Macworld is reporting that Apple will not attend the Apple Expo in France this year.
My question is, does anybody really think Apple need to attend every expo. They generate more than enough publicity for any company without saying anything.
Unconfirmed List for next week WWDC
It was less then 30 minutes after the official word that iTunes was selling films in the UK store, before I was watching Batman Begins. But is the convenience coming at too high a cost?
In the UK we have become used getting ripped off around every corner, it stinks but we are British so we put up with it. My problem is that some of the films now available particularly Al Gores documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" £10.99 At this point the noveltywore off, I can have this shipped to me from amazon £6.22 in less than two days.
I aren't apposed to paying £6.99 for a film, but £10.99 for a film that you can buy in the shops for less than £7 I think its pushing it. Us Brits whilst being hard done by after getting the long of the stick for so many years we have all become cynics, and easily see where profiteering is taking place. We saw it with the iPhone, which didn't do anywhere near as well as planned (see here) We also see it with practically every computer or gadget, when you get nearly 2$US to £1GBP and the prices of things are the same in dollars as pounds you know there is something wrong.
Unless iTunes get more content up in the store and stop stupid pricing, they may just take off. Who am I kidding it will take off whatever apple do, its what their good at. I would like to think that Apple at least get some semblance of order in pricing and price match with the High Street.
There are certain points in your life where you can't help but look back on the preceding years. Officially I have now left college on study leave, until 20 June, which is my last day ever. So how the hell did I end up at this point.
My first exposure to a computer was a windows 3.1 machine in 1995, it was god awful but I was only five and young kids and technology don't really get on. It was a good few years before I got a computer of my own, I ended up with a Pentium 1 MX running Windows 95, which didn't last long. I couldn't play any games on it, and it was stable as a long pole with a plate on it. So inevetably it was upgraded to a machine running Windows 98 Pentium 2, with a decent graphics card and MPEG decoder card.
Its probably at that point that the bug really caught me, from then on in I had a slew of applications and experiments going on the poor computer, which I still have under my desk. Three computers later and I made the big switch to Mac, something which I haven't regretted, and still manage to keep up with windows excluding Vista which is almost as bad as 3.1. I also managed to pick up Ruby on Rails and a bit of PHP along the way, and ashamed as I am to say it Visual Basic.
People always ask me how I know how computers work. The simple answer is I have been tinkering with them for far too long. Every computer I have owned has been broken replaced upgraded and attacked by me, leading me to come across practically every common error you can get. Its sad to say but I can usually diagnose a hardware fault before the BIOS has finished its self test at boot up, and a software problem by hitting less then 10 commands.
The trend over the last few years is people are using technology every waking moment, but very few know how the stuff works. I love knowing how it works, and couldn't really care less about using it. I will strip things down take them to bits, rebuild them, and then maybe use them. Because of this I have a collection of gadgets and gizmos that few other people my age can boast. It also means, that college work can sometimes come a distant second to a new gadget or blog post.
I don't procrastinate as such, I just love technology to distraction. Wait a minute that is technically procrastinating. I don't know what career I may choose, convergent technologies mean that practically any field is open to me.
Best bit is I know there will never be a boring job, technology is getting more and more exciting the closer we get to the point on the curve we drop off.
The more and more I deal with companies and managing networks and working with the wonderful world of windows server, the more and more I realise how poor many companies deal with IT.
Q: "What is the problem?"
A: "I don't really know, but we can solve it if we buy a new X "
Here in lies the problem, there a number of companies that get this crap answer. There is very rarely a person in the company who will take responsibility and make sure their current system works properly before trying new things or upgrading, at the end of the day new hardware is meant to be better right?. Small to medium businesses have less of a problem with this because the amount spent on IT directly effects there bottom line, and don't have deep pockets for IT to begin with.
The problem becomes even more pronounced when you get to a school or college. There are obvious complexities with these system your dealing with a couple of hundred computers and about 10 times as many users, but when anything goes wrong more money 'must' be spent to solve the problem. Inevitably the systems breakdown within a couple of weeks or even days, because the real problem wasn't tackled or even attempted to find a fix.
For the average user this is a minor or major frustration depending on which way you spin it, but for anybody interested or working in tech like me, its like having burnt sticks buried into the back of my eyes. It can't be too difficult to get it set up right in the first place, I like buying new tech as much as the next man (probably even more) but you have to realise somewhere along the line what you are proposing is costing someone a shed load of money and that money could be used better elsewhere, especially in schools.
--Rant Over--
OK, so I will be the first to admit I am quite the geek but I didn't really get twitter. Fair enough I have had an account but it wasn't until last night that the penny finally dropped.
So I have twitter in my AIM account, but have never really done anything with it. "track iron man" the 3 words that brought about the revelation that made twitter make sense to me.
Within seconds I had 30 messages, all relating to our favorite subject Iron Man. Not content with just one subject I added a couple more, and then shut down AIM. Unfortunately for my iphone it was ill equipped to deal with that many messages in one go, so mobile messaging is now disabled. I think twitter is one of those weird things you come across that you have to have being using it for a couple of weeks, before you actually get it.
Heres to Twitter!!
Update:
Its one of those things that snowballs, I don't think I post that much but the information I get out of twitter is invaluable. Like:
Stay until the end of Iron Man, there's an extra scene.
Also its nice to just be able to post, that witty one liner you just came up with 
.
Phorm is a obvious idea, associate ads with what a user views and they will be more likely to click on these ads. There are obvious privacy concerns with the system what gets associate to the users, coupled with rushed legislature link. Could land many people in hot water and prison.
Phorm is just the latest incarnation of what is a global trend, we already collect enough data to be able to track every persons moves transactions and friends, we just don't want the dots to be connected up. Thats when it will go wrong. For better or for worse we are going digital, and more so with web 2 centralising the data we have, making it even easier for profiles of innocent people to be made.
The problem with these systems are if they are put together, no is squeaky clean. For instance I have peace of music in my iTunes library called "Thank God for the Terrorists" it isn't too hard to imagine if I was traced buying that piece of music, I could be arrested.
We need to fight to make sure these database aren't connected up anymore then they already are, we don't need ID cards, or CCTV to stop terrorism and crime. We need to grow up, and tackle the root causes. It's very dangerous to even think these things do anything to stop crime or terrorism.
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” - Benjamin Franklin
Gone are the days where you can launch a e-commerce site and be successful just because you are there and there is nobody else. Its a cut throat market and its all about how people see you. Here are my top tips for getting noticed and getting your plan right from the beginning and what to realise before you hit the road.
Tip #1 : Get your design and look right.
This seems a pretty obvious one but you would be surprised the number of sites that have poor design, whilst there are exceptions to the rule some sites are really poorly designed yet still manage a decent turnover (this is usually due to the companies adwords spend being an obscene number)
When a person first hits your site they immediately judge the quality and security, people now seem less bothered about SSL (because anybody can get one) and more bothered with a good design that looks as if the company cares and most importantly isn't there to scam you. Also attributed to good design is it makes the users want to look through your site and most importantly buy and return to the site.
Tip #2 : Payment Options.
This is heavily dependent on your particular circumstances but you should have as many payment options as you feel confident with being able to manage.
Pay-Pal - Should be your first port of call when setting up - it gives immediate credibility and web users feel safe using it.
Credit/Debit Card - Most important aspect to this is make it simple, there are a number of services such as Protx that provide a system that palms off you to another site to process credit cards. This method of processing cards is poor, because it doesn't allow you to have control over all the process and also does not maintain you image. The ideal system is being able to process the cards without taking the user away from your site, which usually means posting a request to the credit card processing company and they then send an appropriate reply. There can be issues with the as you may be required to be audited by your merchant bank to ensure security.
Tip #3 : Pick your niche & Exploit it.
This is were a lot of web start-ups fail and fail hard. There is no longer any market to be a one stop shop for everything, unless you have some serious capital it is unlikely that you can compete with the Amazons' and ebuyers' of this world. Stay small and specialise, there is a niche for everybody, and if your good enough at support and developing your corner of the net you will be successful. I know this isn't a particularly valid point of view for the bank manager, but the most successful companies generally follow the 'Build it and they will come' monica.
Another benefit of exploit a specific niche is that you will quickly gain creditability and notoriety within that field, this leads ultimately to more business.
Tip #4 : Google works for You, not You work for Google.
Adwords is a very interesting proposition for anybody online, the ability to target practically everyone on the net. The most important thing to remember is, You shouldn't spend loads of money with Google, you want it in your bank account.
Start small, run one campaign and target it to a small geographical area then when you are comfortable expand it. You shouldn't follow the tradition 'you get what you pay' for system with adwords, if you pay more it does not guarantee that you will be the at the top of list, it guarantees your bank balance stays low and makes Google some money.
And Finally:
Don't stay still, the web changes daily. Make it your business each day to find out what way the wind is blowing, and adapt accordingly.
Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world, seamlessly connecting you to the people, devices, programs, and information you care about - available wherever you happen to be. www.mesh.com
Microsoft being its usual self has joined the web 2.0 party, and looks as if the Yahoo! bid was a hint at a much larger plan.
So what exactly is the significance of Mesh and the whole Microsoft online play? Its validated a couple of ideas cloud computing is definitely going to have a massive impact the way in which we interact with both mobile devices and laptops/desktops, and also Microsoft has seen a little sense and is bending to the will of user.
Office Online?
An obvious application that Microsoft will put into mesh is Office, quite frankly the current online offering is underwhelming and Google Docs beats it, but in mesh with a cross-platform version of office that follows you I would be willing to pay for that.
Did I here you say Cross-Platform?
Along with the announcement of Mesh some other intersting things came out of the tour, support for Macs! Is this a much bigger plan to get out of the Operating System business or transition to providing a thinned out operating system that can access mesh (They may even use an Open Source kernel)
I think Microsoft has got themselves some new friends and I will be sure to check out Mesh in more detail very soon. Its going to interesting if they do it right...
This week the BBC has joined the OpenID foundation.
BBC Internet Blog
OK, so there are some problems but I do have faith that they know what they have to do particularly with making iPlayer Cross-Platform and stripping the DRM (I think a little wishful thinking is needed on this point)
Overall the BBC have seemed to be more than ready to jump in were the other industry giants have failed or been far too slow, obviously some people have learned from the Music industry hopeless mess. They have been willing to say most of the 15 - 25 year old market is not watching TV they consume their media online and not in the traditional linear sense like with traditional TV. Also an unexpected (at least to me) effect of iPlayer is how many 'older' people can and enjoy using iPlayer. I often get the comments "Wow, so I don't need to tape anything anymore?" response, which hats of to the BBCs marketing department.
I think some good things are coming out of the BBC, I wonder if they can keep it up and appease both the techies and non-techies alike. I know its a seriously tall order.
Ok so its not that new, but my ageing iMac has been dog slow lately, the solution look in activity monitor to see the uninstalled yet still installed eyeconnect demo is running taking a constant 25% CPU and 500mb Memory.
Zapped it out there and now my iMac is back on top form. I can hold off the Macbook Pro for a couple more months
CCTV cameras could be used in school exam halls in an attempt to prevent cheats using increasingly high-tech devices, examiners said on Friday. Reuters
Cheating in exams no way, mobile phones in exams no way. I know lets put a camera in the room problem solved.
The simple fact is that majority of people who are taking exam at least at A-Level aren't dim wits and don't cheat, the ones that do are generally the stupid minority and get caught. Why is are the Exam Boards bothering with this stupid idea, make exams more relevant and interesting for the minority groups who find it difficult to make the step up to A-Level (thats not meaning making them easier)
In biology, evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next - wikipedia
So I thought I would get back to my favorite subject apart weird jokes about people I know. Thats right some more Artilect goodness.
As part of my biology course we are ofcourse studying Darwinian Natural Selection (intelligent design people stop reading here) which is all well and good, but does it still hold true for our evolution now.
At its basic level Natural Selection states that:
Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common.
So taking that definition we could quite easily state that the Human Population is no longer subject to the laws of natural selection, so then what are we subject to. Looking at technology we can see that the computers and electronics we are interacting with on a daily basis, are evolving in a very similar way to how we evolved. Starting with huge vacuum tubes in the 1940s to the miniscule transistors that are in everything today. The pace of the evolution is exponential growing but like most things including house prices at some point it has to stop, but its a long way off yet.
From this it could quite easily be argued that we are stagnant in our evolution and technology is not, we need to evolve to survive, so get them old transistors merged already.
It just made me laugh: http://blog.laptopmag.com/olpcs-negroponte-responds-to-intels-classmate-2-and-new-low-cost-laptops
Can't take competition, I'd still take an ASUS eeePC anyday over either, and they never offered the buy-one-get one scheme in the UK (but it didn't turn out too stellar in the USA)
Well I was expecting the no easy way to upgrade to the 16gb iPhone from my 8gb. What I was not expecting is that you aren't able to add the International Data Plan, to any iPhone tariff. So it costs a whopping £7.50 per mb thats a couple of cents shy of $15, whenever your outside the UK. The best they could come up with is leave your iPhone in Airplane mode for the duration of your trip.
Get a grip O2, even AT&T can offer Data plans for outside the US to iPhone customers.
O2 obviously isn't making enough money or selling enough iPhone's to make it worth there while and they have completed re-structured there tariff plans, basically more for less. I don't make enough calls to make it any cheaper for me anyway 
More Details here
