Comment

I’m hoping that the surprise finding on Mars won’t be a pocket of hidden water, but a pocket full of Mars bars.

It’s your move Snickers, it’s your move.

about 5 hours ago on Oldest cache of water on Earth may give clues to early life forms

Comment

One [dumb] thing that I keep seeing here. Many people seem to use WhatsApp on the mobile but the concern here is that it doesn’t work on tablet or desktop. Am I the only one that doesn’t see the issue with keeping your mobile beside you WHILE you use the desktop or tablet, that’s what they’re there for anyway isn’t it – to be mobile?

How much convenience do we need before it becomes an inconvenience?

3 days ago on Pick your poison: messaging will be fragmented, expensive, or locked-in

Comment

Reminds me of the Tic Tac guy who followed Elaine around in Seinfeld.

11 days ago on Regal Cinemas bringing Sony's accessibility technology to nearly 6,000 screens this month

Comment

Interesting observation on some recent Nokia handsets that offer 3 contact points on the back of the phone. From there you get a clip on cover that has the wireless charging bits in it.

Nothing to say that those 3 points couldn’t connect to either a PMA or WPC solution. Best of both worlds I guess without having to be stuck with a defunct technology.

11 days ago on Did the future of wireless charging get decided by a coffee cup?

Comment

Stick everyone on cable with a PVR and watch the advertisers say “No thanks”. Now either your cable bill goes up or the cable companies start showing programs that are cheap to buy because they were cheap to make. It doesn’t matter if 50 million people watch a TV show when you can’t jack up advertising revenue accordingly. Same effect for the internet, when your favourite programs to torrent start disappearing.

Of course the bandage fix will be for the cable companies to disable commercial skip functionality in their boxes. Then everyone will be happy (everyone meaning the advertisers).

13 days ago on Crazy like a Fox: how broadcast networks could rake in billions by going cable-only

Comment

Thanks for sharing your perspective Paul. I’m sure it will expand as being on the internet becomes normal in the same way that your unplugged euphoria wore off over time.

I think the internet drives people to normality. People doing crazy stuff on YouTube seem frequent, but the reality is that most people have a dull web presence (or perhaps dull lives). Without a strong will, our desire to be creative and unique gets quashed by our need to belong. That need to belong seems to be more attached to the internet than ever before.

I never signed up for Facebook and lost track of most of my friends’ lives and I accepted it. Not to blame Facebook, but instead to admit that my life on the internet changed my desire to pursue those friends in the real world. You mentioned that you found solace in some of your family relationships, but I wonder how your year would have gone had there been an unplugged-from-the-internet doppelganger for you to chum with and discuss your creative and literary pursuits – a way to stoke that creative fire in the absence of the internet.

Regardless, perhaps your experience will spawn the perspective to strike a balance going forward; where purposeful time-outs are an excuse to explore your creative side that you can draw from to give back to the internet.

18 days ago on I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

Comment

Users have responded well to apps like Google Now that trawl through personal data to provide useful info at the right time and place. Will they be as open to TV screens and telephones that listen in on every conversation and suggest that right recipe, state capital, or song title? Some of the biggest names in the tech world are betting the answer is yes.

Then some of the biggest names in the tech world are idiots.

Are we not fighting to ensure that governments can’t strongarm companies into surrendering our personal communications without getting the proper authorization, all the while big business think they can do the same thing and with our blessing? It’s just stupid.

20 days ago on The walls have ears: Samsung and Intel bet big on a startup that searches every word you say 2 recommends

Comment

So-so movie, but great ending. Made me think of it when I read this article.

Soderbergh’s Contagion

21 days ago on Why is China a hot zone for the deadliest strains of bird flu? 1 reply 2 recommends

Comment

They did show some of the selling features – sleek design and vibrant colours and well as the live tiles view.

It’s enough to differentiate; going into features would kill the comedy of the bit.
Girl: “They kind of like fighting, now let’s pair our phones via NFC to share a playlist”

21 days ago on Microsoft creates an Apple vs. Samsung wedding fight for its new Windows Phone ad 3 recommends

Comment

Once again though, the concept of the old method not being broken only applies if you’re solely talking about mouse and keyboard. Through in all those extra graphical cues and suddenly it gets harder to get your blob of a fingerprint to hit the right place.

24 days ago on Six months on, Windows 8 sales are a mystery

Comment

I think you meant you misread “mysery” instead of “mystery”?

24 days ago on Six months on, Windows 8 sales are a mystery

Comment

I hate the word ‘paradigm’ but I’m going to use it anyway. The ideal paradigm shift takes you from something that worked to something that’s even better with a fairly universal confirmation that it is indeed better. The question is how does it take to get people to that end state where they buy into the concept. For example:

Apple’s leap from iPhone to iPad garnered a very quick adoption of the new paradigm (i.e. larger format) working well. Android’s leap from phone to tablet has been tenuous but they’ve tweeked the formula to gain traction (perhaps smaller and low-cost). Microsoft tried to leap from plain Windows XP to polish in Vista but the reaction was not good (style and performance). They took what they learned and converted Vista into Windows 7. I bet a lot of people thought that Windows 7 was a new product but really it was just a fixed up version of Vista. That’s all that was needed to get most people to forget about XP and move on to 7.

People who are clamouring for classic Windows desktop are not prepared to accept the new metro paradigm. But that implies that they are also rejecting touch as a computing method they want to consider. They may be right, perhaps touch doesn’t have a place in the PC future, but Microsoft hedged on convergence being the overarching theme and that people would be using a mix of tablets, convertables and traditional PCs for Windows. I can’t blame them for wanted to create an single OS that serves all those niches. They could have created Windows 8 Touch and also continued to offer Windows 7 Non-Touch but that doubles your maintenance requirement.

There’s also the question of ARM. Microsoft had to see multiple paths into the future and wanted to chose one that promoted a fresh new idea while still keeping one foot in the past (desktop support for x86). Now Intel is fighting tooth and nail to prove that they can do low power, low cost consuming while maintaining legacy x86 support – it sounds like the best for Windows users who want the best of both worlds. It also prevents Microsoft from fully embracing ARM and the failure of Microsoft Surface RT almost seems to be the nail in the coffin. If I had to guess, people don’t want to be stuck in Metro. They may like Metro but they don’t want to be stuck there.

I’ve used Windows Phone since last year, so I’m familiar with the concept of tiles, but I only recently upgraded one of my PCs to Windows 8. I have to say that like many other people, my feelings are mixed. The concept of an app that serves a single purpose makes sense on a phone because it’s phones are inherently single purpose (in the linear sense). On a PC though, have a dedicated tile that just loads up content that is really just for the most part a web page seems frivilous. I found myself shrinking the size of many tiles and turning off the live tile updates because it makes things look too busy on the home screen. Things in general just look too big, almost as if the Metro concept could work but just needs to be tightened up. Maybe it wouldn’t be dynamic, but what if all your tiles were the same colour and could be laid out on your screen in groups (kind of like the failed Fusion Garage’s Grid 10). People were already familiar with shortcuts being in a specific place on their desktop. I think you should also be able to hover on a tile and have it pop up multiple subtiles. For example, instead of having a million news tiles moving to the right on your screen, have a single News tile that you can hover on and it pops up a grid of news tiles that you placed in there.

So anyway, my point is that the paradigm is not necessarily broken. Perhaps, we’re back in a Vista age and what’s coming next is the new better version of the same thing. Personally I think that convertibles are going to replace the modern PC and therefore touch and voice will both have a very prominant role in our computing experience. Going back to a Windows Desktop by default would frustrate the crap out of anyone use touch instead of a mouse (imagine trying to click on start menu every time with your index finger). But if Intel can prove that they are still worthy of being Microsoft’s premier partner, then perhaps Windows can have it’s cake and eat it to. Metro will be touch based for relaxed consumption and then you’ll jump to desktop and grab your mouse and keyboard to get productive.

Don’t count out the fact that all those mobile users (phones, tablets) may still be in the honeymoon and will eventually wake up to the reality that using these devices is counterproductive to some task. Then there will be a renaissance for the PC.

24 days ago on Six months on, Windows 8 sales are a mystery 2 recommends