Author Archive
300,000 words, some of them quite good
I’m sure this is of no interest to anyone but me, but I’m celebrating an anniversary of sorts: my first ever bit of published writing was for .net magazine back in issue 51, and I’ve just finished a feature for issue 151. That’s eight years, 100 issues (give or take a few) and - a conservative estimate, this - 300,000 words. Blimey.
That first feature was about blogging, or journalling as it was called back then:
More and more people are doing it: in 1996 there were around 20 online diaries. In 1998, the Open Pages site alone links to almost 500. Very few of these people are famous, and only a small number are dead.
Ah, the good old days. 35 million Internet users and an incredible 500 online diaries.
It wasn’t just my first feature, though - it was also my first cock-up. Mocking a blood-soaked “woo, look at me, I’m so mad” site, I suggested that the owner wasn’t mad at all. Turns out she was, as her pissed-off partner emailed the mag to point out. Oops.
On a brighter note, I did get to claim in print that the Hitler diaries were written by a small dog.
Free broadband forever
As widely predicted, Carphone Warehouse does a Freeserve and offers “Free Broadband Forever”. 8Mbps, 40GB monthly usage limit, £29.99 connection fee and no monthly cost if you pay line rental to Carphone Warehouse instead of BT and sign up for the £9.99 per month international calling plan.
It’ll be interesting to see if they can cope with the demand and if other firms make half-arsed attempts to copy the deal. Remember the chaos over free dial-up and then flat-rate Internet access?
Webaroo: a lawsuit waiting to happen?
Tech startup Webaroo wants to offer the internet on a Flash drive, according to Networkworld.com:
Webaroo does it, [the firms Brad Husick] says, through “a server farm that is of Web scale” and a set of proprietary search algorithms that whittle the million gigabytes down to more manageable chunks that will fit on a hard drive: up to 256 megabytes for a growing menu of “Web packs” on specific topics — your favorite Web sites, city guides, news summaries, Wikipedia and the like — that make up the service’s initial offerings; and something in the neighborhood of 40 gigabytes for the full-Web version the company intends to release later this year.
“We’ve developed these algorithms that give you a set of meaningful, relevant results for anything on which you search,” Husick says. “In effect, we give you the first couple pages of results.”
That’s all you really need, the company argues, because studies show that most people rarely look beyond the first 10 to 20 results returned by a typical search. With Webaroo you’re being returned not just a list of pages, but the pages themselves — with all graphics intact — as well as key live links from those pages and the pages to which they lead. They’re talking roughly 10,000 pages per “Web pack,” or plenty to provide a meaningful search experience for whatever the subject matter at hand, Husick says.
So it’s site scraping, just like endless offline browsing packages. However, I’m wondering about the “Web Packs”. Could site owners claim copyright infringement? I can’t tell whether Webaroo is paying publishers for the right to include their content in its Web Packs, but if it isn’t I can imagine firms being a bit miffed at the prospect of someone else selling their content.
Why Apple won’t sell OS X for PCs
Over at Daring Fireball, the ever-readable John Gruber states the obvious about Apple: it makes more money from selling hardware than it could ever make from selling software. He writes:
For any idea, ask yourself this: Would it help Apple sell more Macs or more iPods? If the answer is “no”, Apple isn’t going to do it, or, if they do, it’d be a genuinely shocking development.
As Gruber points out, what Apple’s up to with Boot Camp isn’t attacking Microsoft: it’s going after the really lucrative end of the PC market, where people with money to burn buy expensive kit from the likes of Alienware (now owned by Dell). Rather than slug it out in the bargain basement end of the market, Boot Camp could help Apple take some of the most lucrative computer buyers. As I said the other day, Macs are Marks & Spencer, not Tesco Value.
These are no ordinary computers: Apple and Boot Camp, again
I’ve been thinking about Boot Camp some more, and I maintain that it’s a genius move. Inevitably the Apple fanboys are predicting the end of Microsoft and a big headache for Dell, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen.
I do think Boot Camp (and Leopard, when it ships) will give Apple a big market share boost. Being able to run Windows apps when you need to is a huge thing, and I’m almost regretting ordering a new PC. Doubling or even trebling the amount of Macs sold over the next 12 months seems reasonable to me. But Apple as a mass-market brand, taking on Dell? I really don’t see it.
[Usual Apple-related disclaimer: you never know what's in Steve Jobs's head. You can only go on what Apple's doing *now*, because there's no way of telling what the firm will do next. So for example I got a lot of criticism a while back for predicting a headless Mac and a video iPod, both of which eventually appeared, but I - like most people scribbling about Apple - didn't see the move to Intel chips coming. And Boot Camp was a surprise too.]
Apple isn’t Dell. The best analogy I can think of is supermarkets, and particularly food shopping. Dell is Tesco. Apple is Marks and Spencer.
A more concrete comparison: Dell will give you a 2.8GHz dual core PC with a gig of RAM and a 19″ flat panel display for £615 [Update, 11 April: they've just cut the prices. You can get that spec for £439 now - which is really annoying, as I ordered it at the higher price. Bah]. There isn’t an equivalent Mac Mini, so the closest equivalent machine is an iMac. It’s got a bigger screen (20″) and a bigger hard disk (250GB compared to 80GB) but lower RAM and a slower dual core (2GHz). Still, it’s close enough. Including VAT it’s £1,229 - double the price of the Dell.
That’s not a criticism of Apple, though. It’s an observation. Dell, like Tesco, is happy to scrap it out in the high-volume, low margin sector. Apple, like Marks & Sparks, goes for the more discerning shopper. It’s particularly apparent when you look at the top end of the PC market, where Apple has the MacBook Pro.
Dell’s best laptop is the XPS M170, a 17″ machine that’s just shy of £1,500. 2.13GHz chip, 2 gigs of RAM, decent graphics card, blah blah blah. For the same money you can get the basic MacBook Pro, which is dual core rather than single core, so in the right circumstances it should be a screamer. Bringing that up to 2GB of RAM means shelling out £1,800 for a machine with a smaller screen than the Dell, but that’s not the point. The MacBook Pro, like its predecessor the Powerbook, feels high quality in a way that the best Dells just don’t. I like Dells, but their top-line models are Tesco Finest rather than Marks & Sparks.
*adopts languid, sexy voice*
This is no ordinary computer. This is a California-designed, sun-kissed, ultra-shiny computer.
You get the idea.
Why Apple’s Boot Camp is a stroke of genius
In no particular order:
* They’ve just opened up Apple hardware to gazillions of potential buyers, including corporates and gamers [Gazillions is a technical term].
* Microsoft will be quite happy: they can sell XP licences to Mac owners now. It doesn’t affect Virtual PC sales (assuming VPC is coming to Intel Macs), and Microsoft doesn’t make PCs.
* It’s a big kick up the arse of the PC manufacturers.
* It’s going to generate acres of positive publicity and general warm and fuzzy feelings towards the firm.
I’ll no doubt add more when I’ve had time to think about this.
Hell froze over, again
CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.
Wow. My brain’s just overloaded.
(Thanks, Paul.)
For once, I’m lost for words - printable ones, at least.
The BPI’s blatant misrepresentation of the actual impact of file sharing
Not my words: that’s a comment by respected industry analyst Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research. He says:
They claim that file sharing has cost the UK music industry 1.1 billion pounds over the last 3 years. I’m sorry but that is piffle. The UK music industry in 2002 was worth just over 2 billion pounds. In 2005 it was worth 1.85 billion. That is a total cumulative decrease of 0.29 billion. Where’s the extra 0.81 billion?
…
The BPI should
a) know better than to infer that consumer survey data is actual national market revenue data (however much it might help their PR push)
b) accept the fact that there are many bigger reasons impact declining music sales (prices too high, physical piracy (a MUCH bigger factor according to sister organization IFPI), competing expenditure (DVDs, games consoles etc.)
I couldn’t agree more. As Mark points out, the BPI’s figures mean that each and every file sharer has suddenly stopped spending £186 on music - which is far, far more than the average spend (most people buy around six CDs per year) and doesn’t take into account other forms of spending. For example, sales of ringtones are expected to hit £142.6 million in the UK this year; in 2005, sales of computer games in the UK hit £1.35 billion, making it the best year ever.
Sure, some people are file sharing instead of buying music. But I suspect that the number of people buying games instead of CDs is much higher.
Update
You’ve got to love No Rock’N'Roll Fun, which covers the same story: BPI Responsible For The Deaths of 3,759 People In The UK. As Simon writes:
No, they’re not, actually, but since they’ve decided to announce that illegal downloading has cost the UK music industry a billion pounds, we thought we’d pluck an eyecatching figure out the air and use it as a headline, too.
Bluetooth blaggers: bollocks
Today’s technobollocks story comes via Engadget Mobile, which links to a report that criminals in Cambridge are using bluetooth to locate hidden laptops - and nick them.
According to Cambridge News.co.uk:
MOBILE phone technology is being used by thieves to seek out and steal laptops locked in cars in Cambridgeshire.Up-to-date mobiles often have Bluetooth technology, which allows other compatible devices, including laptops, to link up and exchange information, and log on to the internet.
But thieves in Cambridge have cottoned on to an alternative use for the function, using it as a scanner which will let them know if another Bluetooth device is locked in a car boot.
Det Sgt Al Funge, from Cambridge’s crime investigation unit, said: “There have been a number of instances of this new technology being used to identify cars which have valuable electronics, including laptops, inside.
“The thieves are taking advantage of a relatively new technology, and people need to be aware that this is going on.
“We would urge people not to leave laptops, or anything of value, in their cars, and always de-activate these wireless connections when you’re not using a laptop - otherwise you’re making life easy for the thieves.”
Last month a spate of thefts from cars were put down to thieves using their phones to find laptops after three laptops were stolen from cars parked in neighbouring bays at the Holiday Inn, in Cambridge Road, Impington.
Police in Royston have mirrored the warning, after picking up on new crime trends in the area.
One teeny-weeny little problem with that scenario: when your laptop’s switched off, so is your bluetooth connection. I call shenanigans.
Xbox 360: first impressions and the Ferret of Games
So, I’ve finally got an Xbox 360 (with my own money, not a loaner or a freebie). After a day mucking around with it, I’m really impressed. The dashboard is nice and simple, downloading game demos is easy enough and the backwards compatibility works, more or less (Halo 2 is ace, Black locks up from time to time). It’s a gorgeous bit of kit and I’m particularly impressed by the wireless controller, which feels “right” when you use it.
A couple of minor niggles, though:
* Setting up wireless networking could be easier.
* Some games - such as Half-Life 2 - don’t work if you’re using the VGA HD Cable. As far as I can tell, there’s no workaround unless you’re willing to use a completely different cable whenever you play it. I like Half-Life 2 but I don’t like it enough to indulge in computer cabling fun every time I fancy a quick game.
* Fifty quid for a wireless bridge is ridiculous when USB Wi-Fi adapters cost less than £15 in the real world.
* The Quake 4 demo is a bugger: get killed and you have to sit through the intro cut scenes all over again. It’s enough to put me off buying the game, because it makes me think the retail version will do the same. As I’m rubbish at games and get killed every two seconds, that’s a lot of wasted time. I’m not paying 40-odd quid to sit through cutscenes - I made that mistake when I bought Black.
* Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is far too complicated for my tiny brain.
And the Ferret of Games? That’s the biggest flaw: at the time of writing, there’s no sodding games ferret.
*comedy drum roll and cymbal crash*
Thank you very much.