Archive for AppGap Tips
by Celine Roque
November 3, 2009 at 11:47 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips
Have you ever looked at an image and thought, I think I’ve seen that somewhere. Problem is, you couldn’t quite place it. Wouldn’t it be great to just grab a picture and run it through a search engine? Google has an image search, but it runs on keywords, not real image comparisons. As we wait for them to develop and polish one, in the meantime, we can use tools such as TinEye.
TinEye, created by Idée Inc, is a reverse image search engine. Upload an image and this tool will tell you where matches can be found on the web, so that you can trace the original source, possibly learn about its history and get a hi-res version. If you are the owner or creator of an image, use TinEye to track how your work is being used by others, and see the modifications they’ve done, if any.
Like most modern search engines, TinEye uses crawlers to look for images around the web. Right now they have over a billion images on their index – quite a small number if you think about the ever-expanding volume of Internet content. Here’s how it works:
“When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches. TinEye can even find a partial fingerprint match. TinEye does not typically find similar images (i.e. a different image with the same subject matter [faces]); it finds exact matches including those that have been cropped, edited or resized [logos, symbols].”
The search engine works with JPEG, PNG and GIF files, with optimum results for images greater than 300×300 pixels and without clear watermarks. Maximum file size accepted is 1MB. For unregistered users, uploaded images are automatically discarded after 72 hours. Registration is free, and allows you to keep the file and retain a permalink to the query.
To see examples of what TinEye is capable of, have a look at their Cool Searches page.
by Celine Roque
August 28, 2009 at 12:35 pm · Filed under
AppGap Tips, social media
A few months ago I wrote articles on how to store a backup of Google Docs and Gmail accounts – both quite helpful as these services sometimes go down when you need them most. These are great for saving documents, but you might ask, what about your other data stored online, say on social media sites?
Here are various ways in which to keep a local copy for the most popular services’ contents:
TWITTER
Why create a backup: Twitter only archives your latest 3,200 tweets, and past this limit your earlier tweets are automatically discarded. If you’re a heavy user it’s easy to exceed this in a few months.
RSS – Simplest method is to grab your own tweet feed via a locally installed RSS reader like Feed Demon or RSS Captor.
Tweetake – Allows backup of followers, friends, favorites, and of course your tweets by compiling them into a CSV file.
Backup My Tweets – A free web app that does what its name says. It’s main advantage is that it allows you to export a summary of your tweets in HTML, PDF, and JSON.
FACEBOOK
Why create a backup: Just for posterity, or just in case your account gets deactivated. Plus, who knows if Facebook will still be around after 10 years?
Social Safe – A powerful paid application (just $3) based on Adobe AIR that it backs up most of the things inside your Facebook account, including your profile, pictures, and friend list. One glaring limitations is that it doesn’t (yet) provide a mechanism to backup status messages and their accompanying comments.
Photo Download – Photo Download allows you to get both tagged photographs and photo albums that you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook on to your own computer. Compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X.
by Celine Roque
August 18, 2009 at 10:47 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Economic Development
With job losses continuing to pile up, many are finding it increasingly difficult to rejoin the workforce. Sadly, some elements are using this opportunity to prey on those desperate for any work that could help them pay their bills. Take for example this story by Riva Richmond on The New York Times about a man who became a victim of an online scam:
“When Claude Vera responded to the customer-service job opening he saw on the online-classified site Geebo.com back in February, it seemed like one of a hundred small acts that might get him back to work. Most of his e-mail messages to prospective employers were going unanswered, so he was relieved when Penguin Express Inc. replied the next day with a work-from-home job.
To help him get a home office started, Penguin sent him money orders so he could buy, via money wire, the requisite laptop and other equipment from several different people. Mr. Vera, of Jamaica, New York, deposited nine United States Postal Service money orders into his Chase bank account and wired a total of nearly $8,000 to the various vendors. But he never received a laptop or anything else, and the money orders turned out to be already cashed or counterfeit. The scam consumed Mr. Vera’s tax refund and put him in the red by $6,700 to Chase, which sent his case to a collection agent.”
The nature of the Internet makes it an ideal platform for various scammers, as they can be difficult to trace once the victim realizes he’s been had. The best anyone can do is to be careful when dealing with anyone you’re not familiar with online. Maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism about deals that sound too good or too easy can be crucial. The primary rule of nondisclosure, as always,applies for passwords, bank account numbers, social security numbers, and the like. If otherwise legitimate-looking sites/people ask for these information, you may have good reason to be suspicious. Better do some research on them to verify if they are above board. If jobhunting on the Internet makes you worried, you may try to go back to the old-fashioned ways. This may be a bit safer for some, but certainly still merits the same precautions.
by Patti Anklam
July 17, 2009 at 3:59 pm · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Change Management, Collaboration, Culture, Distributed Work, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Web Apps, social media, social tools
I’d saved a wonderful story by Michael Idinopulos of Socialtext about how moving from a shared space to private offices (What my Granddaddy Taught me about Information Flow). In the days before computers, brokers worked in a large open space in which information moved vary rapidly from one end of the floor to another. When the office layout was changed to give more people private offices and people began focusing their attention on their PCs, people “…lost the ability to communicate, and nobody had the slightest idea what was going on.”
You can’t read the story, of course without catching on that the open office floor in which information moves in waves is a lot like Web 2.0. From our PC (and Mac!) silos, we are finally liberated and can catch the breath of new ideas rolling over our shared spaces. This is happening, outside.
Inside, adoption of Web 2.0 tools is not so much of a wave as a trickle. Inside companies, managers think about technologies in terms of security (bring it inside) and cost (it costs money to maintain something inside, so we can’t let people use free tools. [Hat tip to John Bordeaux for pointing to the irony in this story.]).
Inside, we deal with a series of waves, incremental introductions of technology and Web 2.0 services and look for the best way to encourage adoption. I’m guilty myself of responding to clients’ reason for lack of adoption as “the culture” when it can often be the manner in which the new tool was introduced, or a lack of attention to the user interface/experience.
Adoption and culture being very much on my mind, I was interested to see Hutch Carpenter’s post in the Social Computing Journal Enterprise 2.0: Culture is as Culture Does. He argues that most companies are ready for social software at least to the extent that they acknowledge that employees are their most important asset.
He goes on to put together a wonderful graphic illustrating two paths to adoption of social tool pilots. He anchors the flow chart by two decision points.
- Defined use case? is the determinant of whether adoption goes in an official or a viral flow. This assumes that a well-defined use case has proven business value and that undefined use cases may not. I agree that for a successful pilot in an organization, the defined “use case” must be centered around teams or groups that are engaged in some joint activity that requires flow of information.
- Exceed expectations? is the measurement that occurs when the two flows come back together and employee feedback has been processed. This decision point really implies that there is a funding decision to be made at this point.
Enterprise 2.0: Pilot Deployment Flow
There’s some good stuff in this diagram, and it’s flexible enough for adapting to specific circumstances. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if, at the dawn of the PC era, Michael’s Granddaddy had through to work through the use cases of how PCs would affect the information flow on the trading floor.
by Celine Roque
May 29, 2009 at 3:44 pm · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Web Apps
Unlike desktop applications, web apps run from servers far away from our computers, and to access them we need to use Internet browsers like Firefox. The problem with Firefox is that it was designed for viewing web pages, which it does very well, but not for running applications. If a web app running inside a tab were to freeze, for example, other tabs would also stop functioning and eventually crash, causing you to lose valuable work.
In its own way, Google Chrome was engineered to prevent these types of crashes. Mozilla’s Prism extension for Firefox uses a different approach to make web apps run separately from the browser for added stability. They are treated to work as virtual stand-alone applications, reducing the load on the browser itself and improving performance. Aside from this, Prism takes things even further to make the web app experience feel as familiar as possible.
Accessibility. Shortcuts can be created for web apps on the desktop or the programs folder like other desktop applications. They can also be accessed from the system taskbar or dock.
Start-up. For web apps that you’d like to be always on call, you can use prism to have them run automatically whenever you start your computer.
Minimize to tray. You have the choice between making the applications minimize to the taskbar or to the system tray for a more uncluttered view. Notifications pop up here when you have new emails or other alerts.
Links association. Prism enables special links to treat the web app as a normal application and open it instead of a browser. For example, mailto: links could only open desktop mail clients, but with Prism it can now be set to launch web-based mail clients like Gmail.
Others. Among the nice enhancements brought by Prism are font control and private data clearing for each window.
Mozilla’s Prism comes in two forms: a Firefox extension and a stand-alone program. Each has a short video demo and can be downloaded now for free on the Prism site.
by Celine Roque
May 15, 2009 at 1:21 pm · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Security
Once again, when it comes to office Internet access, employees prove the old saying that “when there’s will, there’s a way.” Even with expensive enterprise security features in place, office workers inevitably circumvent them using proxies, encrypted tunnels, and remote desktop access applications. This is according to Palo Alto Network’s research covering nearly 900,000 users on 60 large corporate networks.
Peer-to-peer programs were monitored on 92% of these networks (BitTorrent and Gnutella the most common among them). Browser-based file-sharing and cloud-storage tools were also seen on 76% of the networks observed (like MegaUpload and YouSendIt). Some web apps are also being used, and while they are helpful to those who need to do off-site work, Palo Alto Networks says they are questionable in terms of security compliance and therefore pose a risk.
Another negative effect of these unwanted applications is that they gobble up a huge amount of bandwidth. The report found that 51% of the bandwidth being consumed by companies was due to 28% of the apps used, a majority of them consumer-oriented (media, social networking, P2P and browser-based file sharing, web-browsing and toolbars).
Today’s applications were designed to be greatly accessible, and so they navigate corporate firewalls easily (or would, with a little help from office techies). It’s difficult to block them permanently with users quickly adapting to barriers. Palo Alto Networks recommends filtering traffic by application type, content and user, as opposed to the traditional way of blocking ports, protocols and IP addresses. This strategy may be more effective, but perhaps it will only be a matter of time before it gets cracked as well.
An alternative would be to understand the reasons behind the popularity of these rogue apps. Needs drive demand. Some of them may have legitimate business usage, such as cloud storage tools. In this case, companies may opt to provide a suitable substitute to their employees that comply with its security standards. They might also want to work with the application developers of popular apps to ensure compliance, and perhaps doing some tweaks to their own networks. Completely eliminating unsecure activities on corporate networks may be a tall order, but minimizing them is definitely not impossible.
by Celine Roque
May 13, 2009 at 8:41 am · Filed under
AppGap Tips, Culture
Young, dynamic, successful and fun – this is what a lot of people think of when you say “Google”, and its reputation has made it one of the most sought-after companies for jobhunters. Some go there almost expecting to find the Holy Grail, but more than a few come away disappointed. Douglas Bowman’s case is particularly interesting, as it gives us an idea of Google’s culture and philosophy from a design perspective. In his blog, Bowman details his experiences in the company and explains why he resigned.
“When I joined Google as its first visual designer, the company was already seven years old. Seven years is a long time to run a company without a classically trained designer. Google had plenty of designers on staff then, but most of them had backgrounds in CS or HCI. And none of them were in high-up, respected leadership positions. Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong. Billions of shareholder dollars are at stake. The company has millions of users around the world to please. That’s no easy task. Google has momentum, and its leadership found a path that works very well. When I joined, I thought there was potential to help the company change course in its design direction. But I learned that Google had set its course long before I arrived. Google was a massive aircraft carrier, and I was just a small dinghy trying to push it a few degrees North.”
This just illustrates the point that there’s more to finding a job than good compensation, the nature of work, or whether you get along well with your collegues. Your philosophy and the company’s must be in tune, or you will end up feeling unfulfilled in your profession. The problem is that it usually won’t be evident until you’ve been inside for a while. In this case, Bowman wanted to lead users into new bold design directions. On the other hand, Google prefers that users take the lead, through continuous testing and data analysis to find what clicks. It’s been working fine for them, so I understand why they’d want to hold on to their processes.
Of course, it’s not a bullet-proof strategy. Humans (i.e., the analysts) are still needed to interpret the data, who inevitably introduce their own biases, for good or ill. Placing a premium on data only minimizes subjectivity, it doesn’t eliminate it. That said, everything that’s measurable can be improved, making this approach enticing. I honestly think that if there was a way to reliably measure their users’ emotional response, Google would seriously consider it.
In the end, it comes down to inertia. Google has grown so big that it’s become incredibly difficult to even nudge it – there’s too much at stake. Not that it’s impossible, but it’s probably not the best venue for radical creative experimentation. Daring designers best go somewhere else, and this is what Doug Bowman realized. He has now transferred to the current social media darling, Twitter. Here’s hoping that his new post as head designer there will prove to be fulfilling. I’m also curious about what his impact will be on the popular startup.
Google is a champion of web applications, a segment that The App Gap is keen on. What can you say about their minimalist aesthetics? Do you agree with their design methods?
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