End of Sacra Blue?
Is it really the end of Sacra Blue? At the present time, yes. There is no one in the wings to take over as editor so this is the last issue until someone new volunteers. I expect someone to come forward eventually, even though there may be a gap of several months. When Sacra Blue returns, I do not expect it to be the same.
I expect that the next Sacra Blue you see after this one will be an electronic edition. This is potentially a lot less work for an editor and can save us enough money to survive our financial problems.
Many of you know that I have been promoting changes in Sacra Blue for several months but we have not been able to come up with a solution. Now we are forced into doing something different. How different will depend upon who steps forward to become the new editor. The new volunteer will have a lot of flexibility because they will be starting from nothing. Anything will be an improvement over nothing.
In the mean time, you will find most of the information you normally see in Sacra Blue on eBlue. If you have not looked at eBlue lately, go visit it now (www.sacpcug.org).
No Mail?
I have heard the complaints that members need to receive Sacra Blue to remind them of the meeting. Even without an editor, we will not leave you in the dark. We will resort to post cards to get out the word.
Wouldn't you rather get that notice electronically? Just send a blank message to SPCUGAnnounce-subscribe@topica.com. You will get back a verification message that you want to subscribe. You need to send that back. Then, every month you will get a message that tells you about the speakers for the meeting about a week before the meeting.
Wait, There's More
There is a similar list that gets you the table of contents for eBlue. This let's you see what's in the latest issue without going to the Web page. The links take you directly to the articles. You subscribe by sending a blank message to eBlue-subscribe@topica.com. This will send you a message each time the new eBlue is posted.
Don't Like To Read Online?
I do not like to read online. I do not like tying up the phone line while I read. Maybe my opinion will change when I get a broadband connection, but I doubt it. I prefer to download the content and then read it offline.
As you know, eBlue contains the entire articles, but Sacra Blue contains only the first page of many articles. For some reason, possibly because others do not like to read online, most of you do not read the end of articles because you do not go online for eBlue. Wouldn't it be nice to download the contents?
There has been a downloadable version of Sacra Blue e for several months now. Just look for the link on the eBlue table of contents (including the eBlue table of contents sent by the list I just described). The current form is a big text file that contains all of the text from the articles. You can download it to read it offline or even print it out and read it that way.
Personally, I would prefer to see a formatted version that looks more like the existing Sacra Blue. This could be done in Adobe's PDF format. You could download a free PDF viewer to read the files or print them out. Because of the way Sacra Blue has been produced since we started eBlue, this has not been practical. I expect that the resurrected Sacra Blue will be in this format.
If you would like to receive an electronic version of Sacra Blue in your email, there is yet another list. You subscribe in the same way as the other list but this time the address is SacraBlue-subscribe@topica. You will not receive any messages until after we have an electronic version to send. By subscribing now you are voting for this type of publication method. If we only get a few subscribers, this service will never be activated.
WWW Tip
When you are running Internet Explorer, you do not need to type the "www." and the ".com" of an address when you enter it on the address line, as long as you end the entry with a Ctrl-Enter instead of just an Enter. Explorer will automatically add the "www." before the name you enter and a ".com" after it. The biggest trouble is breaking the habit of typing them.
Zoom Tip
If you have one of those mice with a scroll wheel on it, you can easily zoom in and out of text on many programs. Just hold down the Ctrl button and spin the wheel. This will enlarge and reduce the font size. I know it works in Internet Explorer and Outlook Express as well as Microsoft Word. I suspect that it works on most recent vintage Microsoft programs. It may well work on any program that adheres to Microsoft's keyboard standards. Try it out on your favorite programs. You should see things clearer.
Address At Hand
You can easily go to any Internet address without loading Internet Explorer first. All you have to do is add the address bar to your taskbar. To do this, right click on any blank part of the taskbar. A menu will pop up. Select Toolbars. Click Address. Now just type the address and Internet Explorer will pop up automatically with the address you entered. The Ctrl-Enter trick works here too.
You may want to enlarge the taskbar after adding the address. Just move the mouse over the edge of the taskbar until it becomes a two-headed arrow. Hold down the left button and move upward until it is the size you desire.
Colorful PDA
Both Larry Clark and I recently got a chance to try out a new PDA that was shown at Comdex. This review contains both his views and mine.
The product is the Helio personal digital assistant (PDA) from VTech. Helio is just one of the new products trying to compete against the very successful Palm Pilot. You may know VTech for their telephones. They are not strangers to making consumer products, and this product seems like it will last a few years.
VTech's approach is to be low cost ($179) and colorful. Colors include bright yellow, pearlized pink, metallic green with purple tint, cool gray, metallic blue, translucent blue, translucent green and clear. I guess this is to appeal to iMac users. Mine is a translucent blue.
The features of this device include the traditional PDA features: calendar, to-do lists, phone book, memo and calculator. It goes beyond that to include a sketchpad, expense manager, and voice recorder. It also includes the capability to download and draft email.
The voice recorder is not the greatest quality but it is suitable for note taking. You can take notes pressing the external buttons without using a stylus. You get 55 minutes of voice recording and you can use the voice messages for alarms if you want to.
I like the back-lit display and the scroll buttons on the side. The scroll buttons let you read with one hand.
Like the Palm Pilot, the Helio has character recognition that lets you enter information using a stylus. VTech licensed CIC's Jot technology. Both Larry and I feel that Jot is much easier to use than Palm's Graffiti. You do not have to train yourself to use it unless your hand printing is really bad. You can also bring up a small keyboard display and enter a character at a time that way. (I know people who do this very quickly). There's even a screen that lets you tell the recognizer how you normally form certain characters-for example, whether you write a "T" with the horizontal or vertical stroke first. This helps the recognizer do its job.
Like other PDAs, the data on the PDA is synchronized with a Windows program through a serial port. You simply slide the Helio into the docking station and press the sync button. The CompanionLink data syncing software works with its own desktop software as well as Personal Information Managers (PIMs) like Microsoft Outlook, ACT, Goldmine, Lotus Organizer, Schedule+, and even Palm Desktop. Unfortunately, there was no convenient way to move the data from my REX into the Helio. I conceivably could have installed Microsoft Outlook and synced my REX with that and then synced with the Helio. I decided that it was not worth the effort for an evaluation.
Aside from wired synchronization with desktop systems, the basic Helio does not offer any built-in communication capabilities. (An optional keyboard and modem is available.) Thus, you cannot beam information to another user or to an infrared printer as you can with Palm systems.
Specifications are quite normal for palm-top devices. Weight is 6 ounces. Battery life is rated at a month for each set of 2 alkaline batteries. The temperature range is 32 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit so it may be a problem on those hot summer days or trips to Tahoe in the winter (but again those ranges seem normal). The carrying case seems sufficient to protect the unit from normal carrying (with plenty of alternate cases available).
For the real geeks among you, Helio has a 32-bit RISC processor running at 75MHz. It has 8 MB of SDRAM and 2 MB of flash memory (used for the operating system). The display is a 160 x 160 pixels (59 x 59 mm), 16-level gray scale, full-graphic, electro-luminescent blue-green back-lit display; 1024 x 1024 resistive analog touchpad. The operating system is the company's own proprietary system.
There is an accessory available that I did not have a chance to try. It is a special keyboard/modem device that you slide the Helio into. This is supposed to allow you to get your email. This could be a handy thing to have if you travel but do not need a laptop for any other reason.
Neither Larry nor I expect to use the Helio. We are each hooked on our current devices and will pass the Helios onto other people. We were both a little disappointed that the Helio did not have some great feature that grabbed us. The product seems to be geared towards the new user rather than a seasoned PDA user.
The pricing is low but not significantly lower than the lowest priced versions of the Palm Pilot so if you need basic PDA functions it is probably a wash in terms of pricing. If you need voice recording then it is probably a great deal. If you want a brightly colored PDA, this is the only option I am currently aware of.
One area to think about, third-party applications. If you hope to find additional applications for your PDA, you'll find hundreds of them for the Palm (the industry standard). Don't expect to find many for the Helio. (Although there is a free C developers' kit available for you to develop your own.)
We can not tell you to rush out and but the Helio and ignore all other PDAs. However, if you are in the market, you should add the Helio to your consideration list. While we are less than enthusiastic about the device, the people we have passed the device to are overjoyed. Do not expect to find Helio at your computer or office store. It appears to only be available through the Web site.
VTech Information
560 Division Street
Campbell, CA 95008
Electronic Business Cards
There is something new in the world of CDs: small size. I found a company at Comdex that offered both mass-duplicated CDs and do-it-yourself CDRs that are the size of normal business cards. Typically this would be used to hold your catalog or company information. It can hold videos or off-line Web pages. This could be the ultimate form for your high-tech resume.
The company offers custom sizes and shapes of these disks that are cut down versions of the 80-mm mini-CD. Mini-CDs work on normal CD players and so do these custom cutouts. A mini-CD is capable of storing 160 MB. The custom versions lose a lot of data because they cut some of the CD away. The smallest size they offer is the same size as a business card and still gives you 17 MB. A slightly larger version gives you 40MB and that seems to be a favored size.
The CD Business Card Kit provides you with authoring software and 12 CDR blanks that hold 50 MB of data. It also includes labels for the CDRs and clear vinyl sleeves. In small quantities, the price is $2.20 each. Obviously this price is higher than what you are currently paying for a normal CDR but these things really catch your eye.
If you have them press real CDs in this unique format the quantity prices are not bad at all. At a 1000 CDs, the price is only $1.25. Compared with the cost of a catalog, this is really cheap.
I expect to be using these soon myself. You can fit an amazing amount of information in 40 to 50 MB of space. You should check this out too.
BizNetCard
78 Laird Drive
Toronto, Ontario, Canada N4G 3V1
416-423-6999
MusicMatch
I saw somewhere that most of the Internet bandwidth in university systems is being used by students exchanging MP3 files. For those of you who have been sleeping for the past few years, MP3 is an audio file format that compresses the data to a fraction of the size they take on an audio CD. You see reference to MP3 files all the time. A lot of the excitement is because of the portable players, but the software players have gotten quite good too.
The portable players currently hold about an hour of music and cost a few hundred dollars (about the same as the original portable CD players). There are some portable changers popping up that hold 200 hours but they are about $700. The software players are limited only by your disk space and the best one is free.
The best of MP3 players is currently MusicMatch Jukebox version 5.0 (but that may change by the time this makes it to print, two weeks ago I would have made a different recomendation).
MusicMatch Jukebox 5.0 contains features that cost extra in the previous 4.x versions. Primary among them was free unlimited encoding files at up to 320 kbps. It can create these files at speeds up to five times faster than their playtime. The previous version limited you to 96 kbps and took two to three times longer than the playtime to record.
I recommend that most people record at 128 kbps. If you are really picky, then you can choose 160 kbps or even 320 kbps, but I have yet to hear any song that I could tell was worse than the CD it came from. Perhaps if I were using headphones, I might notice the difference. A 128 kbps recording gives you an 11:1 compression. The higher kbps files do less compression and may not be usable on the portable players.
The previous version took a long time to load if you had a large library (mine is over 22 GB-more than 430 hours of music) because it had to read the title data from each file. This version is quite snappy. (They must be buffering it up somewhere). The music library lets you see your collection in lots of ways.
If you ever want to listen to the music you record in the order it was on the CD, then you need to set the recorder to include the track number in the song file title. This is done from the dialog that you get to by pressing the Songs Directory button on the Recorder tab of the Settings dialog.
To record a CD, you load the recorder panel (by pressing the record button). Then you load the CD into the player. The program will then connect to the Internet and download the CDDB information. This will give you the title, artist, and track information. In most cases it also gives the copyright and genre information. I have found the CDDB to be very complete. Well over 99 percent of all my CD titles were in the library. Impressive considering how obscure some of my collection is. I did have problems with spellings as well as genre and copyright information, but that is easy to correct.
One problem I have found with software MP3 players is their ugliness. MusicMatch is probably the worst. This is not as bad with this version since you can download themes (Winamp calls them skins). Download them all and find one that you can tolerate.
The auto DJ option is nice. You pick some criteria and how many hours you want and it makes up a play list. It selects the songs randomly. The list seems reasonably random. You can edit and save this list if you want.
This version adds the ability to create a CD from the play list. You can burn an audio CD from a list that is under 74 minutes in length. You can also burn a data CD with over 10 hours of data (there are supposed to be some players for these coming soon).
MusicMatch offers an upgraded version for $29.99 that provides even faster recording speeds (is that possible?). It also gives faster recording of CDs (assuming you have a faster recorder I guess).
I use the program every day, playing tunes from my collection as I work. My play list is a lot more varied than any radio station in Sacramento. I do not listen to the radio anymore.
As I said before, this is the best of the MP3 players currently available. If you want to make your own MP3 files or just play files you downloaded from the Internet, you should get this program. You should try out Winamp too but you will prefer this Musicmatch after you compare. Now if I can just find a way to get my collection to work in my car...
MusicMatch Jukebox[free]
MusicMatch Jukebox Plus [$29.99]
[Ken Hopkins is an active member of the Sacramento PC User Group and currently serves as the Meeting Coordinator. You can reach him by email at ken.hopkins@sacpcug.org]
