Freeware of the Week! [LogMeIn Free]

I know that I’ve blogged about remote software before, but I may have glossed over the fact that it can be tricky getting it to work on several different computers, especially if you’re using it for tech support and the people you are helping never do more than browse and email. Getting them to configure the network from their end can be an ordeal over the phone, and you may end up having to go round to set it up, which defeats the purpose the software. This time I found a solution so good that the 90 year-old silver surfer I tested it on got to grips with it with no trouble at all.

LogMeIn Free does need the remote computers you’ll be accessing to download and install some software, but it is a five-minute setup procedure, very easy, and can be tacked on to your list of things to do the next time you get called out to fix a misbehaving computer. Honestly, just download and install it on your target, log in to your LogMeIn account, and that’s it. The next time that computer is connected to the internet, you’ll be able to access it. And to sweeten the deal, all new computers are initially given a LogMeIn Pro subscription for a one-month trial period before reverting to a free setting.

LogMeIn is incredibly easy to install, just download and click through. Keep in mind that you’ll be prompted for a password straight away; make sure it is something secure, as this will be the password you use to access your LogMeIn account. Once that is set up, you can begin adding computers to the account, as many as you like, too, as there is not limit on how many computer you can add on the free account. When any of them are connnected to the internet, you can access them by logging on to the LogMeIn website. Once again, this is easy-peasy to use, showing you the computers you have in your group and a simple menu from which you can carry out your operations.

The free version of LogMeIn does just about everything you could want for remote access. You can navigate as though you were sitting in front of the computer, with access to files, folders and programs. You will need a broadband connection for the best results, and there is a bit of a time lag in seeing your actions executed, but nothing so slow that the experience is unpleasant. While you can’t do file transfers from computer to computer (you’ll need the paid version for that), you can copy and paste files from one to the other, which is an adequate workaround if you’re not dealing with large files. There’s also no file syncing between computers in the free version, but that is why the gods invented Dropbox.

As I said, I tested by the program by installing it on the computer of a little old lady I know. The only thing she does with her computer is a bit of browsing and send emails to her family, but even so, sometimes things can go wrong with her PC. Having installed LogMeIn Free the last time I called round, the next time her Outlook started playing up, I asked her to connect the computer to the internet and to leave me to it. Sitting at home 30 miles away, I managed to diagnose the problem, fix it, and then called her to tell her that her grandson was back from a school trip. All within 15 minutes. I was rewarded with home-baked pastries the next time I saw her.

For quick and uncomplicated remote access or tech support, I’m going to have to vote for LogMeIn over UltraVNC, especially for the ease with which it can be installed. I’ve added the install file to the arsenal of resident programs that live on my main USB stick for whenever I might need them. Not only is the program easy and relatively fast, but it also doesn’t gobble up a lot of space on the remote hard drive, nor does it severely impair the performance of the remote machine when in use. The holiday season is nearly upon us. When you get the inevitable request to look at somebody’s computer, download LogMeIn for them and save yourself further grief on future visits home.

Deleting Comments Doesn’t Kill Free Speech

Recently, there have been a number of newspaper articles in the Kenyan media on homosexuality and the rights of LGBTQ people, specifically whether their rights should be enshrined in the constitution. Now, given that the gay scene in Kenya has been very much underground, and because there are a great number of people who hold strong religious convictions, comment on various boards and forums has at times descended into flame wars between those who wish to keep things as they are, criminal penalties and all, and those who would like to see more tolerance.

As an editor at Kenya Imagine, I get an email for each new comment on an article. We have had a couple of recent pieces on homosexuality, from both sides of the debate, and users have also submitted blogs posts to air their own views. The comments that have come in have been, for the most part, fairly balanced, but some were nothing but vitriol. We deleted them.

At an editors’ powwow last week, we tried to pin down the Kenya Imagine “vision,” or principles which would guide our running of the site. We wanted to be a forward-thinking, modernising forum where our users could engage in open and honest debate. All very well, so how did that sit with deleting comments we didn’t like the look of? To put it in the most simple terms,  by signing up and agreeing to the terms and conditions, which include the proscription of hate speech, our users had allowed us to. Our house, our rules.

On other boards I have seen users who have had their comments deleted complain that they’re being censored, or that their right to free speech is not being respected. Usually, moderators don’t bother explaining why, as that would just hijack a discussion and take it off-topic. But the users complaining might be better off re-educating themselves about the rules of the board or forum they have signed up to. To protect themselves from legal action, many administrators reserve the right to edit or remove comments, and will usually outline what sorts of comments will and won’t be tolerated. At Kenya Imagine, we will not put up with hate speech, so anything along the lines of “Throw them all into the sea!” was consigned to oblivion.

This may seem like refusing to listen to an opposing view, but it is not too difficult to stay on a moderator’s good side. There is a difference between wishing or inciting violence against people and voicing your opposition in the strongest possible terms. One approach will probably get a disagreement, the other will get a deletion or banning. People are free to hold whatever opinions they please, and to articulate them, provided they can stick to the rules they have agreed to. Deleting infringing comments is less about censorship and more to do with  enforcing the standards that have been outlined. Rephrasing the same sentiments that got deleted in another way that makes the same points would probably be OK.

One of the boards I belong to can look lawless, especially when certain topics are discussed. There is swearing, name-calling and multi-thread trolling on an epic scale. Some people have personal grudges that go back years, and others are single-issue posters who only turn up if their pet topic is being discussed. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be very well moderated, but this is because we’re mostly left to regulate ourselves. Nevertheless, when a topic or comment could get the site owner into trouble, or if there is a flagrant breach of the board’s rules, a comment will be deleted, occasionally with a reminder of the relevant rule which was broken. Break enough rules and the mods will ban you without notice.

It’s entirely up to owners how they decide to manage comments on their websites, and they have the right, some might say responsibility to make sure that their policy to comments is consistent, no matter how contentious the comments. People who get deleted may grouse that they’re not being allowed to have their say, but if they tried to make the same point using different language, they would probably find that the comment was allowed through. And if they are still dissatisfied? Well, they can always set up a blog or website of their own. Then there would be nobody to stop them.

[Image by Roland]

Do You Know Who Your Twitter Followers Are?

Either everyone but me is using a VPN, or the people making the most use of my tweets don’t actually follow me on Twitter. I came to this conclusion last night after looking at the stats for my various Twitter accounts. While I tweet throughout the day, I don’t expect my followers to click on every link I post; that could be a full-time job in itself. Nevertheless, from the clicks I do get, I did find some interesting information.

Hootsuite provides stats on the number of clicks your tweets get, though only if you use their ow.ly URL shortening service.  On the stats page, you can see the number of clicks you’ve had over a particular date range, how those clicks were referred, where the people who clicked the links came from, and also which links have been most popular.

What surprised me is that even for accounts where I thought I was targeting a particular audience, the people clicking on the links were far more geographically diverse than I had anticipated. I have no idea what use my musings on the Kenyan economy are to somebody in Russia, but that is what happened last week. At the same time, clicks from the areas I did expect were outnumbered by those from elsewhere, usually the USA or the UK. This didn’t tally with the locations listed for my followers (I nerded out and did a check), and it puzzled me, until I remembered that in addition to appearing in their streams, my tweets do also appear in the public timeline.

Does this necessarily matter? I suppose it doesn’t, although it did show me that maybe I shouldn’t fret so much about targeting niches through Twitter. Those people who decide to follow me do so because they are interested in what I’m tweeting about, and if somebody following the public timeline or searching for keywords finds a one of my tweets and clicks a link, so much the better. If I was uncomfortable with this, I could always choose to make my tweets private, but where would the fun be in that?

The main lesson I took away is that I can’t be sure exactly how many people actually find my tweets useful. While my lists of followers continue to grow in fits and starts, it’s impossible to know precisely how many people will see a particular tweet or click a link. By appearing in the public timeline, everything I publish via Twitter is accessible to everyone, even those who don’t use Twitter. Does this mean the end of targeted tweeting? Probably not, as pulling together all my accounts would lead to an unholy mish-mash of relevant content and personal diversion. Far better, instead, to keep them separate and to hope that the anonymous clickers continue to enjoy what I offer.

[Image by Sklathill]

Is Social Media Under Attack?

Two articles caught my eye over the weekend, and got me rather worried about how traditional media and big business might be changing their approach to social media. While there have been encouraging noises made about the greater openness that social networking encourages, I wonder whether the former gatekeepers of information are quite as enthusiastic as they appear.

The first, in my local paper, was a brief piece on how the largest law firm in the city is setting up a “Cyber Tracing team” to track down people making uncomplimentary comments about their clients online and, presumably, sue them for defamation and/or libel. The second, by Jon Henley in the Guardian, concerned the people power of social networks, specifically Twitter, and the speed with which a minor incident can become a frenzy.

Now, Henley’s piece wasn’t overtly hostile, but I was left with the distinct impression from some of the quotes he cites that a number of people think social networking might actually be bad for freedom of speech. Essentially, people with controversial opinion or that rub against the liberal grain will be subject to the electronic equivalent of a baying mob, and will therefore hesitate before speaking out, if they speak out at all. Self-censorship can be as powerful as any editor’s blue pencil, and if the threat of being the subject of a Twitterstorm is enough to cow an individual into silence, that can be just as destructive to public discourse as the super-injunction that caused the #Trafigura conflagration.

At the same time, freedom of speech is done a similar disservice if you have a team of lawyers whose main responsibility is to trawl chatrooms, blogs and forums, looking for anything that might hurt their client’s feelings. As Trafigura found out to their cost, sometimes trying to shut down debate can backfire spectacularly, leaving you embarrassed and the details of whatever you hoped to cover up exposed to a wider audience than if you had simply left well enough alone. Not only that, but any battle is likely to be asymmetric: on one side a battery of expensive lawyers with the full weight of the ludicrous defamation and libel laws of the UK behind them; on the other, a lone individual with nothing close to the same resources. And I don’t think you can get no-win-no-fee deals for libel defences.

Reading the two articles on the same day, I was struck at how traditional media and companies who use the media seem to be of the mind that “something has to be done,” even as they make efforts of their own to engage with their audiences through social media. It’s almost as though, having lost the means of controlling the message, they would now rather exert some control over social media itself. The multitude of bloggers, forum members and tweeters is too immense, too fragmented to corral, so the implicit threat of legal action is used. The speed at which information can be disseminated means that traditional journalism can find itself playing catch-up, so Twitterstorms are dismissed as incoherent, messy, or simply well-meaning idiots succumbing to mob mentality.

I don’t agree with either approach. Firstly, because suing somebody who writes something you disagree with is, in most cases, using the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut. Secondly, because bloggers and readers who also use social media are probably better-informed than some traditional journalists think. Yes, it can seem overwhelming when an item is trending, but people do have the choice as to whether or not to retweet, or even tweet at all. Aside from the spammers, nobody has an incentive to hitch their wagon to a topic. It is the ease with which views can be expressed that has changed, not the level of engagement. Whereas previously, public reaction to a particular newspaper article may have been gauged by the number of letters sent to the editor, today people can express their opinion wherever they like, and others can chime in to voice their agreement or disagreement, without having to set up a petition or letter-writing campaign.

Change can be unsettling, and as the media landscape changes, there are bound to be more debates and arguments about the role and responsibilities of traditional media, social networks, and how people and businesses use them. While I don’t think that the internet is a free utopia where nothing bad ever happens, neither do I see it as a lawless Wild West where chaos reigns. Social networking is largely benign, provided you are willing to get involved. It’s those who are determined to keep a hands-off approach who are likely to face the biggest challenges.

[Image by KieraDocherty]

Freeware of the Week! [Tungle]

So yesterday I had a meeting, or rather a group IM chat. All was going swimmingly until we tried to arrange follow-ups, whereupon there was much humming and hawing amongst us from our three respective time zones and with our competing schedules. Had I had this week’s offering to hand, the process of setting up subsequent meetings wouldn’t have been as fraught.

Tungle is, in its simplest form, a means of scheduling meetings. Now, you could use the old-fashioned method, as we did yesterday, and chase up people about their schedules and when they are free. Alternatively, you could use Tungle and take the pain and stress out of dealing with conflicting schedules and sets of priorities. Not only would you get your meeting scheduled, but you’d also have the means to edit start times, add and remove invitees, and offer a range of different start times, all without having to send round multiple emails to keep everyone up to speed.

As Tungle themselves put it, this is not a calendar; oh no, my friends, this a calendar accelerator. Tungle syncs up with your usual calendar, displays the times when you are free, and makes scheduling meetings easy by showing your available time slots to those you need to meet with. It works with Outlook, iCal, Entourage, Lotus Notes and Google Calendar. So far, no compatibility with Thunderbird or Sunbird, which would be my biggest gripe, but there are ways to get around that. Not only that, but people don’t even need to sign up to Tungle to get on board, because they can arrange meetings with you anyway, through the handy Tungle.me link that you can place everywhere from your blog to your Facebook and LinkedIn profile. Honestly? The days of the diary secretary could be numbered.

All Tungle needs is a free sign-up and the details of the calendar that you are going to be using to schedule events. Once the two are synced, you can select multiple time slots when you are free for a meeting, send out invitations to multiple prospective attendees, and it will select the earliest time that all the necessary people are available and “book” that slot for your meeting. Not only that, but it automatically handles who will be able to attend, sends out confirmations, and can even handle details of the meetings being changed. Bonus feature? It handles time zones automatically, so no more do you have to think about what time it will be in Shanghai, Berlin and Guatemala City when trying to arrange a video conference that won’t wreck havoc with anyone’s circadian rhythms.

As I mentioned, it isn’t necessary for everyone you want to schedule meetings with to also have a Tungle account. Those who do not will receive an email giving them a list of possible times, and they can click a link to confirm and receive reminders before the meeting. For people who want to arrange a meeting who don’t use Tungle, it is even easier. If you place a Tungle.me link on your blog, Facebook or LinkedIn profile, people can invite look up your calendar to see when you are free and then invite you to a meeting.  And no need to worry about strangers finding out about your doctor’s appointments or mandatory visits to the in-laws: all they see is whether you are busy or free.

As teleworking becomes a possibility for an ever-greater number of people, it’s important to be able to quickly ascertain whether you are availble, especially if, like me, you deal with people who are scattered to the four winds and are starting their day when you are supposed to be fast asleep. Luckily, there is some overlap in people’s working day, and Tungle makes it easier to find out when the people you need to be in touch with are free. There is even an iPhone app, for heaven’s sake! That leaves no excuse for being “unavailable,” unless you are really so busy that you don’t have any free time whatsoever. Tungle makes working across boundaries and borders much easier. Not only that, but it allows you to take full control of your calendar, and to stay on top of contacting your remote colleagues. For freelancers and businesses alike, this service is a godsend. I can’t wait until “to Tungle” is recognised as a verb.

Hat-tip to Alison K at Useful Tools, without whom I would never have learned about this app.