ArthurGuy

Apple’s Interoperability

Yesterday my MacBook was delivered, I haven’t owned a Mac before but thought I probably should as it seems to be the machine of choice for developers and is a requirement for developing for the iPhone.

I have picked up the way the system works fairly quickly, its relatively intuitive but a few things bug me, the US keyboard for one, the fact the copy and past doesn’t seem to work (just figured this one out, cmd rather than ctrl) unless your using the mouse and the way tabbing works or doesn’t work between form items on web pages. These are just silly problems and things I have quickly worked around.

This morning one of the first things I went to download after letting the machine update overnight was the iPhone SDK, finally having the platform it was designed to work on I expected the process to be straight forward, alas it wasn’t. I went to the developer site and clicked the download link, the login box popped up and I logged in, the login box popped up again which seemed a little strange but I did what it said and logged in again, I was then returned to the site where I clicked on the download link again. When I clicked the download link I expected the download to start but instead I got a box saying my session had expired, a few moments after logging in. I tried this several times but I haven’t been able to get it to work, rather stupidly I am having to download it on my windows machine which worked fine using IE!

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BBC TechCrunch Debate

Last night was the debate at the BBC, it was held in the relatively small council chamber in Broadcasting House. I am not going to provide a summary of the whole thing as Mike Butcher has already done this but I am going to talk about a few things I found particularly interesting.

Rights
I mentioned previously that I would like the BBC to make available there entire catalogue of programs for people to watch or develop with, I found out last night that this is never going to happen because of rights. The BBC doesn’t own the rights to anything other than some of its radio shows so it can’t make them available for commercial or non commercial use; what does this leave the BBC with that it could release, apparently quite a lot.
What was talked about a lot was the other types of data the BBC has, the BBC has and is making available at the moment general information about its programs, it is doing this through a fascinating system of linked articles. Eventually the plan is to have an automatically generated page for every program or even episode that contains details such as which pieces of music were played, these would then be linked to a page on the piece of music which would display all the shows and events where it has been used. This data would be made available through a variety of open formats for external use, there was also talk of linking it through to services like last.fm so if you liked the music in a particular program you could go and listen to more like it. In addition to this type of data the BBC also has a lot of statistical data such as viewer numbers and other similar things which it does own and could open up.

One little fact which did emerge came from Tom Loosemore who was from Ofcom, he was talking about the government and its data and Ordnance Survey came up, they are a public service company but because of the way they are setup they have to make money this is why all there mapping data costs, he seemed to suggest that over the next few years this may be changed and all there services will be opened up for free or at cost. I have used various OS maps in the past and this would be an amazing thing if it happens, I suspect it would also mean mapping services like Google Maps would be able to integrate the much more detailed maps making the purchase of MultiMap by Microsoft even more pointless.

This will be an interesting area to watch, I doubt much will happen over the next few years but we will hopefully move to a state where companies like the BBC and even the government make all of there data publicly available in an open way.

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The TechCrunch BBC Debate

Over the past few months there has been talk of the BBC opening there content up to 3rd parties, this seems to have been spurred on my Mike Butcher the editor for TechCrunch UK in several different posts. Mike has been calling for a public debate on the matter and he has got his wish, next week there will be a debate at Broadcasting House between several people from the BBC and the tech world.

The BBC is a public company which we all pay for so it only seems fare we should all have access to the content it has produced, the BBC recently announced plans to digitise all of their content and make it available on line which is clearly a step in the right direction but there are calls for them to go further.
Rather than just letting people watch the content it needs to be available for people to take and embed, edit and create better things with.
Having the ability to take TV shows or even entire series and embed them say into a fan site for that show would be a great thing for all the shows fans, the website and even the BBC as it all aids in the distribution of the BBC brand.

If the content was there to access, developers could build new websites and services to access and display the material, rather than the BBC spending millions of pounds on content delivery systems they could build an archive, a series of API’s and focus on creating better content. There are clearly big copyright issues involved, there is generally a third party who has made the show for the BBC who would want a say or it may be a show the BBC has bought the rights to show either way this is probably where the problems will be and why the shows in the BBC’s iPlayer are only available for 7 days.

I will do a followup post next week after the event.

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The world of Apple

I have finally joined the Apple club and bought my first product, a MacBook. I had never been interested in Apple products as they always seemed over priced and in compatible with everything, I still think there a little on the pricey side but I bought mine through the Apple higher education store so I only paid £713 instead of £829, a very reasonable discount. I have been in several situations recently where I have needed a Mac so I think this was the right time to make the move.

A couple of weeks ago when I was at the Google Developer conference in San Francisco the majority of people had Macs so I kind of felt out of place sitting there with my HP running Windows, there are also several bits of software that will only run on the Mac, Google have an uploader for there App Engine and the SDK for the iPhone only runs on the Mac as well. My only problem is that I have never properly used a Mac before so it will be like learning to use the computer all over again.

In addition to this Mac I am also considering getting the 3G iPhone when its released next month, the previous iPhone didn’t seem very good especially in comparison to the phone I have but the new one has fixed most of the iPhone’s limitations. I have 2 contract phones at the moment and I really don’t want a third, I will have to wait and see how tempting it is next month.

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Where am I? Here’s where

I think I have finally solved my location problem, I contacted a company called FollowGB who supply a range of tracking software and hardware as well as an online control panel for locating things and people.
At first glance all there products seem tied to there own tracking system but they have said that they can reprogram the devices to send data to any server and seem quite happy to do this for me.

The device they recommend is called Trim Pro and is a small self contained GPS and GSM system which runs from 4 AA batteries. It costs £235 so its not particularly cheap and is at the higher end of my budget but it does seem ideal.
I am still waiting for the company to get back to me with some specifics but all going well I should get this within the next week or two, when I do I will post a more detailed review.

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Where Am I?

For a while now I have been looking for a method of tracking my location, Ideally I would like my exact location at any time of the day to be available and tracked both for my reference and so people know where I am. Some people may not like this idea but I have always been a big fan of anti-privacy type stuff.

I don’t know if something to do this already exists, I have found similar things but nothing to do exactly what I want. My ideal device would be a small black box with GPS receiver and Internet connection through the mobile network, it would then upload my coordinates every minute. Last week I cam across a text message based service called sniff, this service locates you using the cell tower your mobile phone is connected to so it isn’t particularly accurate and it only does this when the service is texted at a cost of 50p. I have always thought there should be a bit of software for the mobile phone that would do this, my HTC Advantage has a built in GPS and mobile connection so it would be an ideal platform.

Over the weekend I found a data logging GPS device in a catalogue, this device says it will record your position so it can be downloaded later so it doesn’t offer real time updates but would be interesting for tracking routes when I go walking. This should turn up in the next couple of days so I will update this post when I have had a chance to try it out.

In the mean time I am still on the lookout for some software or even hardware to track my location so if you have ever come across any let me know.

Update:
I decided to actually look for some software to do this and the first thing I cam access does almost everything I want, the only problem is the updates seem to go to there system. The software is called KoolTrax and I am currently waiting to hear back about some specifics such as the possibility of sending updates to my server.
Update 2:
Received a reply about KoolTrax, unfortunately it doesn’t do what I want but I am tempted to buy it anyway and see what it is like, especially as its only £40.
Update 3:
I may have found the software I have been looking for, there is a company/site called Mologogo which has a piece of software for most types of mobile, it makes use of cell tower positioning or GPS positioning to update there website, the key thing is you can also send the location data to a second server. There are several issues, firstly the application on the phone continually updates a real time map meaning increased bandwidth, it only updates every 30 seconds and the option to send your location to a second server doesn’t work on Windows Mobile yet, oh and it crashes.
I am still looking for that ideal piece of software, if only Windows Mobile was as easy to develop for as the iPhone.

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Microsoft Live Mesh

Last night I received an email invitation to the Microsoft Tech Preview of there new Live Mesh service, this is Microsoft’s attempt at getting back on top and having some relevance. There Mesh service is designed to connect things together, such as your computers, phone, and I would imagine in the future other computer type devices.

The Tech Preview seems fairly limited as it only seems to support Windows PCs, not Macs and no mobiles, apparently there coming soon. When you log into the service you are shown a ring and on this ring are all your connected computers along with a Live Desktop.

When you connect a computer you need to install a small piece of software which allows synchronisation of files and what appears to be remote desktop connection software although I haven’t tried this yet. When the software is installed you can create Mesh folders on your PC, you then place files into here to sync between PCs and the Live Desktop. Rather annoyingly you don’t appear to be able to make an existing folder a Mesh folder it has to be a new one, this means I am unable to sync my whole My Docs folder I have to copy out files into a new folder first.

The other part of the service is the Live Desktop, this is a virtual desktop which does a good job of modeling the look and feel of Vista; the Mesh folders you create on your PCs are visible here along with the files. Simple files like images and audio files can be opened and played or viewed on the Live Desktop but when I tried to open a word document it tried to get me to download it.

The next step for a service like this is to integrate office type software, so when a word or an excel document is opened it opens on the desktop in an online version of the software, even a viewer would do.

I think in the long term something like this would be good, I have a problem moving files between work and home and this may solve that problem, the mobile aspect may be useful as well but I rarely find myself moving files between these devices, I usually just email the files to myself that way I can pick it up on any of my devices.

Update:
I have been using the service for a few days and it seems fairly good, the remote desktop connection system is simple and easy to use and great for downloading files at work where p2p connections are very fast, when the file is downloaded I can then use the mesh folder synchronisation which uses http connections to move the file. The only annoyance I have come across is a problem with Visa machines with UAC disabled, this means for the time being I can’t connect my main home PC.

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Google IO - Day 2

The Google developer conference is now over, the past 2 days have been really interesting both from the conference content point of view and the event itself.

My main focus for the 2 days was the Google App Engine cloud hosting system, I had read up on it before hand but I learned a lot about the system and about the correct methods for creating an app I have also made good progress on moving my Trip List application over to the App Engine system.

One thing I found interesting was how much money Google must have spent putting it all together, there was so much there, an unlimited supply of food and in addition to the breakfast, lunch and dinner there were ice creams, drinks and other snacks available throughout the day.

One interesting I read the other day, the t-shirts we were given had binary code on the back, the code was ASCII and spelt GOOGLEKO rather than GOOGLEIO which it was supposed to spell, this may have been intentional but its unlikely.

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Google IO - Day 1

Its day one of the developer conference and so far the morning has been very interesting.

I arrived shortly before 8 where I got accosted by some guy collecting for charity, I walked away from the encounter with my wallet $20 lighter but feeling OK for doing something for charity.
Registration was at 8 where I collected by badge which has University of Sussex written on it, I guess that’s what I get for only paying $50 for getting in, I also picked up my t-shirt, tote bag and water bottle, not to shabby.
They had free food and free WiFi so I spent the next hour on a bean bag catching up with emails, my VoIP phone also worked so I was able to call home for free.

The keynote speech was fairly interesting as have some of the sessions, this afternoon I am going to a workshop where hopefully I will learn how to properly use Google App Engine.

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Facebook’s new look

Facebook have just launched a public preview of there new site layout, it’s available for anyone to view at www.new.facebook.com, at the moment you can only view your profile page, any attempt to view other pages redirects back.

One big change is the separation of the sections of the site, rather than having everything tied together there is now a separate header bar with the logo, drop down menu’s and a search box, the main content is then below this in an unframed box and finally the chat bar at the bottom of the window.

At the moment a lot isn’t working, for example the items in the feed tab have an option to change there size or hide them, this doesn’t work and the applications on the boxes tab can’t be hidden or resized, also the auto search on the search box isn’t working.

The one thing that is missing is the advertising, I’d imagine they will have the same style advertising down one side, I don’t think they would get away with 2 ad units and they can’t afford to hide it at the bottom. The main content is centralised so the ad box might look a little odd floating of to the left or they may shift the content across, we will have to wait and see. Also at the moment the ads appear below the list of applications as these have been moved the ad box will always be stuck at the top of the page.

As you can see from the screen shot wall items appear in your news feed, this is one think I don’t like and I hope they remove this before the changes are released.

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