PushingJelly

Did you know the BBC (aunty) is holding open consultations at the moment regarding an on-demand service. You fill out a questionare here and answer a load of questions.

I thought I would share my answers with the class, and I would encourage anyone not using a MS based computer to do the complete the survey when taking question 5 into consideration.
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Being the product of a 70′s UK comprehensive education, the quality of my written English leaves a lot to be desired.
It is a well known fact that I am a bit of a pedant. I have a really bad habit of correcting people and its really rude I know, I just can’t help myself. To all those people I have annoyed with this trait I apologise. My Manager also has a problem in the same vein, he can’t stand errors in text such as the title of this posting. I couldn’t help think of him when I found this posting today detailing the 10 most wrongly used words on blogs. Read more

The format war is over as far as I am concerned. HD-DVD has won without firing a shot.

Why? (I hear you ask) -

Sony have failed to learn from history and have banned Porn from their disk format. Duplicators are being prohibited from copying pron onto the disks by Sony Link.

History has proven (at least twice) that where the adult industry goes becomes a dominant format. VHS won the tape war (again over Sony’s technically superior Betamax) because in no small part the porn industry saw commercial advantage to using cheaply duplicated and uncontrolled VHS and the proliferation of the internet has been driven by the money generated by online Porn.

So I official declare the war over. Lets hope Apple reconsider their adoption of the Blu-Ray format and go with the wise money. Now someone has to tell Sony to put the loser out of it misery.

Well it had to happen.

As previously discussed, I recently purchased an E61 phone. It’s my own fault really for looking at the gadget sites but Nokia are just about to launch the E61i. The biggest difference as far as I can tell is that its case is a bit sexier and there;s a canera in the back. I prefer the joystick on the original to the new joypad.

Oh well – I didn’t use the camera anyway (he says optimistically)

Does that mean there will be a firmware update?

Pictures here

I have been getting some stick from my long suffering collegue Ian regarding my “assasination” of the iPhone and then apparent turnaround saying that the E61 will tide me over until the iPhone becomes available in the UK.

Generally Apple have been getting a lot of bad press from the geekery regarding the phone. This is to be expected when (as I said in a previous post) a rumoured Apple product is lord’ed so much before announcement as the iPhone was.

There was no way Apple could have created the device that we were all salivating for, no company could have, for starters it wouldn’t all fit in that little box and secondly Apple are a commercial operation with shareholders and have certain responsibilities, like making as much money as possible. This need to make money results in compromises in specification and practices such as holding back features for the next revision (something all companies do – “never show all your cards at once”).

The “iPhone” (as the name suggests) is an iPod with an integrated phone not a phone with a music player. This has to be remembered when talking about the product. There is a temptation to think of the device as a Smart Phone because that is what Steve positioned it against in the Keynote, but it isn’t. Like the iPod of today can accept Videos, photos, calendars, contacts and notes, and can have the Apple sanctioned games installed upon it, the phone will too.

Like the iPod you will need to attach the device to iTunes to achieve this feet of convergence because the phone like the Pod, is a peripheral to the real device – the Mac (or PC). I fully expect to see a non-phone version as the next incarnation of the iPod.

It has WiFi which enables the device to use web and email but the WiFi connection is not really taken advantage of for commercial reasons. The constraints that Cingular have placed upon Apple for their patronage seem to have been immence. The exclusion of the iChat application can only be a curtailment to Cingular’s commercially lucrative text messaging business. Why would they want to make a pittance on the minute amounts of data sent via IM clients when they get a 10c bung for every sentence sent via Text?

According to Apple the iPhone runs “OS X”, except when you look deeper, it doesn’t really, what it runs is an embedded version of the OS with most of the things that Make OS X, OS X, removed.

For starters there’s no…:

• Finder.
• Dock,
• command line (as far as we can tell)
• folder navigation (shown at all so far)
• Spotlight
• iChat
• Applications (to speak of)

We know there is:

• The Darwin kernel (compiled for what is rumoured to be Intel ARM processors)
• some ‘core’ services such as WebCore and CoreImage
• drivers for the hardware like the touchscreen and phone
• a new iPod application that incorporates the CoverView code
• The Phone application
• a very cut-down Safari (which could just be a widget using the WebCore engine)
• JavaScript (for safari and Widgets)
• Qucktime (which also plays Flash)
• Camera Driver
• A Syncronisation agent
• Software keyboard service
• a Mail client (again could just be a widget of sorts)
• Some more widgets ported from 10.4.x
• an application/Widget manager which looks like a ported version of Exposure/Dashboard

These things do not an OS X make.

To most people a proper OS is about Applications. No OS has everything you need out of the box. If there is functionality you need (like something to track your expenses or a useful phrases translator when traveling abroad) with any other Phone OS (I am thinking Palm, WM2005 or Sybian Series 60 etc.), you can add the functions to your device, sometimes via your PC and sometimes directly from the net. With the more popular ones you have a choice of applications to boot.

Apple owning the supply and controlling the development of software for the iPhone will hold it back and may relegate it to being just a pretty device that plays music. Then their only commercial advantage over other music phones is iTunes and it may not be enough.

Perhaps, by the time the ApplePhone comes to market, they will have listened a little and opened the Widget API for third party developers. I have seen some wonderful things done in a widget and with the release of DashCode fior Leopard this offers some hope in the future.

Apple haven’t shown all their cards with this first device, look at the evolution of the iPod over the last few years and apply that to the iPhone. Its not in their interest to show everything at once, but to keep some good stuff for the next time around – remember those shareholders!

I suspect the relationship with Cingular is going to be rocky over the next two years, the tension has already started between Jobs and the CEO of Cingular in the press. I don’t know (apart from taking a risk with an unknown device and the visual voicemail thing) what Cingular bring to the party.

It is unusual for Apple to let go of control and I really expected them to launch their own phone service from that newly puchased from MCI datacenter in Texas. I guess they have another trick in store for that premises.
I am very interested in how it will play outside the US and who they choose as their service provider in the UK. When I was buying the E61 the assistant said that Charles Dunston’s Carphone Warehouse were trying very hard to become the exclusive dealer for the unit in the UK. That would be interesting because they have access to all service providers and even have their own service that could be adapted.
So to Ian I’ll say: I stand by what I wrote, the iPhone is a dissapointment for all us tech-heads that wanted mobile phone nirvana, it doesn’t meet our expectations, but then nothing could.
The Apple iPhone, even as shown, still looks to be one of the most innovative mobile devices on the market and will probably be a great success regardless of its pricing and limitations.

I don’t mind waiting a while for my one, I never was an early adopter (with my own money).
In 12 months, when I am ready to indulge (because I surely will), there may be a 2.0 device that will tick all those boxes on my wish-list.
We’ll just have to wait and see.

We have recently bought a spankingly new Sony Bravia LCD TV, a KDL-32S2530, HD ready, integrated DVB tuner etc etc., this thing cost about £1000 and although not the top of the range device, was advertised as being “a good un” if you know what I mean.
After wrecking the bedroom running the cabling and fitting the thing to the wall, it looked great – until we turned it on.

Now it may be that I am spoilt. I have a 43″, top of the range (at the time) Pioneer plasma downstairs that is possibly one of the best pictures you can get for PAL SD TV, I would say that it is even better than the top of the range Sony Trinitron it replaced, so it could be that I am expecting a little too much from LCD technology, but I am really not impressed.

In the picture are really bad artifacts, the sort that you get when you have over compressed your pictures or ripped that DVD to Divx and been a little to optimistic with the target file size.
Text on the screen is surrounded by a haze of sparkles and blocks. Out of focus backgrounds, especially dim ones, look like they are made from Lego blocks.

We initially looked at pictures from DVB – renowned for MPEG artifacts when there’s not enough bandwidth to go around, so then we tried analog terrestrial – even worse, S-Video from DVD – Still Bad.
At first I thought this was a fault with the screen so we went back to the shop to “discuss” it with the management however looking at the display units from about five different manufacturers, they all suffer from the same issue. Can it be that the upscaling technology in mid range LCD screens are all this Bad?
We even asked for them to show a SD DVD played from an upscaling Sony DVD player, the artifacts were not as bad but still apparent.
I have searched the net and there seems to be a resignation that this is just how it is with LCD screens.
As I said perhaps I am just spoilt by my plasma being so good. It did cost two and half times as much so I would imagine they spent a bit more on upscaling and DtoA conversion than Sony did on the LCD.

As we don’t have the extra cash to stump up for a 37″ plasma just for the bedroom (I think we spent more than enough, don’t you?), we are keeping the screen. When compared with all the other 32″ screens on the market it is actually one of the best we have found, however I can’t help but be disappointed.

Is this really the experience that millions of new LCD owners are suffering with their new expensive “HD ready” screens? The new leap of technology promised by big flat screen TVs seems to have got lost along the way for the majority of people who want to watch ordinary SD TV in the UK.

Roll on terrestrial HD DVB transmissions in the UK because quality can only get better from here.

Well it seems pushing jelly has been listed among the technorati boards.

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Hi Guys

Well in a moment of weakness I bought an E61. I am quite happy with it, its a bit like going home to your parents after a long while away. Familiar and comfortable but subtly changed and a little odd. I had been a long term Nokia Symbian user before the XDA, but this is a newer version of the OS. I am still finding my way around and WiFi isnt working at home yet, however email to dotmac and WiFi at work are cooking. I’m writing this entry on it, the keyboard seems designed to keep microsurgeons in business, I can feel the onset of RSI as I type. it will more than tide me over until the Applephone is launched in the UK.

Being the guy who deals with all the connected video kit has its advantage for a techhead likke me.
One of our areas is getting into video in a big way and so wanted to edit on the Mac. I had the opportunity to play with some of the kit today while setting it up, one bit of note was the Sony Z1 HighDef camcorder which inspired tech lust in many of my collegues. The lens on the camera is really good and although there was a bit of noise, the picture was great.
What must the high end cameras be like?
Hmm HD!, might look at one of the new Sanyo Xacti HD2′s when they arrive this side of the pond.

Well it was a foregone conclusion really but Cisco have sued Apple over trademark violation.

What did a) Cisco expect for using the iPhone name as a cash in spoiler and b) Apple expect when Cisco got in there first.

What a mess considering neither of them own the domain name www.iphone.com

Its enough to make you avoid both products.