Category Archives: Technology

Technology

Widi–tastic

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Intel WiDi Wireless Display LogoI missed the release of a whole new acronym  – Widi – which is, broadly speaking, wireless display technology that will see PCs hook up with displays (that have special network adapters connected to them) without the need for any sort of cabling.

This sort of thing has been tried before but thanks to the fact that Intel is backing this particular standard it likely stands a chance where it hasn’t before. Huzzah – anyone with any IT skill who works in an office knows that helping people hook up a laptop to an external display – trivial though it is in theory – is inevitably a cause for some tedium.

Business, Technology

iPhones for Enterprise

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appstorevol

I was talking to a friend about Smartphones in the enterprise. He works for a large public company with a strong heritage of working in the public sector, and therefore an understandably high level of concern about IT security. It was for this reason that – despite the mediocrity of the Blackberry platform against contemporary competition and the plunging market share of RIM – he wanted his organization to standardize on Blackberry.

However, for many people accustomed to more… sophisticated Smartphone platforms, Blackberry seems arcane, counter-intuitive and sometimes an actual hindrance to productivity.  That’s not to say that iPhone, with its Apps, games, ease of use et al won’t cause its own distractions but at least people will be able to effectively browse the web!

So it’s with some satisfaction that I note that Apple is upping the game for its enterprise offer – there’s already Exchange controls on iOS devices (pins enforced etc) and remote wipes and remote management is possible (as is location tracking, natch), so enterprise deployment of Apps is an obvious next step in supporting group policy on App deployments within an enterprise environment. That this holds for non-Appstore apps as well is truly remarkable and a very grown up (and atypical) way for Apple to be dealing with the situation. Now, if Apple could just sort out offline email…

I’m going to write further on why Blackberry’s days in the enterprise are numbered and some thoughts on what mobile operators need to do to create more compelling tariffs for the enterprise for iPhone, as have a few other thoughts bubbling under on this.

Internet, Technology

Chuck Norris is the Internet – Cleverbot.com AI

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cleverbotI’m always curious about attempts to challenge the Turing Test, in which machines convince humans they’re human through intelligent interaction. I remember using an ancient text-to-speech programme that attempted this – Dr Sbaitso – extremely badly in the early 90s.

I’d love a world in which there were useful simulacra of humans able to support humanity in its day-to-day dealings (Skynet, natch), but have never yet come across a useful implementation of this technology.

Of of my many blog subscriptions pointed me to Cleverbot.com, an “AI” simulator whose intelligence is predicated on human knowledge available on the Internet. The bot warns you that its insights are based on what people say and think around the Internet and therefore might potentially be offensive.

It took me three questions to get to a Chuck Norris reference. I reckon five questions in I’d be onto Nyan cats and Dogforts.

To the creators of Cleverbot: if you were going to pick a compendium of human knowledge, as wonderful as the Internet is, you might need to sling in some algorithms that limit the frequency with which people mention Chuck Norris, pirates and ninjas, hipster (and other) kitties, things-made-of-bacon-that-normally-aren’t, and a thousand other memetic ideas. Despite the fact that people talk about these things at extreme length with surprising regularity online, they don’t in real life and therefore Mr Turing and his test will remain undefeated.

Unless, of course, that’s the whole idea. Imitate and Internet Savant and people won’t know the difference. It could be inspired!

Technology

Acer Iconia two screened laptop

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Dual touch ScreenI had a go on an Acer Iconia twin screened laptop whilst ambling through an HMV the other day, and it inspired me to make this comment – this should be in contention for one of the worst pieces of computer design ever. Admittedly I played with it for all of three minutes so take my comments with a pinch of salt, but, in brief: it’s just terrible.

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the stylings or construction of the device itself – it looked and felt sturdy. But a screen as an input device and a second screen as a screen? What were they thinking?

Here’s a few reasons why this concept will suck totally for a while.

  1. Battery life must be terrible. Laptopmag worked it out at around 2.5 hours but I’m dubious – given that my 7 hour rated Macbook Air gets 3.5 hours the way I use it I can’t see anything like this working for anyone for any period of time.
  2. It’s big, heavy and too bulky for any normal work surface, at home or in the office – unless maybe you’re a designer.
  3. The form factor and the OS make no sense. I’ve commented before about Windows 7 and touch – not there yet. But even if it did (as Windows 8 looks to do), what, would you occasionally hold this thing like a giant book? Stretch it flat and look at it sideways? What? Why? How?

It’s too expensive a novelty. People, if you’re trying to beat out Apple the iPad you’ve got to try harder and come up with better ideas than expensive novelty props.

Software, Technology

iPhone app to find nearest pool table #apprequest

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moment of impact

I was wandering Islington two weekends ago trying to find somewhere to play pool after discovering that the Elbow Room there has closed down, and despite the abundance of useful data on sites like Beerintheevening.com, no-one seems to have mashed up an app that tells you where the nearest pool table is. C’mon, devs and/or marketing folk for beer companies – that’s a free idea for you. Build it, give it away, and people will use it and buy your beer.

I promise.

Technology

Booz & co report on Generation C

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booznco

My colleague Harriet pointed me to this interesting bit of futurism from Booz & Co, looking at the rise of ‘Generation C’ – a new wave of digital natives born post 1990.

I used to absolutely love this future gazing stuff but I think I’m getting a bit cynical in my old age. As accurately as this seems to anticipate the arrival of certain technologies in the next 5-10 years, it is predictably Western-centric in its anticipation of tech adoption, and worse – it carries a strong weighting to what ABC1 families will be able to afford and educate their children in a way that they will be able or likely to embrace these technologies.

Charlie Stross notes when contemplating near future sci-fi that the future is, to all intents and purposes – 99% now. Some of the things we imagine as fantastical and futuristic today exists in a lab or in the homes of the ultra-wealthy. I remember reading about Bill Gates’ personalised, automated home 15 years ago – and today there still aren’t mass-market home-automation products of that ilk!

This is the fallacy that Booz & Co have fallen into, IMHO. These technologies will be there, but we’re facing an extended period of economic austerity today. That will mean some R&D budgets get cut and some product launches will be delayed. Look at LTE – for the last three years it was coming in 2011/12, and now some people are saying 2013/4. And who will pay the premium?

My fundamental issue is that between infrastructural challenges caused by austerity programmes and corporate conservatism, the growing divide between rich and poor amplified by growing inflation and increased taxation of the middle classes, we may actually see ‘Generation C’ as even more educationally fragmented than the preceding generation. There may be a high level of general tech literacy but as for more sophisticated use? That calls for more exposure, more support, more education. Not things we’re necessarily likely to see in an environment of increasing university fees, pinched spending in schools and high rates of inflation potentially limiting consumer spending on new technologies.

I interview grads every now and then and the most recent lot were born in the late 80s and early 90s. I find them to be as hit and miss as the grads of my generation, and every subsequent generation. Some had the good fortunate to be exposed to tech and embrace it, most people’s digital literacy starts and ends with Facebook.

But as I said, perhaps I’m turning into a cynical old man.

Technology

The rise of (Don’t) DIY PCs

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h2452I’m so used to being able to fix my own computer problems it was a bit of a surprise when the – expensive – media centre PC my parents bought me for my 30th collapsed a week or so ago. Out of nowhere, it failed to boot.

The independent PC manufacturer I bought it from was unfailing in its efforts to help me troubleshoot. I was given instructions on how to remove the (clever heat-sink shaped) casing and check the cables (all fine). I ran BIOS checks myself (insofar as was possible). But there was nothing to be done – my primary hard drive had ‘vanished’ along, taking with it my Windows installation.

So it’s been shipped back to home base for maintenance. The cost of shipping, £25, is substantially less than the cost of even a small SSD of the same quality that I’d had in there, never mind the time required to rebuild the machine… but its still frustrating not to have been able to sort it myself. It’s one of the reasons I resisted Mac for all these years – I wouldn’t trust myself to take an Apple machine apart – but to its credit, at least Apple doesn’t have its sole support location in Manchester…

Technology, Television

4OD review

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For all that video is the future of the web, few UK private sector companies seem to be managing it as well as the BBC. That’s certainly the case with 4OD, which, despite an early start, is noticeably less robust than iPlayer.

Now, as it happens, the E4/C4 programmes we watch are generally DVR-ed, so we have had little need to lean on it to date. However, until Damian told me about it, we entirely missed the newest retelling of the Arthurian legend, Camelot, currently airing on Channel 4. So we had to catch up on the first few episodes.

Generally speaking, the overall experience is significantly less slick than iPlayer for a number of reasons.

  1. On the same Internet connection (which is admittedly mediocre), caching takes place with intermittent irregularity. By which I mean, for no apparent reason, at random intervals, the video will stop whilst (presumably) the player catches up with content from the server. This very rarely happens with iPlayer for us, unless we’re watching something in high-definition.
  2. The picture quality is visibly crappier than iPlayer. Pixellation and artefacts are noticeable and distracting.
  3. No HD. Which is rubbish, really, given that the Beeb has it for all its tier 1 programming.
  4. It has an extremely shaky ad-insertion platform. First of all, 4OD has about three advertisers (Lynx, BT Vision and… 4OD during Camelot). Adverts for Camelot, available on 4OD (which is what we were watching), two versions of a BT Vision advert (sponsors of drama on C4) and an increasingly aggravating ‘premature perspiration’ advert from Lynx dry must have played a dozen times. Secondly, the ads force-play if you try to ‘resume play’ on a programme, which is just irritating (especially as you’ll have just seen them as they pre-roll before the show starts). Third, when watching episode two of Camelot, it skipped 20 minutes of vital exposition, having had someone presumably mistag what should happen after the second ad break.

On point 4) the mediocrity of the platform will likely keep sensible advertisers away. After all, if you know that your ad is going to end up annoying people through the frequency of play, why would you want that? Admittedly it does help with unprompted ad recall, but my affection for those brands is significantly diminished….

So, this is yet another reason I’m grateful for the BBC…

Software, Technology

Pokki – Appstore for Windows

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pokkiOne of the things I’ve grown to prefer on the Macbook over my normal Windows experience is the Appstore; the process of keeping Windows up to date by manual means is unspeakably tedious, as anyone who’s had to click ‘yes’ to a dozen updates and manually hunt down another dozen will tell you.

It was with some delight that I saw that a new app was bringing a comparable (although FAR more limited) version of the experience to Windows. The apps appear in your start bar and pop up and down as you use them.

Unfortunately, despite the slick look of the app, the usability isn’t quite there. Keyboard shortcuts don’t work in Gmail, the mouse scrollwheel does random things like minimise the application instead of scrolling, the Facebook app often ends up non-responsive and… well, there are only 8 apps. However the principle is sound and I’m hoping that MS catch up to this when it rolls Windows 8 off the conveyor belt next year. Either that, or people get Pokki working properly… for now, it’s no Sparrow for Windows…

Does the name remind anyone else of Garfield’s stuffed toy friend?