Monthly Archives: January 2006

Computers/Technology, Pictures

Testing Beta’s

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TechCrunch today published an interesting article giving tips for tech companies, particularly those involved in the latest online developments on how to make the best of their beta programmes. Whilst in the past most people would never see beta releases unless they were signed up to specific beta programmes, but now, with the ease of distribution offered by the internet, companies such as Microsoft and Google offer beta releases of upcoming products on free download. The article also makes interesting points about the kind of people who will participate in such beta programmes will be, and what technology they will tend to be using, and the importance of blogs and bloggers to the whole equation.

That reminded me that I was planning on posting another update on how my experiences with Shozu had been going, as although the possibility of actually using it had come to an end thanks to issues with my phone, as I mentioned at the weekend, I’ve carried on chatting over e-mail with Andy Tiller since then. Certainly I’m not alone with other bloggers commenting on how open Cognima are about their product, and Andy popping up to answer questions. We’ve actually had a good discussion about how I was looking to use Shozu in relation to how it works, and it is certainly a good example of how to run a beta programme.

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Following on from my posting on why Shozu wasn’t working, Andy was curious as to why on exactly the same phone, I wasn’t having problems with Opera Mini. My conclusion was that this was primarily because Opera wasn’t checking on the Java permissions. When I fire up Opera thanks to my lack of certificates I get a message from the operating system of the phone saying that Opera is attempting to access the internet, and giving me the option to allow this or block it. If I allow it then Opera has access to the internet for the duration of the time I am using the browser. If I subsequently exit the browser and go back in, I then have to reauthorise Opera. The difference with Shozu is that in order to provide specific features, such as the automatic resumption of transfers if the GPRS signal is lost, the application needs full access – as the loss of the connection and resumption would result in an annoying series of dialogs repeatedly asking for permission to connect. As a result, Shozu checks it’s level of permission and if it doesn’t have what it requires, forces you to exit. The argument I offered Andy on the subject was that Shozu doesn’t actually need this level of access, and could work at the reduced level I have available on my phone, so it would be better to offer a warning that the reduced level of permissions could adversely affect the user experience in Shozu but let the user use the application anyway. I also highlighted that if Shozu were an application on a PC I’d usually be careful about handing it full control of a connection until I was happy it wasn’t going to connect without my permission and clock up a vast bill, and as such giving Shozu users the option to use the phone operating system to restrict Shozu was helpful.
It is worth mentioning at this point that I don’t think I convinced Andy of my point of view, but at the same time I certainly felt that he was open to discussing other ways of doing things. This again makes a refreshing change, as sometimes you get the feeling that software developers (and I’m sure I give the impression at times too) take anything that seems like criticism of their product pretty personally, when in actual fact the users are only trying to be constructive.

It also kicked off a discussion at work, over some of the occasions when despite a whole series of requirements documents, user workshops, and even sitting watching users work it transpires that the users are actually using your application in a totally different way from how you originally envisioned it. Sometimes this could be as a result of a bug, or that having been given a new application they realise that they can use it to do more than they originally thought. However there are a number of occasions we’ve had some incident reports that appear really obscure until you work out what the users are doing. Equally some feature that seemed massively important, and that we spent ages developing, for some reason is now totally ignored and the users are doing the same thing in a totally different way (usually involving an Excel spreadsheet).

Certainly when I get a phone that is capable, or the guys at Cognima produce a version that doesn’t insist on specific permissions, I’ll take a look again. With the other options being the frustration of trying to get MMS to work reliably, or e-mail, that increases the size of any picture transfer by about 40% (the overhead on Shozu is only about 4%) it certainly seems a great way to send pictures on the move. Also, if you want to see a good example of the kind of mobile photo-blogging that Shozu aims to support just take a look at some of the more than 13,000 Flickr pictures tagged with Shozu! (And you can even see pictures of the guys who work at Cognima in amongst them too!)

Computers/Technology

Not One, But Two New Macs

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As usual, the Macworld Keynote has wheeled out some surprises.

As expected, iLife 06 and iWork 06, adding iWeb into the iLife mix – probably a must have upgrade for me.

However whilst there were rumours of one Intel based Mac, Jobs in fact announced two – a laptop, and the only recently updated iMac is updated again to run on dual-core Intel processors. Both machines also get a significant bump up in the graphics department, with built in Ati Radeon X1600 chips.

The really tempting machine though is the MacBook Pro, which thanks to Apple never having produced a G5 laptop, quadruples the performance of the old Powerbooks. The idea of having a powerful dual core laptop that can run MacOS X, but can also be set up to run Windows when needed is really tempting. The big question now is quite how long Howard will be able to resist…

Life on Mars, Movies & TV

Life on Mars

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Tonight the BBC kicked off probably one of the most eagerly awaited TV series so far this year, Life on Mars. The programme is another production of BBC Wales, the part of the BBC that returned Doctor Who to screens last year, and it is fair to say that Life on Mars might not have come to the screens with such publicity had it not been for the success in getting the new Doctor Who of the ground. Indeed the team behind the show first pitched it to the BBC seven years ago, before Channel 4 picked it up and then got cold feet. Two years ago it ended up back at the BBC and was given the green light.

The show is a strange mix of traditional police show, but with a good deal of weirdness thrown in. It starts with Sam Tyler, a policeman in 2006 involved in investigating a serial killer. He does things very much by the book, and when his girlfriend, also a policewoman decides to go off on her own to follow her hunch after he tries to take her off the case, and then gets taken by the killer, he is frustrated and upset, and narrowly avoids hitting a car driving back to the police station. He gets out of his SUV in shock, and with Life on Mars by David Bowie playing on his iPod, is hit by a car going the other way.

Here is where it starts getting weird, as when he wakes up, he is in exactly the same spot, but over thirty years in the past, in 1973. He’s still a policeman, but things are very different – or are they? As the episode goes on whilst the methods may be radically different, it transpires that the crime that the police in 1973 are investigating is very similar to his case in 2006, indeed it could be that the murderer is one and the same man, released from prison in his own time, and picking up where he left off.

But the big question is whether he really is in 1973, or whether he is actually stuck in a coma. At one point watching the Open University on TV he realises that the presenter has stopped talking about geometry, and is talking to him, trying to wake him up. However against that is the accuracy and detail of the apparent fantasy world he has created, and the fact that he is in an era where he was a child. Like many of the best fantasy dramas there are hints being dropped, and also a fair few red herrings I bet, but I guess we won’t find what is really going on until a lot later in the series.

Of course the great strength of the series seems to be that if you’re not keen on the sci-fi aspects, there is a good old police drama to get into too, plus being 1973, a good dose of nostalgia for those viewers who are old enough to remember the early seventies.

Certainly it was a strong first episode, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Movies & TV, Politics

Who Owns Britain?

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I’ve just watched “Whose Britain is It Anyway?â€? a programme on BBC2 that is essentially a TV version of the book “Who Owns Britainâ€?.

Starting from the premise that with about sixty million inhabitants, and sixty million acres of land, if ninety percent of the people live on only ten percent of the land, there must be some pretty big landowners around, it then takes a look at the ten percent of people who own the remaining ninety percent of the land. The task is made somewhat more difficult because a large amount of the land in the UK is not registered. This is because land only gets registered when it is sold or a mortgage is raised on it, so there are currently about four million properties, and millions of acres of land for which the owner is not registered, leading to several issues of ownership that were explored during the programme.

Oddly enough, although they are still comparatively big land owners still, two of the historically large landowners – the Church and the Crown, now actually own rather less – both only owning under one percent each. In fact government groups are the biggest single owners with the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission owning about ten percent of the country. However, although they own less than in the past, the biggest group of landowners, and the group with the biggest single landowners in terms of area, and in terms of value are the aristocracy – the largest landowner having more than a quarter of a million acres of land in Scotland.

Having said that, what watching the programme also highlighted the importance of what is on the land. For example the land owned by the Duke of Westminster in Belgravia and Mayfair is worth about four billion pounds, but in terms of area, it is less than two hundred acres. In fact it started life as four fields and a bog that was given to the Duke’s ancestor, indeed being able to gain planning permission for a change of use from agricultural land to building land can massively increase the value, going from a few thousand pounds an acre to millions.

All in all it was quite an eye opener, especially that thanks to our tight planning laws, we are, despite what most people think, one of the least built up countries. What we are tending to do is to cram more houses into less space in built up areas, whilst at the same time keeping thousands of acres untouched. So do I think we should be out bulldozing the countryside? I think not. What the programme also highlighted is that large amounts of land are available to the public – the Forestry Commission as well as being the largest single landowner in the country, is also the largest provider of leisure activities, letting people use their land. The Ministry of Defence also lets public onto large parts of their land, and the point was made both by large landowners, and users, that economics of scale come in to play. By owning large amounts of land they are able to properly care for and manage the land for the benefit of all, much more than thousands of small owners could do on a one by one basis.