I agree with Apple (and really, Microsoft) though. GASP! I do though. Any good product manager or developer has to consider at least 1 thing about the user. The user is stupid. I don’t mean in a bad way, I mean, they don’t know how to use the product as well as they would. It makes for better product development. The iPad has, apparently, amazing battery life. Now, take your average user. They open Spotify, they open the Word processor, they open the browser, they open their Mail app. They keep doing this, and never close anything. That kind of behaviour is just dandy on a usual PC or Mac, the processor and RAM are ample. They can do this. On a mobile device, it isn’t so good, yet. The processor will be using all this and the battery will just die. I haven’t even started on the badly written apps that some guy with a Mac decided to try on his weekend to make a quid or two.

So if multi tasking was enabled. The user would be saying “since that latest update, the battery lasts 2 hours, it’s a crap product”. So either way, Apple and Windows Phone 7 can’t win.

However, there is a thing here. As my good friend and life mentor Mr Mathias Hellquist once told me. “Keep it Simple. If there is a way of faking it, fake it well and make it look like it’s working”. At a tech day by Microsoft I went to today, they really showed this. The new Windows phone OS is really damn nice. What they do is they don’t multi task, but they pause an application when the user opens another, they then allow it to stay in a state to receive notifications, taking up much less resources (and I think the iPhone does the same as well). It’s great, it looks like the process is running in the background, but really, it’s just faked. Excellent.

I think, even more than this, the developer should be able to opt to run one application in the background, e.g. an audio application. They could register as an audio app, then the user could only run 1 audio app at a time in the background. The device could then run a few categories that the user may want, but only have one of that category running. It still tricks the user, but they could listen to audio while emailing their someone else. It’s also as close to multi tasking without the potentially hundreds of apps (or even tens) running at the same time.

Anyway, until devices are more powerful, we have to put up with less multitasking, the iPhone, Windows Phone 7 (which, by the way, is really very nice. Microsoft gone and done good! Ground up re-builds always mean some serious work has gone in) and the iPad are all powerful, but they are not laptops with anything like the same power. My Android phone frequently runs out of battery and slows down to a crawl if I run multiple apps (Spotify and email simultaneously). It’s a great phone, but it is early days, and I know this, unfortunately, the general non-tech user just wants their stuff to work and don’t know/care about the ins and outs of it.

And it’s true! There is time. Say you are working on a side project away from work. You get home. The last thing you want to do is more work. If you really want to do it, you won’t even think about “oh but I’m tired now” you think “right, home, food, tea on desk while I do this”. Sometimes there are factors. The kids, the family etc. But somehow people can make time unless they are working 22 hours straight, but then they’re just screwed.

Right, pep talk over. I’m off to watch TV. Cup of tea?

Let it be said now. I hate the news. I’ve reverted back to childhood where watching the news was considered not cartoons and hence boring. Actually, it isn’t boring, it’s just annoying. They report what is going on, how the world is ending etc. etc. then, just because we might not be scared enough, they ham it up.

Let’s go back to the 7th July 2005. A horrible day! Yet the news were happy, so happy because they had a story, hell yes! Something they could legitimately report on the same old crap for the next week at least (hell, they had 11th September 2001 going for at least a month). No more news was really coming out about the event, just the same old crap. Then, a reporter decided to add a little bit. He stood proudly outside Kings Cross Station and said “King’s Cross has become synonymous with disaster, 20 years ago there was a massive fire here”. Erm… 20 years ago? That’s not synonymous, every time I hear Kings Cross I, and most people don’t immediately think “fire” some might, but most don’t. It is unfortunate though.

Forward to last night, 16th January 2009. The plane landing in the Hudson river (well done the pilots by the way, I think that is the first time a commercial airplane has landed on water without breaking up, I need to check my facts though). The reporter gleefully stood and said “New York is known for its plane crashes” and launched into the other 1 story almost 8 years previous. That isn’t known! That’s coincidence!

Bad news! Bad! We’re all scared already. I don’t seem to be alone as The Register got an ex-bomb disposal expert to report on the last potential disaster in London. It was hugely different to what the news had been reporting. It’s still scary, no doubt, but not hammed up.

I’d like to know what you think though (apart from you spam comment man selling vi@gra, I keep buying from you and you send paracetamol, damn you!).

Now, I’m not a sweat shop advocate, far from it, I think the conditions are appauling. But maybe we should think this through in a less black and white way, yes, they work all hours God sends (as some of the workers said, it is (some of the time) their choice, the more they work, the more they get). Taking the work over to LA (as American Apparel are doing) is lovely, or simply not buying clothes made in India, it stops sweat shops, then the workers without jobs in India claim income benefit? No, they potentially starve (along with the families they are supporting), or, go to another sweat shop to work.

So, what I’m trying to say is, improve the conditions, maybe fair trade could be used. But simply taking the work out of 3rd world countries doesn’t solve the problem, it merely makes it far, far worse.

Take for example the Gizmondo, the handheld gaming device. It had no chance. It was competing against Nintendo’s stronghold in the handheld gaming market, also the PSP and the mobile gaming market. But still, they thought “I know, we’ll set up another handheld devied, with GPS, and a mobile built in”. Lovely idea, but it cost a small fortune. Knock in the fact that they had no deals with the big games developers (or any good ones for that matter). Add to that, the hugely expensive shops on Regent Street etc, and , BAM! 1 year later, it’s nowhere.

Anyway, my point is, how the hell could I be reading this today? The article talks about a new “mobile operator” called UK01 running on localised GSM frequencies, only operating where there is a Wifi base set up by Spectrum Interactive. So in other words, you can now use your mobile, only in certain, localised areas. Does anyone remember Rabbit? The mobile service where you had to stand outside a shop, station, or bus stop and talk? It collapsed ‘cos of the mobile taking off. Fair enough, it was difficult to think it might work at the time because people would still use a payphone rather than fork out £200, but it still crashed overnight (you still see Rabbit logos on old shop fronts sometimes).

Now I’m not always right. I made a gamble that HD-DVD would take off over Blu-Ray, and look how that turned out. I didn’t see the tremendous bribe factor in that though. But I really can’t see this mobile venture taking off. I’d put a tenner on it, anyone?

Anyway, I am no relationship councillor, but the day gets my goat. My dad calls it by its Roman name “Lupercalia“, which i find brilliant. The Roman festival, which was held on the 13th-15th February was a different affair entirely. It’s all about signifying health and fertility. Typically, the Romans decided to make an orgy out of it, so after smearing blood of a dog and 2 goats on the foreheads of Luperci (it was human sacrifice before this). After a feast, the Luperci would wonder the streets whipping girls and young women.

Certainly different and beats the inevitable restaurant conversation our 40 year old couples of today might hold: “Edward, do you really have to eat your chicken like that?”, “of course I bloody do you silly woman” etc.

So Happy Lupercalia everyone, right, I’m off to find a dog and 2 goats.

Anyway, not intending to bash companies. My thing is Gmail. I think it is fantastic. The spam filter is second to none, the features are brilliant, and, for the first time, I am considering ditching Outlook for Gmail as my default mail client. “So why don’t you?” you ask. Well I don’t want to use a gmail address. I have my own domain name which I use. “But you could use that with Gmail”. Yes, yes I could, and this is where Gmail’s secret comes out. If I send an email from my domain email, it makes my from field: “xxx@gmail.com on behalf of xxx@xxx.com”. Not great. I don’t want people to know my Gmail address.

Google’s immediate response? “It doesn’t do that in most email clients, only Outlook”. Right, so blame someone else. In fact, even better, most people who check emails in an office environment use Outlook. In fact, half the damn world use Outlook.

It’s a measure to get past spam filters. No other webmail client does this. If it is a bug, then Gmail have to swallow it as most people use Outlook. I would think Outlook is doing the right thing anyway, what Google is doing is setting the from field and another field (I think something like x-sender) to different email addresses. Outlook shows it for security, which I’d say is a good thing. So Outlook won’t change, and Google are being obstinate.

I could use the Google Apps which will do everything for me, but it isn’t really as integrated as Gmail and Google Calendar, and the URL for my Gmail account is pretty long.

So come on Google, blaming other people is not on, especially when competition get it right and Microsoft seem to be doing nothing wrong, add to that the email client where you claim “only some email clients do this” is Outlook, one of the most widely used email clients on the face of this planet, it all points to you, fix it and stop being stupid.

Another example, I flew to Cornwall the other day for a weekend, lovely it was. I stepped on a plane, 1 hour, I was there for dinner (door to door was about 3 hours). Usually I drive, my girlfriend will take the train other times. The plane cost us £50, which was train to airport, plane ticket and tax. The train is £60, takes 4 hours (6 hours door to door), car is £70 minus fuel (5 hours). But with this is isn’t just cost. 1 hour to 4 hours is quite a lot different, then the train is more expensive anyway! Hell, I’d take a cheaper train! No one wants me to, in fact, the train tends to be packed, you can’t even get a seat, so you get to sit on the floor in between carriages for saving the world. So now, to stop this, environmental groups are telling us “put more taxes on planes then”, surely that’s missing the point?

There are places I go to with recycling bins instead of normal bins, “EXCELLENT” I think, but as the food is in one container for several days, fruit flies start buzzing around. I almost expect a rat to pop out at me munching away at any point.

Now, I may get told “but it’s your planet, do you want to die etc?”, I know, I know. But while we’re human, the way to get people interested is to help us, not to say “bathe in mud”, “take extra time to get somewhere”, the human race is sufficiently advanced to try and come up with new ways to do things, we’ve been hearing about global warming since I was 10, 18 years ago. So why the panic now? When some people already say going green will just mean global warming will slow, but not stop.

It’s very hard to make judgement when I can’t go to the polar ice caps and see it all for myself, same for everyone else.

Rant over.

There is a useful section on how bad people see the swear word. I was not shocked by most, but the racial terms I was surprised actually came underneath the obvious swear words as mild. Although I wouldn’t class these as swear words as such, they are words which, in my mind, should never be used. Ok, the N word is used a lot in music, but I am shocked (especially at the P word), it actually silences me when I hear these words anyway (especially when used at me), so the mild rating was interesting to see other people’s views.