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Experimenting With Multimedia E-books

In the past, e-books have been produced as digital copies of the original paper books. Now new possibilities are opening up with enhanced e-books.

Magazine Summary

List of ComputorEdge Sponsors

Digital Dave

by Digital Dave

Digital Dave answers your tech questions.

Facebook E-mails Cause Outlook Express To Crash; Finding Hidden Files; Unresponsive Control Panel.

Adding Audio to Your E-books

by Jack Dunning

Enhance your e-books for the Apple iBooks app with the sound of your own voice.

There are many eReader programs on the market, but it is iBooks that is the most flexible and progressive. iBooks allows the use of multimedia. Jack explains the process of adding audio to an e-book that can then be viewed through iBooks.

Wally Wang's Apple Farm

by Wally Wang

The Demise of a Platform

The Demise of a Platform; The Strange Ways of a CEO; Say Good-Bye to Kodak and Other Dinosaurs; The iPad in China; Pear Note for the iPad and Mac; Restart Your Mac Automatically After Power Outage.

Linux Lessons: Tips and Tricks from Users

by Tony J. Podrasky

Display Top CPU Processes

Tony shares a shell file that provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time.

Worldwide News & Product Reviews

by Charles Carr

The latest in tech news and hot product reviews.

Overclockers Take It To the Limit One More Time; Social Unrest Portends More Cyber Attacks; Making the Case for An iPhone Case.

Editor's Letters: Tips and Thoughts from Readers

by ComputorEdge Staff

Computer and Internet tips, plus comments on the articles and columns.

"Downloading and Reading E-Books," "Mary Tyer Burning Discs," "E-books and Burroughs"

Send mail to ceeditor@computoredge.com with questions about editorial content.

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Digital Dave

“Digital Dave answers your tech questions.”
by Digital Dave

Facebook E-mails Cause Outlook Express To Crash; Finding Hidden Files; Unresponsive Control Panel.

Facebook E-mails Cause Outlook Express To Crash

Dear Digital Dave,

Like many these days, I have an infrequently used Facebook account and they often send robo e-mails to inform me of important things such as someone I've never heard of wants to be friends or it has been over 24 hours since I last logged in, so I might be missing out on something earth shattering. (Just being facetious because I generally find Facebook a waste of time, but that's not why I'm writing.)

Perhaps three or four months ago e-mails from Facebook started locking up my Outlook Express e-mail program immediately when I opened them. The lockup also effectively prevents me from using any other software on my computer. Initially I fixed the lockup by rebooting till I figured out that I could kill Outlook Express using Windows Task Manager—which is much quicker. The problem occurs virtually every time I attempt to open an e-mail from Facebook and has never occurred opening any other e-mail. I'm using Outlook Express (v6) on a Windows XP (SP3) machine.

In attempting to understand the issue I've learned the following: Checking the right click "properties" of the unopened e-mail suggests that it is sent from "facebookmail.com." I assume that this isn't a spammer but don't know it for a fact. When the lockup is in process Windows Task Manager tells me that all open processes associated with Outlook Express are "Not Responding," CPU usage is 100% (which I assume explains why none of my other software does anything), and a process called "msimn.exe" is using 99% of my process resources. Selecting "End Task" in Task Manager quickly kills Outlook Express allowing me to re-launch it so I can delete the offending Facebook e-mail (before attempting to open it) and get back to using Outlook Express as usual.

While the problem is 100% unique to Facebook e-mails, could my computer be causing it? If not, do you have any way to tell Facebook about it (I can't figure out how to contact them)?

Thanks.

Ted

Louisville CO

Dear Ted,

It could be an interaction between either the content or formatting in the Facebook e-mail and Outlook Express which is causing your problem. This is certainly suggested by the fact that you only have problems with Facebook e-mails. There are similar issues occurring between Windows Live Mail and Facebook (possibly related to photos in the e-mails), so I would not be surprised to find that Outlook Express has problems. There are plenty of Windows 7 people complaining to Facebook, so I don't know how much attention you would get as an XP user—even if you knew who to talk to.

You may not like my solution, but the easiest way to avoid the problem is not to open any e-mail from Facebook in Outlook Express. I never open e-mail from Facebook. There are two reasons for this.

The first to avoid Facebook e-mail is that there have been many spams claiming to be from Facebook with the same name and logo in it. It is always safer for you to open Facebook directly with a Favorites (Bookmark) link in your Web browser. This will avoid the phishing schemes masquerading as Facebook.

The second reason not to open Facebook e-mail on your computer is that it is causes your Outlook Express to crash. The process called "msimn.exe" is the main Outlook Express program. There is nothing so important on Facebook which necessitates the opening of Facebook e-mails. I would assume that the problem is with Facebook since it doesn't happen with any other e-mail you receive. Maybe they will fix it, maybe not. You could occasionally try one to see if anything has changed, but I wouldn't rely upon it.

I think Facebook recently changed the default mailing policy so you don't get a notification for every little thing too. Plus, I'm pretty sure you can go into your Facebook account setting and turn the e-mail notifications off. That way if you get a message that appears to be from Facebook, you'll know that it's spam.

Digital Dave

Finding Hidden Files

Dear Digital Dave,

I read your column every week. I need help. I use Spybot and was watching it search and saw several files for gambling venues. I know I never downloaded or visited sites for them. Doing a search of my C: drive with the advanced options to show hidden files did not find them. Help.

Problem Two: I use Firefox for Web browsing and Hotmail as my e-mail. When writing new e-mails and looking through my contacts There are several porn sites listed in bold at the bottom of the list. When trying to manage and delete them they do not show up. How can this happen?

Art Bowen

San Diego

Dear Art,

This appears to be a two-for-one.

On your first question, it is important to know that your scanner will look at everything on your hard drive, while when you do a search of your files, it will not search all of the files. In particular, temporary files for your browser and other programs are not routinely part of any search.

Most likely you saw those gambling site names when Spybot was going through the cache for the Web sites you have visited. While you may not have visited a particular site, every piece of the pages you do visit will be saved in with temporary Internet files. This includes all of the graphics which may include the names of the sites. Also, some pages will open other sites in the back without your knowing it which would be another source of unwanted temporary site file name. These pages would also leave a cookie which would include the name of the site in the cookie's file name. The cookies folder is another area which is routinely scanned by anti-virus/spyware software.

You should be able to view and remove these files in the History and Cookies section of Options => Privacy.

Another option is to consider switching to Gmail. Unless you need to keep the Hotmail address, you will find Hotmail to be problematic.

Your second question relates to the operation of Hotmail. Hotmail as a Web based e-mail system has a feature which allows people to request to be added to your list. It is similar to the Facebook friend system. Apparently, when someone makes a request to be added, they will appear on your Hotmail contact list until you reject them. But you can't reject them directly on your contact list.

You need to enter the Add People section of Hotmail Contacts to view these requests. Reject all those that you don't want (probably all of them). When you go back to your contact list while creating a new e-mail, the unwanted names should no longer appear.

Digital Dave

Unresponsive Control Panel

Dear Digital Dave,

In the control panel I double click "Add or Remove." The error message comes up, "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\rundll32.exe Application not found." Going to this address the file is there. My McAfee has previously removed a Trojan. This happens on all entries in the Control Panel. Can you help me?

Gene Shirley

Denver, CO

Dear Gene,

The error you are seeing occurs when either the default application cannot be found or the "rundll32.exe" file is corrupted. In your case it is most likely the latter since it is happening with all of your Control Panel options. This file is often corrupted by viruses.

Usually putting a clean copy of "rundll32.exe" in the same directory will fix the situation. You can either get a new copy from another computer or try repair with your systems disks. Another option is to restore to an earlier restore point before you contracted the virus.

There are many sites found in a search such as WiseFixer which offer solutions for the rundll32 problem. For anything found in a general search, I would not download directly from that site, but rather go to CNET and check out whether it's listed and what people are saying.

I don't know if the registry cleaners such as CCleaner will address this specific problem. Perhaps someone else who has had the problem will know.

As a last resort, if you know you had a virus, it's not a terrible idea to back up your stuff and do a clean install when convenient—just to be safe. Virus removal isn't always reliable.

Digital Dave

Adding Audio to Your E-books

“Enhance your e-books for the Apple iBooks app with the sound of your own voice.”
by Jack Dunning

There are many eReader programs on the market, but it is iBooks that is the most flexible and progressive. iBooks allows the use of multimedia. Jack explains the process of adding audio to an e-book that can then be viewed through iBooks.

Apple has a reputation for introducing the technology that creates new markets and opportunities. Everyone else has to play catch-up. The astounding success of the iPad from day one has confounded the so-called experts. Residing between the laptop and smart phone markets the iPad has claimed its territory, and, so far, no one else has come close to intruding onto that market. One of the reasons for that success is that the company's foresight is not limited to merely the hardware, but extends to the software as well. Case in point is the iBooks eReader which is a free download for the iPad.

There are numerous free eReader programs on the market, many of which run on the iPad, but to the best of my knowledge, only iBooks has been built for the future of e-books. The new EPUB 3 standard will include audio and video tags, yet only Apple has made a point to include those features in its eReader app. It seems that most of the eReader manufacturers (Kindle, Nook, etc) have had trouble with the seemingly obvious advantages to adding multimedia to e-books by, so far, not building hardware or software which will support the features.

Amazon launched a beta program over a year ago to read embedded multimedia in the Kindle e-book apps for iPad and iPhone. Although there were some e-books with multimedia produced under the beta program for the Kindle app, it was difficult to get good information about how to embed audio or video. The program now seems to be canceled with no information about Amazon's future plans in this area. My guess is that a new strategy is being developed in light of the success of the iPad and the advantage of the iBooks app which supports both embedded audio and video. (Update: Amazon has just announced that the new Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011. This full color 7" multi-touch display tablet with Wi-Fi is Amazon's initial shot at the iPad market. It will sell for only $199.)

Many people may feel that adding audio and/or video to an e-book is a gratuitous step which only detracts from the purity of the reading experience. They may be right if you're reading an engrossing novel. However, there are times when adding multimedia to an e-book will enhance the value of the reading experience. For example, e-books for preschool toddlers would benefit from audio which reads the page to them. (There are many educational devices on the market which do just that.) Adding audio to children's e-books seems like a no-brainer.

Why Use E-books for Multimedia?

There are many ways to experience multimedia on a computer. Web sites, as well as, specialized programs and games regularly take advantage to the computer's ability of deliver sound and motion. There are multimedia apps available for smart phones and tablet computers. What would make the e-book reader an attractive alternative as a multimedia platform?

First is development costs. The EPUB specification is relatively straightforward compared to writing a multimedia app from the ground up. Even once the software is written there remains the problem of getting content for the new app. The apps which read e-books are already in existence and free, although there is only one that supports embedded audio and video: iBooks. It makes more sense (and less risky) to add the multimedia capability to the current eReaders, then to invent a new system.

It is relatively cheap to produce e-books for iBooks when compared to the price of software development. If you already have produced an EPUB book, then there are specific steps you can take to embed audio (or video which will be discussed in a later article) to that digital book. The example included here will show you how to add audio to an e-book which will work when read with Apple's iBooks eReader. Apple is leading the way in a new market for multimedia enhanced e-books, but I expect the others will not be far behind.

Adding Audio to a Children's Book

The page shown below is taken from an e-book (a work currently in progress) written by Katie Dunning for her two boys (see Figure 1). The artwork is by Becky Tripp, Katie's mother. The object is to combine the artwork with the text in an e-book format which will support adding audio. In the iBooks app touching the audio bar will activate the embedded MP3 file. However, getting the MP3 file into the e-book can be problematic. Until recently, very few e-book editing programs have supported the adding of audio and video—and the options continue to be expensive or sparse. I will show you how to do it for free.

Figure 1. A page from "Goodnight" by Katie Dunning. The iPad version will include audio files which when touched will read the story to toddlers.

Adobe InDesign CS5.5 has added the audio and video tag features which are part of the new EPUB 3 specification, but the program can cost you $1300 or more. If you are only planning to do one or two e-books, you may want save money and to go an alternative direction. Sigil is a free open source EPUB editor which has become quite popular. It is noted for cleaning up EPUB files with errors and automatically correcting them. This power is a double-edged sword since Sigil will also automatically remove the new audio and video tags when the file is loaded and/or saved. At least until a new version of Sigil which will handle (or ignore these tags) is out, there is a technique which will allow you to add multimedia by hand. (Once the new EPUB 3 specification approved, it's expected that Sigil will be updated to allow audio and video.)

EPUB as a ZIP File

An EPUB is a compressed folder (zipped) with a series of files in XML format—a language very similar to HTML. It your e-book does not have Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection applied to it, then you can reverse engineer the zip files to add audio or video.

The first step is to turn the EPUB back into a ZIP file. This is done by renaming the extension "epub" to "zip", the extension used for a compressed file. You will get a warning that the file may become unusable, but you should continue with the extension change. You can always rename the "zip" extension back to "epub" and make the e-book readable again.

Once you have access to the ZIP folder, extract all of the files to a new folder. This will give you an uncompressed set of all of the required files. In the new uncompressed folder you will find two folders: META-INF and OEBPS, plus a file named mimetype. The file you want is one of those located in the OEBPS/Text folder, with an extension such as "xhtml" or "html"—each of which represent a chapter in the e-book. There may be a number of these files, so you may want to load the original EPUB e-book into Sigil to see the individual chapters and their names. (You will not be able to do this with the audio embedded e-book since Sigil will strip out the tags.)

After identifying the correct chapter file, you can open it with any text editor. (Don't double-click since this will most likely open the file in a browser.) Notepad is handy for this purpose. You will see code similar to Figure 2.

Figure 2. The code in an e-book chapter file. The audio tag should be added at the location where the touch bar should appear.

The next step is to add the audio tag to the file. The location where the new code should be added is shown by the red arrow. The code should be as follows:

<div>

<audio src="MomReading.mp3" controls="controls">

There is an embedded audio here that is not supported by your software.

</audio>

</div>

"MomReading.mp3" is the name of the audio file in this example. The file needs to be in MP3 format and reside in the same OEBPS/Text folder. The line of text between the <audio> </audio> tags will display in eReaders which do not support the audio tag—for now that is all of them other than iBooks. Once you have saved the file and located the audio MP3 file in the same folder, you will need to turn the folders back into an EPUB.

Making the EPUB File

The process for creating the readable e-book is almost the reverse of the original unzipping process. In Windows, highlight the uncompresssed META-INF and OEBPS folders and right-click on them. Select Send To => Compress (zipped) Folder. Give the new ZIP folder an appropriate name ("Goodnight.zip" in this case). Drag the uncompressed file "mimetype" into the new ZIP folder (the "mimetype" file is never compressed, but dropped in after all else is zipped), then change the "zip" to the "epub" extension ("Goodnight.epub"). You will then have a new e-book with audio which will play in the iBooks app. You can download a sample of the Goodnight e-book which will play in iBooks with audio.

For now Apple is leading the way for embedding audio and video in e-books with the iBooks eReader app. I expect that other eReader manufacturers and software applications will soon support multimedia e-books. The same will be true for Sigil and other EPUB editors. While enhanced e-books is still an emerging market, it is likely that we will see much more of it—and it will be much easier to do—in the future.

Jack is the publisher of ComputorEdge Magazine. He's been with the magazine since first issue on May 16, 1983. Back then, it was called The Byte Buyer. His Web site is www.computoredge.com. He can be reached at ceeditor@computoredge.com

Wally Wang's Apple Farm

“The Demise of a Platform”
by Wally Wang

The Demise of a Platform; The Strange Ways of a CEO; Say Good-Bye to Kodak and Other Dinosaurs; The iPad in China; Pear Note for the iPad and Mac; Restart Your Mac Automatically After Power Outage.

Horace Dedlu at the Asymco Web site has an interesting theory. After examining different operating systems, he concluded that the demise of any operating system is often preceded by a long development time. His reasoning is that this long development time heralds the beginning of the end because it's a last ditch effort to modify something that was initially designed for something else.

Horace cites Vista's long development time as a signal marking the end of Windows, but Horace's theory holds for other software as well. Right before Microsoft transitioned from MS-DOS to Windows, Microsoft took a long time to release MS-DOS 4.0, which the public derided as buggy and bloated. Microsoft quickly repaired the damage with MS-DOS 5.0 and improved it with MS-DOS 6.0, but then transitioned to Windows 95 and let MS-DOS fade away.

Even Microsoft knows that they can't keep legacy code alive forever. After Windows 95, they released Windows 98 and ran into a dead end with Windows Me. At this point, Microsoft created a new Windows operating system called Windows NT, which morphed into Windows 2000, and became Windows XP. Although the Windows name remains the same, Windows 8's roots really begin with Windows NT and not Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.

As Windows NT's legacy code becomes too bloated to maintain, Windows 8 may represent the last stage before Microsoft needs to shift to a new operating system. They may still call this new operating system Windows, but it needs to be built from scratch like Windows NT.

This lengthy development time that signals the demise of a platform can be seen in other programs. Ashton-Tate took a long time to release dBASE IV, which was buggy and bloated, and spelled the end of dBASE as a database leader. Lotus Development took a long time to release Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows, which spelled the end of Lotus 1-2-3 in the spreadsheet market. WordStar and WordPerfect took a long time to release updated versions of their programs, which ended their reign as word processor leaders.

Even Apple had trouble keeping their original OS 9 operating system updated until they finally bought the NeXTSTEP operating system and turned it into Mac OS X. Eventually all software will become too antiquated to maintain anymore. That's the point where it's easier to write something new rather than waste time trying to modify a program designed to solve obsolete problems from another era.

Rebuilding software on a creaking foundation can only last for a limited time. Taking a desktop operating system like Windows 7 and trying to morph it into a tablet form as Windows 8 represents a huge technical challenge. Microsoft's tablet strategy is to create an operating system that can run on any device. Apple's tablet strategy is to create an operating system designed from scratch to run on tablets. Microsoft wants to create a Swiss Army knife operating system while Apple wants to create specialized operating systems for mobile devices.

Which approach will lead to greater acceptance? The next time you see construction workers building a house, check to see if they're using specialized tools to accomplish their work or are using a Swiss Army knife to do everything. That could tell you which approach will likely prove more productive in the long run.

More importantly, will people like Windows 8 and appreciate the changes Microsoft made? According to CNN, the customer satisfaction gap between the Macintosh and Windows PCs keeps getting larger in favor of the Macintosh.

Figure 1. The customer satisfaction gap between the Mac and Windows keeps growing in favor of the Mac.

In addition, a survey by Hudson Square Research indicates that college students are increasingly choosing the Macintosh as their computer of choice. Just stroll through any college campus and you'll see a far greater number of Macintosh laptops than you would have ever seen just five years ago.

Figure 2. More college students are choosing the Macintosh.

Combine greater customer satisfaction with greater college student use and the future of the Macintosh looks bright while the future of Windows 8 remains murky and less certain.

Will Windows 8 tablets prove popular? Will the Metro touch-oriented interface of Windows 8 appeal to desktop PC users? Will Intel and ARM-based tablets confuse consumers in the tablet market? If the tile interface of Windows Phone 7 didn't wow consumers in the smartphone market, can it suddenly attract consumers for the tablet market? Will Microsoft demonstrate their own software at the Windows 8 official launch to showcase the possibilities of the Metro interface such as turning Microsoft Office into a touch-oriented tablet program? Will Windows developers take the risk of creating a traditional Windows program and a Metro program, or just play it safe and create a traditional Windows program, effectively ignoring the Metro interface altogether?

Windows 8 has to get so many things right but it has too many pitfalls where something can go wrong. Microsoft has burdened Windows 8 with unrealistic expectations, which can only lead to disappointment when it can't achieve the impossible. If Windows 8 isn't a massive success, the fault won't be technical problems but Microsoft's promises that exceed anyone's capabilities to achieve them.

The worse-case scenario is that desktop and laptop users will just ignore the Metro interface and Windows 8 tablets in general. The best-case scenario is that Windows 8 works flawlessly on both desktop PCs and tablets, people can run older Windows programs on Windows 8 tablets easily despite using programs not designed for touch interaction, and Windows 8 tablets are just as thin, light and long-lasting on batteries as the iPad while costing the same or even less. Which scenario do you think is more likely to occur?

The Strange Ways of a CEO

Most people can't get a job even if they're qualified for the position. When most people apply for a job, they need to show that they have a track record of success in similar positions. When they lose their jobs, most people might get severance pay, but only if they worked at the company for several years. That's not how life works when you're a CEO.

As a CEO, you can get a job whether you have any work experience in that particular industry or not. You can also become CEO of a corporation despite having a shoddy record of employment as the CEO of other companies. When you get fired as CEO, you often get millions of dollars in severance pay and sometimes even a guaranteed salary for the rest of your life, despite only working a year or two on the job. Even better, as CEO, you don't have to produce any results on the job because you're going to get paid millions anyway.

In case you're wondering why CEOs get paid millions for doing lousy jobs and then walking away with golden parachutes that pay them millions, you might want to read the New York Times story about why Hewlett-Packard hired former CEO Leo Apotheker.

Many members on Hewlett-Packard's board of directors never even met or interviewed Leo Apotheker before giving him the position. When was the last time anyone else got a high-paying job without being interviewed first?

Leo Apotheker's previous job was as CEO of SAP where he lasted less than a year before resigning. Anyone else ever apply for a job at another company after only working several months at a previous employer? For most people, such a short work history looks bad. For a CEO, such a short work history means nothing.

During Leo Apotheker's reign as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the company's stock dropped by 40 percent, and they spent $1.2 billion to acquire Palm Computing for their webOS operating system, only to dump it less than a year later.

With Hewlett-Packard one day promoting their vision of webOS on personal computers, tablets, smart phones and printers, then suddenly reversing direction to dump webOS altogether along with the PC business, why would someone who causes major financial damage to an employer get rewarded for their lack of results? If anyone else worked in a job and caused millions of dollars worth of losses, they wouldn't get rewarded with a million dollar severance package and then get hired by another company to collect another fat paycheck without having to do anything.

If major companies like Hewlett-Packard can pay millions for CEOs using hiring criteria that's looser than the requirements used to pick a janitor, is it any wonder why companies like Apple can compete and beat them in the market?

Say Good-Bye to Kodak and Other Dinosaurs

Kodak once made tons of money selling and processing film. As the world embraced digital photography, Kodak let competitors tackle the digital camera market while they focused on their film processing business, which continued to deliver huge profits. Now Kodak's stock barely registers over the one dollar mark and their future looks extremely dim. For a summary of Kodak's demise, read Chapter 6 of Robert M. Grant's book "Contemporary Strategy Analysis," which describes Kodak's struggles.

Basically, the camera market switched from film to digital, killing Kodak's cash cows of selling and processing film. Kodak tried to rush into the printer market, but they were already late and ran into stiff competition from other printer manufacturers like Epson and Canon. Kodak went from a position of strength (the leader of film) to a position of weakness (competing on a level playing field against digital cameras, scanners and printers).

Think of film and Kodak had the brand name recognition and reputation for offering the best products. Think of digital cameras, scanners, or printers, and there's nothing special or unique about Kodak in those markets. Is it any wonder why Kodak keeps sinking every year?

Kodak's demise is a warning to everyone that you could lead the market, but if the market doesn't want your product any more, any advantage you have evaporates in an instant.

Kodak has been around for 131 years, but isn't likely to last much longer. Every company, no matter how big, eventually fails when consumers no longer want their products. Switching to a new market isn't easy for a big corporation because they still have to pay for the infrastructure they created to support their old market.

This is the reason why e-books aren't as inexpensive as people would like. Despite the cost savings from not printing, shipping and storing physical books, publishers still must pay for the cost of editors, proofreaders, page layout designers, sales people, etc. who create and sell print books. Eliminating printing costs is actually a minor expense compared to paying the salaries of these other people needed to create a book.

Having to support an infrastructure focused around print books drives up the cost of e-books. However, if you check USA Today's best-seller list, you'll find that several self-published e-books have made the best seller list, such as The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan (99 cents), Blind Faith by C.J. Lyons (99 cents), and Silent Run" by Barbara Freethy ($4.99).

By avoiding the publishers, self-published authors can not only sell e-books for less, but they can also keep the majority of the profits as well. How can publishers compete by selling e-books for more to support an infrastructure designed around printed books? Just ask Kodak how well they adapted to the changing camera market and that pretty much predicts the future of most book publishers.

If a major corporation like Kodak isn't immune to shifting markets, then no other company can be safe from rapid change either. Digital Research (CP/M-80), Ashton-Tate (dBASE), Lotus Development (Lotus 1-2-3), Borland International (Turbo Pascal and Paradox) along with WordStar and WordPerfect can all attest to that.

The iPad in China

Citi Group Financial recently conducted a survey and found that 8 percent of Americans bought a tablet (most likely an iPad) to replace a PC. Yet in China, 31 percent of people wanted a tablet to replace a laptop, another 26 percent wanted a tablet to replace a desktop PC, and 30 percent wanted a tablet to replace a netbook.

Perhaps the greatest advantage the iPad has in China is its ability to recognize handwritten characters. For those learning Chinese, Chinese dictionaries are nearly impossible to use because there's no way to organize characters and their definitions. With English dictionaries, you can easily look up a word even if you only know how to spell part of that word. With Chinese, dictionaries organize characters by the number of strokes needed to create them or by the common symbols, called radicals, that appear in many Chinese characters.

As a result, looking up the meaning of a Chinese character is tedious and difficult, even for native Chinese speakers. For anyone learning Chinese, looking up a Chinese character in a dictionary is nearly impossible.

However, if you download the free Pleco app for the iPad, you can get a complete Chinese dictionary at your fingertips. Just use the iPad's ability to input Chinese characters by drawing them with your finger and the Pleco app displays a list of characters it thinks you're trying to write.

Figure 3. Pleco lets you draw a Chinese character to find its meaning.

Tap the right character and a definition of that character appears so you can decipher Chinese quickly and easily. What makes the Pleco app work is the iPad's ability to accept handwritten Chinese characters, which is something impossible to do with most other types of computers, except for a Macintosh using a trackpad.

Which type of computer do you think people in China will want to use? A computer that makes it difficult to write Chinese characters naturally or a computer that makes it easy? As the simplest computer to use for writing Chinese, the iPad (and the Macintosh) will likely attract a large segment of the Chinese market, which could prove more profitable than the entire American market.

Pear Note for the iPad and Mac

In the old days, students took notes by scribbling down whatever thoughts they felt were important. Of course, some people take better notes than others, so relying on notes alone may not always be accurate.

As inexpensive tape recorders became available, students started recorded lectures while also scribbling notes at the same time. Now you could review both your notes and your audio recording to insure you caught all of the lecture.

To make note taking and recording more effective, try the $4.99 Pear Note for the iPad app instead. Pear Note lets you type notes on your iPad and selectively record audio through the iPad's built-in microphone. Now when you review your notes at a later time, you can select your typewritten notes and hear what the lecturer said as you were typing that note.

Figure 4. Pear Note can record both audio and text.

As you play the recorded audio, Pear Note highlights the text that you typed at that moment so you can see what the lecturer said that made you type a particular note. By synchronizing your text and audio, Pear Note works as a more effective note-taking method than relying on separate text or audio alone.

If the idea of synchronizing text and audio sounds appealing, but you don't like typing on an iPad, get the $39.99 version of Pear Note for the Mac. The Mac version works the same way, except you can type on a laptop keyboard, which many people find more convenient than typing on the iPad's virtual keyboard.

If you get Pear Note on both your iPad and Mac, you can even share your notes using Dropbox. Now you can keep your notes synchronized between your iPad and Mac laptop so you'll never risk being without your notes again.

If you currently take notes using an iPad or Mac laptop, or record audio using a tape recorder, it's time to store your notes and audio recordings in one place like Pear Note. The more you use Pear Note, the more archaic separate note taking or audio recording will feel until you can't imagine why anyone would want to take notes with anything other than a combination text and audio recorder like Pear Note.

*                    *                    *

Southern California recently experienced a power failure that lasted for almost two days. If you were using Mac OS X Lion, you could have turned your Macintosh back on after the power failed and all your data in your windows would have appeared exactly as they were before the power outage hit.

If you think the power might fail again in your area, you make your Macintosh start itself back up as soon as it gets power again. Just click the Apple menu and choose System Preferences. Then click the Energy Saver icon in the Hardware category to open an Energy Saver window.

Select the "Start up automatically after a power failure" check box. Now if the power suddenly goes out, your Macintosh will start itself back up and display all your windows exactly as they appeared before the power outage.

Figure 5. Configuring your Macintosh to start itself automatically after a power failure.

In rare cases, your Macintosh might freeze, so you can also select the "Restart automatically if the computer freezes" check box as well. Now if your Macintosh freezes or loses power, it will start itself back up again exactly as your screen appeared before the power outage or computer freeze.

In the early days, before Wally became an Internationally renowned comedian, computer book writer, and generally cool guy, Wally Wang used to hang around The Byte Buyer dangling participles with Jack Dunning and go to the gym to pump iron with Dan Gookin.

Wally is responsible for the following books:

My New Mac,

My New iPhone,

My New iPad,

Steal This Computer Book 4.0,

Microsoft Office 2010 for Dummies,

Beginning Programming for Dummies,

Beginning Programming All-in-One Reference for Dummies,

Breaking Into Acting for Dummies with Larry Garrison,

Strategic Entrepreneurism with Jon Fisher and Gerald Fisher,

How to Live With a Cat (When You Really Don't Want To).

Mac Programming For Absolute Beginners

The 15-Minute Movie Method

In his spare time, Wally likes blogging about movies and writing screenplays at his site "The 15 Minute Movie Method" along with blogging about electronic publishing and how authors can take advantage of technology at his site "The Electronic Author." Wally can be reached at wally@computoredge.com.

Linux Lessons: Tips and Tricks from Users

“Display Top CPU Processes”
by Tony J. Podrasky

Tony shares a shell file that provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time.

Filename: top

Use: Display top CPU processes.

<top> provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time. It displays a listing of the most CPU intensive tasks on the system, and can provide an interactive interface for manipulating processes. It can sort the tasks by CPU usage, memory usage and run-time. It can be better configured than the standard top from the procps suite. Most features can either be selected by an interactive command or by specifying the feature in the personal or system-wide configuration file (taken from the <top> manpage).

Example: Here is the screen capture from an instance of running <top> on my host. Because some users use proportional fonts while others use fonts that take up the same space for each character, I will

breakdown the output into lines.

[the system time / uptime / number of users / load on the system]

13:12:04  up 11 days, 10:40,  8 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.08, 0.06

[number of: / processes / processes not active / processes running / disconnected / paused]

87 processes: 86 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped

[number of cpus / being used: / users / changed schedule priority / interrupts / pendings / not busy]

CPU states:  cpu    user    nice  system    irq  softirq  iowait    idle

total    0.2%    0.0%    0.2%   0.0%     0.0%    0.3%   99.0%

cpu00    0.0%    0.0%    0.1%   0.0%     0.0%    0.3%   99.4%

cpu01    0.5%    0.0%    0.3%   0.0%     0.0%    0.3%   98.6%

[memory: physical and disk-swap]

Mem:  1028480k av,  922760k used,  105720k free,       0k shrd,  111248k buff

368204k actv,   10000k in_d,   15344k in_c

Swap:  835372k av,    6524k used,  828848k free                  255208k cached

Here are just a few of the processes that are running on my system.

PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME CPU COMMAND

2661 tonyp     15   0 17860  17M   796 S     0.6  1.7  23:41   1 xsysinfo

7196 tonyp     15   0  1256 1256   912 R     0.2  0.1   0:00   0 top

2641 root      15   0  200M  60M  2380 S     0.1  6.0  36:57   1 X

1 root      15   0   504  496   452 S     0.0  0.0   0:16   1 init

2 root      RT   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 migration/0

3 root      RT   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   1 migration/1

4 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:02   1 keventd

5 root      34  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00   0 ksoftirqd/0

Let's give it a try. Open up an xsession, and type in <top>

You should have a display somewhat similar to the above.

A couple of the neater switches to play with are:

Type in an "i". <top> will discontinue displaying processes that are not active. Type in an "i" again to display all the processes.

<top> normally repaints the screen every 5 seconds. To change that, Type in an "s" and then type in the desired time between screen repaints. You might try "1" first and watch it update every second. Then try typing in an "s" and follow that with ".1" (point 1). Now the display is updating every 1/10th of a second. If you have just a couple of active processes, you might get queezy looking at the screen because it will "bounce" by one or two lines.

You might want to run <man top> and see some of the other options.

*                    *                    *

Silly Signature Du Jour:

(the next few weeks will have "Famous Last Words" from different sources)

Tony J. Podrasky | Professor Goddard does not know the relation between

| action and reaction and the need to have something

| better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems

| to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high

| schools.             -New York Times editorial, 1921

-:-ETX-:-

NOTE: I give my shell files uppercase names so that I know they are my shell files and not the system's binaries. For example, when I save the data (the commands between the "CUT HERE" lines, which is the actual shell file) I might call it "VI", which is not to be confused with the system's "vi" file—but I call it "VI" because it calls (or uses) the system's "vi editor."

Tony has been in the computer field since 1976 when he started working for Data General Corp as a field engineer. Later going on to design hardware interfaces, write patches for operating systems, and build networks. It was in 1995 while working with the military on several projects that he ran into a "spook" who showed him a laptop that ran a then-unknown O/S called "Linux." "A laptop running a form of UNIX tony = a marriage made in heaven!" Tony can be reached for questions at Linux Questions for Tony.

Worldwide News & Product Reviews

“The latest in tech news and hot product reviews.”
by Charles Carr

Overclockers Take It To the Limit One More Time; Social Unrest Portends More Cyber Attacks; Making the Case for An iPhone Case.

Overclockers Take It To the Limit One More Time

The folks at Futuremark, creators of popular benchmarks and PC performance tests, sent us this report about their annual Lords of Overclocking contest:

The Lords of Overclocking is our most prestigious event, so it is no surprise that competition is fierce. The MSI-sponsored event, which is Futuremark's premier OC contest each year, saw over 10,000 entries from more than 80 countries across the globe. With such worldwide interest, competition was fierce for the top prize: flights, accommodation and qualification to the MSI Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) 2011 grand final in Taipei.

• Incredibly, 39 scores submitted during the four week competition were higher than the previous world record for a single GPU.

• In a nail-biting finish, the winning score of P12499 from overclocker "SuicidePhoenix" came on the very last day of the competition.

Proving his mastery of extreme overclocking, overall winner SuicidePhoenix pushed his Intel Core i7-2600K and MSI N580GTX Lightning far beyond their factory settings as his scores demonstrate.

• 3DMark Score: P12499 (Stock setting:P6600)

• Graphics Score: 12349 (Stock setting:6400)

• Physics Score: 13689 (Stock setting:8200)

"This year's Lords of Overclocking event brought together the world's top competitive overclockers in thrilling competition," said Jukka M�kinen, Futuremark CEO. "We congratulate the winners and thank all participants for making the contest a huge success."

Futuremark holds a number of overclocking competitions each year. For details of upcoming contests, please visit www.3dmark.com/competitions/ or follow Futuremark on Facebook.

Social Unrest Portends More Cyber Attacks

Prolexic Technologies, a global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services, says it expects cyber attacks against companies and governments to increase in the near-term as a result of recent global social unrest:

According to Prolexic's Chief Executive Officer Scott Hammack, hacktivism—using computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends—is likely to increase in both the short and long-term. "Countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Israel and most recently the U.K. have all experienced demonstrations or social unrest and we expect this activism will soon spill over into the digital realm," said Hammack. "The same mentality and discontent that motivates someone to take to the streets is easily transferred to cyber attacks against governments and major corporations."

For the last eight years, Prolexic has monitored Internet attack traffic from its Security Operations Center on behalf of its clients. Prolexic has tracked a rise in attack traffic over the last few weeks, and as a result, the company has increased its own internal threat barometer from "elevated" to "high."

Hammack believes it is only a matter of time before the number of DDoS attacks against leading businesses and government agencies increases. "Our intelligence indicates that hacktivist tools are evolving rapidly. As a result, we expect the frequency of attacks will increase and they will be more successful unless organizations upgrade their defenses."

In a report titled "Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Protection, 2011," industry analyst firm Gartner predicts that DDoS defense will achieve mainstream adoption in less than two years and lists it as "highly beneficial" on its Priority Matrix.

"Gartner client calls on DDoS have increased and DDoS services are nearing 'must-have' status," said John Pescatore, vice president and research fellow at Gartner in the Hype Cycle report. "Any Internet-enabled application that requires guaranteed levels of availability should employ DDoS protection to meet those requirements."

"It's interesting to note that more and more threats received from hacktivists are not financially motivated. It is a power play, plain and simple," said Hammack. "We often see extortion as motivation for a DDoS attack where the objective is to extract money from a company in return for not taking down its Web site. In the near future, we are more likely to see hacktivists using the threat of DDoS attacks to control a company's actions."

Hammack believes hacktivism is entering a new era defined by increasing activity. "We know that the tools used by hacktivists and cyber attackers are becoming much more effective and the list of targets is increasing," said Hammack. "Hacktivism is not something that will quietly fade away. It's here to stay."

Making the Case for An iPhone Case

The biggest worry I had when I ended up purchasing a smartphone, was the repair and replacement fees. And, personally, I tend to drop my iPhone a lot, so having a device which is known for its screen shattering from a three foot drop worried me. Add the fact that repair costs of smartphones can be prohibitive. It's often cheaper to purchase a new phone altogether. So, when it comes to keeping the phone protected, you're going to be needing a solid case. Otterbox's Commuter series case does just that.

The Commuter case is designed with the user in mind. It has a silicone skin that keeps all ports and connectors covered and that can be easily moved out of the way at any time. There is also a tough polycarbonate shell that wraps over the phone that helps protect the phone from falling damage. Also included with every case is a screen protector, essentially protecting every portion of the phone.

I can tell you, from experience, this case delivers the bang for your buck. This case has protected my phone in every instance in which I accidentally dropped it. Concrete, dirt, you name it, I still don't have a scratch or crack on the phone.

The other worry with iPhones is water damage. Water separated the top layer of the screen from the phone and gives a spider web effect on the glass. However, I've spilled a couple drinks on my phone now, and the Otterbox Commuter's design prevented any water from getting to the phone.

The only problem I've had with the case is docking and connecting it to sound systems via AUX. If you're using the standard iPod cable, or headphones, you will have no problem. However, if you try to dock the phone or connect a fatter headphone jack, you may notice that you have to remove the case because the cases ports are too narrow.

Other than that, this case is awesome and has saved me from buying a new phone multiple times. The Otterbox Commuter series case is available for several models of smartphones, not just the iPhone. The iPhone 4 model is available for $35 direct from their Web site (http://www.otterbox.com).

Review contributed by Jeremy Halligan

In addition to being an editor and columnist for ComputorEdge and ComputerScene Magazines, where he has written hundreds of feature articles and cover stories over the past decade, Charles Carr has also penned well over 1,000 non-tech newspaper and magazine articles and columns for various publications, including two widely-read columns each week for San Diego's North County Times newspaper.

Carr has covered such diverse topics as pesticide use in area schools, invasive background checks for county volunteers, asthma awareness, the debate over standards-based grading, potential vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, and Southern California's devastating 2003 and 2007 wildfires. He has also written many humorous pieces.

Carr has also edited dozens of stories and articles written by others which have appeared in major publications and web sites across the country.

He has been a contributor and technical advisor to L.A. and San Diego Parent magazines and receives dozens of requests a year to appear on Southern California television and radio stations to talk about important events in the tech world.

Carr has judged many writing competitions including San Diego Press Club and Time-Warner Communications contests and was sole judge for the national NAPPA Tech Toys awards for five years (which his kids really appreciated). He was recently a judge for the national "Poetry Out Loud" competition.

He has won many writing accolades, including Press Club awards for Best Column Writing, Consumer Writing and Best Arts and Entertainment, and has repeatedly taken top honors in San Diego Songwriter's Guild competitions for his original musical compositions.

Carr will soon publish his first book, What a World, a collection of his best writings.

Learn more at www.charlescarr.com.

Editor's Letters: Tips and Thoughts from Readers

“Computer and Internet tips, plus comments on the articles and columns.”
by ComputorEdge Staff

"Downloading and Reading E-Books," "Mary Tyer Burning Discs," "E-books and Burroughs"

Downloading and Reading E-Books

[Regarding Jack Dunning's September 9 article, "How to Download and Read Free E-Books":]

Site to convert PDF to MOBI: PdfMasher

-Bill Tiep, Toledo, OH

Any info that you can/could provide on the KOBO Book reader (available from the currently closing Borders Book stores)? You seem to have missed any reference to them in your article.

-David Vail, King George, VA.

David, I was remiss in not including the Kobo eReader. This is not the first time that it's been pointed out to me. The reason I didn't include it is because I don't own a Kobo and had not downloaded any of the Kobo computer (or iPad) software, but it does deserve at a least a mention.

First, Borders only owns an 11 percent stake in Kobo, therefore the closing of Borders' stores should not affect the future of Kobo.

Loading of third-party e-books on the Kobo eReader requires Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) software to be installed on your computer. Kobo has a Web page devoted to the process of installing ADE and loading outside e-books onto your Kobo device.

I did download the Kobo app for iPad and found that adding e-books is as easy as it is for the Kindle iPad app described in the article. It could be done either through the iTunes program on your computer (same process as Kindle) or as a direct download through Safari on the iPad. When directly downloading from the Web to the iPad Kobo app, you are given a choice between iBooks (the Apple eReader app) or other. When you select other, the next window shows both iBooks and Kobo as selections. (I would expect the Nook will soon implement an app for iPad similar to Kindle and Kobo, since at this time I know of no way to add outside books to the Nook iPad app.)

I hope this helps.

-Jack Dunning, ComputorEdge

Mary Tyer Burning Discs

[Regarding the September 9 Digital Dave column:]

I have burned over 8000 discs mostly using Nero and some DVDFab software. My experience is that individual DVD burners are sensitive to the DVD you are burning to. An example is LG burners and one LiteON I have will only burn at 2.4x on certain discs. I have had very good results with Sony, Verbatim, Ativa, Memorex discs. Problem discs are Ritex and TDK. So it must be the coating on the disc along with the laser in the DVD burner having compatibility problems. This is something to consider when purchasing blank media versus your particular equipment.

-Richard Manteufel, Lemon Grove, CA

I forgot to mention in my last comment that you cannot copy video DVD without video software. You will probably have to buy the software if you intend to do this. I can recommend Nero and DVDFab as stable programs. Don't forget most commercial movies have copy protection and Nero will not allow you to duplicate a disc. ImgBurn has freeware for video copy you might want to investigate.

-Richard Manteufel, Lemon Grove, CA.

Sorry, in my comment about Nero software I should have said Nero will not allow you to duplicate DVDs that are copy protected, because of international laws. It will duplicate other video and data discs.

-Richard Manteufel, Lemon Grove, CA.

What Mary Tyer failed to include in her question about burning DVD media to a DVD-+r disc is what kind of unit she is using to burn media to disc. She only said that she has burned files to CD media and burning to DVD R media failed. Everybody assumes that it is a software problem. For what I see at this point is that she doesn't have a DVD/RW burner to start with and she only has a CD-RW unit that only burns CD-R media until she confirms otherwise.

-JD, Calx, CA.

E-books and Burroughs

[Regarding the September 9 Wally Wangs Apple Farm column:]

I just wanted to say thank you for introducing me to the Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. We downloaded the first one to my wife's Sony eReader and we started reading it on a long road trip. I hope to continue this weekend.

Also, I bought my wife an iPhone a couple of weeks ago and she is adjusting. She is having problems when she holds the phone between her shoulder and ear. Her cheek is pushing buttons like numbers and the mute. It is in a Otter Box case. It seems that light is getting to the sensor to detect when it is next to her face. Is there a sensitivity adjustment anywhere? I told her she needs to use a bluetooth headset but she won't use one.

-Marcus, Alabama

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