Dreading the move to ADSL

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

In a few months I’m buying a flat. It’s not quite finished yet, but I’ve been inside it and I’ve seen the specs, all of which look impressive, except for one tiny problem. The block will have a communal Sky dish and connection points in every property, but I was told this week that cable won’t be an option.

This is bad. Very bad.

I’ve been with Virgin broadband in various properties for nearly four years now, and I’m genuinely despondent at the thought of switching to ADSL. Some of you will probably bring up traffic shaping, customer service and other less appealing aspects of Virgin’s offering, but I’m not listening. The blinkers have gone up and my opinion is set in stone: cable broadband just works, and I can’t live with anything less.

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Apple iPad: PC Pro’s first reactions

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

So the wait is over, and the general reaction of the editorial team is undeniably one of very slight disappointment. The mock-ups floating around the web were generally of a device like a great big iPhone, and in the event we got… a great big iPhone.

Our slumped shoulders when it seemed there was no 3G are now square again – you will at least be able choose a 3G version. So essentially you can choose between a big iPod (no 3G) or a big iPhone (with 3G). And despite there being no mention of GPS capability during the launch event, we’re very much relieved to say the 3G versions will have it. (more…)

Browser Testing: Microsoft SuperPreview versus Adobe BrowserLab

Monday, January 25th, 2010

It’s not quite the nightmare that it used to be, but testing that your beautifully-crafted web design works across all browser versions on all operating systems is still a major pain largely because most browsers don’t let you run multiple versions on the same machine – IE6 alongside IE8 say – and also because most designers are limited to testing those browsers available on their own choice of platform.

Now both Microsoft and Adobe have finally addressed this core problem and come up with their own solutions…

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A packing crate full of eBooks?

Monday, January 25th, 2010

I’m starting to come around to the idea of eBooks. I still appreciate the physicality and ruggedness of printed texts, and I’m wary of DRM, simply because I’m the sort of person who’d want to try out a new sort of reader every eighteen months.

But recent developments have persuaded me that electronic texts really are the future. And by “recent developments” I mean I’m moving house.

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Steve Ballmer signs a Mac

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Never let it be said that Steve Ballmer doesn’t have a sense of humour. Nor that Nashville students don’t have cojones. Because it takes a brave man to ask the Microsoft boss to sign his computer, when said computer is blatantly a MacBook Pro.

The big question: is the MacBook worth more or less than it was before?

What to do with business cards in 2010?

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Business cards. How on earth has it got to the year 2010 and they still exist, filling our drawers, cluttering our desks?

The crazy thing is that business cards are more important now than they were a decade ago. Back in those halcyon days Palm Pilots were as ubiquitous as biros, and you could transmit your details to someone else via the wonders of infrared technology. But then other devices started filling our suit pockets, all using different operating systems and proprietary interfaces, and we had to fall back on that cumbersome rectangular piece of card.

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Anglian Windows gets more than it bargained for on Bing

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

By now I expect everyone is familiar with the idea of buying keywords in search engines. Identify a keyword you like, stake your claim to it, and you get a featured listing whenever someone puts that term in the search box.

On Bing, Microsoft’s very handy and super-relevant search engine, it would seem that Anglian Windows has bought a featured spot that pops up to tell you about the new Government scrappage scheme – not the one that applies to cars, the one that applies to double glazing.

Except that “Windows” has to be one of the most frequently searched terms on the web  -  I put it in almost every search because I’m always looking for Network error messages and their fixes, and if I leave “Windows” out then I get five times as many hits about Linux, which I don’t need to see. I am very unlikely to go from my “Windows” search to Anglian for some new double-glazing, so quite why Anglian’s ad appears when I type terms such as “windows trust failure vmware” into Bing is a mystery.

Thank God they only pay when people click on the ad, or the Government may be bailing out another company.

A minute’s applause for the passing of my awful PC

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

My desktop computer is dying. It’s contracted some sort of virulent tech plague that’s sweeping through the components, knocking out my graphics card a couple of weeks ago, and causing my RAM to wobble – though not fall down – over the weekend. It’s even developed a death rattle from somewhere behind the fan.

Computers are like cars in this respect, they tend to teeter on the verge of death for a while and then collapse in a spectacular heap overnight. And while I should be wringing my hands, consulting priests, shamans and witch doctors while tearing the labs apart for replacement parts, I find myself blissfully unconcerned. You see, I don’t like my desktop PC and I’m going to watch it die with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

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Twitter bomb threat: has the world gone mad?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

I’ve always understood that the world is a crazy place – after all, Westlife had a highly successful career – but this morning’s story that a British man was arrested for a blow-off-steam Twitter comment about “blowing the airport sky high” suggests we’ve moved up a gear.

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Whatever happened to Second Life? Your reaction

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

My recent feature “Whatever happened to Second Life?” certainly struck a nerve.  At least two people called for me to be sacked, Second Life blogs swelled with indignation and one die-hard Second Lifer delivered the finest stream of foul-mouthed insults I think I’ve ever read (click through to The Ephemeral Frontier if  – like me – you’re not easily offended).

There were also more than 50 comments on the feature itself, many of which are lengthy, measured and insightful. They clearly took a lot of time to write and I thank you for taking the time to contribute. Incredibly, some even agreed with me.

Here I’m going to round-up a selection of the comments and issue my response to them.

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