Role playing games (the computer variety) are quite old, but Super Columbine Massacre RPG cast them in a different light, both as games and as medium. Looking around I found the following tools for creating electronic stories with relative ease (i.e. as little programming as possible with automation of common tasks):

These other two are heavyweights; they require a lot of technical expertise and could be just too much but I felt they must be included:

My experience with these is very limited, but I can suggest:

• For ease of use, RPG Maker VX or IG Maker -just remember ease of use means less and harder customization
• If you just want to mix graphics and text with a bit of user choice, Ren’Py is just the ticket
• For easy 3D or lots of customization, GameMaker. Also for easy web deployment, if and when they finish the HTML 5 version.
• For the full 3D enchilada, Unity 3D is somewhat more accessible than Unreal, being a complete development environment. Both require a good understanding of 3D graphics, programming and modeling -just buying the book won’t cut it.
• Need more information? Why not search YouTube? Many creators upload their works and you can get a feel of what can be done. Just remember: a tool is as good as the person wielding it.

Examples

OK, the tools look good, but technicalities aside, how do I tell my story? The following are terrific examples of the possibilities: 

Non-electronic examples

• Pale Fire by Nabokov was written well before the web existed, but its use of cross-referenced notes to create parallel storylines is superb and actually an important part of the work. The introduction also shows excellently how to create an atmosphere.
• Before videotape existed, Disney used to sell vinyl LPs alongside printed books so children could simulate the movie experience by listening to a edited audio version while perusing the book. As it usually happens, the idea is actually very old; one thousand years ago japanese courtiers had attendants read aloud stories while they perused illustrated scrolls depicting the scenes being read.
• “Choose your adventure” books, where at the end of each page you made a choice, based on which you were directed to another page. Some even had basic rpg-like combat and items! (Now on YouTube: Saved by the Bell interactive game)
• “The Waste Land” by T.S. Elliot, another work making good use of notes -this time for furthering the point behind the poem. For an hyperlinked version see here.

Notes

1. Super Columbine Massacre RPG contains many inaccuracies, inherited from the general confusion and/or incompetence/malice of the original investigators. For the definitive reference on Columbine, read the book Columbine, by Dave Cullen.

© 2011 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.

Here’s the executive summary of the “Bing copies Google” fiasco:

1. A lot of people notices Google isn’t so good anymore, and Bing has improved
2. Google notices Bing returns the same first result (a Wikipedia page, hardly an odd choice for a first result when you are lazy or just don’t have a clue) for an unusual query
3. Thinking Bing’s toolbar copies Google’s search results and transmits them back to Bing, Google
   1. Sets up an isolated page that normally wouldn’t be indexed and artificially sets it as the first result for a completely absurd query (something they always said couldn’t be done, btw)
   2. Asks a group of Google employees to search for it while using Bing’s toolbar and clicking on the first (fixed) result -the isolated page
   3. Waits a few weeks and then -surprise! Bing knows the page exists and also shows it as the first search result for said completely absurd query.
   4. Conclusion: Bing copies Google’s search results

Never mind the fact that:

1. By religiously browsing the isolated page while using the Bing Toolbar, Google’s employees made sure Bing knew it existed.
2. Bing indexes/analyzes the pages reported by its toolbar -that’s what it does to recommend similar pages to you, yet
3. The absurd keyword isn’t part of the isolated page set up by Google, so Bing couldn’t have made the connection just by indexing -but it did. Why?
   Let me ask it this way: why not? Everyone who made a Google search for a certain absurd keyword inmediately browsed to the same page. You don’t need to copy search results -just analyze user behaviour. That’s how recommendations work -you’re on page A, sometime later you are on page B. If enough people do that (specially by clicking), start recommending page B to people browsing on page A.
   If page A happens to be a Google search, so what?
   Pages are related by their relevant keywords: what most relevant keyword in a search page than the query itself?
   And what most obvious recommendation than being a first search result?

So that’s it: Google proved Bing mines data from its users via its toolbar -just like everyone who bothered to read the toolbar’s documentation knew. The only surprise is the mining seems to be smarter than everyone thought. (Bing’s official comment)

Bing has realized the folly of linking as the definite metric of relevancy and the practical impossibilities of traversing today’s huge Web.

Don’t index webpages; index user’s actions

Links have little to do with relevance -most websites, even those otherwise reputable, bend themselves over to have lots of made-for-Google links. When was the last time you searched for a brand or personality and got the official site as the first result?

Content farms, spam, plagiarism, reposting, misinterpreting a link’s intent, Google’s proven ability to fix results -all this make relevancy by linking dubious at best.

So what did Bing? Easy -index the web their users make.

The very same thing Amazon does to recommend products to you -don’t find pages, find a trail.

While Google tries to keep you logged in Gmail while you browse AdSensed pages, Microsoft puts the ultimate cookie: a browser’s toolbar. Bing doesn’t care what spam-riddled page links to what attention-starved web magazine nor what irrelevant ad you ignored -it cares about your personal journey on your own web. Compared to this, curation (i.e. the fancy term in vogue for what used to be social bookmarking) looks lacking.

Last thoughts

The “personal web” idea is not new, and it has been done with both cookies and toolbars for years. Even Google has a toolbar although they deny it influences search results in any way -then again, we just saw how worthless is a Google denial. Social bookmarking/curation websites also have toolbars or bookmarklets.

Recommendations too are old news, as anyone who ever browsed Amazon can tell.

Heck, even this so-called ”copying” is old news: Yes, Bing Has Been Copying Google Search Results FOR YEARS

So why the fuss? Google’s mad because Bing indexed them as if they were any other site in the web.

You may be interested in:

• Contextual Semantic Publishing and the Open Index - on how to improve the current indexing model with a cloud-based publishing platform
• The problems of monetizing with online advertising - why contextual ads are a questionable choice to monetize a site, partly because current search engines aren’t that good

© 2011 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.

If people aren’t meant to stay on your site, why should they arrive in the first place?

Betting the farm on SEO? Read this NYTimes article on how stupid SEO can be. Can’t be bothered? Here’s the summary: having a tidal wave of irate customers complaining on popular consumer sites will make you the number one result for your chosen keywords, sending your way even more suckers to fleece, I mean, customers.

Before finding your site: contextual ads in search results

This is when the search engines processes the user’s query and returns an ad along search results. These ads are supposed to be your competitors; however,

• if the search results are so good, why should users bother looking at the ads?
• if the search results aren’t so good, how can they expect the right ad to be shown?

And that’s assuming the ads shown have something to do with the search query and aren’t the result of buying competitor’s trademarked keywords. But don’t feel relieved: unless you do your homework, these same weak ads are the ones showing in your website.

Another problem: user queries aren’t the same as user intent. Since the point of an ad is to get visitors to do something, let’s focus on user intention.

After search: user intention in websites

Now that your site has been found, what’s next? Online stores have it incredibly easy: they simply can’t put ads -everything is a site link, and every single one of them can lead to a sale.

Site links are cool -readers pay attention to them and won’t think twice of visiting them, even if they are less flashy and prominent than ads.

People couldn’t care less about ads. Why? Because site links are part of your site’s purpose, and ads just get in the way -no one reads your website for the ads. Why should they pay attention to them?

In the user’s mind, if it’s relevant it’s not an ad, it’s a site link.

How do I turn an ugly ad into a beautiful site link?

The easiest way would be to become a store, with the independence it carries. Most people can’t or won’t; for them, the old recipe holds true: know your site first, then know your readers. Analytics are your friend, but you still have to work at it:

• Don’t bait-and-switch your users -go with what brought them to you in the first place. Simple keyword matching will only take you so far. This says it all:
  • “The idea is (…) the advertising really does become the content you were hoping to find.” (source)
• Make others care by showing you do: users won’t ignore the most transparent of paid insertions if it adds value (however minimal) to your site, is placed accordingly and you are upfront about it. Think SuperBowl half-time.

Sometimes the ad resists the upgrade, but you can improve future odds with return visits: don’t depend on being found again. This is where your site must pull itself. Again, stores and services have it a lot easier (exhibits A, B and C) but entertainment and information do well too.

Since you are counting on being the last stop before the real deal (the ad buyer’s site), ask yourself how much sense it makes for your site to be standing in the way of someone else’s shop, and go from there; if you do it right you can make a killing profit with a minimal investment.

Learning about SEO from reputable sources is a must. I’m not against SEO by itself, but I either laugh or cringe whenever people write a Search Engine Optimization Guide and keep telling you not to write for machines. Get real: SEO is writing for machines, and stupid machines incredibly stupid machines to boot.

Notes

1. A startup wrote an interesting post about the traffic (and conversions) they got from TechCrunch coverage. While their experience isn’t applicable to everyone, it gives context to the realities of traffic volume, quality and monetization.
2. This 2009 article on Susan Boyle has some numbers on YouTube monetization: USD$20 to $35 for each 1,000 views, to be split with Google and probably discounted by bandwidth costs.
3. Analytics are a good start, but there are other methods to fine-tune a page, like testing alternate versions to see which performs best. Just remember to first have a website to test.
4. Sometimes you can benefit from someone else’s testing: these guys improved their annual sales by USD$300 million just by changing a form.
5. A cautionary tale: don’t depend too much on ad income.

© 2010 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.

The developer version of Diaspora was released on September 2010 and some time later followed by a private alpha that still goes on (March 2011). The logical outcome: too big a job with too few people and time to get it done. So you probably should stick to Facebook or try the open-source Elgg (also hosted).

Since this and my other post about Diaspora actually apply to any social platform, specially Facebook contenders, I’m just rewriting them to reflect Diaspora’s fading out.

These are some of the pitfalls awaiting Facebook contenders:

Technology

• Don’t think it’s all about technology. In the Internet, it’s not really about technology, even if it’s something fancy like real-time communication with your friends.
• Patents. These days it’s hard to tell the difference between technology and patents. Feel free to say I put them in the wrong category, but ignore them at your own peril.

Design

• I can’t share with my friends if they don’t have their own social profile. The most important of all. For self-hosted platforms add: If I need one other person with Diaspora/whatever installed to make it work, that’s one installation too many. How it works, then? With guest-passes sent by email and special email addresses, allowing limited access and upload capacities. This is hardly new -Flickr!, Facebook and specially Posterous already do a lot of things with email. For more fine-grained control and broader access, they can sign-up at my own profile; having their own should be strictly optional.
  Sharing with my friends has nothing to do with their ability or willingness to share with me.
• Postponing internationalization. If you don’t implement real internationalization/localization from the beginning, at every level, you’ll be in a lot of pain afterwards.
• Not learning from file-sharing programs’ mistakes. Even government agencies that should know better have been sharing confidential info just because a secretary or clerk wanted free music.

Usability

• The “stupid defaults only burn stupid people” mindset: the misguided belief of the UNIX guru that if your data becomes compromised for not changing the default settings it’s your own fault for running software you’re not smart enough to use. I call this incompetence and laziness: if you’re a developer and know a setting is insecure, it’s your responsibility to turn it off by default, and make it clear to everyone that changing it is not recommended.
• Making the user interface an afterthought. Sure, implementing all those standards and protocols is difficult, even if you stick with existing ones, but the UI is the thing users see every day. The worst part? User interface problems can’t be solved simply by writing better code.
• Failing the single download, 2-click install test. Of those two-clicks, one is for bypassing Windows UAC. And of course I can install two in the same host, although the second might require (possibly automatic) configuration. Bonus points if I can run it from a memory stick -I don’t even have to own a computer (think 3rd World).
• Not learning from Facebook’s mistakes.
  • Lesson number one: People think “Everyone” means “All my friends” instead of ”Whole Wide World”.
  • Lesson number two: Just say no to Opt-out.
  • Lesson number three: “Friend” is a terrible catch-all term for including “People or organizations I believe exist”. (Lunch.com does something nice: you have Friends, Followers, Communities and Similars -you even take a simple quiz! See also Designing for Social Interaction.)

Security

• Not having automatic/easy patching. It does have its drawbacks (like the McAfee patch that nuked a lot of PC’s), but it really increases security in the long run, specially in the consumer space. Just make sure you don’t corrupt people’s photos.
• Not including monitoring tools. Yep, this goes against the privacy of visitors to my seed, but if I’m going to host my seed I need a minimum of information, specially if my ISP charges for bandwidth usage -in this case, the possibilities of mischief are endless.
• Including the dev team as “trusted” in the GPG keystore. This happened in the original PGP, where the author’s public key was marked as “trusted”, meaning it could be used for verifying unknown digital signatures. Thus PGP users learned their first lesson in public-key encryption security: trust someone you don’t really know to verify other people’s signatures. Also keep track of who “introduced” who, in case of impersonation or revocation.
  (This is kind of a ”trick pitfall”: you really shouldn’t need to know there’s a keystore at all).
• Requiring 3rd-party cookies. Third-party cookies are anathema to privacy, but sometimes you can’t avoid them, for example when you are using a third-party for authentication. Although this problem should be addressed by browsers, they usually provide a crude all-or-nothing configuration. Until this improves, avoid them as much as possible.
• root-awe. ”OK, you know the root password, so clearly you are an authorized user and can do everything you want”. The UNIX-style permissions are so outdated it hurts. A variant of this: letting another user of my computer have access to my files. Unfortunately, encrypting storage has its share of problems.

Privacy and anonimity

• Not supporting multiple, isolated identities. Why does the chess club has to know I’m also an avid mountaineer? Why do my coworkers have to know who my relatives are? I don’t have to protect my privacy only from advertisers -also from my connections. Just remember humans are bad at drawing boundaries.

The following has nothing to do with a specific platform, but I think it’s worth mentioning: nothing prevents your friends from automatically reposting your photos with them to the web or other social sites. The problem with digital is that “sharing” is a lot like “giving” -bad news if you want to share and keep control.

Suggestions

• Publish by email for grandma (send her a pdf file of my latest album or whatever). She can send her comments back by email, of course. A variant of this: create a website that can be burned to DVD and mailed for off-line browsing. This can be used for yearbooks. (Facebook kinda does this to let you export your data.)
• Panic button for temporarily closing your seed to everyone (aka “Damage control mode”).
• 3rd-party security audits are always worth the money. Always.
• A big differentiator would be a “Dislike” button. Just don’t try to turn it into a poll or moderation system. Better yet -rethink the “Like” system.
• Parental controls -this would be great for school networks. Mattel did some pretty smart things with BarbieGirls (check their Parent’s Place). Look for “B Chat” levels -a way to control chat interactions to prevent griefing and dissemination of personal information, mostly via dictionaries, word analysis and physical procedures (think iPod/iTunes) to ensure participants know each other in the real world.
• Find a way to deal with dead or just inactive users. Believe me, you’ll have to.

It’s nice to see people starting to pay attention to online privacy, and Facebook definitely got the memo (and proceeded to shove it in a secret location when they thought no one was watching) but they still have to monetize their free (and powerful) service.

Notes

1. For some non-technical issues facing Facebook competitors, see this post.
2. Interesting pre-release posts about Diaspora: their answers to Luis Villa’s questions, and Luis’ Notes on Diaspora Talk.

© 2010 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.

Open source contenders should avoid thinking Facebook is just a piece of software (or that just having a working piece of software is enough; for a more technical view of issues facing Facebook competitors please read this).

So what else do you need to defeat Facebook on privacy protection?

• Income without ads. Today’s advertising hates user privacy; the only way you can avoid it is by having only paid accounts.
  Unfortunately, the public thinks differently -the one mistake Facebook hasn’t made yet is billing their users, and it’s the only one people won’t ever forgive. Not even the most raging privacy advocates have suggested Facebook bills their users to eliminate the need to get income from advertising (venture capital won’t last forever).
  WordPress is a successful example of a free/paid service, but blogs aren’t social -taking Wordpress.com as a role model for social could be very dangerous, and even WordPress.com throws in an ad or two (not to mention the VIP Blogs, a category in themselves).
• Natives. Facebook grew out of schools. It was easy and logical to be part of Facebook -I mean, of your school community. Most free software alternatives have the low requirement of hosting your own server or paying someone else to do it.
  I think Facebook competitors have a better chance by embracing closed societies -schools, clubs and medium-sized organizations that don’t want to interact with the rest of the Internet and are willing to pay for the privilege (these are the customers of SocialGo, Ning and the open source elgg). Moodle integration could be a winner in the education space. Lockheed Martin’s Eureka Streams was open-sourced as a social platform for businesses (with plans of monetization by propietary extensions).

The real problem with Facebook (and most other social platforms) is that they insist on grasping the individual by the neck and making him cozy with the rest of the world, stripping him clean of anonymity and privacy, then retrofit access controls (like friend lists) to pretend to make up for it.

The myth of the global village is the first thing any social platform has to refudiate to protect user privacy.

© 2010 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.

A lot of people seem to be searching for an “Anathem movie”. As far as I know, the only thing like that is Anathem’s official video trailer.

While reviewing a less than half-read book is risky business, I think it’s warranted for two reasons: I actually pulled myself to read that much, so I have to make something for it, and I can’t help thinking the people who praise it so much do it because they haven’t read a good book (if you have read both “Anathem” and one of the books I mention below, please comment).

Although “Anathem” has to explain itself almost since the first page, I won’t give spoilers. I will just point out the novel failures:

• It kinda tries to expose a philosophical point, but not really.
• It kinda tries to create a different world out of an unbelievable Earth with misspelled names -and fails to the point it has a spoiler at the beginning to get its failure out of the way early.
• It kinda tries to impress its readers with the subtlety of abstract mathematical thought, but the protagonists are just dumb, despite all the big words.

And it does it very persistently, all the time. Its only success is to confirm spectacularly xkcd’s Fiction Rule of Thumb:

"Except for anything by Lewis Carroll or Tolkien, you get five made-up words per story. I'm looking at you, Anathem."

A while ago there was the “remix culture” fad. Basically, you took a work (book, movie) and edited it to suit your tastes. “The Phantom Edit” was Star Wars: Episode One without Jar Jar Binks, for example.

I might give “Anathem” a try if I could replace all the fake, misspelled exotica with the properly spelled names. I’m aware it might be a writing device -just like a novel about a boring person might be purposely written in a boring way to bring the point home. I also caught the self-referential points in the story. However, as a reader, I just wanted to skip to the last 10 pages and be done with it. Not good. When I found out I had to pay for the privilege, I cut my losses and wrote this. Fail.

I will list a few books. They are not “replacement”, ”Anathem”-like novels -that’s the whole point! They are superb works that might be appealing to readers who out of ignorance thought “Anathem” was incredible.

Warning: After reading these, you won’t be satisfied by just any hyped book.

Atlas Shrugged

The classical philosophical novel by Ayn Rand. Not as popular outside the United States, but still a classic. Not for everyone, because being a philosophical novel, the characters are ”restricted” by the ideas and attitudes they represent, feeling a bit differently from your usual novel; but the plot is interesting, and as an unapologetic defense of Capitalism, is a must-read book to everyone with an opinion on it. The official website is http://atlasshrugged.com/

There has been a movie in the works forever -it looks like it finally happened, complete with Facebook Page; the dystopian world of the original Bioshock video game (highly recommended) was clearly inspired by it (Hello, Andrew Ryan!). And how many novels have a social network and dating site built around them?

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Technically a science-fiction novel, it’s actually a story of Humankind told in three short glimpses spanning hundreds of years in a future, post-apocalyptic Earth. While a careless reader might think it’s similar to “Anathem” (both novels are centered around monks and their convent), they couldn’t be more different.
“A Canticle for Leibowitz” is about the preservation of knowledge for a world that is not ready to reclaim it, and might never be. Walter M. Miller manages to do in plain English what Stephenson fails to do with its dictionary of misspelled words: create an engaging, believable world. And unlike the poseurs in “Anathem”, the monks of the Order of Leibowitz are real Christian monks (in the fictional world of the book, of course).

A bad, fake ”sequel” (more of a spin-off, a side story set some time after the second part of the original) was “Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman”. It was edited out of Miller’s incomplete drafts, and published posthumously. Don’t waste your time -comparing it to “A Canticle for Leibowitz” is like comparing a season of ”24″ to Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane”. It’s hard to believe they come from the same author. But it is not totally worthless -even being an inferior novel, “Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman” does a better job at creating a fake world (complete with fake culture and history) than “Anathem”. In fact, they share this emphasis -for worse.

His Dark Materials Trilogy

Known to most people from the movie loosely based on the first book, “The Golden Compass”.  Philip Pullman shows us a different but still recognizable and believable world. This strange reality is a central part of the story, but the story is not about it -it’s about the people who inhabit it. Although not a philosophical novel, it does have an underlying point: live life for life itself. Incredibly engaging, one of the few series that really needs all its books.

“The Golden Compass” movie wasn’t neither a commercial success nor faithful to the first book (in fact, it’s way shorter). Sure, there is a talking polar bear and the protagonist is a child, but it’s not for children. Is for young adults and older people who don’t mind having their world rocked a bit. Imagine what would happen to “Kirikou and the Sorceress” if it was remade by Disney; this is what they did to “The Golden Compass”.

The Martian Chronicles

One of Ray Bradbury’s classics, in an unusual genre: science-fiction chronicle. Born as short stories written separately, as a whole they have a nostalgic quality, as the repeated attempts of Humankind to colonize Mars finally succeed, more than they thought.

Flatland: a romance of many dimensions

 By Edwin A. Abbott. Written from the point of view of a square living in Flatland, it describes its people, ranked by the number and regularity of its sides, and the once-in-a-millenium Revelation he received from a higher-dimensional being. The full text is at Project Gutenberg’s site: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/97

There’s even a movie oriented to students based on it.

© 2010 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.

Full Disclosure: Other than being an individual customer, I have no relationship nor interest in either the company or the product. More info here.

The Belkin Flip

I have the F1DG102U model: 2-Port KVM Switch with Audio Support, USB Connection, wired remote. Detailed specs, including cable length, are here. You should note one of the cables connecting to the back of the computer is shorter than the other. However, the most important measure is your own devices’ cable length -you don’t want the body of the Flip cluttering your desktop. Connectors on the body are labeled, including where to connect the mouse and the keyboard. I haven’t tried mixing those.

To switch, just press the top of the buck-shaped remote (if you are having problems, specially if the remote is in an odd position, try pressing directly above its LED light). Audio will change instantly, quickly followed by video; mouse and keyboard will take a moment (more on this below).

You don’t need to install any software or configure your machines to use the Belkin Flip. Just turn off the machines, connect, then turn on the first machine, switch, then turn on the other.

You have to install software only if you want to listen to one computer’s audio while using the other, or to switch by hot-keys or a desktop icon (untested by me; software and more information at Belkin’s site). I am switching between Windows XP and Vista, without any Belkin software installed.

Compatibility with USB devices

Instead of a mouse, I use a small USB touchpad. It comes with its own drivers but I don’t use them, letting Windows recognize it as a generic USB mouse. I do this because it works okay for me and I always ended having problems with the touchpad drivers (before using the Flip). I have an ergonomic but otherwise vanilla keyboard.

Supposedly some KVMs allow you to use “enhanced” mice and keyboards; user reports vary, and you can’t really count on them for anything other than the specific device (maybe even driver version) reported. Success probably depends on how the KVM handles the USB connection internally and how creatively the driver uses it.

Belkin’s documentation says the Flip works with ”any keyboard and mouse with a USB connection”, and even mentions a few mouse brands, but that doesn’t really says much. It subtly hints custom drivers might work (enabling non-standard functionality like programmable buttons), but no assurances. My suggestion? Don’t count on them, but try anyway. KVM switching is a great thing, even if only using the vanilla features of your devices.

Tips and tricks

Update: Belkin added these support FAQs on their website.

Mouse and keyboard

• Don’t immediately try to use the mouse or keyboard after switching. If you do before they are ready, they will take even longer to be recognized. Having said that, my waiting times usually are around 3-4 seconds. Usually the mouse comes first. The delay time isn’t consistent. How to know when your devices are ready? Usually, the mouse pointer will change shape briefly, then your keyboard’s lights will turn off then quickly turn on again. I seldom check for this – I wait for a moment, then use the machine, mouse first.
• If you have waited too long and still your keyboard won’t come on (it’s always the keyboard), especially if you tried to type before, you can switch to the other machine a couple seconds and back. I only have to do this occasionally. Just make sure you have focus on the window or text field you are trying to type on -specially at Windows login screens.
• Sometimes, just after switching, the mouse moves and clicks erratically by itself. This is more frequent in older hardware, apparently because, from your motherboard’s point-of-view, the mouse was disconnected then connected. Usually it corrects itself after a few seconds; after that you shouldn’t have more problems. It’s a small annoyance, and it seems more frequent when I begin to use the mouse too quickly. If instead of moving erratically the mouse feels a bit “stuck”, clicking once might help.
• As a last resort, disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse or keyboard usually solves any problems you have; failing that, disconnect then reconnect the Flip (just the USB cable) from the current machine. If you followed the above guidelines, you should very rarely have to do this. If still this doesn’t work, check you don’t have one of the problems described below.

Starting, sleeping and rebooting machines

• In general, once properly started, the switch can deal with hibernating or sleeping machines.
• You can reboot the current machine whenever you want, without problems, but you can’t switch before it restarts (you don’t need to wait for the login screen) or it won’t detect the mouse and keyboard.
• If both machines unexpectedly turn off (say because of a power outage) you have to disconnect the Flip’s USB power from both, then reconnect, before restarting. If you don’t, they won’t recognize the mouse and keyboard, even if the machines reboot. For this reason I suggest to configure the power button of your machines to shut down instead of going to sleep. This way you can turn off your machines safely without mouse and keyboard. If your machine’s asleep, the first press of the power button should simply awake it, regardless of its configuration. If you did all this and still have problems, disconnecting and reconnecting mouse and keyboard should fix it, at least for the current machine; you might have to reboot the other.
• Another problem I had once with a sleeping machine was that, apparently, because the other machine was in hibernation there wasn’t enough power for the Flip, so the keyboard wasn’t working and I couldn’t use it to wake up the sleeping machine. Maybe this depends on the specific USB port you connect the Flip on? Not all ports are powered. For the record, it’s not unusual for me to have both machines asleep, and I can usually wake them up without problems.
• Caveat: Newer versions of Windows sometimes hibernate automatically after many hours of sleep. If you are having problems awaking your machine, make sure this hasn’t happened.

Troubleshooting

• If you are having problems with waking up a sleeping machine make sure the other is active. Also, try to awaken it with both keyboard and mouse -sometimes it will respond to one but not the other.
• A quick check to make sure everything is working is to see if both LEDs are lit -on the body and on the remote. If they aren’t, double-check your connections. The machines don’t have to be turned on, but they have to be powered. Also, just connecting the KVM to one is enough to light the LEDs -make sure both machines are connected via a powered USB port. Powered USB ports are usually only on the back of your desktop or laptop. Front or side ports might not work reliably or at all; avoid hubs.

Conclusion

I am very happy with the Belkin Flip, and I recommend it. Belkin’s suggested retail price as of this writing is USD$59.99, but it can be found for a lot less in online stores. If you are shopping for a KVM, remember to look for audio sharing -not all models do it. You might think you don’t really need it, but you probably will.

If you need to connect more than two computers, other KVMs allow you to do that, either a fixed number (say 4) or by daisy chaining. As far as I know the Belkin Flip’s remote is unique to it; other KVMs switch when you press a certain keyboard combination, which hopefully you don’t need for anything else. KVMs are pretty straightforward -if you want something different, there are software alternatives that allow different ways of sharing and multitasking between networked machines.

© 2010 Héctor Cuevas. All rights reserved.