The iMac has died.
I was out of town for a couple days in late May, for which I turned off power to the computers while I was away. Upon my return, and when I turned power back on to the iMac, all I got was a folder icon, with a question mark. A quick call to Applecare followed, and with their help we determined that the internal hard drive had died. As I have previously written about, all that was on the iMac was my music and sound collection, and I was doing a daily backup to two external hard drives, so I haven't lost anything.
Any sane person simply cannot be without music in their lives, so I purchased a Dell PC at my local Costco. I have previously owned a Dell, and this one is a nice rig. But there is still that nagging hesitation concerning the crappy, heavy accented tech support, and all the bloat that they add to their machines. One thing for sure, I knew I did not want an HP PoS, which Costco also sells. This Dell rig has Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium, with a 24-inch monitor.
Right off the top, within a couple hours of new, one of the cooling fans on the Dell kicked into high gear and tried to imitate a helicopter. Dell tech support was pretty unresponsive, as expected. A couple days later, FedEx delivered a box with two new fans and a new power supply. No note in the box, and still no email. There have been a couple phone messages, in which some guy mumbles something about Dell and what I think is his cell phone number, so I think the two might be related. Still no email, or easily understood phone call, so the new stuff sits on the floor, awaiting an uncertain fate. By the way, a review of the forums suggests that the random high speed cooling fan problem is common to several different Dell motherboards and firmware versions, and is easily fixed by a power off, power on cycle; so far, only twice in the one month of ownership, and only after the occasional warm boot.
Why another PC instead of simply fixing the iMac?
Simple answer: I like to tweak, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing when I do it. I really, really don't like it that I cannot simply open the case, unplug the hard drive and plug in a new one. Ten minutes to a fix, tops. I have always felt that the iMac ran a bit hot, with nothing more that vents on the bottom, and a long slot across the top, and no cooling fan. My own gut feeling is that since I never turned it off, and seldom rebooted, the poor hard drive simply cooked itself, and it died when it cooled down from the power being off.
Next task was how to get the music files from one of the Mac-formatted backups to the new Dell PC. The externals were hooked to the iMac by way of a couple Firewire 400 connections, which the Dell also has. A quick on-line search found MacDrive, a PC program that allows a PC to read a Mac-formatted drive. And it works great. I copied all the music files to the PC without a hitch.
Before loading iTunes, I took the opportunity to reorganize the Music folder to get them off and away from the iTunes folder. I lost about 30 bits of album art that I had previously let iTunes get for me, but I either found them elsewhere on the 'net, or rescanned them myself with Photoshop. To keep Apple's "helpful" fingers out of my stuff, when I loaded iTunes I unchecked the "Keep iTunes music folder organized". I have also decided that I'll keep the WAV and other source files separate and away from the iTunes library, using only MP3s for that purpose, which allows adding album art to the file itself.
For an editor, I reloaded CoolEdit, but Vista is a bit too fast for that nine-year-old program. So I tried the open source Audacity, the NCH suite (way too intrusive), and the nice Free Audio Editor, which looks a lot like Office 2007. FAE needs some more development work, but it is pretty good as it stands. After some consideration, and a trial period, I purchased Adobe Audition 3, which retains all the features of the old CoolEdit, plus some other bits. I especially like the ability to record a vinyl album as a single file, then use Audition's marker labels to split and save the different tracks into separate files.
As expected, due to the changes in Vista versus XP and the way each handles sound, Total Recorder doesn't play nice with the integrated sound on the Dell, so I installed a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio sound card. After some fiddling with the Sound settings in the Windows Control Panel, I am again able to record what I hear. To use either Audition, FAE, or Total Recorder, I have to disable the Bose Companion speakers since their USB connection confuses all other sound programs. I then enable a set of speakers connected to the Soundblaster sound card, and it all works as needed. When I'm done being creative, I disable the standard speakers, and enable the Bose speakers. (One small quirk: whatever sound application is running remembers which speakers are being used, no matter if they are disabled or enabled. So to change speakers, I need to shut the application down and restart it.)
For backups there are two external hard drives: a set of two Other World Computing (OWC MacSales, Inc.) 500GB Mercury Elite-AL Pro "Quad Interface" drives that allow any of the current connections (USB, FW400, FW800, eSATA) between the externals and the Dell PC. Although preformatted as Mac, they work just fine on a PC after being reformatted.
I tried a separate add-on expansion card with two eSATA connections, but there is a problem with the two drives powered on during a reboot. When I reboot with the drives powered on, the rig hangs at the RAID BIOS screen. Although I don't use RAID, the expansion card thinks I do. When I power the drives up after rebooting, they both show up in Explorer just fine. But I can't figure out how to update the expansion card's Tools/Driver/BIOS the way Silicon Image says I need to. So the connection will remain as USB until I can figure out the eSATA thing. Maybe a direct connection to the two empty ports on the motherboard.
I use iTunes, but to be fair, a couple days ago I tried Zune, having noticed the recommendation given it by the newest Maximum PC pagazine. It took Zune well over two hours to import the 6500 songs in the music collection, and after trying to use it to play particular songs, I think I'll stay with iTunes. I don't much care for Zune's look and feel, but maybe there is some tweaking I can do. Or, maybe I am thoroughly infected with the iTunes bug.
As for fixing the iMac, since it's still on the original 3-year Applecare warranty, I'll let them replace the hard drive free of charge. Then maybe I'll keep it. Or maybe I'll sell it to recover some to costs of getting its PC replacement up and running.
Some background on my audio life: It all started with my brother's return from his Viet Nam experience in 1969 with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Along with the real-to-reel recorder, the setup included an amp and a couple big-bass floor-speakers. We spent time recording our (mostly his) vinyl collection, recording songs from the radio, and listening to music, loud music. I bought my own setup within the year which included a Pioneer amp, a Garrard turntable, a Sony cassette player that auto-reversed (cool stuff in those days), and two big Pioneer speakers that are, almost 40 years later, still mounted up high on my walls.
Music has remained a part of my life ever since, through all the various moves and upgrades. Components have come and gone, and the current component setup uses those same big Pioneer speakers, plus a couple great sounding book shelf speakers at the other end of the room, and a AIWA combination CD/cassette player, together with what was literally hundreds of CDs and vinyl albums. That was until I purchased my first iPod in late 2005, which forced me to rethink of my audio life, with my computer becoming the focal point.
I soon began loading the CDs into iTunes, and scanning my own album art. Within a short period I filled the 30GB iPod. A concurrent review of the CD collection revealed several that were not really keepers, and several that were one-trick ponies with a single song being the reason for the original purchase. While keeping a realistic collection of CDs, a local used-CD store bought the rest at a fair price, and I walked out with enough cash to buy a new 80GB iPod, which as I write this, is still only half filled with over 6000 songs.
Until it died, the iMac had been kept just for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers. The combination of iTunes and the Bose speakers, along with the iMac (now replaced by the Dell PC) is essentially a great stereo, with edit capability, with more music readily available from several on-line music stores including iTunes, Amazon, Jamendo, Last.fm, or whatever else strikes my fancy. I can still crank up the volume and feel the music. The sound is so great that I haven't had my four-speaker component stereo even powered-on for over a year. And I can pick and choose the songs I want on iTunes, by artist, by album, by date added, by least played, by title, or completely random.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Asking Questions
An anonymus stranger wrote in June 2006:
Jeff Cauthen wrote in June 2006:
I have been able to get an amazing variety of books through my local county library. It may take a while, but you, too, might be surprised as to what's available through interlibrary loan. At no charge, so the "limited income" argument has nothing to stand on.
But I can understand Jeff's frustration. I suspect the question asking for a detailed list of Cab Forwards that operated in northern California and southern Oregon was simply ill-considered about the depth and range of possible answers, but Jeff's words could have come from any of the 30+ authors that I know.
There are times that we authors get real tired of answering basic questions that we have all written about many times (kind of like a doctor being asked medical questions at a party). Why oh why don't people read the books and magazines they buy. By far, most railroad books are sold for the photographs, with most buyers simply flipping through a new book and putting it proudly on the shelf.
As for asking simple questions, it's a whole lot easier to simply tap a question on the computer keyboard, than it is to spend a couple hours reading various printed sources. A good comparison would be a conversation on a street corner, which is what I consider all of these discussion groups to be. Two people are talking, and one of them will ask the other a question.
I run a very large web site, with over 1500 pages. It has a "Contact Me" feature. Anyone would be amazed at the variety and range of questions that get thrown my way. Most are pretty senseless, like a recent one, "Can you tell me about my Grandfather Hector Holmes, who I think worked for a railroad in Colorado?" This to a web site that is clearly marked UtahRails.
But every now and again, a question comes in that makes it all worth while. Or, even better, an offer to send along some item of interest. The good questions force me to think about what I may, or may not know. The good questions make it all worth while. I love doing research, and I enjoy sharing the results of my research, but please, do a little basic research before asking your question.
I cannot believe how mean spirited the responses to a simple question have been. Many of us (myself included) live on a limited income and cannot afford the spend $50.00 or more on books.
Jeff Cauthen wrote in June 2006:
I'm sick of this "limited income" crap. WE"RE all on limited incomes. Buy a book, it won't kill you!!
I have been able to get an amazing variety of books through my local county library. It may take a while, but you, too, might be surprised as to what's available through interlibrary loan. At no charge, so the "limited income" argument has nothing to stand on.
But I can understand Jeff's frustration. I suspect the question asking for a detailed list of Cab Forwards that operated in northern California and southern Oregon was simply ill-considered about the depth and range of possible answers, but Jeff's words could have come from any of the 30+ authors that I know.
There are times that we authors get real tired of answering basic questions that we have all written about many times (kind of like a doctor being asked medical questions at a party). Why oh why don't people read the books and magazines they buy. By far, most railroad books are sold for the photographs, with most buyers simply flipping through a new book and putting it proudly on the shelf.
As for asking simple questions, it's a whole lot easier to simply tap a question on the computer keyboard, than it is to spend a couple hours reading various printed sources. A good comparison would be a conversation on a street corner, which is what I consider all of these discussion groups to be. Two people are talking, and one of them will ask the other a question.
I run a very large web site, with over 1500 pages. It has a "Contact Me" feature. Anyone would be amazed at the variety and range of questions that get thrown my way. Most are pretty senseless, like a recent one, "Can you tell me about my Grandfather Hector Holmes, who I think worked for a railroad in Colorado?" This to a web site that is clearly marked UtahRails.
But every now and again, a question comes in that makes it all worth while. Or, even better, an offer to send along some item of interest. The good questions force me to think about what I may, or may not know. The good questions make it all worth while. I love doing research, and I enjoy sharing the results of my research, but please, do a little basic research before asking your question.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
History and Web Sites Are Fragile
In June 2006, Ken Clark wrote:
In my recent visit to UP at Omaha, I was more than surprised to learn that UP themselves cannot access equipment records from the mid 1980s, and through to the time of my visit in 1995. It was during the mid 1980s that UP computerized their record keeping. I discussed this with several contacts within the company, and learned that they accept the new reality, along with the fact that if an employee did not print the report out, and keep it in his personal stash, the record is likely not available. Also, now that the ICC no longer exists, with its requirements for volumes and volumes of retained records, the railroads simply don't retain the depth and range of records that they did previously. Also, one of the "buried-in-the-minutiae" parts of the 1980 Staggers act was the reduction in reporting required by the railroads, and less reporting meant less records retention.
Ken continued:
When I realized just how fragile web sites are, I determined to generate web pages that conform to current standards of future compatibility. All my web pages are fully compliant with XHTML standards, meaning mostly that they are simple text with formatting being handled by separate style sheets. I use PHP server-side includes so that I don't need to worry about keeping the formatting of every page perfectly up to date. No glitz. Each and every page is all about just the content.
I'm a great believer in open source, public web sites, such as Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. They have over 200,000 articles, supposedly more than Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta combined. For us railroaders, there is a remarkable range of railroad-related subjects. The editors take their (volunteer) jobs very seriously and strive to the most accurate information available. But their weakness is similar to any author's weakness; you can't use a source if you don't know of its existence.
The information at Wikipedia is always suspect, as is information in any printed source. But Wikipedia is fully editable by any registered user, with a full history shown of all changes. Wikipedia makes good use of peer review, much like academic research. Peer review is something our railroad writing could certainly use more of, but I have learned that there is a definite shortage of peers in the subjects I write about.
I determined years ago that railroad publishing to paper has a severe limitation. The potential market is astronomically small (1000 to 1500 books), therefore the economics of such a small market severely limit both the size and content of the published work, and the promotion and advertising of newly released, or still available, books. I figured this out at about the same time that Google became available as the web's premier search engine. From then on, I decided to make my research readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. The hard part, a difficulty also shared by commercial interests on the web, is to get the search engines to find your web site through a simple key word search.
My first Wiki edit was for Cooper bridge loadings. Some recent research about the weight limitations of the Salt Lake trestle brought a private email that mentioned the bridge loading standards known as Cooper loadings, with its axle loading standards, of which E-70 is an example. I did a search on Cooper loadings, along with the engineer who developed them, Theodore Cooper, and was a bit surprised that neither Google nor Wikipedia had any reference to this basic facet of railroad engineering. There is an article about Cooper, the man, but it makes no mention of the bridge loading standards named for him. Oh well, yet another subject to be researched and developed. Life goes on, and every work is a work in progress...
The problem is that the records are fast disappearing. Twenty five years ago we had a lot of records that were 25 years old, now we can't find or read files that are three years old.
In my recent visit to UP at Omaha, I was more than surprised to learn that UP themselves cannot access equipment records from the mid 1980s, and through to the time of my visit in 1995. It was during the mid 1980s that UP computerized their record keeping. I discussed this with several contacts within the company, and learned that they accept the new reality, along with the fact that if an employee did not print the report out, and keep it in his personal stash, the record is likely not available. Also, now that the ICC no longer exists, with its requirements for volumes and volumes of retained records, the railroads simply don't retain the depth and range of records that they did previously. Also, one of the "buried-in-the-minutiae" parts of the 1980 Staggers act was the reduction in reporting required by the railroads, and less reporting meant less records retention.
Ken continued:
One author who contacted me brought up a more troubling issue, that of the relative fragility of the web site. Many have not had the staying power of the hard bound volume. What happens upon the maintainer's death? or the internet host quits? Dead links abound. Will historical societies provide secure host space and maybe digital backups to ensure that the information is not lost? At this time I think the digital media has proven more fragile than the printed medium. It requires continual renewal onto current technology to avoid rapid obsolescence.
When I realized just how fragile web sites are, I determined to generate web pages that conform to current standards of future compatibility. All my web pages are fully compliant with XHTML standards, meaning mostly that they are simple text with formatting being handled by separate style sheets. I use PHP server-side includes so that I don't need to worry about keeping the formatting of every page perfectly up to date. No glitz. Each and every page is all about just the content.
I'm a great believer in open source, public web sites, such as Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. They have over 200,000 articles, supposedly more than Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta combined. For us railroaders, there is a remarkable range of railroad-related subjects. The editors take their (volunteer) jobs very seriously and strive to the most accurate information available. But their weakness is similar to any author's weakness; you can't use a source if you don't know of its existence.
The information at Wikipedia is always suspect, as is information in any printed source. But Wikipedia is fully editable by any registered user, with a full history shown of all changes. Wikipedia makes good use of peer review, much like academic research. Peer review is something our railroad writing could certainly use more of, but I have learned that there is a definite shortage of peers in the subjects I write about.
I determined years ago that railroad publishing to paper has a severe limitation. The potential market is astronomically small (1000 to 1500 books), therefore the economics of such a small market severely limit both the size and content of the published work, and the promotion and advertising of newly released, or still available, books. I figured this out at about the same time that Google became available as the web's premier search engine. From then on, I decided to make my research readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. The hard part, a difficulty also shared by commercial interests on the web, is to get the search engines to find your web site through a simple key word search.
My first Wiki edit was for Cooper bridge loadings. Some recent research about the weight limitations of the Salt Lake trestle brought a private email that mentioned the bridge loading standards known as Cooper loadings, with its axle loading standards, of which E-70 is an example. I did a search on Cooper loadings, along with the engineer who developed them, Theodore Cooper, and was a bit surprised that neither Google nor Wikipedia had any reference to this basic facet of railroad engineering. There is an article about Cooper, the man, but it makes no mention of the bridge loading standards named for him. Oh well, yet another subject to be researched and developed. Life goes on, and every work is a work in progress...
Metallic Smokebox Color
In October 2006, Harry Wong wrote:
This brings to mind my experience as a boilermaker apprentice back in 1971. I was an active modeler at the time (Denver & Salt Lake), and we were retubing the boilers in UP's huge power plant in Salt Lake City. These were massive water tube boilers, three in a row and three stories tall.
My journeyman was Glen Rice. One day he had me mix up what he called graphite paint. It was about a half gallon of some thick valve oil (a bit darker than your typical motor oil for automobiles), into which I mixed an equal measure of powered graphite. I then brushed it on an exposed part of the upper tube sheet. The heat took care of the oil in a couple hours, leaving behind a durable graphite coating as form of corrosion control. The next day, it was exactly the same color as Floquil's then-Graphite color that I took with me to work to compare.
I have since learned that what we modelers know as silver paint is actually aluminum paint, or aluminum powder in a carrier solvent. I have also learned that aluminum paint came about as a replacement for aluminum leaf, which itself was a cheaper version of silver leaf in lettering. Aluminum paint was so cheap and so durable in high heat situations, that many railroads began using it in lots of applications. It wears very well, but also oxidizes pretty fast.
...had a darker shade of metallic on the smokebox.
This brings to mind my experience as a boilermaker apprentice back in 1971. I was an active modeler at the time (Denver & Salt Lake), and we were retubing the boilers in UP's huge power plant in Salt Lake City. These were massive water tube boilers, three in a row and three stories tall.
My journeyman was Glen Rice. One day he had me mix up what he called graphite paint. It was about a half gallon of some thick valve oil (a bit darker than your typical motor oil for automobiles), into which I mixed an equal measure of powered graphite. I then brushed it on an exposed part of the upper tube sheet. The heat took care of the oil in a couple hours, leaving behind a durable graphite coating as form of corrosion control. The next day, it was exactly the same color as Floquil's then-Graphite color that I took with me to work to compare.
I have since learned that what we modelers know as silver paint is actually aluminum paint, or aluminum powder in a carrier solvent. I have also learned that aluminum paint came about as a replacement for aluminum leaf, which itself was a cheaper version of silver leaf in lettering. Aluminum paint was so cheap and so durable in high heat situations, that many railroads began using it in lots of applications. It wears very well, but also oxidizes pretty fast.
History
History as pure dates is boring to many. But dates are the skeleton of history.
If you have your dates wrong, then any history based on those dates will be seen as lopsided and unsupported. This includes any history of equipment, of operations, or even social and cultural histories that seem to be in vogue today.
History in context brings the past alive.
If you have your dates wrong, then any history based on those dates will be seen as lopsided and unsupported. This includes any history of equipment, of operations, or even social and cultural histories that seem to be in vogue today.
History in context brings the past alive.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Local History
I've been asked for my thoughts about compiling the book with local history as its subject. Like any other project, you will have to decide what story you want to tell. No publisher will touch an "all-time", definitive history. So the challenge is the compromise that the author is willing to live with.
This is precisely why I do web pages. I'm in complete control, with no publisher breathing down my neck about page count and always trying to reduce costs. Plus there is no fear of a lack of promotion. Any good internet search engine will find a web site.
In my case I will always consider the Ogden Rails project incomplete. But there comes a time when you have to move on. I'd love to do a "Salt Lake City Rails" book, or a full history of Brigham Young and the railroads. But in reality, I doubt that such projects will ever see publication, other than in the form of loosely associated web pages.
About doing a local history book: maybe a simple update of a previously published project might be good enough, such as my personal favorite, Ira Swett's "Interurbans of Utah", but with more and bigger photos, and good maps. Doing day-to-day newspaper research almost always adds new information, but can be incredibly boring and time consuming. At some point you will have to ask yourself, "will it really add to the story I want to tell?"
As words of encouragement, continue gathering data, photos, and maps. At some point, you will have to decide what exactly you want to say. Hopefully that decision will come sooner rather than later, and you won't pass from this world and leave your family with the decision as to what to do with all of your research.
This is precisely why I do web pages. I'm in complete control, with no publisher breathing down my neck about page count and always trying to reduce costs. Plus there is no fear of a lack of promotion. Any good internet search engine will find a web site.
In my case I will always consider the Ogden Rails project incomplete. But there comes a time when you have to move on. I'd love to do a "Salt Lake City Rails" book, or a full history of Brigham Young and the railroads. But in reality, I doubt that such projects will ever see publication, other than in the form of loosely associated web pages.
About doing a local history book: maybe a simple update of a previously published project might be good enough, such as my personal favorite, Ira Swett's "Interurbans of Utah", but with more and bigger photos, and good maps. Doing day-to-day newspaper research almost always adds new information, but can be incredibly boring and time consuming. At some point you will have to ask yourself, "will it really add to the story I want to tell?"
As words of encouragement, continue gathering data, photos, and maps. At some point, you will have to decide what exactly you want to say. Hopefully that decision will come sooner rather than later, and you won't pass from this world and leave your family with the decision as to what to do with all of your research.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Local Museums
Sorry to say, I've never been much of a preservationist, other than photos and books. I have found that too many people get wrapped up in keeping for all time and forever, their mother's wedding dress, or Uncle Wilbur's family bible, or Aunt Wilma's dress from when she was baptized.
Too much attention is paid to keeping the "one-only" stuff, rather than the every day stuff used by people to get through each and every day. The worst I've seen is at Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and at the Union Pacific museum in Omaha. Most of the stuff is insignificant junk that the museums dare not throw away because it was a gift.
I've been to many local museums that have one too many washboards and butter churns, or three gold watches, and seventeen different gold buttons. Obviously, I'm not a fan of local museums, so I'm not the person to ask for an encouraging word. But yet, I visit them at every opportunity.
My interest is the history of industrial development in Utah, with a focus on railroad-related industries. I continue to be hopeful when I do go to a local museum, hoping for old photos of what the world looked like back then. The best have been in Crockett, California, with its great stuff about the C&H sugar factory there, and the museum in Helper, Utah. Both are wonderful places to visit, but I'm sure there are several more. A recent trip through Torrington, Wyoming included another very good local museum.
Too much attention is paid to keeping the "one-only" stuff, rather than the every day stuff used by people to get through each and every day. The worst I've seen is at Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and at the Union Pacific museum in Omaha. Most of the stuff is insignificant junk that the museums dare not throw away because it was a gift.
I've been to many local museums that have one too many washboards and butter churns, or three gold watches, and seventeen different gold buttons. Obviously, I'm not a fan of local museums, so I'm not the person to ask for an encouraging word. But yet, I visit them at every opportunity.
My interest is the history of industrial development in Utah, with a focus on railroad-related industries. I continue to be hopeful when I do go to a local museum, hoping for old photos of what the world looked like back then. The best have been in Crockett, California, with its great stuff about the C&H sugar factory there, and the museum in Helper, Utah. Both are wonderful places to visit, but I'm sure there are several more. A recent trip through Torrington, Wyoming included another very good local museum.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
A Case of Forgotten Users
... a story of the dangers of proprietary formats.
In July 1998 while visiting the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum in Salt Lake City, I purchased at their bookstore, a CD-ROM titled "The Pioneer Heritage CD-ROM". The CD-ROM was being offered because it contained all of the text and photos, searchable by keyword, of DUP's extremely useful "lessons", dating back to Kate B. Carter's "Heart Throbs of the West", first published in 1939.
In December 1998 in one of my first on-line purchases, I gave Ancestry $39.95 to "unlock" the CD's full contents, which included the following:
Six months later, I upgraded my hard drive, which required a new "unlock" code, which Ancestry furnished without problem. A year after that, a new computer forced another unlock code, which was also furnished, with the customer service representative saying that the initial purchase from a year before was a "lifetime" purchase.
Over the ensuing years, I continued to upgrade hard drives, and computers, and as late as August 2006, Ancestry continued to furnish an unlock code. But beginning in 2000-2001, each call for support required a longer and longer hold time as the telephone support person searched for the needed input screen, which in turn would generate a five-digit unlock code. An attempt in July 2004 needed three separate calls to Ancestry customer support to find a knowledgeable person who was able to find the unlock code generator. At that time, I started doing research into the history of Folio, Infobases, and the development of the file format (.NFO) proprietary to Folio.
A bit of on-line research helped me discover that the Folio setup program uses the computer's internal clock for part of the algorithm, along with a generated five-digit "unlock" code, to "unlock" the contents of the CD-ROM. This means that each new installation, due to new computers or replacement hard drives, must be "real time," meaning that the user must to be at the his computer and running the setup at the same time that customer support is called to request a new unlock code.
Then it happened.
In August 2006, after (yet another) hard drive crash in late 2005, I was unable to find anyone at Ancestry who recognized the need for an unlock code, and gave up. In December 2006 I suffered another hard drive failure, and I was again told by telephone support that an unlock code was no longer available.
Repeated calls to telephone support finally put me in the hands of a support person with similar interests, and he helped me identify the location of the DUP collections on Ancestry.com's web site. I immediately subscribed to their service.
Unfortunately, the search function at Ancestry.com assumes I am looking for a person. But they do allow a keyword search, which seems to work properly when searching a single source. I am unable to simply browse through the collections. Gone is the ability to print selected text (and search results) with citations, along with the photos.
Using the DUP collections at Ancestry.com [September 2008]:
Ancestry.com -> Search -> Stories & Publications -> Browse By Location (Utah) -> Utah Stories & Publications -> (search the list of over 8000 entries for the title of the DUP collection, i.e., An Enduring Legacy, Heart Throbs of the West, Our Pioneer Heritage, Treasures of Pioneer History). Save the URL web address as one of your favorite bookmarks.
The research into Folio and Infobases I did in 2004 made me pretty upset about the whole concept of entrepreneurs focusing on easy targets. In this case, it was a group of young entrepreneurs who also happen to be members of the LDS faith. They saw an opportunity of using Utah and LDS history resources as a revenue stream, using a proprietary file format. They then moved on to other opportunities without caring that they are walking away from their customer base.
The Back Story
In 1990, two BYU graduates by the name of Paul Allen and Dan Taggart created Infobases as a company, and began offering LDS publications on computer floppy disks. They chose to use the Folio infobase encryption and compression technology that Allen was familiar with, having worked at Folio Corporation since that company's founding in 1987. Folio was co-founded by Paul Allen's brother Curt Allen, and by his brother-in-law Brad Pelo, and using Folio technology seemed a natural way to offer LDS publications as a business venture.
(I have added some of what I found to the Infobases, and the Folio Corporation articles at Wikipedia.)
Infobases was successful in the small but unfulfilled LDS consumer market with its LDS Collector's Library. By 1996 Allen and Infobases together were gaining national media attention as an up-and-coming company and its young entrepreneur CEO. By 1997, the LDS Collector's Library had been sold to thousands of trusting church members. These new buyers simply wanted to make their use of LDS scriptures and associated publications, using the combined benefits of Folio Bound Views technology, and Infobases' scanning of hundreds of books and documents, and publishing them as CD-ROMs. As a side note, apparently most if not all of the books and documents were obtained from the libraries of nearby Brigham Young University.
Throughout 1995-1997, Infobases continued to sell LDS publications on CDs, and worked with other organizations, such as Daughters of Utah Pioneers and Utah State Historical Society, to make their own unique publications readily available, and searchable, on CD-ROM. These new CDs were a wonderful resource that made the study and use of LDS and Utah history publications much easier. But it all changed in 1997, after a very brief three year span of success.
In February 1997, Folio Corporation, co-founded by Brad Pelo and Curt Allen, was sold to Open Market, a Boston-based internet company seeking to take advantage of the growing electronic commerce phenomena taking place on the world wide web.
Open Market struggled to integrate the Folio technology into its business model, and together with a growing sense of reality among investors and businesses of high tech internet-related stocks, the company was soon seeing serious decline in its fortunes. A change in management at Open Market, and a switch in technologies in mid 1999 saw the Folio technology licensed back to Pelo and a group of Utah investors that included Alan Ashton of WordPerfect fame, under the name of ABSB. (Open Market attempted to embrace at least two other content management technologies, but was never able to fully recover. In March 2003, Open Market declared bankruptcy. Its surviving technology is now controlled by FatWire.)
This new company, ABSB, very soon changed its name to NextPage, and embarked on an expanding effort to leverage the benefits of Folio technology into what was variously called Peer-To-Peer Content Network and eContent Network. Where Folio really shined was in its ability to index all document formats on a company's internal network, known as an intra-net, and make those documents readily available to all network users.
During the mid 1990s, Folio had expanded its technology to include indexing web-based documents and products, along with additional formats. NextPage continued to improve on its Folio technology, and in less than two years the technology was being successfully marketed as NextPage's NXT.
The benefit's of NextPage's former Folio technology saw Pelo give testimony before the U.S. Senate in October 2000 on the advantages of server-based peer-to-peer document management, in the Senate's hearings on the negative impact of Napster, a similar peer-to-peer technology that allowed users to share music (illegally) across the internet.
In early September 2004 NextPage, Inc. announced that Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a Norwegian-based leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, had agreed to purchase the technology, product lines, and the over 500 customers and partners of NextPage's publishing applications business unit, including NXT, Folio, LivePublish, and GetSmart. NextPage's document management services, Chrome, was to remain with the company.
In January 2006, FAST announced the release of ProPublish 4.1, "designed specifically for premium content providers whose research-oriented users demand complex search and navigation capabilities." The relationship of the old Folio format, to this newer ProPublish format in not known, but the news release shows that ProPublish included "Enhanced support for Folio and NXT content types."
FAST is now a Microsoft Subsidiary. On April 25, 2008, Microsoft completed its acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer, in what Microsoft called "opening a new chapter in the ongoing evolution of search." They continue to support the Folio technology, but not the Infobases encrytion scheme.
In response to a query to Microsoft's FAST subsidiary, I have learned that the troublesome five-digit unlock code was not a feature of the Folio software. It was solely the choice that the now-defunct Infobases company made to protect its digital publications. Folio and its encryption technology is still fully supported. A Microsoft representative wrote, "The Folio product line continues to be supported through the many acquisitions; we are currently at version 4.7.1. While we are not actively selling the software any longer, we do continue to provide support services, including software patches, as necessary. The current versions of the software can open and read the older formats (back to version 3.1)."
Additional clarification was provided by Microsoft's FAST: "Folio is essentially a CD/DVD publishing platform. Publishers use the software to generate, secure, and distribute infobases (.nfos). They pay a royalty to distribute their publications with the software. The Folio organization (and its successors) have no control over their content nor any way to access their content without the appropriate access keys - which are controlled by the publisher, not by Folio."
So, it appears that the culprit here was Infobases as a publisher. As will be shown later, the rights and interests of Infobases is now owned and controlled by the LDS church's own Deseret Book Company.
Rewind back to Infobases in 1997. Infobases founders Paul Allen and Dan Taggart, saw a need to embrace the growing use of the world wide web for the purposes of genealogy and family history research. They purchased Ancestry Publishing, a 13-year-old publishing house that specialized in family history materials, and converted it to Ancestry.com.
The growing interest in using the internet to research one's family history has seen an explosive growth in the potential market. Allen and Taggart saw this as an opportunity in 1997, and today, Ancestry.com is one of the most successful internet companies in the nation. (After November 1999, Ancestry's parent company was renamed to MyFamily.com, with Ancestry.com remaining as its most popular component company.)
With the success of Ancestry.com as an internet company, the CD-ROM compact disks sold by Infobases soon became just a sideline to the on-line internet products that Ancestry was offering. To provide content and to expand its customer base, in June 1997, Infobases bought Bookcraft Publishing Company, a publishing house that published LDS-related books that had been turned away by the church's own Deseret Book Company.
Bookcraft had developed an impressive catalog of print publications, and Infobases saw a potential source that would greatly expand its own catalog of digital publications published as CD-ROMs for use on personal computers. The two companies merged, retaining the Bookcraft name as the top-level company.
In this same late 1990s time period, the LDS church itself was becoming aware of the advantages of the internet and electronic publishing. Through its Deseret Book brand name, the church had published its own scriptures and related publications on CD-ROM, and soon the Deseret Book versions of the LDS scriptural material, under the GospeLink name, were in direct competition with what Infobases had been doing since 1990.
Rather than to continue to compete, in April 1999, the management arm of the LDS church, Deseret Management, bought Bookcraft, which included all of the electronic publishing efforts of Infobases. Now that the LDS church itself was in the electronic publishing field, in addition to the scriptural materials, it could make available the numerous family history databases under the FamilySearch brand name.
Deseret Book chose to continue using the Folio infobase technology, supplied by NextPage as successor to Folio. Starting in 2002, and still unfulfilled in mid 2004, Deseret Book continued to promise an internet-based version of GospeLink. The kinks were worked out and today the effort is known simply as GospeLink.com. However, this internet-based service still would not address the concerns of owners of Infobases-published works on CD-ROM for the Utah history community.
It might be a fair assumption that those users who purchased Infobases CD-ROM products, are in many cases people who don't have much more than a beginner's knowledge of computer use, and are likely mystified as to why their Infobases CDs don't work properly on their new computers. Those users who are somewhat familiar with the use of computers, are most assuredly quite frustrated by the lack of upgrade patches and support for the old Infobases CDs. The loss of access to the extensive spiritual and historical CD resources originally published by Infobases is a fine example of the disadvantages of so-called "improving" technology. The customers who helped make the company successful, are simply left behind and technology moves on.
The true travesty of this whole string of events is that these Utah Valley entrepreneurs have abandoned the Folio/Infobases text encryption and compression technology. A technology that was so successfully pushed on the unsuspecting consumer market, and users in the LDS and Utah history communities.
There were many, many books and other source materials made available in the magical 1995-1997 time period; quite literally thousands of books and documents. Several of the businesses started by these guys were voted as the "bright stars" and fine examples of the "new age" Utah business community. They have all espoused the faith and family values of their personal religion, each talking at great length in various interviews about the service they were doing by making all of this spiritual and historical material available to the masses.
But anyone today who tries to use any consumer-marketed Infobases CD-ROM product on a newer technology personal computer such as a PC with Windows XP or Vista, or any Apple computer, soon runs up against a brick wall of non-compatibility.
What is needed is a Folio-compatible viewer for the consumer market that allows the uploading of Infobase .nfo and their associated files from those old CD-ROMs, to today's massive hard drives. There is no need for this viewer to compromise Infobases' proprietary encryption and compression technology, but it must be able to view Infobases' version of the files created under all of the Folio formats after the initial DOS 2.0 version. This would include the earliest 3.1a version that was used so extensively in 1996-1997, and meant to be compatible with Windows 3.1.
These founders and co-founders of Folio and Infobases are all millionaires many times over. I would think that in their entrepreneurial philanthropy, they could at a minimum embrace an implied obligation to produce a viewer for their Infobases products for the consumers who are stuck with all of these encrypted document collections.
I know nothing about encryption and compression technology, but surely, someone knows the details of these old encypted Infobases text and index files to the point that a viewer could be made available. If not a viewer, than at least a conversion tool that reads an old infobase, and saves it as a group of web-enabled files on our hard drives, with full Digital Rights Management. No marketing or customer support required; simply make it available as a free (or low cost) download from the Ancestry.com web site, or because Deseret Book bought the rights to Infobases products, from the GospeLink.com web site.
In 2000 Deseret Book released its GospeLink 2001 product on CD-ROMs, as a suite of church-related publications (a combination of Deseret Book's previous GospeLink suite and Infobases previous LDS Collector's Library), using the then-current NextPage technology. By mid 2004, the program was up to version 2.20, but still with a copyright date of 2000. Apparently, new features have been added, and it does appear to install and operate with Windows. But it cannot be used as a viewer for other Folio infobases.
Deseret Book's decision to make available the GospelLink suite on CD-ROM implies full support of the current Folio standard from then-owner NextPage. For business reasons, this decision is intended to limit the program's usefulness to only the current version of the infobase technology. This seems a bit shortsighted given the overwhelming push that Deseret Book gave to earlier consumer products during the late 1990s. Not everyone can afford this constant push to upgrade-upgrade-upgrade, especially us lowly consumers.
A similar release of historical data on CD took place with Utah State Historical Society's Utah History Suite, but with a better result. Originally available in 1999 as the "Utah History on CD-ROM", and using older Folio encryption, the CD included fully searchable versions of the Utah Historical Quarterly, the History Blazer, the full series of Centennial County Histories, and Beehive History. The version released in 2004 (and still available in 2008) came from a mystery company known as Historical Views, and made full use of changing technology and included updated viewers for both Windows and for Apple Macintosh computers. In its "About" help screen the viewer identifies itself as Folio Bound Views, version 3.11.2, copyright 1992-1996. And yet, even with the old original version, the viewer installs itself, and is fully functional on a new PC computer, running Windows Vista.
One question begs to be asked: If Folio technology can be used convert the earlier infobases internally for release in the latest GospeLink for LDS publications, and for the Utah History Suite, why can't a solution be offered to convert the earlier Infobases CD-ROMs that apply to Utah history, and other historical works.
NextPage offered a single-license version of Folio View, for a mere $149, but only by a direct credit-card-in-hand telephone call to their Lehi headquarters. Unfortunately, a warning was given that this latest incarnation of the Folio viewer may, or may not, be compatible with earlier infobases due to varying levels of encryption and rights management. This would be minimally acceptable if it would at least import the older infobases and offer to convert and save them to the latest format, much like many "improved" programs do for older database formats offered by other software companies.
Am I whining? You bet! Us consumers are more often than not seen merely as overstuffed wallets begging to have these same wallets emptied. We aren't businesses who can easily write off any and all expenses as the cost of doing business, passing along those same costs to our customers.
Technology is moving at a breakneck pace, but no new technology is moving so fast as to not at least give some sort of minimal support, or at least consideration to older versions, especially by the guys who developed the technology in the first place.
Folio Timeline
Infobases Timeline
In July 1998 while visiting the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum in Salt Lake City, I purchased at their bookstore, a CD-ROM titled "The Pioneer Heritage CD-ROM". The CD-ROM was being offered because it contained all of the text and photos, searchable by keyword, of DUP's extremely useful "lessons", dating back to Kate B. Carter's "Heart Throbs of the West", first published in 1939.
In December 1998 in one of my first on-line purchases, I gave Ancestry $39.95 to "unlock" the CD's full contents, which included the following:
- Pioneers and Prominent Men
- Pioneer Vital Records
- Histories and Early Periodicals
- Pioneer Biographies
- Pioneer Resources
- Our Pioneer Heritage, 20 volumes
- Heart Throbs of the West, 12 volumes
- Treasures of Pioneer History, 6 volumes
- An Enduring Legacy, 12 volumes
- Daughters of Utah Pioneers and Their Mothers
Six months later, I upgraded my hard drive, which required a new "unlock" code, which Ancestry furnished without problem. A year after that, a new computer forced another unlock code, which was also furnished, with the customer service representative saying that the initial purchase from a year before was a "lifetime" purchase.
Over the ensuing years, I continued to upgrade hard drives, and computers, and as late as August 2006, Ancestry continued to furnish an unlock code. But beginning in 2000-2001, each call for support required a longer and longer hold time as the telephone support person searched for the needed input screen, which in turn would generate a five-digit unlock code. An attempt in July 2004 needed three separate calls to Ancestry customer support to find a knowledgeable person who was able to find the unlock code generator. At that time, I started doing research into the history of Folio, Infobases, and the development of the file format (.NFO) proprietary to Folio.
A bit of on-line research helped me discover that the Folio setup program uses the computer's internal clock for part of the algorithm, along with a generated five-digit "unlock" code, to "unlock" the contents of the CD-ROM. This means that each new installation, due to new computers or replacement hard drives, must be "real time," meaning that the user must to be at the his computer and running the setup at the same time that customer support is called to request a new unlock code.
Then it happened.
In August 2006, after (yet another) hard drive crash in late 2005, I was unable to find anyone at Ancestry who recognized the need for an unlock code, and gave up. In December 2006 I suffered another hard drive failure, and I was again told by telephone support that an unlock code was no longer available.
Repeated calls to telephone support finally put me in the hands of a support person with similar interests, and he helped me identify the location of the DUP collections on Ancestry.com's web site. I immediately subscribed to their service.
Unfortunately, the search function at Ancestry.com assumes I am looking for a person. But they do allow a keyword search, which seems to work properly when searching a single source. I am unable to simply browse through the collections. Gone is the ability to print selected text (and search results) with citations, along with the photos.
Using the DUP collections at Ancestry.com [September 2008]:
Ancestry.com -> Search -> Stories & Publications -> Browse By Location (Utah) -> Utah Stories & Publications -> (search the list of over 8000 entries for the title of the DUP collection, i.e., An Enduring Legacy, Heart Throbs of the West, Our Pioneer Heritage, Treasures of Pioneer History). Save the URL web address as one of your favorite bookmarks.
The research into Folio and Infobases I did in 2004 made me pretty upset about the whole concept of entrepreneurs focusing on easy targets. In this case, it was a group of young entrepreneurs who also happen to be members of the LDS faith. They saw an opportunity of using Utah and LDS history resources as a revenue stream, using a proprietary file format. They then moved on to other opportunities without caring that they are walking away from their customer base.
The Back Story
In 1990, two BYU graduates by the name of Paul Allen and Dan Taggart created Infobases as a company, and began offering LDS publications on computer floppy disks. They chose to use the Folio infobase encryption and compression technology that Allen was familiar with, having worked at Folio Corporation since that company's founding in 1987. Folio was co-founded by Paul Allen's brother Curt Allen, and by his brother-in-law Brad Pelo, and using Folio technology seemed a natural way to offer LDS publications as a business venture.
(I have added some of what I found to the Infobases, and the Folio Corporation articles at Wikipedia.)
Infobases was successful in the small but unfulfilled LDS consumer market with its LDS Collector's Library. By 1996 Allen and Infobases together were gaining national media attention as an up-and-coming company and its young entrepreneur CEO. By 1997, the LDS Collector's Library had been sold to thousands of trusting church members. These new buyers simply wanted to make their use of LDS scriptures and associated publications, using the combined benefits of Folio Bound Views technology, and Infobases' scanning of hundreds of books and documents, and publishing them as CD-ROMs. As a side note, apparently most if not all of the books and documents were obtained from the libraries of nearby Brigham Young University.
Throughout 1995-1997, Infobases continued to sell LDS publications on CDs, and worked with other organizations, such as Daughters of Utah Pioneers and Utah State Historical Society, to make their own unique publications readily available, and searchable, on CD-ROM. These new CDs were a wonderful resource that made the study and use of LDS and Utah history publications much easier. But it all changed in 1997, after a very brief three year span of success.
In February 1997, Folio Corporation, co-founded by Brad Pelo and Curt Allen, was sold to Open Market, a Boston-based internet company seeking to take advantage of the growing electronic commerce phenomena taking place on the world wide web.
Open Market struggled to integrate the Folio technology into its business model, and together with a growing sense of reality among investors and businesses of high tech internet-related stocks, the company was soon seeing serious decline in its fortunes. A change in management at Open Market, and a switch in technologies in mid 1999 saw the Folio technology licensed back to Pelo and a group of Utah investors that included Alan Ashton of WordPerfect fame, under the name of ABSB. (Open Market attempted to embrace at least two other content management technologies, but was never able to fully recover. In March 2003, Open Market declared bankruptcy. Its surviving technology is now controlled by FatWire.)
This new company, ABSB, very soon changed its name to NextPage, and embarked on an expanding effort to leverage the benefits of Folio technology into what was variously called Peer-To-Peer Content Network and eContent Network. Where Folio really shined was in its ability to index all document formats on a company's internal network, known as an intra-net, and make those documents readily available to all network users.
During the mid 1990s, Folio had expanded its technology to include indexing web-based documents and products, along with additional formats. NextPage continued to improve on its Folio technology, and in less than two years the technology was being successfully marketed as NextPage's NXT.
The benefit's of NextPage's former Folio technology saw Pelo give testimony before the U.S. Senate in October 2000 on the advantages of server-based peer-to-peer document management, in the Senate's hearings on the negative impact of Napster, a similar peer-to-peer technology that allowed users to share music (illegally) across the internet.
In early September 2004 NextPage, Inc. announced that Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a Norwegian-based leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, had agreed to purchase the technology, product lines, and the over 500 customers and partners of NextPage's publishing applications business unit, including NXT, Folio, LivePublish, and GetSmart. NextPage's document management services, Chrome, was to remain with the company.
In January 2006, FAST announced the release of ProPublish 4.1, "designed specifically for premium content providers whose research-oriented users demand complex search and navigation capabilities." The relationship of the old Folio format, to this newer ProPublish format in not known, but the news release shows that ProPublish included "Enhanced support for Folio and NXT content types."
FAST is now a Microsoft Subsidiary. On April 25, 2008, Microsoft completed its acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer, in what Microsoft called "opening a new chapter in the ongoing evolution of search." They continue to support the Folio technology, but not the Infobases encrytion scheme.
In response to a query to Microsoft's FAST subsidiary, I have learned that the troublesome five-digit unlock code was not a feature of the Folio software. It was solely the choice that the now-defunct Infobases company made to protect its digital publications. Folio and its encryption technology is still fully supported. A Microsoft representative wrote, "The Folio product line continues to be supported through the many acquisitions; we are currently at version 4.7.1. While we are not actively selling the software any longer, we do continue to provide support services, including software patches, as necessary. The current versions of the software can open and read the older formats (back to version 3.1)."
Additional clarification was provided by Microsoft's FAST: "Folio is essentially a CD/DVD publishing platform. Publishers use the software to generate, secure, and distribute infobases (.nfos). They pay a royalty to distribute their publications with the software. The Folio organization (and its successors) have no control over their content nor any way to access their content without the appropriate access keys - which are controlled by the publisher, not by Folio."
So, it appears that the culprit here was Infobases as a publisher. As will be shown later, the rights and interests of Infobases is now owned and controlled by the LDS church's own Deseret Book Company.
Rewind back to Infobases in 1997. Infobases founders Paul Allen and Dan Taggart, saw a need to embrace the growing use of the world wide web for the purposes of genealogy and family history research. They purchased Ancestry Publishing, a 13-year-old publishing house that specialized in family history materials, and converted it to Ancestry.com.
The growing interest in using the internet to research one's family history has seen an explosive growth in the potential market. Allen and Taggart saw this as an opportunity in 1997, and today, Ancestry.com is one of the most successful internet companies in the nation. (After November 1999, Ancestry's parent company was renamed to MyFamily.com, with Ancestry.com remaining as its most popular component company.)
With the success of Ancestry.com as an internet company, the CD-ROM compact disks sold by Infobases soon became just a sideline to the on-line internet products that Ancestry was offering. To provide content and to expand its customer base, in June 1997, Infobases bought Bookcraft Publishing Company, a publishing house that published LDS-related books that had been turned away by the church's own Deseret Book Company.
Bookcraft had developed an impressive catalog of print publications, and Infobases saw a potential source that would greatly expand its own catalog of digital publications published as CD-ROMs for use on personal computers. The two companies merged, retaining the Bookcraft name as the top-level company.
In this same late 1990s time period, the LDS church itself was becoming aware of the advantages of the internet and electronic publishing. Through its Deseret Book brand name, the church had published its own scriptures and related publications on CD-ROM, and soon the Deseret Book versions of the LDS scriptural material, under the GospeLink name, were in direct competition with what Infobases had been doing since 1990.
Rather than to continue to compete, in April 1999, the management arm of the LDS church, Deseret Management, bought Bookcraft, which included all of the electronic publishing efforts of Infobases. Now that the LDS church itself was in the electronic publishing field, in addition to the scriptural materials, it could make available the numerous family history databases under the FamilySearch brand name.
Deseret Book chose to continue using the Folio infobase technology, supplied by NextPage as successor to Folio. Starting in 2002, and still unfulfilled in mid 2004, Deseret Book continued to promise an internet-based version of GospeLink. The kinks were worked out and today the effort is known simply as GospeLink.com. However, this internet-based service still would not address the concerns of owners of Infobases-published works on CD-ROM for the Utah history community.
It might be a fair assumption that those users who purchased Infobases CD-ROM products, are in many cases people who don't have much more than a beginner's knowledge of computer use, and are likely mystified as to why their Infobases CDs don't work properly on their new computers. Those users who are somewhat familiar with the use of computers, are most assuredly quite frustrated by the lack of upgrade patches and support for the old Infobases CDs. The loss of access to the extensive spiritual and historical CD resources originally published by Infobases is a fine example of the disadvantages of so-called "improving" technology. The customers who helped make the company successful, are simply left behind and technology moves on.
The true travesty of this whole string of events is that these Utah Valley entrepreneurs have abandoned the Folio/Infobases text encryption and compression technology. A technology that was so successfully pushed on the unsuspecting consumer market, and users in the LDS and Utah history communities.
There were many, many books and other source materials made available in the magical 1995-1997 time period; quite literally thousands of books and documents. Several of the businesses started by these guys were voted as the "bright stars" and fine examples of the "new age" Utah business community. They have all espoused the faith and family values of their personal religion, each talking at great length in various interviews about the service they were doing by making all of this spiritual and historical material available to the masses.
But anyone today who tries to use any consumer-marketed Infobases CD-ROM product on a newer technology personal computer such as a PC with Windows XP or Vista, or any Apple computer, soon runs up against a brick wall of non-compatibility.
What is needed is a Folio-compatible viewer for the consumer market that allows the uploading of Infobase .nfo and their associated files from those old CD-ROMs, to today's massive hard drives. There is no need for this viewer to compromise Infobases' proprietary encryption and compression technology, but it must be able to view Infobases' version of the files created under all of the Folio formats after the initial DOS 2.0 version. This would include the earliest 3.1a version that was used so extensively in 1996-1997, and meant to be compatible with Windows 3.1.
These founders and co-founders of Folio and Infobases are all millionaires many times over. I would think that in their entrepreneurial philanthropy, they could at a minimum embrace an implied obligation to produce a viewer for their Infobases products for the consumers who are stuck with all of these encrypted document collections.
I know nothing about encryption and compression technology, but surely, someone knows the details of these old encypted Infobases text and index files to the point that a viewer could be made available. If not a viewer, than at least a conversion tool that reads an old infobase, and saves it as a group of web-enabled files on our hard drives, with full Digital Rights Management. No marketing or customer support required; simply make it available as a free (or low cost) download from the Ancestry.com web site, or because Deseret Book bought the rights to Infobases products, from the GospeLink.com web site.
In 2000 Deseret Book released its GospeLink 2001 product on CD-ROMs, as a suite of church-related publications (a combination of Deseret Book's previous GospeLink suite and Infobases previous LDS Collector's Library), using the then-current NextPage technology. By mid 2004, the program was up to version 2.20, but still with a copyright date of 2000. Apparently, new features have been added, and it does appear to install and operate with Windows. But it cannot be used as a viewer for other Folio infobases.
Deseret Book's decision to make available the GospelLink suite on CD-ROM implies full support of the current Folio standard from then-owner NextPage. For business reasons, this decision is intended to limit the program's usefulness to only the current version of the infobase technology. This seems a bit shortsighted given the overwhelming push that Deseret Book gave to earlier consumer products during the late 1990s. Not everyone can afford this constant push to upgrade-upgrade-upgrade, especially us lowly consumers.
A similar release of historical data on CD took place with Utah State Historical Society's Utah History Suite, but with a better result. Originally available in 1999 as the "Utah History on CD-ROM", and using older Folio encryption, the CD included fully searchable versions of the Utah Historical Quarterly, the History Blazer, the full series of Centennial County Histories, and Beehive History. The version released in 2004 (and still available in 2008) came from a mystery company known as Historical Views, and made full use of changing technology and included updated viewers for both Windows and for Apple Macintosh computers. In its "About" help screen the viewer identifies itself as Folio Bound Views, version 3.11.2, copyright 1992-1996. And yet, even with the old original version, the viewer installs itself, and is fully functional on a new PC computer, running Windows Vista.
One question begs to be asked: If Folio technology can be used convert the earlier infobases internally for release in the latest GospeLink for LDS publications, and for the Utah History Suite, why can't a solution be offered to convert the earlier Infobases CD-ROMs that apply to Utah history, and other historical works.
NextPage offered a single-license version of Folio View, for a mere $149, but only by a direct credit-card-in-hand telephone call to their Lehi headquarters. Unfortunately, a warning was given that this latest incarnation of the Folio viewer may, or may not, be compatible with earlier infobases due to varying levels of encryption and rights management. This would be minimally acceptable if it would at least import the older infobases and offer to convert and save them to the latest format, much like many "improved" programs do for older database formats offered by other software companies.
Am I whining? You bet! Us consumers are more often than not seen merely as overstuffed wallets begging to have these same wallets emptied. We aren't businesses who can easily write off any and all expenses as the cost of doing business, passing along those same costs to our customers.
Technology is moving at a breakneck pace, but no new technology is moving so fast as to not at least give some sort of minimal support, or at least consideration to older versions, especially by the guys who developed the technology in the first place.
Folio Timeline
Infobases Timeline
Saturday, August 09, 2008
PC to Mac, and Back Again
After 18 months of being a Mac guy, the limitations became too much. While still occupying a space on my desktop, it shares that space with a new PC that was placed in service on May 30.
The 20 inch Intel iMac has been relegated to being what is essentially a music server, being the central location for me to manage my 3600+ files of music and audio. I find that iTunes works better on a Mac, plus the fact that there is no longer a simple way to capture audio on a PC. The combination of Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack and Fission make audio a joy to work with on a Mac. I use audio capture to grab dialogue from DVDs and from web sites, and I edit various audio files to get rid of bits and bytes that I dislike in particular songs and sound files. This used to be easy on a PC a couple years ago with CoolEdit and Total Recorder. But CoolEdit went corporate (and expensive; now known as Audition 3) after being bought by Adobe, and Total Recorder is now much too dependent on hardware and driver configuration. I tried the entire Replay suite, and DAK's collection, but none of the three work with my particular combination of PC hardware and software. So the iMac stays for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers.
One severe limitation for the iMac was that I have several PC-only programs that I use regularly, including the NoteTab text editor (BBEdit isn't even close), and IrfanView as an image viewer/converter (again, no Mac equivalent). I tried Parallels right from the iMac's first day, but dumped it when VM Fusion became available seven months later. Fusion is a lot better than Parallels, but I grew weary of the back-and-forth program usage.
Although I upgraded the iMac's performance with more memory, the final straw came when I outgrew the 250GB internal hard drive. All scanning projects came to a halt until a solution could be found. I gave much thought and consideration to keeping some files solely on external hard drives, but previous experience with hard drive failure, points to the need for all files to be on the computer's internal hard drive, with backups being simple mirrors of everything on the internal drive. SyncBackSE works great as a centralized backup solution. Having all files immediately available is a big plus. Everything gets backed up every night to at least two external drives, via either Firewire 800 or eSATA connections. The lack of these high-speed connections is another iMac limitation.
As for the new PC, it's an Intel processor on an Asus motherboard, with 4GB of RAM, all inside an Antec P182 case, and running Vista Business. Lots of expansion space, and lots of cooling capacity, the two biggest limitations of the iMac. The cost was definitely not low, but was also half of what a comparable Mac Pro would have cost.
After running both programs on the iMac, Dreamweaver and Photoshop both run faster on the PC. All the scanners have PC drivers, and all is working well. All, that is, except that the iMac couldn't talk to the PC over the wired network, or vice versa. I gave up briefly and used a USB drive to transfer the few files that I need to. A very successful solution came with the discovery of a program called Network Magic, which fixed the iMac to PC problem, and a separate problem of an XP box talking to two Vista boxes.
The 20 inch Intel iMac has been relegated to being what is essentially a music server, being the central location for me to manage my 3600+ files of music and audio. I find that iTunes works better on a Mac, plus the fact that there is no longer a simple way to capture audio on a PC. The combination of Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack and Fission make audio a joy to work with on a Mac. I use audio capture to grab dialogue from DVDs and from web sites, and I edit various audio files to get rid of bits and bytes that I dislike in particular songs and sound files. This used to be easy on a PC a couple years ago with CoolEdit and Total Recorder. But CoolEdit went corporate (and expensive; now known as Audition 3) after being bought by Adobe, and Total Recorder is now much too dependent on hardware and driver configuration. I tried the entire Replay suite, and DAK's collection, but none of the three work with my particular combination of PC hardware and software. So the iMac stays for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers.
One severe limitation for the iMac was that I have several PC-only programs that I use regularly, including the NoteTab text editor (BBEdit isn't even close), and IrfanView as an image viewer/converter (again, no Mac equivalent). I tried Parallels right from the iMac's first day, but dumped it when VM Fusion became available seven months later. Fusion is a lot better than Parallels, but I grew weary of the back-and-forth program usage.
Although I upgraded the iMac's performance with more memory, the final straw came when I outgrew the 250GB internal hard drive. All scanning projects came to a halt until a solution could be found. I gave much thought and consideration to keeping some files solely on external hard drives, but previous experience with hard drive failure, points to the need for all files to be on the computer's internal hard drive, with backups being simple mirrors of everything on the internal drive. SyncBackSE works great as a centralized backup solution. Having all files immediately available is a big plus. Everything gets backed up every night to at least two external drives, via either Firewire 800 or eSATA connections. The lack of these high-speed connections is another iMac limitation.
As for the new PC, it's an Intel processor on an Asus motherboard, with 4GB of RAM, all inside an Antec P182 case, and running Vista Business. Lots of expansion space, and lots of cooling capacity, the two biggest limitations of the iMac. The cost was definitely not low, but was also half of what a comparable Mac Pro would have cost.
After running both programs on the iMac, Dreamweaver and Photoshop both run faster on the PC. All the scanners have PC drivers, and all is working well. All, that is, except that the iMac couldn't talk to the PC over the wired network, or vice versa. I gave up briefly and used a USB drive to transfer the few files that I need to. A very successful solution came with the discovery of a program called Network Magic, which fixed the iMac to PC problem, and a separate problem of an XP box talking to two Vista boxes.
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