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Who's in the corner?
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WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio • Sunday morning from 8 until 9 |
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Sunday, September 28, 2003 |
Random thought:
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Fancy tricks from AcrobatJust about every computer owner has Adobe's free Acrobat Reader installed because PDF (portable document format) is the preferred file format for sharing files if you want to be certain the receiver can read the file. PDF files are readable on any operating system that has a PDF viewer (and that's most of them). Additionally, I can create a file in Ventura Publisher, distill it to PDF, and send it to the chairman of the board at Quark. He'll be able to read it even though Quark XPress wouldn't have a clue what to do with a Ventura file. That, according to Adobe's Jonathan Knowles, is the primary reason why the
ability to create a PDF is so important. You can't just send a Word
file or an Excel spreadsheet because the person you're sending it to
may not have Word or Excel -- or that person might have a computer that
runs on Unix or Linux... If you have a Mac that runs OS X, you already have a limited version of the Acrobat Distiller. Additionally, some applications (particularly those from Corel) on Windows machines include functionality licensed from Adobe so that users can create PDFs that will be adequate for sending to co-workers. If you need to send your output file to a professional printer, you'll need to invest in the full product from Adobe, though. Acrobat comes in 2 versions: Standard and Professional. The primary difference is that the professional version includes a "Catalog" feature that allows the user to build an index for one or more PDF files. The index makes searching the files faster and easier for users. Version 6 adds more than 10 new features, but here are the features Adobe considers to be the most important:
For more information, see that Acrobat website.
How the Technology Corner rating system works. Making Acrobat sing, dance, and do the dishesAcrobat comes with a little booklet and the usual on-line help files, but if you want to get up to speed in a hurry, the best way to do it is the old-fashioned way: With a book. Osborne's How to Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 6.0 by Doug Sahlin would be a good choice. Remember when applications used to come with thick manuals that described how to do everything? That's what this book does. The inside front cover gives you a quick look at some of the major tasks you can accomplish with Acrobat. If you want to capture a website into Acrobat (not a new feature with this version, but a very useful one) you'll know to head for chapter 6. There's also a full index (any manual without an index is useless) and the inside back cover has a short list of useful function keys. Sahlin explains how to make a PDF from a text document (and various other kinds of files) and also describes the many settings that a user can modify to make graphics look and print better or load faster, to make the file larger or smaller, and to control typefaces. More than just explaining what the settings do, you're told why you might want to use one setting instead of another. (Interesting concept, that: Teach people why they should consider one option or another instead of just saying "This is the way I do it, so this is the way you should do it.") Considering you'll pay $450 for the full version of Acrobat Professional ($149 for the upgrade) or $299 for the full version of Acrobat Standard ($99 for the upgrade), adding an extra $25 for a book that will get you up to speed in a hurry seems like a reasonable investment. For more information, see Osborne's website.
Keyspan's "read anything" readerNo, that's not its name. Keyspan call it the "7-way Media Reader" (aka "UMR-6X") but I like my name better. Compact Flash? Smart Media? It reads 'em. SD or MMC? Yep. Sony Memory Stick? Of course. That's only 5. What else? Add MicroDrive and we're up to 6. I don't see any more slots on the box, so maybe it should be the "6-way Media Reader" as the product code suggests (6x). See, I knew my name was better.
Better yet, if I need to copy something from a CF card to a Memory Stick, I can do it. Plug the reader in and 4 new drives show up on your computer. Plug in a removable memory device and it becomes one of the drives. You can then drag and drop files from one to another just as you would with any other drive. This really simplifies things. And you don't even need a power cord because the UMR-6X "read-anything" 7(!)-way Media Reader gets its power from the USB port. It works with Windows 98 or later and with Mac OS 8.5 or later (excepting OS X 10.0). Oh -- and it lists at just $49. For more information, see Keyspan's website.
How the Technology Corner rating system works. Nerdly NewsA Kodak momentRemember when IBM sold off its Selectric typewriter division and went out of the typewriter business? It was something that everyone knew was coming, but it was still a surprise. So it was this week when Kodak made official the end of the slide projector. The official announcement (although it had been leaked days before) was made on Friday. According to the news release "Eastman Kodak Company today announced its intent to stop making and selling slide projectors by June 2004." If you think about it for a moment, when was the last time you saw a slide projected onto a screen? I can't remember when I last used a slide projector. These days, if I want to show something on a screen, the image will probably originate in my notebook computer and be projected onto the screen by a digital projector. That's the reality Kodak recognized in saying that slide projectors have declined in usage and have been replaced by alternative projection technologies. Over the last 5 decades or so, Kodak produced millions of slide projectors. Many are still in use, but sales have dropped. The remaining market segment for slide projectors is museums, planetariums, cinemas, and schools. As those old projectors break down or as programs are updated, most of these markets will move to digital. Some advanced amateur photographers still use slides, but the amateur photography market is moving rapidly to digital, too. Kodak will continue to provide service and support for slide projectors through June 2011 and the company will continue to manufacture color slide films as long as there is a demand for them. Microsoft: Threat to national security?Some security experts think so. Take a look at the report here: www.ccianet.org/papers/cyberinsecurity.pdf for the complete story. Windows has been criticized as buggy, crash-prone and confusing to use. This is the first time, though, that it has been called a security threat. The reason is its complex design and Microsoft's essential monopoly position. The claim is in a 24-page report by 7 security specialists. The Computer and Communications Industry Association published it. Note: The CCIA is known for its anti-Microsoft position and this attack on Windows in light of the recent security problems that have affected millions of users is at least somewhat "political". But that doesn't make it wrong. CCIA is appealing the government's antitrust settlement with Microsoft, and several months ago, it filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission. So these are not "friendly criticisms". Because so many computers run on a single operating system, the threat is multiplied. "Most of the world's computers run Microsoft's operating systems, thus most of the world's computers are vulnerable to the same viruses and worms at the same time," the report says. "The only way to stop this is to avoid monoculture in computer operating systems.Microsoft exacerbates this problem via a wide range of practices that lock users to its platform. The impact on security of this lock-in is real and endangers society." I have previously noted that Unix is, by design, somewhat more secure than Windows. While that is true, a Window-less world would not necessarily be a more secure world. Some of the report's authors noted that the real problem is not so much Microsoft's design as it is the ubiquity of the Windows operating system. Security consultant Perry Metzger said, "If every machine on earth ran Mac OS X, it would be the same problem." Let us know what you think about this program! Write to: |
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I can't think of anything else I'd want to read and Keyspan's website lists
"only" the 6 items I've mentioned. That's OK. That's enough. Instead
of having to keep track of a separate reader (and its cable) for every
possible kind of removable memory, all I have to do is keep track of
one little reader with 4 slots (SD and MMC have the same configuration
and MicroDrive shares a pin configuration with CompactFlash) and 1 cable.
