tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
Apple has sent out their invites for their “annual” iPhone release.
If you ask Siri on your iPhone, to give you a hint, you get some quite witty responses.
As well as new iPhones, the rumours also say there may be a new Apple TV. That I wouldn’t mind to replace my old 720p model.
Many, many years ago I went out, after listening to people on the Twitter, and purchased a Polaroid Pogo printer, well according to the Twitter it was six years ago in 2009.
Does anyone have a Polaroid Pogo printer? Thoughts please?
— James Clay (@jamesclay) June 24, 2009
I bought it for £50, though it soon fell in price to £17…
Can't believe the Polaroid PoGo Printer is now less than £17 on Amazon… http://bit.ly/6PT0mB I paid £50 for mine, before that it was £100!
— James Clay (@jamesclay) November 22, 2009
I did use it for a while, but there were some core reasons why it never really clicked for me, partly the size of the prints, just 2” x 3” which was too small for most things. Couldn’t really see a practical use for such small prints, even if they were stickers. The other main reason was that the quality of the prints was quite poor in comparison to the HP photo printer I had at the time. So like many other devices after the novelty had rubbed off and the curiosity value had waned, it went into the cupboard.
It was recently though that after making notes in a my new work notebook (trying out visual note taking for project planning) that I realised I actually wanted to include a diagram in my notes. I could have attempted to draw the diagram, but I am not that good at drawing clear diagrams. Also in this case I wanted the actual diagram, not a drawn representation of the diagram. I then remembered the Pogo printer and I wondered…
I had to connect it to the power adapter and remember that the easiest way to do this was to send it the image file over Bluetooth. I was actually quite surprised and impressed that it worked.
I then realised how useful it would be for making notes, well supporting handwritten notes. I could use it to print off slides from Powerpoint presentations, diagrams from said presentations, covers of reports (as visual reminders), images as visual cues for notes, cartoon strips (usually xkcd) even photographs of locations where meetings or events were been held.
There are some challenges in using it. It only likes JPGs and only in 4:3. It will print other ratio but expect to get some unexpected cropping. One strange outcome is that square images (like those created in Instagram) come out in portrait mode.
The most consistent way of printing has been sending files from my Mac to the printer via Bluetooth. I have had success in doing this with a Windows 7 laptop, but the experience has been inconsistent and some days it just won’t work! Alas because of the Bluetooth restrictions imposed by Apple, you can’t print to it from an iOS device such as the iPhone or the iPad. Having said that, LG released a ZINK printer that utilises an iOS App to enable you to print using your iPhone. It should be said that the process works fine with an Android phone.
Aa a result if a diagram is in PNG format and not in 4:3 ratio then you need to use an image editing package to ensure it will print correctly. Likewise if you export a wide screen Powerpoint presentation as JPGs, you again need to adjust the size of the image (canvas size) so that it all prints and ensure that the Pogo doesn’t crop the slide image.
The ZINK paper it uses isn’t easily available on the high street, so I just bought some on Amazon, watch though as the prices vary quite a bit, I did manage to find 70 sheets for £8.99 which was reasonable.
So far I have found using the Pogo printer a really useful tool in supporting my note taking and planning. I am not sure I would go out and buy one just for this, I was lucky I had it in the cupboard, but they do go for quite cheap prices on eBay if you are interested.
Fast broadband in Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) came to the Worle exchange, my local exchange, in 2010 and at the time I was one of the first people to sign up, as soon as our cabinet was upgraded. However in 2012 we moved house, literally moving down the road. This house was connected to a different cabinet, and if the internet is to be believed this was the only cabinet connected to the Worle exchange which wasn’t upgraded.
I am connected to cabinet 25, which is on Moor Lane, near to the playground in Plumley Park. At the time of writing it still hasn’t been upgraded with no indication from BT Openreach when it will be upgraded.
I have written previously about my woes with fibre before, when we first moved house and lost fibre and then my initial investigations into why I couldn’t get FTTC and back in 2012 writing about the confirmation of no plans to upgrading cabinet 25.
I did once e-mail BT Openreach (when they published an e-mail address you could contact them on, they’ve removed that option now), their response was that the cabinet wasn’t economically viable and as a result it would probably be upgraded by Connecting Devon and Somerset as part of a public private partnership.
Thank you for your enquiry. You are connected to the Worle Exchange, cabinet 25. We are deploying one of the fastest and largest commercial deployments in the world. Our commercial deployment will have extended to 66% of the UK by the end of December 2014. We aim extend this to 90% of the UK, in partnership with other sources of funding, e.g. local and National government. Our deployment is based on the commercial criteria for each cabinet and your PCP fails to meet the commercial criteria. This is because the cabinet is too small to provide a return on the investment based on the costs for the construction and on-going running costs of providing a new FTTC cabinet. Where cabinets are not commercially viable Government funding is available to county councils and it is worth registering your interest on the County council website.
As a result I of course registered my interest to the council supporting the upgrade of this cabinet to FTTC via the Connecting Devon and Somerset website.
Connecting Devon and Somerset has been set up to deliver next generation broadband infrastructure to areas where the market has failed to invest.
I never heard from BT Openreach or Connecting Devon and Somerset again…
I wrote to my MP, and John Penrose, had had similar queries did some investigation., but again no clear answer from either side.
Connecting Devon and Somerset now say on their web site that:
According to our records your area is either currently, or planned to be, commercially covered by a private service provider. As such we are not allowed to invest in your area under European Commission State Aid regulations. You are not part of our programme and will need to contact an internet service provider (ISP) to find out about the current status/plans for your area.
So the situation is that originally BT Openreach said they wouldn’t upgrade the cabinet as it wasn’t commercially viable. Connecting Devon and Somerset say they won’t upgrade the cabinet as it is part of a commercial rollout.
The BT Openreach website now says that the cabinet is “Under Review”. At one point a third party website said that the cabinet was part of the Phase 13a rollout, but then BT Openreach closed that site down, so that information was lost to the ether.
According to some other stuff I have read it would appear that BT Openreach decided initially that cabinet 25 wasn’t commercially viable, as a result passed it over to Connecting Devon and Somerset. Then at some point BT Openreach changed their mind about the commercial viability, so when Connecting Devon and Somerset came to plan to upgrade the cabinet, they found it was part of a commercial plan, and under the rules they adhere to, they weren’t able to upgrade it. Now we are in a situation where BT Openreach are saying that it is under review with no indication of when or even if it will be ever upgraded.
The end result is now in 2015, when most people across Weston super Mare have access to FTTC, the area around cabinet 25 don’t. It’s got to the point when I think EE’s 4G service may be the only viable option to fast broadband.
Star Wars will be the main theme for Disney Infinity 3.0 which will arrive this autumn.
https://youtu.be/DWnA-yXUmJI
My children have really enjoyed Disney Infinity and I think this will be on their Christmas list, (probably along with Lego Dimensions.
This made me smile.
https://youtu.be/irJQDGw8Ptk
Today Microsoft launch MS-DOS Mobile, a new OS designed especially for Lumia smartphones.
Microsoft are going back to where productivity started for millions of people, launching a beautifully simple OS.
The MS-DOS Mobile preview is an essential download for those who remember life before Windows, those who want to go back to BASIC, or even those looking to boot into DOS for the first time.
Note today’s date.
A documentary about the Geek Out! event at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford. A group of intrepid geeks set out to achieve a 30 year old challenge by playing Mahler’s first symphony on a network of ZX Spectrum computers.
How did I found out about this, the video uses one of my CC licensed images from Flickr.
![Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [Blu-ray + UV Copy]](https://i0.wp.com/technologystuff.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/10978699-1414085339-78304.jpg?resize=480%2C600&ssl=1)
Dear 20th Century Fox, Amazon and LG
I am writing an open letter to all three companies as I have no real idea who is responsible or who is to blame and I am unsure of how this can be resolved.
For Christmas I received The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Blu-Ray, this had been purchased from Amazon
I unwrapped the Blu-Ray and put it into my LG BD360-P Blu-Ray player. However it did not play, I got an error message saying “Check Disk”. I did check the disk, and there did not appear to be a physical issue with the disk.
I checked the firmware on my LG Blu-Ray player and it was up to date. I also turned everything off and back on. Still no joy, I was still getting the “Check Disk” error.
I did a Google search and it was apparent that I wasn’t alone, other people were having the same issue with the same Blu-Ray disk and the same LG Blu-Ray player. According the online information the problem is with the encryption used by 20th Century Fox on The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Blu-Ray disk, this means that my Blu-Ray player can’t read the disk.
As a result I am now unsure and confused about what I can do as a consumer.
As far as Amazon are concerned there is no fault with the disk and probably wouldn’t accept a return this long after purchase and the wrapping has been removed.
20th Century Fox won’t replace the disk with one that works, as far as they concerned the disk isn’t faulty and they would only replace it with the same disk with the same encryption issues. They will probably blame the Blu-Ray player manufacturer.
As for LG, they are no longer updating the firmware for what is now quite an old Blu-Ray player and would probably point me back to the company that released the disk.
So the end result is I have no idea where to go and I have a Blu-Ray of a film I am unable to watch.
Kind Regards
James Clay
So do you have any idea? Maybe I should have bought it on iTunes.
You have probably noticed that over the last few years mobile phones have been getting bigger, and tablets, such as the iPad have been getting smaller. Almost a convergence in terms of size between phones and tablets.
Doing some internet research for another article I found this comment I made on Brian Kelly’s blog post (from 2008) on what devices we would be using in 2013. My main comment was wondering if devices (such as phones) would get bigger!
James Clay said
7 February 2008 at 1:16 pmI believe that the key difference will be is that the storage capabilities will become less important, as connectivity improves allowing easy access to information and content whenever and wherever you are.
I wonder if the devices will get bigger rather than smaller?
Think about phones, the Nokia N95 is a BIG phone compared to the compact small phones of a few years ago.
The iPod touch screen is so much bigger than the iPod video screen.
Bigger and thinner possibly?
Though for me the downside of all the functionality is battery life and I wonder if there will be minimal improvement in functionality, but a huge leap in the battery life as technology improves the power efficiency of the chips and memory.
As with all things rather than look five years in the future, look five years in the past.
In 2003 I had a phone which could play music, video, had an in-built radio, could surf the net (slowly on a GPRS) connection.
In 2008 I can do all those things but in higher quality and I know where I am (GPS).
In 2013…
I thought it would be interesting to see what said then and see how things have changed and also look forward a little more.
I said back then “I wonder if the devices will get bigger rather than smaller?” well in 2013 we saw the first large phones or phablets. The iPad mini had been released the year before and we had played around with the iPad since 2010, but now we wanted smaller tablets.
Now in 2015, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been released by Apple and as with many Apple devices, and as I predicted, these are bigger and thinner than the phones we had in 2008.
Connectivity is much better with most new devices able to access 4G speeds, but not all of us can afford to be connected at those speeds.
These larger screens, more powerful connectivity have large power requirements compared to older devices. Back in 2008 I said
I wonder if there will be minimal improvement in functionality, but a huge leap in the battery life as technology improves the power efficiency of the chips and memory.
Manufacturers have improved battery life for their devices, still for most people there is a requirement to charge every day, but at least the battery does last most of the day. I remember having a Nokia N95 and too often the battery would only last half a day as I did use many of the different functions on the phone.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned in the first post was battery life, but I commented on in the following post.
Upon reflection I realised why I carry multiple devices around. The key reason is battery life.
If my phone has GPS, plays video and/or music, internet, acts as a 3G modem for my laptop, oh and makes phone calls; then even with a large battery I don’t expect it to last the day.
Spread the functionality over multiple devices and suddenly I can ensure that I can do all of the above, over catching the 6.30am train to London, all day in a meeting or a conference, and back again to reach home at 7.30pm.
I have multiple devices as a single device can not last for the time I need it.
The one change from 2008 that is much more apparent is the decline of the specialist device and the move to a multi-function device. No longer are we carrying pocket cameras, dedicated music players, video devices, e-book readers; our larger phones now do all that for us and then some…
So what will the device of 2020 look like?
Well that’s more difficult to predict, what do you think?
Yesterday Google announced that they were to halt sales of Google Glass Explorer Edition. It’s only been on sale in the UK for less than seven months, and many expected that it would be followed by a full consumer launch. Another expectation was that the existing Explorer Edition of Glass would be replaced with an updated, cheaper retail version.
So why have Google pulled Glass, there are probably many reasons for this, the official line from Google, according to BBC News is:
The company insists it is still committed to launching the smart glasses as a consumer product, but will stop producing Glass in its present form. Instead it will focus on “future versions of Glass” with work carried out by a different division to before.
You can interpret this response, that this was a planned approach to Google Glass by Google. They had always planned to stop selling Google Glass at some point. There is the possibility that there is a planned consumer or retail edition of Google Glass. However the way in which Google Glass has been “killed” by Google does make me think the possibility if this is very unlikely.
You can of course also interpret this, that with all the issues that Google were facing with Glass, they decided to pull the product and in order not to annoy those people who spent their cash on Glass, placated them with talk of support and future products.
There are many reasons that Google have stopped selling Google Glass. Though they’ve not been too open about these reasons, we can speculate about the cost, privacy and looking downright weird!
One reason is cost, at a £1000 per pair and the additional cost of £500 for a smartphone to work alongside it. This wasn’t a product that could be considered an impulse purchase, or a “nice to have”, for most people this was a significant investment. Though Google Glass was an innovative product that had lots of benefits, was there £1500 value in those benefits? We don’t know how well or how badly it was selling, what we do know that it wasn’t been sold on the high street in retail chains akin to other high value devices.
Another core reason was the negative response that Google Glass got in terms of invasion of privacy, there was lots of press and comment on how the use of Glass would invade people’s privacy, though how was this was that different to the use of cameraphones. Yes using mobile phones is more in your face, than Glass, the look of Glass wasn’t that prominent, you could mistake it for a pair of reading glasses, however after all the negative press, those people who were worried about privacy knew exactly what Glass looked like.
The “you look weird” reason has to be up there near the top. One wearable technology that has been around a while has been the Bluetooth headset for mobile phones, but though an useful technology, the reality is that for most people they would never wear a Bluetooth headset and those that wear them all the time, well, they look for a lot of people either geeky or just plain silly. Similar arguments can be had with those wearing and using Google Glass. It’s one thing to use it an environment such as a workshop or a tech conference, it’s something quite different to wear it on the tube home.
Another reason is what did it bring to the party, that a device we had already, couldn’t do. Maybe a mobile phone wasn’t as clever or as smart as Google Glass, but it could take videos, it could take photographs, it had web access, it notified you, it had a better battery life and you didn’t need to wear it. Yes there were scenarios where not holding a phone and wearing Google Glass would be advantageous, but for most people or most of the time their mobile phone was probably easier.
As I said above, the the in which Google Glass has been “killed” by Google does make me think the possibility of a new consumer retail version of Glass very unlikely. It also raises the question of whether the attraction and functionality of wearables such as smart watches, Google Glass, Apple Watch and other similar devices will have a strong enough pull with consumers to make them a commercial success? What do you think?
I rarely synchronise the iPhone with my Mac, since unlike earlier phones there is so much you can do over the air these days.
Syncing it last night I was slightly confused over why it wasn’t syncing. I unplugged and replugged the iPhone into the Mac. No luck.
A quick search on Google found that sometimes problems arise if you have an USB drive plugged into your Mac. I knew I had plugged in a USB 32GB stick into the Mac, I unplugged it and removed it, and then the iPhone was able to sync no problem.