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Sunday, January 18, 2004

Random thought:

Nisus Writer Express for OS X

If you think that Microsoft has wrapped up the entire word processor market, even on the Mac, you're not seeing the entire picture. It's true that Microsoft Office is the indisputable king of the Windows world. It's also true that Microsoft Office is the market leader on Macs.

If you use a Mac, you've heard about Nisus Writer, one of the best-known word processors for Apple computers. Nisus Writer is particularly revered for its typographic capabilities. But Nisus Writer is doesn't run natively under OS X. Some Mac users won't give up the "Classic" mode because they don't want to do without Nisus Writer.

As a new Mac user who was appalled by the shortcomings of the Mac's OS prior to OS X, I won't have anything to do with software that requires the Classic mode. For that reason, I've never used the original, but I have been looking at Nisus Writer Express 1.0, designed from the ground up for OS X. Because of this, long-time users of Nisus Writer may feel shortchanged. They shouldn't.

Click the image for a larger view.

The company's stated goal is to build the best word processor they can, "In order to be able to provide you with new and useful features in the coming years as Nisus Writer and Mac OS X evolve, we decided that we needed to make a clean break from the baggage of the old platform, even if it meant that some users may have to wait a little for their favorite features to return and that some features may need to change the way you work. We realize this is an inconvenience for some, but in the long run it will be worth the effort." More software development teams should have that kind of mandate!

While I understand that Nisus Writer Express's capabilities are a fraction of what Nisus Writer can do, the developers are off to an excellent start. If you're an OS X user who prefers not to install Microsoft Word, take a look at it!

Unlike most word processors, Nisus Writer Express doesn't use a proprietary file format. Instead, you're offered a variety of choices. One of these is RTF ("rich text format") and it's marked "preferred" on the Save menu. RTF is the universal word processor format, readable by any word processor on the planet. Period. Good choice! Other options include "plain text", Microsoft Word, and Abi Word.

Using RTF means that documents you create in Nisus Writer Express will be portable.

Just a few bells & not many whistles

Nisus Writer Express doesn't have a paper clip (or a dog, cat, or Einstein) to offer help and suggestions. It doesn't have paragraph styles to make formatting easier. Nor does it correct your spelling as you type. If you can't write without an assistant, you'll want Microsoft Word. But if you prefer to think for yourself, Nisus Writer Express is a worthy choice.

The company calls Nisus Writer Express "lean and focused." I agree.

With a nod to OS X's Unix underpinnings, Nisus Writer Express offers Macros that are written in Perl. Perl is one of the key programming languages that runs the Internet, and I mean that quite literally. Perl is easy to learn, too. (I should clarify that a bit: If you have some knowledge of C++, Perl will be easy to learn. If you know nothing at all about programming, Perl will be a challenge. Perl is not a programming language that is quickly or easily mastered because it is uncommonly flexible, but it is a language that's easy to learn enough to become productive quickly. In other words, Mac users who have never seen a command line or a programming language might be flummoxed for a bit, but a little work and study will introduce them to an exciting and powerful feature.) There are also "recorder" type macros and Nisus Writer Express supports AppleScript.

Is this for you?

Nisus Writer Express is "just" a word processor. There's no spreadsheet. No database manager. No personal information manager. No e-mail client. No website development application. No graphics editor. No clip-art. If you need all these things, just buy Microsoft's Office X. On the other hand, if you like the idea of using a word processor that's lean and lithe (even on my little 500MHz G3 Ibook with just 256MB of RAM) this might be the application you need. (Hint: You can buy Microsoft Office X and use all the other applications except Word.)

Nisus Writer Express is available from http://www.nisus.com/ for $60.

Technology corner rating for NINSUS WRITER EXPRESS
	SIX CATS: Check back with me a couple of versions from now and Nisus Writer Express will probably earn 8, 9, or 10 cats. The company's philosophy shows itself in a product that has a clear development path. For most writing tasks, Nisus Writer Express is more than adequate; for power users, additional features will be needed. I like what I've seen. I like the direction Nisus Writer Express is taking.
How the Technology Corner rating system works.

Brave New Phone: Treo 600

I've been using one of Sprint's Treo 600 phones for the past month or so and the more I use it, the more impressed I am with how it works. The Treo is one of those hybrid devices that is both a phone and a Palm organizer. I'd had a Treo 300 and liked the way it worked -- except that two successive models occasionally lost all battery power (and all data) within 2 hours of being unplugged from the charger. The other problem with the Treo 300 was that it was pathetically slow as a Palm device.

The Treo 600 hasn't lost battery power, so that's a plus. When the previous model did that, I rarely lost data because I synchronize regularly. But it was an annoyance to have to restore the data. But beyond that, I couldn't rely on the 300 to be available when I needed it. When the batteries died as I drove from Tucson to Phoenix (about 90 minutes) I arrived at the airport and with a non-functioning phone. So the 600 seems to have resolved that problem.

Another annoyance is gone, too. With previous Sprint phones, the voice-mail icon sometimes turned on and wouldn't turn off even after I retrieved all of my messages. Sometimes resetting the phone would take care of it. Sometimes calling, leaving myself a message, and then calling to retrieve the message I'd just left for myself would clear the icon. Apparently that's still a problem, but the Treo 600 has an option on the phone preferences menu to clear the voice mail icon.

If you've seen the Treo 300, you know that it flips open. The 600 model has dispensed with the flip-up cover. That's probably good overall because I've heard that the 300's cover was easy to break. But eliminating the cover means that the keys are easily bumped. If you carry the phone in your pocket, as I do, it would be easy to make accidental calls if not for a clever keyboard lock feature.

Most cell phones can be locked for security, as can the Treo. Unlocking it requires entering a code. This isn't a feature that I use, but the keyboard lock feature designed to prevent accidental calling is perfect. Press one of the activity buttons (phone, calendar, et cetera) and the phone wakes up, but it won't do anything until the user presses the center button. This is exactly the amount of safeguard I'm looking for.

I'm not all thumbs

The Treo 600 has a keyboard that's intended for thumbs. While the buttons are exremely close together (the entire keyboard takes up about the amount of space required by 8 keys -- 2 rows of 4 -- on a standard keyboard) I was surprised by how well they work. The buttons are relatively tall and have a sharp bevel. In pushing one of they keys, my thumb is actually in contact with all of the surrounding keys, but the key height and the bevel keep me from pressing multiple keys simultaneously. Whoever thought of that must have had a good night's sleep.

Having praised the keyboard, I now have to say that I'd prefer not to use it. I prefer a utility application called Jot from Communication Intelligence Corporation (www.cic.com) but the Treo 600 uses Palm's OS 5 and Jot didn't work properly with that version of the operating system when I got the phone. CIC solved part of the problem and Jot now works acceptably with Palm OS 5 (hurrah!) but CIC is working to solve some additional problems.

The design team solved another problem that could have been a substantial annoyance. The screen is a touch screen and holding the Treo like a phone means it touches the user's face. The touch screen can't tell whether it's being touched intentionally by fingers or the stylus or accidentally by a cheek or beard. Because the touch screen includes functions to terminate the call, a user could accidentally hang up during a call. In the preferences menu is an option to disable the touch screen during a call. Should you need to use the touch screen during a call, you can easily turn it back on. In other words, the design team did a good job of making this phone functional.

Lose the wait; see the screen

I said that the Treo 300 was slow. That's because it's powered by a 33 MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ CPU with 16MB of RAM. The 600 has a 144 MHz ARM processor with 32MB of RAM and the ability to plug in a Secure Digital card to provide more memory, special applications (a dictionary or thesaurus, for example), or (when somebody makes one that will work with the device) Bluetooth. While the 300 offered 2.5 hours of talk time and 150 hours standby time, the 600 claims 4 hours of talk time and up to 240 hours (10 days) of standby time.

The Treo 600 improves on the 300's screen, too. The 300's screen was easy to read -- so long as the phone was inside a building and in a relatively dark room. Take it outside and it became hard to read. Try it on a sunny day, and it was impossible to read. The 600's screen is easily read indoors and even the buttons are lighted, which is a huge help in a dark room. But the screen is also bright and vivid outdoors, even in full sunshine. Wow!

I haven't yet mentioned that the Treo 600 includes something that's in most new mobile phones these days: A camera. The images are about the same quality you might see from a video surveilance camera when the police release images of a bank robber. As a perfectionist when it comes to photographic images, I'm not impressed by the camera. But I don't carry a camera with me everywhere I go and having the ability to capture an important, fleeting image with my phone may someday come in handy. So while I say I'm not really impressed by the camera function, that might not be the entire truth.

Image is everything

Here are some sample pictures taken by the Treo 600 phone. If you compare the images to what you might get from a Nikon D100 digital camera (street price $1500 or more, plus lens) you won't be very impressed. But the Nikon isn't a phone. The full image (click one of the smaller ones to see the full image) is 640x480, enough to make a (barely) acceptable snapshot size print. And if you're looking for a picture that's adequate for a Website, this phone will do that.

	This is part of the technology corner.
	I compared the resulting image to something you might get from a security camera. This is the image I was thinking of. I'd stopped to get gas. The sun wasn't up yet.
	This is Tangerine, the orange cat. Note the surprising amount of detail in the whiskers even though the focus is a little soft. Needless to say, the camera does not have a focusing option or a flash.
	And here's a picture I took of Joe in early December. There was a lot of light behind him, which accounts for the blue-green aura. This is, in fact, an uncommonly good image considering the lighting.

As for everything else ... Wow!

Technology corner rating for SPRINT'S TREO 600 PHONE
	EIGHT CATS: At last, a phone and organizer combination that works well as a phone and works well as an organizer. Depsite a couple of odd omissions (Bluetooth is the most significant) the device is a pleasure to use. The phone functions perfectly with Sprint's nationwide service so I'm always on time, organized (well, better organized than I would otherwise be), and in touch.
How the Technology Corner rating system works.

Nerdly News

Microsoft Internet Explorer flaw follow-up

Matthew Middleton of Westerville let me know during the week that "the IE flaw you mentioned in your program last weekend is real - and easy to recreate on any html page." I had written what I thought would be a brief article about the ability to spoof a URL in unpatched versions of Internet Explorer. When I tested the patched version of IE on my computer, it worked as expected. But it doesn't work everywhere.

Middleton reminded me that the patch Microsoft issued in November was incomplete and that Microsoft is still "investigating" this flaw. His recommendation for security is a good one: Use another browser as your default. He likes (and so do I) Mozilla from www.mozilla.org.

As I mentioned last week, Mozilla is my default browser. Netscape's product is nearly identical, but it includes numerous helpers, applications, and junk that I do not want. Opera is another good choice, but it still malfunctions with too many websites to be my default browser. I keep an Opera session open, though, because it gives me immediate access to 14 websites that I use regularly and it does so without taking up a lot of space on the task bar.

Microsoft, in my opinion, deserves strong criticism for failing to correct this known flaw in nearly 2 months. This is serious because it's the kind of exploit that any idiot can use to cause trouble, not some obscure flaw that takes some knowledge of programming to use.

Notice that big drop in spam?

Neither did I. When the national Do Not Call registry was finally allowed to go into effect, the result was dramatic. Instead of having to tell half a dozen telephone solicitors that I'm not interested in what they have to sell every day, I get maybe 1 call a week now. What an improvement!

A lot of people thought the CAN-SPAM act (Why do they use all caps?) would be just as effective. As I pointed out when Congress was considering the legislation, Congress is clueless on the issue of spam. It went into effect on January 1 and techno-turnip reporters local TV stations predicted an end to spam. Even the (usually) more skeptical network shows seemed to have been taken in by the blather.

Point 1: The US Congress can pass laws that have an effect on US citizens at home and abroad. The US Congress can pass laws that have an effect on the citizens of any country when they are in the United States.

Point 2: The US Congress cannot pass laws that have much of an effect on spammers that operate from China, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, former soviet states, or anywhere else in the world. Most spam comes from outside the United States.

By choosing to ignore the second point, Congress created yet another law that just won't work.

And because the vast majority of spam is used to sell products that are illegal (devices to steal pay-TV signals) or fraudulent ("generic" Viagra), no new law is really needed to go after spammers. Technology can help. Well-designed filters can eliminate much of the spam. And if the big Internet service providers identify the people and the companies responsible for the spam and drag them into court, the tide might begin to turn.

Spammers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the US know that they can safely send their crud as long as it originates outside the US. Microsoft, New York State's attorney general, and others have started identifying the people and companies behind the curtain. Find them. Sue their pants off. That might help. And Congress did get at least one thing right: Spammers might find that the possessions they bought with proceeds from spamming will be taken away.

Spams promoting spam blockers?

You open a spam that offers to protect you from spam, pop-ups, spyware, or malware. What should you do? I suggest that you delete the message.

The trouble with buying an anti-spam product from a spammer should be obvious. What interest does the spammer have in protecting you from spam? But that's not the worst of it.

Many (most? all?) of these spamvertized "protection" programs are actually applications designed to install spyware or malware on your computer! If you want to protect yourself from the people who would like to take over your computer and gain access to your personal and financial information, obtain an application from a company or an individual you trust.

I'm currently looking at "Spybot Search and Destroy", a free application from Patrick M. Kolla, a programmer in Germany, and I like what I see. I'll have a full review in a few weeks. In the meantime, you may want to look at the website -- http://www.safer-networking.org/.

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley --

Joe
(Photo by Sally)

Bill
(Photo by Scampi)

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Annoying legal disclaimer
My attorney says I really need to say this: The Technology Corner website is for informational purposes only. Neither Joe nor I assume any responsibility for its accuracy, although we do our best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. Technology Corner cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned on the air or on the website.