Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
March 17th, 2009
I’m a child of the 80s, my music came on 60 or 90 minute cassette tapes and sounded worse the more I played it.
Then came the mighty CD (although my mum still calls these tapes), 74 minutes of digital clarity that skipped when you tried to take it anywhere and scratched when you didn’t put them back in their boxes.
Just prior to the portable digital music player iPod generation, I had a miniDisc player which was a kind of half way house between tapes and CDs and (supposidly) better than both. You had the robustness of tapes with the digital music clarity of CDs. The only problem was that these were about 10 years too late. If they’d have been invented before, they’d have been a smash - the trouble was they were kind of laughable in a world where you could buy a creative Zen jukebox that would store a WHOLE Gigabyte of music on it’s internal hard disc.
And now iPod and iTunes rule the roost. But hot on their heels comes a new kid on the block: Spotify has quickly become my music player of choice when I’m working. But I can’t take it with me. So, where next for Digital Music?
Digital Music On The Go
Surly the next thing that Spoitfy must be working on is portability, and it seams fairly obvious that someone, somewhere must be beavering away on this right now. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Apple - Why not have a service, available through iTunes, that does exactly what Spotify does. Namely offer unlimited streaming music for a fixed fee per month.
BUT what if, as part of your monthly fee, you could license those tracks (obviously with some form of DRM) for your iPod? Suddenly things start to make a lot more sense, The DRM free version on the traditional store would still be available if you wanted to own the music, but you could simply “rent” the music for extended periods of time to listen to on the go. I, for one, would also be more willing to pay a monthly fee for a service that let me take music with me.
Maybe you’d have to re-sync your iPod every week (or so) to renew the rental on your hired music, just to ensure you keep paying the monthly fee and don’t just pay one month and get a load of music for one small price.
If Apple don’t do this, then I can imagine that Spotify may through some kind of iTunes plugin (although I don’t know about the technical ins-and-outs of getting this to work).
It just seems obvious to me that this must surly be the next step in the evolution of digital music. And maybe, with everyone paying a set fee, we can save the music industry.
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July 22nd, 2008
That’s the old joke right, they hate to love me and I love to hate them? Well, as Confucius say: Lot of truth come from crap Jokes.
By now I’m sure anyone whose called me or spoken to me in the last few days has heard me say “Yar, oh hi, yar, I’m speaking to you from my iPhone… *snort*”, and thought “T***”! But nevertheless I have it in my grubby mitts and I LOVE it! Yeah, OK, so the battery life isn’t great and it still doesn’t do voice dialing - but it’s mine… My precious!
Alas there is one big, terrible, steaming, huge, pile of festering turd - the O2 website. Never have I come across a web service so inept and terrible at every turn as the dog-shite that O2 are serving up.
My first encounter with the webshite was when I tried to track my order. I clicked on the link from the email they sent me, only to discover that as I was already logged in - my session had expired. So I was given the link to log in, which I did, but then it takes me back to the O2 homepage. From here there’s no links to order tracking, so you have to go back to the email and re-click the link. Which then tells you your session has expired!
In the end, the only way to access your order is to log out, click the link, copy the link, log back in, and paste the link… Nightmare.
The next was MMS. Everyone knows that picture messaging is Soooo last year, and that’s why Apple haven’t added this feature, but some freak still send me one. No problem though, you get a text with a web link and a code to type in. (Which could be better - like having the code in the url) but still… But, uh-oh, the link is dead! An Apache error occurs. I even emailed O2 “Support” about this - to which their answer was “we know, we’re working on it, but don’t ask us how long to sort it ‘cos our web team is clearly rubbish!”
I could go on, but suffice to say that for a company who is as big as O2 you think they could afford to spend a few bob on some decent systems and developers. The monkeys they’ve got working there now should be sacked, and they should get some actual monkeys in. They’d do a better job.
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July 10th, 2008
Let me tell you, I was bloomin excited on Monday to be able to order the new iPhone 3G. Especially as some of my mates had such a hard time getting on the O2 website let alone actually being able to order the thing.
It seems that O2 had expected maybe 100,000 hits total for the day. What they actually got was 250,000 by lunchtime. And while we’re on the subject, the O2 website is AWFUL!
So it’s now 34 minutes into July 11th, and I should be writing this confident in the knowledge that a friendly UPS guy will knock on my door in a few hours and proudly present me with my shiny new phone. But I’m not… Far from it. The fact I received a email from O2 today telling me they’d refund any postage I’d payed didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
So we’ll see.. I’ll update this post thought the day. Boring as it may be, I’m excited about it. I’m also keen to see if Lloydy and Ellen manage to get themselves one from the store.
Update - July 11th @ 9:32am
Well, after speaking to a very nice Scottish woman, and despite ordering my iPhone at 8:03am on Monday - it looks as if I won’t be getting my new toy today. In fact, according to her (I think she took pity on me after hearing my disappointed “oh”) I’m looking at around another two weeks. Gutted. Hope you had better luck Lloydy.
Update - July 14th
I was in the Apple store in Birmingham yesterday and they had plenty of iPhones. It’s a bit annoying when I’ve ordered one like a week in advance, and now have to wait another two to get mine. I really don’t understand why Apple can’t help O2 fill some of their pre-existing orders rather than selling to new customers in store. I’m now toying with the idea of canceling my online order and trying my luck at the store.
Update - July 14th @ 12.40pm
Called O2 who say my iPhone will be delivered on Friday.. I’m not holding my breath!
Update - July 17th
Still no iPhone, but I did get my bill via email! Yeah! O2 so far are AWESOME!! no. really.
22 Comments »
June 18th, 2008
Firefox 3 is out! And today the popular Spread Firefox site has set a challenge to break the world record for the most downloads in one day. And so far they’ve smashed all their expectations, 5.7 Million downloads, and they still have just under an hour left (if I’ve converted from PDT to BST correctly). I can’t help feeling though that this may have been a little marred by the strain on the Mozilla servers.
Several times this morning I’ve tried to download only to be greeted with a nicely styled “Technical Difficulties” page or, even worse, a HTTP/1.1 Service Unavailable page. Not a great help to the cause. But still, they’ve certainly smashed the 1.2 Million that Firefox 2 achieved on it’s first day.
And, yes, Mozilla’s claims that Firefox is far better than Safari may not be entirely convincing but I LOVE this new version. Having used the beta and RC’s for a month or so (combined with the web developer & Firebug add-ons) Firefox is my browser of choice, and I don’t really see that changing in the near future.
My only wish is that someone would conceive of a way for me to test sites in IE6 and above without having to switch to Parallels.
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May 13th, 2008
Gadgets - I flippin’ love ‘em almost as much as I love web geekary, so a system that combines the two sounded right up my street. (Actually, what is right up my street is a cost-cutter and a pizza place, but that’s another story).
Nike have just launched their new Nike+ Sportsband. This is a small USB pen type device that straps around your wrist and links wirelessly to a small accelerometer in your shoe. After running (or walking) the device connects to your computer and uploads all of it’s data to your online Nike+ account, where you can set challenges, goals, training programs and (even better) compare your stats with those of other runners from all over the world.
Performance
In terms of accuracy, the Nike+ system is spot on. I calibrated the device using a know 1/4 mile and it got it dead on. Even using a small pouch to hold the sensor rather than the official Nike+ shoes the accuracy is perfect.
The website is a bit of a hit and miss affair - The runs get uploaded ok, but the training section doesn’t really work for me at all. They need to debug that thing big time. But, there’s enough other features on there to keep me happy - and it’s the tracking of the runs that really interests me anyway.
Price
As I’ve only just started running, I didn’t want to invest in an expensive pair of running shoes - So I brought a £40 pair of New Balance 736’s. To attach the Nike+ sensor to the shoes I used good old eBay to get a neoprene pouch that threads through the laces for £8 (inc P&P). That works really well, it’s only just bigger than the sensor so it holds it very tightly - which is important for the accuracy of the sensor.
The actual Nike+ band (including the sensor) is £40, which I thought was quite reasonable.
I really wouldn’t recommend that anyone start like I did though - Get to a proper running shop and get yourself on their treadmill. They’ll be able to tell you what kind of shoes you need to support your particular style of running. I need to do this sharpish!
Verdict
I love it! Perfect for keeping me motivated and challenged, and at £40 it’s reasonably priced. I just wouldn’t go buying the expensive Nike+ running shoes.
UPDATE! Mon, 19th May
Ok, I’m not so happy. A couple of times the band failed to load my latest run onto the nike+ website. As this is the main functionality of the band, I’m pretty disgusted at this product right now. I’ve emailed the support guys, so lets see what that say… Watch this space.
8 Comments »
March 18th, 2008
It was exciting news when apple released details of the SDK for developing iPhone applications last week. Watching the roadmap video I was very impressed with the direction that Apple have taken for rolling out the development of apps to third parties and distributing said apps in a brand new apps store.
Of particular interest (aside from the accelerometer controlled games) was the AOL messenger. It got me thinking about the messenger system we use to remote-connect at work - Skype.
With rumours rife around the whole subject of a G3 iPhone - and now the ability for third party developers to bring their apps to the worlds best mobile platform, it isn’t a great stretch to suppose that they’ll be skype for iPhone.
Obviously, the 2.5G EDGE network that the UK iPhone currently uses wouldn’t be enough to support VOIP calls - but with 3G support it’s not unthinkable that iPhone users will be calling each other for free - Using their O2 unlimited data.
I wait with bated breath to see what O2 (and by arbitration Apple) will do about this threat to their revenue. If Apple’s recent actions are anything to go by, there must surly be some kind of reaction to this.
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February 11th, 2008
ebuzzing is a new pay-to-blog service from France, just launched in the UK. Their man Dan dropped me an email asking me to give it a look see, so here’s what I thought of it.
As a rule, I really don’t like pay-to-blog (P2B) sites as they’re usually really restrictive on what you can write about. Why would you write a review on a product you don’t own or particularly care about? Selling your integrity to the man has never been high on my agenda with this site, but Dan insisted that ebuzzing was different…
They basically have two ways to feed the blogger content - Network and Direct.
Network is the regular fare I’ve come to expect from P2B sites - there’s a big list of products and services that people want you to blog about with a price they’re willing to pay for you to do so. I say big list with some trepidation, as currently the ebuzzing UK site only has a request to review their own site (cue this review). Dan assures me that the French network is much bigger and they’re working hard to bring across some of their French partners as well as some big British advertisers.
Direct is what makes ebuzzing somewhat different. When you sign up for an account and add in your blog you’re given a recommended price per article (or you can specify your own). This is based on several things (technorati rank, inward links, etc.) but it looks like it’s mainly based on your Google page rank.
As far as I understand the idea behind this is - Advertisers that have a particular product or service they wish blogged. They are then presented with a list of blogs that write about that sort of stuff (via a number of tags you specify). I actually really like this idea - it means (at least if it works like it says on the tin) that you’ll only get offered the sorts of stuff you’d normally blog about anyway. And, if they’ve got any brains, the advertisers will have read a bit of your blog and know that what they have to offer will be well received. That way - less selling out and a nice little earner for you - just for writing about the stuff you normally would anyway.
If this actually works remains to be seen - but at least ebuzzing have thought outside the box a little.
The only other thing I’d like to say about their service is their website. Good idea, slightly rickety website. It’s still a little rough around the edges (for instance, some of the Javascript popup alerts are still in French). The whole site needs some serious interaction re-design. It’s not really intuitive or easy to use. But I think once they’ve sorted that out they’ll have a potential killer service.
In summary - ebuzzing is a great idea that hinges on them getting some big blogs together with some decent advertisers. Do that, and they’re in the money.
This is a sponsored article
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October 17th, 2007
Whist in Italy I took the opportunity to capture several images of the same thing - the bay at Salo, the Tower at Sirmione and the Arena in Verona.
Now by themselves, they look pretty rubbish, but stick them in a crazy-go-nutts program called Calico and out the other end you get beautiful panoramic shots.
I’m so impressed with this software. I didn’t use a tripod for these shots, I simply ensured there was plenty of overlap and then exported them full-res from iPhoto. Once in Calico I simply loaded the photos in, and clicked Align.
You can of course rotate each photo or change their order, but Calico takes care of the rest. Alignment, colour balance, the lot! Crop off the black edges and you can’t tell the photos were ever separate.
Pretty sweet! Sorry for those of you with a PC - perhaps someone could suggest something similar for other platforms?
2 Comments »
October 5th, 2007
Well, no great supprises but it turns out that there was an iPod touch in the box.
So far I love it!
In the box you get: The iPod (ohhh momma), Headphones, USB cable, A silky cleaning cloth, one of those dock adapter things (so you can use the Touch with Apple Speakers, etc) and a crappy little plastic stand. No stickers (didn’t they used to give you them with everything?) and a useless quick start guide in every language on God’s green Earth.
But onto the main event, the Touch itself. The interface is amazing! Even the keyboard (which pops up whenever you need to type anything) is easy to use, despite the keys looking too small for my chubby fingers to press. It really is well done, and well thought out!
The pinch-zoom is awesome, as is the double-tap - both really intuitive. No wonder they don’t provide a big manual, when it’s this well thought out it’s easy to use. You just kind of instinctively know what to do. Even the built in sound effects give you that warm glow of a well delivered feedback.
I LOVE Coverflow on this - I only wish iTunes could find more of my album art. The accelerometer (the device that flips the display or puts the ipod into Coverflow mode when you tip-up the device) makes yet another thing that could have been a User Interface nightmare a snap to use.
The only few gripes I have with it, so far, are…
- No Mail - What? Why? Come on Apple, why no mail app, surly this would be a natural thing to add in seeing how we have a web browser. Maybe they’ll release this soon
- No Bluetooth - This would be really useful to transfer photos, etc with my mobile and other devices.
- The bug in Videos - Sometimes (randomly) videos will pixelate to such an extent as to make them unwatchable. This is sorted with a restart, but it’s still annoying.
- No Quicktime in Safari - Again, What? Why? Maybe something to do with the zooming. Come on Apple, I’m sure your boffins can sort this.
- No games - Only a matter of time though I think
So in summing up - yes, it was a bit of a splurge (the first big spend I’ve made in a very long time) - but I’m very impressed. I’m sure they’ll be a new post soon about the dangers of the Mobile iTunes store! So look out for that one.
I’m on holiday for a week now, so roobottom will be back after a short break.
8 Comments »
September 26th, 2007
Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that my Mac has been slowly grinding to a halt, overheating and basically not bringing me as much maccy joy as she used to.
After a little investigation, I discovered that (for some unknown reason) Dashboard was chewing up memory and processor power by the fistful. In fact, it was claiming a mighty 80% chunk of my 2.3 Ghz core 2 duo.
80% !?! Something had to be done.
After a little investigation I discovered that there was a way to completely disable my little used Dashboard. The Dashboard app is run as a process of the Dock, so it’s a two stage task to disable the pesky thing.
First, start terminal and type the following
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
This will tell your mac that you no longer require Dashboard, then restart your Dock…
killall Dock
There. All better. If you (for some strange reason) decide that the Dashboard is a good idea, you can reverse the process with this command.
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
The run the ‘killall’ again, and you’re back in business - Although why you’d want this piece of useless gadgetry is beyond me. Have fun!
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