This topic is particularly relevant to experienced Lertap 5 users; it documents a variety of important changes implemented on the 1st of July, 2014.

 

As mentioned towards the end of the previous topic, Curtin University entered into a Lertap 5 marketing contract with Assessment Systems Corporation (ASC) in 2001. At that time ASC became the exclusive marketing agent for Lertap 5. It was the beginning of a partnership that lasted over a decade.

 

Up until 2008 or so, ASC had been what might be called a rather traditional software house, distributing their own systems, such as Iteman, Xcalibre, and FastTEST, and other systems too, such as Lertap 5 and software from SSI (including Bilog-MG). They also distributed technical books related to measurement and assessment, making them available for on-line purchase from their website.

 

During its tenure on the ASC website, Lertap 5 was the top income-generating product for non-ASC systems, and, until Iteman was upgraded to Iteman 4 in late 2009, ASC would recommend Lertap 5 over Iteman, regarding it as the most-capable classical test analysis system in its stable. (The new edition of Iteman incorporated a great variety of features previously found only in Lertap 5, bringing the two products, Iteman and Lertap, up to something of a level playing field. See this document for more comments.)

 

In the years 2010 and 2011 ASC began to increase its focus. New alliances and partnerships were made, and by late 2012 (or so) ASC was actively engaged in expanding into new markets, particularly those having to do with licensing and certification.

 

ASC got rid of their bookstore, and started to place restrictions on software sales. Any customer regarded as a potential competitor to ASC's commercial endeavors was to be prohibited from purchasing many of the systems on offer at the ASC website, including Lertap 5 and Xcalibre 4.

 

This effectively violated the original Curtin-ASC contract, and Curtin made a decision to terminate the contract at the end of June 2014.  Curtin University subsequently agreed to assign its share of the intellectual property rights in Lertap 5 to me if I agreed to remove Lertap from Curtin's web servers. This I have done; I now own all of the rights to Lertap 5.

 

The internet domain www.lertap5.com was redirected to www.lertap5.com/lertap/ on the 1st of July 2014.  (But www.lertap5.com will still work.)

 

I have created a new website, the one you're on now, to replace the old "Lertap resources" site at Curtin. Another new website, the "Lertap 5 store", has come on line too. Three of the other Lertap websites remain pretty much as they were as far as content goes. These are "Lelp (Lertap 5 help)", the very popular "sample datasets" website, and the "tips and tricks" website (also known as "B_Science").

 

But it's not back to business as usual. Users who have bookmarked favorite webpages in the past will find they don't work. A click on one of them, any of them, will bring users here, to this website. It will be necessary to get into the new websites, look for the content wanted, and bookmark them again. (Sorry, but it had to be.)

 

Users with versions earlier than 5.10.4 will find that the handy "little-h" online context-sensitive help links in Lertap do not work. All of them will route to the same place: this website. (An example of the little-h link is circled in red in the screen snapshot below.)

 

 

We offer a $24 update option on the store for users who want to bring their Lertap up to the current version (this option will be useful only to users with Excel 2010 or Excel 2013). One of the main advantages to updating is that Lertap's many links to online help will lead to the correct pages.

 

For your information, a link to the "updates summary" page is here. And here's a link to the "24 smack-Os option" at the store.

 

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Larry Nelson

Fremantle Village, Western Australia

July 2014