iDon't

On my quest to find a replacement for my iPod, and my final settlement on the Creative Zen, I found an online campaign which calls itself “iDont”.

The purpose of “iDont” is to point out to manufactures of speaker systems, car audio systems, and other MP3 player accessories that the iPod isn’t the be all and end all of the portable music player. Now, I cannot deny that the popularity of the iPod is massive compared to the followings some of the other players, but to the customer, a choice and a selection of products needs to be made available for all devices.

Take for example my situation; I’ve already purchased a Sony stereo for my car which has a “Connect2” device, which allows me to plug my iPod directly into the CD changer input. As the “Connect2” device I purchased was iPod only, I’ve had to purchase a new “Connect2” device in order to allow me to plug in other USB devices (by the way, the Connect2 products really do work and I can’t praise them enough for allowing me to interface my devices to my Sony head unit). Looking at speaker systems though, there is not one that is specifically designed for any other type of player than iPod – yes you can buy stand-alone speakers, but these do not come with remote controls and do not allow you slot your playing into them to dock – and then you have to power them!

A similar problem existed with mobile phones not so long ago. Every time you purchased a new phone or upgraded to a difference model or different manufacturer, your power chargers and in car chargers were different, your headsets weren’t compatible, and any other accessory that plugged into the phone via its interface port. Thankfully mobile phone manufacturers have now agreed that the standard for all chargers and accessories is mini-USB, which reduces the amount of money people need to spend on accessories and additional chargers.

But why can’t the MP3 manufacturers adopt a similar approach. I remember reading speculation about the Microsoft Zune possibly adopting the same interface port as the Apple iPod – I thought that would save a lot of trouble for users and a healthy competition between the two players if the accessories could be interchangeable. However, it was not to be – Microsoft’s Zune has its own interface (as I understand it – we don’t actually have them in Europe yet!), presumably because Apple wanted so much money to share its interface design and patent with its competitors (or maybe because others thought they knew best).

My Creative Zen has a mini-USB port, just like my phone, so charging my devices is simplified – and I like simple. But I would love to see all MP3 players standardise the interfaces on future devices for the benefits of their customers, and for the manufacturer of speaker systems, in-car audio and integration and other accessory devices yet to be dreamt up.

Home Network Design

This morning I read an interesting article on the web about the adoption of the home network. The home network has sneaked into most people’s lives without much thought being applied to it – possibly because these home networks serve their purpose well or because people have become ‘used’ to dealing with networks within their working environment.

Think about it, a couple of years ago, its likely that you had one PC that was directly connected to a broadband or telephone line and that was the chosen machine for connecting to the internetwork. Of course, the demand went up – not only do you want to connect to the internet but you family also want to connect at the same time and do their own things. The introductions of switches and routers into the home were introduced into the home – I remember at the time various broadband companies apposing the idea of ‘sharing’ a single connection in the home between multiple PCs and devices. The increase in wireless traffic has also dramatically risen, as these devices have become more portable and prices have decreased.

Now it seems that the home network is more important than ever and it’s getting to the stages where some serious thought is going into how to set up these networks to meet the needs of the ‘family’. The demands are going up – more devices connecting, VPN connectivity back to the workplace is needed, household items are becoming ‘always-on’ and ‘always-connected’, media players, storage devices, voice/telephony, and the list is ever increasing.

One of the main items missing from the home network from what I can see is the perimeter firewall. Most users are likely to install a firewall on their actual device rather than at the perimeter – although some ‘home’ routers have basic built in firewall capabilities – this could be a major or a minor home networking issue in some households depending on the level of technical ability and understanding of the set up and risks of the implementation of their home network.

The whole point is that the design of the home network appears to be heading into an area where as more is demanded and required, the cleverer and more flexible the design of the home network needs to be to meet the expectations of the user now and in the future.

Light up my Devices

As has probably been the topic of conversations in most offices up and down the country, the topic of this morning was the ever increasing rise of petrol prices. It’s affected everyone in some way or another (increasing fuel costs, food costs, increase in energy prices, etc), and there is no getting around the problem just yet. The mention of electric and hybrid powered cars were mentioned, only to the outcry of the issue of replacing the high price of petrol with the high price of electricity.

To which, we got talking about renewable energy sources – and in particular solar. Solar panels are not something new, they’ve been around for quite a long time and yet their uptake is still relatively low. The reason for this is that solar panels are still quite pricey to purchase and install. However, after a quick look around, there are some reasonable panels that can be purchased at a reasonable cost, which will save money and provide a decent return on investment (ROI).

Take for example, charging of your mobile phone or iPod (or alternative music player). I run my mobile phone pretty hard, I have the wireless switched on constantly, I touch the screen all the time lighting up the display and perform a number of number crunching functions – calculator, word processor, music player, internet browser, text messages and occasionally making telephone calls. All this use adds up to a fair amount of battery usage and it’s therefore not uncommon for me to charge my phone up at least once every two days. Then there’s my MP3 player, which is constantly playing music, again it’s not uncommon that it needs to be charged at least once or twice a week.

A £30 solar panel is estimated to charge my phone in around 70 minutes, which means leaving my phone on a window sill at the end of the day will charge my phone for around two days!

Leaving my MP3 player plugged in to charge on the alternate day, there’s got to be a saving and an ROI worth making an investment in. Spending just a little bit more, a solar panel and battery could easily power your computer or laptop – or even a lower powered server – therefore offsetting the cost of never having to pay to power those devices again. It’s something that people need to look at more seriously as the price of electricity rises, the savings can only go up.

To leave this on a techie note, calculators have long included solar panels in their casings as well as carrying a small watch battery. The modern day calculator – the mobile phone – doesn’t include anything built in on its display, which is mostly due to aesthetic reasons from manufacturers to market their highly-good-looking products. Apple however has recently applied for a patent to insert solar panels behind the screen of the iPhone/iPod devices. Placing the panels behind the display hide them from view and apparently the light penetration onto the panels is still as high as placing them on the outside of the device, whilst maintaining a readable and colourful, bright display (at this time I believe there is a bit of uproar about Apple trying to patent this, especially as this has been in calculators for a long, long time, but it’s a bit of clever thinking that needs to see the light of day (pun intended)).

Online Manuals

Something I’ve only recently noticed….

If you’ve bought any type of gadgetry recently, you may have found like I have, that there is a lack of a manual located in the box of your new favourite toy. There’s bound to be a few pieces of one page documentation in there, some health and safety declaration and a warranty card. For everything else, you’ll be directed either to the vendor’s website or to the online manual located on the accompanying CD.

I can’t quite remember when this change occurred and it’s only now that I’ve come to realise that the manuals (which I usually ignore, except in times of crisis or lack of logical sense to figure out how it works myself), are no longer there. The problem is who wants to start loading discs and searching for PDF based manuals when something has gone wrong, especially when out and about and no where near your computer. By the same token, I often find that vendor’s websites are overly complicated to find exactly what your looking for and often have to search through a maze of forums (with many opinionated people), and Q&A pages to find what your looking for.

With the projects Google and Amazon and others are working on to digitise books, I wonder just how long it will take for the with drawl of the dependable paperback (or for those with a bit more cash, the hardback). Whilst screens are not quite there for bedtime reading just yet – I still prefer my printed word books and can’t see that changing just yet.

I don’t have a point to these ponderings, except that digital and printed formats need to be carefully considered and where appropriate provisions for both need to be made – unless the next big thing is reading is just around the corner.

Are computers about to learn psychology?

It seems so. Advances in research related to how the computer interacts with its human counterparts are set to increase as new techniques are brought into the mainstream. The premise of the research is to allow the computer to be able to read your facial expressions which is then used to determine your mood, once determined the computer will adjust its operation to match or counteract your mood.

At the simplest level, imagine sitting down at your computer in a bad mood, the software would recognise this and adjust your music playlists in an attempt to bring your mood back under control – either by selecting tracks that will calm you down or some more cheerful, up-beat music (or some sort of progressive approach from the depressing to the more light-hearted tracks in your library). The colours of your screen could also change accordingly – a bit like a ‘mood ring’, only instead of working out how clammy your hands are, the colour changes as your mood improves or declines.

Whilst these two examples might indicate to others your mood and might cheer you up a bit, they don’t provide much more use than that. So for a more advanced example, you have to have look at the research that this technology has when applied to education.

Research into how robots can be more effective teachers has found that this technology can change the way subjects are taught. As a robot (or software), monitors facial patterns and moods, its reckoned that the teaching methods can be adjusted accordingly – either by slowing down the amount of information or by the robot/computer stopping and asking the user if they would like the information presented in a different way or at a much more basic level, which is very different to some of online videos we watch today where information is delivered in a flat, non-interactive video format that never changes according to the viewers understanding or confusion levels.

Is it wise to mix human behaviour with computers that recognise that behaviour though? Allowing computers to ‘read’ their owners and adapt – could lead to some sort of “iRobot” type movie-scenario, where machines protect us against ourselves. Time will tell.

You got the Time?

Why is it that almost every device I own, wants to manage my life?

My Windows Vista machine has a built in free-standing calendar, my Gmail account supplies me with an online calendar, I have a calendar on my work PC and on my home PC (supplied via Microsoft Outlook), my phone has a calendar – even my MP3 has a built in calendar. When did calendars become so important that they needed to be included on every device and which users are using their MP3 players as a method to store their appointments?

Annoyingly, it seems that all of these different calendars are able to communicate with an Outlook client (my phone syncs with my Outlook calendar, which in turn updates my work calendar and vice-versa). I’ve yet to set up my MP3 player to synchronise with Outlook and I have yet to see the point in an online calendar as supplied via Google, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc. I’m sure people do use them (otherwise why would they be offered as services), but I fail to see how the online calendar can alert you when your not logged in online to that service?

Do you use your MP3 player as your calendar?

Mr Fusion

With the ever increasing amount of talk of fuel prices, economy meltdown, food crisis, terrorist attack and the impending arrival of the aliens (okay, I made that last one up), it’s all been about transport and oil.

Whilst there has been so much talk about electric, battery powered and hydrogen fuelled vehicles, what I really want to see the Mr Fusion “Flux Capacitor” (okay, again I know the flux was the bit that made time travel possible, but it just sounds so cool), garbage powered cars.

Think about it, would solve all of the current problems – waste food would become useful, as well as packaging solving a whole heap of recycling problems, oil can be used for more beneficial purposes, the economy would stabilise as a result of the reduction in ‘fuel’ costs and we only have to worry about the aliens.

I trust someone is working towards this solution – or are we just waiting for Emmett Brown to bring the solution to us from the future?

TouchSmart

HP recently announced a raft of new devices at its “Connecting Your World” conference, including a range of new laptops spanning across its premium to professional ranges, including a ultra-slim Voodoo laptop that rivals Apple’s MacBook Air as the slimmest laptop available, a monitor they have labelled as the “DreamColor” which was developed with co-operation from DreamWorks engineers and promises more than 1 billion colours and a new TouchSmart All-in-One machine was announced.

It’s the TouchSmart I’ve been most interested in though. I remember when HP announced the last version, when it was very much a concept form factor – for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a touch screen display with a PC build and integrated onto the back of it, with a touch oriented software pack installed to provide an electronic “family notice board” experience, allowing “post-its” to be stuck on the screen leaving notes for family members and a whole other raft of uses.

This second version seems to follow that concept up, but this time I get the feeling that it is based more around a digital entertainment hub and social gateway. The hardware seems to be a lot thinner and better designed than last time – they’ve now produced it in a friendlier living-space piano black colour and with its 22” HD screen can be placed in pretty much any room from the living room to the kitchen. The emphasis on the ability to watch and record TV, play music and view photographs on the device reminds me more of a Media Centre PC type set up, which will appeal to those interested in that market or bring something extra to the product for those who want the device for other uses.

The device could easily become the centre hub of your “Digital LifeStyle”, blending social networking, home automation, entertainment, internet and other computing tasks (your usual word processing and office type activities), together on a single device for the entire family. Or allow other devices to connect into this centralised unit and share data throughout the household.

The inclusion of touch again indicates that more and more users want to reach out and control data with their fingertips. My only concern with this form factor is how long it will be around for, with Windows 7 bringing further advances in touch and gesture control, the form factor could easily change again between now and a couple of years time, but this is all pure speculation – the TV style format will remain popular and usable for some time yet.

Dear Mr Green,....

I want to write about an idea I’ve stolen from Cisco today, that I think is rather clever and allows a positive approach to tackling the ‘green issue’. For those who haven’t been keeping up-to-date with Cisco’s announcements, they have set themselves the challenge of lowering their overall energy consumption in 2007 by 25% by 2011. It’s a much bigger task than it first appears, as this isn’t just the energy used by Cisco themselves, it’s the energy used by their customers as well. It’s an ambitious target, but I believe they will meet or even exceed this target.

The idea I’ve stolen from them however, is that in order to achieve this, they have elected a “Mr Green”, who just so happens to be one of the major architects within the Cisco hardware division. Mr Green has an email address “mrgreen@”, where all ideas and thoughts about how energy consumption can be lowered. All of these ideas are directed to a centralised source and considerations into each one are taken and hopefully the carbon footprint is lowered.

Within the IT community, we’re always talking about empowering users, giving them the tools and to get on with what they need to do without having to rely upon the IT department –this means that the IT department can sometimes be cut off from the user community where these ideas are generated. Publishing a global email address within the company to poll and appeal for green, energy saving ideas is a fantastic idea – especially in companies where users are perhaps too afraid or don’t know how to suggest environmental ideas to the business.

Set up your “MrGreen@” or “MsGreen@” address today and get your company communicating about lowering the carbon footprint within your department or business.

Photograph Recognition

About a week ago, I blogged about the freshly developed Japanese cigarette machines that have built in face recognition software, that is used to "age verify" the potential buyer.

Well, it seems that the clever bit of software is working as expected - what the developers hadn't quiet bargained on was the ingenuity of the Japanese smoker, as it turns out they have been holding up photographs to the camera of 'aged adjusted', legal buyers.

It turns out you can fool the machine after all. However, there are further reports that a solution to this problem is on its way and the photograph trick won't work in version 2. Upon which, the next "work around" will surely be being tested out.

What people will do for a few smokes huh?

An Ode To BillG

Today, Bill Gates will step down from his role within the might Microsoft Software Company – one of the first software companies in the world and certainly one of the most successful. Gates will not however be consigned to retirement and has pledged to devote his time to the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”, which operate a number of humanitarian projects.

Down the years there have been multiple jokes and comments made at the expense of Gates and his company (the most famous being “In a world without walls and fences, who needs gates and windows”), maybe it hasn’t always gone smoothly or as planned, however there is no denying that he has brought computers and technology to the masses through simple GUI interfaces and intuitive software.

Looking back over his career, there must be many high and low lights, and there are many satisfied and unsatisfied Microsoft users across the globe. I for one will miss Gates as the Microsoft frontman, but hopefully Bill’s work with the Foundation will surpass his achievements at Microsoft and I wish him well in achieving a new set of objectives that benefit the world, with or without the use of technology and I hope even those people who don’t take kindly to the “Microsoft Way”, lend their support to this cause.

To find out more about the Foundation click here.