Category Archives: Technology

Technology

Moore’s law, suffering

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In the 90s, as a PC-gaming geek, I bemoaned Moore’s law; Intel’s founder’s dictum that the processing power of computers would double every two years or so (technically, the dictum might be that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double, but the former sounds more comprehensible and comes to much the same thing).

Why did I care? Because every new piece of software required a faster computer, and that meant, when I was trying to play Dune 2 on an ageing Amstrad PC2286 (clocked at a staggering 12 megahertz, costing the best part of £2k) that I had to do some considerable Macgyvery hackery to free enough system resources to allow the game to load – and it dragged agonisingly slowly when I’d built too many Harkonnen Devastator tanks (we didn’t have the money or inclination to upgrade every two years, certainly not so I could game more).

Today, over 40 years on from the original prediction, material and manufacturing limits are slowing the pace at which hardware becomes defunct. That is to say – the processes by which CPUs are created are reaching the point where we simply will not be able to make the processing elements any smaller, and so Moore’s law is slowing. Intel’s website explains, and gives us this handy graph:

Source: Intel

By 2020, Moore’s law will not apply to traditional CPU development. So one of two things will happen; first, companies will continue to shift multiple cores onto CPUs (dual, quad-, octo-core machines already exist) to allow for even more parallel processing. Second; we will move onto a new substrate for computer processing – potentially optical based computing or some such. I don’t think the technology for the latter is quite ready yet.

But the net impact for me, as a consumer and Deputy CIO for my company – lack of processing power no longer fuels hardware refresh in the way that it once did. A server I put in three years ago is showing no significant signs of performance degradation and the only real point of concern I have is that a hard drive will fail. Cost of replacement hard drive? A couple of hundred quid, if that. Cost of new server? In the thousands.

Of course, ideologically speaking, I’m looking to outsource all of this stuff (personally and professionally) to the cloud. But the UK’s internet infrastructure isn’t quite there yet – and neither are the services. But they move 10% closer every 6-12 months…*

 

 

 

* Yes, this is nonsense. I need to come up with some better laws.

Books, Technology

Why do we pay VAT on eBooks but not on print books?

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There’s no VAT charged on books – it’s one of a number of exempt products and services that the HMRC sets to be zero rated (For the full list – click here).

…but there is on eBooks. I’ve been searching for an answer as to why (and indeed, why print books are zero rated). I can only assume that – as books broadly speaking ‘better’ or are needed for civilized society, a view was taken that they should be zero rated and that’s been maintained over the years.

As to why eBooks aren’t zero rated? The suggestions I’ve read online indicate that legislators haven’t quite caught up with the concept. Would they be taxing a digital download/service, or a ‘book’ in the traditional sense? In the case of Kindle, you aren’t buying the book but the right to access it from Amazon – so how is that classified by the bean counters?

Irrespective of the logistics of it and whether they should be zero rated or not, this is why the pricing on eBooks is so broken. It is almost inevitably cheaper for me to buy a hardback on Amazon than the Kindle equivalent (given Amazon’s extensive discounting of new mass-market hardback novels). Frustrating, but I’m still paying the digital tax – the convenience of e-reading – not to mention the enormous amounts of shelf space it’ll save me in the long run – is immense.

Technology

The future of human/machine interaction

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I’ve been thinking about this one for a while as well. We all know the scene from minority report…

This has been held up as the way in which people will interact with machines, and – indeed – some people have been working to make it a reality.

But is this the way that people will interact with technology in the future? A big part of me thinks no – too much work! Sci-fi tells lots of different stories, and one of the main things people imagine is voice control.

My own feeling falls down a few different paths. I should flag that my agency has clients involved in a few of these fields – Logitech on the more traditional machine interaction side and Nuance on the voice recognition side – but these views are my own and uninformed by discussions with those guys.

1. Traditional man/machine interaction isn’t going away for a while. Mice and keyboards are very effective at getting through many of the tasks we’ve made for ourselves and are very well entrenched.

2. Voice is going to continue to develop. Whilst voice control has always had its fans and its critics, there will be two key things that both limit it and send it on its way. The limitation – is accuracy. In the near to mid term it’s unlikely to reach the 90+% accuracy levels you get when typing. The driving force – is the need for hands free. There are always going to be contexts in which hands-free control over a machine will be important, more so as mobile computing entrenches itself in modern society. So whether its in an industrial context, in a car or on a mobile device there are platforms on which voice would be an optimum control mechanism.

3. Touch. The ‘hot’ interface right now. As someone who owns and uses and iPad and and iPhone I can tell you that I am a convert; initial mediocre experiences on tediously inadequate Windows Mobile devices, unresponsive and stylus-driven, made me very sceptical indeed but the potential of this for innovative and interesting interaction with different applications is tremendous. But I can’t help but feel that the limitation here is the screen…

Which leads me to…

4. AR interaction. I have no idea how far this will go – at the moment augmented reality provides wonderful toys for marketers to play with and the potential for some retail novelty. But if you’ve read Charlie Stross‘ Halting State (as you know I have), you’ll have read of a world in which everyone wears AR enabled glasses, and can overlay ‘layers’ of Internet reality on the real world. So – an overlay of Google Maps on your current view of the street, complete with turn by turn navigation. An overlay of SquareMeal’s restaurant reviews. An overview of World of Warcraft’s avatars, if you are so inclined. An overlay of the police criminal database, giving you information on individuals, crime scenes, etc. Whilst that’s a fun extrapolation, I think there’s scope for more everyday applications, and – as ever – I have no doubt that marketers will be amongst the first to pick them up. Imagine an AR iPhone app, for example, that allowed you to view special offers on a poster, and interact with them to choose the one you wanted to download (app would recognise a QR code, or some such, download the relevant reality overlay from the Internet alongside an interaction protocol, and let you play!). Or imagine a gaming context – in which you could run around, laserquest style, interacting with phantoms like the one in the Lynx ad.

AR is exciting for much the same reason that the Wii was exciting – it involves every day people in an interactive experience – in the real world. There may be screens or bits of tech to support the interaction but over time they will fade into routine mundanity (is that a word? computer says no). Although I do think that perhaps Gmail’s new features might be taking the concept a bit further than it should go.

5. Direct neural interface. Still far away? I’ve not read anything in the mainstream media about this one. A lot of sci-fi features subvocalisation to intelligent digital agents (Peter F Hamilton (link) calls them ‘u-shadows’). I’ve never been sure what subvocalisation is (oh, that’s interesting, wonder what Nuance is doing there…), and over the years of meeting people, the workings of whose minds completely evades me, I’m cynical about the capacity of a machine to interpret the synaptic instructions of a broad subset of humanity. Not without the Cylons taking over, anyway.

One thing’s for sure – there’s a lot going on in this space and it’s massively exciting. Have I missed any particularly interesting ones? Always interested to read.

Technology

Helpful Mac gestures and shortcuts for Windows users

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I’m still getting used to the MacBook, so discovering things daily. The below are my current most helpful shortcuts and gestures. What do you use? Tell me, Macfans!

Option instead of alt, COMMAND instead of CTRL. COMMAND-OPTION-ARROW (or COMMAND-OPTION-SHIFT-ARROW). Keep messing that one up.

Command tab – switch apps, etc. Command generally replaces CTRL. Command-` will switch between tabs in an application.

Enter to rename files (F2 in Windows)

FN-DELETE – forward delete (delete key in Windows)

COMMAND-SPACEBAR – Spotlight search (keep thinking it should be left-swish – probably will be in Lion)

Loads of cool stuff with Expose, the applicaton switching, erm, application – COMMAND-F3 shows desktop, for example, Expose shows all open windows wby pressing F3 (same as three finger gesture)

Cool touchpad stuff:

Two finger touch gesture – scrolling.

Four fingers swoosh down gesture – view all open apps (or swoosh up to show desktop)

Three fingers sideways swoosh – back/forward

Pinch to zoom

Rotate to… rotate

Technology

International broadbandness

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Because I’m curious about these things, I tend to make a cursory study of broadband connectivity wherever I travel (after all, in my professional life, I helped promote a global Broadband Quality Study three times…). All speed ratings are as determined by the Speedtest.net app on my iPhone.

– In the UK, we get an average of 3 mbp/s down and 0.8 mbp/s up. Mediocre, but serviceable. I’m considering BT Infinity when my contract is up in September – anyone have any insight into whether that might be a terrible idea? This is a suburban reading.

– In Malaysia, which for years has had a fairly consistently terrible broadband service, my parents have recently acquired a fibre optic cable service – resulting in synchronous 10mbp/s internet access for them. It’s amazing, although not massively cheap – at over 40 quid a month, in local currency. This is also a suburban reading.

– In Denmark, the speed as tested was more like 2 mbp/s down and 1 mbp/s up. Which is low, until you consider that somehow they manage to stream HD IPTV over the same line, at the same time, with nary a glitch or artefact. They have some clever traffic management stuff going on to make that happen, although aspects of the connection confounded sense: the router periodically stopped routing to random websites (including Google.com) and the original router supplied didn’t have wifi or switch features, so was tediously difficult to share. Thank goodness for the wifi upgrade Onkel and Moster got! This is a remote rural reading.

I didn’t check Finland – but that was a suburban reading which has been the cause for a little complaint.

No grand conclusions to draw from this except to point out that the fibre experience was almost magical next to the increasing creakiness of DSL broadband, which gets proportionately worse the further you are from a city. My hesitation around BT Infinity stems as much from concerns about how effectively the copper and in-house wiring will carry an increased broadband quality, how crappy the BT provided VDSL modem/router is likely to be… as well as the cost, which is double what I’m currently paying with O2.

I’ll continue to fight a broadband crusade – we need Next Generation Access in the UK sooner rather than later – and look forward to seeing what the likes of BT and Virgin Media do about it. I can’t believe that the Malaysians have managed to provide such a good quality of service, but it’s early days for the product there so imagine TMNet will soon eat its own tail in contention ratios.

Any other International broadband experiences to share?

Software, Technology

Trialling Disqus

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I’ve been thinking for a while that this blog needed tighter social integration into Facebook etc., and came across Disqus ("discuss") whilst researching commercial spam filters for a client. Am trying it out here – it’ll allow you to comment on posts by logging into your Facebook, Twitter or Disqus account and hopefully diminish barriers to commenting marginally, not to mention make for a slicker, more interactive commenting experience.

Thoughts appreciated.

So far, all I’ve really had opportunity to notice is that the set-up process was fairly seamless and I had to do remarkably little hackery to get it to take the place of the native WordPress commenting engine, and that it syncs into the WordPress DB so even if Disqus someday goes bust (always a worry for Silicon valley start up services) – I’ll still have all the comments here.

Software, Technology

Google Android maturing fast

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If you read my earlier post on the Android vs IOS debate you’ll understand many of the reasons why I feel that Google’s platform isn’t quite ready for the mass market yet, despite its increasing sales success and technical brilliance. However, at Google I/O some news dropped that will make a difference to this.

In brief: Google is unifying the platform – which will mean fewer different versions in the wild, simpler and more regular updates for all phone (and tablet) users, and a marginally more tightly controlled user experience!

The conflict between open and closed, open ideals and ‘being evil’, tends to get polarised to extremes. In my view, complete choice is just too confusing for the average Joe, so am massively pleased to read that Google seems to have understood this (to some extent) – albeit from the perspective of the developers. Hopefully it’ll bring Android into contention for me the next time I review my handset choice… Which might give Google a little time to thrash it all out if the rumours of supply chain disruption to Apple’s iPhone5 production line bear true!

In unrelated news, my brother-in-law is trialling a Blackberry Torch for a week, having used an iPhone 3GS for the last 18 months. May well get his thoughts for another blog post, whichever way it goes…

Books, Software, Technology

Kindle blogstore… ish

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I made good use of the Kindle app over the sabbatical – I read my way through most of Joe Abercrombie’s back catalogue, including the First Law trilogy, amongst others, via the iPad and iPhone, whilst feeding Emily and when on planes, trains and boats.

So it was with some excitement that I realised that I could add my blog to the Kindle store and make it available to my adoring public via another channel. I’ve done so, and you can subscribe here… if you live in the US and have a full-on Kindle device. I’ve no idea why it’s not available in the UK… Can anyone educate me?

As to why is it that Amazon hasn’t provided similar features on the iPhone/iPad that it has going on its own device…? Again, not sure. Presumably to force sales of the Kindle to people that want to read blogs, newspaper etc., and make some money from the hardware sales… But you’d think that they make most of their money from the book sales rather than from the physical hardware??

Software, Technology

Android vs iOS – why I’m not yet with Google on this one

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I love Google. My relationship with the company is very different to my relationship with Apple (grudging respect) or Microsoft (mild, perpetual frustration). I use the company’s products all over the place. But I’m not yet unequivocally recommending Android phones to anyone but the early adopters for a few reasons.

Am interested in others’ thoughts, especially those who have been in both camps (I’ve trialled, but not owned, and Android device):

1) Experience uniformity. There isn’t any, because device manufacturers can customise it massively. So fine for early adopters, but for mass market – every Android device will feel slightly different and you’ll have to learn it again.

2) Software upgrades are fragmented. Because of the device fragmentation (some screens are 3.2 inches some 4.3, some 2.7, different resolutions, processor speeds etc), Google can’t roll out upgrades for everyone at the same time. This means where with an iPhone you potentially always have the latest features, with an Android phone you have to wait for your phone manufacturer to catch up and update the software for you. And worse, potentially your operator too.

3) Application sprawl. It’s bad on iOS but Apple’s Appstore’s quality control and consumer feedback mechanism protects you from dodgy apps and malware in a way Android does not always manage. Also, there are now multiple appstores for Android. Is that much choice good for a consumer? Theoretically yes, in practice it’s a little confusing.

4) Security. For the same reason it’s hard to patch the OS, it’s hard to provide uniform security. Exploits will occur on individual handsets customisations (HTC Sense, Motorola Motorblur etc) and legacy Android versions (a large number of handsets in the field are running Android 1.5, 2.0, 2.1 and the latest version is 2.3).

5) Skype doesn’t work with front facing video on Android, and one of the major uses my iPhone gets is letting Emily speak to her Grandparents from it and the iPhone plays a key part of that.

6) Peripherals are more easily available for iPhone at the moment – manufacturers only have to design for one/two form factors so there are tonnes about, from cases to docks and beyond. Not so with the Android jobbies…

7) Product creep. At least with Apple I’m guaranteed a year before I start to feel Phone Envy. Google’s iterative development cycle is seeing point releases and new features coming out several times a year, and hardware seems to be changing at least twice a year too. I can’t afford to keep up with that and I like being at the edge of things…!

There are tonnes of reasons to choose Android, don’t get me wrong – Google integration, great hardware from a number of manufacturers, loads of great apps, more affordable than iOS, and better on a number of individual features – but I can’t help but feel that on the whole ithas the potential to be a little more confusing than the average user might like – and so I’m sticking with iOS for now.

Music, Software, Technology

Shazam alternative for sung/hummed tunes

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If you, like me, have a good memory for tunes but a shoddy memory for lyrics or song titles, then you’ll have loved Shazam – the smartphone app that recognises music when its being played and tells you what it is and where its from.

Whilst staying with Sarah and Ilkka we tried it with a hummed tune, which – to be fair – it doesn’t claim to be able to cope with. It didn’t. So I researched alternatives and found Soundhound – it works on both Android and iOS devices and when I sing to it – it works out the song title pretty regularly.

Fantastically clever, and good for spontaneous singing competitions!