gDoc

The big free software switch

The impending end of the tax year tends to focus the mind on matters financial. For businesses, controlling costs is vital; with this in mind, we put together some ideas and advice on the subject.

Global Graphics urges businesses planning for the new financial year to consider all options for savings in a tough economic climate including examining software costs.

Companies are in a flurry this month to be ready for the new financial year and if actions by the government to make cuts in order to save £11bn across government departments is anything to go by, it looks like 2010 is going to be a tough year all round.

Global Graphics is urging businesses to wake up to the idea that free doesn’t mean poor quality and now a great time to ‘spring clean’ and discover areas in which to make savings. A recent study commissioned by Global Graphics showed that 76 per cent of large organisations already use or are planning to issue free software across the enterprise in 2010. The study also demonstrated that free software is not only a practical set of desktop products but also something more fundamental to boosting enterprise productivity.

Our CEO, Gary Fry, offers some points to think about:

• IT Budgets are still under pressure - A recent report by the National Computing Centre revealed that 28% of those surveyed admitted they have had to undertake significant cost-cutting in their IT operations and a further 32% have had to make moderate cuts. 33% are putting on hold software refreshes
• The pros and cons of free software – Despite organisations feeling positive about free opportunities and the prospect of savings across the board, Global Graphics research found that the two main concerns for CIOs when considering free software were product quality and support. Something can be free but it needs to be reliable and offer free product upgrades and the option of free forum-led and/or paid-for support
• Re-negotiate with current suppliers. Now is the time to shop around for the best utilities, insurance providers and every other business cost including enterprise software.
• I’ll scratch your back if… Find opportunities for ‘contra’ arrangements with suppliers and partner organisations, either offering like-for-like services or reduced rates
• Think about features, usability, integration and ROI – Free products vary vastly in quality and service. In the PDF market the competitors fall into two main categories: those from commercial organisations such as Global Graphics who are offering free PDF creation and the option to upgrade to a paid-for product, and freeware which is generally limited in functionality and often less easy to install and use with poor support. There is a third category, PDF creation built–in (or that can be freely downloaded) to an existing document creation product
• Value for money – organisations are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Make sure you consider what ‘free’ really means and the broader functionalities available. Ensure that the amount of software licenses enabled fits exactly with office functions and staffing levels.

Global Graphics gDoc Creator product is the only enterprise quality PDF creation and viewing software tool that is available for free. Over 200,000 customers are now creating and viewing their documents for free with Global Graphics software. If you want a more functionality then gDoc Fusion is the paid-for big brother to Creator but is still very competitively priced.

Following Adobe’s admission last December of a security flaw in their free Reader, there was a lot of media attention on the issue of rogue PDFs and their potential as a vector for viruses. The furore has since died down, but the threat remains. Here are five tips to help keep you safe.

1. Keep your PDF software and virus software updated by visiting your providers’ website
2. Don’t open PDFs from people you don’t know, no matter how tempting the title!
3. Keep an eye out for any PDF security advice coming out from the likes of SANS (http://isc.sans.org/)
4. Be wary of PDF software that has had security scares or is targeted by hackers. There are alternatives.
5. If you do use free PDF software from smaller providers, make sure you know they have strong support services

Like most other people I was very excited by the recent release of the Apple iPad. It wasn’t excitement about the specific device but the potential growth it heralded for the tablet PC form factor. The design of tablet PCs and modern eBook readers make a stronger connection to the experience of working with physical paper documents. They also encourage the development of natural user interfaces (NUIs) for reading and working with documents.

Working with documents in natural way is a very important part of our gDoc product vision. The first generation of natural user interfaces can be seen in the Flick and Assembly views within gDoc Fusion. The future of the gDoc Product range will take this much further. I wrote about multi-touch and gesture based technologies in a previous blog post, another natural interface we are interested in is handwriting recognition.

Considering the iPad’s name, I was surprised to see that it didn’t support handwriting input. The Windows-based tablet PCs coming to the market offer extensive handwriting recognition functionality. Intuitively, handwriting seems like a natural way to interface with this kind of device. However I’m starting to wonder if traditional handwriting is actually a skill that people would still consider natural.

Bill Buxton (Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research) pointed out in a recent interview that there are only a very small number of truly innate natural skills and the rest only feel natural as we have invested large amounts of time learning and maintaining them. I was taught over a number of years to write at school, it started with block text and then moved onto a cursive (joined up) form of writing. Before the home PC was commonplace I used a pen and paper to generate all kinds of written documents. At university I reinvested time to learn how to use a PC and keyboard to write documents. I now use a PC exclusively to write documents and my hand writing skills are reduced to note taking tasks.

A couple of years ago I bought an electronic pad for taking notes in meetings. I would write on the paper and the electronic pen would record what I wrote. The recording could then be turned into text using handwriting recognition software. Sounded great until I realised that my handwriting skill had degraded too far to make it useful. Don’t get me wrong I can write legibly but not the same time as rapidly. I found myself thinking if only I had learned some form of shorthand.

I have come to the conclusion that I would be in much better position now to make technology work for me if my school had focused on teaching touch-typing together with a form of shorthand for taking notes. It makes me wonder as we move into the era of natural user interfaces (NUI) whether software companies need to be encouraging us to develop more relevant natural skills. Maybe if the iPad had offered shorthand recognition rather than handwriting recognition I would think about retraining myself again.