Fran's Blog

A week or so ago I posted about why I was excited about 2009 in the technology world. The Palm Pre has had me licking my lips, tucking my napkin over my shirt and holding my knife and fork. However, as I surf for more information on this lovely piece of kit, I have seen one type of article “could this be the iphone killer?”. It isn’t just with the Pre, any phone with a touch screen that now comes out seems to end up having this title. The answer? No, it isn’t an iphone killer, and neither should it be. Any business which relies on a competitor to fail is doomed, especially when a device like the iphone has changed the industry. There isn’t only space for one touch screen phone. There’s space for several, but the best will win and move the technology forward. Apple will copy and improve and so it continues and it has been thus since the invention of the wheel (ok, bad example as the wheel needs no improving, but you get the idea, I hope). And if the competitor is not up to scratch, it won’t be a success.

I know what they mean is really “a competitor to the iphone” in a lazy journalistic “it’s like x on acid” way, but killer? Maybe there’s a better word. I’m sure of it, there are enough words in our fine language to choose from.

Technology is exciting me at the moment, really exciting me. One of my favourite quotes is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C Clarke. And any time something like this happens I get a bit bubbly about it. Just imagine what people must have thought when they first saw a light bulb?

This year I followed CES quite a lot. There wasn’t that much out there, a few bits, mainly the Palm Pre, which has made me feel good. But the real excitement I saw was the wireless charger called the Powermat. You can see a bit more here: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/5025/ces-2009-powermat-wireless-charger.html.

Ok, just imagine. You’re in the kitchen, your work surface is a powermat surface. You take the blender out the cupboard and put it on the mat, it it then powered, no plugging in, cables etc. its pretty cool! Just imagine taking only 1 charger with you on holiday. Of course it won’t just work with all gadgets and in the short/mid term you’d need an adaptor, but holy crap does this get me wet (I apologise, but it really does).

The best part is the Palm Pre also has a wireless charger which you just stick the phone on and it charges: http://www.palm.com/us/products/accessories/dock.html. Right, I’m off to calm down.

I was speaking to my dear friend and flatmate the other day as we gamed our faces off on Halo 3 (my gamer tag, by the way, is Dark Monk) and he asked me a great question: “what is the best technology you have ever bought?”. Now he put a caveat in there: which technology has brought you the most satisfaction, not necessarily the latest thing you bought.

It got me thinking. I love my Blu-ray player, but how much more satisfying is it compared to my first DVD player? My Apple laptop is great, but my first laptop was really what set it off. The answer to both is, I love the latest thing I have, brilliant, but the first DVD player I had, my first laptop, first desktop and first mobile were really the things that gave me huge satisfaction, after that they were upgrades, better, yes, but not quite as satisfying on that marginal level.

Anyway, just a thought. Tell me in the comments if you have anything.

I’m excited today. Actually, I was excited yesterday, but the excitement had to continue till I got a chance to write a post about it. And the reason I’m excited is that Palm are back with a phone that is seriously interesting: the Palm Pre, wireless charging, full face touch recognition. In fact, don’t listen to me, watch this:

ok, it has several nods to the iphone and a keyboard (which I consider a down side) but f*ck me this is sexy (and small) and will probably not be the restrictionware the iphone is (I still want one, but it is restricted too much, come on), especially from a company who up until recently have been pootling along the black line between existence and, well, non-existence.

I thought of this last night and thought of my Palm III I had back at university. I loved it, for a while. The main thing was the handwriting technology called graffitti. You had to learn a new way of writing, but it was simple and really quick to learn. Anyone with a stylus Palm back in the heady days should remember it, do you? Here is a reminder in any case.

Palm Graffiti Gestures

It felt like a community with its own handwriting. Anyway, I’m excited, especially about the wireless charging thing, but the future of mobiles is great (and we do have Apple to thank for that, iphone hater or not) and if the new HTC Android phone rumours are anything to go by, 2009 could be a real step forward.

I’ve just seen something wonderful. For anyone not au fait with unboxings, they are usually a video or sequence of photographs showing the packaging of a product, for example, an ipod. It’s usually done by Apple fans as Apple’s product wrapping is great. This one’s, erm… quite different.

Today I got into work, now sometimes I have to leave my PC on, mainly as I am in the middle of something, and switching it off would my path of work to be interrupted as I get in. Anyway, this morning I realised, my PC had restarted itself. I rolled my eyes, and immediately started thinking “bloody Microsoft”, which is very easy to think, they just had their weekly update schedule pass (every week on a Tuesday) and my PC needed restarting.

I got to thinking though. It isn’t Microsoft’s fault. I blame the people who don’t EVER restart their PCs. Some (not all) updates need a restart as they update something important at the kernel. These can be security features that mean the PC isn’t secure until a restart happens.

Now, Microsoft has had some flack over the years about security, so they decide “I know, let’s restart the user’s PC”, not entirely a good idea as some people want to delay for a bit, but some people just keep delaying it ad infinitum. The best part is, these users end up being the victim of some hack, become a zombie or are compromised in some way and will immediately blame Microsoft anyway. It’s all about the education. In fact, some of these people will even be surfing the web without an anti-virus or firewall! A huge risk, as a columnist once said “…on par with group needle-sharing after having unprotected sex in a Third World orgy”. Ok, he was talking about opening email attachments with a .exe extension, but it’s the same thing. The majority of spam now comes from compromised computers.

So, until people start thinking about their system security, unfortunately we’ll be having our PCs restarting for a while. The only alternative, is to force a restart straight away like Apple do. I kind of like their way of doing it.

Ahhh, the iphone, the hype, oh the hype. It’s good, but hey, in a couple of years, all mobile companies will be jumping on that band wagon, those companies are pretty dynamic. Anyway, People say to me, “but the iphone has a large screen so you can watch films” etc. Mr David Lynch, despite looking a bit mad and archaic thinking, kind of sums it up nicely.

I’m going to say it now, very clearly, I am a geek, I’m actually proud to have this title bestowed upon me, I’m out, I sat my parents down, and i said “mum, dad, i am geek”, they hurt at first, but now they have come to accept that sometimes I will bring a new tech item home for them to meet.

Before you assume it is Facebook, it isn’t. In fact, over the last year, social networks are becoming almost as common as porn on the web. All sorts of niche markets or slightly different variations on a theme are out there.

I’ve been trying out as many as I can and one stands out above the rest for me at the moment. But first, I remember when I first signed up to Facebook, it wasn’t much, you could message, write on a wall, upload a photo or 2, and that was about it. No API, not really any apps. I simply didn’t get it. Then it got better. The secret to looking through social networks is not to say “this is crap” straight away, but to see what potential it might have over the other networks out there, and what it might be able to do in the future.

Every now and again I get asked “I want broadband, who should I use?”. This question tends to get answered in 1 way, “go for Be” I say. And Be is great. Be is a Swedish company who know that speed is a big factor on the internet and don’t charge the earth. Be is fantastic, I was on the pilot scheme a while back in my old flat (I think my old flatmates still have it). Unfortunately, no more as my current flat does not have a BT line, so we have been stuck with Virgin (we charge too much for everything) Media.

Anyway, my point. Be have just put down their prices, so if you thought it was cheap before (£24 for 24Mb download, 1.3Mb upload). Now it’s £22 (£24 for 24Mb download, 2.5Mb upload + static IP + more) for the pro account, which is sweeter, and £18 for the standard. Very good, well done Be. I support you whole heartedly.

For the people who don’t want to spend that much (I’m always surprised by the number of people who want free, reliable etc. broadband), there is a Value option, which is also pretty sweet at £14 a month.