Let MPs tell us what they really want ISPs to block

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013

I appeared on Newsnight last night to discuss internet filtering, and was quickly thrust into the role of defending ISPs for failing to protect children from pornography.

“Why are ISPs so pathetic at dealing with all of this?” asked Jeremy Paxman. In my view, they’re not. Certainly, the TalkTalk HomeSafe filter we tested last year exhibited appalling, basic failings. Likewise, some of the parental control software we asked teenagers to test a couple of years back. But, as I told Jeremy Paxman last night, I don’t think ISPs should be thrust into the role of internet censors.

It seems the government disagrees. Today, culture secretary Maria Miller is meeting with all of Britain’s leading internet providers, demanding to know why they haven’t done more to tackle child abuse. The truth is they’ve done a lot more than the government, which last year cut funding to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) by 10%. Even the industry-funded Internet Watch Foundation admits on its About Us page that the “content we deal with [which is primarily child abuse images] has been virtually eradicated from UK networks”.

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WWDC 2013 and iOS 7 launch: live blog

Monday, June 10th, 2013

Apple has unveiled iOS 7 at its World Wide Developer Conference, as well as a new version of OS X, Safari, iTunes Radio and more.

You can catch up with all the announcements, as they happened, below.

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Flickr redesign: is it enough to tempt photographers back?

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Almost two years ago, I wrote about how I’d abandoned the stagnating Flickr for the altogether more modern photo-sharing site 500px. Finally, Yahoo has found the time to give Flickr its desperately needed facelift, and thrown in a terabyte of free photo storage to sweeten the deal. Will that be enough to tempt me and other photographers back?

Firstly, let’s deal with the aesthetics. Until last night, Flickr’s design was marooned in 2002: acres of white space, thumbnail images that took the name literally, and clunky drop-down menus. As I wrote in 2011, Yahoo had “allowed Flickr to stagnate to the point where the only reason to keep using the site is the size and talent of its user community”. In fact, it’s staggering how many photographers persevered with Flickr despite the outdated design.

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Google Now draining iPhone battery

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

Google Now was added to the Google Search app for iPhone and iPad earlier this week, and already appears to have infuriated many users with excessive battery drain.

Google Now provides a series of cards that deliver location-based data, such as how long it will take you to get home from your current location, local restaurant reviews, and how far you’ve walked this week. This obviously requires the app to make use of the iPhone’s GPS chip, and users of the app may have noticed that the GPS notification icon is now almost permanently displayed in the status bar at the top of the home screen.

GPS is one of the more battery-intensive tasks on a phone. Anyone who’s used a satnav app, such as TomTom, will attest how quickly the battery drains when the GPS is in constant use.

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The government website that doesn’t work with IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Macs or smartphones

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

Remember how, late last year, the Government promised to start getting its websites in order? Best it pays a visit to the Department of Work and Pensions site.

There you’ll find an e-service that allegedly allows you to claim for Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance and the Overseas State Pension. But only if you have a computer that hasn’t been updated since about 2005.

For if you click on the What Do I Need? section, you’ll find a fairly exhaustive list of the operating systems, browsers and – unforgivably, given this is a site for claiming disability benefits – screen readers with which the site doesn’t work properly. These include:

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BlackBerry Q10: has it really sold out?

Monday, April 29th, 2013

BlackBerry had a cheerful Monday morning, with its BlackBerry Q10 reportedly selling out in the UK and causing queues at Selfridges, which had the device exclusively for the launch weekend. The posh department store claimed the Q10 was the fastest selling consumer electronics device in its history, selling out within two hours; now, stock is being delivered hourly to “keep up with demand”, the breathless press release stated.

Tales of “selling out” are entirely meaningless unless you know how many were stocked in the first place  – which BlackBerry or Selfridges have yet to tell us.

So we decided to go undercover to find the truth. Disguised as a Selfridges shopper — I’m wearing silly shoes and I’m female — I went in, dodging the dangers of Oxford Street (tourists, chuggers, buses) to bring back this exclusive investigative report.

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Silly Microsoft, that’s not a Start button

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Rumours that Microsoft is bringing the Start button back to Windows 8 have been gathering pace over the past week or so. Don’t get your hopes up, however.

The Verge’s Tom Warren, as reliable a Microsoft-watcher as they come, has been told by his Redmond sources that Windows 8.1 will indeed include a Start button on the desktop – but this will merely send people back to the Metro Start screen. It isn’t a return of the cascading Start menu and search bar that appears when you click on the Start button in Windows 7.

If true, it’s yet another indication that Microsoft just doesn’t get it. The people clamouring for the return of the Start button don’t want just another shortcut to the Start screen – they can get there easily enough by pressing the Windows button or using the Start button charm. What they want is the convenience of being able to open and search for applications, files or settings without being thrust into the touch-optimised Metroverse.

It looks like those PC makers who are preinstalling third-party Start buttons on their machines are going to get no respite.

What are the acceptable limits of “unlimited” internet?

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

For years we’ve argued against the sheer ridiculousness of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) allowing fixed and mobile ISPs to advertise services with stated limits as “unlimited”. Recently, the ASA has upheld complaints against both Virgin Media and T-Mobile when advertising “unlimited” services, claiming that the limits they imposed went beyond the permitted “moderate restrictions”.

The networks have told us that they’re confused about what they can and can’t advertise as “unlimited”; broadband customers are confused; we’re confused. So we asked the ASA to define exactly what counts as a “moderate restriction”. It sent us the text of a Help Note, that’s designed to clear this all up:

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Ken Livingstone invented broadband in 1983

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

OK, he didn’t. Just like Al Gore never really claimed to invent the internet in that infamous 1999 interview. However, the former London Mayor did claim that he was lobbying for broadband connections as far back as 1983 – roughly 15 years before broadband was even heard of.

The staggering claim was made in a discussion of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy on last night’s Newsnight (fast forward to around 43 mins), and made me laugh so loud I fear I may have woken the former Prime Minister up. The conversation turned to Thatcher’s privatisation of BT in the early 1980s, which Ken – then leader of now-disbanded Greater London Council – vigorously opposed.

“What I was saying in 1983 was you should have a broadband system in Britain and you needed a state corporation to do that,” Ken stated on Newsnight. “We could have been the leading figures in that. That was in 1983… We missed a great opportunity. We could have had Microsoft and all the great internet opportunities in this country.”

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Major retailers mis-selling Windows RT as Windows 8

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

There are only five Windows RT tablets or hybrids on store shelves and they’re not selling well, as one analyst has pointed out this week.

There’s many reasons devices such as the Asus VivoTab RT TF600T and Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 haven’t challenged the iPad’s dominance — high prices, poor availability, failure to invest in marketing, dislike of Windows RT, incredibly silly names — but I can add one further excuse to the list: confusion among retailers.

The Samsung Ativ Tab RT, for example, is listed over on Argos’ website. It won’t be tough for PC Pro readers to name what’s wrong with this picture:

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