Communications Technology Watch is happy to announce that William Harrel has begun reviewing printers for the popular online magazine and buyers’ guide Computer Shopper. Harrel has a long history of writing about information technology, going back to the industry’s glory days, when monthly paper magazines–Computer Magazine, PC World, Windows Magazine, MacWorld, MacUser, and, yes, Computer Shopper–were popular and powerful. A favorable review in one of these publications could make an unknown product famous, and turn small, upstart companies into powerhouse corporations. Those days are over, and once two-inch-thick magazines are now a quarter or less of there size, those that survived, that is. The ones that did make it adapted to the medium of our era, the Internet. Computer Shopper made the transition successfully and is now a trusted Internet destination and source for well-researched and unbiased new product information and reviews–as it has always been.

William Harrel – www.williamharrel.com

Yes, creating Websites is fun and rewarding work. And nothing is more fun and rewarding than creating Flash Websites, or other Flash applications, such as online movies or training courses. Nowadays, learning to use Flash is a must for student Website and Web application designers.

The Flash CS4 course at Ed2Go was so well-received that I am feverishly working to crank out a CS5 course. The name of the course is “Introduction to Adobe Flash CS5“. It is a beginner’s course on creating basic Flash movies and Websites with the latest version of Flash, Creative Suite 5.

ed2go is the largest online course provider, offering hundreds of courses through most major universities, colleges and other learning facilities.

Course Details

This twelve-week course will introduce students to the basics of using Flash, and will cover the following:

• Getting to know the Flash interface
• Workspaces
• Animation and Tweens
• Flash’s drawing tools
• Flash’s text tools
• The Flash Timeline and frames
• Intro to ActionScript 3.0
• Intro to 3D and Motion Editor
• Using images, sound and video clips in Flash
• And much more

The course is well underway and should be available is a few months.

Bill Harrel – www.williamharrel.com

The folks at WilliamHarrel.com have been diligently upgrading the California Spine Institute’s (CSI) Website over the past few weeks, bringing it into the Twenty-First Century. As the original designers of World renowned Neurosurgeon, Dr. John C. Chiu’s first Website (SpineCenter.com) nearly 15 years ago, Bill and his staff have been asked to come back and give the old site a makeover. The new site is a completely scripted AS3 and XML modular Flash design, complementing CSI’s ultra-modern Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery (MISS)  and physical rehabilitation center, located in Thousand Oaks, California. Dr. Chiu is the primary developer of the Micro-Discectomy and Laser Thermodiskoplasty MISS procedures for eliminating pain from herniated spinal discs.

The new site is resplendent with content on spine surgery, MISS and Medical Laser technology–complete with videos, presentations, research and other information designed for medical professionals and the general public. It branches at the home page to accommodate professionals looking for technology solutions and providers and non-professionals looking for alternatives to conventional “open back” surgery.

“We have been tacking on new information almost weekly for many years,” says Dr. Chiu. “It has become a huge maze of mismatched designs [reflecting the styles of the several different designers employed to update it] and outdated material mixed in with the new, pertinent data.” It’s time to bring it all together in a format where users can find what they need without hunting and pecking.” Dr. Chiu added that he is excited about the work so far and eager to get it up and running.

While in development, the site is located at csi.williamharrel.com. It has been opened to the public during the final stages, with the warning that not everything works yet. But anybody is welcome to come and watch the project as  it nears completion. “Use the menus,” Bill Harrel says. “The page links don’t all work yet, and not all of the material they link to has been deployed.”

WilliamHarrel.com

Communications Technology Watch is pleased to announce that William Harrel has contracted with Ed2Go to create and instruct two intermediate-level Flash courses, Intermediate Flash CS5 and Intermediate Flash CS4. The upcoming courses are extensions of Harrel’s popular Introduction to Flash CS4 and Introduction to CS5, which are currently distributed through Ed2Go.com to nearly 2,500 colleges and universities. Hundreds of students have taken the CS4 course to date, and it continually receives high ratings from students. The CS5 course in nearing completion and will be released soon.

The new course will help students improve their Flash animation, design, 3D graphics, and ActionScript skills.

“We’ll look closely at Flash’s high-end design and graphics tools,” Harrel told us. “Especially, the Bone Tool, Motion Editor, and 3D tools. Oh yeah, and ActionScript 3.0–lots of ActionScript 3.0.”

As the courses develop and get closer to a launch date, we’ll keep you posted.

Learn how to create inner popups using the UILoader component in Flash CS4. (This procedure is nearly identical in CS5.) Load any external SWF as a popup. Create as many popups as you need. Part 1 and Part 2 walk you through the entire process, from configuring the component to creating a close button movie clip, to scripting the popup. Part 1 covers preparing and setting up the UILoader component.

Best Viewed in HD Format.

Learn this and other techniques in William Harrel’s Introduction to Adobe Flash CS4, (and soon to be released Introduction to Adobe Flash CS5) Course at Ed2Go.

Click here to download popups.fla.

William Harrel – williamharrel.com

Finally, after several months of painstaking writing, editing and rewriting, my Introduction to Adobe Flash CS4 is ready to go over at Ed2Go. Begin your career as a Flash designer! In this course, you’ll learn how to create animated, interactive movies in Flash CS4. Nowadays, Flash movies appear everywhere—the Internet, the cinema, TV shows and commercials, computer games—everywhere. The skills you’ll learn will get you started on your way to a lucrative career designing animated graphics and special effects for one of these fun and exciting fields.

During this course, we’ll create a full-blown Flash application, complete with animated text and graphics, and interactive buttons. We’ll start by going over the Flash workspace, creating text and graphics, and animating objects on the Flash movie stage. Then, we’ll look in detail at the anatomy of a Flash movie—how to use the Flash timeline, layers and frames to control objects and timing on the stage.

While you can create an entire movie in Flash, most often you’ll need to import graphics, sounds, and digital videos from other applications. While creating your first Flash movie, you’ll learn how to format and embed external digital media and how to make them appear or play at specific times. We’ll also look at controlling digital media based on specific events, such as end user mouse clicks.

No course on Flash is complete without an introduction to ActionScript, Flash’s powerful programming language. We’ll get our hands dirty, creating interactive buttons with ActionScript 3.0. You’ll also learn to write scripts that control movie flow, and scripts that call to and load external videos, Web pages, and other Flash movie files.

As we create our movie, we’ll go over creating and animating 3-D objects, syncing sounds with animations, and publishing your Flash movies to the Internet. By the end of the course, you’ll know how to create and publish Flash movies and applications, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a Flash designer.

Here a few links to some movies showing you the kinds of things you’ll learn in this course:

• Using Photoshop Layers in Flash CS4
• Creating Simultaneous Fades in Flash CS4
• Creating Fade Affects in Adobe Flash CS4
• Sliding an Object on to the Stage in Flash CS4
• Using Shape Tweens in Adobe Flash CS4
• Docking Panels in Adobe Flash CS4

Here’s an example of the kinds of techniques you’ll learn during the course:

Again, the course is available on the Ed2Go network of schools, about 2500 colleges and universities, and the course carries full college credit. Check to see if your school offers the course or go to Ed2Go’s school list to find a course provider.

Hope to see you there.

William Harrel – www.williamharrel.com

I’ve been using Windows since before Windows 3.1, which is when this unruly beast finally became functional. You can’t imagine what it was like running PageMaker and Photoshop on machines that sometimes took a full minute or so for screen redraws. Crashes were a regular occurrence, driving me nuts and making me wonder why I bothered. Finally, with version 3.1, Windows became relatively stable and PCs were almost fast enough to run the struggling OS comfortably. Now, over 20 years later, here we are at version 7. As usual, Microsoft and pundits are touting it as the greatest thing since sliced bread. But we’ve heard that before…

With each Windows release the everyday enduser encounters numerous serious issues that don’t turn up during development and testing–upgrade issues, program compatibility issues, performance issues, security issues, you name it. Let’s face it, Vista was a disaster. Even after Service Pack 2, it’s still a bloated dog.

So, the question is, is Windows 7 what Vista should have been?

So far, my experience with Windows 7 has been relatively positive. But then, I doubt that I am the average PC user. (In fact, I doubt there really is such a thing as an average PC user.)

So, instead of simply recounting my limited experience with the new OS, let’s also take a look at what others are saying about Microsoft’s latest OS.

One thing we should all know by now is that moving to a new version of Windows will undoubtedly be an adventure, a test of our patience and fortitude.

Another Convoluted Edition Scheme

As with Vista, Microsoft has once again come up with an elaborate Edition scheme to confuse you and relieve you of more of your money. The more you need your computer to do, the more Widows 7 will cost you. Oh how I long for the days when all you had to do was buy and install Windows, without trying to figure out what level of user you are. This time, at least, there are only three Editions (so, Microsoft knows we don’t like this whole edition thing). Rather than go over all three and what they allow you to do, here is a link to a page on Microsoft’s site comparing them:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare

Speed and Stability

Several testers, including Microsoft, are touting Windows 7’s speed. Microsoft’s ads are calling it “snappy.” There’s a lot of hype out there about faster boot speed. Here’s an article about how fast the new OS boots:

http://windows7news.com/2008/11/11/windows-7-boot-speed-benchmark/

Most of the tests I’ve seen test how long it takes to display the desktop. But these tests are done primarily without virus and other software installed. Besides, just getting to the desktop is half the battle. Vista displays the desktop rather quickly, but the OS continues loading long after that. In fact, programs are slow to open and sluggish for quite some time after the operating system “boots”, to the point where Windows is nearly unusable for several minutes.

The real issue is, of course, how fast will programs load and perform their magic. Outlook, for example, is sluggish under Vista, and always misbehaving. We won’t know until the OS is released and running in real world environments how nice Windows 7 plays on PCs with various configurations.

Granted, Microsoft’s beta environment and sampling is much more sophisticated than with previous releases, but haven’t we heard that before?

My experience so far is that the new OS seems fairly stable. No real problems with crashing. Here’s an article from a guy with similar experience:

http://www.benhblog.com/2009/01/windows-7-beta-stability-is-solid.html

Notice, though, that Ben had trouble with one of his programs, which takes us to the next issue.

Program Compatibility

More often than not, upgrading Windows means also upgrading several programs, or running them in compatibility mode. Here’s an example of some experiences people have had running Photoshop CS4 in Windows 7.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=720420

I haven’t had a lot of trouble with the graphics and design software I run, mostly Adobe products. And it really looks like most applications will run alright in Windows 7. Here are a few sights where people are listing their experience with various programs:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=150360

http://www.joejoe.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=17767

New Features

So, we upgrade software to get new features, right? Well, Windows 7 has a bunch of those. Even Vista was easier to use than XP, once you found everything. And that’s the issue again. Microsoft seems to move things around and change how things are done for no apparent reason. A classic example is Office 2007. Does anybody know why it’s so different from previous versions?

Many things are different in Windows 7. For example, you setup dual monitors in an all new way.  So, there is always a learning curve.

Anyway, I found most of the new features useful, though nothing to get excited about. Here is a list of the new stuff:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features

So far, it looks like Windows 7 is relatively stable, fast, and pretty slick. But I’ve said that before about other upgrades. We’ll see…

William Harrel – www.williamharrel.com

Here’s a quick and easy way to create a product color selection movie by importing Photoshop PSD files into Flash. Flash imports the PSD layers, distributes them to Flash Layers and aligns the images precisely on the Stage. This technique can save you a lot time. You don’t have to fiddle around with getting image alignment right in Flash. There are hundreds of applications for this technique.

You can learn this technique in William Harrel’s Introduction to Adobe Flash CS4 over at Ed2Go.

William Harrel – www.williamharrel.com

CTW and williamharrel.com are proud to announce the launch of the new Gold Coast Recovery Center Website. Gold Coast Recovery Center, Inc. is a non-profit corporation based in Ventura, California. The purpose of the corporation is to mange The Meeting Place, a meeting hall and gathering place for 12 step fellowships and people recovering from substance abuse. The Meeting Place currently hosts over twenty-five 12-Step meetings monthly, as well as various service committees for Ventura County recovery fellowships. Recovering people, or people seeking recovery, are welcome to attend any and all meetings at the facility. You are also welcome to start your own recovery meetings at The Meeting Place. All substance abuse recovery-oriented organizations are welcome. Feel free to contact us about how we can help you get a meeting started at The Meeting Place.

They are an upstart non-profit and are dire need of donations. You can reach them here:

http://www.goldcoastrecoverycenter.org

Bill Harrel -www.williamharrel.com

Nowadays, many small to medium companies are thinking about and looking into Voice over IP (VoIP) PBX systems, if for no other reason than to save money over their existing or antiquated traditional phone systems. Making this transition requires a lot of analysis and decision making. One of the more important decisions is whether to purchase your own VoIP PBX or to go with a “hosted” or virtual PBX, which is a system hosted by a VoIP provider. There are good arguments for both solutions, including cost, voice quality and reliability. Let’s look at each solution to see which works best for your business.

Premise Based VoIP PBX

With a premise based VoIP system, you either install the IP PBX yourself, or have a dealer or VAR (value added reseller) Install it for you. The equipment sits in your company’s data center, connects to your LAN, and distributes calls to IP phones also connected to the LAN. You own the equipment and software, and administer and maintain it. Calls can come to the IP PBX from a communication service provider over traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines or over your company’s broadband Internet connection, or both.

The premise-based approach has several advantages. Although the upfront cost is higher than with a hosted service, your company owns the system, rather than having to make payments forever. And with ownership comes increased control—you can customize or extend the capabilities of your systems more than you can with hosted service, provided you have the technical resources or are willing to pay somebody to do it for you. Another advantage is that it’s not necessary to rely solely on the Internet to deliver calls.  A premise based IP PBX gives you fallback capabilities should your Internet service be interrupted. Security is also higher because all messages and call data remain on your company’s premises.

But when compared to hosted solutions, there can be a significant disadvantage depending on the needs and resources of your organization. The biggest is monitoring and maintenance. Someone has to be available virtually all the time to make sure the system is running right. Someone also has to maintain and upgrade the software on a regular basis. Premise-based systems typically require maintenance contracts that add significantly to the total cost of ownership. Configuring remote users can also be somewhat complicated and thereby expensive.

Here are a couple of premise-based solution providers:

GSolutionz

Cisco

Here is a great post on VoIP-News comparing premise-based systems to hosted systems:

http://www.voip-news.com/news/hosted-premises-pbx-pro-con/

Pros

• You will own the system
• You can customize it to suit needs
• Doesn’t necessarily have to rely on Internet for quality, reliability
• Messages, prompts, records remain on your company’s premises

Cons

• Significant costs for hardware and software maintenance contracts
• Requires staff for monitoring and maintaining
• Configuring remote users can be tricky
• Hardware, software upgrades could eventually become necessary if your user numbers and/or call volume grows

Hosted PBX

Hosted VoIP, also known as hosted PBX or virtual PBX, runs on equipment belonging to and located in the data center of a service provider. Calls travel to your office via its broadband Internet connection. Hosted services can provide many of the features and capabilities that traditional phone systems offer. Users can make or transfer calls by dialing each other’s extensions. They can also make conference calls, park and pick up calls, and answer calls forwarded to groups of extensions, known as ring groups. That’s not to mention all the new capabilities that IP makes possible, such as listening to voice mail messages through e-mail or another online interface, or placing calls by simply clicking on names in onscreen address books.

This solution also allows you to create extensions in different locations, such as multiple offices or employee homes. Remote VoIP extensions act just like extensions of traditional PBXs in that you can call them directly by dialing extension numbers, page them, or include them in call groups. The real benefit of VoIP extensions is that you are not charged for calling between them, no matter where they are located.

The biggest benefit of the hosted approach is its low upfront cost. The only equipment you need to buy to get started is IP phones for your employees. You then pay a monthly fee for each extension, which typically includes packages of minutes or unlimited domestic calling as well as cheap international rates. This approach lets you increase the number of users as needed and eliminates some ongoing costs. There are no hardware or software maintenance contracts, for example, and no need for in-house IT staff to monitor equipment and fix problems.  All service, maintenance, and updates are managed and provided by your service provider.

Hosted services can also have considerable drawbacks, though. The monthly charges can add up, especially when they involve paying full rate for little-used but necessary extensions. And unlike equipment purchases, hosted PBX payments don’t end until you cancel the service, and upon termination of service the business is left with no associated asset. Security is another concern, since voice mail messages and call records reside on the service provider’s servers, not you servers. Call quality and service reliability can also be significant worries, since both are totally dependent on your Internet connection(s).

Today, their are many hosted PBX providers. Here are a few:

Aerioconnect

NCISP

Here is a great blog for finding out all you need to know about hosted PBX: 

http://www.voip-news.com/blog/

Pros

• Low upfront costs
• Increase capacity exactly as needed
• No need for maintenance contracts or staff
• Remote extensions

Cons

• Quality, reliability depend on Internet
• Pay full rate for little-used extensions
• No end to payments, no eventual ownership of equipment
• Messages, prompts and call records reside in service provider’s data center

A Third Alternative

Another alternative, sometimes called “hybrid-hosted,” combines the key elements of hosted and premise-based systems. You buy and own the IP PBX equipment, which resides at your premises. But the vendor monitors and helps manage the equipment from its data center. This arrangement offers most of the benefits of both hosted and premise solutions, while doing away with most of the disadvantages of both. However, it is also by far the most costly.

As with conventional premise solutions, hybrid-hosted systems lets you pay once to purchase the equipment rather than paying forever for extensions, some of which may see little use. And messages and call data remain within the company.

 

And as with hosted solutions, hybrid-hosted systems significantly decrease the hassles and headaches of premise solutions. Part of it is ease of use. Administrators and managers can access their systems from anywhere via web browsers, rather than having to be on premises or to have configured special routes through their firewalls. Setting up remote users is simple too, and linking branch offices is often a one-click process. Users can even configure their own extensions from wherever they are.

Perhaps most important, the hybrid-hosted approach alleviates monitoring and maintenance headaches. From its data center, the vendor proactively watches the customer’s hardware and software, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for impending failures, and takes action before they happen. It also transparently maintains the software, pushing out automatic updates without the need for someone at your company to do anything. The vendor can also choose to back up call records and generate reports, taking a significant load off the premise equipment. And it also backs up the customer’s configurations (though usually not its voice mail messages or prompts due to privacy concerns), allowing for easy recovery in case of disaster.

Pros

• You own the system
• Can customize to suit needs
• Messages, prompts, records remain on company’s own premises
• Vendor monitors for faults 24/7
• Vendor backup of customer configurations with easy disaster recovery
• Automatic software upgrades
• Easy remote administration through web browser
• Easy setup of remote users
• One-click linking of branch offices

Cons

• Upfront costs higher than with hosted solutions
• Hardware and software maintenance contracts recommended
• Hardware upgrade eventually necessary if user numbers grow
• Support and management contracts can be quite high, eliminating the savings you would gain from using VoIP.

William Harrel – www.williamharrel.com