Newsletter Issue 139, October 2007

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 139, October 2007

Hi guys,

For anyone wanting a cheap and reliable valuation, go no further than Quotable Value Online.

A how to tip on Limiting System Restore space used on your PC. 

Apophenics do it by the Numbers   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Quotable Value Online

Property valuation company Quotable Value Ltd (QV) is selling more than half a million data products each year, now customers are ordering electronic valuation reports and property information, and paying online. Technology has allowed QV to shrug off its roots as a loss-making government department and re-launch itself as a profitable online business.

In 1998, when the former Valuation Department was privatised, their technology was green screens, no email and very few PCs. After restructuring and reducing staff from 320 to 250, QV started re-engineering its business processes, using technology solutions to add value.

QV launched a website in October 1999 and by February 2000 was ready to accept online credit card payments. This paved the way for what turned out to be one of QV’s most successful online products, e-Valuer, which provides an instant estimate of the market value of a property based on data from sales of comparable properties in the same area. QV is currently selling 60,000 e-Valuer reports per annum, which are now being accepted by banks for mortgage approval purposes.

QV has progressively refined its services by incorporating new databases, such as property title information and Census data, and by fine tuning its technology. QV uses a product called Map Xtreme which draws on geographical information stored on a dedicated mapping server to include in their products. QV uses IBM X346s for their mapping technology and for their web server, while SQL databases are hosted on an IBM X366.

QV's CIO Bryce Johnson, says that choosing the right software has been the key to achieving systems reliability. For example load balancing software provided by F5 has allowed QV’s servers to cope with the large spikes in traffic caused by promotions, when up to 10,000 free reports have been downloaded in one day. “If the software is humming the hardware looks after itself. We are now getting availability rate of 99.1%, that’s 24/7, 365 days a year.”

QV has also paid a lot of attention over the years to improving the ‘look and feel’ of its web offering. In August 2006, they introduced a “delayed login”, after the company noticed that too many users were leaving the website when they were being asked to log in “up front”. “We noticed that our conversion rate from the people visiting the site to people actually buying something was only 7%,” Johnson says. The mandatory login was obviously a “friction point” which had to be re-engineered. “Now when you arrive at our site you see a list of the reports available and you can drill down to get more information on any one — you only have to register when you click on a report to buy it. That changed our conversion rate from 7% to 20%.”

QV is New Zealand's largest valuation and property information company, operating from 22 offices throughout New Zealand and with subsidiary companies in three states of Australia.

Check out their reports at https://www.qv.co.nz/

Limiting System Restore

System Restore uses a shed-load of space; and that might be OK if System Restore was a really foolproof backup system, but it isn't.

Windows Secrets Newsletter says this month "At best, System Restore may get the core operating system running again after a bad crash, but it doesn't return all files to the pre-trouble state, and it can't remove all traces of a program that went bad. Because it's such a limited recovery tool, I don't feel it's worthwhile to devote vast amounts of disk space to it."

Windows Secrets suggest 'taming' your System Restore's insatiable hunger by:

1. Right clicking on the My Computer icon on the desktop
2. Select Properties from the pop-up menu. This opens the System Properties dialogue box.
3. Click on the System Restore tab
4. Select your main drive (usually C:)
5. Slick Settings, and move the slider to reserve a reasonable amount of disk space (eg on an 80 Gb hard drive, select 2% - 6000Mb - or so).

However, if you already backup really regularly, you could move the System Restore slider completely to the left (0% or 200Mb), or disable it completely. But in general, having 6000Mb allocated to a system restore is not going to slow up your computing too much, and it could well save you having to reinstall post-crash.

Better to be safe than sorry!

Apophenics do it by the Numbers

What is it about some people and conspiracy? Are there really likely to be a huge secret organisations pulling many strings behind the scenes, interfering in our lives?

Hollywood movies have done well out of exploiting paranoia. I'm thinking JFK, both the Manchurian Candidate films, the Bourne franchise... to name a tiny few that immediately spring to mind.

And now, "The Number 23", reheated as a DVD release, attempts to exploit our paranoia a little more. Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) starts seeing connections when he becomes gripped by a second-hand book his wife (Virginia Madsen) gives him. Walter starts seeing unsettling similarities between the book's detective and his own life, becoming extremely paranoid when the detective commits a gruesome murder. The movie takes a while to unfold, so Walter is apparently quite a slow reader.

The title is based on the pop-culture numerology enigma that many things have 23 in them, such as the number of chromosomes we get from each parent, the Earth’s axis, summing dates (Titanic’s sinking on 15/4/1912, or the infamous 9/11/2001). This numerology conspiracy fascination is called apophenia, where people see unfounded connections in random or meaningless data.

Klaus Conrad defined apophenia in 1958 as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness". In statistics, apophenia would be classed as a Type I error (false positive, false alarm, caused by an excess in sensitivity).

From the review in the local paper for this Jim Carey in-serious-acting-mode movie, it is more likely to be a specific experience of an abnormal meaninglessness instead.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you:

• PVR, Personal Video Recorder. This is MySky and its compadrés; personal HDDs to record programmes on to be watched at leisure.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

In this newsletter, we look at all you can do with Alt:

• Access "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time" Alt
• Excel "Make the menu bar active, or close a visible menu and submenu at the same time" Alt
• Publisher "Move between the menu bar and the publication" Alt
• Excel "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time; works with menu commands" Alt
• FrontPage "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time" Alt
• Outlook "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time; works with menu commands" Alt
• Windows "Activate, or select, the main toolbar beginning with the first toolbar option on the left, usually File; after the first option is activated you can navigate through toolbar and menu options using the appropriate ARROW keys; press F10 or ALT again " Alt
• Word "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time; works with menu commands" Alt

Hot Linx

If you have a passion for recycling, check out the ultimate in recyclable wedding dresses at http://www.cheap-chic-weddings.com/wedding-contest-2006.html

For a horror tour of really, really, really bad art, check out the true awfulness of the un-gifted amateur painter at http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/index.php

To know what is hot and what is not around the planet, all you have to do is dig for it - at http://www.digg.com/. Bookmark this site for news & views the world over

For a new approach to on demand media, try this Italian company which aims to change the way we interact with our world at http://www.babelgum.com/

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 139, October 2007"

Newsletter Issue 138, October 2007

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 138, October 2007

Hi guys,

For those of you about to do another print run, check out Business Card Tips before you go to print.

In case you have forgotten about MIT's comms work, we have an Update on Project Oxygen. 

Vista vs Windows XP   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Business Card Tips

What do you like to see in a business card? What drives you mad about some business cards?

I recently received a tip from a business consultant from the US. They had seven great ideas to make memorable business cards. The trouble is, when I read through their list, I felt that six of their tips were big no-nos (use two or four sides; ditch centred alignment; add your services; add the benefits of working with you; add a photo of you; use an unusual shape).

So I had a bit of a think about what is a good issue for a business card, and what is not. I considered what we do with business cards once we get them. I thought about what pleased me and what annoyed me when I was given cards. The resulting tips are what I think makes a good business card:

1. Keep it simple. Don't cram too much information on the front of your card. The most effective cards I have seen are those which convey your key company skills through effective use of colour, images, logo or straplines, leaving lots of space.
2. Brand it. Make sure the branding on your business card is the same as is on your letterhead, vehicle, website, brochures and invoices.
3. Standardise. Use internationally recognised phone number formats. Use a standard international size (for filing in a business card folder or rotating file). Present all your contact details in the same format on all your branded marketing collateral so people learn where to go each time to find your contact information. Don't use odd card shapes unless they will fit into a business card holder or rotating file; your card becomes an annoyance because it can't be stored.
4. Make it legible. Don't use fonts on key contact information that are too fancy or too small to read clearly.
5. Single-sided printing only. Don't do double-sided printing unless you make sure all your company and contact information is on ONE side for those who store cards in a business card folder or rotating file. If you want to add more detail about the services you offer or the benefits of working with you, put that on the back. If you want a four-sided business card, again, make sure there is one face with all the details on for easy filing.
6. No personal photos. Don't put your image on your business card; this is a look aligned with real estate agents and insurance salespeople. It feels pushy, and if you have swapped cards at a meeting, they already know what you look like.
7. Landscape or Portrait. If your card is portrait, then your user will have to read the details off with their head to one side on a card file. This is something that makes your client have to work harder to get in touch with you; if the design is fantastic, then you may be prepared to risk a little client inconvenience, but you should consider it.
8. Alignment of card info. It doesn't matter whether you align information, straplines or contact details left, right or centre, as long as it is consistent with your branding and is legible.
9. Unusual paper/materials. Sometimes unusual papers or materials can work well, such as a metalwork company putting out thin metal cards. If it fits your company, then use it. However, the storage issue again needs to be considered. Keep your end user in mind, and make it easy for them to keep your information on file.

When giving someone your business card, you usually do that in a face to face meeting. Thus there is no need to try to make your business card do too much work by specifying what your key services are or to have a photo of you. They should remember you from your meeting, and your business card allows them to contact you later on; or you to contact them for follow-up.

And of course, once you have built a relationship, you don't need the card anymore. That client then becomes a contact in Outlook and on your PDA, and you rarely, if ever, look at their business card again. So keeping your design and print costs low is probably a good line to follow.

At some point in the future, something will probably replace business cards as we know them. We had a brief foray with the mini CDs, but they failed to ignite our imagination. I can't see anything on the horizon yet that matches the simplicity of transferring our contact information to others, in a format that everyone can use easily.

So for now, it would pay to ensure that your business cards are client-friendly.

Update on Project Oxygen

For those of you who remember MIT's Project Oxygen, which kicked off in the late 90s, you may be assuming, as I was, that the project was lying dormant with the rise of iPods, Blackberrys and other personal devices.

However, a quick visit to MIT's Oxygen website soon sets you straight. Oxygen is aiming to use human perception as the main modes of interaction to run the technologies - ie, speech and vision, rather than keyboards and mice.

They are working on multimodal integration to increase perceptual technology effectiveness, such as using vision to augment speech understanding by recognising facial expressions, lip movement, and gaze (I can imagine that this is going to be quite tricky - especially with the range of expression from Italy - low context - to Japan - high context - where even other Japanese have trouble working out facial expressions).

Perceptual technologies are part of the core of Oxygen, not just afterthoughts or interfaces to separate applications. So it is built around interaction driven by speech and vision.

Project Oxygen's teams are working on the following applications clusters:

• Automation technologies, for automating and tuning repetitive information and control tasks, eg, allowing users to create 'scripts' to customise doors or heating systems
• Collaboration technologies, support for recording / archiving speech and video fragments from meetings, and for linking these fragments to issues, summaries, keywords, and annotations; enabling spontaneous collaborative region formation to accommodate the needs of highly mobile people and computations
• Knowledge access technologies, which offer greatly improved access to information, customised to people's needs, applications, and software systems. They allow users to access their own knowledge bases, the knowledge bases of friends and associates, and those on the web. They facilitate this access through semantic connection nets.

The two applications cases that the team quote on their website are interesting as well. Shades of Star Trek. "Computer? Get me a trim latte." "Coming right up, Captain".

Vista vs Windows XP

The forest products giant Carter Holt Harvey (CHH), employs 10,000 people across New Zealand, Australia and Asia, and has no plans to upgrade to Microsoft's new operating system, Vista. Despite being an early adopter of Microsoft's Windows XP, CHH's IT department, CHH Infotech, do not plan to upgrade to Vista. They can’t see the benefit of it at this stage, and may skip the new operating system altogether.

Krassi Modkov, CHH's manager of design and implementation says "If a technology platform serves its purpose, there is no reason to change or upgrade it. When CHH does decide to upgrade it will probably not go for the latest operating system version. When we adopt a new technology, we ride the technology wave for as long as we possibly can."

The company is not alone in preferring XP to Vista. Microsoft has revised their 2008 forecast, from an 85:15 percent split between Vista/XP sales to 78:22. Dell is now re-offering Windows XP on small business and home user PCs.

However, Microsoft still plans to terminate Windows XP sales in January 2008, and to terminate XP support in April 2014.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLA for you:

• ARPU, Average revenue per user/unit. The income generated by a typical subscriber or device per unit time in a telecoms network. ARPU is used to indicate the effectiveness with which revenue-generating potential is exploited.
• JSON, Javascript Object Notation. A text-based, human-readable data interchange format used for representing simple data structures and objects in Web browser-based code. JSON is also sometimes used in desktop and server-side programming environments.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short & Hot Keys

In this newsletter, we look at some of the Windows keyboard key shortcuts:

• Windows Show the desktop     Win & D
• Windows Minimize all windows     Win & M
• Windows Restore minimized windows     Win & Shift & M
• Windows Launch Windows Explorer     Win & E
• Windows Search for files or folders     Win & F
• Windows Search for computers     Win & Ctrl & F
• Windows Lock the computer     Win & L
• Windows Open the Run box     Win & R
• Windows Open Utility Manager     Win & U
• Windows Display System Properties Box     Win & Pause
• Windows Open/Close the Start menu     Win

Hot Linx

For any of you who are returning to study, and need to know the latest referencing standards, check out the very easy to use APA guide at http://library.curtin.edu.au/referencing/apa.pdf

Could you recognise a photo of Kurt Cobain as a child? What about Bruce Willis? To find out, take this quick quiz and at http://gerport.com/celebQuiz/

For access to all government business information and services for business people, small and medium sized enterprises, check out http://www.business.govt.nz/

If any of you have an interest in astronomy, go to http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ and download their application for viewing ur universe. If you find space a little empty (surprise!) use the go to function...

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 138, October 2007"