Forte's AGENT still rocks (But I miss Magellan)
One of my most fond memories in the computer world is my dad buying me a copy of Lotus Magellan 2.0.’
Like its name would imply, the program was designed to search and explore our then-cavernous 20 MB hard drives under MS-DOS. It would find any file, any text within a program and do many other things. To reuse the metaphor it was the Swiss Army Knife of utilities under DOS.
I used it religiously until Windows 95 made it useless and Lotus shelved Magellan. (It is such a loved program that people have put up Web pages lamenting its demise, something I dare say doesn’t happen a lot about software, Apple fans notwithstanding.)
The only surviving program that I still have any fondness for (or, for which I still have fondness) is Forte’s Agent, a program that is little known outside of the bowels of the Internet.
In the early days of the Internet there were a couple of distinct divisions. One became the World Wide Web, one was IRC (the chat area) and the other was (and sort of remains) Usenet, the discussion area. Unlike chat, Usenet served as a bulletin board for the Internet. You’d “post” something and someone else would come along and comment on it, posting on top of yours.
Today there are more than 50,000 discussion topics on Usenet, ranging from Disneyworld (one of my favorites) to adoption and relationships. (Of those 50,000, only about 5 percent are worth reading; many have degenerated into spam-filled cesspools.) A good deal of these are adult in nature, so this is not a place for kids. There also are many “binaries” groups that share photographs, music and other files.
In order to read the discussions and participate you needed a “newsreader.” The best of those was Agent, a program that makes navigating the many discussions easier.
The latest version is Agent 3.1, a great upgrade to the venerable program. You log in to your Internet Service Provider’s “news server” and let it gather up the boards that your ISP subscribes to. In most cases the name of your ISP’s news server is “news.yourisp.com” where “yourisp.com” is the name of your ISP.
Once you have the list downloaded (this can take a while over a dial-up connection) then you can search for the topics that interest you. Once you find one that may be up your alley you can sample the content of the group or “subscribe” to the group to make it easier to find it again.
When you log in each time you get the “headers” of the group downloaded to your reader (that’s like a subject line in an e-mail). If you want to read the post you can click on it and it will download the whole “body” of message or file.
Agent is offered in two flavors; the whole program is $29 or you can get a free version supported by ads (no popups or spyware, however) called “Free Agent”. If your ISP does not have a news server (AOL for example) you can subscribe to one for $2.95 that works with Agent.
You can sample the world of newsgroups by using the Web by heading to “groups.google.com”. It’s a sampling of what’s out there but it’s a pretty awful way to participate in the discussion long-term. It also doesn’t have the full list of groups available, which may or may not be a good thing.
You can get all the information about Agent at www.forteinc.com
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: The Sundance Film Festival has a great Web site that details some of the best films coming out of the groundbreaking festival. Try it at www.sundance.org.
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
New things that tick me off
It has been a while since I have disclosed my bad mood in print so here are the things that are making me cranky.
---Shutterfly, once my favorite photo site, ticked me off big-time over the holidays. I ordered a half-dozen photobooks and received a shipping date well in advance of Christmas. The product, however, keep getting delayed and delayed. My requests for information went unanswed. There was a note on my order history page saying the company was working through “high order volume” and I would just have to wait.
When the books did arrive I found the photos were too small and the books kinda flimsy for the price. The layout options of the books were pretty limited and they can’t be resized.
---Signals, the mail order and Internet company, ticked me off last year and I have not been back since. Same issue...failure to live up to a shipping promise. (Christmas gifts shipped on Dec. 27 aren’t all that welcome.)
I believe in the Southwest Airlines theory of customer serve. Promise little and deliver on your promise. Basically Southwest sets expectations low and generally fulfills those expectations.
---Dell is on the list this year for adding so much junk to their new PCs that it takes a trained technician to remove most of them. Their “starter” edition of Quickbooks is the most annoying...even popping up reminders to try the program long after you’ve deleted it. I know Dell sells 80 percent of its PCs to businesses but there’s no reason to have such an invasive product and selling tactic. Most large businesses don’t use Quickbooks, most small businesses already have it and consumers don’t want it. Editing the Windows Registry should not be needed to remove it. (Dell gets an honorable mention for charging $25 for a USB cable to connect their “free” printers to their computers.)
---Balance Digital Technology, a low-end computer line, gets a rasberry for using a non-standard power supply in their desktop PC then running out of spares. I have had one on my shop bench for a week and it looks like I will have to custom-make one, as the company had a single-source for them and that company quit making them. It’s never a good plan to have a unique form factor.
---More than one person has emailed me claiming because they cannot find the Epson RX700 printer, which I recommended, in their local store so therefore it must not exist. I too politely suggest Google.
---A few people have taken great exception to my recommendation of AVG, a free anti-virus product for Windows and Linux. Some claim nothing free can work, some say it’s spyware and some say it’s inferior. All of those people are wrong. AVG scored 100 percent on the December 2005 Virus Bulletin testing. The reason they can give it away to consumers is that they sell it to businesses.
---I love the people who try to guess my political or social leanings by the Web sites I recommend. I don’t care what the content is; I recommend sites based on many factors. I get called a left wing wacko and a right-wing loonie, sometimes in the same week. It’s pretty interesting.
---I am getting very annoyed that no one has cleaned the Web lately. Lots of the sites I find in search engines no longer exist. I would like a house-cleaning day where we purge all of the search databases and start over. We all ought to have a “do-over” day.
---I also long for the day where the hype of the Internet is over. Every week someone puts up a the next “cool” Web site. He/she gets rich and the site disappears in a year.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: My new favorite site to get software is Filehippo at www.filehippo.com
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair company and columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His email address is jim@cyberdads.com
What's made me angry today
It has been a while since I have disclosed my bad mood in print so here are the things that are making me cranky.
---Shutterfly, once my favorite photo site, ticked me off big-time over the holidays. I ordered a half-dozen photobooks and received a shipping date well in advance of Christmas. The product, however, keep getting delayed and delayed. My requests for information went unanswed. There was a note on my order history page saying the company was working through “high order volume” and I would just have to wait.
When the books did arrive I found the photos were too small and the books kinda flimsy for the price. The layout options of the books were pretty limited and they can’t be resized.
---Signals, the mail order and Internet company, ticked me off last year and I have not been back since. Same issue...failure to live up to a shipping promise. (Christmas gifts shipped on Dec. 27 aren’t all that welcome.)
I believe in the Southwest Airlines theory of customer serve. Promise little and deliver on your promise. Basically Southwest sets expectations low and generally fulfills those expectations.
---Dell is on the list this year for adding so much junk to their new PCs that it takes a trained technician to remove most of them. Their “starter” edition of Quickbooks is the most annoying...even popping up reminders to try the program long after you’ve deleted it. I know Dell sells 80 percent of its PCs to businesses but there’s no reason to have such an invasive product and selling tactic. Most large businesses don’t use Quickbooks, most small businesses already have it and consumers don’t want it. Editing the Windows Registry should not be needed to remove it. (Dell gets an honorable mention for charging $25 for a USB cable to connect their “free” printers to their computers.)
---Balance Digital Technology, a low-end computer line, gets a rasberry for using a non-standard power supply in their desktop PC then running out of spares. I have had one on my shop bench for a week and it looks like I will have to custom-make one, as the company had a single-source for them and that company quit making them. It’s never a good plan to have a unique form factor.
---More than one person has emailed me claiming because they cannot find the Epson RX700 printer, which I recommended, in their local store so therefore it must not exist. I too politely suggest Google.
---A few people have taken great exception to my recommendation of AVG, a free anti-virus product for Windows and Linux. Some claim nothing free can work, some say it’s spyware and some say it’s inferior. All of those people are wrong. AVG scored 100 percent on the December 2005 Virus Bulletin testing. The reason they can give it away to consumers is that they sell it to businesses.
---I love the people who try to guess my political or social leanings by the Web sites I recommend. I don’t care what the content is; I recommend sites based on many factors. I get called a left wing wacko and a right-wing loonie, sometimes in the same week. It’s pretty interesting.
---I am getting very annoyed that no one has cleaned the Web lately. Lots of the sites I find in search engines no longer exist. I would like a house-cleaning day where we purge all of the search databases and start over. We all ought to have a “do-over” day.
---I also long for the day where the hype of the Internet is over. Every week someone puts up a the next “cool” Web site. He/she gets rich and the site disappears in a year.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: My new favorite site to get software is Filehippo at www.filehippo.com
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair company and columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His email address is jim@cyberdads.com
Questions from the masses
It’s been a while since I raided the mailbag for some material. Let’s see if we can clear up some questions.
Q. I received a new PC for Christmas and it came with Windows XP Media Center 2005 on it. I am not fully sure what this is capable of versus normal Windows XP and the PC didn’t come with a manual. What did I get with this?
A. I firmly believe Dell and a few others are pushing Windows Media Center edition because it has not sold very well on the open market and Microsoft is giving them some incentives to get rid of it. If you never touch the Media Center parts of the operating system it will work just like Windows XP. If you decide to connect your computer to a TV source (cable TV or satellite) then you can train your computer to work sort of like a Tivo. Windows Media Center has the ability to record television programming, so it’s important to have a big hard drive.
Q. I am upset with Dell’s Web site. I ordered a computer from the Web site and when I went back to check an hour later they were giving away a free flat-panel monitor, which I paid $170 for. When I complained I got nowhere.
A. Dell offers a dynamic Web site that adjusts “special offers” based on what the company has in stock. You will find 19-inch monitors offered on special when the company is running low on 17s or 15s offered when 17s and 19s are low. I don’t think you got ripped off, however, as I tend to think (but have no evidence to support) that the overall system price does not change. So while the flat-panel monitor is offered as a free upgrade, the overall cost of the system is adjusted to pay for it. The think about Dell is, just keep refreshing the site every day until you find the offer you want.
Q. Like you, rebates are driving me insane. I think they are getting more complex and more annoying. Did you fall for this one? (Link attached.)
A. Yes, when I received my new Nikon digital camera I was offered a “free” Epson printer that ended up being four separate rebates totaling $180. They required copies of the UPC codes of both the printer and the camera, copies of the sales receipts and four separate mailed forms, which then required serial numbers of both devices. My recent rebate for Dlink was denied because the company claimed I missed the “postmark by” date (I didn’t) and I never received a rebate I applied for from a Symantec product. (Because many rebates are amazingly mailed as postcards it is a wonder any are received at all.)
Until the attorneys general of the states get some backbone we will be stuck with this junk.
Q. You were wrong when you said the end of Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Mac was just announced. That announcement was made a long time ago.
A. Yes, about 500 Mac aficionados brought the incorrect verb to my attention. (It’s nice to be loved.) The point remains, if you’re using IE for the Mac, you should switch to Firefox or Safari.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: There are lots of answer sites out there. One of the better ones is AnswerBag (www.answerbag.com) which lets you ask and answer questions on nearly any topic under the sun.
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair company, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His email address is jim@cyberdads.com
Digital cams need large memory cards
Let’s hope everyone’s Christmas and Hannukah was full of way-cool technology. I know mine was, which made it a day full of installing batteries, reading manuals and downloading drivers.
My wife surprised me with a digital Nikon SLR, which gave me an excuse to fire off a lot of photos and an excuse here to delve into digital photography and connections to computers.
My first discovery was that despite the hefty price, Nikon does not ship any memory cards with the camera. I had a small 128MB card already but my first stop was the Crucial web site (www.crucial.com), where I scoped out a 2GB card for less than $150.
(Time out for a flashback… I once paid $799 for 24K of memory and holding 2 gigs of memory in a small chip the size of a dime was truly awe-inspiring.) Anyway, inserting the card into the Nikon and setting the resolution to “medium” resulted in nearly 1,000 exposures being available. When it comes to photography I can’t fully explain what that means.
When I was in college training to be a photojournalist one of the main constraints was number of exposures available. Unless you went to an extended film back you were limited to 36 (or sometimes 72) exposures. That’s why photographers often carry many cameras…to have different lenses and more exposures available.
However having 1,000 photos available (and a motor drive) in a digital SLR really is an amazing thing. You can fire off 40 or 50 exposures of a single moment in time and not worry that you’ve missed the split second that matters.
Adding to this freedom is the LCD monitor on the back of the camera. During a quiet moment you can review the exposures you’ve made and weed out the obvious dogs. With a film camera you never knew what you had until you came out of the darkroom, smelling of Dektol or D-76.
So I wholeheartedly endorse adding a large memory card to a digital camera, especially if you take photography at all seriously.
When it comes to connecting your camera to your computer, I frankly wouldn’t bother. Yes, I upload my photos to my hard drive (and a backup copy to an online site and a backup of that to an external hard drive) but there’s no reason to muddle through the crappy software that comes with your camera.
Instead go to the store, or Crucial’s web site, and get a card reader. For less than $20 you can slide the reader into your USB port. Then when you want to transfer photos to your PC, you just eject the card from the camera and insert it into the reader. Both Windows and Apple computers will recognize the card as a hard drive. You just drag from one to the other and you’re done. No cables, no mess, no software.
It’s a much more elegant solution.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: If you’re looking for a great site to store and save photos, head to www.smugmug.com. I like the management and features of this site.
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and is computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His email is jim@cyberdads.com
