ePub: Free software for pubs
OK. Pour yourself a stiff drink and sit down. You know everyone always tells you that you don't get something for nothing. And that if it sounds too good to be true, it isn't true. Well, we might have found you an exception.
Hospitality Machine is a suite of software applications for your computer that's designed specifically to help small hospitality businesses such as pubs
That sort of thing - Microsoft Office for instance - will normally set you back a three-figure sum. But this is free. Correction. It will cost you the price of a CD and some electricity. And half-an-hour or so of your valuable time.
You simply download Hospitality Machine from a website onto a disk. You can then run a whole series of useful applications from the disk, and, if you like it, download it into your hard drive.
So why is it free? For that you have to thank Paul Boggia, a self-styled 'techno geek' and advocate of free software for all. Basically, he sees no harm in chipping away at Bill Gates's billions, and what's more he enjoys doing whatever it is techno geeks do.Why should you trust him? Well, he's a publican. One of us.
Together with partner Jane Fairhall he owns the Kingston Arms, an award-winning freehouse in the backstreets of Cambridge. He arrived there five years ago with a background in IT and, as techno geeks will, immediately thought the pub could benefit from some more sophisticated computer technology.
As well as installing five terminals in the back office - they are connected up as a network but still allow each user privacy - he put in two screens in the bar, detecting a local market among foreign students for an internet café.
The idea worked, but web-surfers are prey to viruses.
"I was having to deal with hundreds of them a month," says Paul. "The system virtually came to a standstill."
His radical solution was to take the hard drives out of the computers and run them off a 'live' CD, using free Linux software, rather than Microsoft's. This became the forerunner to Hospitality Machine, Hospitality Machine Kiosk
"Since doing that we've had no problems. We have had no viruses at all. It's been a revelation."
Success inspired him to develop Hospitality Machine, again using the Linux operating system. "I wanted to put everything a pub could need onto one CD, stick in on a website and give it away. I don't want to make money out of it. I just like doing IT."
So Paul remastered the Linux equivalent of Microsoft Office, squeezing everything he could onto a disk. It went live on the web at Easter, although he's still making improvements to it.
If there is a catch, it's that people aren't familiar with the way Linux works. Paul admits that it takes a while to get the hang of it, and although he's changed the look of it to make it more user-friendly, the different terminology can trip you up and it takes longer to learn.
He's available to help with installation problems, though, and he's still making improvements and is open to ideas for what else you'd like to see in the package. Go on, go mad! It's free!
To find out more - or download the software for nothing - go to www.hospitalitymachine.co.uk
