Sometimes a new feature comes along that leaves you unsure if it’s a good or bad development. This is one such development. A company by the name of Remote Approach has developed a system whereby PDF files can be tagged with the addition of some code so that it reports home every time someone opens the file and reports the IP address and other details, including any unique identifiers the makers choose to add, back to the author. They are also apparently working on a method of denying access to the PDF if the reader is not online at the time.

My concern is that this could become yet another tool for tracking users habits, and also that companies will start using the facility to require users be online to read ebooks, so that they can track piracy. Since ebook readers and other such tools are unlikely to be online most of the time, this could create serious usability issues. My laptop has been very handy for reading long PDF’s while sitting on a deck chair out in the back and out of range of the Wireless network. I’d hate to lose that ability due to a restrictive new tool. I’m also not convinced that such a tool should allow collection of IP address’s and other such explicit information about users as it increases the likely hood that in future such a tool might be used by unscrupulous types. This particular tool is subscription based and as such will be under the control of Remote Approach, but there is a good likelihood that the technology can be co-opted by people of less moral fibre and that worries me somewhat. Trends seem to strongly indicate that the days of the anonymous Internet are drawing to a close. As John Bielby of Remote Approach points out, such information gathering takes place already with Web server logs, but what they don’t mention is that web users can use an anonymizer service to hide their details from web servers if they chose to do so. No such facility is currently available for the new PDF system.

We have just been offered one suggested solution (along with a $30 donation for mentioning it through December 13, 2007) to the offline use dilemma is to use a PDF to HTML Converter. This would allow you to instead use the document in straight html that would be available offline. That suggests an intriguing solution. For a long time, Google has converted pdf documents to html, and I often use that method when searching to get a sense for what is in the document because of the relatively lighter download that I have to take. Unfortunately I have not been able to test able2extract because the donation didn’t come with a copy of the software. It suggests that unlike Google, it will convert images as well as text. Google mainly converts the text portion in my experience.

I’ll admit, I have yet to actually encounter one of these files that isn’t available offline, so perhaps we are thus far tilting windmills? If it becomes common place, then I’ll definately try something like able2extract.

Web designers these days should at a minimum look at their pages in Firefox, Internet Explorer (painful though that may be), and perhaps Opera and Safari. Often, we tend to overlook the growing number of text only browsers that happen by our sites. Tonight I happened on a great tool to help you see what your page would look like in Lynx, a graphic free browser, should you choose not to load a copy yourself. This tool allows you to see your page like it would appear to a Lynx browser.

That site offers a number of other great tools as well, including:
– a header viewer — see what your server is putting out
– a http request scan — see what you are giving servers such as your browser string, referrer, etc.
– search engine simulator — think like a search engine when looking at your pages
– backwards compatibility check — see what the page looks like with some tag types removed that weren’t supported

While none of these things are “rocket science” in scope, it is still a handly little group of tools for the kit.

After beta release and success, Google released today the 1.0 version of Desktop Search. According to the Google Press Release on Desktop 1.0 The new Desktop is greatly enhanced from the original version. It will search the entire text of a pdf document, meta information from images, video and music, support for Firefox, Netscrape Browser, Thunderbird etc. It has the ability to search your visited web pages and even many deleted documents (the text with cached snapshots).

Parents might like Desktops ability to search instant messages. However be forwarned, it takes up 500 megabytes of space. You can find out more and get a copy at http://desktop.google.com.

US Department of Justice crosses border to purchase 50,000 copies of WordPerfect 12 worth 13 million dollars from Canadian based Corel Software.

While I enjoy the irony in the DOJ going Canadian, in fact Corel was taken private by Vector Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. So perhaps I should not chuckle too long.

Corel also aquired Paint Shop Pro last year, one of my favorite programs, so I guess they must be okay.

Professor Lawrence Lessig has posted a link to his blog, basically daring O’Reilly to come after him. As usual, his article leaves out the details and assumes everyone coming along understands what he means to say and the background that surrounds it.

Lessig writes about another blog, Newshounds, that watches the happenings on Fox Television and provides reports. That blog made the unprofessional mistake of quoting an entire article about Buster the Bunny that appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s website in one of it’s posts. Now, re-publishing the works or another is certainly the wrong thing to do if it exceeds the fair use doctrine, and the “O’Reilly people” called them on it — as they should. But according to Lessig, the site corrected it’s error and instead posted a link to the article.

Lessig claims that this link also offended the folks who syndicate O’Reilly. Now, unlike Lessig, I have no interest in dragging this site into litigation — even if we are proper in our usage. Matters such as this are resolved simply in most cases, the David caves to the Goliath. Who wants to defend, let alone fund the defense however just, of a lawsuit over what is primarily a hobby in the exercise of free speech? Not us!

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Today I happened onto Stu Nicholls’ CSS Playground. I found the site interesting in design, for example the hover over links on the main page shows a flashing brown bar. Is it over the top or interesting? I found some of his general menu structure hard to understand at first without playing, for example his speech bubble that is his comment link.

I like the negative image of the lady that appears … but where are the positives? Not sure what the relevance of the picture is other than it is interesting. I like the color blocks that come on for hovers as well.

I also like some of his menu examples.

Recently both Websidestory and Onestat released their findings that although Firefox usage was still growing, it’s uptake was slowing down a little. I don’t believe that is the full story and I’m about to tell you why. The first thing to keep in mind, is that Onestat collect their statistics from users of their various online counter offerings. Websidestory apparently get their statistics from several big sites like Disney, Sony, Best Buy and Liz Claiborne.

The problem is is that both of these methods miss a crucial (vast) and growing Internet population, namely the power users. In the case of Onestat with their online counter systems, the problem is that generally only two types of clients use this type of service, newbies and occasionally businesses. In the case of Websidestory, the big sites they monitor are not those likely to be those visited by power Internet users, if you are one yourself, do you remember the last time you visited Disney or Liz Clairborne?

That skips a vast portion of the Internet’s users, namely the techies and power users. These guys know what they want online, they know where to go, and a vastly higher number of them use the Firefox web browser. The Internet’s users are slowly becoming more knowledgeable then they once were, and this group of power users are growing all the time. Experienced Web developers are likely to be using their own log file analysers for statistics and for those without log file access, counters like our own statistical counter that serve the same purpose. The only places I really see remote hit counters is on newbie web pages and free blog services (the exact places where one expects people to be using the default browser that came with their computer.)

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