From Programmer to Puppet-Master: How I Didn’t Rig the Zimbabwean Elections with a PDF Converter

Here is the unbelievable story … Last Thursday (03/28/2008) a newspaper called “Zimbabwe Online” published an article accusing my company (Cogniview) of helping Robert Mugabe, The infamous Zimbabwean president, rig the Zimbabwean elections.

Link to full story

The article continues to claim that my company has secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, and that the accusations came directly from the General Secretary of the MDC, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party.

Before I go on with the details of the story, here’s my official response … this story is NOT TRUE. In fact it could have only been more fictional if we were accused of using alien technology. Here are some more facts:

We have no ties with Robert Mugabe’s party. We have never met or dealt in any way with him or any of his people.
We have no connections to the Israeli Mossad.
No Cogniview employee has ever been to Zimbabwe.

The full story up until now…

On Wednesday, a day before the article was published, I received an email from a Yahoo email address, inquiring whether my company was helping Robert Mugabe win the upcoming Zimbabwe elections. The email was so funny, I assumed it was spam and deleted it (not before being very impressed with how well it was tailored for my company).

A day later, an email from the site ZimOnline alerted me that there was an article on the site that concerned Cogniview. The article was even funnier than the email. At this point my respect for the Zimbabwean scam-artists was at an all-time high. Not only did they send me a well crafted email, they went as far as to setting up a mock newspaper and publishing an article there.

And then it became very serious very quickly …

I was contacted by a gentleman called Phil Matibe, a human rights activist from Zimbabwe currently living in the US, who wanted to get to the bottom of this story (I will be speaking with Mr. Matibe later today).

We also started getting emails from angry people telling us that we “sold the Zimbabwean people for 20 pieces of silver”

And then additional articles began to appear. Apparently we got 3 million dollars for helping Mugabe.

What I think happened

About a year ago we developed an Open-Source PDF converter called CC PDF converter. This converter (which is available for download for anyone that has an internet connection) allows one to convert anything printable into PDF. It also allows adding a Creative Commons license as the last page of the document. And at the very end of this page there is a link to Cogniview’s website.

I also learned (from the people that called to chastise us) that the voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website.

My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format they could easily handle (like Excel) and instead got it in a PDF file (that was produced by our converter). They got (justifiably) angry and concocted a story about the Israeli Mossad and my company (this part isn’t justifiable).

Here’s what we are willing to do to help sort out this mess

Every respectable party (UN, US, European) that will want to investigate this matter will get Cogniview’s full cooperation. We will give them unlimited access to our legal and financial Records. We will also allow them to interview any employee in the company. Heck, they can strap us all to lie-detectors - we have nothing to hide.

But I’m hoping it won’t come to this. This story has the potential to damage my company’s reputation as well as to seriously damage the credibility of the MDC officials who spread this lie.

One last thing: If anyone from the MDC is reading this, please check your facts and denounce these lies. They bring you no honor.

I will continue to update as the story unfolds.

Why you should publish your PDF with a Creative Commons License

Over the past two weeks I talked to over a dozen people about publishing content and PDF’s with a Creative Commons License. One question came up again and again - What are the benefits of publishing my content with a creative commons license?

Here is my answer in … PDF form.

Announcing the Creative Commons PDF Converter

The CC PDF Converter is a free (open source) application that enables you to create PDF documents from almost any application (Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and more). The CC PDF Converter also allows you to easily embed a creative commons license in your PDF file.

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it if you leave them as comments on this post.

I can also be contacted through my email (see the About the author page).

How typing may lead to madness (and how to avoid it)

Warning: shameless self-promotion ahead

The Psychology of Typing

Sometimes, there is no way around it. You just have to sit down and spend an hour—or two, or three—typing. It’s boring and often infuriating. Boredom, as Wikipedia tells us, leads to anxiety. And mixing anger with anxiety can lead to—madness!

And so, at Cogniview, we have decided to create a new product line that will help lessen anger and anxiety in the world. Products that dramatically reduce the amount of typing in your life. The new Typing Free™ product line.

A typing-free world

PDF2XL is our primary and best-selling product. Several thousands of clients are already using it and IMO it’s the best PDF to Excel conversion tool in the universe (I’ll admit I am a bit biased).

So if you want to avoid typing data from PDF documents to Excel, give PDF2XL a try.

PDF2XL OCR is a new product. It combines OCR technology from IRIS Software with PDF2XL’s data extraction interface.

I am proudest of two features in PDF2XL OCR:

The data-validation module: Every OCR engine has recognition errors, but one thing that most OCR tools lack is a way to efficiently browse through the suspected words and correct recognition errors. Our data validation module displays the suspected word and the image of the actual word from the document side by side (with a huge zoom). This helps you catch a problem in a fraction of a second, because your eyes see the difference and you don’t actually have to read.
The numerical column: An OCR engine works about a million times better if you tell it that it is trying to identify a number (I’ll expand on that if anyone is interested). When you define a column as numeric in PDF2XL OCR, it asks you whether you want to try to improve results by rerunning the OCR only on that column!

If you need to convert data from scanned documents to Excel, give PDF2XL OCR a try.

PDF2XL Enterprise is really a magical tool. It combines a print driver with an extraction tool. You can print whatever you want to it and then extract the data to Excel. It also includes all the functionality of PDF2XL and PDF2XL OCR.

Check it out. It’s really cool!

The secret, sure-fire way to avoid madness, hand cramps and blindness

Buy one of our products. They are good for your health!

How to win the war on spending, visually!

Recently I have been scolded for writing too much about technology and theory (i.e. stuff that only interests me). The main Scolder was Ms. Hadar Kadar, our director of customer relations. She pointed out that every once in a while we should post something that is actually useful to our customers (and was right as she usually is).

And so with this post, we are starting a new tradition. Every week, Hadar will prepare and post a new Excel Video Tutorial. This week’s tutorial is about controlling expenses. We would love to get your feedback on this. This template was prepared for Excel 2007.

Enjoy!

You can download the template here

Five blogging tools that every blogger will use in 2007

Why is it that some bloggers are 10 times more productive than others?

Like programming, blogging is an occupation in which huge variations exist between the best and the merely average. Joel Spolsky of the famed Joel on Software made a historic post on the difference between the best programmer and the average programmer. I strongly recommend that you read Joel’s post. While doing so, replace the word “programmer” with the word “blogger.”

So how do you become a master blogger?

The secret of the kung fu master

Imagine a kung fu master during his daily practice session. He moves with accuracy and grace. Every strike is perfect and flows seamlessly into the next. But the most amazing part is that the kung fu master seems to be in another world, contemplating the philosophy of martial arts while his body automatically performs the moves.

How is kung fu relevant to blogging? Like the kung fu master, you should control the tools of your trade to the point that using them is second nature. Then you can focus on the core of the blogging art–thinking!

Here are the five essential tools you will have to master to become a ~~kung fu~~ blogging master:

Finding interesting things to blog about

Tool #1: Del.icio.us

When reading your RSS feeds and surfing the net, you often come across things you can blog about. Use del.icio.us to bookmark them and use them in your blog later. And that’s not all. By subscribing to the Del.icio.us tag RSS feeds, you can see what other people have bookmarked on the tags that interest you and use that for your blog. By doing so, you use the entire del.icio.us user group as your personal scouts!

Tool #2: Technorati

Also subscribe to the tag RSS feeds on Technorati. This is very similar to Del.icio.us, but you get to read everything blogged about the keywords that interest you.

Think everywhere

When you sit in front of your computer, you start thinking about headlines, subtitles, and all the other stuff that make your blog posts great. But don’t you hate it when you think of a great idea for a title or a joke, and by the time you get to your computer you have forgotten about it? Wouldn’t it be great if you could blog everywhere?

Tool #3: online word processors

By using Google Docs, Zoho, or one of the many other online word processors, you can write your post at work, from home, when visiting friends–wherever there is a computer connected to the internet.

Warning: Your spouse, family, and friends may not like this technique.

Get your blogging groove on

Blogging is hard work. To really be effective, you have to be in the right mood. I use a special “substance” to clear my mind.

Tool #4: ZeFrank

It’s enough to watch an episode of the ZeFrank daily show to forget all your troubles, get a good laugh, and enter that blogging state of mind.

Become a master wordsmith

Tool #5: Cogniview’s ultimate copywriting tool

During the first quarter of 2007, we will be launching a new copywriting software tool to serve you, the blogger. This tool (yet to be named) will allow you to write a brilliant post every time. This tool will be the equivalent of having Darren and Brian as your personal advisers.

How can you get this tool?

Easy, just subscribe to our RSS feed. Once the tool has been released, we will post it here and you will be able to download it, free!

This post is participating in the ProBlogger Group Writing Project - Reviews and Predictions.

Happy holidays, everyone,

Yoav

We’ve struck gold

I’m delighted to announce that Cogniview has attained the rank of Microsoft gold certified partner.

Why is being a gold certified partner important?

Most importantly, it’s a validation of our commitment to developing first-class products and giving first-class support. To quote from the Microsoft Web site:
“Microsoft Gold Certified Partners are the elite Microsoft Business Partners who earn the highest customer endorsement. They have the knowledge, skills, and commitment to help implement technology solutions that match your exact business needs. Microsoft Gold Certified Partners have passed the highest level of requirements from Microsoft and have demonstrated the most robust, efficient and scalable implementations of Microsoft technologies in demonstrated enterprise customer deployments or an on-site Microsoft assessment.”
Getting a gazillion licenses for every Microsoft product isn’t bad either.

We used the survey method to get the additional partner points we needed for gold. This means that Microsoft sent a survey (composed of 47 questions) to a group of our customers. Here are some graphs that summarize the responses.

As you can see from the graphs, our satisfaction score was a whopping 98 percent.

Again, all we can say is, “Thank you, dear customers!”

Now that we are a gold partner we thought about working with the Microsoft office marketing group. Does anyone have any experience with that? I’ll be extremly grateful for some pointers

Purchase-order tracking system based on Excel 2007: current process and requirements

Current process

In a previous post, I said that we would be developing a new purchase-order tracking system in Excel 2007. I started by interviewing the customers. I sat down with Inbal, our “accounting department,” and this is what she said …

“Today, we have a licenses management solution [Nick named Hendrix]. Every purchase is entered into Hendrix, and the customer then receives an automated e-mail from Hendrix with his payment code and download and activation instructions.”

“When a purchase order arrives, it is entered into the system, so that a license will be issued to the customer. I also manage an Excel sheet with a list of POs to track.”

Here is a sample of the Excel sheet that Inbal uses:

Purchase Order Tracking Sheet

“Purchase orders are not paid immediately; they usually have net or net+30 payment terms. it’s my job to see that all the payment orders are eventually paid,” Inbal added.

“So, every week, I single out the POs that have not been paid, and according to how late the payment is, I either send an e-mail or mail, or I call the customer. When a purchase order is paid, I update the tracking sheet to reflect that, this way I know not to bother the customer.”

Users’ requirements

I then asked her what she would like to the tracking system to do.

“I need to be able to define contact details for both customer and end user,” Inbal said. “This is because sometimes (especially with POs), the customer’s accounting department is ordering the software for their users. So I need to send the download and activation instructions to the user and work with the accounting department on payment issues. In any case, the customer has to be notified about the delivery of the software as well as the user.

“I want to be able to define the due date for each PO (net, net+30, etc.).”

“I want to get a weekly report of all the purchase orders that should have already been paid. If possible, I want to get it by e-mail.”

“When closing an order, I need a place to enter the payment date and some sort of transaction ID (check number, bank transfer ID, etc.).”

And that was it.

If you have any ideas on how to make this system better, please, pretty please … add them as a comment to this post.

Purchase-order tracking application with Excel 2007: kickoff

The company I work for, Cogniview, offers customers various ways to purchase its products. A customer can use PayPal to purchase online, send a fax order, or send a purchase order by fax or e-mail.

We have had an unusual amount of purchase orders lately. Everybody is happy when a PO comes in, but our accounting department started complaining that tracking those purchase orders is becoming difficult.

We had a meeting in which we agreed that some sort of purchase tracking system should be created. I persuaded everyone that it would take a tenth of the time to write it in Excel 2007 then in C++ (the language of choice for our programmers). So I have been awarded the pleasure of writing it myself.

In the coming week or so, I will share with you the process of designing this system and implementing it–successfully, I hope.

I will also make the Excel application available to anyone who’s interested.

Cogniview is now a certified partner of Microsoft

I am pleased to announce that Cogniview has achieved the rank of Microsoft certified partner. We were always putting off becoming a certified partner because it seemed to be a big hassle. We were right about that. We had, however, an ace in the hole that I wasn’t aware of: you, the customers.

Our customers deserve the credit for our becoming a certified partner. It seems that if you have a product that is used by thousands of customers, you just fly through the product-certification tests (we submitted our PDF-to-Excel conversion product).

The best part was the testimonials. As an ISV, you are required to submit customer testimonials to Microsoft and have the customers who gave those testimonials approve them. It took us just three hours to get approval for our testimonials. The speed with which the approval came moved me.

Thank you, dear customers.

Here are a couple of pictures of the gang and PDF2XL with the goodies that you get from Microsoft.

The Gang with the Microsoft flag

PDF2XL and the ISV competency plaque