iPad Vs Geeks

I am a geek but sometimes even I get mad at the geek mentality.

You can’t have missed the bru-ha-ha over the Apple iPad.

Apparently it’s all wrong …

Now, some of that stuff I think will be present in version 2 (the camera seems pretty much guaranteed) but it amazes me how so many geeks think this product is aimed squarely at them.

Not for Geeks

OK, so the mighty Steve made a big play about it being better than a netbook, but in my view this has always been a Kindle killer.

It’s a colour Kindle that runs applications.

A computer Grandma will love

Regardless if you think this is an ebook reader (I do, but you do not have to agree with me), ask yourself what your parents and older relatives do with computers, or want to do. Think about your friends and relatives who are not IT savvy but would like to be more online for whatever reason.

Which of those things really need a fully equipped computer, operating system, or even multi-tasking? None is the answer.

Flash could help some of that, but it is by no means essential to the experience.

Geeks need not apply.

I think geeks need to remember that IT is not their sole territory any longer. When the iPod came out the geeks revolted saying it was all wrong, but those white earbuds soon became a badge of cool (something we geeks do not understand) and the geeks were silenced by sales data.

I’m not saying the iPad will be as big as the iPod. I am saying that the geeks need to butt out and let the actual target market decide.

Personally, I never buy version 1 of anything unless I absolutely have to. I’m waiting for the iPad 3gs like I did the iPhone ;)

iPhone Addict

Little did I know when I upgraded my phone to an iPhone 3Gs that I would be writing what I am telling you now.

My name is Chris Garrett and I am an iPhone addict.

Yes, it is true. Evidence, unfortunately, is slapping me in the face as I write this.

First I was distraught when I dropped my beloved iPhone in a mop bucket full of dirty water, drowning it so completely that it had to go to the iPhone hospital and be replaced with a refurb replacement (£150 at the Apple store). While the replacement is in theory identical, and should be good as new, I still miss my original (and worry about who has access to the data stored on it!).

Next, during my recent trip to Las Vegas, I clocked up £100 in roaming data fees in just a few short hours of pretty normal usage. The only thing that stopped that figure being way higher is the fact I am on Pay as You Go and they would not allow me to top up any more within a 30 day period. Yes, strange as it may seem, o2 phone network do not actually like you to send them more money. They would rather you be stuck in a foreign country with no way to make calls.

Now, lesson learned from USA, I am in another country, craving the use of my funky digital friend, but unable in case I use all my call time up Twittering, Flickring and generally messing around with the mobile interwebs. And it is driving. Me. Mad.

Fact is I need mobile data. There is not enough usable wifi (free or paid) to replace that always on 3G connection. Most useful travel functions (eg. Maps!) need some sort of data access, once you get past making calls. Even my music now comes down streamed. Even the internet connection in my hotel that I am writing this post via, well, plain sucks. Normally there is a time or a data limit. This connection has both. $0.68 per megabyte, 1GB transfer, and either two hours or 24 hour limits. That’s cheaper than the £3 per megabyte of roaming 3G data I have to pay, but not much better.

This shows two things to me:

  1. I need help with my iPhone addiction
  2. Apple need to sort out this expensive roaming data thing, it really sucks.

iPhone 3GS First Impressions

iPhone 3gs

A while ago I broke all the geek rules on this blog by declaring Why I am Waiting for iPhone

iPhoneThe iPhone is coming to the UK this weekend and I am shocked myself to tell you this, but I will NOT be in the queue to grab one.

The problem was not that I did not like the phone – I really did, the problem was that there were several features that I really needed.

I have gotten used to retrieving emails at the top of mountains, skype chat on frozen lakes, and remote managing servers from the beach. This gadget has allowed me to blog on planes and on motorways, and catch up with documents in several continent’s Starbucks.

…

Yes, I am an Apple-loving geek, and many of the iPhone features do have me lusting over the device, but after careful research I have found not one but ten deal-breakers:

1. Modem
2. 3G
3. GPS
4. App Support – (Skype, Remote Desktop, VNC)
5. Edit Word or PDF
6. Removable Storage
7. Camera + MMS
8. Downloads
9. Bluetooth
10. Java / Flash

You might be already aware that most of these are now fixed in the iPhone 3GS, so today I queued up with the other geeks early and grabbed my iPhone from the Apple store!

I did not keep my Pocket PC based smartphone for long. In fact for the last few months I have been using a combination of an iPod Touch and an aging Nokia n95 with the 3g connection shared via wifi. This gave me confidence that the platform could do most of what I need to do and my requirements actually changed over time.

Let us have a look at my check list to see how things have changed …

  1. Modem – You can now tether the phone to provide laptop internet data access but expect additional fees unless you jailbreak your phone to unlock it. I am disappointed from an over charging point of view, especially as you are supposed to get unlimited data!
  2. 3G – This was fixed in the previous iteration, but supposedly this version ought to be able to get the full 3G 7.2Mbps HSDPA speeds.
  3. GPS – Not only is there “Assisted GPS” support, but a compass for directional navigation (useful for when you are on foot), and screen rotation within turn by turn directions in apps like Tom Tom.
  4. App Support – (Skype, Remote Desktop, VNC) – Remote desktop support was the first to go, I no longer do any server management – all of that is outsourced and I am happy that way! But you can get VNC clients for iPhone if you need to. There is Skype, kind of. It is not 100% perfect (for example right now it is refusing to import my contacts) but it is there.
  5. Edit Word or PDF – You can not edit as far as I know, but using the Files Lite application I have transferred 200mb of PDF and other office documents for viewing, and you can also open them from email. Since I wrote the previous article, Google Docs has become far more popular for “road warriors” so I expect this to be less of an issue anyway.

    At this point it is important that I mention that Cogniview (the company that lets me have fun on this blog) is the maker of the top PDF To Excel converter. And now onwards with the iPhone review…

  6. Removable Storage – No removable flash memory but I have signed up for the MobileMe “cloud storage” service and expect that will mitigate this problem.
  7. Camera + MMS – Yup :) In fact I am pretty happy with the autofocus 3mp camera, and video results, see below.
  8. Downloads – There are various workarounds, including some that involve jailbreak, but file management is still an issue as Apple seems to want to force us to only use the App store and be limited with what we can download.
  9. Bluetooth – Bluetooth is present but not great, an area for improvement. In fact the staff at the Apple store today said it was the one area where they were disapointed. That said, I am not a big BlueTooth user so can live without it.
  10. Java / Flash – I have come round to the thinking that the lack of Java and Flash is not a big deal, now that the YouTube solution of a custom application has been brought up to spec with the user login now enabled.

So I am super happy :)

Applications I have installed are:

The camera quality is very good compared to previous models. Although the megapixel count is not as high as the n95 at only 3mp, the autofocus does make a big difference to the actual results. See below.

Mon-keh

Video is not only good quality, but you can even edit right in the phone!

(I forgot to rotate the phone, but it does do landscape)

So, over all happy.

Let me know what you think in the comments …

VOIP Choices

You know it is going to be an interesting day when you spot your wife scowling at a telephone bill. Some times our bill is a mile long and the figure at the end appears to have been confused with the national debt of a small country.

I’m not having an affair or calling dodgy premium lines. Honest!

Part of my work involves a fair amount of time on the telephone. This is fine for consulting calls as the client pays me well for them, but lately I have been doing a lot of interviews since our book and my course were launched.

When you have to pay for your own transatlantic calls that can last an hour or more, you start looking into better options for telephone service!

Of course the first place I turn is Skype, which is brilliant in many ways, especially because I can record, but all too often on calls that go on a while the sound breaks up or drops me entirely, especially over long distances. This is not good in live interviews.

Even though I live in the UK where we are a fair bit behind the US, there are still a confusing array of alternative VOIP service options.

The problem is how to work out the good from the bad? Will any of them be any better than Skype?

Please let me know if you have any recommendations in the comments …

A letter to my hosting company

Dear Web Host,

We had a good run. Lots of great memories.

But I think it is about time I left.

Yes, I have been looking around, I have been seeing others. It’s me, not you. Don’t blame yourself.

People told me you were cheap, but I didn’t mind, in fact I found that charming about you. I liked that you were popular, though I know people thought that meant you were “easy”. Perhaps you did have too many friends now thinking about it, probably too many for you to handle. Half the mess was likely caused by you trying to please too many too often.

I think it is best for both of us that I move on. Don’t worry, you won’t even notice me moving my stuff out.

It’s just I was ready to get serious, and it seems you were not up to that level of commitment. I had grown up, but you just wanted to stick to your old fun ways. I need more than that.

I need to know you will be there when I need you.

Do you take your responsibilities seriously? I’m not sure you do.

A bit of fun is great and all, but, you know, I am looking for you to be by my side through good times and bad. How do you think your behavior reflects on me when I have visitors over?

Sometimes people come to visit and you are not even there. How hard do you think it is to get people to come back? Not easy, I will tell you. And when they do visit and everything is a mess? It’s just not the impression I want to give people.

So, I am sorry, but I have found someone else. Someone that is willing to be a serious partner, who will look after me.

But I will always remember the good times.

Lots of love

Your hosting customer

The Growing Threat of DDOS as a Weapon

The more we build business and economies on top of internet infrastructure, the more we are vulnerable.

I was reading today about yet more DDOS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service) on websites. A DDOS is a lethally effective way to take a website unavailable, and often requires expensive and specialist help to solve if the attackers are determined and skilled.

These latest events may be political, may be grass roots or might even be government sponsored. If anyone knows, nobody is telling. Fact is though it would be naive to think only one group, country or movement is looking at this as a useful tactic. You can bet every government has at least investigated it.

The aim of these attacks could be to knock the site out so it is unavailable, degrade the service, so the users go to a competitor, for example, or to hold the owners to ransom. If the attack is politically motivated a satisfactory outcome could be for the site to be unavailable in the attackers home country, either as an outcome of the attack or due to heavy handed remedial measures.

DDOS works by flooding the host computer with requests. This could be as simple as getting a story to the front page of Digg for weaker hosts, or by getting a large group of people to all descend on the site at an appointed time.

Obviously in the recent cases they were more industrial strength, for example in the TechCrunch report about SlideShare

We’ve been told that the attack reached a peak of 2.5GB/sec and consisted entirely of packets sent from China.

That’s a serious attack. This will have required a large network of computers, a great deal of bandwidth capacity, and lots of separate lines. A common approach is to use “zombie” computers, that is computers infected with malware so the remote operator can use the resources to perform the attack while the unwitting owner is fully unaware.

You can read more on the topic and more sophisticated approaches at Wikipedia.

The concern is not so much that this kind of attack happens, but more how easily it can be done, and that, other than some basic protection, there is not a great deal many companies can do about it.

While a good network security plan can fend off lower level attacks, a seriously funded group could do a huge amount of damage to even the best protected business. Beyond that, Governments around the world are putting their tentacles into ISPs under various guises, overtly and covertly.

How difficult would it be for a government or security service to launch an attack if they wanted to? I expect it has already happened more than once.

Could this be the commerce or political weapon of the future?

Asus Eee PC the Wave of the Future?

The latest gadget on my “I want I need” list is this little gizmo. The Asus Eee PC.

It might not look much but I think it is a vision of things to come.

While Apple was making big about their thinnest notebook, Eee PCs were delivering something equally remarkable, perhaps more so.

This machine comes in at just over £200, less (even as low as $299) if you are lucky enough to live in a more reasonably priced country and choose the base model.

It weighs just 2 pounds. I have books that are heavier and bulkier.

You see, for me, thin is not much of a selling point. Light is. Add to light cheap, and you have right there a winning combination.

For travelers, being able to pack power into a compact and light unit, delivering everything you need without going over your weight allowance or getting funny looks from the nice TSA folks, has real benefits. Even better having it at a low enough cost that you don’t convulse into panic every time someone waves their Starbucks over it.

The benefits don’t just end there. It runs Linux, hence the low price, but you can install XP if you have to. Wifi is built in, and has no hard drive so is power efficient. You can plug in external monitor and keyboard but the keyboard is well equipped for touch typing. Some models even have mic and webcam.

Of course the clones have arrived, but the Asus is still the leader. The question I have is how are Dell and Apple going to respond? This machine has found a niche in the market full of hungry consumers. Could it lead them to create an ultra compact and lower cost device to compete? You could argue the iPhone is kind of in that market but not quite.

I’m seriously considering buying one of these Eee PCs for my next trip in May, but I hear there is a 9″ screen model with 1024x resolution coming so I might just try and pick one up while I am there :)

Anyone used one of these bad boys? What is the user experience really like? Is it cramped or comfy? Please share in the comments …

Retro Gaming and Childhood Computing Memories

1980s micro computers

Todays BBC News article about the computer they sponsored, the BBC Micro, takes me back to my childhood. While the machines back then didn’t have the power or cool factor of todays gaming machines, at the time they had a deep and lasting impact on the people, culture and what we take for granted today was born out of those geeks and their machines.

BBC Micro
The BBC did have a big impact in the UK, particularly in schools. It was too expensive for the average household so they released a more scaled down version. The only other time I can remember the BBC being so involved in something was when the internet was just starting to kick off they sponsored an ISP.

Radofin tv sports console systemWhile I didn’t own a BBC Micro, or its smaller, cheaper sibling the Acorn Electron, I am a proud member of the micro computer generation. We started out with one of those TV Sports Systems then graduated to a Commodore Vic 20.

Do you remember those sports consoles? Basically put batteries in, plug into the tv and play variations of Pong. Glorious black and white boxy wonderfulness. Kept me happy anyway.

commodore vic 20c64While other kids were already onto their second computers, usually the Commodore 64, we were just beginning with the Vic 20 as I turned (I think) age 9.

That little 3.5k beast had a profound influence on me. That and Star Wars made me the geek I am. Obviously I was jealous of the C64 kids, in particular my cousin Ian who would bring his over when he visited, but I was glad to own this little box of tricks.

Do any poll of geeks and the Commodore machines will rank highly. In other countries you will hear other names bandied as competitors. The TRS-80, the early Apple machines, but in the UK there was Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair and later, Amstrad.

sinclair zx81The alternative to the Vic for us at the time was the Sinclair ZX81. It was a popular (and cheap!) machine but far more limited than even the Vic 20. Sinclair had a massive share of the UK market with their machines but if it took the Spectrum to build real popularity.

sinclair spectrumStarting with the ZX80 they had several versions of the Spectrum, 48k, + and 128k models, even a 16-bit machine, the QL. That QL was the first mass market computer based on the Motorola 68000, beating both Apple and Atari to the punch, but ultimately failing in the marketplace.

amigaThe logical upgrade path for the Commodore kids was the Amiga, a 16 bit powerhouse. They did in fact have other computers that are lesser know, the 64c and the 128. The Amiga had its biggest rival in the form of the Atari ST.

Acorn didn’t want to sit back and let Commodore and Atari take the whole market. They built their most powerful machine, the Archimedes. It didn’t set sales figures alight outside of the education sector, but the legacy of that ARM RISC work lives on in a multitude of products to this day.

Which computer did you start with? Do you remember home computing fondly? Share your memories in the comments …

Free Mobile Phone Calls?


My wife lost her phone recently so we have been on a hunt for a new handset. While I saw that phones could do Skype  when I bought my n95, I didn’t think the feature was as widespread or as good value as it really is.

Talking to the phone shop guy we discovered on Three network Skype calls are completely free. Yup, you don’t pay even for the data. How does that work? A voice call over the internet has to be quite a lot of bytes. If they don’t charge for the call, and don’t charge for the bytes, all they are getting is your monthly subscription?

Well, regardless, we will take it!

For those people without smart phones, or with phones where Skype is not available, there is now a Skypephone3 Skypehone screenshots handset available.

When I travel those short “how are you doing?” calls add up to a princely sum. To be able to make them for free will be a big bonus. Add to that the fact that if I am not online she knows not to contact me or the other way round.

One shame is despite the phones and Skype being capable, there doesn’t seem to be a video option. That would be really cool. After a few days away from family it is nice to get to see them as well as speak to them. My daughter is old enough now to be able to tell me in detail how her day went but the pets in particular don’t talk very much, heh.

OK, lack of video I can understand, but for some reason from my n95 I can not initiate text chat. Seems a strange thing to be missing, especially as the screenshots at Skype.com seem to imply you can.

From our small tests the call quality seems just as good as using Skype from your computer but I would love to know your experiences, I worry if it is seems to good to be true then it just might have a sting hiding somewhere!

More UK Government Data Goes Astray

First there was the computer discs that “went missing” containing personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16, now a Government laptop with potentially sensitive data has been purchased on ebay

Counter terrorism police are today investigating the discovery of a Home Office laptop and encrypted data disc – apparently bought on eBay….

With the statistics showing that nearly 500 government devices have gone missing since 2001, it was only a matter of time before a confidential disc inadvertently ended up on Ebay. Luckily, the public sector finally seems to be learning from repeated mistakes, as the laptop and disc were encrypted.

While the first data leak was unencrypted, thankfully some sort of encryption was used on this latest goof. What worries me is I have seen how some public sector employees behave in this country and believe me, I wouldn’t trust them with my coffee order let alone my private data. What is going to happen when all data is centralized around an ID card system?

People say “if you are innocent you have nothing to fear”. The people on those disks and this laptop, and goodness knows how many other leaks, were innocent but they DO have something to fear. Identity theft and future credit problems.

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