Gmail and its contents

By: BOB & JOY SCHWABACH
Published: 18/03/2009 at 12:00 AM

A reader wrote to say he was fed up with his email program and was waving the white flag. We advised him to try Google's Gmail. We made this switch four years ago and have been happy with it ever since.
The one great fear that people have about switching email hosts is that they will lose the old mail and lose touch with everyone who wrote them at that old address. This doesn't happen. You can keep the old email addresses, just as we did, and check off the box to have that mail automatically forwarded to the new Gmail account. This fear of being cut off is so strong, by the way, that we have a friend of many years who refuses to make the shift despite our assurances. Believe us, there's no danger.
Bob has over 5,000 emails in his Gmail inbox. Rather than delete old ones, he uses the search function to find messages. Joy, who is much more organised than Bob, likes to use the "archive" button to get the mail neatly put away each day. The emails are all still there and can be searched, they just aren't in her inbox.
Joy uses labels to categorise her emails. For example, one group is labelled "Mary Schmitendorf" If a new note from Mary comes in, it is automatically labelled and archived, so she can reply at the weekend when she has more time. If you want to just label an email, without archiving it, you can tap the "v" key on your keyboard or click "move", to move an email to one of your folders. To reply to a message, you can just tap "r", and to reply to everyone involved, you tap "a". You can even have more than one email account visible on the same screen. There are dozens of shortcuts. You can find them by - what else? - Googling "gmail shortcuts."
There are many advantages to using Gmail, including an excellent spam filter and the ability to check your mail from any computer that can connect to the Internet.
Up close with your iPhone
We get pitched on more accessories for iPods and iPhones than any other product we have ever seen, and we ignore almost all of them. But one that caught our eye, so to speak, is a case with a sliding lens that lets you take close-up photos with your iPhone.
Normally, an iPhone shot has to be 45cm or further from a subject in order to get a clear focus. The Clarifi case from GriffinTechnology.com has a sliding lens that can be moved over the iPhone's own lens to reduce the focal length to as close as 10cm. When you want to take a close-up of a flower or an insect - or a business card, slide the lens into place; to return to normal focus, slide it out of the way.
Users say they not only get sharp close-up shots with this Griffin case but the colour seems better as well. The Griffin Clarifi costs $35 from their web site, but we found it for about half that price at Amazon and other Internet discounters.
The Godzilla of PDF editors
Anyone who has the free Adobe Reader can open a PDF, which is the most widely used method of saving documents in their original format. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and it means whatever you save that way will look exactly the same on someone else's computer.
You can look at a PDF document but you can't touch - meaning you can read it but you can't change anything, at least not without some additional software. Adobe invented the PDF, so understandably the granddaddy of PDF editors is Adobe Acrobat. But at $300, it does a whole lot more than most people need or want. In the past, we have used and recommended PDF Converter from Nuance (formerly called Scansoft), which sells for around $50. But recently we found something cheaper. It's PDFZilla, the Godzilla of PDF converters. We got it for $30 from pdfzilla.com
Comparing PDFZilla to the Nuance product, we found they did equally well on our test documents. We liked the fact that PDFZilla could convert a document to Word or HTML or even Adobe Flash (for animations). More importantly, you can try it out for free. You can only try out the Nuance product for free if you sign up for Netflix or one of a few dozen other offers. However, Nuance does some conversions that PDFZilla doesn't: It can convert PDFs to Excel or PowerPoint or WordPerfect, for example.
PDFZilla works with Microsoft Word as well as the OpenOffice word processor, which anyone can get for free from OpenOffice.org. This is good, because Joy's copy of MS Word hasn't worked since early in the Bush administration and we were getting desperate.
Gaming the mouse
Most advances in desktop computers have come from games. This is hard to believe but true. The popularity of the original Apple, called the Apple II (there was no Apple I), was because it contained a game called Little Brick Out. Steve Wozniak liked it so much that he programmed it into the onboard software. In Little Brick Out you use a paddle to try and keep a ball bouncing against some coloured bricks to knock them out. That meant the Apple II had to have colour. You don't need colour to do word processing or use a spreadsheet, but you need it to play Little Brick Out. Because the Apple II had colour, it forced IBM to put colour in their first computers as well.
Increased speed, more memory and bigger hard drives were also in large part driven by the need for more processing power and disk storage to play games, which kept getting bigger and more complex. Office programs don't need much processing power. Only programs using graphics and motion need speed and memory. All of which brings us to the subject of this little digression, the new Ikari mouse from SteelSeries.com, designed for gamers.
The Ikari mouse has its own LCD display and transmits clicks and movements five times faster than conventional mice. This response time can be tuned by the user to match their reflexes and reaction patterns.
That means, of course, that getting that creature with a single shot when he sticks just a bit of his head around the corner might require a very precise movement with the mouse, and you can do it.
Does this have any reference at all beyond shooting the bad guys in creature features? Well yes, actually. People who use CAD programs, like AutoCAD (computer-aided design), and art and illustration, need precise control over lines and dimensions. In the early days, precision mice and joysticks were big ticket items. (Bob had a joystick that cost $1,500.)
We found the new Ikari mouse for $70 at Amazon.com. Users have raved about it.
Readers can search several years of On Computers columns at our web site: OnComp.com. We can be contacted by email at JoyDee@OnComp.com and BobSchwab@gmail.com. You can hear us on Internet radio at BlogTalkRadio.com/oncomp.

ICT market still buoyant

ICT market still buoyant
Some sectors will still see double-digit growth rates this year,

By: Sasiwimon Boonruang
Published: 11/03/2009 at 12:00 AM

Thailand's ICT market is forecast to grow by 5.2% this year, the lowest growth rate for 10 years, according to the market research by both the public and private sectors in a report entitled Thailand ICT Market 2008 and Outlook 2009.

Industry experts suggested that businesses should increase their use of Web technology and that small companies enter into partnerships with larger companies in order to survive the present situation.
The declining growth of the IT industry has led the private sector to overhaul its operations and business model. Manoo Ordeedolchest, chairman of the ICT policy committee at Sripatum University and former Sipa director, suggested the business pay more attention to open source and Web 2.0 technology, and forming alliances.
"They should apply Web technology as an efficient tool to keep costs down," he said, noting that small companies should partner with big companies and specialise in niche areas.
While manufacturing and retail were challenging sectors during an economic crisis, Oracle Asean regional managing director Natasak Rodjanapiches pointed out that the government, education, healthcare and utility markets were strong in this region.
Transport was still good, while telecoms was a mix, with some countries still growing such as Indonesia and the Philippines, he said.
Natasak stated that logistics and HR would be boom areas and there would be a trend to shared services, business process outsourcing and e-learning, all of which could cut costs. Consumer behaviour has changed, and people are using the Web more, and e-commerce would grow sharply, he said.
Wealth Management System CEO Somkiat Chinthammit, who provides financial and consulting services, locally and internationally, suggested that companies should select the right business model that fits their culture. They should also be sure of their "identity" and "positioning", because the global market is entering an era of "specialisation" and they needed to make themselves recognised.
Collaboration and specialisation were most important for small- and medium-sized companies, so that they can work with others and find new customers.
According to the ICT market survey, the overall ICT market in 2008 was around 54.2 billion baht, increasing by 8.3% over 2007 and expected to grow at a rate of 5.2% this year, with a total value of 57 billion baht. ICT spending was mainly in communications, around 70% of total ICT market, followed by computer hardware and software, with market shares of 14% and 12% respectively. The value of the whole IT market (hardware, software, computer services and data communication equipment) last year was around 22.3 billion baht, growing by 11.6% over the previous year and it is predicted to rise by 6% this year.
ICT market survey project adviser Jumrud Sawangsamud noted that computer services tended to enjoy more market share, with an increase from 10.7% in 2007 to 11.2% in 2008 and 12% in 2009, while hardware and software were gradually shrinking. "Such a phenomenon reconciles with the global trend for services to take a more important role in the economy," he said.
In 2008, the domestic and small office/home office sectors accounted for around 52.5% of ICT spending, around 284 billion baht, of which some 81% was in communications, while the government and enterprise sectors together accounted for around 47.5% of the market, or 257 billion baht, of which the spending was mainly was in communications (56%) and software (21%).
Computer hardware sales increased 11% in 2008, to a total value of 75.7 billion baht, of which 66% was from PCs (desktops, notebooks and mini-notebooks). However, the hardware market is forecast to grow by only 0.4% this year.
Jumrud noted that 2008 was the first year that the number of notebooks sold was equivalent to desktop sales, and this year notebook would surpass desktops. Last year, mini-notebooks were very popular, increasing from 10,000 units in 2007 to 80,000 units last year.
The shrinking volume of CRT monitor sales continued, and it is expected that CRT would disappear from the market by mid-2009 as manufacturers focus on LCD technology.
A total of 1,355,000 printers shipped in 2008, and showed a slight reduction over the 1,359,000 units shipped in 2007. However, multi-function devices, both of inkjet and laser, received a warm welcome as the market grew by 15% last year, and it is predicted that they will keep a 15% growth rate in 2009.
The study showed that the external data storage market in 2008 was valued at 3.36 billion baht, a 3% increase over 2007, and more than 55% of the market was from enterprise storage.
The positive factors for the growth of the hardware market in 2008 were: IT became a critical factor for consumers and businesses; a low PC penetration rate; a pricing war; technology vendors launched new products for more specialised markets; the strong value of the baht; cheaper Internet access; more widespread Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, political uncertainty, the economic downturn and inflation were negative factors.
Jumrud noted that the new government, mega-projects, growing IT awareness of the private sector, new technologies such as 3G and WiMAX, increased adoption of netbooks and PDA phones, as well as lower oil prices would all be positive factors for the hardware market this year. However, he said the financial crisis and economic downturn would have more impact from now on.
Jumrud noted that the "sun rise" technologies in 2009 would be green IT, virtualisation, cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS), data deduplication, 3G and WiMAX, OLED monitor, 32 nanometre chips, convergence technology and wireless POS.
Based on the market survey, computer software would grow by 5% this year, the lowest growth rate in a decade. Enterprise software, mainly packaged software, has over 70% of the enterprise market. The growth of mobile application would be primarily from entertainment applications, around 66% of the total mobile application business. 3G and new applications development will have an impact on the market value of mobile applications.
In addition, embedded software such as RFID and sensor technology would enjoy a high growth in this year, around 15%, because their possible application in a wide range of electronic devices.
The sectors that will spend highly on software included banking, finance and telecoms, whereas the manufacturing, industry, property, tourism, retail and wholesale sectors would delay spending. Open source software and SaaS would take on important roles due to the economic slump, and could help many organisations realise cost savings.
In computer services, outsourcing enjoyed the highest growth, 24% in 2008, with a value of 4.08 billion baht and was an alternative for organisation as they want to control their IT investment in the current uncertain conditions.
The value of the comms market in 2008 was around 379.2 billion baht, and comprised of services (266 billion baht) and equipment (134 billion baht). This is estimated to grow to around 400 billion baht this year.
The IT and ICT Market Outlook 2009 report was a collaboration between the Software Industry Promotion Agency, the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, the Association of Thai ICT Industry, the Association of Thai Software Industry, Software Park, the Thai Software Export Promotion Association, the Thai Embedded System Association and the Association of Thai Computer Manufacturers.