Will you hit the Orange iPhone “unlimited” cap?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Orange’s big unveiling of its iPhone tariffs has caused a bit of a kerfuffle, not least because its prices are almost identical to those of O2. A lot of people are up in arms about the promise of “unlimited browsing”, which in fact comes with a fair-use limit of 750MB.

But, ignoring the terrible decision to put an “unlimited” label on a very clearly capped tariff, is that amount of monthly data actually “fair-use”?

As discussed in this week’s podcast, there’s a very easy way for existing iPhone owners to find out if that data cap would prove troublesome. Just go to Settings -> General -> Usage, and take a look at your Cellular Network Data. I did just that, believing this cap would be encroaching at least a little on my roaming lifestyle, but I was in for a surprise. (more…)

Did Stephen Fry and Twitter really score a victory for free speech?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

“What’s the difference between libel in print and libel on the web?” the trainer on a recent legal training course I attended asked rhetorically of his audience. His answer: “None whatsoever – the law applies to both.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking after the events of yesterday, however, that the rule of law had completely collapsed online. For while a team of smart solicitors effectively managed to gag The Guardian from revealing that oil company Trafigura was the subject of a recent question in Parliament concerned with the dumping of toxic waste, it wasn’t able to silence the Twittering classes.

Within hours of the judge awarding the injunction, bloggers were already untying the gag, openly linking the oil firm to the Parliamentary question – a practice that could have landed The Guardian editor in jail if he’d done likewise.

Meanwhile, thousands of Twitter users, including Twitterer-in-chief Stephen Fry, were bandying around the #Trafigura hashtag on tweets linked to the story. Subtle, it was not.

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Why ignorance isn’t bliss when it comes to NDAs

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I have acquired a rather unfair reputation in the PC Pro office for being a bit of a moaner. However, I’ll happily (or should that be grumpily?) confess that one thing is guaranteed to get my dander up: non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).

These horrendous documents are becoming increasingly common in the technology trade. For those of you who are unfamiliar with their evil ways, they work as follows:

Company A decides to launch a new product, but it doesn’t want Company B or (more importantly) its customers knowing about it, just in case Company B decides to copy it or its customers decide to stop buying its current products and wait for the launch of the Shiny New Loveliness. So Company A invites a bunch of journalists along to see the new product, but before said hacks can get a sniff of the goods, they have to sign a five-page document promising not to mention said product before such and such a date.

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Why are iPlayer viewers exempt from the TV licence?

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

There was a chap from TV Licensing on BBC Breakfast this morning, reminding Britain’s small business owners that they owed his employers £142.50 if they wanted to watch live TV on their computers at work.

“How you can possibly enforce that?” asked the BBC man, somewhere in between the 96 daily reminders of how you can watch BBC News online. “We can and we will,” was the gist of the not particularly convincing reply. Still, it’s nice to see that, just as small businesses are putting the worst of the recession flames out, TV Licensing wants to open another can of petrol.

But why pick on small businesses? During his convoluted explanation of what you can and can’t do, the enforcer explained that you don’t need to buy a licence to watch BBC programmes on iPlayer after they are broadcast.

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Google’s new motto: pi** off Microsoft

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Google’s official motto may be “do no evil”, but I rather suspect the company has a new unofficial mission statement: “pi** off Microsoft”.

That can be the only explanation for the events of the past couple of days. First the company announced one of the most audacious moves I’ve ever seen with the Google Chrome Frame.

Not content with having its own browser, Google now wants to hijack Microsoft’s as well. Google Chrome Frame is an IE plug-in that replaces the IE rendering engine with the WebKit engine that underpins Chrome. Why? Because like the boy racers that hang around the McDonalds car park in my local town centre, Google wants to show off that it has the fastest engine.

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Internet radio exec: don’t mention Linux!

Friday, September 18th, 2009

It might be used to run everything from PCs to power stations, but it seems some people are still a wee bit shy about using the (cough) L word.

Speaking at the launch of the touchscreen Pure Sensia digital radio, director of marketing Colin Crawford was pressed for specifics of the new device’s software. But after his CEO reminded him that the new radio was based on a Linux OS, Crawford remarked: “I don’t like the using the word ‘Linux’ on a radio.”

Why did the man in the sharp suit go queasy at the very mention of Linux? His reluctance may be borne out of perceived consumer antipathy towards versions of the open-source operating system. PC retailers have largely retreated from Linux-based netbooks following reports of consumer confusion and a marketing onslaught from Microsoft, which has persuaded manufacturers such as netbook pioneer Asus to drop Linux in favour of Windows XP.

Equally, it may be that Crawford simply doesn’t want to draw attention to the OS on a consumer device where, quite frankly, the flavour of the operating system is about as noteworthy as the colour of the screws they used to hold the thing together.

Either way,  don’t expect to see a penguin logo on the Sensia box in Currys.

Pure Sensia digital radio: first look

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

The iPhone has a lot to answer for. Ever since it lit a stick of dynamite under the mobile phone industry, technology companies have been itching to, shall we say, “borrow” its magic dust. Now, with the Pure Sensia, two of the iPhone’s key features are arriving in an internet radio.

The Pure Sensia has two standout features: a 5.7in capacitive touchscreen and apps, combining to produce what Pure describes as the “Radio for the Facebook generation”.

The device breaks from the boxy blueprint of previous Pure radios, such as our Recommended award winner, the Pure Evoke Flow. The unusual oval unit is certainly eye catching, even though my MacUser colleague Nik Rawlinson rather cruelly christened it “a noisy rugby ball”. The unit houses 30W stereo speakers that delivered commendable punch and clarity, even in a crowded demo room with plenty of background noise.

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How would the Twitter generation have coped with 9/11?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

There was a staggeringly good programme on Channel 4 the other night called 9/11: Phone Calls From The Towers. I say “staggeringly good” because I was expecting this to be a sensationalist, intrusive sham of a documentary that exploited the final moments of people who died in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. Instead, it was a sensitively made and fascinating insight into the moments before the towers collapsed.

What surprised me most about this documentary was the way the relatives of the dead cherished the recordings of those conversations. Several of those interviewed had kept the answerphone messages from their dying husbands, wives and siblings; one had recorded the voicemail message from his brother and kept it on his iPod. Instead of recoiling in horror from the emotion-strewn messages of their loved ones dying (as I expected they would), they were proud and comforted by the sound of their voice.

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Toshiba JournE Touch: first look

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Following Toshiba’s launch of the JournE Touch last Thursday I was delighted to get my hands on the tablet itself at the company’s IFA stand in Berlin. But I am using the word launch advisedly, because this product does seem some way from being ready for retail.

To be fair, my impressions weren’t helped by the fact that the IFA wireless connection was flakier than the plot of Snakes on a Plane. This meant I couldn’t test the JournE’s flagship offering, which is the ability – according to Toshiba’s Marco Perino – to browse the web like you would on a desktop PC. (more…)

Is Firefox turning into the ultimate nagware?

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Firefox, it must be said, is beginning to get on my Bristols. Like a death by a thousand cuts, the accumulation of minor irritations is pushing me desperately close to permanently decamping to Google Chrome.

From the irritating freeze that seems to temporarily paralyse the address bar about 30 seconds after it has first booted, to the mystery disappearance of the close button when you’ve got nine or more tabs open, to the clumsy implementation of the new Private Browsing mode, to the way the browser refuses to reboot for about 30 seconds after it (increasingly frequently) crashes… Firefox is heading for a fall.

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