I am moving my blog back to my main site: http://www.ComputingAsYouLikeIt.com, since pretty much everything here is technology oriented, and fits well within my software development / IT Consulting efforts at Computing As You Like It.
I will leave my old articles here for reference, but you can find them on my new site as well.
Please come and visit me there, and correct your bookmarks.
You can also find me at http://www.dingfelder.org
Cheers,
Ding
Filed under Uncategorized
BitTorrent?
BitTorrent on Thursday unveiled a new service, dubbed Sync, that will let users synchronize personal files across multiple devices. The system uses peer-to-peer technology to sync files between devices. Details are scant, but a BitTorrent spokesman explained that Sync will allow direct synchronization between machines without any cloud caching via native apps for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, as well as native NAS integration. Files will be encrypted, as well.
Mega?
Kim Dotcom’s recently launched Mega file locker website has been climbing the ranks of the world’s biggest sites very quickly indeed. Just yesterday it had become the biggest site in New Zealand and today it’s managed to eclipse not only Rapidshare, but DropBox as well.
This was announced by Kim Dotcom on his regularly updated twitter account, with the simple message “141.” This is because while Mega.co.nz’s three month ranking is still somewhere in the low thousands, in-fact the site’s daily rank has show to 141, ranking it in the top 150 websites in the world. Considering it was only launched on Friday, that’s a tremendous achievement.
Dropbox?
Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc., that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronises so that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of which computer is used to view it. Files placed in this folder also are accessible through a website and mobile phone applications.
Others?
I looked at google drive, but this turned me off:
“Google may make and publicize derivative works of your uploaded content for the operation, promotion, or improvement of its services, and may store its own copies of your content even after you stop using its services”
How do I choose?
Clearly they are all different beasts. How do you choose which one is best?
I looked on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_hosting_services but mega is not there. So lets compare them here instead. Unfortunately BitTorrent is not ready yet so it is not included.
Features |
MEGA |
Dropbox |
Free Storage |
50 GB |
2 GB (up to 18GB via Referrals) |
Paid Storage (basic) |
500 GB |
100 GB |
Monthly Cost (basic) |
9.99 Euros |
9.99 Dollars |
Undelete Function |
No |
Yes (Paid @ 39.99$/Year) |
Encrypted? |
Yes |
No |
Drive Mapping? |
No* (on the way) |
Yes |
It is really simple. If you require drive mapping (copy files from once device to another) then drop box wins for the moment.
If you require privacy (encryption), or volume (big files) then Mega is the king.
You decide. I will publish updates later as the coming features start pouring in.
Follow me on twitter for more updates: http://www.twitter.com/dingfelder
Filed under Uncategorized
Well, the online New Zealand online auction site business just got a bit more crowded, with the addition of Knomee.
Initial reactions? I’m not overly impressed.
What needs work?
But I think the biggest hurdle for Knomee will be getting sales volume. Until they get customers, sellers will not want to risk paying for product listings. But unless they have sellers (and products to sell) customers will not want to visit. It is the classic chicken and egg problem.
Filed under auction
We all know about Trademe. They have recently raised their rates, Trade Me said the fee for selling an item valued at $50 – about its average trade – would rise from $3.75 to $3.95, an increase of 5.3%. The highest rise would be for items priced at $1500, for which success fees will increase by 8.1% to $79.50. There will be lower increases on higher-priced items and no change to the maximum $149 success fee.
Some users reported indignation as a couple months ago Trade Me reported an 8.4% jump in its annual profit to $75.6 million. But it is hard for rivals to offer much competition as they lack a critical mass of buyers.
Who are the players in this market?
Trademe
I will start with Trademe because they are the biggest player in the New Zealand market.
Looking today, they have:
So, clearly they have good volume. It is fair to say their volume is bigger than everyone else combined.
What are their fees like?
Then if you sell, they charge a success fee:
This is the major area of contention for users and competitors, as most competitors starting up new businesses are advertising lower fees or no fees.
Sella:
Sella.co.nz has a web page that lists the pros and cons, comparing them with trademe but obviously some of this may be marketing hype. The primary difference is Sella is free of commissions or success fees. Their description is:
Pure and simple, it’s free to buy or list. Our business model is to make money selling advertising on the site as well as offering featured listings, where for a small fee, users can buy priority ranking (ie: display their listings above others).
Having said that, while the listing may be free, the volume is a lot lower than trademe. Here are their stats:
Wheedle
Mainfreight co-founder and Rich-Lister Neil Graham is taking on Trade Me with a new online auction and classified site, Wheedle.co.nz. Wheedle promises to be a lower cost alternative to trademe.
But after opening, and trading for a couple of days, Wheedle announced it woud close its online marketplace while it carries out a ”thorough update” of its systems and processes. Managing director Carl Rees did not give an indication of how long that might take.
He said Wheedle would not reopen until its management team were ”completely confident its performance and processes meet the standards expected by New Zealand consumers”. Wheedle’s website went offline after a blogger identified a fault that let people change the reserve price of other members’ auctions.
Asked in October when the site would reopen, general manager Carl Rees told NBR,
“At this point in time I have no idea. Hopefully before Christmas but it could be the New Year.” “The fixes are minimal compared to the size of our entire source code and development. We identified the areas where we had problems and we have engaged an independent company to do the fixes … for peace of mind.”
It is not clear what fee if any will apply for under $20. Sellers won’t like a fee if it does not sell at all. But the fees are a lot cheaper than Trade Me. However the major factor is price. Say your item sells for $50. Then it is $1 on Wheedle and $3.95 on Trade Me making it a net $49 vs $46.25.
Knomee
Knomee.co.nz promises to be another alternative, with free listings.
http://www.facebook.com/Knomee is the only information at the moment until their site goes live. Today is the day it is supposed to happen but no sign of life yet. Sounds like it is supposed to happen at noon.
Knomee charges no commission on sales and no success fee.
EBay
The elephant in the room that nobody is talking about is Ebay. Your guess is as good as mine why they do not have a presence here.
My assumption is that the market is just too small for them to care. If they do try and gain a foothold here, I believe they will have an easier time (at stealing market share from trademe) than the other new players, because they have a proven website, and there will be no growing pains. But until then, we need to pick from trademe or one of the newer alternatives.
Which do you prefer?
Filed under Misc
The best-selling smartphone in the world is no longer an iPhone.
New data released on Thursday by market research firm Strategy Analytics finds that Samsung’s Galaxy S III was the world’s top-selling smartphone model in the third quarter this year, displacing Apple’s iPhone for the first time in years.
Samsung announced earlier this week that cumulative Galaxy S III channel sales reached the 30 million unit milestone and according to Strategy Analytics, 18 million of those were shipped in Q3 2012. During the same period, Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S handsets, slipping into the No.2 spot for the quarter.
“Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone model shipped 18.0 million units worldwide during the third quarter of 2012,” said Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Shah. “The Galaxy S3 captured an impressive 11 percent share of all smartphones shipped globally and it has become the world’s best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever. A large touchscreen design, extensive distribution across dozens of countries, and generous operator subsidies have been among the main causes of the Galaxy S3’s success. Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S units worldwide for second place, as consumers temporarily held off purchases in anticipation of a widely expected iPhone 5 upgrade at the end of the quarter.”
Samsung’s time at the top will be short-lived however, as Apple’s iPhone 5 is expected to regain the title to top-selling smartphone in the December quarter. ”Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has proven wildly popular with consumers and operators across North America, Europe and Asia,” Shah’s colleague Neil Mawtson stated. “However, the Galaxy S3’s position as the world’s best-selling smartphone model is likely to be short-lived. The Apple iPhone 5 has gotten off to a solid start already with an estimated 6.0 million units shipped globally during Q3 2012. We expect the new iPhone 5 to out-ship Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the coming fourth quarter of 2012 and Apple should soon reclaim the title of the world’s most popular smartphone model.”
Barack Obama may have comfortably won re-election in the electoral college, and squeaked a victory in the popular vote. But here is the absolute, undoubted winner of this election: Nate Silver and big data.
The Fivethirtyeight.com analyst, despite being pilloried by the pundits, outdid even his 2008 prediction. In that year, his mathematical model correctly called 49 out of 50 states, missing only Indiana (which went to Obama by 0.1%.)
This year, according to all projections, Silver’s model has correctly predicted 50 out of 50 states. A last-minute flip for Florida, which finally went blue in Silver’s prediction on Monday night, helped him to a perfect game.
What does this victory mean? That mathematical models can no longer be derided by “gut-feeling” pundits. That Silver’s contention — TV pundits are generally no more accurate than a coin toss — must now be given wider credence.
The great thing about a model like Silver’s (and that of similarly winning math nerds, such as Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium) is that it takes all that myopic human bias out of the equation. The ever-present temptation to cherry-pick polls is subverted.
You set your parameters at the start, deciding how much weight and accuracy you’re going to give to each poll based purely on their historical accuracy. You feed in whatever other conditions you think will matter to the result. Then, you sit back and let the algorithm do the work.
Silver may be a registered Democrat, but he learned back when he was doing baseball analysis that he’d never get anywhere if his models weren’t absolutely neutral, straight down the line between feuding teams.
By 2016, if the networks are paying attention, don’t be surprised to see that the talking heads are all Nate Silver clones. Every media organization will now want its own state poll-based algorithm, especially given how much traffic Silver has driven to the New York Times‘ website. We’ll see more about that kind of model, and less stories about individual polls, which are almost always misleading unless you aggregate them.
Statistics, big data, neutral mathematical models — this, it turns out, is what people want. Who knew?
Well, we geeks knew, but we’re starting to get used to having the rest of the world follow our lead. We had the smartphones first, we read the fantasy books before they became blockbuster movies and TV shows, and now we can boast that we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nate Silver’s data before it was popular.
— repost of http://mashable.com/2012/11/07/nate-silver-wins/?utm_source=twitterfeed
Filed under Politics
Microsoft’s Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android is a reality. Although Office Mobile has been rumored and reportedly spotted in the wild, Microsoft has remained persistently quiet about its plans for the product.
Now it sounds like the company will release Office versions for Android and iOS in early 2013. 
Office Mobile will debut in the form of free apps that allow Android and iOS users to view Microsoft Office documents on the move. Like the existing SkyDrive and OneNote apps, Office Mobile will require a Microsoft account. On first launch, a Microsoft account will provide access to the basic viewing functionality in the apps. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents will all be supported, and edit functionality can be enabled with an Office 365 subscription.
Microsoft will allow iOS users to purchase an Office 365 subscription within the app, or let organizations distribute codes to enable Office Mobile editing for users. The apps will allow for basic editing, but we’re told this won’t go very far in attempting to replace regular full use of a desktop Office version.
It’s real and it’s coming to iOS first
A recent Microsoft press release from the company’s Czech Republic subsidiary revealed that Office Mobile apps for Android and iOS would be made available from March 2013. We understand that Office Mobile for iOS will arrive first in late February or early March, with an Android version due in May.
We reached out to Microsoft for comment on this story and a company spokesperson says “Office will work across Windows Phone, iOS and Android.”
— reposted from http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3612422/microsoft-office-mobile-ipad-iphone-android-screenshots
Microsoft has announced it intends to “retire” its instant message chat tool and replace it with Skype’s messaging tool.
The news comes 18 months after the software giant announced it was paying $8.5bn (£5.3bn) for the communications software developer.
Microsoft said Windows Live Messenger (WLM) would be turned off by March 2013 worldwide, with the exception of China.
It reflects the firm’s determination to focus its efforts on Skype.
WLM launched in 1999 when it was known as MSN Messenger. Over time, photo delivery, video calls and games were added to the package’s text-based messages.
In 2009, the firm said it had 330 million active users.
Chat ‘cannibalisation’
According to internet analysis firm Comscore, WLM still had more than double the number of Skype’s instant messenger facility at the start of this year and was second only in popularity to Yahoo Messenger.
But the report suggested WLM’s US audience had fallen to 8.3 million unique users, representing a 48% drop year-on-year. By contrast, the number of people using Skype to instant message each other grew over the period.
“When a company has competing products that can result in cannibalisation it’s often better to focus on a single one,” said Brian Blau from the consultancy Gartner.
“Skype’s top-up services offer the chance to monetise its users and Microsoft is also looking towards opportunities in the living room.
Skype is offering a tool to migrate users WLM contacts to its service“Messenger doesn’t seem like an appropriate communications platform for TVs or the firm’s Xbox console – but Skype does.”
He also noted that the firm had opted to integrate Skype into its new Windows Phone 8 smartphone software, eclipsing the effort to integrate WLM into the message threads of the operating system’ previous version.
To ease the changeover, Microsoft is offering a tool to migrate WLM messenger contacts over.
The risk is that the move encourages users to switch instead to rival platforms such as WhatsApp Messenger, AIM or Google Talk.
But Microsoft is at least partially protected by its tie-up with Facebook last year. Skype video calls are now offered as an extra to the social network’s own instant messaging tool.
Filed under Technology, windows
It’s approximately 11 years since Windows XP was unveiled, and this week Microsoft was still at it trying to convince users that it’s time to upgrade.
A post on the Windows For Your Business Blog calls on businesses to start XP migrations now.
Microsoft cites the main reason as being that support for XP ends in April 2014, and ‘most new hardware options will likely not support the Windows XP operating system.’
If you run Windows Vista, Microsoft argues that it’s time to ‘start planning’ the move to Windows 8.
As this article points out, it’s not uncommon to hear about people still running XP at work.
But yet, at the same time, Microsoft Corp’s release of Windows 8 on Friday is likely to be a non-event for most companies — and some experts say many may never adopt it.
The system may appear to offer something for everyone: touch-screen functionality for tablet enthusiasts, a slick new interface for the younger set, and multiple versions to make it compatible with traditional desktop PC software.
Many businesses, though, say there is no compelling reason to adopt. Indeed, a large number have yet to make the transition to Windows 7 from Windows XP.
Even as it launches Windows 8, a key priority for Microsoft is to get customers off the decade-old Windows XP — which still runs on 41 percent of the world’s 1.5 billion PCs.
What will happen? Will businesses stay with the unsupported XP ? or move to a newer (but not loved) Windows 7? Or will they jump to Windows 8? Only time will tell..
Filed under windows
I read an article yesterday on the New York Times about the Do Not Track process and was amused to read the following:
First came a stern letter from nine members of the House of Representatives to the Federal Trade Commission, questioning its involvement with an international group called the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, which is trying to work out global standards for the don’t-track-me features. The legislators said they were concerned that these options for consumers might restrict “the flow of data at the heart of the Internet’s success.”
Next came an incensed open letter from the board of the Association of National Advertisers to Steve Ballmer, the C.E.O. of Microsoft, and two other company officials. Microsoft had committed a grievous infraction, wrote executives from Dell, I.B.M., Intel, Visa, Verizon, Wal-Mart and other major corporations, by making Do Not Track the default option in the company’s forthcoming Internet Explorer 10 browser. If consumers chose to stay with that option, the letter warned, they could prevent companies from collecting data on up to 43 percent of browsers used by Americans.
“Microsoft’s action is wrong. The entire media ecosystem has condemned this action,” the letter said. “In the face of this opposition and the reality of the harm that your actions could create, it is time to realign with the broader business community by providing choice through a default of ‘off’ on your browser’s ‘do not track’ setting.”
Personally I would applaud Microsoft’s actions to make the “opt out” process very easy for customers, as over 75% want to opt out. Compare this to hiding the setting deep in the browser settings like Apple did. I believe the browser vendors have it right, and Apple has it wrong. Yes, we need to ask users, and they should be aware of the repurcussions, but it must be simple and obvious.
Word to advertisers: I know you want info. And I will sometimes give you some. But if you do not honour my wishes, I will turn on ad blocking software and you will get nothing.
Filed under Uncategorized
Andy Dingfelder 
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