Archive for the ‘Software’ category

So geht Support nicht.

March 21st, 2011

Ich kom­mu­ni­ziere gerade mit einem Software-Anbieter wegen Rück­fra­gen über deren Pro­dukt. Zunächst: Sup­port gibt es per E-Mail oder per 0900-Nummer. Das stimmt mich ja schon mal nicht posi­tiv. Aber dann:
In der ers­ten Mail auf meine Frage wer­den neben der genauen Ver­si­ons­num­mer – kann ich ja noch ver­ste­hen! – auch noch Seri­en­num­mer und genaue Kun­den­be­zeich­nung abge­fragt. Damit man die Anfrage rich­tig able­gen könne. Und in der nächs­ten E-Mail, in der ich auf die Rück­fra­gen ant­wor­tete, kommt dann

Beach­ten Sie, die kom­plette Kor­re­spon­denz immer anzu­fü­gen, damit die Bear­bei­tung nicht unnö­tig ver­zö­gert wird.

Herr­schaf­ten, so geht kun­den­freund­li­cher Sup­port nicht!

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Posted in Software

European Software

February 15th, 2011

Rea­ding that the Ger­man For­eign Minis­try is about to change their com­pu­ting desk­tops back from a GNU/Linux-based sys­tem to Micro­soft Win­dows and their Office offe­rings, a thing that has been on my mind for a while comes back again.
I think it would be very worthwhile to start an initia­tive to fos­ter euro­pean soft­ware; I think that whe­re­ver soft­ware pro­du­ced in europe is avail­able, it should be favored over other pro­ducts. There are euro­pean ope­ra­ting sys­tem ven­dors – espe­cially in the GNU/Linux arena. Why are they not get­ting the money, but rather the big ven­dor from Red­mont?
There also is the point that I think par­ti­cu­larly for sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, an ope­ra­ting sys­tem where the code can be audi­ted and tra­ced is a good idea. I am not sure that you should be trus­ting the ope­ra­ti­ons of a highly sen­si­tive net­work to a com­pany that is not all trans­pa­rent about it moti­ves, or its poten­tial con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity in its home coun­try.
I think that stra­te­gic invest­ments would also do won­ders to sti­mu­late activity in the soft­ware mar­ket. Working towards the goal of ero­ding Microsoft’s domi­nance would be a good thing in my book. Con­side­ring that there have been many pus­hes towards fos­te­ring some­thing like a euro­pean (or ger­man, or bri­tish or …) Sili­con Val­ley, this could just be the way to get the euro­pean soft­ware indus­try to focus on pro­vi­ding com­pe­ti­tive offe­rings for basic func­tio­na­lity like office and desk­top ope­ra­ting systems.

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Posted in EU, Politics, Software

Software I like: Evernote

August 5th, 2010

I’ve been a user of Ever­note for quite a while now, and I must admit that I’m also one of the lovers of that ser­vice. It does data sto­rage the way I felt it should be done. You can access your notes via local app­li­ca­ti­ons on desk­top and lap­top, and that works well. I per­so­nally use only the Mac­in­tosh ver­sion (but that on mul­ti­ple machi­nes) for work­sta­tion use. But I can also access my data via the iPhone app­li­ca­tion, or with the ever­note web app from just about any­where. There’s also a Win­dows ver­sion avail­able, but I’ve never played around with that.
I jour­nal all the ideas that are on my mind wit­hin Ever­note; that way, I am sure that I have all ideas that might war­rant revi­sit­ing at a later point are caught, because it’s just so easy and quick to write them down and have them stored in a way that I can access from any­where.
I know that there are many more fea­tures (uploading PDFs, cap­tu­ring images and sto­ring them, image reco­gni­tion and many more), but none of those have pro­vi­ded import­ant to me. The fact that I can get to all my notes from any­where, and with soft­ware that makes using the sto­rage easy and fast — it does feel like it’s a local app­li­ca­tion, because it is — that’s what has me con­vin­ced.
And the best thing? It just works.
Highly recommended.

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Posted in Software