Brad(s) Wright

Which one you ask? Well both of them actually.

It is not often you meet someone with the same name as you (unless you are called John Smith I guess).

Some time ago I started receiving mistakenly addressed emails for someone in Australia with the same name as me – Brad Wright. After some research I found his email address and forwarded the mails on to him. He was thankful and we kind of hit it off.

Well Brad was in London this week on business and we met up.

I arranged the meal, which is always dangerous with my (dis)organisational skills, but I thought I had done really well choosing a nice resturant near to where I thought he and his wife were staying in north London. It was a fair drive but I thought it was easier for me to travel as he’s a visitor and didn’t have access to a car etc.

Well for one reason or another I left with just enough time to get there but hit traffic on the M25 and was a little late. I emailed him and called the restaurant to make sure we didn’t lose the booking and they were very nice about it all but this was cockup #1 of the day, #2 as it turns out was that they were not staying in N20 after all but in central london in a private club – in my defense the postcode Brad sent was wrong and I had based my arrangements on this.

I am not the best at making small talk and the couple (Brad and his wife) were very kind and made conversation when I dried up. I was hot, bothered and on edge due to my own issues of hating to mess up (see cockup #1&2).

Despite all this, the company was delightful and we shared stories about kids and wives and work and hobbies and we had a surprisingly large number of things in common (he’s a Mac guy too!) and I wouldn’t of missed it for anything.

The food was great too.

So here’s to all the Brad Wrights in the world. If they are all as nice as that one, we are all Wright.

PS. Anyone called Brad Wright reading this, please leave a comment – we’d love to hear from you – oh and I’m the one on the left!

In my role at the studios I quite often mix the bands when they come in, both the Sun and News of the World have music sections to their papers and websites and quite often music companies send artists to us on the promo trail that leads them from radio station to TV channels and then us.

Eliza Doolottle and her band have been to the studios twice now, performing for firstly NoW XS and recently the Sun Bizarre page.

When the bands come in I talk to them via the floor monitors from the gallery  when we are setting up and to tell them when we are ready to go etc. The first time Eliza came in we joked about my disembodied voice being the ‘voice of god (not THAT god but a god – the god of sound perhaps), they found it funny and it helped break the ice.  I was pretty jazzed when they remembered it when they came in for their Biz session and we joked about it again.

Although Eliza’s Biz session won’t be posted for another couple of weeks, this afternoon the SunTalk guys managed to get her on the phone to talk about the session for the Gordon Smart Bizarre show. There was a horrible delay on the phone from where she was, which didn’t help the flow of the conversation but this is a podcast of the show. Check out the bit about 00:58 – 01:12.

Every time I hear it I can’t help laughing. Mental

As I mentioned yesterday there is a very unfortunate soul who (hopefully) is still on the Apple Campus, one Gray Powell who accidently lost a prototype 4th gen iPhone about two weeks ago.

Apparently (according to Gizmodo.com who bought the device) someone did try to give the phone back to Apple but were unable to.

Should Gray keep his job when it is obvious the importance that Apple places on confidentiality ? I don’t think so, it may have been a genuine mistake (after all, no-one would throw their career away on purpose), but if you are in the trusted position of having something like this on your person, you don’t go to a bar and get pissed enough to leave it on the chair and not check it’s on your person when you leave.

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Here’s a possible reason for the lack of flash support on the iPhone – Adverts.

I think that Apple’s purchase of mobile advertising company Quattro wireless is part of their strategy to corner the mobile advertising market and it will make it rewarding to app developers to include their advertising in free apps on the store. This is pretty obvious, but I think that the lack of flash on the device is deliberate to prevent the Google/Adobe ad duopoly from exercising their dominance and damaging Apple’s ad plans.

Apple’s long term planning never ceases to amaze me but if my guess is true this is quite impressive bloody mindedness.

Well it’s the morning after the night before and I have awoken on my sofa. The day is bright and there’s a sprinkling of snow on our cars that looks like icing sugar sprinkled from a giant sieve in the same way as mince pies have.
The start of a new year and a new decade.

In the UK we are looking forward to a change of government this year and although not a Tory voter by any means, the Labour party have been in charge for far too long, they are if not overtly corrupt then criminally complacent and need to go. It’s just a shame there’s no alternative to the Conservatives who let’s face it are potentially as bad as the incumbent bunch of tossers. Don’t start with the LibDems either, as they have no recognisable presence in the political race. I have no idea what they stand for and I am not even sure who leads them any more.

Technology wise it looks quite promising, the tablet finally looks like it is due for release (we have been waiting YEARS Steve, what took so long?), Apple may finally take the AppleTV project seriously and who knows what iPhone v4 will be like (Well Steve and Jonny Ive do obviously, it was a rhetorical question really). 40 Million 5MP camera modules have been ordered – apparently.

So as it has become traditional at this part of the year here are my predictions for 2010 (excluding the tablet which is a given)

• Tomorrows World will come back to the BBC (Oh please Aunty, serious tech reporting again – Click’s good but it’s not TW)
• O2 will turn on Apple for the bandwidth issue and drop the iPhone
• Free WiFi Mesh installations will increase in the UK (First one is always free)
• ADSL will reach “Up to” 100Mb/s (actually delivering 5Mb/s for anyone further than 10 feet from the exchange – Lies, Damn Lies and ADSL speeds)
• “iPod Game” will be launched with game controller built in (this is of course a joke entry)
• App Store will come to the Mac platform bringing unlimited secure application delivery to the Mac reducing piracy and in turn application prices and increasing Apple’s profits (30% cut remember).
• Apple will continue to alter the memory market with their bulk purchases of Flash chips causing the cost of solid state storage to remain too high for the rest of us
• The hepatic interface pioneered (read UAT tested) on the iSlate will come to the new iPhone v4 to applause and frustration in equal measure.
• The Apple Tablet will have a cell phone built in and be offered for cheap (£200) on contract

Happy new year everyone.

B

Had a enlightening and infuriating afternoon today.

At 5:45, I was sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop having a latte and a piece of cheese cake with my lovely wife. A small boy of middle eastern appearance and with an accent to match who must of been about ten years old, came over to our table and showed some leaflet muttering incoherently about “this is coffee”.

Bemused at what he was talking about, I placated with a “yes” and smiled and he then left.

As he left, my wife asked where my iPhone was – thirty seconds before the kid arrived it was on the table in front of me.

It had of course gone.

Realising quickly what had happened, I chased after the boy, who by then had run out of the mall and (according to a passer by) met up with another kid and apparently got onto a bus.

Walking back to find a mall security guard (two met me on the way – my wife had got to them first) – I remembered that because it was an iPhone and I have a subscription to Mobile Me (Apple’s cloud data service) I could track the whereabouts of the phone on the me.com website.

I told the mall security officer this and we walked promptly to the recently opened Apple dealer. I quickly explained the issue to a member of staff and they allowed me to log into the me.com website and we tracked the phone.

We called the police while watching my phone travel along a local bus route. We could see the phone stop at bus stops and then carry on it’s route. One of the shop assistants said that she knew the route (the 86) and we told the police where they could find the bus. We were told that they could not send anyone out as they couldn’t “chase around Romford after a bus”. I told them they wouldn’t be chasing around as I knew where the bus was and they could just drive there and pick the little git up.

Instead they told me they were going to send “a unit” to the shop to take details (even though they had taken all the info over the phone).

While we were waiting someone from Romford police station called me and I had to give all the information I just told the CAD operator.

By now I had sent a message to the phone saying that the police were on their way and that we knew the brat was on the 86 bus and in Goodmayes and that he should give the phone to the bus driver.

The office turned up after about 15 minutes (while we watched the kid get off the bus and go to a MacDonalds on our Hybrid Google Map display within me.com’s website.). He was a PCSO who although very nice and apologetic, was unable to do anything apart from take the details of the crime again (third time lucky perhaps). He couldn’t even fill out a crime report.

After giving the info to the PCSO, I went back to the terminal and it had stopped updating. We tried calling the phone and it was off, going to voice mail.

It was gone. The police were useless and were not going to chase the bus. I was not going to get it back.

I decided to hit the kill switch on the website and remotely wipe the phone. I wish I had done this before I lost contact with it, as then I could be sure my data would be safe. As it is, I can only hope that the device will be wiped when it starts back up or when they try too many times to unlock it.

At any rate, I have done all I can to protect myself now.

The system will email me to tell me when the wipe has begun, until then I just have to wait. The SIM has been cancelled however so I am not that sure if it will work.

Things I learned today.

• Don’t trust anyone, including innocent looking little kids.
• PCSOs although nice and all are just there to make it look good, they are as useful as a chocolate teapot.
• The police couldn’t give a crap about petty theft, and won’t do anything – even when you hand them the thieves on a plate.
• If you have an iPhone, don’t send messages to the thieves to alert them to the tracking or they will turn it off.
• Lastly Wipe the phone before they do turn it off – just to be sure, you can always get your data re synced later from Mobile Me or the Mac/PC you sync with.

I guess the real difference between being a blogger and writing professionally is that when you are paid to write, you have to write to get paid.

This simple truth might explain why I am so crap at updating the blog – I don’t have to so I am therefore not compelled to unless there is something outstanding that I want to share or get off my chest.

Being a mild mannered person (most of the time) and having a busy working life means that Pushing Jelly gets less attention than it should and for that dear reader, I apologise.

In the run up to the holiday season, I have a large amount of holiday booked. I shall try to pick up my game.

In my utopian dream world (something along the same lines as the one dreamed by Gene Roddenberry), when an abundant free energy source was found and we no longer driven by commercial concerns, everyone and everything would just work with each other to make the world (and space) a better place.

Standards would be open and adhered to. we would all use the best operating system because that was the one that everyone used and worked hard to make better. It wouldn’t matter if it cost more to produce because everyone would benefit in the long run.

Applications would talk to each-other and devices would too without the encumbrance of competing formats and incompatibilities – there would be one document format, one image format etc. and if a more efficient way was found to store data THE formats would be updated accordingly for the good of all.

It is the reality of microsoft and apple’s control of the marketplace that is forcing us all to look to the open world of the internet for our next paradigm in computing.

The cloud (as it is known) is the next battleground in the format war with Google taking an early lead but Microsoft preparing to exert its will on the net with Office Online. MS have previously had difficulty with their transition to an internet company (with the exception of hotmail of course which was already immense when they purchased it for $400 in 1997) and the industry is waiting to pass judgement on the new product.

Apple too seem to be preparing for an assault with the purchase of a massive new data-centre to host it’s cloud offerings (me.com was just the start) and the (apparently) imminent launch of a web tablet device.

The iPad (or whatever they will call it) will be reminiscent of Mr Roddenberry’s star ship bound devices but once again market forces are restricting the usefulness of the applications to be found there on because unless we all pledge allegiance to the fruit, we are again left with a choice between Apple’s OS, Google Android, MS Windows Mobile, Palm PreOS, Symbian and the many others. None talking to each other, the wealth of applications from one unavailable to others and the underground market of un-sanctioned applications confusing things further.

Even the much lauded Android is still owned by a commercial concern with restrictions on use built into it’s Ts and Cs.

It is the next generation mess caused by the same old companies. It sucks.

So much for capitalism, so much for the free market economy – at the end of the day the user communities suffer and the biggest corporate wallets win.

I was faintly amused by the headline on the Guardian website – ‘The Times they are a charging’, of course in reference to Mr Murdoch’s plan to charge for content on NI’s websites.

I have always firmly held the belief that if you restrict access to content on websites, either by unpaid subscription or worst still paid subscription, it is a sure fire way to drive visitors to a) your competitors sites b) to bootleg the information or c) away.

When the afore mentioned Guardian site tried enforced registration for their site, a black market sprung up with pre-registered user accounts to log-in with so the visitor didn’t have to leave their personal info to be spammed at a later date. They have always been a little ahead of the NI sites in regard to their use of new technology and techniques.

It didn’t work for them and it will (in my humble opinion anyway) will fail for NI. I occationally visit the Times site. It is looking a bit old nowadays and the BBC have better content, however due to some small amount of loyalty to the company, I go on the site to look at content that we produce in the studio and to look at the normally good web/tech section.

I wouldn’t however pay for the privilege, or at least the content on the site would have to be a whole lot more compelling to make me put my hand in my pocket.

I wish them luck, I think they are going to need it.