Nothing's better than a free find
I changed the Technology Corner search function to FreeFind.com earlier this year. Because I'm using the free version, users of the search function will see advertisements that relate to their search. But they'll also see more accurate search results on the Technology Corner site. Most of the pages on the site are "shtml" instead of "html" and that's something that some other search engines don't handle very well. FreeFind gobbles up shtml pages easily.
Free accounts start with an initial limit of 32MB of HTML/text (about 3,000 average sized pages). Larger sites will need to pay for the service. According to FreeFind's FAQ, "Our subscription accounts do not subsidize the free accounts and are the most cost-effective available."
What's surprising is that all accounts (including free accounts) get unlimited on-demand re-indexing and automatic re-indexing as often as daily. Automatic re-indexing can be scheduled to occur on a flexible daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The Technology Corner site is indexed weekly because content changes weekly.
The main difference between the free indexing sites and the paid sites is that the free sites must accept advertising. "We recommend the professional subscription version to all businesses and anyone else who might find the advertising undesirable or who wants extended features and support." The subscription version eliminates all ads and also does not display the FreeFind logo or any other identifying information.
Unlike some competing services, FreeFind indexes PDF documents. It also creates an automatic site map based on page titles. Because of the way the Technology Corner site is organized, this is not a particularly useful feature.
According to FreeFind, "Unlike other internet companies, FreeFind has never had a 'market share at any cost' attitude. While other companies were committing themselves to expensive high profile deals and long term over-priced services, FreeFind was optimizing its efficiency. As a result we do not depend on venture capital money to keep us going until some 'drop dead' date, nor do we need excessively high pricing to pay off our investors." This, FreeFind says, means that the company is "uniquely positioned to be your most dependable source of high-reliability search services -- the same high quality service we supply to thousands of other web sites."
Overall: Probably the best free site indexer available. (5 cats)
Although it displays ads if you use the free service, the ads are inobtrusive and clearly marked. The ability to schedule indexing makes the service usable by sites that change every day as well as by sites with only weekly updates. For more information, see the FreeFind website.
Hey, buddy! Back it up.
The marketing folks at Maxell came up with an idea to sell more media: Promoting fall back(up) around the return to standard time from daylight saving. It's a self-serving promotion, but it's also a good reminder that backing up the data on your computer is more than just a good idea. Backup needs to be done on a regular basis. Even home users should back up their critical files at least once per week. If your computer died and you lost every photograph, letter, spreadsheet, video, and audio file since your last backup, would you be inconvenienced?
I spoke with Maxell's manger of technical support, Al Dripchak and asked him to tell me what Maxell had in mind with its fall back(up) promotion. [The full interview, about 5 minutes, will be on the podcast.]
This is the week Hell froze over
And not Hell, Michigan. Microsoft says it will allow Linux to work more seamlessly with Windows. It wasn't something that Microsoft just decided to do because it was a good idea, though. Steve Ballmer admitted that Microsoft's customers have been beating up the company and demanding interoperability.
He didn't say it quite that way, of course. He said Microsoft and Novell had created a set of agreements to bridge the divide between open-source and proprietary software. "The impetus for this event really comes from our customers," he said, carefully forming his mouth around the PR agency's words..
The agreement seems to be an end run around Red Hat in that it gives preferential treatment to SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. Users will be able to run a Linux virtual machine (VM) on Windows and a Windows VM on Linux. One's head spins.
Novell and Microsoft will collaborate on sales and marketing, but Ballmer says that the companies will continue to be competitors.
But wait, there's more
After two years or more of trying to find a way to make spam control a revenue stream, Microsoft has suddenly included its Sender ID Framework specification for e-mail authentication in the company's Open Specification Promise (OSP). What this means is that anyone in the world can use Microsoft's patented technology free and without threat of legal action.
Did somebody drop LSD into the Redmond water supply?
Microsoft has committed itself to cooperatively working to help fight spam. Sender ID can be used to battle spam, phishing, malware and other problems. Microsoft's PR agency, of course, calls SPF "the leading e-mail authentication protocol" but PR "professionals" include that line automatically without thinking about it.
Most spam arrives with a forged header. Sender ID is one of several technologies aimed at providing a true indication of a message's source. Microsoft says more than 5 million domain holders have adopted Sender ID, but there have been concerns about licensing and costs. "By putting Sender ID under the Open Specification Promise, our goal is to put those questions to rest and advance interoperable efforts for online safety worldwide," said Microsoft's corporate vice president of the Windows Live Platform Development Group, Brian Arbogast.
Sendmail is the company responsible for handling most of the messages that are routed through the Internet with its eponymous product, "Sendmail". Sendmail's Eric Allman says that Microsoft is doing the right thing and that making SPF available freely is "a positive step in the fight against spoofing, phishing and other categories of unwanted messaging."
Nerdly News
E-mail: IM for old people
Just about the time you think you're surfing along with the rest of humanity and that you're somewhere near the front of the pack, you learn that the technology you rely on the most is for old folks. A poll by Parks Associates says teens think e-mail is old-fashioned.
Some 40% of the old folks (25-54) use e-mail regularly, but only about 20% of teens do. The whippersnappers prefer IM while only 11% of adults go that route. E-mail is, of course, the oldest Internet technology, predating even such services as Gopher. (Yes, "Gopher", not "Google".) John Barrett, the director of research for Parks Associates, says e-mail isn't threatened by the kids. They'll learn to use it as they move from childhood into the "real world".
The Parks Associates study was a large report that covers "Digital Media Habits" overall. Unsurprisingly, multitasking is big with the younger crowd. Barrett says that teens are likely to be typing an IM while watching TV and talking on the phone.
The FCC gives Continental Airlines the OK for WiFi at Logan
Logan International Airport in Boston has been trying to shut down Continental's WiFi service for the past couple of years. Why? Might it be because the airport authority has its own $8-per-day service? (This compares somewhat unfavorably with the free service offered at Port Columbus.) Logan said it was a "safety issue" but the Federal Communications Commission says that Continental has every right to operate its own WiFe service in its own lounge and that Massport has no authority to order Continental to shut it off.
Massport argued that Continental's WiFi service could jam airline and public-safety radio systems. The airport authority's system ($8 per day per person, remember) operates on the same frequencies and presumably would not be a safety concern.
T-Mobile had also been ordered to shut down its WiFi service in American's Terminal B and Massport threatened Delta with legal action if it tried to set up a WiFi operation in Terminal A.
The decision was both logical and correct, which is something that one cannot necessarily expect from government agencies these days.
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