Gadget Show 2011 – what I learntMay 27th, 2011

Android

2011 might be the self-proclaimed year of the iPad, but it’s also the year of Android. It’s everywhere when it comes to tablets: It seems to be the default not-an-Apple device operating system. Which is a shame, because it means theres less innovation going on and instead tablet makers are just slapping on some open source software without thinking about it.

And very often it’s just done really, really badly. I’m a self proclaimed Apple nut, but I love good technology more. There’s nothing more I’d like to see than something, or someone, beat Apple at it’s game. I think with mobile phones we’re now there: I like the HTC Desire1. But we’re not there with tablets. It seems manufacturers are getting scared of the iPad, churning out their so-called iPad killer, and using rubbish spec hardware.

I’m also surprised that of all the Android tablets I’ve used at the show, not one was using the version specifically designed for tablets. Most used Android 2.2 (the current version designed only for phones), with one even using 2.1. One salesman told me that their hardware wasn’t good enough to support Android 3. Tell me about it.

A note to manufacturers: it’s all about attention to detail and doing it right. If I have to swipe slowly to get your screen to react, you’re doing it wrong. Salesmen shouldn’t have to teach me the right technique to swipe, and it shouldn’t involve pressing down on a LCD touchscreen, breaking a few pixels while I’m at it.

A note to salesmen: when I ask you what the killer features of your tablet is (hoping to be blown away) dropping the lie that I want to get away from Apple/my iPad, the answer isn’t “it has Flash”. It really isn’t.

A note to the salesmen from Prestigio whose tablet I managed to crash (it was the PMP30848, if you’re interested). I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I think I swiped it the wrong way…

Ebook readers are now in colour

Wow. After my complaints last year about ebooks being naff, I’m so pleased that ebook reader manufacturers are finally starting to move to LED backlit screens. The hardware I tried is still a bit too slow for my liking, and I don’t really see the value in ebook readers (I guess I don’t take enough beach holidays), but the improvements in the last 12 months were staggering, I just hope the momentum carries on and next year I’ll be drooling over a slick touch-screen reader.

Watches

Vivifi Titan

Vivifi Titan, complete with Nokia style menu. Image
taken from company website. Sorry.

My guilty pleasure item. Almost completely pointless but the day I see a mobile phone watch I’m happy with that I can use, the day I can die happy.

Last year I compared them to 80s digital watches. I’m pleased to report that the watches I saw were no longer like this: instead they can be compared to 90s mobile phones, with the old Nokia 3210-style menus and everything. Ok, maybe not pleased. But one step at a time eh?

(Also, the problem with it being too easy to pick-pocket the phone off your wrist is still there)

Speech recognition

I’m really blown away by this. Admittedly I’ve not used speech recognition software in a long, long time, but I was genuinely shocked at how well it worked after seeing a demonstration.

Chargers

I never thought I’d be impressed by a charger. But I am. Recognising that people have more than one portable electrical device, iDapt have smartly created a docking station which allows you to plug more than one device in to charge. It’s a bit of a stepping stone between a plug per device and charging using wireless charging mats, and I’m not sure how good the quality will be (third party chargers generally being rubbish), but I was very tempted to buy one.

Internet TVs

Last year it was all about 3D; this year it was all about Internet connected TVs. I have to be honest and say that I’m pretty neutral about Internet TVs at the moment. Sure, it’s a good idea, but it needs that killer application (the replacement to the red button that makes an Internet connection worth it), and I don’t think YouTube is it.

Lack of Flip

There was a distinct lack of Fiip exhibiting this year. Which is a real shame.

Cheap accessories

It was a shame to see so many cheap accessories on sale at the exhibition. It seemed like it was a shame to have it detract from the genuinely good tech on show (a real problem in that environment where it’s very easy to get lost and even though you have the time it’s impossible to see everything).

The quality is also questionable. I saw a iPhone case labelled “4G”; or maybe I just missed an Apple announcement.

Get a decent sound system

Once more I was blown away by the sheer quality of headphones available: anyone using the earphones that came with their MP3 player is missing out. And I was amazed by the systems that Bowers and Wilkins demonstrated. It was also nice to be invited to plug your iPod into some headphones and see the quality on music you choose.2

And the killer gadget of 2011 is…

Er. Last year I could clearly say that 2010 was certainly the year of 3D TV. But this year? I guess it has to be the year of the tablet device. Or rather, the year of the crap tablet device.

And finally…

It was upsetting to see blond girls wearing next to nothing being used to attract people to stands and sell stuff. One particular stand even had girls doing a little dance routine (shame on you, Viewquest). We’ve moved on since the days of “only men are interested in technology and the best way to attract them is with sex”.

  1. Enough to get an HTC Desire S as a replacement to my broken-but-getting-old-anyway iPhone [↩]
  2. On a related note, you haven’t lived until you’ve listened to the Tron Legacy soundtrack on some noise cancelling surround sound headphones [↩]

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Posted in Rambling, Technology and gadgets | 2 Comments »
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Transparent/broken HTML form validation warnings in Webkit and FirefoxApril 29th, 2011

In the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox, if you use the new bits of HTML forms such as validation (the ‘required’ attribute) and the ‘email’ type, there’s now some validation

If you was to enter something that wasn’t a valid email address, or left the field empty if it was required, you’d get a nice looking tooltip notification as such:
HTML form validation error tooltip

But sadly, if you use some popular CSS resets such as the lovely one made by Meyer, you’ll get something that looks like this:

HTML form validation error tooltip, not as nice looking

The fix is to look for code similar to this in the reset:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td,
article, aside, canvas, details, embed,
figure, figcaption, footer, header, hgroup,
menu, nav, output, ruby, section, summary,
time, mark, audio, video {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
font-size: 100%;
font: inherit;
vertical-align: baseline;
}

And replace the div selector with body div

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Computers are too hardMarch 22nd, 2011

Press “Start” to shut down your computer
But don’t turn it off without shutting it down

Update your browser to keep your computer secure
But only do it if you’re using a validated up to date version of Windows (you can’t use XP), and you have the permission of your administrator first

Choose between size 12, 14, or 16 font
Not small or large
Why shouldn’t you choose Times New Roman anyway? It’s there and it looks ok, doesn’t it?

Read all your email and reply by only posting under what the other person says. No top posting allowed
That is, once you have your IMAP, POP3 and SMTP settings right
But don’t click on emails from your bank

You can have a 2Ghz or 3GHz chip, with duel, quad or 8 core
But it will still take 5 minutes to turn on
What is a GHz anyway?

No wonder people are afraid to use computers

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From personal experienceMarch 7th, 2011

I’ve been having a lot of issues with my web hosts lately, mostly going back to a single event towards the end of last year. From time to time I do sysadmin duties, so I can’t help but feel that I should learn something from all of this.

There’s a real user behind that account

It might just be an account to me: a record in a table, a line in a config file. But there’s a person using that account. A person with their own bosses and customers. Who they then have to explain themselves to.

If I’m moving stuff, tell the customer

If I’ve been given the task of moving stuff to another server, tell the users involved. It might be a simple task for me, a case of just copying over some files and the right configuration – but something might go wrong. And when something goes wrong because I made a change without telling people, people get angry.

But when something goes wrong because I made a change and I told them, they might even be able to fix the problem themselves. If I forget to update a DNS record, and if they have access to update it themselves, they’ll probably just update it themselves thinking that they were expected to do it, and will probably forgive me.

Don’t just turn things off

Especially if I’m doing it to highlight who’s still using it (that’s what logs are for). Give some notice, and tell them again once it’s off. They might not have known you were planning to turn it off, find something is broken, then get annoyed at me.

Use the same address

So I’m moving everything from server 1 onto server 2. Can’t I just point the same IP or address to the new server? It would save me having to update DNS records, and missing one.

Use the same configuration

If I didn’t use SSL for email before, don’t suddenly start using it now. They might have a script which didn’t understand SSL, which might suddenly break. And upset people.

Check it out

If someone tells me they can’t connect to FTP, then the first thing I should do is try it myself, not ask for logs.

Don’t guess

If I don’t know the answer, don’t answer to the user with a guess. If they can’t edit a domain name when they should be able to, don’t guess that I’m not the registrar. Find out: they’ll only get more annoyed if they know I’m wrong.

Error reporting isn’t perfect

If someone reports a fault — even if it’s late at night — don’t just glance at my error reporting system, shrug, and say “works for me”. Check it out: am I seeing something different? The server might be up, but their account could be down. And I might be the only one who can tell.

Make my support system easy

For example, if I ask people for a log, let them upload a text file. Respond to twitter. Reply to all emails.

Don’t ask for passwords

Really. Especially if I don’t need it. If I need to log into something, create a new account if I don’t have one.

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Quick Review: HTC HD7February 6th, 2011

HTC HD7

Photo by Sham Hardy, used under CC licence

If I could describe this phone in one word, it would be “confusing”. Give me two more words and I’d say “pointless graphics”.

When I first picked up the phone I went into Messages, which was easy enough. But it took me a fair few minutes to figure out how to go back. There’s no on-screen button to go back, you can’t swipe back, you have to use the physical back button on the bottom left of the phone. Which is probably covered by your thumb.

The big problem with the HD7 is Microsoft have tried too hard with Windows Mobile 7. There’s pointless transitions from screen to screen which if anything only distracts you, and stops your train of thought. It’s all form and very little function. Even the transition when you turn the phone on its side is pointless and ends up taking longer than it really should.

As a phone, it’s decent. It might be ugly but it works ok: it’s not sluggy. The big let down is the operating system.

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The state of video on the webJanuary 16th, 2011

The backstory

In case you didn’t know, if you want to add video to a website you can do it in one of two ways: using a plugin such as Adobe’s Flash or natively playing it in the browser by using a new feature of the HTML web language, aptly called <video>. The latter technique works a bit like how including images on a webpage works. Remember this; it’s important

But video does have its problems. Just as with images (where you see JPEG, GIF and PNG) there’s several different file formats for video. You see, videos generally need to be compressed (both the pictures and the sound), and there’s different ways of compressing them. That’s what these file formats are. The big three formats are Ogg, h.264 and the latest kid on the block, WebM

Native video support (that is, not needing to use a plugin) is relatively new — it’s not official standard yet — so the different browsers have yet to agree on which format to use:

  • Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 9 and Apple’s Safari only understand h.264
  • Firefox understands Ogg and WebM
  • And until recently Google’s Chrome supported all three

So, why the disagreement? Simple — h.264 uses patented technology (interestingly Apple and Microsoft are holders of one or more of these patents), while Ogg and (possibly) WebM are patent-free. Firefox have always refused to use h.264 for this very reason, whereas Apple has always said that Ogg and WebM are of lesser quality

Things were ticking along nicely, with the majority of browsers supporting h.264 and yours truly hoping that Firefox will see sense and include it too. But in the last week Chrome have decided to drop support for said format

I mentioned that it was important you remembered that images work in a vaguely similar way, and this is why: until recently, GIF was also patented — and the big difference is unlike GIF, nobody will have to pay to use h.264 on the web. People still used GIF files (the only reason we don’t nowadays is because there are better formats)

The problem

This all means that video on the web is at a worse state than it’s ever been. Sure, we can use a plugin such as Adobe Flash, but Flash just isn’t very good

I have to wonder why Google made this decision. The official line is similar to that of Firefox’s: that h.264 isn’t open, whereas Ogg and WebM is. That’s true enough, but remember that Chrome supports Flash, which also isn’t an open format. And Google Street View and YouTube (owned by Google) use Flash, as I’ve just mentioned isn’t an open format. Why the contradiction?

Is it a coincidence that Google created WebM? Is it coincidence that the most vocal proponent of h.264 also vocally attack Google and Adobe?

Of course, Adobe are happy about this, they will be. But it doesn’t add up. Neither h.264 or Flash are open, but at least h.264 is good. If we’re going to be dropping support for something because it’s closed, it really ought to be the one that’s full of problems

The state of video on the web

As a web development community we need to go one of two ways: we need to either decide on a single format once and for all (my vote, of course, goes to h.264) or we need to go the way of images: it doesn’t matter what format you use, it should just work

Last year when it was announced that nobody would be charged to use h.264 on the web, we went a step forwards. We all hoped that Firefox would use it — but so far they haven’t. Instead we took a step back, with browsers being split in half between those who support h.264 and those who support Ogg and WebM

The web shouldn’t matter what browser you use, what computer you use. You should be able to visit it on your PC, your Mac, your iPhone or your 5 year old Nokia. We should be past the stage of “Best viewed using” messages. There isn’t a desktop web and a mobile web. And there shouldn’t be a h.264 web and an Ogg/WebM web. I shouldn’t need to have to include one video for Internet Explorer and another video for Firefox when making a website

The web is for everybody to see, not just those with Flash plugins installed or the correct browser. This isn’t 1997 when the two major browsers conflicted, fought, and generally didn’t work together. It’s 2011, we should be learning from our past mistakes maturing as an industry, we should be working together to make the web the best it can be, not bickering over patents and openness and not using a certain technology because your rival helped make it

As a web developer and active(ish) member of the web community, I’m angry and upset that we’re not using our energy on more important things. The losers here are the people who have to make the sites and create two different versions of every video, and the visitor who will only get to see half a web if they don’t

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Posted in Rambling, Web design | No Comments »
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Predictions for 2011January 9th, 2011

Just the one prediction this year

I don’t think that 3D TV will take off in 2011. 3D requires you buy a new TV set, and with the economy as it is I don’t think people can justify this extra cost. I mean, people have only just bought their HD TV

I think 3D cinema will grow though. It won’t be massive but there will be a few blockbusters that are practically 3D only, a bit like with Tron

Bonus prediction: Responsive web design will be the buzzword of the year

As always I’ll see how I did in about a year’s time!

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Predictions for 2010 – revisitedDecember 20th, 2010

So, how accurate was I with my predictions last year?

Twitter will still be just as popular, and might get a source of income
If this graph is accurate, then Twitter is still growing. And did they find a source of income? Well, I guess promoted tweets count

Mobile apps will be big, with more services and brands creating apps
Did I get this right? I’m not so sure. The world seems to be going iPad, which I didn’t count on

Rupert Murdoch will try and start charging people to read news online
Another tricky one – we don’t know

Internet streamed media will take one step closer to being at the quality it needs to be, both from the point of view of the user and the broadcaster
There’s certainly not been a shortage of announcements of internet streamed media – with announcements such as Youview and Radioplayer this year. But are they better for the user..?

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Review: HTC DesireOctober 13th, 2010

There’s a couple of things I don’t like about the iPhone and iOS. I think it could do with a homescreen (it’s tacky but it’s handy — I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve accidentally lost an application alert by unlocking my phone, with no way to get it back), and I would love it to have an FM radio. As much as I love internet radio, mobile data providers have yet to provide a good enough (and cheap enough) service to allow you to stream smoothly.

The HTC Desire solves all of these problems. As well as the built in radio there’s also the homescreen which works very well, and alerts are shown at the top of the screen. No more popup alerts that get in the way that you can’t get back: they’re nicely tucked at the top of the screen. The notification light is also a useful little addition – It’s the one thing I miss when I upgraded from my old phone to iPhone, and they prove very helpful

But enough of what I don’t like about the iPhone.

When you take it out of the box, the HTC Desire stands out as being a very good looking phone that’s pleasant to hold. Apart from it being hard to find where to put the battery and SIM (I actually had to read the instructions), it’s a doddle to set up, although I’m a little unsure about your phone being linked to your Google account

But once set up, the one thing I didn’t like is the sheer number of apps. The iPhone doesn’t have many apps on a clean setup (although even then I’d say there were too many – does anyone ever use Stocks?) – but the HTC Desire is just insane. There’s at least two mail apps, I couldn’t even find the address book app, and it’s just generally a lot of clutter that most people won’t really need (and if they did, they’d easily find it in the Android Market which is – yup – hard to find)

The earphones are also questionable. I know the Apple earphones are a bit crappy, but these are just plain bad. It’s like the cheapest pair you could find, but worse. There was no way they were gonna stay in my ears. But I do like the power cable: it’s a USB lead. I’m a big fan of reusing leads and I have a ton of USB cables around. It’s a nice little touch, and I’m looking forward to more phones doing that in the future.

So – my final thoughts. It’s a nice phone – a very nice phone. There’s a lot that Apple can learn from it. But just like the iPhone, there’s a couple of irritating niggles that I’m sure would annoy me just as much after a year and a half so of using it.

For those who don’t like Apple’s closed way of doing things, it’s a fantastic phone. For those don’t mind it, you’ve got a difficult choice. The HTC Desire is most definitely on par as being one of the best phones on the market to date, alongside the iPhone 4

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The problem with Internet mediaSeptember 19th, 2010

The great thing about modern technology is there’s a lot of different ways of getting TV and radio to you. If one technology doesn’t work, then there’s another more suitable platform just around the corner.

I want to use FM on my iPhone because my internet signal won’t be very good when walking down the street, and I use the internet when I’m at a desk. I can use DAB for the “xtra” type channels it provides when I’m not at my desk. In short, I care about the content. I don’t particularly care how I get it as long as I get it, and I get it conveniently.

But the problem with Internet TV (and to a lesser extent, Internet Radio) is there’s too many different solutions to the same platform — too many brands and too many set-top boxes. The platform shouldn’t be the brand — the platform should contain the brand. Why do I have to go to iPlayer to get BBC content and 4oD to get Channel 4 content? And why on earth is there the added complexity with Channel 4 content also being on YouTube? It’s the same platform, it’s pointless.

There’s too many TVs and set-top boxes out there giving you bits of the platform. You can have this channel but not that one. You want this brand for live streaming and that one for catch-up. Why I can’t I just turn on my TV, select “Internet” (or the appropriate brand name), and get a choice of “channels” (your traditional TV channels, plus any internet only channels who want to be on there and the likes of YouTube) both streaming and on catch up?

The whole industry is awash with brands, and it’s starting to confuse even the biggest geek. I want to watch Doctor Who so I go to iPlayer… or do I choose BT Vision? Oh wait, is See Saw better? Should I buy Apple TV? But is it on YouTube? YouView? What the hell is YouView?? Is that some cheap YouTube knockoff??

Someone needs to bash together the heads of all the big TV content providers, and tell them to stop arguing with each other and stop threatening to get the competition commission involved. They need to work together for a change and come up with a solution to make Internet TV simpler. Because right now, it’s just getting more and more confusing, because more and more companies are coming up with their own separate solutions.

Posted in Media, Rambling | No Comments »
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