Thursday 24 February 2011
Saturday 19 February 2011
High Prices Threaten to Kill Tablet Adoption
via pcworld.com
This piece echoes my feelings. Tech devices always start off expensive, then fall in price quite rapidly. So far tablet PCs haven't quite followed that trajectory. The potential 'iPad killers' that have come along so far are actually more expensive than Apple's product.
This writer suggests this may kill off the market. I doubt that. My feeling is that it's simply that manufacturers were caught flat-footed by the sales success of the iPad. After all, it's less than a year since it came to market. My guess is we're probably a year away from real competition in the form of a device which offers an experience to compete with the iPad at a significantly lower price.
Friday 18 February 2011
Real journalists can’t write - Caledonian Mercury
What is a journalist? Is it the same as a writer? Has the internet destroyed journalism or could it be its saviour?
Thursday 10 February 2011
Who says the revolution won't be televised? Just look at Aljazeera now
Actually, to be fair to Gil Scott-Heron who coined the phrase 'the revolution will not be televised', he was writing over 40 years ago. Also one of the last desperate acts of the old Muberak regime was to try and close down Aljazeera and intimidate journalists. The failure of the dictatorship to silence the media is one of the reasons the people. I hope, have won.
Tuesday 8 February 2011
PR stunt bites back - Anonymous Hacks Security Firm Investigating It
via wired.com
Cyber law and order's always bit like the Wild West with a somewhat hazy line between goodies and baddies. There are those that break the law for the "right" reasons and those that purport to uphold the law, but employ methods that are at best morally dubious.
At the same time, often those making the money are the ones supporting the law while the outlaws make nothing. And because the whole thing's so secretive it's easy for both sides to make exaggerated claims.
It's hard not to smile when you read this story from Wired. A few days ago a US security firm claimed it was in a position to reveal the identities of some of the leaders of Anonymous, the group that's carried out cyber attacks on companies that didn't support WikiLeaks. Now Anonymous claims to have hacked the security firm to expose it's poor, er, security.
Ever been bitten by your own PR stunt?
Friday 4 February 2011
Google's shockingly bad language on Android Market
The ability to find apps for your Android phone or tablet on a website should be a great step forward. It's just easier on a big screen to see what you want, enter password details and so on.
But Google's execution of the Android Market is infuriating users across the world. Not for the first time it's the use of language that's the problem.
I live in Spain, but my English is rather better than my Spanish. It shouldn't be a problem for me to set language options to deal with that. But I can't. What I have is an international mishmash with navigation in Spanish, app descriptions in English and comments in Spanish.
There are even more ludicrous examples. One Android user in Switzerland complains that the language defaults to German event though they live in the Italian-speaking part of the country.You can see more here: http://www.google.vu/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=7a6841e195c8df9f&hl=en
The language problem with Google's service is long-running and annoying. You set all the language preferences to English, in my case, and all's fine for a few weeks. Then some sort of hidden updates resets everything.
Microsoft and Bing don't seem to have the same problem. So why can't Google sort it out?
Tuesday 1 February 2011
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