SimplicITy ‘over 50s’ PC is so un-PC

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

This morning I had a press release emailed to me about a new range of systems by simplicITy computers to be launched today by Valerie Singleton, her of Blue Peter and ’sticky-backed plastic’ fame. She was also presenter of the BBC Money program for many years.

What got me fuming was that this range of computers was for the ‘over 50s’, those people whose brains are just too old and addled to understand new technology, like me and a lot of my friends. I find the term ’silver surfer’ particularly annoying; my hair went grey in my mid-30s so presumably dementia set in then as well. Heck, even our own youthful Jon Honeyball has a few threads of grey, so perhaps he’ll need some help with his computer soon!

By all means market a computer for ‘those who find existing computers confusing,’ but this assumption that the over-50s and silver surfers have special needs is just plain ageist.

As for this computer launch, the operating system is Linux, so you are not going to find as much local help for that as you would with a Windows machine. By all means build an easy-to-use interface on top of Windows, make a simple email client, and remove all the unnecessary buttons from the browser (or use Chrome). But keep an operating system underneath that your kids can help you with, and that has support for all those devices that you might want to plug into it.

I’ll get off me soapbox now.

Silverlight 3 and Expressions 3 have escaped!

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Yesterday Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of their web design suite Expression version 3. This means that the development tools for Silverlight 3 will be available for developers.

Although Silverlight 3 is, according to Microsoft’s own figures, only installed on one in three internet-connected computers, several big players such as Tesco and NBC are developing with this technology. We shouldn’t get too excited to hear that the big boys are developing with any one piece of technology as they have the resources to try out most things.

The choice if your company wants to produce a slick web application with smooth, high-quality video still comes down heavily in favour of Adobe’s Flash/Air/Flex framework, mainly because of the true multi-platform capabilites and the large installed user base (Adobe claims over 95% of browsers have flash installed) .

But it is obvious that Microsoft is putting its considerable weight behind Silverlight and the next year or two will determine if it sinks or swims.

End of Microsoft Popfly

Friday, July 17th, 2009

I just recieved an email from John Montgomery of the MIcrosoft Popfly Team that from August 24th Popfly will be no more.

Microsoft Popfly is that free service that enable you combine a series of applets into ‘mash ups’; we covered its use in the mag and online.

So all the time you spent coding your killer app with this service will be to no avail, another blow against using cloud services. In a stroke all your hard work will be removed.

Perhaps the rumours are right and Microsoft really is feeling the pinch?

Vodafone to charge for Twitter posts?

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Yesterday I recieved an SMS from Vodafone saying that SMS to Twitter will in future be charged at the normal rate. I assume from this that SMS tweets will not come out of your allowance of free SMS. If this is so then Vodafone’s definition of free is interesting to say the least. Anyone else had this SMS ?

How I broke a world record and had fun doing it

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Before this Bank Holiday weekend I was invited by Microsoft to a preview of Photosynth, a new way of combing pictures into a 3D world which is then hosted online. Photosynth also uses the ‘Deep Zoom’ technology which is in Sliverlight that I have written about in this month’s issue. The trick to creating a good ’synth’ is apparently to make sure that your photos overlap and also take photos of any detailed areas that you might what users to zoom in on.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend I attended the ‘NATS’ which is a huge gathering of modded cars, both American and old skool UK cars. I thought that this might be a great opportunity to try my efforts at making a Photosynth.

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Online advertising

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

It’s always flattering when a company asks if they can advertise on your website. However a recent spate of these requests got me thinking. The requests often come from online gaming sites and take to form of ‘ we will pay you £50 CPA if you will display our advert’.

At first this looks like easy money for the webmaster. But have a think about this. When agreeing to pay on CPA ( cost per acquisition ) the advertiser is effectively getting free promotion of their brand on as many sites as they can convince to run it. A visitor will see this advert many times and if they decided to click on it AND sign up, then that, and only that,  gets the CPA money.

So in effect you as a webmaster are giving away page views to these companies. They get free, no-risk advertising, as they only have to pay if someone signs up for their service and pays them. Nice money for them, but for you and your website? I think not.

We have stoped accepting CPA requests, we have built up the traffic with lots of hard work and see no reason for others to piggyback on this without contributing to the costs.

I’m sure there are those in ‘Ad Land’ who can argue the case of CPA and I am happy to be convinced otherwise.

Mobile phone vs my life

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

I, like a lot of you, own a mobile phone that stores more than just a few phone numbers. Being a BlackBerry Pearl it also has copies of my recent emails, my full contacts lists and all sorts of notes that I find useful. Obviously this information is backed up, so losing a phone is not a problem in that respect. But when this phone’s keyboard packed up I wanted to erase this data before I returned it for replacement.

A quick call to Vodafone and a replacement was on its way, but I had to return the broken one. Fine I said, but how do I erase my personal data on this phone? All its suggestions involved using the keyboard, not much help really. Why not have a reset button on these phone that will clear all the data on them? Better than that, why can’t the service provider ( Vodafone in this case ) send a signal to the phone to instruct it to erase all the data on it, obviously with your permssion?

Is it any surprise that personal data theft is a big problem nowadays when such small devices that can easily get lost or stolen can contain such a wealth of private information?

Come on you phone providers, think about security: the more information we store on these devices the more important it is that this information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Or am I just being paranoid?