Does Free Lead to Buy?

imageA fairly common practice for software providers is to provide older versions of their software for free as a taster to encourage you to go on and purchase the latest versions. This applies equally to online apps as it does to desktop – the delivery mechanism is different but the principal is the same.  But does it work?

Reading a story on the web recently I was reacquainted with the Softmaker products which are equivalents of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The story pointed out that Softmaker were offering a copy of their previous version of TextMaker and PlanMaker for … Read the rest

Google Mobile App

image So after much anticipation and false starts the latest version of the Google Mobile App for iPhone was launched today. What is particularly exciting about this application is that it uses voice recognition for search text entry rather than having to use the on-screen keyboard. The concept is simple. You start the app, hold the device to your ear and speak the phrase you want to search on. There is then a short delay while the voice is converted to text and sent to Google’s search servers.

The blogsphere has been alight with a buzz of expectation around the app … Read the rest

SET NOCOUNT ON

I spent a frustrating couple of hours yesterday trying to get output from a database into a web page – something that I have done many times before. However, on this occasion as the query was complex I decided that it needed to go into a stored procedure. I quickly got that working and tested via query analyser and then plugged it into my asp page. No matter what I tried I could not get the query to run and I was getting pretty frustrated. Finally I got a message that I could Google, as follows:

ADODB.Recordset error ‘800a0e78’

Operation Read the rest

New Look – New Focus

imageYou may have noticed a new look to the site today (still tweaking so expect some more subtle changes). I decided that not only did it need a refresh but also a slight change of emphasis.

Since spinning the site out of my personal blog I have covered anything technology based that has taken my fancy. However, going forward I have decided to focus on the topic of remote working.

This new emphasis will look at many of the areas that I have covered in the past, such as mobile devices, cloud based apps, and gadgets for the mobile … Read the rest