Welcome to the Spy Coin

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

I’m giddily excited by the new Bond films, but I can’t help thinking they’re missing a vital ingredient – gadgets. Well, a little humour, too, but that’s another post for another magazine…

Q is gone; retired, defected, laid off in the latest round of redundancies – who knows – but he’s taken his wacky inventions with him, and the Government obviously didn’t keep the IP. (more…)

Facebook in the news. Constantly.

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Facebook now claims to have 120 million users, and although the number of active accounts will be significantly smaller, it’s still a phenomenal figure. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be twice the size of the United Kingdom.

That sort of popularity is always going to bring problems. Just as a city experiences growing pains, with a rising population bringing a proportional rise in crime and drug problems, Facebook is starting to get clogged up with scammers, spammers and baddies of all descriptions. (more…)

iPhone still flying off shelves

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Apparently the O2 store just around the corner from PC Pro towers on Oxford Street is having to beef up security after an Applephilic tea-leaf stole eight display models right from their docks. Brave? Undoubtedly. Stupid? Yup.

Quite what anyone would do with a stolen handset is beyond me; they won’t have a contract, for starters, and the IMEI numbers will surely be known, so as soon as you turn one on it will be deactivated.

Time will tell what the new security measures are, but I suspect they will involve no longer leaving expensive handsets sitting on a table near the door.

Just for the record, I picked up an iPhone in the last few days from the 02 store, but I paid cash-money. Honest.

Public “can’t wait” to lose personal data

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

The public can’t wait to get their hands on ID cards, apparently. Come 2012 we’ll have to carry them, but Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told the BBC today that she has people, “coming up to me and saying that they don’t want to wait that long.”

 Well, I’m in no hurry, personally. The longer I can keep my biometric data out of the Government’s hands, the longer I can keep it from being accidentally left on a bus, in a pub, stolen on a laptop or dropped somewhere en route by a courier. Never mind the privacy implications of having to hand over finger prints and a photograph to the Home Office, just to leave the country – can they be trusted to hang on to them?

 To me, it feels like the Labour party is urgently attempting to rush these cards into circulation in order to make it harder for the Conservatives to cancel the scheme when they come to power in 2010. Remember, Labour is the only party in favour of the scheme; the Conservatives have promised to cancel it, and the Lib Dems have called it a “laminated poll tax”.

(more…)

Flickr adds 3,000,000,000th image

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

The three billionth image has just been uploaded to Flickr – that’s an astonishing nine zeroes.

I’ve helped to contribute several hundred of those myself, although only the most recent 200 are shown, as I’m too tight to pay for a professional account. I wonder how many of those 3 billion images can actually be viewed?

Luckily, the 3 billionth image is rather tasteful; a moody, monochrome snap of a doorway. The 2 billionth image, uploaded almost a year ago to the day, is also rather artistic; a gnarled tree stump shot from below against a startling blue sky. I’m not suggesting that foul play is afoot, although it is quite lucky, isn’t it?

As if to prove that nothing is being manipulated, I can’t find any reference to the one billionth image. One presumes it’s horribly pornographic, violent or, even worse – among the Flickr community at least – poorly shot. Perhaps the subject of the image is just too horrible for Flickr to have promoted, such as this one.

Turn on GMail’s hidden features

Friday, October 31st, 2008

GMail’s a superb tool – one that I shudder to think about living without – but it’s old. Since it emerged in 2004 it’s hardly changed at all, except for that constantly ticking maximum storage size (which is over 7GB now, I was surprised to see). Would a new feature every now and then kill Google?

To be fair, little tweaks do arrive every now and then. The SMS feature which has been gathering attention today, for example, but they’re often not enabled by default. Google keeps that BETA tag on the logo, though, so there’s really no reason for it to be squeamish about making updates.

If you’ve never tried, then you should dabble with some of these experimental features. Pop to your settings page from within GMail, then the Labs tab. Here you’ll find loads of interesting tweaks that you can turn on. (more…)

Knuth launches The Bank of San Serriffe

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Donald Knuth, creator of TeX and author of The Art of Computer Programming, used to post checks to anyone who spotted an error in one of his books – one hexadecimal dollar, or $2.56. It was a clever way to ensure that his work was as accurate as possible.

Nobody used to take the money, though. Instead the cheques are pinned up on notice boards in computer science departments all over the world as mementos. I’m lucky enough to have two, which I’ve stashed away at home.

“It turns out that only 9 of the first 275 checks that I’ve sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached,” says Knuth on his website. (more…)

New E Ink turns up with speed-up

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

I was disappointed earlier this month when an eBook reader landed on my desk to be reviewed. Every time I turned the page, so to speak, there was a second or two’s lag. It was irritating, and it led to me ranting about the need for a new screen technology that can refresh instantly, if eBook readers are ever to take off.

This morning I saw a video that made me re-think all that. The new AM 300 developer’s kit from E Ink can handle animation pretty smoothly, and instant page turns, too. It uses the same technology as previous versions – little balls, black on one side and white on the other, which physically rotate to create areas of colour – but handles it all a lot faster.

This is down to the chips and firmware that control it. The importance of this is often underestimated; rival television manufacturers may use the same panel from the same factory, but the image quality of a TV is largely down to software. Even the performance of Formula One cars is largely down to their engine management and braking control software.

I’m waiting eagerly for the first reader to use the new kit. I just hope that the next generation of models won’t mess up all of this hard work by putting the buttons where I can’t reach them.

The MacBook Pro’s clicky little problem

Friday, October 17th, 2008

I’m a self-confessed Apple fan boy, but I still try to be objective when looking at their new kit. At the moment we have a new MacBook Pro in the labs, and, as normal, I scurried down there to check it out.

Unsurprisingly, I’m really impressed. The new chassis is wonderfully neat and tidy, sturdy and not as heavy as I was expecting. It’s certainly a good looking machine. I’ve only got one little criticism (if you exclude the hefty price) – the touchpad. (more…)

Should regulators step in to “green” mobile phone industry

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

As PC Pro’s resident “Eco Warrior” – a term that’s used with more than a hint of sarcasm by the rest of the team – I was chosen to attend the recent Green IT conference in London.

All the speakers gave food for thought, but one stood out in particular; James Page has over a decade’s wireless engineering experience at Nokia, and is an active member of the Green Party, too. He was also speaking independently, so was probably free to be a little more forthcoming than those there under a corporate banner. (more…)