. I've taken some screenshots from their site too for better illustrations for this review.
