IT Sneak blog - V3.co.uk

Overheating iPhones: Sorry I'll have to call you back, I'm in a heat wave

2009-07-03T14:06:37Z

The heat wave may have broken in the UK, but that hasn't stopped the world from noticing that Apple has released some support information concerned with overheating iPhones and using the devices in hot weather. We know, the words 'support information' chill us too (if you'll excuse the pun) so we'll summarise it for you - don't let your iPhone get too hot or it will stop working.

Although designed to work in temperatures that range from chilly to "will someone please let me out of this oven" (between 0ºC and 35ºC) trying to use one outside of these parameters could cause it to stop working, Apple has warned. The firm makes a number of recommendations, including telling people not to leave their iPhone in a hot car. Instead it recommends that you turn off the phone and move to somewhere cooler - like indoors maybe, or Iceland?

Although Sneak usually adjusts to the hot weather by making small changes to his daily routine - for example, storing his underpants in the office fridge - he can't help but wonder what this sort of announcement will mean to those holidaymakers planning on using their iPhones in St Tropez, St Lucia or some other summer hotspot. It's hard to imagine them stuffing the oh-so-trendy item anywhere but on permanent display. Besides, beach outfits tend to be low on pockets.

NB: The Apple support page was updated on 25 June. We would like to apologise for our lateness in bringing it to your attention, but Sneak works remotely and like the iPhone was struggling to work in the heat.

Stand by for 1980's home PC nostalgia

2009-07-01T13:03:01Z

Sneak was intrigued to read reports that the BBC is to screen a 'comedy drama' about the early days of the home computer industry in the UK, when men were men, computers were knocked up from kits that had to be soldered together at home, and software was almost invariably loaded from audio cassette tape.

The show is apparently to be called [bad pun alert] "Syntax Era", and will star comedians Alexander Armstrong as Clive Sinclair and Martin Freeman as Chris Curry, one of the founders of Acorn Computers.

Many of the reports Sneak has seen indicate the show's plot will centre on the rivalry between Sinclair and Acorn Computers for "home computer supremacy".

This isn't how Sneak recalls this period of IT history, it has to be said. Sinclair's ZX Spectrum and Acorn's BBC Micro computers were aimed at very different ends of the computer market.

The 'Beeb' was regarded as the Rolls-Royce of home computers, as it had a full typewriter keyboard, video outputs for a TV and monitor, and an array of ports, including analogue-to-digital converter, disk drive interface, and even a set of chip sockets for plugging in add-on ROM chips that expanded its built-in software. It was a hobbyists' dream.

By contrast, the 'Speccy' was cheap and cheerful, with a rubbery keyboard and a single expansion port that simply brought out the processor bus signals to a connector at the back of the case. It was great for learning to program, playing games, and an introduction to the world of computers.

It would be difficult to decide which of the two was best, however. While the Beeb was clearly technically superior, the Spectrum was far more affordable and had many more software titles created for it. Which would you choose?

As to the "Syntax Era", don't you think that it's great that the BBC went out of its way to find so obvious a look-alike for Clive Sinclair?

Barcode, we salute you!

2009-06-27T11:53:29Z

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.

Printing without a PC?

2009-06-26T12:32:21Z

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?

eBruce

2009-06-22T12:46:16Z

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.

Buzzwords bamboozle IT hacks

2009-06-19T10:36:40Z

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.....

Oy'm feeling lucky

2009-06-15T10:58:54Z

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.

Heinz keeps workers trapped at desks

2009-06-10T12:20:51Z

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.

Congratulations Yasmina, this year's Apprentice

2009-06-08T15:58:40Z

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.

Broadband is increasingly essential, but not as important as water

2009-06-04T15:41:51Z

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.

Poke the Pope!

2009-05-24T10:04:15Z

The Pope has launched his own Facebook application. Yes, that's right, Pope Bendict XVI can now be referred to as the Digital Pontiff, with the launch of Pope2You. Apart from sounding disconcertingly like a papal pizza delivery service, the new application is the latest in the Vatican's attempts to reach out to loyal Catholics around the world.

You know social networking has really come of age when the Establishment starts to get in on the act. First politicians and big business, and now this. To be fair to His Holiness, the Vatican has already made moves in the Web 2.0 space with the launch of a papal YouTube channel, and says this new app will allow users to receive messages from the Benedict XVI through "the most important social network of the world". Sneak wonders what MySpace will have to say about that judgement.

"You can meet the Pope on Facebook, listen to his words, see his pictures, receive his messages of congratulations through 'virtual postcards'," according to the Vatican. "The postcards can be sent to your 'friends' on Facebook and the application can be shared by anyone."

But that's not all, kids. Sneak has discovered that the Pope also has a nifty iPhone and iPod Touch application out, which will give fans, sorry, followers, accesss to video and audio news on the pontiff's trips and speeches, as well as news on global Catholic events.

And before you all mock this rather incongruous use of Web 2.0 technology, by one of the oldest institutions on the planet, according to reports, the Pope2You portal garnered 45,000 contacts and 500,000 page views on the first day alone.

Twitter: fount of all knowledge?

2009-05-20T15:38:18Z

Is Twitter actually worth using as an information source? Two unrelated incidents today have pushed Sneak firmly into the "no" camp. While the micro-blogging phenomenon is a wonderful reminder that some people out there really have nothing better to do than let the world know what they had for lunch, its use for matters a little more serious remains dubious.

Take poor Patrick Swayze for instance. The Twittersphere was awash with speculation that the 56-year old Dirty Dancer had finally lost his battle with cancer. Until it emerged that he is actually alive and well and chill-axing at his massive ranch.

Then news emerged that there could be a General Election in a couple of months. According to TechCrunch, a new profile claiming to be that of chief Labour whip Nick Brown appeared this morning, posted the Tweet - "the new speaker will only have a few weeks to settle in before the election is called" - and then promptly deleted the account. Chances are it's a phoney too. There is a lot of noise on Twitter, in fact, it's really what the site is all about. This is what makes it curiously addictive and dangerously unreliable at the same time.

They say that 90 per cent of all information on the internet is factually inaccurate (although Sneak got that particular fact from the internet, so it may not be true). Well, on Twitter, you can probably push that up to 95. Less a fount of all knowledge then and more an unstoppable torrent of misinformation.

Music industry 0-1 Illegal downloaders

2009-05-18T13:45:10Z

The beleaguered entertainment industry has received another blow in its battle against the downloaders, as uber-cool music producer Danger Mouse has revealed plans to issue his latest album with a blank CD-R.

Due to a falling out with the suits at his record company, EMI, Danger Mouse (real name Brian Burton) will release his Dark Night of the Soul album with elaborate packaging, but will ask his fans to download the contents via the internet on to the included blank disc - and not by official sources either.

Young Mr Burton, who is half of Gnarls Barkley, has worked with Banksy and Damon Albarn (there is always room for one blip) and first won praise with his internet-only - and non-record company sanctioned - The Grey Album, a mashup of the Beatles and Jay Z. Now, following the EMI dispute, Danger Mouse says he "hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is".

The announcement is surely the sort of thing that sees record company execs remove their faces from mirrored surfaces and move at speed in the direction of high-storey windows. Just consider what the entertainment industry has to put up with already: early releases, forced preview downloads, DRM technology and unnecessary accompanying applications - and that's just the music biz.

Just last week, the UK creative industry stopped searching eBay for limited edition Nike trainers long enough to ask ISPs to step on prolific filesharers, while a study from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) revealed that one in four software installations in the UK was illegal.

Illegal software, the BSA warned, might not live up to your expectations and could leave you open to security issues - leaving Sneak wondering when they were going to start talking about how it differed from the official version in many cases.

While the above examples aren't quite as cool as Hip Hop industry spats, they still show just how concerned the 'biz' remains about pirates. Artists lowering a ladder for the miscreants to jump onboard ship isn't going to help anyone. Unless...

Sneak eagerly awaits the day that Celine Dion follows suit. Because surely a blank Ms Dion CD is the best Ms Dion CD.

Dell woos the ladies

2009-05-15T03:00:55Z

In a bid to tempt the ladies to get all techie and buy a laptop, Dell launched a web site earlier this week aimed at women and called 'Della'.

The site is divided into just four areas (that's it, Dell, keep it nice and simple for the ladies): Products, Featured Artist, Tech Tips and Giving. Sneak's favourite area is the Tech Tips page, which until Wednesday this week featured 'Seven Unexpected Ways a Netbook Can Change Your Life' and boasted the promise that once you get beyond their cuteness, you'll realise netbooks can do more than just check your email.

However, in response to feedback (no doubt of the negative kind in response to the previous patronising tone of the advice), Dell has now updated this section and reduced it to only five tips, along with a note explaining the changes: "Some of you have read this article over the last several days and will notice a few modifications. You spoke; we listened. Thank you for your ongoing feedback."

Luckily Sneak had already saved all the info from the original seven tips, and can safely say that while none of them were that 'unexpected', all fit the normal lazy stereotyping around women and technology. The original list featured ways to use your laptop as a calorie counter, recipe finder or meditation aid. The new tips still include an e-book reader (so you can catch up on the latest Mills & Boon or Jackie Collins blockbuster, no doubt) and a lifestyle organiser. But the reference to a 'Remember the Milk' time management application has now mysteriously disappeared.

The 'Stay in the clouds' section has also been wiped. This covered nothing too technical at first: "'Cloud computing' is a buzzword for what your mini does best: save money and time by using free online apps for everything you need - meaning you don't need to buy, install or update a bunch of space- and memory-hogging applications on your computer itself."

However, it then went on to reference streaming media, Google Docs, transferring data, porting it via removable SD cards or USB flash drives, and plugging in an external drive. Hopefully this section hasn't disappeared as readers complained it was too techie and complicated. Instead there is a much more basic 'Get more' tip, which encourages women to, "Add storage to your netbook with memory cards or memory keys".

Fortunately the Featured Artist area of the site still features Robyn Moreno, author of Practically Posh: The Smart Girls Guide to a Glam Life and producer for Plum TV in the Hamptons, no less. I'm not sure what she has to do with the Della web site or netbooks, but she seems to like eating and drinking wine, judging by the pictures on the site, so a perfect choice for selling netbooks to the ladies.

Thinking Digital - an IT conference with a difference

2009-05-14T13:03:52Z

When Sneak normally attends IT conferences he finds himself usually surrounded by the old, the grey and the unwashed to sit through hour after hour of keynote from Vendor X and Service Provider Y about how great their technology is. It is tough going for your loyal reporter, but ultimately yields a fairly high story quota.

The Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead (or Newcastle, for you non-north-easterners) is a bit different. The opening session has borne witness to several visual treats, including a discussion about whether Christians are pro-cyborg or not, and the truly disturbing post-Partridge vision of a grown man miming along to Beatles songs while playing a large inflatable guitar.

Now back to the cyborg news. The debate, between social media entrepreneur Paul Miller and conference organiser Herb Kim, centred in all seriousness on whether us humans are all capable of taking control of technology, rather than the other way around. Now, 'the other way around', as any film buff knows, is likely to take the form of some kind of doomsday scenario as imagined by the creators of the Terminator franchise.

"There are many things that will happen, but they are not inevitable, and conflict is not inevitable either," argued Miller. Phew, good news. The last thing Sneak needs right now is a battle with our cyborg foes set to destroy mankind. I've got a bad back.