XML Aficionado

Bye bye, Instagram

2012-12-18T12:10:00.001-05:00

I deleted my Instagram account today due to their new overreaching terms of service that essentially promise to violate my copyright in any photos posted to the service.

The NY Times Bits Technology blog has a good summary of the new terms and their impact on customers, so I won't repeat the detailed analysis here, but it boils down to essentially these huge privacy red-flags:

Instagram can share information about its users with outside affiliates and advertisers
Instagram can use your photos in advertising and promotions without your consent
If you want to opt-out, your only option is to delete your account

Thanks, I went ahead and just did that.

In terms of mobile photo-editing on my smartphone or tablet device I've long preferred using SnapSeed anyway, because it has tons more powerful and customizable features.

For more blog coverage on the new Instagram terms see Techmeme…

Totally redesigned Altova Website Launched Today

2012-12-12T11:08:00.001-05:00

We are very excited to announce the launch of our totally redesigned Altova website today. The new site features a modern tile-based user interface and is easier to read, navigate, and use - and, if I may say so, it is stunningly beautiful on desktop computers as well as tablet devices and smartphones:

See also our company blog post today that provides more links and details.

Password Security and Keeping your Data Safe

2012-12-10T12:52:00.001-05:00

If you are using a password that is 8 characters in length (or shorter) you just lost the game. And I'm not talking about well-known passwords, such as "password", "monkey", "qwerty", or "12345678". This machine here is part of a cluster of 25 GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) and can crack any 8 character password of any complexity in less than 6 hours:

As reported on the Ars Technica blog today, researchers have built a Linux-based GPU cluster that can do a brute-force attack on the NTLM cryptographic algorithm at the heart of the Windows login authentication that can try and astounding 95⁸ combinations in just 5.5 hours. At a speed of 350 billion guesses per second, it can crack any password of 8 characters or less in length without resorting to dictionary-based attacks.

Combining such power with existing dictionary based cracking algorithms can possibly crack even longer passwords in a similar time.

The machine was unveiled by Jeremi Gosney at the Passwords^12 conference in Oslo, Norway, last week. The same machine can make 63 billion guesses per second against password hashes computed using SHA1 - a very widely used hashing algorithm.

How secure is your password?

The reality is that most people still use incredibly weak passwords. The 25 Most Popular Passwords of 2012 are well-documented, as are the 10,000 Top Passwords of 2011. If your password is on either of those lists, you should stop what you are doing right now and go change it. Seriously. All of these well-known passwords as well as any word that appears in a dictionary is highly susceptible to hacking.

Up until a little while ago the common recommendation was to add a few numerical digits and maybe a special character or two to the mix and that would usually result in a pretty safe password. Most sites also require users to pick a password of 8 characters of length (or more) and people usually stick with 8. But that is simply no longer sufficient, as any password 8 characters in length can now be hacked within 6 hours with a brute-force attack.

However, the solution is fairly simple: just by doubling the password length from 8 to at least 16, the duration required to crack the password by the new GPU cluster or similar machines increases from 6 hours to 138 billion years. Even assuming reasonable advances in processor power over the next couple of years, that should make the password pretty safe for the foreseeable future.

If you want to see how (in)secure your old password was, you can use this service. But please make sure you change your password afterwards!

In addition to these thoughts about password length and complexity, it is also important to realize that sooner or later most online websites end up being hacked and all their passwords being stolen (see, for example, the LinkedIn Password Hack in June 2012). Therefore, it is vitally important to minimize the damage and not reuse your passwords on multiple sites.

Ultimately, however, a password alone cannot ever be 100% secure. In addition to hacking in its various forms, any password is also susceptible to phishing attempts, trojans, key-loggers, and other approaches that compromise its security. The only proven approach to really keep a system secure is based on a technology called 2-factor authentication where you need to provide at least two pieces of information to access a system: for example, something that you know (password) and something that you have (secure token).

A lot of these topics have also been discussed in various newspaper articles and blog posts recently and I have provided links to the most useful articles at the bottom of this blog post.

Recommendations

Here is my own personal list of measures that help me keep my passwords and data more secure - these are based on my own approach that I've developed over time, so feel free to adopt any of those for your needs as you see fit:

If an online service offers 2-factor authentication, I always take advantage of that - especially for sensitive information, such as online banking, investments, etc. but I also use it for DropBox, my Google account, or even for Facebook.
All passwords need to be 16-20 characters length at a minimum and include at least 6 numeric or special characters. This makes them relatively uncrackable, provided that one doesn't include any common words from the dictionary. I try to stay away from common recommendations and password-generation patterns, such as taking the first character of each word in your favorite song lyrics or similar approaches. If a pattern has been described somewhere you can rest assured that hackers know about that pattern and can tweak their algorithm to crack it.
I use different passwords for all sites - not a single password shared amongst multiple sites.
For all online services I use computer-generated random passwords with a length of 16-20 characters or longer - depending on what the website allows - and these passwords use at least six numeric or special characters. For example, such a password might look like this: [mLzJKf1j7cP3n|B!8@WJw
I use a password-management application to generate and keep track of all these random passwords. There are many popular such applications on the market and after some research and testing I found 1Password to be the right solution for me, since it is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.
My master password for the password-management software is somewhere between 25-35 characters in length and uses more than eight numeric and special characters. Nothing in this password is susceptible to a dictionary-based attack, so it should withstand all current cracking capabilities.
I store all my sensitive information and financial data in an encrypted file and keep it safe by storing that file on a USB drive. I use a href="http://www.truecrypt.org/">TrueCrypt as the encryption software of choice, because it is again available on multiple platforms. The password for my encrypted data is again highly complex and fulfills all of the requirements outlined above.
To guard against catastrophic failure of the password-management software, a printout of all passwords is stored in my safe.

With this approach I feel that I have done a pretty good job of making a hackers' life rather difficult. Is it 100% secure? Probably not, and I constantly tweak my system as new information surfaces and we learn about new improvements in processing speed or cryptography advances.

What is your strategy? Let me know your thoughts here on the blog or via Twitter or Facebook comments…

Tools I use:

Ingress - an AR-MMOG created by Niantic Labs at Google

2012-11-24T15:54:00.001-05:00

I don't often write about games on my blog, but this one deserves an exception, because it is extremely innovative, unique, and a harbinger of things to come. On November 15 Google launched a closed beta of Ingress, a sci-fi themed game currently available only on the Android platform.

Ingress defines a new category of game that could probably be best described as AR-MMOG (Augmented Reality - Massively Multiplayer Online Game). The basic premise is that an alien influence called Shapers are trying to control human thought and are entering the world through portals that are often associated with historically significant locations, statues, or public displays of arts. These portals are associated with Exotic Matter (called XM in the game) that needs to be collected to energize the player as well as the portals.

Players must move through the real world and visit these portals with their GPS-equipped Android smartphones to play the game.

The objective is to hack the portals, link different portals, and create so-called control fields by forming triangles of linked portals. After completing a few training missions, players must choose a faction and either side with the Resistance, who are trying to protect mankind and prevent further Shaper influence, or side with the Enlightened, who consider Shaper influence to be beneficial and usher in the next logical step in the evolution of mankind.

I was very happy to receive my invite to the closed beta on November 21 and found some time on the morning of Thanksgiving Day as well as on Black Friday to play the game on my Galaxy SIII. Doing so allowed me to take some extensive walks on both days and burn off a lot of the food calories that would have accumulated otherwise.

Playing the game is extremely addictive. I decided to join the Resistance and explored the available portals in and around Marblehead on the first day. Capturing my first few portals was fairly easy, but then I encountered some Enlightened portals that gave me a good challenge right away. Most of the portals are directly taken from the Historical Marker Database, so you learn a lot more about the history while playing the game. I also found that having a car to drive to neighboring towns and some remote portal locations is a huge bonus - especially when you get to deploy higher-level portals that have a range of several kilometers available for linking.

For example, on one of my excursions I took a stroll through downtown Salem in my quest to capture more portals and found one above the statue of Roger Conant:

By hacking and capturing one portal after the other, I was able to not only collect the required items for linking portals together, but also the necessary weapons for attacking portals of the opposing faction. And it didn't take long for me to eliminate all of the Enlightened influence in my area and connect several of the portals in Marblehead to create the necessary control fields that are then shown on the display of the Ingress app:

As I leveled up, I was able to create more powerful portals that allowed linkages over several kilometers distance and so I used Black Friday for some further excursions into Salem as well as trips to Swampscott and Nahant that allowed me to create a much larger field to protect all the inhabitants in my immediate vicinity:

Now it is only a matter of time until the Enlightened students at MIT try to increase their influence further north and will begin their attack on the North Shore. I am sure a battle of epic proportions will ensue in the days to come:

Ingress is extremely well done for a beta version of a game. I can only assume that Google has done some extensive internal testing before opening up the beta to people outside. And the combination of GPS, mapping, the historical marker database, and the many different web properties (see list below) combine to provide a truly addictive game-playing experience.

Even before you get immersed in the actual gameplay - and while you anxiously await the arrival of your invitation to participate in the beta - there are several websites that provide hints at the background story, videos, and artwork by fictions characters that appear to exhibit signs of Shaper influence.

One can easily see how Google's Project Glass will be used in a future version of this game that takes augmented reality game-play to a whole new level…

Obviously, there are also some privacy implications in such kind of gameplay and several bloggers have already questioned Google's motives in creating this game. Allegations range from creating an optimized database of walking paths for further enhancing Google Maps to more sinister data collection for advertising purposes.

Be that as it may, for the time being I will continue participating in the beta for a very simple reason: the game is actually a lot of fun to play!

Further information on Ingress can be found here:

Also see blog posts on AllThingsD, Engadget, pandodaily, The Verge, TechCrunch, and others…

P.S. Don't ask me for an invite, as I don't have any to give away, sorry!

iPad 2 with dead/swollen battery - Apple refuses to fix it and wants to charge $240 for replacement

2012-11-05T17:20:00.001-05:00

I will admit that I've been a bit of an "Apple Fanboy" for a long time now. Today I am afraid, this relationship has finally come to an end.

Let me explain: I've been an "early-adopter" Apple customer for about 29 years, starting with my first Apple IIe in 1983, first Mac in 1984, etc. (in the last 18 months alone, I've purchased: 3 iPhone 5, 2 iPhone 4S, 1 15" MBP w/ Retina, 2 new iPad2 March 2012, 1 Apple TV, 1 Time Capsule 3TB, 2 Mac Pro, 1 MBP 15" Aug 2011, 1 27" Thunderbolt display, etc.). As such, I have followed Apple's products and also product recalls over time and know that Apple normally stands by its products to the extent that systematic battery failures, like they occurred in the MacBook Air were met with a well-designed recall program that provided customers with a battery replacement plus a replacement of the top case if that was damaged by the swollen battery.

I was, therefore, very surprised about the turn of events today:

I had purchased a new iPad (3rd generation) in March this year and pre-ordered it on the day it was announced. Since then my iPad 2 has been sitting in a drawer of my desk, and I was recently approached at our Rotary Club by our exchange student from Germany on whether I had a tablet computer to donate to him. Obviously I felt that the iPad 2 would be ideal for such a donation, but when I tried to charge it this morning, it showed the following symptoms:

It would not start without the power adapter being plugged in
When plugged it, it showed a 100% battery charge
However, when removing the plug, it immediately shut down, so the battery is clearly no longer functional
I left the iPad plugged in, but noticed that after a while the top glass started lifting up at the right edge - very likely due to an expanding battery
The iPad 2 is entirely unusable in this state and it is just 19 months since I had bought it and a little over six months since I last used it

Here is a photo of the iPad 2 atop my barograph where the lifting of the glass can be seen on the right edge just a little bit to the left of the volume buttons:

I figured that since battery issues such as this one are well-known and documented, it would be an easy appointment at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store Northshore Mall in Peabody today.

You can imagine my surprise, when the genius I was assigned to politely listened to my story and then informed me that my only option was to buy a new replacement iPad 2 for $240 (i.e. at some discount compared to the new price).

Even though the iPad 2 is obviously out of warranty, I was expecting this to be a free replacement due to the systemic nature of battery issues in various Apple products (including many cases documented for the iPad 2 in the Apple Support forums) and due to the fact that in case of such systemic issues a recall is mandated by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. In the worst case, I was expecting to be charged about $40-50 for a new battery if this was considered a border-line case because I left the iPad 2 in a drawer for 6 months.

But being asked to pay $240 when all I wanted to do was donate the iPad to a Rotary exchange student felt like an inappropriate reply. Therefore, I asked to speak to the manager and was kept waiting for 10 minutes. After that time a certain Mr. Kevin Alumbaugh came out and introduced himself as the manager on duty and politely listened to my story again, only to offer me the exact same choice. When I suggested to him that (a) this case was similar to the swollen battery issues in the MacBook Air and (b) he should perhaps look at my purchase history with Apple and (c) consider to be more open to the potential that this might also be a systematic issue and warrant a free replacement as well as sending the device to Apple's QC department, he changed his tone, became rather confrontational, and started berating me about several things:

He questioned how I could know that this was a battery issue even though I had clearly explained all the symptoms and the fact that the glass started lifting off when I attempted to charge the battery. The fact that published images of various gadget blogs also clearly show the battery at the right side of the case where the top glass lifted off on my iPad apparently did not factor into his consideration.
He berated me with the words "maybe that's how you run your business, but at Apple we treat each customer the same" when I pointed out that he should maybe consider that it is in general not such a good idea for companies to upset their early-adopter customers.
He explained that Apple could not open or repair the iPad, so even if the battery died after 18 months, the only option is to throw away the entire device. According to Kevin, Apple was being extremely generous to me to offer a $240 replacement path even though my warranty had already run out, rather than forcing me to upgrade to the latest model.

At no time did he offer any alternative path than for me to pay $240 for a refurbished replacement iPad 2.

I ended the conversation at that point, asked him for his business card (which indicated that he was actually from a different Apple store at Pheasant Lane in NH), and advised him that I would reconfirm his position with Apple PR before blogging about it tonight.

Since then I have emailed Apple's PR team and asked them to confirm whether the following points are indeed Apple's official position with respect to an iPad 2 that no longer works due to a dead battery and shows clear signs of an expanding ("swollen") battery including lifting off of the to glass at the right edge:

Apple does not consider iPad 2 battery issues to fall under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and refuses to engage in a product recall of such units
Apple is not interested in having the device sent to quality control in order to investigate further whether or not a product recall is warranted
Apple does consider it an extremely generous offer when they ask a customer to pay $240 for a refurbished replacement unit only 19 months after the original purchase
Apple finds nothing wrong with the idea that after 19 months a tablet device has to be thrown away just because a battery has failed

Sadly, I have not received any response to my inquiry from Apple PR by the time I published this to the blog.

Clearly, just a little over one year after Steve's passing, the company has lost its way and is now demonstrating an arrogant and presumptuous posture towards customers. Combined with the various 3rd generation iPad issues with LTE, iCloud, etc., the restore issues when migrating from iPhone 4S to 5, the recent Maps disaster, increased criticism of the closed eco-system, and extensive and ever-increasing competition in terms of tablets from the Google Nexus, the Amazon Kindle Fire, and the Microsoft Surface, this could be early signs of the decline of Apple.

UPDATE: Several days after posting this to my blog I received a phone call from Kristin Gitlitz, manager at the Apple Store North Shore Mall and she told me that she would like to take another look at that iPad. I was traveling in Europe on a business trip during that time, so I made an appointment with her on Sunday, November 18. After running some battery tests on the device and having a technician open it up, she confirmed that it was a battery issue and promptly told me that there was a $99 fix available rather than the $240 replacement. Furthermore, she agreed to provide that fix for free as a compensation for all the trouble I previously had to go through. Well done, Apple. Thank you for restoring my faith!

Windows 8 double-fail

2012-10-26T11:15:00.001-04:00

I was expecting to jump right into the Windows 8 experience today and do some upgrading and testing this weekend as well as play with my new Microsoft Surface tablet, but it appears that this will not be happening as Microsoft managed to fail twice in just one day…

I had, of course, been testing previous pre-release versions of Windows 8 and like the new features, but when I went to upgrade my home PC to Windows 8 Pro today, the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant failed spectacularly every time I tried to actually spend $39.99 and purchase a downloadable upgrade:

Furthermore, there is no back-button and so if this happens and you want to try again - thinking this might just be server overload - you have to re-enter all your information. It is also somewhat discouraging that a company like Microsoft has to rely on a 3rd party company called "arvato digital services, llc." to process upgrades? Why is this not sold through the Microsoft Store? Last, but not least, wouldn’t you think that Microsoft would run a spell-checker on their error messages? "Intializing" isn't' even a word…

So I figured I'd wait with my PC upgrade until tomorrow and was looking forward to instead work with my new Microsoft Surface tablet that was supposed to be delivered today. I had pre-ordered the device on the day it was announced and was promised a delivery today, October 26th. Imagine my surprise when I checked the FedEx tracking info from the Microsoft Store link:

So it seems the pre-ordered Surface that was guaranteed to be delivered today is going to show up on Monday instead.

Great job, Microsoft, making a first impression with Windows 8…

UPDATE: On the fifth attempt the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant worked, the order completed, and the download progress is now at 32% with 5 minutes remaining…

UPDATE 2: FedEx ended up doing a separate delivery run today, so the Surface also arrived.

Altova MissionKit 2013

2012-10-21T11:32:00.001-04:00

Just in case you missed these announcements last month, here is a quick recap of some of our blog posts about the new major features in the Altova MissionKit 2013:

But there is so much more included in version 2013 of the various developer tools across the entire MissionKit tools suite in terms of new features that we added in direct response to customer feedback:

Seamless integration options in Java applications for XMLSpy, MapForce, StyleVision, Authentic
Support for embedded XML Schemas in WSDL files
Enhanced WSDL documentation options
Flexible integration of external programs into XMLSpy
Support for CamelCase words in spell checker
Option to strip unnecessary whitespace
Support for Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider for version control systems
Table row and column conditions
XPath Evaluator extension of XPath Builder
Integration with Eclipse 4.2 (adds to support for earlier versions)
Support for US GAAP 2012 XBRL taxonomy (adds to support for earlier versions)
Support for UML 2.4
Support for SysML 1.2
Support for displaying .NET properties as UML associations
Spell checker for UML model components
Print results of directory comparisons in DiffDog
Significant performance improvements in DiffDog
Authentic browser plug-in for Google Chrome
Authentic push installer for browser plug-ins

More information on all of these new features can be found on our "What's New" page…

Google Data Center StreetView with Storm Trooper and R2-D2

2012-10-17T11:11:00.001-04:00

Google has opened up StreetView access into its data center in Nenoir, North Carolina today, giving you the ability to take a virtual walk-through of their facility. In a time where most companies are super-secret about their facilities to prevent vulnerabilities, hackers, or even physical intrusions, this is a remarkable and somewhat surprising publicity stunt. Maybe they are convinced that their site security team - apparently consisting of a single Imperial Storm Trooper and R2-D2 - is sufficient to prevent any malicious attacks…?

Kindle Paperwhite 3G Review: Finally a Worthy Successor to the Kindle 2

2012-10-02T23:52:00.001-04:00

I will gladly admit that I've been a fan of ebook readers from the day the very first Kindle was announced. In fact, I've always been a collector of books and while I do prefer real books in hardcover or paperback form in my library at home, there just isn't anything that could possibly beat an ebook reader for the convenience of bringing several books with me on a trip or for the ability to read a book in bed under low-light conditions, or reading a couple of books on the beach on a sunny summer day, or buying a new book instantly online when I'm finished with the previous one.

So I was truly delighted when my new Kindle paperwhite 3G arrived today. I had always loved the original Kindle in 2007 and the Kindle 2 that I had bought in 2009, because both devices had an e-ink display that was easily viewable in bright daylight conditions as well as indoors. By contrast, I felt that the Kindle Fire was a big disappointment when it first came out. In fact, while I had bought one at that time, it ended up somewhere in a pile of unused electronic gadgets very quickly. It was neither good enough as a tablet computer to truly compete with the iPad, nor was the screen any advantage when reading a book, and the battery life was just too short. In fact, I kept reading my books either on the Kindle 2 (outdoors) or on the iPad (indoors) for the last couple of years.

But the new Kindle paperwhite changes all of that.

Returning to the concept of an e-ink display, the device is again fabulously suitable for daylight reading on the beach on a bright sunny day, yet it also has a subtly lit display that is perfect for low-light conditions and indoor reading at night. The device is extremely light and they got the form-factor just right. Getting rid of the physical keyboard from the Kindle 2 model and replacing it with a touch-screen helped to shrink the form factor considerably and makes reading books on the device that much more comfortable than reading them on an iPad. I cannot wait to see if the advertised battery life of 8 weeks really holds up in real-world reading and usage.

The font choices have been expanded and the high resolution of the display makes reading a real pleasure - even if you switch to a small font-size (if your eyes are still good). Alternatively, you can opt for a larger line spacing and bigger fonts if your eyes get tired more quickly.

As always, the device is directly linked to your Amazon.com account and you can download books form the cloud onto your device easily via the built-in Wi-Fi or free 3G networks. And in addition to highlighting paragraphs and adding notes for your own purposes, you can also share passages with friends via Twitter and Facebook integration. And you can continue to send PDF files and Word documents to a special device- and user-specific @kindle.com email address to read these on your Kindle.

However, I found it a bit disappointing that Amazon has once again failed to include support for ePub publications in their latest device, given that this open electronic book publishing format is fully supported by Adobe, Apple, and many other industry players.

Bottom-line: great form-factor, perfect screen resolution and readability in direct sunlight as well as low-light conditions due to advanced e-ink technology with backlight display. This will be a permanent travel companion for all my future trips.

P.S. I would recommend opting for the 3G model "without special offers". For just $20 more you can get rid of annoying advertising in the Kindle Store screen as well as the sleep-mode display. However, you can also buy the cheaper model first to see whether you find the ads annoying and then later pay $20 on your credit card to "upgrade" your device to get rid of them.

P.P.S. You may ask what is on my reading list on the new Kindle paperwhite? Presently I'm continuing "Chapterhouse: Dune" by Frank Herbert, which I had last read some 12-13 years ago and decided to re-read recently. In fact, I decided to re-read the entire Dune cycle this summer, and have now reached this book. Next I have "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand on my list, followed by some Neal Stephenson novels and "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham.

Backup/Restore on iOS - not always what you'd expect

2012-09-28T16:53:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I had an interesting experience with the backup/restore function in iTunes 10.7 while migrating all my data from my old iPhone 4S to the new iPhone 5. Due to my previous unsatisfactory experience with backup/restore from iCloud when migrating from an iPad 2 to iPad 3 this spring, I decided to use iTunes on my MacPro to make a local backup this time. Furthermore, I wanted to make sure not to run into any iOS 5 -> 6 upgrade issues, so I had already upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS 6 in the previous week to make this switch more efficient - or so I thought! When it was time to make the move, I connected the 4S, waited for the sync operation to finish, and then right-clicked the phone in iTunes and selected backup.

After the backup process completed, I turned off the old phone, connected the new phone, and selected "Restore" to restore the phone from the backup I just had created. After I waited through a reboot and confirmed a few more dialogs, I thought I would now have everything on the new device exactly the same way as I had on the old phone. But that was not the case…

When you do a backup of your PC or Mac and then lose your hard drive you would expect the machine to be exactly the same after you buy a new disk and run a restore operation, right? Especially you'd expect all settings and configurations to be restored.

Apparently not so with iOS. To my great disappointment I found that for a lot of my applications the restore function only restored the app itself, but not any of its settings, especially not any login information. In particular, I had to manually reenter my account information into all of the following apps on my new phone:

Evernote
Dropbox
Twitter
Facebook
WSJ
Kindle
iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime, Find my friends
Netflix
Hulu+
Yelp
OpenTable
MLB At Bat
Disk Decipher
and many more…

In addition, I found that all of the soft-token apps for secure 2-factor authentication to various services were not getting restored with their settings, and so they each generated a new unique device idea and did not allow any easy restoration, transfer, or migration from one device to the next. In fact, with the Google Authenticator that I use for Google Apps and Dropbox as well as with thr Symantec VIP Access app I use for some banking sites my only choice was to log into these web sites, request deactivation of the old soft-token, and then add the new soft-token. In most cases this required having access to the old soft-token to enter a valid code. So I had to turn the old phone back on and migrate every single service authentication to the new token app on the new phone one by one.

Now, in all fairness, I should say that in iOS at least there is a Backup/Restore function, which is completely missing in Android (unless you want to be adventurous and root your device). But I found it very surprising to be lacking in so many ways, especially with regards to app configurations, settings, and logins.

Luckily I don't have to complain about any actual data loss. With my calendar, contacts, and email all in Google Apps, none of those got lost. So this was more of a nuisance that cost me about an hour or two before I had my phone reconfigured to my exact specs and resetting all my soft-token apps.

But it would have been much harder to do, had I actually lost my phone or had it been damage, because removing 2-factor authentication from an account when you don't have the soft-token anymore is rather difficult and often only possible with lengthy tech support calls. It would make much more sense to allow full backup/restore functionality of your phone onto your computer - especially since you can encrypt your backups nicely with iTunes, so the information therein is rather secure.

Bottom-line: plan a couple of hours for your upgrade - especially if you use many apps…

Samsung Galaxy S III vs. iPhone 4S - a phone-swap experience

2012-07-15T15:22:00.001-04:00

I am always on the look-out for the newest gadgets and best technology for my own personal and business use, so when the Samsung Galaxy S III started shipping in the US this month, I pre-ordered a Verizon 4G LTE model in white with 32 GB and it arrived Monday last week. I set myself the goal of doing a "phone-swap" and using the new phone exclusively for one week to determine whether it could replace my iPhone 4S as my primary smart phone device. Having all of my data in the cloud already through a combination of Google Apps, DropBox, Evernote, and our corporate email system, setting up the S III was a breeze. All I had to do was configure my Google and Exchange server accounts, download the DropBox and Evernote apps, and I was ready to go with all my calendar, contacts, notes, to-dos, emails, etc. 100% in sync on the new phone. In addition I installed Google Voice and Skype for my telephony needs as well as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for social networking. The next step was to go through all the other apps on my iPhone that had accumulated over the past year and determine which ones I really used more than once a month. That in of itself was a true cleansing ritual and I was able to get rid of a lot of junk (yes, I do admit that I actually played all levels of Angry Birds Space when it came out). And I was pleasantly surprised to find that about 95% of the apps I actually used were available on the Android platform as well. For convenience, I arranged them in a similar manner with folders so that I would be able to easily locate each app on both devices: For the few apps that I did not find in the Google Play app store (or other app stores) I was able to easily locate an equivalent replacement app with only two exceptions. More on that later… With all these preparations done in the first day, I was ready to embark on my one-week phone swap test and redirected my iPhone phone# to the Galaxy, as well as including it in my Google Voice list of active phones. The second day held three interesting surprises for me in stock and I was actually quite disappointed with the Galaxy at the end of that day. The issues that I encountered were the following:

Battery Drainage: Within only 2-3 hours the battery on my S III had gone from 100% down to 48%. I was only using the phone to play with apps and was on my home Wi-Fi network, so this should not have happened. However, I later found out that the severe battery drain was caused exclusively by a very poor cell phone signal at my location and the phone trying to communicate with the towers despite the poor signal strength. When I used the same phone in the office the next day, where we have good cell phone reception, the battery was still at 79% in the late afternoon.
No German Keyboard: For some reason Samsung had decided to only ship English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese keyboards in the S III. I was, therefore, unable to compose any e-mails or text messages in German.
IPv6 Connectivity Problems: On my home network I already use IPv4 and IPv6 in a dual-stack setup and all my laptops, PCs, Macs, and iOS devices automatically get both an IPv4 and IPv6 address. Then, when communicating with an IPv6 enabled web site they already do that via IPv6, which can be easily verified using the test-ipv6.com site. However, the S III was unable to pass that test and could only use and IPv4 address and thus was unable to reach any IPv6 website. Samsung tech support proved to be highly incompetent in this regard an had absolutely no idea how to fix this problem (or even understand what IPv6 is).

However, on the third day I was able to resolve two of those issues and things were looking much better thereafter: The battery problem is strictly a result of bad cell phone coverage, and we had seen a similar problem with the iPhone about a year ago, so I expect Samsung to fix this shortly. Furthermore, when I am at home I plug my phone in anyway, so the lack of cell phone signal at home and the resulting battery drainage can easily be circumvented. But the battery meter makes it very clear how bad the problem is, if you look at this screen shot taken 1 hour and 15 minutes after taking the phone out of the charger and not using it at all. In that time it has already lost 11% of its charge doing absolutely nothing: The keyboard issue was easily fixed by installing Swype Beta for Android. Swype is an alternative keyboard that not only supports multiple languages (including German), but also provides a much faster input method for text, because it lets you trace the letters of a word on the on-screen keyboard without lifting your finger, which is indeed much faster than tapping each key individually. Furthermore, it comes with a vast dictionary for each language and really recognizes your movements with amazing accuracy. The remainder of the week progressed on a very upbeat note and I really enjoyed my usage of the Galaxy S III after I had overcome those small initial setbacks. In particular, these are the features and app experiences I liked most:

Swype: this is really a powerful productivity tool and I found that text entry speed for me improved by about 50% compared to the standard on-screen keyboard.
Larger screen: I really like the screen size and form factor of the S III. The larger screen size directly translates to 30% more emails visible in GMail as well as better browsing experience in Chrome and other apps.
Much deeper integration with Google Voice: I've been using a Google Voice phone number as my primary phone number for several years now, and the Google Voice app for Android provides a much deeper integration with the telephony module on the phone than iOS would allow. In particular, it is possible to set up the phone so that all outgoing calls are automatically routed via Google Voice, which is brilliant.
Background apps: It has always been an annoyance for me to no end, that on iOS there is no facility for true background applications. For example, DropBox on Android really uploads photos in the background whenever I am connected to my home Wi-Fi network, whereas on the iPhone I have to actually go to the DropBox app to trigger the upload. Similarly Skype works much better on Android than it does on iOS.
Auto-update of apps: I love the fact that I can configure my apps to automatically update on Android. Whenever I am connected to my Wi-Fi network at home, all apps get their updates and I don't have to do anything. By contrast, on my iOS devices I have to go to the App Store and manually hit Update and then enter my password.
Google Voice Search: Maybe it is just me (and my German accent), but Siri and I never developed a true relationship. I found that for many queries on Google Voice Search I can actually get better results and faster responses than with Siri, and it seems that I am not alone in this observation.
4G LTE: it is truly remarkable how much faster the 4G LTE data network is. Similar to what I had previously reported with respect to the iPad 3, the 4G LTE data speed on the S III makes a huge difference, if you are inside the LTE coverage area. Reading emails and news, browsing web sites, etc. is just lighting-fast.
Face Unlock: OK, unlocking your phone automatically via face recognition is really cool. It may not be super-secure, but you can always combine it with PINs etc. And it is really nice when the phone recognizes its owner.
Widgets: Yes, it seems like such a small thing, but being able to see the local weather details, Wall Street Journal headlines, and latest Engadget news directly on my home screen really makes me happy.

In many respects, these positive experiences as well as the abundance of apps that are now available on both the iOS and Android platforms in parallel made it very clear to me that Apple is about to lose its competitive edge in the smart phone business soon, if it hasn't already happened. Either platform allows you to be productive and connected in this mobile world and the differences are becoming more and more a matter of personal taste. Talking of which, in the past week I found that these are the iOS features that I missed the most and where I was unable to locate any reasonable equivalent on the Android platform:

iCloud backup: I found it truly astonishing, that Google would not think of providing Android users with a true cloud-based backup solution for their phones. Backup functionality is limited to calendar, contacts, and emails, and if you want to be able to backup your entire phone (including photos and all apps) you have to do so on an SD card, connected computer, or you have to hack your phone to get root access in order to use a backup app like Titanium Backup.
iMessage: being able to save on SMS costs by sending text messages via the data network in the form of iMessage was a game changer when it was first introduced on iOS. While there are some apps that promise to do the same on Android, the real killer-app feature of iMessage is that it is transparently integrated into the messaging app, so it will try to deliver a message via iMessage if it can, but will automatically revert to sending it via SMS when it cannot do so.
Find-my-phone: The ability to go to the iCloud website, and trigger a loud sonar-ping from your phone (irrespective of what the sound volume is set to) is a feature that we often use in our family to locate missing phones. And no, just calling the phone doesn't work, because they or often set to just vibrate.
Different notification sounds: On my iPhone I use different notification sounds for SMS vs. emails vs. voice mails etc. and I found no good equivalent that would let me configure this in a similar way.
Clear OS upgrade path: This is perhaps the biggest weakness of the Android platform at this stage. The Nexus 7 is coming out with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and there is no clear path that would let me know when I can expect to get 4.1 on my S III. There are so many different devices and variations and the fact that both device manufacturer and phone network provider add their own variations to the base OS results in a plethora of different versions of the OS. And after a while people realize that their 2-year old smart phone suddenly will either not get the latest version of Android or will get it with a substantial delay.

In addition to these platform differences between iOS and Android, I also found that I could not locate either one of the following apps, which I love and use on iOS on a daily basis: Dark Sky is a hyper-local short-term weather prediction software that allows me to predict rain within the next hour with super-accurate precision based on analysis of the weather radar. For boaters (and fireworks committee chair people) this is an absolute must-have. The second app is g! Mobile, which is part of my smart home system that lets me control HVAC, audio, video, irrigation, pool, and various other home automation systems from my phone. Last, but not least, here are four more observations that - when taken together with the above features and apps that I am missing - end up tilting the balance in favor of the iPhone from my perspective:

Battery drainage in areas of bad cell-phone coverage: While I was initially happy to accept this limitation based on the thought that (a) it would only occur at home and (b) would soon be fixed by Samsung, I have since then experienced this battery drainage repeatedly while underway. In all cases it was connected to poor cell-phone coverage, but that is just the reality of the networks today and I experienced battery drain while being out on the boat in Massachusetts Bay as well as while having dinner at Woodman's in Essex.
Larger screen not as useful as initially thought: despite the larger screen, there are several limitations built into Android that make things look quite ugly over time. For example, you get the same layout of 4x4 apps, folders, or widget space only, even though the screen should easily be able to accommodate more rows or columns. And even inside apps like Facebook or Skype or Twitter, the usage of the extra screen real estate is not efficient. By contrast, on the iPhone you get a smaller device yet makes better use of the screen real-estate and due to the high-resolution Retina display looks a lot sharper.
Verizon has much less real-world data coverage than AT&T: Yes, this is clearly a criticism that has nothing to do with Android vs. iOS, but the reality is that while 4G LTE is beautiful and fast wherever it is available, the second you move out of the core coverage area the Verizon CDMA network is really vastly inferior than AT&T's GSM network. And I found in my testing that I got a lot better and more consistent data coverage on my iPhone, for example out on the boat or away from the city.
IPv6 support not working properly: now that IPv6 is permanently activated since the World IPv6 launch day in June this year, I think it is quite astonishing that Samsung would introduce a device that is not capable of getting an IPv6 address or communicating with IPv6-only websites. And talking to Samsung tech-support via website chat and email revealed another weakness: there is no good and knowledgable technical support available. While it is true that the "geniuses" at the Apple "Genius Bar" are not always brilliant either, at least the Apple website and support forums provide the in-depth technical information and I had been able to solve every technical problem there in the past. By contrast, the Samsung website doesn't even have any reference to IPv6 at all.

So after a week-long phone swap, here is my conclusion: for now I'm switching back to my iPhone 4S for daily usage, but I'm really hopeful that future innovation on the Android platform with 4.1 Jelly Bean will close the gap even further and I'm looking forward to repeating this week-long test at that time. I also have a Nexus 7 tablet coming this week and look forward to experimenting with that. At the same time I hope that Apple won't stand still and will surprise us all with new innovative features in their iPhone 5 product this fall, including a larger-screen device. Long-term, I hope that Apple will finally become a more open platform. The ability to replace keyboards and use Swype, the ability to deeply integrate with the telephony capabilities - those are all huge advantages that Android has right now and they will eventually give Android the edge over iOS, if Apple sticks to the closed platform model forever. We've seen this happen before in the 80s with Windows vs. the first generations of MacOS and history is bound to repeat itself - especially now that Apple no longer has its charismatic leader and his reality-distortion field. Bottom-line: if you are looking to buy a new smart phone right now, the Samsung Galaxy S III is a really nice device and as long as you live in a city with great 4G LTE coverage, everything should be fine. It boils down to personal preference in the end. However, if you have been using iPhones for the past couple of years, there is no convincing reason to switch.

Team collaboration and project management: the need for a new cloud-based approach

2012-05-18T13:08:00.001-04:00

The reality of any form of collaboration on a project in today's world is that teams are faced with increasingly complex challenges and are more distributed than ever before. This is certainly true for any software development or IT project, where you might have people from different departments and locations collaborating with outside service providers, consultants, customers, or even out-sourcing firms. And it is also true for any other form of project management in the real world, such as construction projects where you have architects, builders, LEED consultants, engineers, and many contractors and sub-contractors working together.

We hear about these challenges from our customers every day, and I've seen the issues first-hand over the past four years when I undertook a house restoration project to revitalize an 1899 coastal home that had been in disrepair for almost fifty years and we turned it into an energy-efficient green building that achieved LEED For Homes Silver certification. And these collaboration problems are certainly not limited to the software or construction industries - barriers to efficient communication and confusion about roles and responsibilities are a universal issue that plague projects across a broad range of industries and disciplines.

There are several essential pieces that need to come together to enable a distributed team to collaborate effectively and work efficiently:

Clear communication: all team members need to adopt a shared vocabulary and the same term needs to have the same meaning for everybody. Especially when people are in different locations or come from different backgrounds, any miscommunication can become very costly.
Central knowledge base: teams have started to adopt wikis and similar content management tools in greater numbers, because they provide an easy way for team members to capture and record any knowledge about the project so that it can easily be shared with others.
Goal-oriented management of to-dos and task assignments: teams need a way to delegate and monitor assignments, deadlines, and task statuses, allowing each member to stay informed via personalized to-do lists, views, and e-mail notifications.
Clearly defined roles and responsibilities: as the team grows, people need a single location for managing team roles, responsibilities, and members. When team members have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, they have the autonomy and focus necessary to complete project tasks.
Proper decision making process: to make decisions appropriately and to document the outcome of every decision as well as the thought process that went into it, the team needs a tool that facilitates decision making by lending structure and transparency to the process. Structured decision making is more efficient, more inclusive, and generates more sustainable outcomes.

Our vision was to provide all these essential components in one easy-to-use cloud-based application. That's why we created MetaTeam and started making it available as a free public beta this week:

MetaTeam is a different kind of project management tool. Designed to support the entire team – not just the project manager – MetaTeam fosters collaboration and promotes a sense of ownership among all project stakeholders. MetaTeam’s individual apps provide all the essential features discussed above to help your team create an environment of transparency and information accessibility.

No matter if you are part of a virtual team, or collaborate with others just within one organization - you need a cloud-based service for project management and efficient team collaboration that can be easily accessed from any device, any computer, any network, and any organization.

While there are already many other online to-do list services around, and even some more elaborate project management systems, most of them lack the essential Glossary and Decision Making components, and none of them provide all the essential components in one place. That's what makes MetaTeam so unique and, therefore, makes teamwork in MetaTeam so productive and rewarding!

For a quick two minute introduction to MetaTeam, please watch the above video, or you can go directly to metateam.net to read more about the different apps in more detail or view the video in a larger window and HD quality.

Once you have done that, click the sign-up button on metateam.net to create your own free beta account and start using MetaTeam for your next project.

The Emperor's New Clothes - a "New iPad" Review in a "Post-PC World"

2012-03-19T12:07:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned on this blog before, I love gadgets and usually am an early adopter of the latest and greatest toys that tech companies produce and I often share my opinions about these devices with the world. I bought the original Kindle, the Kindle 2, the Kindle Fire, all generations of the iPhone, various Droids, the Xoom, the original iPad, the iPad 2, and now… the new iPad.

When Apple did their big announcement on March 7th, I immediately went online that afternoon, pre-ordered one in the largest configuration (WiFi+4G 64GB), and it arrived yesterday afternoon. I am not going to repeat the benefits and new features of the device, since they've been aptly covered by Walt Mossberg and many others. And the new screen with its super-high resolution is really stunning.

Instead, I wanted to put Tim Cook's claim that this is now a "post-PC world" to the test and decided to set up my new iPad without connecting it to either PC or Mac and use my iCloud backup of the old iPad 2 to set up the new iPad.

Restore from iCloud

To prepare for the migration from my iPad 2 to the new iPad I made sure that I had previously upgraded my iPad 2 to the latest version 5.1 of iOS and also completed a backup to iCloud over my Wi-Fi network at home on the previous day.

I also should probably say at this point that my home Wi-Fi network is 802.11 g+n and my home is connected to the Internet via a Verizon FIOS connection at 50 Mbps. Therefore, running SpeedTest or similar apps on iPhones or iPads typically report latencies of only 64ms, downstream bandwidths of 17-18 Mbps and upstream bandwidths of 16-17 Mbps on the home Wi-Fi network. So by any means, this is not a slow network. One would think that this is the ideal environment for iCloud to shine in a "post-PC world".

After unpacking the new iPad and attaching the cover I started it up, connected it to my home Wi-Fi network, and entered my Apple ID to connect to my iCloud account. As expected, the iPad offered me the choice to restore from iCloud or to restore via iTunes on my computer. I elected to put the iCloud Restore to the test.

To my initial great delight, the iPad showed a download progress bar, and after a short period of 2-3 minutes proceeded to restart the device, show another progress bar underneath the Apple logo, and completed the whole process in about 5 minutes.

Or did it?

When the iPad came back from its reboot, all my apps were in their usual places, but every single one of them had an empty progress bar underneath. And then I was greeted with a rather unspecific message that said "Restore Incomplete":

Not only did the message not inform me of which apps or what data I would be missing, it also left me with the uneasy feeling that this was perhaps not restricted to just apps, because it said "Some items could not be downloaded".

I was still optimistic that all the apps would now quickly download and I could start using my new iPad soon. However, as it turns out the entire process of restoring all the apps from my iCloud backup took more than 3½ hours. Given that I have about 22GB of apps on my iPad and the available network bandwidth mentioned above, the process should have taken less than half and hour!

4G LTE Activation

The next step was to activate the new high-speed 4G LTE data network option. Based on my poor experience with AT&T activations in the past, I decided to go with Verizon this time around. Furthermore, I was looking forward to using the iPad as a mobile hotspot, and presently only Verizon is offering that feature at no extra cost.

After entering all my credit card data and choosing the 5GB data plan, the iPad informed me that it would take up to 15 minutes to activate the new data plan. What really happened after about 5 minutes, however, was that I got the following "Data Plan Activation Failure" message:

A second attempt to "Try Again" just produced the same message after a several minutes of no information and no progress bars. On my third attempt I then got this rather interesting message about the need to "reprovision" my device:

I followed the steps prescribed in this screenshot and was soon greeted my another cryptic message - this one more surprising than all of the others before, because I had not touched the SIM card slot at all and so the card was most definitely still there:

Indeed, after another 15-20 minutes or so, the problem disappeared entirely on its own, the iPad finally connected to the 4G network and also properly activated the data plan. As a next step I wanted to see how fast the 4G network really is…

4G LTE Performance

Living on the Boston Northshore, I've always had network coverage issues in certain rooms in my home, so for this test I went to a window in the attic facing in the direction of the closest cell phone towers and was rewarded with 3 out of 5 bars of LTE signal strength. I ran the trusted old SpeedTest app and to my great delight found downstream bandwidths of 17-18 Mbps, which is indeed as fast as the Wi-Fi connections at my house. Network latency was a bit poorer with 117ms vs. the 64ms on Wi-Fi, and upstream bandwidth was much lower as expected. By comparison, on my iPhone on AT&T's HSPA+ network in this area (which now also shows up as "4G" on the iPhone, even though it is technically just 3G) I get downstream speeds of 2.8 Mbps and upstream speeds of 1.1 Mbps with a latency of 181ms. So these LTE speeds are indeed about 6 times faster than typical 3G speeds and that is quite impressive.

Next I wanted to put it to the real test and download an app over 4G. I picked Infinity Blade II - one of the new apps that were just recently released and optimized for the new high-resolution "retina" display. Imagine my surprise when I got the following message on my screen:

The astonishing thing about this is that Verizon advertises their LTE network with the words "Verizon 4G LTE means real-time responsiveness. Apps. Games. Movies. Seamless streaming". And even though I just signed up for a 5GB data plan they are not letting me download a 791MB game? I could certainly understand the need for a warning message that would advise people that this game has a certain size and ask them if they were sure they wanted to download it over LTE. But to not allow them to download it at all makes little sense.

Similarly, as has already been mentioned in various other blogs it is not quite understandable why FaceTime would not work over the LTE network:

More specifically, there is no technical reason for this arbitrary restriction. As I now have an iPad 2 and the new iPad, I was easily able to turn on the Personal Hotspot feature on the new iPad, create a Wi-Fi network from it, then connect my old iPad 2 to that Wi-Fi network an successfully make a FaceTime video call to Europe from the iPad 2. So the LTE network is easily able to carry the data traffic for FaceTime.

So it seems that while the new iPad does indeed shine technologically on the LTE data speeds as well as the beautiful screen resolution, the whole "post-PC world" hype is to a large degree bogus and it will take quite a while until even the new iPad can be used to its full power on the LTE network.

Some will probably argue that the "post-PC world" meme is not just about smartphones and tablet becoming untethered from computers and directly connecting to the cloud. The idea is supposedly that you can now do certain things on the tablet that required a computer just a few years ago. However, if you look at what the best-selling applications on tablets actually do, then you quickly find that 95% of them are games and the remainder are mostly social media apps or consumer-level tools for editing photos, videos, or organizing personal to-do lists.

For example, while the iPad versions of iMovie and iPhoto are certainly impressive and give people the ability to edit their photos a bit, they are at best useful for hobbyists and when you look at the features available they simply cannot even being to compare to the state of the art of professional photo or video editing tools that exist on computers today.

Summary and Clarification

Just to clarify, I really enjoy using iPads, and continue to believe they are great media consumption devices. I love to read books on them. I love to read magazines and newspapers on them. I even watch the occasional movie or play a game. And for all these purposes, the improved screen resolution of the new iPad as well as the 4G LTE network capabilities are fabulous improvements.

But for any expression of creativity, for software development, for photography, for cinematography, for journalism, blogging, marketing, science, engineering, architecture, … in other words for any serious work … tablets are somewhere between mediocre to useless. For all of these fields the PC - be it Windows, MacOS, or Linux based - has been and will be the essential tool of any creative mind. Therefore, I firmly resent the hubris of people proclaiming this to be a "post-PC world".

The reality distortion field

It is amazing to see the efficiency of the Apple PR machinery at work and how all major newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the NY Times are praising the new iPad and giving its launch such huge coverage. And all the bloggers are doing their part to extol the virtues of the new features by endlessly repeating the same mantra: "insane Retina screen resolution, faster GPU, 4G LTE, same long battery life".

Apparently the reality distortion field is alive and well, even after Steve Jobs has passed away.

But doesn't anyone see that the emperor is wearing nothing at all?

Postscriptum

P.S. Kudos to Joe Brockmeier of ReadWriteWeb for publishing a critical article last week on what we lose in a "post-PC" world.

P.P.S. For comparison purposes, I also set up my wife's new iPad yesterday and in her case used iTunes on her MacBook Pro to install it, activate, it, and restore the backup from her old iPad 1 via the computer. The entire process worked seamlessly with none of the errors I encountered and was completed in about half an hour. She was happy to read her email, go on Facebook, and play Boggle on her new iPad in no time, while I was still waiting for hours for my "Restore from iCloud" to complete…

Fun with EPUB

2012-02-23T10:38:00.001-05:00

Release 2 of the Altova MissionKit 2012, which was announced today, adds tons of new features to various products in the MissionKit, including EPUB support in XMLSpy.

Since there has been a lot of recent press and blog coverage of Apple's iBooks Author program, I wanted to point out that an open standards-based alternative exists in the form of EPUB and that we at Altova are fully committed to supporting such open standards.

EPUB is published by the <idpf>, the International Digital Publishing Forum, and is widely supported by various manufacturers and on many devices. The standard is based on XHTML, CSS, SVG, and other well-known web standards and a huge volume of freely available EPUB books already exist today.

From "The Canterville Ghost" by Oscar Wilde, 1906

Let me point out a few useful resources for getting started with the EPUB standard and also outline the new EPUB capabilities in XMLSpy.

To consume EPUB documents, you will need a reader application for the device of your choice. On Windows 7 or MacOS X computers I would recommend Adobe Digital Editions, which is a free eBook reader applications that supports EPUB as well as PDF/A. On the iPhone or iPad you can simply use the standard iBooks app, which supports EPUB as well as PDF and the Apple-proprietary iBooks formats. On Android devices you can use Aldiko, and you can also read EPUB books on the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and other devices directly.

There are many web sites dedicated to providing collections of free eBooks that you can download to get started, but I recommend Project Gutenberg, which was started by Michael Hart in 1971.

Now let's talk about EPUB support in XMLSpy. Essentially, an EPUB file is a ZIP archive that contains all necessary components in a compressed archive to reduce space. Within that archive is a navigation document, metadata, content documents, CSS stylesheets, as well as all required image files (for further details, please see the EPUB specification, which can be found here). When you open an EPUB file in XMLSpy you are able to view all the included components.

From this archive view you can now directly edit the CSS files as well as other XML-based navigation and content files and you can validate the entire EPUB package file using epubcheck directly from within XMLSpy as well as preview the publication in XMLSpy's built-in browser preview.

We are all keenly aware that the publishing industry is undergoing a radical change these days. People consume magazines and books increasingly via electronic devices rather than in print and in the process the books themselves transform into a more interactive reading experience than we had ever seen before. Having an open standard like EPUB available ensures that no one manufacturer or company can dominate the industry and it also allows us to preserve many existing books and make them widely available via organizations such as Project Gutenberg.

While my wife and I are collectors of printed books - the above photo is from our home library - I believe the march towards electronic books is inevitable. I am convinced that within the next few years we will see the huge shift in the industry continue and I hope that EPUB support in our products will allow people to create as well as consume electronic books in many ways.

HTML5, large-scale ETL, Java API, JDBC, MDA, and web differencing

2011-10-19T07:33:00.001-04:00

It is always a very exciting time of the year here at Altova when we reveal our latest major software version, and I am pleased to announce our MissionKit 2012 release today!

As always, we've packed a ton of exciting new features into this release and they span the entire product line.

So here it is in a nutshell - the cool "stuff" that is now available in version 2012:

Major enhancements for web developers

HTML5 is quite obviously the way to go and we now have full HTML5 support in both XMLSpy and StyleVision. In fact, XMLSpy's intelligent editing support and entry helpers make for super-fast web development in both HTML4 and HTML5 with support for previews in multiple different browsers. In addition, the CSS editor in XMLSpy now fully supports CSS3 in addition to CSS2, and we've added CSS3 support to StyleVision as well.

Another major feature for web developers is now available in DiffDog: Web Differencing! You will love the ability to do file differencing as well as directory comparisons between local directories and server directories accessed via FTP or HTTP. You can even do differencing between two servers! This takes a lot of pain out of deployments or keeping servers in sync, as well as helping greatly with moving to the cloud!

Support for large-scale ETL

ETL ("Extract-Transform-Load") projects as well as larger and more complicated data transformations and mappings are now a breeze with the new streaming support in MapForce. In addition to the existing streaming output capabilities, MapForce 2012 adds new streaming input capabilities that lets you process XML, CSV, and FLF text files as well as database rows with no limitation on size.

Major improvements to Java support

We've always supported Java application development, but the integration APIs for XMLSpy, MapForce, and other products got a major overhaul this time around with an all-new extended Java API that makes using our products from within Java applications a breeze, and there are now cool new code samples available to demonstrate the use of the new APIs.

In addition, we've added JDBC driver support to all our products that integrate with databases. This complements the existing ADO and ODBC drivers support nicely and provides for better performance and more integration options with some database servers.

Support for MDA

If you work with UML you are going to love the new UModel. We now support platform independent models that can be described without concern for the details of any specific programming language. This lets software architects focus exclusively on the logic of the subject domain rather than worry about the characteristics of any particular programming language.

Through the new Model Transformation selection in UModel you can then instantly transform into any supported language, such as Java, C#, Visual Basic, databases or XML Schema.

You can even apply Model Transformations to a project that has been reverse-engineered from existing source code. For example an existing Java application can be reverse-engineered by UModel to create a UML model and then transformed to generate C# classes. Imagine that!

But these are just the highlights - there are many more new features in this release! For more in-depth information, check out the Altova Blog as well as the What's New page on our website. And all of it is available immediately for downloading from our website.

Recent popular articles on the Altova Blog

2011-10-18T22:45:00.001-04:00

Just a quick pointer to make sure that you didn't miss any of the excellent articles that we published on the Altova Blog these past couple of months. These contain tips on using our products, helpful development pointers, use-cases, and much more. Here is a quick digest of some of the most popular articles…

Feel free to follow any of the links below to directly access the articles mentioned, or go to the Altova Blog home page to read more.

Software Testing for State Machines

Regardless of a software project's goals or source code language, it's obvious that the earlier a defect is found the easier, cheaper, and more rapidly it can be fixed. Altova UModel 2011 (r2 and beyond) can generate code from UML state machine diagrams that can be used to validate conceptual logic very early in the project lifecycle, potentially saving you days of development time.

Read the post ...

Switch Statement vs. Look-up Table in MapForce

One of the great things about working with software developers is that you get to see firsthand how they architect different solutions to design challenges. We recently received a comment from a developer in response to our post Expandable If-Else Works like a Switch Statement in MapForce suggesting a more elegant solution to an expanded if-else statement. He rather convincingly suggests that a value-map would accomplish the job more efficiently.

Read the post ...

New XML Schema Editing Tools in XMLSpy

XMLSpy is the industry's leading XML editor for a reason – XMLSpy delivers power and flexibility in the same package. Earlier this year Altova introduced additional functionalities including sorting in schema view, schema refactoring, intelligent support for changing types, and customizable XML Schema documentation. Wow!

Read the post ...

XML in the Cloud

More and more enterprises are discovering the advantages of implementing database applications in the cloud – high availability and reliability, automatic scaling, and freedom from hardware costs and maintenance requirements to name a few. In this blog post we demonstrate how to connect to the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and build a small database using Altova DatabaseSpy. Since the database Connection Wizard is consistent across the Altova MissionKit, you can connect the same way using XMLSpy, MapForce, or StyleVision as well.

Read the post ...

Using Charts to Effectively Communicate Data

XMLSpy, StyleVision, and DatabaseSpy have intuitive features that allow even the most novice user to create powerful reports with sophisticated charts based on XML, XBRL, and database data. With Altova tools you can easily create stacked charts (bar and area) and candlestick charts, use chart overlays, control background images and color gradients, change the position of axis labels, and more! See how you can leverage this functionality to support your own projects.

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A personal tribute to Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T10:57:00.001-04:00

I learned about the passing of Steve Jobs this Wednesday as I was in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld. I was munching on a cream puff from Beard Papa's on my way back to the hotel when the message popped up on my iPhone.

Image credit: Jonathan Mak (麥朗)

I was thunderstruck by the news and observed a moment of silence and remembering. While I only ever had the opportunity to meet Steve in person once at a talk he gave during his time at NeXT, he and the company he built have made a huge impact on my life in numerous ways.

It all started in the early eighties when I went to high school in Linz, Austria, and discovered my love for computers and learned how to program on the TRS-80 we had in school, on a Commodore PET that one of my friends owned, and an Apple II that was built into some laboratory equipment in my dad's organic chemistry lab at the JKU university.

In 1983 I bought my first computer, an Apple IIe, and two years later I bought my first Mac. It was through these two machines that I got deeper and deeper into programming, became a serious computer geek, and learned everything from BASIC to UCSD Pascal and assembly language for the 6502 and 68000 microprocessors. And I started working while still going to high school and wrote software for small businesses in the area to help finance the purchase of various computer upgrades, modems, printers, and other gadgets.

After high school I went on to study semiconductor and solid state physics at JKU university and continued to work part-time. During that time I worked as a teacher at a local computer camp for kids that offered sailing and programming instructions (on Apple II and Macintosh computers) over the summer, and I started working for Apple's Austrian subsidiary in Vienna, doing training for their reseller channel as well as participating in the founding of AMDA, the Austrian Macintosh Developer Association.

It was through that Apple connection in Vienna that I got the opportunity of a lifetime in 1988 when I was admitted into the summer-intern program at Apple's main campus in Cupertino. For three summers and one February break I contributed to various projects at Apple ranging from a modification of the Calculator desk accessory to support international number formats, modifying the internal disk image program that was then used to transfer operating system images from the Cupertino campus to the Fremont factory, to writing the 'KCHR' editor and numerous other modules for ResEdit. I made many great friends during those years and, in fact, just had dinner again with some of them last week in San Francisco.

What I had learned at Apple in those years profoundly influenced my life and kindled a love for elegant and powerful developer tools that continues to live on in what I do at Altova today. Ultimately, these three summers in California also played a significant role in my decision to relocate to the US in 2001 with my entire family and to become US citizens in early 2009.

My life would truly have been very different without the influences of Apple, it's products, and it's visionary founder.

Thank you, Steve.

Photo credit: Nora Falk

A life-changing software called “Lose It!”

2011-03-04T19:46:00.001-05:00

It is not often that I would give a piece of software the attribute “life-changing”. Certainly, XMLSpy and it’s huge success has changed my life and that of many people at Altova. And others have called DiffDog a life-saver before:

"DiffDog saved my life! Recordare developed MusicXML as an Internet-friendly format for publishing and sharing digital sheet music. As MusicXML became more popular, we needed a truly XML-aware differencing program to evaluate the XML files created by our Dolet plug-ins. DiffDog gives us the high quality regression testing tool that we had long sought for our MusicXML projects."
- Michael Good, CEO, Recordare

But the software I discovered on January 1^st this year is the one that best deserves this label. Like so many other years before, my New Year’s resolution this year was to finally lose some weight. And most every year that resolution didn’t last very long. In fact, over the past 17 years I had managed to gain just a few lbs every year – but those added up and ultimately got me from 200 lbs to about 291 lbs in over a decade. Not good.

But this year it was different. This year I discovered Lose It! – a nifty little iPhone app plus website – and started on a real weight-loss program (in combination with a consultation with my doctor). What Lose It! does is deceivingly simple: it helps you track your calories – both those taken in as food and those expended in the form of exercise.

But it doesn’t restrict you in your choices of what foods you can eat. Due to the tracking you quickly learn what is good for you and what isn’t, so you end up making healthy food choices automatically.

And over time your actual habits start changing. For example, when I now know that I have a big dinner with friends ahead of me, I always make sure to exercise right after work and build up a calorie-deficit going into the dinner. And the fact that you are counting calories with the iPhone app right at the dinner table helps you learn portion control and get back to eating in moderation.

As a result of that, Lose It! has enabled me to lose 25.2 lbs in the past 9 weeks. That’s just a little over 2.5 lbs per week, so it is a very healthy rate of weight-loss.

I still have a long way ahead of me and only time will tell if I can reach my goal on time. But I already feel a lot better and have a lot more energy. And it feels truly empowering and liberating to finally see those extra pounds disappear.

This post may sound like a commercial for the latest weight-loss fad, but it isn’t. In fact, I have no financial interest in the company behind Lose It! or their products. And the iPhone app is free. The only reason for me to blog about this is to (a) give a tip of the hat to the people who created Lose It! and (b) hopefully help a few other people get started on their way to a healthier weight.

Altova MissionKit packs a punch with new features in v2011r2

2011-03-03T16:37:00.001-05:00

I’ve been traveling for a bit, so I haven’t even had time to tell you about the new version 2011r2 of our Altova product line yet. As always we’ve been very busy in the past four months and have added a number of very cool features to all our products. As a result the Altova MissionKit v2011r2 packs a nice punch and shouldn’t be missing from any professional developer’s toolbox.

Here are the highlights among the new features:

Huge improvements in the charting functionality that we’ve originally introduced in v2011 with a wide range of new customizable charting features, including Stacked Bar Charts, Area Charts, Stacked Area Charts, Candlestick Charts, Chart overlays, Background images, Color gradients, and customizable axis labels.
Embedding external files in XML documents via CDATA blocks (supporting Base 16 and Base 64 encoding).
XML Schema refactoring in XMLSpy.
Customizable generation of documentation from XMLSpy, MapForce, and UModel via StyleVision stylesheets. This provides countless options to customize your documentation from adding your logo to creating a detailed in-depth report about your mappings or models for later analysis.
Data streaming for file output in MapForce for large ETL projects.
Support for IATA PADIS EDI format in MapForce.
Automatic creation of reverse mappings in MapForce.
Barcode support for QR, DataMatrix, PDF417, Codabar, Code39, and many other formats.
Ability to create multiple output files from a single design template in StyleVision.
Ability to create ASPX web applications for dynamic data output in StyleVision.
Support for BPMN 2.0 in UModel.
Code-generation from state machine diagrams in UModel.
Word comparison in DiffDog.

And there are many more additional features. Also make sure to check out the latest couple of posts on the Altova Blog that go into more detail.

As always, you can download a free 30-day trial version from our website and our tools are available in English, German, and Japanese versions – plus XMLSpy is also available in a Chinese version now.

Motorola Xoom a huge disappointment

2011-03-02T22:42:00.001-05:00

I couldn’t resist the temptation to get my hands on the first Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) device and wanted to explore the tablet world outside of iOS a bit, so I bought a Motorola Xoom the day it came out. I’ve now spent a couple of days with the device, downloaded apps, explored all the features, and come to the conclusion that the Motorola Xoom and Android 3.0 are a huge disappointment.

Let’s start with the Xoom hardware problems first:

It is rather heavy
The battery life is too short (about 5-6 hours rather than the 10 advertised)
The power-button is in the most ridiculous spot on the back of the device (next to the camera & flash)
The plastic snap-on cover is bulky and adds weight and thickness to it

Yes, the screen with HD resolution is nice. But that’s about the only thing that is better than the original iPad.

Now let’s talk about the Android 3.0 issues:

There are only about 16 apps available that are designed for an Android tablet form-factor. Robert Scoble goes into great detail on that issue in this blog post today.
When you run a few apps (and download some that are more designed for a phone) you inevitably arrive at a state, where the UI starts to feel sluggish – despite the dual-core CPU. The way that background applications can eat processor cycles and make your foreground application feel incredibly slow is a design flaw that I’ve already observed in the Motorola Droid a year ago. And it hasn’t been fixed in Android 3.0.
In using the device for a couple of hours, I got multiple apps to crash on me.
The Android app store is still extremely difficult to navigate and you cannot easily tell the good applications apart from the “me too” junk.
When connected to an Exchange server and trying to archive a piece of e-mail, the list of available folders is shown by flattening the entire folder hierarchy instead of displaying it properly. Therefore, I have to scroll down for 4-5 pages until I find the folder I need.
The idea to put widgets on the home screen that are more than just an icon is nice. But the implementation is ridiculous. There are plenty of apps that claim to be a widget, but all they are is an icon. Other apps, such as Twitter, have a widget view, but you cannot control the update frequency. With the CNN widget this leads to flickering and nervous screen updates. Then, when you tap on the widget, it takes forever to load the app and display the news.
Flash player isn’t available yet.
There is no movie availability other than YouTube. Nothing even remotely similar to the iTunes store where I can simply rent or buy a movie anytime.

I could go on for a long time. It is simply ridiculous how far from the truth the TV commercial for the Motorola Xoom is.

And, of course, now that the iPad 2 has been announced today, the Xoom looks even worse…

Watson 9000

2011-02-15T23:08:00.001-05:00

I’ve been watching Jeopardy – The IBM Challenge for the last two evenings and the Nova documentary “Smartest Machine on Earth” the week before. What the folks at the IBM Watson team have pulled together is really quite impressive. Not only is Watson in the lead so far – and by a huge margin – it has also taken a giant leap forward for natural language processing in computers.

From the early days of the Eliza program by Joseph Weizenbaum it has always been a challenge for computers to recognize and process human language (click here for a JavaScript version of Eliza that you can interact with). While we’ve made remarkable progress in speech recognition in the past couple of years, the actual ability to understand and interpret language has eluded even the most sophisticated computer systems.

Humans just have a tendency to use colorful phrases, idioms, pop-culture references, and mix it all with humor in a way that is difficult to grasp for a machine. Nevertheless the Watson team seems to have made great strides in tackling these difficult problems.

It was immediately obvious that Watson did best when the question was directly related to an encyclopedic fact, such as the various illnesses in the “Don’t worry about it” category tonight. But even with humorous categories like “Church & State”, Watson did fine. In fact, Watson didn’t just do fine tonight: he (it?) dominated this second day of the Jeopardy challenge finishing with a crazy lead of $36,881, to $5,400 for Rutter and $2,400 for Jennings before going into Final Jeopardy.

The big surprise, however, came in the Final Jeopardy round tonight, when the category was “U.S. Cities”. In response to the answer “This city’s largest airport is named for a World War II hero, and its second largest airport is named for a World War II battle”, Watson came up with “What is Toronto”, which is clearly not a US city, while the two human contestants both responded with the correct answer (What is Chicago? The airports are O’Hare and Midway). However, Watson was reasonably unsure about its answer and only wagered $749, so his loss was kept nicely under control. Clearly, there is something amiss in the interpretation of categories in Watson’s algorithms. It could potentially be as simple as a missing entry in a synonym table that equates “U.S.” with “US” and “USA”…

But we’ve seen that same weakness in the category interpretation also in various rounds of test games that we saw in the Nova documentary.

It remains to be seen how Watson fares tomorrow in the final round of Jeopardy. I will definitely be watching…

In any case, now it is just a simple matter of time until IBM shifts its company name one letter to the left and comes out with the next release of Watson, which will probably be called version 9000:

HAL 9000 responding to Dave Bowman in “2001: A Space Odyssey”

More commentary on Watson can be found on Techmeme, and in particular I recommend this article All Things Digital.

UPDATE: For an explanation of the “Toronto” incident by David Ferrucci, project manager for Watson, please see “The Confusion over an Airport Clue” on the IBM Smarter Planet blog.

Using Altova tools for Cloud Computing

2011-01-07T11:01:00.001-05:00

Obviously, cloud computing is one of the major trends of 2010 and continues to excite people. We just posted a brand new detailed article on the Altova Blog about XML in the Cloud that shows how to use DatabaseSpy, MapForce, XMLSpy, and StyleVision to work with an Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) instance in the cloud.

Essentially the Amazon RDS is a big MySQL database in the cloud, so you can use the Data Source connection wizard in all Altova tools to easily connect with the cloud instance, just like you would connect with a local instance of MySQL:

Similarly, in a previous post last summer we showed you how to configure Altova tools to work with a SQL Server Azure instance, if you prefer the Microsoft cloud computing platform. And in another post we showed you in detail how to work with XML data in SQL Server Azure.

Check out all three articles and see how easy it is to use Altova tools not just for your enterprise in-house or classic web development projects, but also for your cloud computing projects!

Microsoft files patent for shape-shifting touchscreen

2010-11-29T12:22:00.001-05:00

Every now and then a new technology comes about that has the potential to change the way how we interact with computers in a profound manner. The first computer mouse, the first touchscreen display, the first use of multi-touch – all paved the way for a new generation of user interfaces.

I believe we are now witnessing the introduction of the next such new technology. In a new US patent application 20100295820, which was published last week, Microsoft inventor Erez Kikin-Gil proposes a new way to construct a “tactile feedback” touchscreen. According to this new invention, a shape-memory polymer film is placed onto a computer display and UV light is used on a pixel-by-pixel basis to selectively change the topography of the surface.

While tactile feedback displays are nothing new per se, previous approaches by Nokia, Disney, and others had been using voltages of different frequencies to trick fingertips into experiencing some touch sensations. The huge disadvantage of such vibrotacticle displays, however, is the annoying humming sounds they emit. Which might be one reason why they were never widely successful.

The Microsoft invention completely circumvents that problem and proposes a radically different approach using UV lights and a plastic film that is using shape-memory polymer technology. Here is the abstract from the patent application:

“A light-induced shape-memory polymer display screen is provided herein. One example display device includes a display screen having a topography-changing layer including a light-induced shape-memory polymer. The display device further includes an imaging engine configured to project visible light onto the display screen, where the visible light may be modulated at a pixel level to form a display image thereon. The display device further includes a topography-changing engine configured to project agitation light of an ultraviolet band towards the display screen, where the agitation light is modulated at a pixel level to selectively change a topography of the topography-changing layer.”

And here are some of the drawings attached to the patent application to further illustrate the invention and its use in display technology:

FIG. 2 schematically shows agitation light projected onto a light-induced shape-memory polymer

FIG. 5 schematically shows a user interacting with an example display screen having a topography-changing layer

It is widely assumed that such shape-shifting touchscreens would at first be used in surface computing displays, like tabletop computers, but it isn’t impossible to imagine smartphone or tablet computers using such technology, too. How cool would that be!

For further reference, see this article in New Scientist Tech, as well as blog posts on Gizmodo and more via Techmeme.

Communicating more efficiently with E-mail and Social Media

2010-10-18T20:38:00.001-04:00

Every now and then – sometimes in response to one of my jubilant “inbox zero” tweets – people ask me for tips on how to communicate more efficiently using E-Mail as well as various social networks. For a long time I have resisted their questions or occasionally simply given people the link to the “Inbox Zero” video by Merlin Mann.

However, over the past year I gradually came to realize that while I initially started out just following the Inbox Zero paradigm in the spring of 2008, my system of dealing with E-Mail and social media interactions has evolved considerably since then.

I am not going to repeat any of the Inbox Zero principles here – for those I recommend the above-mentioned video or getting Merlin’s upcoming book on the subject – but instead will focus on what I do differently and in addition to his principles.

Inbox Zero²

Clearly zero² is still zero, so take the topic with a grain of salt. My approach to keeping my E-mail inbox cleaned up and down to zero focuses much more on prevention than just managing the incoming flow of E-mail. An E-Mail that you don’t even receive in the first place immediately translates to less work spent on dealing with it.

Step 1

Get the best spam filter you can afford. Some come bundled with anti-virus and security software and those work well. Others are stand-alone products and that is fine, too. The most important thing is to configure it correctly so that all your contacts are white-listed and the spam settings are updated constantly via subscription service. If tuned correctly, a spam filter will virtually eliminate 98% of spam while yielding very little if not even zero false-positives.

Step 2

Once your spam filter is running smoothly, modify the Inbox Zero rules that you are using so that the most desirable action is no longer to delete an e-mail. Instead, the most desirable action is now to mark an e-mail as junk and block the sender from ever sending you e-mail again. This sounds incredibly brutal, but just think of the countless newsletters, cartoons of the day, or other useless noise you’ve subscribed to at some point in time in the past and then think about how often you actually read them today. Instead of deleting them – which forces to delete them again and again and again week after week – unsubscribe from them if there is a legit unsubscribe-link at the bottom or mark them as junk so that the spam-filter will automatically delete them for you. The one exception is, of course, the Altova Developer Newsletter – that is the one newsletter you should indeed read every month. ☺

Step 3

Whenever you are filling out a web form, placing an order, or requesting a white-paper, take great care in reading all the options and making sure to uncheck the “send me a monthly e-mail” check-box.

Step 4

Don’t hesitate to use the mark e-mail as junk and block the sender function on unsolicited sales messages, out-sourcing offers to India, or uninteresting and irrelevant business-development requests. This may feel a bit impolite at first, but remember: these messages came unsolicited, so there is no need to be polite or even respond at all.

Step 5

If there are annoying e-mails that you must receive as part of company-internal policies or correspondence that you cannot simply mark as junk e-mail, you may want to consider setting up a special folder for them and using a rule to automatically have those e-mails delivered into that folder. Then you simply make time once a week to read those internal e-mails and scan them for important information before you archive them.

Step 6

Last, but not least, observe your own e-mail behavior and realize that a lot of the e-mail you receive probably is in response to a question you sent. In essence, you are generating your own inbound e-mail flood. Now adjust your own behavior by determining which questions can be better and more efficiently dealt with in a phone call, an IM conversation, a Skype call, or even via social networking tools, like Twitter. You will find that as a result of adjusting your outgoing e-mail practices, your inflow will adjust in a similar fashion.

By adopting these steps and following all the other best practices from Inbox Zero you can develop a habit of reducing the amount of e-mail you have to deal with and keeping your inbox empty, your stress-levels low, and your to-do list nicely organized.

Be Smart. Get a Smartphone.

The second most important productivity increasing tool is the use of a smartphone. I personally prefer to use an iPhone, 4 but it doesn’t really make a difference if you use Android, Windows Phone 7, or the iPhone. The key is to set up your e-mail account in such a way that you can not only read your e-mail on your smartphone, but also process it according to Inbox Zero principles. This means you need to be able to (a) delegate e-mail via forwarding; (b) reply to e-mail quickly; (c) archive it after reading; and (d) delete it if it wasn’t important.

If your smartphone only allows you to read your e-mail, but doesn’t allow for the above processing, it is entirely useless, because now you are wasting time on reading an e-mail which you will have to later read again. If that is the case, you may need to get a better e-mail provider, better smartphone, or just figure out how to use it properly.

In my case we use a Microsoft Exchange server as our e-mail back-end system in the office, and I use an iPhone 4 as my smartphone – and it works like a charm and lets me do all the processing I need to do.

Now why is that important? The answer is quite simple: there are uncountable minutes of “dead time” during a day that you don’t even realize you have or that you are currently wasting. Anything from waiting at a Dr.’s office to an unproductive meeting and from waiting in front of the school to pick up your kids to standing in line at the post office. There are always unused periods of 3-4 minutes each – sometimes even 5-10 minutes – that you can use for reading and processing e-mail.

The Inbox Zero video teaches you to not have Outlook (or your preferred e-mail client) open all the time and instead dedicated specific periods of time during the day for dealing with e-mail. By using a smartphone and processing e-mail during otherwise dead periods of time, you can easily reduce the duration and frequency of your e-mail processing times during your work day and thus gain more productivity.

Once you get good at this, it will also no longer be necessary for you to set up “Out of Office” notifications when you are on a business trip. Instead you will find that you can easily deal with the normal e-mail inflow by using your smartphone during the day and perhaps spending one hour per day on dedicated e-mail processing on your laptop in the morning or evening in your hotel room, during which you reply to those e-mails that cannot be answered with a simple 1-line reply from the smartphone.

Social Media

We’ve already discussed that the Inbox Zero approach teaches us to not have the e-mail client running all day long so that it doesn’t interrupt our work constantly. The same is true – perhaps even more so – for social media. If you keep Facebook open in your browser the entire day, don’t be surprised if you can’t get anything done. The social life of our friends is guaranteed to always be more interesting than your current job or assignment.

I am by no means saying that social media are useless. But you can easily waste a lot of time, if you don’t deal with social media in a carefully measured approach.

My recommendation is to only open Facebook or other social media sites from your computer at home, but not use it at all from your work environment. If you have to check Facebook during the day, do it in your lunch break using your smartphone.

Last, but not least, think about your approach to social media. If you are primarily a consumer and reading what other people post, you are probably wasting a lot of time. Try a different approach and think of social media as your personal broadcasting tool to spread your ideas, amplify your blog, increase interest in your product – and you will find that a lot more productive interactions and real conversations will happen as a result.

At the same time, be careful that you are not getting sucked into over-sharing…

Becoming even more efficient

Clearly, this blog post is already way too long. Which brings me to the one problem I haven’t mastered yet in my own communication: to try to keep all e-mail, messages, blog posts, etc. short and sweet. Ideally, I would want to aim at having all my e-mail be less than five sentences. But that is really hard to do…

Time Warp: Ray Ozzie posts Windows 1.0 Press Kit

2010-10-15T08:30:00.001-04:00

Ray Ozzie has resurfaced and is apparently blogging again. In his first post he unearths an ancient artifact that he stumbled upon while cleaning up his home office: a press kit folder with collaterals from the Windows 1.0 launch in November 1985.

A very interesting historic document and definitely recommended to read…

XML Aficionado

Bye bye, Instagram

Totally redesigned Altova Website Launched Today

Password Security and Keeping your Data Safe

How secure is your password?

Recommendations

Further reading:

Tools I use:

Ingress - an AR-MMOG created by Niantic Labs at Google

iPad 2 with dead/swollen battery - Apple refuses to fix it and wants to charge $240 for replacement

Windows 8 double-fail

Altova MissionKit 2013

Google Data Center StreetView with Storm Trooper and R2-D2

Kindle Paperwhite 3G Review: Finally a Worthy Successor to the Kindle 2

Backup/Restore on iOS - not always what you'd expect

Samsung Galaxy S III vs. iPhone 4S - a phone-swap experience

Team collaboration and project management: the need for a new cloud-based approach

The Emperor's New Clothes - a "New iPad" Review in a "Post-PC World"

Restore from iCloud

4G LTE Activation

4G LTE Performance

Summary and Clarification

The reality distortion field

Postscriptum

Fun with EPUB

HTML5, large-scale ETL, Java API, JDBC, MDA, and web differencing

Major enhancements for web developers

Support for large-scale ETL

Major improvements to Java support

Support for MDA

Recent popular articles on the Altova Blog

Software Testing for State Machines

Switch Statement vs. Look-up Table in MapForce

New XML Schema Editing Tools in XMLSpy

XML in the Cloud

Using Charts to Effectively Communicate Data

A personal tribute to Steve Jobs

A life-changing software called “Lose It!”

Altova MissionKit packs a punch with new features in v2011r2

Motorola Xoom a huge disappointment

Watson 9000

Using Altova tools for Cloud Computing

Microsoft files patent for shape-shifting touchscreen

Communicating more efficiently with E-mail and Social Media

Inbox Zero2

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Be Smart. Get a Smartphone.

Social Media

Becoming even more efficient

Time Warp: Ray Ozzie posts Windows 1.0 Press Kit

Inbox Zero²