Category Archives: Technology

Software, Technology

The shine of Chrome

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Disclaimer: Google Enterprise is a client. This isn’t really my clients’ beat but its not unconnected given how much faster Chrome is with Ajax/Javascript than most things, and therefore Google Apps. Well, until Firefox 3.1. Maybe.

I love Firefox. I love Chrome. I’m switching between the two interchangeably at the moment. Here’s the good and bad of Chrome and why I haven’t given up on FF altogether.

Good
Fast!
Less resource hungry – no more memory leaks!
Clean interface
More stable than FF & IE!
Windows only (I maintain my view that Apple Macs suck, and am not bothered that Google hasn’t yet released non-Windows versions. I’ve read that they will, so that’s good in principle)

Neutral
Still can’t save passwords for Yahoo (FF can’t either). Why not?
Can’t distinguish between different Google Apps profiles (again, FF can’t either). Why not?

Not so good
Shortcuts go weird (e.g. CTRL – minus in Google Docs to delete a row doesn’t work)
Needs an IE rendering plugin, and lots of other plugins, which will come in time…
Some websites go bananas
Needs nicer animation around the shortcuts toolbar

Technology, Travel

London – tech hostspot?

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Silicon.com (part of CNet Networks UK, a Brands2Life client – my employers, for those who haven’t been keeping up) has published a study into tech hotspots and London figures at no3 globally. Which is nice — and the rationale makes sense — lots of tech companies are based/invested in or near the big smoke.

But I couldn’t suppress a wry grin given the fact that the Circle Line and District Line continue to play havoc with my commute on a daily basis and we have a Boris Johnson as our mayor — who, despite his entertaining appearances on HIGNFY, probably couldn’t find the front side of an iPhone. And we all know what happened with Terminal 5…

Surely those things should have an impact on our standing?

Still, it is a good place for me to be working in tech. Wouldn’t trade it for any other techno-paradise (though I am hoping to visit San Francisco in the not-too-distant future, and who knows what impact that will have on me? Silicon Valley is no 1 on Silicon.com’s list).

PR, Technology, Work

Full disclosure

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If I wax particularly lyrical about Google Apps in the near future, it is because I think they’re awesome, but it is important readers understand that we’ve been appointed to handle the PR for Google Enterprise in the UK. This is the division of Google that helps businesses organise their information with its cloud-based productivity applications, its Enterprise Search products and its Geo applications.

You can imagine this is somewhat exciting for me, and my increasing use of Apps is one of the factors that has me wanting an EEE PC so much.

And, to answer your unasked questions, no, I haven’t met Larry, Sergey or Eric, but yes, I’ve been to the Googleplex in London, and yes, it is as awesome as you’d imagine.

Internet, Technology

IPv6, Twitter, and leaving the lights on

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Saw this video whilst scanning through anecdotes of Twitter’s uptime on its blog.


Control Lights with Twitter from Justin Wickett on Vimeo.

Interesting not because I think its a particularly useful application of Twitter to turn lights on and off, but because of the growing chatter around ‘IPv6’, a technology protocol understood by few people outside the networking but that will come to have more relevance as the Internet carries on its ongoing march.

Essentially, every Internet connected device there is has a unique address. In your case, it may be your broadband modem, and every other machine connected to that shares that IP address. This IP address under the protocol we currently use, IPv4, is a unique identifier of that device and takes the form of four three digit numbers separated by full stops. For example, 222.129.228.110. The upper limit on each three digit number is 255, I think due to some relationship between the way the protocol works and hexadecimal base.

What’s happening thanks to cheaper and cheaper technology allowing connectivity, more and more advanced devices supporting connectivity and the general all-around goodness of Broadband is that people have more and more devices they’d like to enable as unique devices on the Internet. You might already monitor an IP CCTV camera remotely, or login to Slingbox, or want to use Twitter to turn your bedroom lights or oven off.

Gradually, as these requirements grow we’ll use up the 4.3 or so billion addresses IPv4 allows and we’ll really need everything to switch up to IPv6 – which supports trillions. There’s been limited imperative to move over to IPv6 in the past as people genuinely haven’t been able to understand why they would every need more than 4.3 billion addresses. Well, the maths has gotten a little bit easier to understand thanks to growing ‘net penetration and an understanding of how we can use the net in different ways that makes things like giving a light bulb an IP address useful.

Which is pretty cool, from where I’m standing.

NB There’s absolutely no need for the light bulb in question here to have its own IP address, but it is the principle I’m talking about here, people. Sure, it’s just massive geeks doing this stuff now, but Facebook just had geeks on it for a while and look at it now…!

Film, Technology

Cisco on Innovation

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Cisco is a client of mine, so you know.

I don’t ordinarily write about clients at the weekend. Pretty much never, actually. Buy we’ve been working on a cool project with a man called Ian Kennedy at Cisco, and I spotted that Ian Forrester had been involved with the Thinking Digital conference in Newcastle last week and caught Ian K’s talk on ‘Open Innovation’ on Blip.tv.

Much interesting insight. Ian Kennedy’s a very smart guy and if you’re interested in the ongoing development of technology (well, everything really) in the UK and how one of the very big, very innovative companies in the world is approaching it, have a view:

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Update: Turns out Ian made it onto Sky News this weekend too, talking about future collaboration and meeting applications, amongst other things.

Gaming, Internet, Technology

Mobile broadband causing problems for Poker (or vice versa)

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I’ve seen a couple of mentions of online poker sites being blocked by mobile broadband providers… But I wonder why this is happening, if, indeed it is at all.

Cheating poker jockeys would find the appeal of cheap (as low as £10 per month) mobile broadband very strong – they could have multiple IP addresses at a single location and, well, cheat to their hearts’ content. Well, cheat until the algorithms/monitors looking for anomalous behaviour caught them out. But y’know, they could cheat.

So it’d have to be the poker sites blocking access to people from mobile broadband connections rather than the other way around, given that, if anything, online poker would provide an incentive for people to sign up to mobile broadband.

For the record, I love poker, don’t have a USB mobile broadband dongle, and wouldn’t cheat at online poker even if I knew how. Cheaters are wrong. But was just wondering about it, inundated as I seem to have been with mobile broadband adverts lately.

Technology, Television

Three things to look for when buying an HDTV

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I get asked about tech stuff occasionally (once or twice… an hour), and one of the questions I get asked that doesn’t relate to fixing a problem directly with Mr Gates’ software is “what do I need to look out for when buying an HDTV?”. High Definition TV is awesome and is definitely worth buying, but requires some thought.

HDTV LCDs/Plasmas have been around for a few years but there’s a bunch of different elements that consumers need to look into when choosing one which can make it a bit confusing.

First, resolution: The higher resolution of the image is what makes a TV ‘High Definition’ – regular TVs have standard resolution of around 720 by 480 pixels. 720p TVs up this resolution to 1368×768 (TV output is usually at 1280×768). ‘True’ HD TVs output at a mammoth 1920×1200 pixels. The higher the resolution, the better the potential for the ultimate image displayed as you can have twice as many dots defining the picture. For a neat diagram to give you a sense of quite how much the different HD formats add to the picture, check the image on this Wikipedia page. Not all ‘TrueHD’ panels are created equal (most are produced by Sharp and Samsung and developed into their own product lines by other HDTV manufacturers), and there are some very cheap ones on the market which will display a poor quality image even with the highest quality source. I don’t see the point in getting anything other than 1080p at this point — they’re getting cheap enough; but do make sure you get a good enough one for your needs.

Which takes us onto… the Standard Definition Engine. Given the paucity of HDTV content out there (only Sky HD and Virgin have HD channels in the UK at the moment, although future evolutions of Freeview and Freesat will give us new means of accessing content), and even these are only in 720p. There is no ‘TrueHD’ broadcast content. As such, you need to make sure that your HDTV makes standard definition signals look passable. They won’t look as good as proper HD sources regardless, but some normal Standard Definition engines make better work of the signals received through SCART leads et al. If you don’t know whether you have any standard definition sources… well, you do. Your DVD player, VCR, Sky box and Freeview receiver are all most likely working in SD. If you have anything that uses a SCART lead or a composite or S-Video lead, it is working in SD. So test the TVs – make sure they aren’t just showing you Blu-Ray content, which is in 1080p, make sure you watch analogue BBC1 or some such to make sure it’s not pixellated to hell.

The final thing I think is really vital is the connectivity. New, HD sources will output in HDMI (a new cable socket, essentially, about a million times better than SCART). Many new HDTVs come with only one HDMI socket. Even two will start to feel like too few once you’ve got a games console hooked up. I have a lead in from my desktop PC and one from my DVD-PVR and have run out — so when I (eventually) get a PS3 I’ll need to get a switcher box. Which will be annoying. So look for 2-3 HDMI sockets minimum, and make sure you also have VGA in, RGB, sockets as well.

There are other things that matter to some people – plasma vs. LCD, response times, rated lifetime of panel, energy rating, integrated DVB etc. But I think most of this stuff is secondary to the top three. Remember, just buying an HDTV won’t necessarily improve your viewing experience — you’ll probably need to get some HD sources at the same time, so save some cash for a DVD player / freeview box that ‘upscales’ to 1080p (includes clever software making standard def signals look high def).

Anyone think different? Let me know in the comments. Be interesting to see how quickly this advice dates…

Technology

On Shy iPhones, Flo’ Windows Mobiles, and World-eating Androids

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Right, so much as I enjoyed Stephen Fry’s epic opus on the iPhone*, my general love for fully specced** devices and general contempt for Apple’s hype machine (how can a company with such a good rep have such an arrogant approach to PR?) means I don’t really give two hoots about the launch last Friday. No idea how many iPhones they’ve sold and unbothered that it doesn’t sound like too many…

More interesting to me is the Android launch from Google. No idea, really, what the devices will look like but there are lots of elements of the software that look awesome. In particular, the 3Dness of it all, the full technical spec (and I love that HTC is behind the platform because I love their phones)… Check out this video, via Kat at Tech Digest:

Annoying as the American marketing speak and repeated references to the “power of the platform” are, it does look like it has some good stuff in there.

As to Windows Mobile? Well, I’ve been on that platform since 2002 and would love it to do well — but ‘TouchFlo’ probably won’t cut it in the long term. They need to do some proper innovating on the UI there. That said, I’m up for contract renewal in February, and given that I have no intention of buying an iPhone in the near future and that the first Android handsets will miss my upgrade window by about 6 months, I will probably be trying to pick up an HTC Touch Dual in February…

* His ‘dork talk’ column on the subject is actually less enjoyable, IMHO…

** Rory Reid on Cnet.co.uk, speaking wittily on the rumoured Apple tablet PC:

So, can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is ‘yes’. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.

Internet, Media & Marketing, Technology, Work

From Shorthand to Broadband

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For those of you with an interest in technology, public relations, marketing and the media, my agency, Brands2Life, has done a really interesting piece of research looking at how journalists’ jobs have changed in the 15 or so years the Internet has been around. The headlines on point to journalists across all media types (not just technology or online) working harder and having to manage multimedia content and reader communities — a very different brief to what “traditional” journalism usually entails on a day-to-day basis. You can read the story in depth by downloading the research report from here. There are some graphs up on Flickr if anyone wants them.

The name – “From Shorthand to Broadband” – inspired this video which summarises the development of the media story. Have we got the whole story in? Is there something else you would have included / subbed out?

My personal view? From a business perspective, we’re at a really interesting point; one business model (traditional, ad-sponsored, print and broadcast media) is struggling in the wake of having to share its revenue with the online world, and the online world hasn’t yet developed a business model more substantive than relying on Google adwords. From a consumer perspective, broadband and web technologies are available and accessible to the point where the way everyone interacts with media has changed, whether they realise it or not. Not everyone’s there yet, of course, but where a few years ago you wouldn’t have been that surprised if someone from a different generation didn’t know how to Google something, today I’m having conversations with my mother about Facebook, and helping her organise to deliver a plenary speech at a conference via Skype video conferencing.

From a PR perspective — with journalists having to work differently, is it surprising that PRs will have to as well? Conversations in the industry — even with technology companies traditionally on the edge of new things — indicate how early on we are with this part of the story. A lot has changed since the ‘Martini lunches’ of legend, and even more is set to.

Be interested to hear from people who’ve been in one side and out the other — whilst there’s a lot of “web 2.0” that’s hype, I have a feeling that where we are with “social” media today is a pale, pale precursor to the way we’ll interact online in the future.

Technology, Work

An interesting work week

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Had a really interesting week at work last week – amongst other things, was working with a couple of fascinating senior Cisco-ites (Richard Allan and Robert Pepper) to campaign for wireless broadband to get some of the spectrum that is being freed up following the Digital Switchover. If you don’t know what the digital switchover is, check this… and this. For those who need disclaimers, obviously Cisco is a client…

In any event, here’s what’s happening. The analogue TV transmission signal is being switched off, in stages, starting last week in Whitehaven, Cumbria. In 2012, or just before, Ofcom will ‘auction’ off the license that is being freed up, as digital TV transmissions are more efficient, and can be compressed to use less spectrum for more channels. Various people, including the HD for All group and the EU commissioners (as I understand it) are campaigning for different things — the HD group for the spectrum to be allocated to HD over Freeview, and the EU has some thoughts on allocating some spectrum for DVB-H (mobile TV).

Cisco’s thrown its hat in the ring for wireless broadband, and I’m totally with them on this one. The impact broadband has on social and business development is remarkable and intuitively understood by someone who works where I do… a conversation with Damian highlighted the fact that, actually, it may not be so intuitive for others, but this is the role of education, and local business industry groups to work on. It is ludicrous that in this digital age, things like this happen — according to the Times, a woman had to wait 11 months for broadband to be wired to her home… 90 miles from London, the biggest Facebook city in the world.

There are a few reasons broadband needs this spectrum…

First: As Richard put it, it is the “Park Lane and Mayfair” of the EM spectrum (Pepper called it the “beachfront real estate” for you American readers) – it passes through everything easily, which a lot of wireless technologies, operating in their native frequencies, don’t. If you live in a big house, does your home Wifi signal penetrate through as many walls as you’d like it to?. Cisco’s actually technology neutral in this debate — they just “love broadband.” How else will you reach that 0.7% of the population (or whatever it is) that live outside the range of the fixed line infrastructure?

Second: Fixed line broadband needs viable competition! Wireless broadband will force the fixed line providers to up the ante and be good for consumers.

Third: In developing countries, we can skip fixed line altogether! But we need this spectrum – higher frequency transmissions apparently don’t pass through leaf foliage. Not quite so useful…

Fourth: You can still have video content delivered (over wireless broadband), which will be more interactive and generally better than the TV you’re used to (eventually, once Joost and IPlayer and applications like them grow up and get better). And, thanks to compression, you can still have HD over Freeview and mobile TV – just maybe not as many channels as people might like. But then, how much HD content is there? And, over time, we can re-allocate the current TV spectrum between SD and HD channels…

Fifth: The opportunity to ‘rezone’ the spectrum doesn’t happen often! We shouldn’t miss this opportunity by locking ourselves into a restrictive medium that doesn’t reflect the way people increasingly live their lives… (think of all the surveys that have shown that we surf the web more and watch TV less…)

There’s lots more to this debate, and some of it has been picked up by some of the journalists we spoke to – including Jane Wakefield’s piece on BBC News Online and David Meyer’s ZDNet article. There’s lots more interesting things coming – Google is rumoured to be putting a bid in for the US’ spectrum (which goes on auction in January) so there could be a whole spate of new, disruptive technologies coming into play.

Completely fascinating stuff, and great to be involved with them on this. Be interesting to see how the conversation develops over the next few years.