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February 27, 2005 |
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The Department of Corrections*Word's AutoCorrect is very cool. I know that I frequently type "hopsital" when I really mean "hospital". This occurred to me a decade or more ago when I spent a fair amount of time writing for a medical audience. Telling Word to correct the misspelling worked fine as long as I was using Word, but not when I was using a text editor or an e-mail program. What's needed is something that works at the operating system level. Fortunately, such a program exists for both Windows machines and Macs. There are differences in programming philosophies from one to the other, but they both can step in to make typing easier and faster. Both were invented for other purposes though. Allow me to demonstrate. When Technology Corner listeners write with questions, I try to answer them. As part of the answer, when I remember, I add a small warning:
Needless to say, typing that each time would be a bit tiresome. My preferred e-mail program, The Bat, allows me to define "Quick Templates" that can insert text and, at the same time, change the message's subject line, add a signature, and do any of several dozen other functions. But what if I'm using another e-mail program? Or what if I'm using one of the Macs? Or what if I'm writing a letter? The Bat can't help me there. But on a Windows machine, Smart Type Assistant can help and on a Mac, TypeIt4Me leaps in to assist. On both systems, I have defined "_tcwarn" as the sign to the applications that I want them to type the two disclaimer paragraphs. For Windows users, Smart Type Assistant
Well, if you've enabled STA's diary, you can quickly capture all of the text from the message. If you're like me (severe attention deficit disorder) and you hop from one application to another, you text may be a bit fragmented. In the example, I've interrupted writing this review to hop over to The Bat and reply to two messages. Because of this -- should UltraEdit crash (I've never seen this program crash) retrieving the review might require copying and pasting several sections of text. But it's all there. STA must monitor everything that happens on the keyboard anyway, so adding this "diary" feature probably didn't add an enormous amount of effort to the project, but it's an extremely useful function. I mentioned, though, that it could be misused. It is, after all, a keystroke logger and it could be used to spy on other users of the computer. The potential misuse doesn't, in my estimation, outweigh the advantages of having access to the "lifesaver" function. The program offers "autoreplace" and "autocorrect".
For Mac users, TypeIt4Me
While TypeIt4Me doesn't have all of the features of STA, it's more than competent in carrying out its main functions. Unlike STA, TypeIt4Me requires no user intervention to substitute text. If I type _tcwarn on the Mac, it will automatically be replaced with my warning as soon as I type a tab, space, or return. I can specify other keys that should trigger the expansion. But if I don't want TI4M to replace the text, I can press Shift (or Control) when I press the space bar.
TI4M doesn't offer the ability to capture keystrokes to a log.
*Long ago, in another lifetime (or perhaps another dimension) I worked for the State of Ohio. The Department of Corrections is the state agency charged with maintaining Ohio's prisons. No small number of people wrote to the Department of Corrections to request that errors in various state documents be corrected.Dantz Retrospect – backup with teeth for Windows and MacsA few weeks ago, I talked about backup applications and mentioned that Retrospect didn't belong with the standard backup applications. It's a much more complex application than other backup programs. It's undoubtedly the most difficult backup program I've learned how to use, but it's also remarkably complete. I remember when it was exciting to backup a 10MB hard disk in 10 minutes. That was about 1 minute per floppy disk (1.2MB or 1.44MB). When I backup my home system now, the process saves more than 100 GB (118 GB if you need to be more precise) in about 3.5 hours. If I still had to deal with a floppy-based backup that stored 1MB per minute, I'd need a stack of nearly 82,000 1.44MB floppies and the backup procedure would take nearly 57 days. Fortunately, backup is faster now with an external hard drive that connects to the computer with Firewire or USB2. The backup procedure writes (on average) about 240MB of data per second to the external drive and backing up 100+ GB of data takes only about 3 hours.
Several weeks later, I installed the Mac version of Retrospect on a Mac running OS X 10.3 and told it to back up the entire machine to an external Firerwire hard drive. As with the Windows application, Retrospect for the Mac can back up more than one machine -- one local machine (desktop or notebook) and two other computers that are attached to the network. Those additional machines can be Macs, Windows machines, or LInux systems (Red Hat only). Those who have more than 3 computers attached to a LAN can purchase additional licenses. The product CD provides bootable Mac OS X disaster recovery and includes both Retrospect 6 for OS X and Retrospect 5.1 System 9 computers. Both the Windows and Mac versions come with uncommonly good documentation. This is important for two reasons: Retrospect operates differently from any other backup product I've encountered, so users need to understand the program's philosophy, and any backup program should be carefully documented because users need to know exactly what to expect when there's an emergency and data must be restored from a backup device. Retrospect, when coupled with an external (USB or Firewire) hard drive, is an uncommonly robust backup application. It's one you can depend on and that is the most important part of any backup strategy. Late in 2004, Dantz was acquired by EMC Corporation, one of the major players in network attached storage devices. The more disk drives you attach to a network, the more critical backup becomes. EMC saw value in adding the Dantz product line to its stable. In addition to the desktop product, Dantz has applications that are designed to recognize and back up notebook computers when they show up on the LAN. Notebook systems have been a particular problem for network administrators because the people who use them are frequently not in the office. Retrospect may be overkill for a single computer at home (How much is your data worth?) but it's an application that anyone who administers a network of Windows or Mac PCs should investigate.
Nerdly News25 million downloads and a security patchFirefox has been downloaded by 25,000,000 people. Even if all of those people are using the application as their primary browser, Firefox still has a market share in single digits and Internet Explorer still has more than 90% of the market. Many of those who have started using Firefox have done so because of security problems with IE. Now the Mozilla Foundation has released an update to Firefox and the update, besides fixing some bugs, closes some security loopholes. Versions 1.0.1 addresses a flaw found in all browsers that support "International Domain Names". Someone operating a phishing scam, for example, could register a domain in a way that would fool the browser into displaying a false name on the address bar, Does this mean Firefox isn't as secure as a lot of people thought? Yes. No browser is completely secure. No browser can be completely secure. Any security measures that one group of humans can devise will eventually be broken by some other group of humans. All Mozilla (or Microsoft) can do is fix their browsers promptly when security problems are revealed. That is exactly what Mozilla has done. No, the FBI did not send you a message saying that you're being investigatedThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned about e-mail messages that appear to come from the FBI. The messages say that the user's Internet use has been monitored by the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center and that they have accessed illegal websites. It then suggests that the user open an attachment and answer questions. At this point, alarms should be going off in your brain. Never open an unexpected attachment. The message, of course, is not from the FBI and attachment, of course, contains a virus. The FBI asks that anyone who receives one of these messages report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Let us know what you think. Write to:
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STA offers a particularly interesting feature that could be misused but that can also be a lifesaver. Let's say you're in the midst of typing a long e-mail message when you accidentally close the program or the application crashes. You've just spent the last 90 minutes typing an important message and now it's gone! Now what? (For a larger view of the image at the right, just click it.) 
Auto replace requires confirmation from the user to make the replacement. If I type "_tcwarn", STA displays a pop-up message that tells me I can have the application expand the text to my long message if I press Tab or Enter. The pop-up stays on the screen for a scant 2 seconds and this seems not to be something the user can change.
Auto correct will immediately change the text you type to the "corrected" version. The program provides audible feedback and displays a pop-up that explains what it did. If I type hopsital and STA changes it, I'll see a reminder. This is another 2-second message and that's still not enough. I can tell STA to change the text back if I really want "hopsital" by pressing the Break key. Unfortunately, the Microsoft keyboard I use redefines the Break key when I have the function keys turned on. This is something else that should be definable by the user. I'd make the Escape key cancel an autocorrection.
If you accidentally press CapsLock and then create a message that looks like "tHIS IS WRONG", STA will automatically fix the problem and turn CapsLock off. You can also tell the application to correct two initial caps (LIke this) but I've disabled that because I frequently type "PCs" and I don't want STA to change it to "Pcs".
What happens if you have STA enabled and you use Word? Nothing serious, but you should either disable STA when Word is running or disable Word's AutoCorrect feature. Either of those is easy enough. If you have applications that you don't want STA to monitor, all you need do is list them on the "exceptions" page. You'll notice that I don't have any exceptions.
Unlike most Mac OS X applications, you don't install TypeIt4Me by dragging the application's folder to the Applications directory. The application uses an installer that places the program in a system directory. When you restart your Mac, you'll find TypeIt4Me in the upper right corner of the screen. (If you're using an earlier version of OS X or System 9, you experience will differ.)
Clicking the icon displays a small menu.
TI4M lets the user create multiple files that contain replacement definitions and then associate any application with a specific replacement file. This could be a particularly useful capability for a programmer or website designer.
NINE CATS: If you're a Windows user who regularly types repetitive text, you need this program. For Windows users, this is $20 well spent. 
TEN CATS: You won't find a better backup application than this. For both Windows and Mac platforms, this is the application that offers the features every backup program should have. It's not the cheapest backup application, but how valuable is your work? 
