Searching in Outlook

The ability to search and quickly find what you're looking for is obviously important.  We have become used to this with Google (although Google doesn't suffice for certain types of searches), but for some people, searching for files, email, etc. at work seems to be a hopeless task, and this situation is accepted.  

For Outlook 2003, the Advanced Find dialog box is extremely useful to narrow down your search.  It is available from the search bar, under Options on the far right.  Alternatively, just press Ctrl+Shift+F.  It is easier to use than using the search bar itself.

One caveat to Outlook searches is that if you are searching for text that is within a section of XML tags in the body of an email message, as may happen with technical discussions, Outlook is unable to search within those XML tags so the email you want will be missing from your results.  This is despite the fact that Outlook will search inside attachments, including ZIP files, and find text within XML tags for those attachments.  This behavior is consistent between Outlook 2003 and Outlook Web App (Client Access server version: 14.3.123.0).
 

Nokia Lumia 920/Windows Phone 8 impressions over a month and a half

For the potential WP8 adopter, like I was, there were these questions, which I didn't get answered until I was using my Lumia 920.

Some rights reserved by punk17er 

Does WP8 sync Video to SkyDrive, rather than just photos?  Yes, see Settings > backup > photos

Can User Agent of included Internet Explorer be adjusted?  No, it does not appear possible (can only choose between "mobile version" of website versus "desktop version")

Which smartphones (iPhone, Android, etc.), other than Nokia Lumia 920 and siblings, offer optical image stabilization?  The latest iPhone 5S does not yet offer this.

As I used the Lumia 920, there were some surprises, good and bad.  I generally focus on the unexpected bad surprises in this post although overall, I like my 920 and I feel the experience gets even better as I discover more features of the device and more apps and operating system updates are released.  For example, as winter approaches, discovering I can use the 920 with gloves on is a welcome surprise.

# September 16
- yellow theme color isn't as bright as expected ... Adjusting brightness helps
- doesn't focus well/photos aren't sharp ... Operating system update helps
- feel of screen is different than Samsung Focus (glass rather than plastic, and possibly a coating)
- flash doesn't activate ... Still an issue, occasionally activates
- list of apps is not separated by letters ... Requires installation of more apps to activate
- is scratch on glass (used phone) noticeable when phone screen is on?  No
- need to remember:  set up app-specific passwords for Google accounts that have 2-factor authentication enabled
- month view does not show actual calendar entry names but rather what appears to be Latin words?!?
- numeric keyboard for certain fields in web browser like for Google verification code
- does NOT show up as additional drive when connected to computer?

# September 28
- WP "app store" on WP8 shows whether app has Live Tile support and also when app was last updated rather than "originally released" as on WP7, much more useful to determine whether app is being maintained
- phone gets noticeably warm after continuous use
- apps work faster on 920, just enough so that there is no waiting on the user's part  
- some apps seem to have different versions for WP7 versus WP8 (for example, Accuweather) even though look and feel may be similar
- Screen not activating after pressing power button - this has happened to me only once and although very scary, to reset the phone (since I couldn't remove the battery as I could with Samsung Focus), I followed these soft reset instructions.


# September 29
- still a lag refreshing information on Start screen, e.g. Weather details
- more clear how to resolve upload conflicts when editing Excel files stored on SkyDrive 

# September 30
- no problem with SkyDrive surveys.  On WP7 and older Internet Explorer, SkyDrive survey would never completely load

# October 3
- weird behavior in MetroNote, a SimpleNote client, where attempt to select an entire word selects every character except the first.  And words like "ddone" are not underlined as being misspelled.  Not an issue in built-in OneNote

# October 7
- battery (or something) is moving around inside phone body when it is shaken
- Agenda view of Calendar remains confusing when glanced at:  which Day is the calendar entry on?

# October 8
- problems with syncing multiple Google calendars despite following instructions in forums - never resolved, purchased True Calender 8 app, a super if imperfect Calendar replacement

# October 13
- DataSense useless to find Wifi hotspots when offline (isn't that the point), despite downloading maps prior to going offline
- Does not prompt to save unsaved calendar entry when hit Back button

# October 16
- can't add a OneNote Section on WP8?  Can only add Pages to existing Section
- searching Gmail folder doesn't return correct results (no results) when using default mail client
- cannot "favorite" businesses, etc. found through Search?  This was possible with WP7.  Now can only Pin to Start screen

# October 22
- editing of Excel spreadsheet is difficult, cannot copy and paste multiple cells.  Also if editing same spreadsheet on SkyDrive, cannot edit spreadsheet on phone

Migration from old WP7 phone to new WP8 phone

Migration roughly consists of the following steps:

• need to synchronize WP7 to Zune for backup of photos
• migrate data that I want to keep; cloud-based storage is best
• sign into online accounts within phone
• re-install apps individually
• sign into various apps

Lack of official apps and third-party apps

While there are many apps and for many services, sometimes the WP ecosystem is still lacking official apps for certain services.  One can use third-party apps, e.g. Auctionapp, but unless the app is very popular and has been released for some time, I would avoid them because there is the potential that the app is malicious and the developer could be stealing security credentials.  This also applies to web browser apps where you type in your credentials into web pages.

Do your research before downloading and installing.  If you have nothing valuable to keep secure for that service, go ahead.   

Skyping between iPad and Windows Phone 8

One of the reasons I moved up to a smartphone with front-facing camera was so I could Skype with my dad, allowing him to see our preschooler more often.  But after many attempts trying to use my Windows Phone 8 device to "phone" his iPad, I was almost ready to give up.  On the iPad, no incoming call was being detected. 

I was going to resort to Google Hangouts and using my wife's Android phone.  Google Hangouts required a iOS upgrade, so I updated my dad's 3rd generation iPad to iOS 7.0.2 and in the process, I updated Skype as well on the Apple device. Before heading home, I decided to try Skype once more and eureka, video-conferencing finally worked! 

Now the challenge is to get my dad to learn a couple of steps and try Skyping with me when we are at two different locations and I can't directly assist him.

The one major problem with the BlackBerry PlayBook

Some rights reserved by Charles Williams

With the availability of a good alternative Web browser, OrigamiBrowser, the Playbook became a very adequate tablet.  But it still has two serious and related failings:  poor battery life/high power consumption, plus a very long boot time from cold.

Under my normal usage (connected to Wifi, not a lot of video playback), my Playbook lasts about 3-4 hours.  Even with attempts to conserve power by turning on Airplane mode and putting the device into Standby, it still drains the battery more than expected.  If I turned off the tablet until I needed to use it I'd need to wait upwards of 3 minutes for the Playbook to finish booting and be ready for use:  completely unfeasible.

So I purchased an external battery with 2A output, capable of charging an Ipad, and on paper, capable of charging the Playbook.  Playing with the connectors, which I don't have to do for either an Ipad or my Lumia 920, I am able to get the Playbook to charge about 10% of the time.  To top it off, using a wall charger, it takes 3-4 hours to completely charge, about as long as the device lasts on a single charge.  Something is not right here.

So while the Playbook lasts long enough for a couple meetings and my daily commute, it isn't a device you can take to a conference and expect to use for the entire day.  I'd like to keep using the Playbook and not buy another tablet device but it will likely be relegated to use by my preschooler in the near future.

Nokia Lumia 920 first impressions

Coming from a Samsung Focus running Windows Phone 7.8 background, my first impressions:

• Faster Web browsing as pages rendered quickly.  Ditto for PDFs
• No need to plug into computer to update operating system software as was necessary for WP7 and need for Zune
• Larger screen is good but expected to be able to put more Live Tiles on screen, that is, 5 small tiles across rather than 4 as with Samsung Focus.  Tiles almost look too big
• Sharpness of resolution appreciated - back to what I was used to with 4th generation iPod Touch 
• Camera is disappointing in terms of sharpness but need to test further with latest Lumia updates 
• Weight of phone is hefty but I think should be something manageable.  I notice when I think about the weight of my Focus in hand, even though it is an extremely light phone like the iPhone 5, it begins to feel weighty when you deliberately think about its weight 
• 
  

Continue with Windows Phone?

I've been using a Samsung Focus since November 2011.  I bought it used and it was already released for a year.  It was missing a front-facing camera which I didn't think of much use until I wanted to have grandpa see my son using video calling.  I came from a pairing of a Windows Mobile 6 phone plus a 4th generation iPod Touch.  In retrospect, the WM6 device was awful but I hung onto it for almost 4 years due to the initial cost of $400.

So what are the options now:  iPhone 5S, Moto X, Nokia Lumia 1020?   The iPhones prior to iPhone 5 have a screen that is just too small for reading fixed-format PDFs and the like but the iPhone 5 has a decent-sized screen and iOS 7 is intriguing.  Moto X is also interesting and has some subtleties that I probably would like; it's Leo Laporte's current phone of choice.  Lumia 1020 is too camera-centric and too expensive at this time. 

Well, I'm one to watch my budget so I'm considering the almost year-old Nokia Lumia 920.  Yes, possibly another Windows Phone. 

A good web browser makes a huge difference

Some rights reserved by elPadawan

While I was testing out the Maxthon web browser for Playbook, Origami Browser was released.  For almost all web sites tested, this excellent browser is able to render them well, browser menu usage (accessing bookmarks, going back/forward, etc.) is quick and easy, and finally text editing capabilities, as I noted as a must requirement in my previous post, is superb.  I donated to the developer of this free browser; an excellent developer for an end-of-life product deserves support. 

Text editing capabilities are built on top of Playbook functionality, which is actually very good.  This is unlike the Maxthon browser that poorly implements its own text selection, copy-paste, etc. functionality.

Maxthon browser for Playbook versus iPad Safari browser

Not having access to a laptop, I am using a Playbook.  While the default Playbook browser is less than adequate for many tasks and web sites, the free Maxthon browser performs admirably with many web sites, due to it mimicking an Android browser user agent (among others).  According to What's My User Agent?, the user agent is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; zh-cn; HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio Z715e Build/GRJ22)Maxthon AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

Compare this to the user agent of the default Playbook browser:  

Mozilla/5.0 (PlayBook; U; RIM Tablet OS 2.1.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/536.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.2.1.0 Safari/536.2+
   

Using Google Docs is a better experience than with the default Playbook browser and no Bluetooth keyboard.  Having said that, I am now typing this post using an iPad and the ease of use is noticeably higher.  The iOS copy and paste, text selection and cursor repositioning (magnifying glass), and auto spelling correction features are more intuitive than those of the Maxthon browser (Maxthon doesn't use the default Playbook OS edit features).  I used to think that the iPad is mainly a "consumption" device but it is large enough to do multi-finger touch typing with the virtual keyboard.  Combined with the excellent edit functionality, it is an worthy laptop alternative when you have a table and case/stand.

Hmmm, just noticed some weirdness with attempting to apply some labels to this post, but I think it was because I was zoomed in.

So what makes a good web browser?  Besides web pages rendering as intended by the page author, if you're going to do anything where you have to type some characters (this may include typing a URL or search term) and if you don't have a hardware keyboard, you should have good text editing capability.  That is, auto spelling correction and cursor repositioning, and for productivity:  copy-and-paste and text selection features.

[Updated August 2, 2013]

CBC Spark: Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

• Listen
• Need to realize that media out of context can be misinterpreted by others.  Need to have a conversation with those upset with us, rather than just saying they are "wrong"
• We get less international news than before from broadcasts (newspaper, newscast, etc.).  Broadcasts are giving us what we want (local news) rather than what we need.  We also curate for news that we already have an understanding of.  International news is important because we live in a globalized world.   
• Broadly, news/information comes from three channels:
• professionally curated (newspaper, newscast, etc.)
• our own searches
• social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• Despite being able to look at any web site around the world, we are still very narrow-minded
• One problem is homophily:  Our friends typically have the same view and get similar news as we do 
• Language restrictions:  Most of us have no access to the part of Web created by hundreds of millions of Chinese people due to language issues
• Bridge figures - those that know two cultures equally well and can explain one culture to those of the other culture
• Difficult to find information via serendipity because Web is programmed to provide links to things we will like with great certainty (that is, similar to things we liked before).  This is caused by the risk-adverse nature of  the Web driven by advertising

Citrix and Remote Desktop data usage - lower than expected

I had to get some work done while being on the road.  All the files were on my work computer and my personal laptop didn't have the right software.  I was very apprehensive about using Citrix Desktop and then subsequently Remote Desktop to access my workstation, due to unknown data usage. 

According to my mobile data provider (Wind Mobile), I used approximate 35.4 MB over a 1 hour period.  This was less than I expected but in line with other observations.  I was editing a document but needing to switch between other windows to collect information and do some data manipulation.  My laptop resolution is 1600 x 900 (and my Remote Desktop session was adjusted to the same).

So for getting a few things done at work while being on the road, using Citrix and Remote Desktop won't eat up your data allotment. 

Trying to let go of Firefox

For the last several months, have pondered switching my default desktop web browser from Firefox to Chrome.  The impetus came from Firefox occasionally freezing because of buggy Plugins (e.g. Adobe Acrobat or Shockwave Flash), enormous memory consumption (could be the result of me having 9+ tabs open!), or poor performance (streaming music from music.cbc.ca can be jittery).  The straw that broke the camel's back was that I could not update the Shockwave Flash plugin that was automatically disabled in Firefox due to security vulnerabilities.  While I appreciate Firefox trying to protect my computer and its data, I likely needed Administrator privileges to update the plugin and I did not have them on this client-provided workstation.   

The two main reasons I have stuck with Firefox are the Delicious and Selenium IDE Extensions.  So I thought that I could start up Firefox whenever I needed to use Selenium IDE for some script-automated web browsing.  But I still needed good Delicious integration with my web browser.  Hopeful, I sought out Delicious extensions for Chrome and tried "Delibookmarks (Delicious Bookmarks)" from yasinecky and "Delicious Bookmarks" from blog.kasunbg.org, both third-party extensions.  Unfortunately, neither were anywhere close to the functionality offered by the official Firefox Delicious extension.  Easily Bookmarking and searching saved Bookmarks across computers is essential for me and neither were usable to me. 

I briefly entertained using the Chrome Bookmarks functionality which I believe is synced across Chrome logins on different computers but the simple concept of tags was not supported out of the box.  So it appears I will soldier on with Firefox but I'm open to alternatives.

Who to follow?

With so many innovative ideas and interesting people out there, it's sometimes difficult to decide who to follow and then what tweets, status updates, blog posts, etc. to focus on.  Here is my tentative criteria for people to follow, going forward, in order of descending priority:

• People that you know personally and who live in the same city - it's nice to be able to speak to people face-to-face and for extended periods of time
• People that you've met in person before but that live elsewhere - it's better to renew a relationship than to have had none at all
• People that work in your organization but that may work in a different location - easier to start a conversation with someone that is somewhat obligated to respond
• People you haven't met yet but live in the same city - potentially you can meet up with them
• Well-known people - you'd like to meet them but if you did, you probably wouldn't have more than an "elevator conversation" with them

Google disillusionment and smartphone convenience

After hearing about a prominent user's hacked digital life, I turned on Google 2-factor authentication.  I did notice that in order for my smartphone to continue accessing my email without needing to enter a code SMS'd to the phone, I needed to create an "application-specific password" for my smartphone email client.  Momentarily I sensed there was a security weakness here.  But because I had a general positive feeling that Google was very security-conscious, I thought the smart people working there had probably closed all the loopholes in this situation.  Then today I became aware of Google's ASP password issues.  Now I have to re-think if I have any very sensitive data stored in Google Drive.  I also no longer consider Google above and beyond the other online companies out there in a security sense:  Google has sunk to the depths of Dropbox and Sony. 

I believe that one of the big reason that users love their smartphones and tablets is because they don't have to re-enter their passwords.  I use a lot of cloud services like Evernote, various web email services and social networking sites and whereas the web version of these services will prompt me to re-enter the password on a frequent basis, the native smartphone versions NEVER prompt me.  Google had to preserve this convenient experience for users of Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. on smartphones despite implementing 2-factor authentication, and they were screwed because of their poor implementation.  How to get rid of passwords and still have security is the issue plaguing the digital industry. 

Windows Phone web browser malaise

Dropped by our local Microsoft store located at WEM on Monday and since my toddler was with me, only had time to try the Ringmark mobile browser features test on the latest Windows Phone 8 phones.  Both the HTC and Nokia were unable to make it past Ring 0.  My WP7.5 phone also can't pass Ring 0 and although there was improvement in the results with Windows Phone 8, they remain dreadful.  By contrast, the new Blackberry Z10 nearly passes Ring 1. 

If a platform is lacking in apps (relatively), it must have a web browser that is leading the pack and able to use web apps as they are currently deployed and implemented.  Very disappointed with Windows Phone and this is another step away from the platform for me.

The ergonomic and social problems with tablets

Without a stand, tablets are inconvenient as they need to be propped up or continuously held with one hand.  With a stand/folding case, they are great in meeting rooms as they don't obstruct the view of the tablet user from the other meeting participants.  I think this is equivalent to keeping your hands visible during an interview and in my opinion, it speaks to a subconscious need for people to know that your hands aren't hiding weapons, etc. (only slightly tongue-in-cheek).

Tablets are good when you have an arm rest to support the hand holding the tablet.  But in my experience and looking at other people, they are terrible on public transportation.  When sitting down, there are no arm rests and it is tiring to hold a tablet with one hand and mash your finger against it with the other.  If standing up, you have to hold onto something in case of sudden stops or swerves.  In the meantime, you also have to hold your fragile tablet and navigate with the other hand.  Touch screen phones are much nicer for public transportation because they are capable of one-handed use.  

Compared to traditional laptops, tablets are great for presenting information to others.  I think of them as useful for doctors making the rounds, realtors showing houses to their clients, and for salespeople on the sales floor.  When you have to be mobile, you're on your feet, and you want a large screen to view information and show to others, a tablet is ideal.  When a table is available, depending on the stand, they are also better than traditional laptops in that they have a smaller footprint.  This can be an advantage when the table is small (I'm thinking at a coffee shop or restaurant) and you're trying to share something on the screen with another person.  

One place where tablets are not socially acceptable is in public washrooms.  A tablet, 7" or larger, is difficult to discreetly take into a washroom.  Again, in this situation, smartphones win out.  Bringing a newspaper or tablet into the washroom may continue to be frowned upon for some years to come ...?