Silverlight RIP?

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

The battle royal between HTML5 and the two major plugin runtimes of Silverlight from Microsoft and Flash from Adobe continues to rumble on.

To the intense annoyance of both firms, it appears Apple is holding sway here with its insistence that neither Silverlight nor Flash will be allowed on the iOS platform used in the iPhone and iPad. And that, in its opinion, HTML5 is the future.

Well, there is no doubt that HTML5 is the future, in that the current HTML5 implementation leaves much to be desired and it will take time and work for this to be fleshed out. But Apple says no, use native code on iOS or use HTML5. (more…)

Death of the sales channel

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

The news that Microsoft will have a software e-shop for Windows 8, and that Apple will be doing the same for its forthcoming Lion version of OS X, should be ringing alarm bells in the boardrooms of the high-street vendors, and the online e-shops.

The reality is that customers like buying from a curated store, with easy installation, payment and updating. And they like the low prices that this method tends to bring. In addition, developers love it because it allows for them to concentrate on app design and not on website design, credit card handling, and the huge overhead of keeping in touch with customers for updates.

However, if you’re in the business of selling packaged software, then you are about to have your Titanic moment. (more…)

TomTom 940 and the tortuous road to recovery

Monday, September 20th, 2010

If you read my Epilog column in the new shiny edition of PC Pro, you will know that my respect for TomTom and its software upgrade process really couldn’t be much worse.

In short, the company released a major update for the TomTom 940 almost two months ago which simply didn’t work. It wouldn’t connect to the online TomTom Live services, which is the very reason for having this device. The Live services gives you features such as live traffic rerouting, Google access and so forth.

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The real reason Microsoft killed the Kin

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

The news that Microsoft Kin, the recently released Yoof Fone, has been cancelled should come as a surprise. Microsoft simply doesn’t make decisions this quickly, which clearly indicates the overwhelming badness of the decision to launch the damn thing in the first place. (more…)

Please, Microsoft, let Windows 8 banish passwords

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

For me, the most important part of the recent leak of Windows 8 material (assuming it is real, of course) is the use of facial recognition to do login authentication. We know that passwords are a pain in the bum of sysadmins all over the world. Of course, we enforce all kinds of things to attempt to make them more secure — forcing regular changes, disallowing certain words and patterns, ensuring passwords can’t be reused too quickly and so forth. (more…)

A5 paper puts my printer on a go-slow

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

In the realms of technology in the average office, printers are undoubtedly the most bizarre, quirky, and deeply strange devices known to mankind. I accept that tape drives are in a world of pain all of their own, but we do our best to ignore them on the grounds of maintaining some sort of sanity. So printers it is.

For the past few years, I’ve had an HP Color LaserJet 5500HDTN printer in my office (HP’s spelling of ‘color’, not mine). It’s a monster, doing A3 double-sided and having five paper trays and a hard disk. It has lasted well, and produced consistently high-quality copies, spitting them out at high speed too. That is until this week. I needed to do some printing on A5 paper, so loaded up a tray with 500 sheets. The print job was already on the printer’s own hard disk, so it was a few button presses to get 500 copies underway.

The printer ran like a racehorse until about the twelfth copy, at which point it slowed right down. Instead of the usual twenty-something sheets per minute, I was down to about five. Clearly, something was wrong. There was nothing in the printer log, no errors on the display, nothing visible in the web-server pages.

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Gracious, infuriating and funny: Goodbye Guy, and thanks

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

In the grand scheme of things, in the realms of The Great And The Good, Guy Kewney’s passing might not seem worthy of mention. He didn’t found a multi-billion dollar software firm, he didn’t run a bank or get into the House of Lords. In truth, he did more than all of that. Do not underestimate the influence that Guy Kewney has had on an entire generation.

He was the first computer journalist, and was there right at the very beginning. When Guy said “and I told Bill that this wasn’t a good idea”, he is referring to Gates and it really happened. Guy knew everyone. Everyone read Guy. Some of us were fortunate enough to either work with him or call him a friend.

He was gracious, infuriating, funny, deeply caring, humane, generous, inspirational, annoying, difficult, learned, witty, awkward, and just about every other term you care to apply. I recall furious arguments with him over the years, but will treasure the inevitable get-togethers, chats and putting the row behind us.

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TomTom 940T vs iPhone TomTom: a real road test

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Last week, I had to drive to Brussels. I took the overnight ferry by Stena Line from Harwich which plonked me into Hook of Holland at about 7am in the morning. Ideal for a fast sprint to Brussels, or so I thought. Thick fog everywhere, traffic queues everywhere, and Rotterdam was a mess.

Fortunately I had two TomTom GPS units with me. Firstly, is the trusty top of the range 940T with the live traffic update data facility. Plus I had the UK and European maps version of the TomTom software on my iPhone. I had also recently bought the new TomTom active car mount kit which has a GPS aerial unit within the mounting. So it was going to be interesting to try two versions of ostensibly the same thing.

Getting the iPhone into the mount wasn’t easy — it didn’t click in well, and felt stiff and awkward. But it worked out, and was soon mounted alongside the 940T.

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Where online businesses go terribly wrong

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Few things annoy me more than large companies whose web-based eshop indicates a level of stock which is, in reality, a total fiction. They don’t have the stock, it’s just there as a ruse to get you to hand over your credit card details and place the order with them.

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Everything that’s wrong with Windows Server 2008

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Trundle over to the Microsoft Download Center and download the Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster.

Now I have the rather lovely Epson 4880 A2 printer. And I really don’t think it’s big enough for this monster.

And if you ever wanted a clearer demonstration of what’s broken with the Microsoft server model for businesses, one glance at this will tell you all you need to know.

Just ask yourself this question – who actually understands this stuff? All of it?