With all the fuss surrounding the untimely demise of the King of Pop, Sneak is keen to point out we are forgetting to pay homage to the anniversary of one of the greatest events of our collective lifetime.

At exactly 8:06 am on 26 June 1974 at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first ever barcode was scanned. Yes, that's right, 35 years ago, almost to the day, history was made. Can you remember what you were doing at that time? It is one of those momentous events - Armstrong on the moon, Kennedy's assassination, the final of Big Brother 5 - that everyone surely remembers.

That famous first barcode, as we all know, was on a packet of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Who knew then that it would start a revolution?

Other equally memorable moments of the last 35 years of barcode history include, in 1980, the birth of Symbol's LS1000, the first handheld portable scanner.

In 1990, the same firm developed the Laser Radio Terminal 3800 (LRT3800), a light-weight portable unit combining barcode scanning, mobile computing and wireless communications.

And who could forget, in 1994, the Portable Pen Terminal 4100 (PPT 4100), the first pen-based handheld terminal with integrated scanning and wireless LAN technologies? Not I.

Now a part of Motorola, Symbol Technologies continues to push the boundaries of imaging and scanning innovation. God bless them one and all.

June 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

When Sneak heard about HP's new Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web, he was irresistibly reminded of an old apocryphal IT support story, which goes something like this:

A support technician receives a call from a buyer who cannot get their printer to work. After going through an exhaustive checklist, including checking whether the guy has ink in the printer, if it is loaded with paper, if the printer is turned on, etc, he finally asks the customer to check if the cable is securely connected to the computer.

"Oh, I haven't got a computer, just a printer," he chirps.

Well, all jokes eventually come true, as it is now possible to have a printer and print stuff directly from the web, without the need to turn on your PC.

The Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web has a touch-screen, so that users can link to online content, such as photos, and print it. Downloadable applications will allow you to buy cinema tickets and print them, again without needing a PC.

However, Sneak is at a loss to find any of these scenarios where it wouldn't be simpler just to do this via the web from your PC, and then print it off using any old printer that doesn't set you back $399 (£244). Or are we missing something?

June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bruce Schneier, security expert and international man about town, has blogged about his less-than-impressive eBay sales experience.

Bruce had a Sony Vaio notebook that was never used (read: got for free) and decided to put it on eBay, sadly all that was bad about the online auction experience popped into his lap(top). First it was bought by a hacker, and then once relisted it was bought by a thief.

Things weren't looking too good for Bruce and his laptop. In fact he compares the whole 'on/off' laptop listing affair to being the victim of a denial of service attack. This is strong - but Bruce lives in Minneapolis and works for BT so we guess with all that travelling his time is uber-important. After all you can't check your eBay account on a plane. Yet.

Thankfully for Bruce thrice was the charm, and on its third listing the notebook shifted for some $1,500 - roughly half its highstreet value. Perhaps he should have signed it or included a lock of his hair in the auction, we can't help but think that that would have made it appeal to a much-higher class of potential buyer in the first place.

By the way if you do have any unwanted alice bands or scrunchies for sale, Bruce has a pretty good rep on the 'Bay with 21 positive rankings to his name.

June 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was intrigued to see a string of recent news stories on the web proclaiming that Korean electronics giant LG is to produce new monitors with "virtualisation technology".

The original source of this story seems to be Reuters, which reported that LG's new SmartVine N-series flat-screen monitors are to come with embedded circuitry supporting NComputing's technology for sharing a single PC between multiple users.

This setup has proven popular in education, as you need little more than a keyboard, mouse and screen for each user, with a little box connecting all these up to the shared PC.

In other words, it's basically a thin client terminal.

Pretty much every thin client vendor has offered a terminal integrated into a flat-screen monitor at some point, such as the one pictured here currently available from Igel Technology.

Sneak wondered why this particular announcement should have garnered such breathless headlines, when thin clients are barely considered worthy of attention by most of the IT press.

Could it be because the Reuters story included the magic buzzword "virtualisation"? Sneak will leave it up to readers to decide for themselves.....

June 19, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A new search site has launched... yeah yeah, we know, another one! But this one is different. This one is aimed at Orthodox Jews.

Koogle.co.il was launched recently in Jerusalem and omits most of the things that most of us have come to love and enjoy about the internet - such as bawdy ladies. Unfortunately we only got wind of it on Monday morning so we don't know if it was working on the Sabbath - we rather doubt it though.

Because of its inbuilt content controls, Koogle could be the perfect search site for offices where people look at things they shouldn't - when they should be working. Adding to its enterprise appeal is the fact that it is pitched as a business and services directory and comes in two languages - Hebrew and American English.

Although it worked very well as a simple directory switching to America English messed with the page formatting and when we tried a number of searches - ranging from Katy Perry to Temples, we got more server errors than you find in a tennis tournament for short-term memory loss sufferers.

However it is not pitched at IT journalists more used to searching for 'monkey petting zoos' and 'antique motherboards' than real services, and as such we can only applaud it for bringing a decent web service to people in an apropriate manner.

Something that the other search sites could all learn from.

June 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you ever sat at your desk fighting back a strong desire to eat some beans?

No, no one in Sneak's office has either. But apparently the people at Heinz are so bean-obsessed that they think that what the world needs more than anything is a USB-powered microwave designed for heating up beans. At your desk.

Yeah - you read that right. A bean microwave for the desk. We had to check the date to make sure that it wasn't actually April Fool's Day, but a story in the Daily Mail has pictures of the device and pictures of a man sitting at a desk using one. The mind boggles - in 57 different ways.

The Daily Mail has spoken to all involved - while presumably keeping a straight face - and has come up with the following facts: that almost 70 per cent of people are too busy to leave their desks at lunchtime, and that the mini-microwave would carry a price tag of around £100. Neither of which really sounds like a good reason for developing or purchasing a deskbound microwave.

Still according to those involved, the possibilities are almost endless: "It is possible to heat a pie, a burger, a cup of soup or tea in quick time," explained microwave expert and the Beanzawave's designer Gordon Andrews. Prompting us to wonder whether the device is aimed at office workers or food concessions at football grounds.

June 10, 2009 Food and Drink, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yasmina Siadatan is the lucky winner of this year's Apprentice, and as a prize she's landed the business job that we all dream of. No, not being Alan Sugar's apprentice - he has already had four of those from the previous series so we doubt he'll have much time to actually manage and nurture her.

Yasmina's exciting new role will see her giving away free electronic screens. With adverts on. To doctors surgeries. Wow. That's definitely bleeding something, if not quite 'bleeding edge'.

This new role sounds very similar as the job given to Lee McQueen, the winner of last year's show who also went to work for Al's Amscreen digital signage division. Lee - known for his bizarrre dinosaur impression and CV fakery - was recently applauded by 'Surralan' for getting a large contract inked for the firm. What was the contract for? Giving away free screens? Check. With adverts on? Check. To doc... No, this time it was to petrol stations.

Boy. I bet Yasmina wishes she entered last year. Or had stayed put at her restaurant.

June 8, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a recent survey by a government group called the Communications Consumer Panel (CCP), nearly three quarters of respondents said they couldn't live without their home broadband connection, rating it as high as other utilities such as electricity and water.

This prompted a range of headlines stating that 'broadband is now as important as water'. Now, while I wholeheartedly agree that broadband is an increasingly essential part of our lives, rating it as highly as these other life-giving services is possibly a step too far.

Removing the fact that without electricity there is no broadband, two weeks without water or power and your internet connection would soon pale into insignificance, except possibly to bombard your water and electricity providers with angry emails about the lack of service.

To be fair to the CCP, some of this was simply over-hyping from publications trying to generate an eye catching headline.

I've looked through the report and at no time does it actually say that respondents consider their home broadband to be as important as water or electricity, simply that they increasingly treat it as a utility rather than a commodity and that internet access should be considered a right, rather than a privilege. The distinction is a subtle one, but it is there nonetheless.

Perhaps my instinctive aversion to the comparison comes from being born and raised in South Africa, a country where a lack of electricity, water and basic sanitation is still a very real issue for thousands of people, but interestingly even there a mobile phone is increasingly seen as a vital part of life.

Returning to the first world and the UK in particular, the report does raise some interesting points about how internet access at home is viewed as increasingly essential and not having internet access at home is now considered something of a disadvantage, especially for families with children.

Anna Bradley, the chair of the Communications Consumer Panel puts it quite well: "The tipping point will be when broadband does not just provide an advantage to people who have it, but disadvantages people who do not," she said.

"Interestingly some people already feel disadvantaged: those who live in not-spots and those who have school-age children but do not have broadband at home."

We're living increasingly hyper-connected lives, using the internet not just for information, but for communication, purchases, services and entertainment - and that means that, while data access at home is never going to be as important as running water, those that don't have it are going to find themselves struggling to keep up with their peers.

For those of you interested in the full 'Not online, not included: consumers say broadband essential for all' report a PDF version can be found here.

June 4, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)