ConceptDraw Office gets an upgrade

 ConceptDraw Office has now been upgraded to version 8 and it contains 3 (well really 4) main packages: -

• ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v15
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP v13
• ConceptDraw PROJECT v12

There is also ConceptDraw STORE which offers access to various ConceptDraw solutions and upgrades to the main packages too.

Diagram offers professional-quality graphic solutions of all sorts for all businesses, Mindmaop is essential to strategic planning, knowledge and team management and Project provides a professional approach to portfolio and project management.

ConceptDraw Office is available both on Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS and are alternative offerings to Microsoft Visio and Project.

Though the applications can run standalone for basic primitives, the flexibility comes when the Solutions are added, all 215 of them. Many are free and can be downloaded via the Store, while some are paid for and new Solutions are being added all the time.

The categories of Solutions are: -

• Building Plans
• Business Infographics
• Business Processes
• Business Productivity
• Collaboration
• Computers and Networks
• Dashboards
• Diagrams
• Finance and Accounting
• Food and Beverage
• Graphs and Charts
• Health
• Illustrations
• Industrial Engineering
• Infographics
• Management
• Maps
• Marketing
• Project Management
• Quality Management
• Science and Education
• Software Development
• Sport
• Statistical Charts

Some of these are just building blocks, while others can be connected to data to produce charts/infographics based on the data.

Examples of some of the actual building blocks

Divided Bar Chart

Financial Infographics

Sport - Baseball Field

Above infographics may be static or utilise data (such as the divided bar chart) or just a picture like the baseball field.

The applications can import Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Project, Visio, Mindmanager, Xmind and Freemind documents and export pdf, images, Outline, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Project and Visio.

There still are differences between the Windows and macOS versions such as it's only possible to explore pdf layers on the Windows version of the software.

The STORE also allows upgrading the applications and solutions

It's also possible to purchase new solutions (when a new solution is published it will have a green flag on it)

The applications can be purchased individually or as ConceptDraw Office which contains all of them.

Single user pricing is as follows: -

• ConceptDraw OFFICE 8 £399 (but seems to be £239 now)
• ConceptDraw DIAGRAM 15 £159
• ConceptDraw PROJECT 12 £239
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP 13 £159
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP 13 & PROJECT 12 £319

So Office seems a bargain at the moment.

The solutions vary in price.

If you need a suite of applications that can do mind mapping and project planning and you don't want to go the Microsoft route, this could be for you.

Paragon, allowing users to mount the world

Paragon Software makes software that allows users to mount disks from other operating systems. So say you're a Mac user, then you could mount a Windows disk that's formatted with NTFS and access it normally just as you would a disk that's formatted in a native macOS system. Once installed, the system should be rebooted, then external drives should appear as native drives through the file system.

On macOS Paragon support Windows NTFS and also extFS (used by Linux and supporting Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4 disks). There's also a 'value' pack which contains both and support for older Apple formats such as HFS+.

Windows users are also supported so there's support for HFS+ and Linux ExtFS.

Paragon have just announced Windows support for the new Apple File System, APFS and it's a FREE download. Again it will install so that drives are available through the Windows Explorer (and available to any Windows program). Drives will auto mount on start-up. Currently only read-access to the drive is supported.

The Mac version does work nicely and accessing an old hard disk from a Linux system was painless and fast. An added bonus is that it makes access RaspberryPi SD cards a breeze, use any of the SD card utilities to get Raspbian or other operating system on to the SD card, then access it as an attached disk and modify any of the configuration files before installing it into the Pi itself. Can save a lot of time rather than having to boot up the Pi, log into the Pi and then configure everything locally, reboot, etc.

Though not relevant to home users, Paragon also specialise in making drivers for iOS, Android and other embedded operating systems such as QNX and embedded Linux. There's also drivers for UEFI (i.e. the replacement for the BIOS on systems), so that a system, even before the operating system is loaded, can access various drives.

Embedded Linux is used in a lot of systems like Network Attached Storage (NAS) and the drivers allow the NAS to access content on external disks or SD cards in not native formats. QNX is used in a lot of system that use a Real-time OS and again the drivers allow access to non-native disks.

Pricing varies, ExtFS for Mac is £29.00, NTFS for Mac is £15.95 or the UFSD value pack (allowing NTFS and ExtFS on Mac and HFS+ and ExtFS on Windows) is $49.95 (oddly only seems available in dollars).

Wicked Cool Shell Scripts

The exact title is "Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, 101 scripts of Linux, OS X and UNIX systems, 2nd Edition" by Dave Taylor and Brandon Perry from No Starch Press.

It's been a while since the first version of the book came out (2004) and a lot has changed in the world of UNIX since that time so though many of the ideas from the first version are still valid, it has been updated to take into account systems like macOS and even Windows.

The book is broken into the following sections

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 0: A Shell Scripts Crash Course
• Chapter 1: The Missing Code Library
• Chapter 2: Improving on User Commands
• Chapter 3: Creating Utilities
• Chapter 4: Tweaking Unix
• Chapter 5: System Administration: Managing Users
• Chapter 6: System Administration: System Maintenance
• Chapter 7: Web and Internet Users
• Chapter 8: Webmaster Hacks
• Chapter 9: Web and Internet Administration
• Chapter 10: Internet Server Administration
• Chapter 11: OS X Scripts
• Chapter 12: Shell Script Fun and Games
• Chapter 13: Working with the Cloud
• Chapter 14: ImageMagick and Working with Graphics Files
• Chapter 15: Days and Dates
• Appendix A: Installing Bash on Windows 10
• Appendix B: Bonus Scripts
• Index

It's a long book at 305 pages, and it's probably more of a reference book for ideas on shell scripting and what you can do rather than reading it from start to finish - though if you're new to the subject, it's probably worth reading Chapter 0 before moving to other chapters.

If you want to get more out of using the command line (on pretty much any UNIX like OS) this could be the book for you.

It's available for purchase direct from No Starch Press for $34.95 Print Book and FREE Ebook or $27.95 Ebook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub), slightly more through O'Reilly (but you can get it through their Safari service) and considerably cheaper through Amazon.

Moo Moovs beyond the traditional business card

Moo, the company founded by Richard Moross MBE, which traditionally focussed on making very pretty business cards and other stationary has now added NFC technology to its portfolio.

It's has branded the technology as BusinessCard+ and users can utilise all the normal Moo tools for designing a regular business card, but sandwiched inside is an NFC chip and antenna. It's possible to have the cards preprogrammed before they leave Moo which is a boon for Apple users as NFC support is lacking.

The Moo NFC service can be set-up in several ways: -

• Embed a URL
• Action Library
• 3rd party Actions
• Maker Channel

The embed a URL just puts in a standard URL (with the length limitation based on the storage of the NFC chip), this could point anywhere such as a website.

The Action Library is really a Moo URL redirector, whereby the URL in the chip points to Moo, which then deliver an action which can be: -

• Website Link i.e. a standard URL
• Digital Business Card i.e. the redirection points to a vCard
• Connect your social network i.e. a social network URL
• Promote your app i.e. a link to an app download

3rd party actions can be: -

• Connect on LinkedIn i.e. points to your LinkedIn URL
• Navigate with CityMapper i.e. a link to a CityMapper location
• Videochat with appear.in i.e. a link to your appear.in user
• Listen with Spotify i.e. a Spotify URL
• Meet with Sunrise i.e. a Sunrise link

The Maker channel supports an IFTTT recipe.

Once a URL has been put into the card, it's difficult to change (well for Mac/iOS users anyway), Android, Blackberry and Windows users are in luck as the OS has native support for NFC and many devices have NFC readers/writers in them and it's easy to get software to support them which means the URL can be changed.

For users that don't have the ability to write to the NFC chips, the Moo Action libraries are really the way to go, as then the actions can be changed on the fly but just logging into Moo and accessing their Paper+ service which allows users to enter what action should be performed from now on for the particular cards selected.

Mac users are really left out in the cold here, though the iPhone 6/6+ and Apple Watch (and newer versions) have NFC bits in them, they're only currently accessible for contactless payment and there's no direct access to the NFC subsystem from the operating system. MacOS X users are also currently out of luck as though there is some support in the operating system, it's drastically changed in recent version of MacOS X and old card reader/writer software no longer works. It is possible to 'hack support', but not really easy for 'normal users', see RFIdiot.org.

Artrage 4 hits the streets

Artrage has released version 4 of its painting program, available for both Apple's MacOS X and Microsoft's Windows 8.

If it's run on on a Surface Pro tablet it makes full use of the touch capabilities and of course it fully uses pen systems on non-touch systems.

The package is easy to use (even for a non artist) and it doesn't take much time to get used to the various controls and painting techniques such as smearing and blending of oil paints and watercolours that flow into each other.

There's also nice features such as stencils (which can be painted on, but the paint only applies to the empty spaces on the stencil) and stickers that are just stuck onto a painting.

A nice feature is tracing where an image is loaded as the background - but not as part of the image being painted - and then it can be traced. When it's saved, it's only the tracing and not the original image, though the same process could be achieved using layers.

Artrage also fully supports Wacom features available with some of their stylus' such as Pressure, Tilt, Barrel Rotation, and the Airbrush Wheel.

It's available for $49.90 from the Artrage Store. There is also a version available for Apple's iPhone/iPad.

Digia releases Qt 5.0

Digia the company that has taken over the development of Qt (from Nokia) has released version 5.0 of the toolkit. This maintains compatibility with Qt 4.

Qt 5 benefits include:

• graphics quality
• performance on constrained hardware
• cross-platform portability
• support for C++11
• HTML5 support with QtWebKit 2
• a vastly improved QML engine with new APIs

Qt 5 also supports OpenGL ES (the version of Open GL that is optimised for embedded systems).

Qt supports a wide range of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, embedded operating systems such as embedded Linux, Windows Embedded as well as the most widely deployed real-time operating systems for embedded devices – VxWorks, Neutrino and INTEGRITY – and popular mobile OSes.

Digia is maintaining 2 versions of Qt, the commercial version and a 30 day free trial is available from qt.digia.com and the open source version from qt-project.org.

Skype for Windows offers deeper Facebook integration

Skype have released version 5.5 for Windows which now allows checking the availability of Facebook friends without leaving the Skype client.

There are also improvements to the group chat functionality and the video quality.

Though Skype currently dominate this space, Vonage are releasing mobile clients that will allow VoIP calls, there is already a Vonage client for iPhone which integrates with Facebook chat (but doesn't allow access to other Vonage users).

Nomadesk launch virtual Fileservers

Nomadesk have launched a virtual disk service. There's a personal version and a Team version, both with a 30 day free trial, but then they cost $50pa and $15 per month respectively. The personal version can be installed on up to 5 computers while the team version is unlimited. They have a Windows client and MacOS X (beta) client available now and there's a mobile desktop for managing files (as well as the web version).

There are lots of similar services out there Dropbox for one, however Nomadesk also have an API and clients can be built that use the Nomadesk cloud storage within the application.

Whether they're any better than anyone else, time will tell.

Nokia announces now Booklet

Nokia has announced a new Windows laptop (or Booklet as they call it). It utilises the Intel Atom processor and comes with WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G built-in. It also incorporates A-GPS, an SD card reader and an HDMI port.

It does this all while having an impressive 12 hours battery life. It's also only weighs 1.25Kg and is less than 2cm thick while having an HD glass LCD panel.

Nokia haven't released full specs or pricing which will be announced at the forthcoming Nokia World.

Though running Windows, it will still offer the Ovi suite which will be pre-installed.

Nokia is obviously making a statement before Apple come out with their 10" ultra portable.

Bootcamp to expire

Apple's Bootcamp system (which allows Windows or MacOS X to run on Apple hardware) will expire when the next version of MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard) is launched.

Bootcamp is currently offered as a beta download.

Bootcamp differs from Parallels or VMWare's offering in that it encapsulates a Windows partition on the hard disk and allows a Windows operating system to boot or MacOS X. Parallels is a virtual machine which runs inside MacOS X, allowing a Windows OS to run in parallel with MacOS X (there's a reason why they called it Parallels).

Apple to release Safari for Windows

Safari 3 has been released as a public beta for MacOS X and Windows. Safari 3 will come with Apple's MacOS X 10.5 known as Leopard.

Apple state Safari is siginificantly faster than other browsers on the Windows platform (2x IE7 and 1.6x Firefox v2), however Windows users may be slow to adopt Safari most people will use IE by default.

It does give developers (who don't use Macs) the opportunity to test their web pages on multiple browsers on Windows though, although that's a tiny market.

This seems more a dig at Microsoft than a real browser competitor.

New Apple ads

Apple's starting splashing ads all over the space (MySpace in particular) starring comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

One plays Windows/PC and the other MacOS/Mac. They're pretty funny - in the vein of the Wii vs PS3 ads put out by Nintendo and putting Macs in a good light.

They're up on YouTube too.