Author: jamesclay

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Twitter Problems

The spam problem on Twitter, which to be honest has always been there, for me anyhow, appears to be getting worse.

Like most people I get spam followers all the time, they follow you in the hope that you will follow them back and they can then flood your stream with their spammy tweets. Most people I know are quite wise to them and as a result either ignore them as I do, or report them to Twitter, which usually results in them getting banned and their accounts suspended.

What I however am noticing a lot more of, are the automated reply bots that start their Tweets with @jamesclay, so it appears in my @Mentions stream. They are usually the result of me talking about something or other, usually the iPad, or the Kindle. I use to get about two or three a week, which wasn’t too much of an issue. However I am now getting three or four a day!

I have written before about the “end” of Twitter, but even I have been surprised by the fact that a) Twitter is still around and b) we still use it.

However if the spam situation gets worse than that may start to put me off using Twitter and I can’t be alone thinking like that, so many people would stop using it regularly, maybe try a different service. The problem with people leaving Twitter is that, that is the main reason people are on Twitter. It’s the people, the conversation and the sharing that makes Twitter work. Without the people and the people using Twitter, then it just won’t work; there will be no conversation.

So am I alone in getting all this @ spam replies, or is it annoying you too?

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Slideshare WordPress Plugin Issue

I do like Slideshare, a great service that allows you to upload presentations and then either view them easily on the web, or embed them into webpages. Thought I don’t do that much on this blog, I do use it a fair bit on my e-Learning Stuff blog where I embed presentations I have given at conferences and events.

Before I went self-hosted, Slideshare had a simple embed code for WordPress.com blogs, which when I went self-hosted didn’t work. I did a search and found a plugin that allowed me to continue to use the simple embed code.

When it was recently updated to version 1.8 I was disappointed to find that on my blog it stopped working. I did a fair few things to try and fix it, but in the end I downgraded the plugin from a backup. Always useful to retain a backup of your plugins in case something like this happens. I had done a thorough search and hadn’t found a solution, and even a posting on the WordPress.org support forums failed to get any response.

You can imagine my disappointment when the plugin failed again, even more annoyed as I hadn’t done anything. It appeared the simple embed code was working, but the Flash movie that Slideshare use had failed to load. My initial thought it was a Flash player problem, but after checking multiple browsers on different OSs and even doing a check using the “normal” embed code from Slideshare, it still came down to a problem with the plugin.

So, after more fruitless searching, I decided to deactivate the plugin and revert to using the “normal” Slideshare embed code. I had to go through a fair few blog posts and edit them and change the code from the simple embed code to the normal one. I guess there are probably still a fair few archived posts I need to edit, but should have them all done soon.

So what was causing the plugin to fail?

Well to be honest I have no idea, but as I failed to find the issue through searching the web, my suspicion is that it is an issue with the web server, but no real idea what the issue is, how it could be resolved and what I would need to say to the web hosts. Maybe it is just one of those things.

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Scribbly iPad Stylus

Though I do like the finger approach to the iPad, sometimes, especially when drawing or making notes I think I would like a stylus. When I used Microsoft’s Windows for Tablet PC on an HP Tablet, I really did like using the stylus for various things, just a pity the battery life was so bad (which is different these days I know) and the user interface wasn’t really designed for a stylus, worked better with a mouse!

The iPad with it’s focus on using gestures for navigation does work really well, but is not as intuitive for some things and I think a stylus would do the job.

Having seen this video, I think I might be getting one of these.

Scribbly is the ultimate stylus for your iPad or iPhone.

Replicating the look and feel of an old school marker pen it’s ideal for wireframing, sketching and notetaking!

Free your creative side with the scribbly stylus!

At £10 it’s not a bad price either.

Of course doesn’t mean I will be able to draw better… there’s more to drawing than just the tools you use.


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Back to the Future…

Check out this quote.

Checking out your favorite movie during a road trip. Downloading and listening to the latest hot tunes at the coffee shop. Surfing the Web at the beach while your friends surf the waves. More than ever before, people around the world are demanding simpler, more convenient ways to access and enjoy their favorite digital content while on the go.

Sounds like the iPad doesn’t it?

So was this quote about the iPad?

No!

It was from March 2006, five years ago, before the iPhone, before the iPod touch and four years before the iPad.

The quote above was from Intel about the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). Back then they also said:

The Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) addresses these needs with small, stylish products you can carry with you everywhere you go. The UMPC devices offer ultra-portable sizes and long battery life, plus full PC and Internet capabilities, so you can access your favorite web pages anytime, virtually anywhere!

I remember back then really liking the concept, so much so that I ordered the Sony VAIO UX1XN, which was a great little UMPC computer that fulfilled the dream

UX1XN

So what happened to the UMPC?

Well it wasn’t killed by the iPad, no it was well dead by the time Apple released that. No it was the netbook and more specifically the Asus EeePC. What happened was that when companies like Sony started releasing products like the UX1XN, and Samsung their Q1 they charged a premium price. The UMPC was not a cheap product, it was much more a luxury. The price did drop quite quickly.

When the Sony VAIO UX1XN was released in the UK it commanded a £2,000 price tag. This was a lot of money for a device the size of a PDA (even if it could run Windows Vista).

In July 2007 I noticed my local Sony Centre had reduced the price to £1,600. Still expensive, but 20% off is quite a reduction. Such reductions usually imply that a new model is just around the corner.

On Amazon in August 2007 you could get the UX1XN for just £1,199 which considering the features of the UX1XN (the cameras, flash hdd) makes the UX1XN seem like a reasonable proposition.

In October 2007 it was just £999 at the Sony story and only £899 on Amazon.

UX1XN

Today used models can be have for less than £500 on Amazon, which is the same price as an iPad!

So when the Asus EeePC was launched with a £200 price tag, the concept of the netbook was launched and the UMPC effectively died. Companies did try and compete by reducing prices, but in the end it was impossible to compete on features and low prices were what people looked at.

Pricing wasn’t the only flaw, there were some others. One of the main drawbacks was battery life, iPad users who probably don’t even worry about it today would gasp at the 1½-2 hour battery life with those UMPC devices. These weren’t devices you would use all day, much more a casual device that always needed to be close to it’s charger.

I remember taking the UX1XN to a conference in Cardiff and back then said

It’s small enough to be unintrusive, unlike a laptop which can be a bit of a barrier, it has two cameras which enable me to send images to Flickr or take short video clips, and the keyboard is usable unlike the fiddly mobile phone type split keyboard of the Q1 Ultra. You can also use it without needing to put it on the table or on your lap which makes it ideal in the conference hall or break-out room environment.

I wouldn’t want to write a long blog entry (like this one) on it, but for entering URLs or posting tweets or jaiku postings, I think it will work just fine.

A big flaw for me was the operating system, Windows Vista was rather too bloated for a device which lacked the power and memory of standard desktops and laptops. This would eventually be solved with Windows 7, but by that time the UMPC was just a distant memory. Microsoft really needed to do what Apple and Google have done and create a completely new OS that works on new formats for devices, but that wasn’t going to happen at that time.

Another problem were the touch screens, whereas big Tablet PCs required a dedicated stylus, the UMPC often resorted to a simple touch screen. However with an OS that really didn’t work with touch and needed a stylus, too often you found that neither worked satisfactorily and the experience was not nice.

However many people like me, saw that these early products, though expensive and having some flaws, they really demonstrated the potential of small mobile computers, something we now see in Apple’s iPad and Android tablets. Looking back at the UMPC we can see what worked and what didn’t, as a result when something like the iPad comes along that solves many of the flaws, price, battery life and OS, but still has the the main features of the UMPS, such as solid state drives (SSD), cameras, touch screens. You start to realise the influence of these devices on companies such as Apple and Google.

Many people see the iPad as Apple’s response to the netbook, I don’t, I think Apple looked at the original UMPC concept from Intel and went, “we can do that, and we can do that better!”

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Android Desserts

Now I didn’t know this, but I guess it was obvious.

Firstly though I will admit when I heard the name Froyo I was a bit bemused, wasn’t sure what it was, thought it might be some character out of Lord of the Rings. It turned out that the name of the Android software update was in fact what they call Frozen Yoghurt.

I was well pleased when they upgraded my Nexus One to Froyo and quite liked the Gingerbread update when it eventually arrived.

However what I have only recently found out, is that there is a pattern to the android version names

Cupcake
Donut
Eclair
Froyo
Gingerbread
Honeycomb
Ice Cream Sandwich

Not it’s not that are all desserts, think that’s pretty obvious, but they’re also in alphabetical order.

Now I didn’t know this, but I guess it was obvious.

In case you were wondering there were no A or B desserts, but they probably had Alpha and Beta.

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WIRED gone haywire…

I have quite enjoyed reading WIRED magazine on my iPad and have written about the “app” on my e-Learning Stuff Blog where I review iPad apps.

I reviewed when it first came out and then four months later.

Over the last few months I have “missed” a few issues, but I was never one to read every issue of WIRED anyway, or as was the case the last issue I got was a paper version as I was on a plane to Inverness. During that time WIRED have updated their app a few times.

You can then when going back to look at the app to find that all my back issues were missing and it appeared that I would need to re-buy the issues I had already bought. Prior to this the app would indicate which issues I hadn’t bought, which issues I had bought and downloaded, and which issues I had bought but could download again. Now it seemed to indicate that all my back issues were gone and I would need to buy them again!

No I wouldn’t do that.

Was annoyed so didn’t pursue it further and certainly didn’t buy another issue either…

A few days ago I looked again at the app, wondering if it had been fixed, and from the first look, no they hadn’t. I then decided to do a quick Google search and see what others were saying and doing and it was then that I found out what had happened.

It would seem that updating the app and a change in the process of how apps deal with in-app purchases meant that though the app shows all my back issues as needing to be bought again… if I went and purchased them, it would say “You’ve already purchased this. Tap OK to download it again for free.”

So I can get my back issues back for free.

Now the challenge is to remember which ones I bought… have to go and check the e-mail. Not as simple as it should be!

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Airsync Androidness

I have had a Google Nexus One for a while now, but though I have downloaded many different apps, they’ve all had one thing in common, they were free. I realised that I had never bought an Android App for the Nexus One. This is very unlike my iPhone experience where I have bought quite a few apps.

So when it came to buying my first Android App, I was a little apprehensive. To be honest the experience was not very positive and could have been better.

So what was the app?

Well it was doubleTwist AirSync.

As well as letting me sync the Nexus One with my Mac over wifi using doubleTwist, there were two other features that made me think that this was going to be a worthwhile purchase.

doubleTwist now supports AirPlay for users who have upgraded to AirSync. Stream to Apple TV (music, videos and photos) and DLNA devices (music and videos). Beta support for Sonos.

When a supported device such as the Apple TV is recognized on the same WiFi network as your Android device, you can start streaming to it from the doubleTwist playback controls if you are an AirSync user.

So what went wrong, why was the process not very positive?

Well… after finding the app in the Android Market Place (which was easy), I tentatively clicked the purchase link.

It took me to a purchase screen and as I had used Google Checkout before it remembered my details. I paid for the purchase, I fully expected the app to download and then I could start using it. Well that’s what I expected, but that’s not what happened.

It didn’t download, all I got was a message that I was awaiting for the purchase to be authorised.

Initially I thought it was broken or had failed. However an e-mail from Google said that my purchase had gone through and I was charged for the App. Still the phone was saying that it was waiting for the purchase to be authorised…

It did this for a few hours before finally the app installed, I could use it, pair it and sync it with doubleTwist. No idea if that delay is normal and certainly I had not warning that this would happen. If I knew it was going to take hours then fair enough, however there was no warning or explanation.

So what of the app? I do like it and the ability to stream video, audio and photos from the Nexus One to my Apple TV is a real plus. Most of the videos I tried worked fine, but then they were encoded for the iPhone and I would expect them to work through the Apple TV. I was disappointed though that native videos i recorded on my Nexus One didn’t work. Well one did, but the rest didn’t. The one that did was a recent video, older ones failed to stream.

So I am pleased with the app, however less happy with the purchasing experience. Hopefully next time (and yes there will be a next time) it will be a more positive experience.

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Tethering Widget

Even though I have been using my Google Nexus One for tethering (portable wifi hotspot) for a while now, one of the annoyances was having to go into the menu structure to turn it on.

Menu -> Settings -> Wireless -> Portable Hotspot -> Turn it on….

There didn’t seem to be a quick way to add menu items to the screen. You couldn’t add it as a shortcut either.

After doing some of the Google stuff, I found that there was a free widget I could download that would then give me a widget on the home screen to turn the portable wifi hotspot on and off with a single click. Result!

Find it here.

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Still Kindling

I’ve had my Kindle for over eight months now and I am still using it on a regular basis for reading. I will say that the Kindle App on my iPad probably gets heavier use, but only because with a “back light” the iPad is easier to read in the evening. For daylight and bright sun though, the Kindle does win out. I was on a train recently and the sun was streaming in through the window. The iPad was very difficult if not impossible to read from, whilst the Kindle was a dream. If you read outside a lot or on trains, then the Kindle is certainly a much better option than the iPad. The battery life on the Kindle is incredible, we’re talking weeks between charges, rather than the day for the iPad.

I have found with the Kindle App on the iPad, means I don’t use iBooks at all, though I do have a few books on my shelf to read.

I do find that I have quite enjoyed reading a magazine on the Kindle, and unlike magazines on the iPad the lack of adverts certainly makes up for the lack of colour and interactive content. Downside is that he magazines can only be read ON the Kindle and can not be read in the Kindle App on the iPad. Why? Well it can’t just be to annoy me, can it?

What I am finding is that I am reading more now than before. Of course there are still quite a few books that I would like to read that aren’t in Kindle format, so have had to resort to paper. To be honest I have even bought some paper books too, which were available in Kindle format. For me the Kindle doesn’t replace paper books it complements them, giving me opportunities and more choice about what I can read, where and when I want to.

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Turn off the wifi

Following my previous post about the Nexus One battery life I received some useful suggestions from Gia and Dan.

If the Nexus One is searching for wifi access points then as Dan pointed out, this will drain the battery quite rapidly. This is not unique to the Nexus One, I have had similar issues with the iPhone 3GS and the Nokia N95. I had hoped that the issues would have been resolved with newer phones.

It’s interesting though to see the impact of wifi and the power requirements are still an issue.

It is the constant searching that has such a hit on the battery life, if the Nexus One is connected to a wireless access point then this has a lot less of an impact on the battery. That’s the reason why when using wifi on my iPad I don’t have similar battery issues as I am connected to wifi. Likewise when using the portable wifi hotspot on the Nexus One I find that I don’t have the battery problems either. Interestingly you don’t need to have the wifi turned on to use the portable wifi hotspot, the phone will turn on the wifi transmitter when you turn on the hotspot and turn it off when you turn the hotspot off.

I did find turning off the wifi did make a big difference to battery life on the Nexus One, so it is remaining off. Apart from having to turn it back on when I am using the phone at home, it hasn’t been such a big deal and hasn’t been annoying, whereas the lack of battery life was much more annoying. Still may follow Gia’s suggestions and get a new battery and use my old one as a spare.