Monthly Archives: September 2007

Apple/Mac, Calendar/Contact Syncing, Computers/Technology, PocketPC, Web/Internet

iPod Touch – A MacOS X Based PDA?

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Yesterday I had a slightly strange experience -after being decidedly unenthusiastic at recent Apple Keynotes, I found myself getting decidedly excited at the new range of iPod’s that Steve Jobs announced yesterday – even finding the whole Starbucks thing exciting (until I realised that it was US only… 🙁 ).

The revamp of the existing range was pretty impressive, with more video support and a revamped user interface, and increased capacities across the board. The ringtones for the iPhone seemed pretty cool, but of course totally irrelevant for anybody outside the USA. Even if we did have it here, I’m not sure I’d be using it as a phone anyway as I much prefer a separate phone sized and shaped phone and PDA.

However, in the search for the ideal PDA, the iPod Touch did seem to be ticking a lot of boxes.

In simple terms, this device is an iPhone without the phone bit, so it retains the high quality touch screen, and also has the same software for playing songs and videos. This means that unlike any of my other portable devices it should play all my music. It also retains the Wi-Fi, and includes the same version of Safari found on the iPhone so web browsing should be an experience comparable to the N770 rather than being the usual cramped screen mobile experience. We won’t even mention the woeful excuse for a browser on my PocketPC device…

Looking at the icons in the demo the suite includes both the contact and calendar applications from the iPhone – although the big unanswered question is whether these are the full applications or read-only as on the other iPod’s.

The most notable absence is the e-mail application, although you can get around this using webmail applications. The reason for e-mail being missing is obviously to steer carefully around upsetting the phone networks, so in that vein there is no mention of the ability to hook up to a phone with Bluetooth.

So a real possibility as a PDA? I guess the jury is still out – will just have to wait and see, and head down to an Apple Store when they get released next month.

iPod touch originally uploaded by bvalium

Church, Computers/Technology, Current Affairs, Web/Internet

What’s in Facebook Stays in Facebook?

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Not anymore… Facebook have announced that they are adding a public search facility which in a month will be linked into the main Google search allowing anybody to obtain the name and profile picture of any Facebook member. The search will also provide links to Facebook functionality to allow the retrieved Facebook users to be contacted directly.

True they will only be revealing a name and a picture, but it is still a lot less private than before. You can also restrict search access through your profile settings too, but it’s very much an opt out rather than an opt in.

The growing phenomenon of Facebook is definitely starting to cause concern – Om Malik is quoted in the BBC article highlighting that the move turns Facebook into a de-facto phone book of the internet – he also highlights the risk of publishing too much information on your profile when for example people often use their birthday as a significant bit of information for their banks.

There are also growing issues with regards to the fact that the site was previously aimed at students. This is a definite issue with schools, for example at Beth’s school all of the staff with Facebook accounts were called to a special meeting on Monday to in particular highlight the potential issues with the information staff could put on their profiles, and more importantly how to deal with friend requests from students. The same issues will obviously relate to other people who work with young people, for example youth leaders in Churches. How much information are you putting in – and who else is being linked together? Do you really want what you friends are writing on your ‘wall’ to be visibly by those you work with in a professional capacity?

To some extent we’ve had similar issues with this site, as have other teachers with blogs – we try to ensure that we don’t mention Beth’s school by name, or link to it directly (much the same as I do with my employer), and this site is also explicitly blocked on the school servers. Essentially schools all over the world are going through the same issue, but on a much larger scale. After her experience before Beth has said that she is absolutely not going to get a Facebook account -and as I’ve mentioned before, mine is as slim as it possibly can be.

Update: The Scobleizer article that I linked to in the comments section, and the original article that Scoble was answering are well worth a read too. In particular with the original article it is worth considering the question as to what you reveal to whom by joining a city network, and also taking a look at the range of discussion in the comments. There is also some good discussion about perceived versus actual security, particularly with regards to MySpace and Facebook.

General

A Simple Plan?

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The theory…

Between 7:30am and 1pm today, our new fridge freezer would be delivered and installed by Indesit/Hotpoint. This in actual fact requires a bit of co-operation between the delivery guys based at Andover, and the Reading based engineer, so the works order consists of three jobs and reads as follows:

1. Call FSE (Field Service Engineer) one hour before on 7288

2. Removal of Old Appliance

3. Deliver HMB313I (our new Fridge Freezer)

The New Fridge Delivered

Seems fairly straightforward, but in practice it didn’t work out like that. Just before 9am, this is a view of our kitchen.

The delivery driver turned up, and I expressed some surprise that he was on his own. His response was that they only needed one person to do the job now thanks to hydraulic lifts and trolley. However, having brought the new fridge/freezer into the kitchen announced that it needed an engineer to remove the old one so he couldn’t do it (perhaps why his job sheet said he was supposed to have phoned 7288 before he arrived?). He said to give the call centre a call when the engineer was done and somebody would be back to collect the old appliance.

The engineer arrived at about 11:30am, totally in the dark about what he was actually here to do since he hadn’t received any calls – it seems they give the delivery driver the number to call the service engineer, but not the other way around. Of course the other reason why they arrange for both the delivery driver and the engineer to turn up together is that installing a built-in fridge freezer is a difficult job as the whole thing has to be lifted into place – since the delivery driver has hydraulic lifts and trolleys it makes life easier – unfortunately the engineer has a van with tools – no lifts or trolleys. Anyway, my thought was that since he was on his own, he could perhaps refuse to do the job. Thankfully he was really helpful, and with a bit of help from me and a bit of cardboard to slide it we got the old fridge outside, and the new one in place, and by about 1pm it was all installed and running.

The Old Fridge Left on the Kerbside

However, that just left the matter of the old fridge – sat on the kerbside at the front of our house. Giving the call centre a ring as instructed, after a lot of waiting on hold they eventually said that they will be by to collect either tomorrow or Thursday!

Bear in mind at this point that on Monday morning the Indesit/Hotpoint call centre left us a message reminding us of the appointment, and saying that they would charge us £34 if nobody was available and they were unable to deliver – since they’ve failed to complete the job properly between 7:30am and 1pm as arranged, I wonder when the cheque will be arriving for me? The call centre maintains that as we were the first delivery it would have been a bit early to call the engineer – so perhaps better scheduling is called for?

According to their corporate values they are respectful and ambitious to improve – so perhaps I’ll write them a letter detailing my experience…

Pictures

Canada Pictures

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Canadian Falls by Night

I’ve just finished uploading my pictures from our recent trip to Canada. Beth has another set from her camera that will be uploaded to her Flickr account over the next couple of days.

Currently all of mine are in a single set, but as with our earlier trip I’ll probably break down the three hundred or so pictures into more manageable sets too. I’ll also post about some of our adventures – including the float plane that took six attempts to get into the air…

As a quick overview, the first group are pictures taken at the family wedding which was the main reason for our trip, then pictures of Toronto. After that we spent a couple of days up at Parry Sound, and finally we finished off the trip at Niagara Falls.

Update: Beth’s pictures can be found here.

Doctor Who, Movies & TV

Confirmation that Tennant is Leaving Doctor Who?

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We got back from Canada to what is possibly confirmation that David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who at the end of the next series – Beth being a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company had a copy of their 2008 brochure sitting waiting, confirming this Daily Mail story from July, David Tennant is to play Hamlet, and also, somewhat ironically appear as Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, the play at the centre of the Shakespeare Code. The Royal Shakespeare Company issue publicity to their members a month or so before publicity is generally released – so the productions aren’t even listed on their website yet.

Since his performances run from July 24th to November 15th 2008 it seems unlikely that he will be able to film for Doctor Who unless the BBC were willing to do some significant rescheduling.

Having said that, he’s not the only TV sci-fi star appearing in the productions, playing Claudius alongside David Tennant will be none other than Patrick Stewart. Tennant and Stewart together on stage – I guess I might just have to join Beth when she goes up to see that one…

Update: An interesting news release from the BBC today describes as unconfirmed that Tennant will play Hamlet – although obviously the Royal Shakespeare Company members have been told otherwise.

However the news that he will be appearing in three specials during 2009, whilst he is at the RSC, with full scale Doctor Who production resuming in 2009 for a 2010 series does hold out the prospect, even if they aren’t fully confirming that he will appear in the 2010 series, that Tennant is not leaving, and the BBC are adapting their schedules to accommodate him. I can’t see that the BBC would want to deliberately rest one of their top rated, and most financially successful series for any other reason as to accommodate their star – so I can certainly see Tennant climbing up from his position as 24th most influential person in the recent Media Guardian List if that is what has happened!

Update 2: Questioned after winning an award at the TV Quick/TV Choice awards Tennant will neither confirm or deny whether he will be appearing in the series in 2010.