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I don’t like the terminology but I feel forced to use it. ITV recently emailed me to let me know that, as a Mac user, I can now watch itv episodes on my Mac. This was a nice catchup to BBC’s iPlayer which, although very limited on the Mac, allows me to watch Dr Who … Continue reading “itv.com full of FAIL”
I don’t like the terminology but I feel forced to use it.
ITV recently emailed me to let me know that, as a Mac user, I can now watch itv episodes on my Mac. This was a nice catchup to BBC’s iPlayer which, although very limited on the Mac, allows me to watch Dr Who just about anywhere on my Mac or iPhone.
itv.com’s streaming requires Silverlight.
*sigh*
Article on Reddit God…. Related posts: The Creative Industries Innovation Fund Computer Programming for Everybody Neil Young of ng:moco Game changing research networks for the Video game industry Arts and Humanities Research Council
God….
ENN.ie with the news: “A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Lori Drew, from Missouri, for her alleged role in the hoax on the social network against her 13 year-old neighbour Megan Meier who committed suicide. Drew allegedly helped create a MySpace account with a false identity to contact Meier, who thought she was … Continue reading “MySpace Internet Predator indicted”
“A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Lori Drew, from Missouri, for her alleged role in the hoax on the social network against her 13 year-old neighbour Megan Meier who committed suicide. Drew allegedly helped create a MySpace account with a false identity to contact Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16 year-old boy named Josh Evans. In reality Evans did not exist. Meier hanged herself at her home in October 2006 after receiving hostile messages from the Josh Evans account, including one stating the world would be better off without her. Drew faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
…
“Any adult who uses the internet or a social gathering website to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realise that their actions can have serious consequences,” said O’Brien.”
I was horrified when I read the account around the time it happened. This woman should be treated like any other Internet Predator – as if keeping 13 year old girls away from male internet predators who would molest them wasn’t enough of a challenge, we have the mothers of other children convincing your child to kill him/herself?
If she’d gotten away with this, can you imagine what sort of horrors she could wreak in the future? What sort of person lords power over teenagers like this (other than teachers, parents and celebrities).
It’s a matter of intent. She intended to cause Megan Meier distress and she should pay for it.
A stunning piece of advertorial from InfoWorld via Nortel’s sponsored IDC survey. a considerable number of what it calls “hyperconnected” users … those using at least seven devices and nine applications … accounted for 16 percent of the population in the study Behind the hyperconnected were the “increasingly connected,” who use four devices and as … Continue reading “Hyperconnected”
A stunning piece of advertorial from InfoWorld via Nortel’s sponsored IDC survey.
a considerable number of what it calls “hyperconnected” users … those using at least seven devices and nine applications … accounted for 16 percent of the population in the study
Behind the hyperconnected were the “increasingly connected,” who use four devices and as many as six applications and account for 36 percent of the population.
i don’t find this hard to believe considering that at home I have a heap of IP-enabled equipment: three routers, a desktop computer (iMac), three laptops (17″ Pro, Air and Asus eeePC) , a slingbox, a game console (Wii) one Internet tablet (Nokia N800), two iPhones and two other internet-capable phones (Nokia and Sony-Ericsson).
The article continues like an infomercial but points out that your local friendly neighbourhood It department may have to change the way they work to allow for more heterogenous workspaces and include platforms like mobile telephones, FaceBook or even game consoles (those that have web browsers built in). How frustrating is it that I can’t just connect to Facebook or LinkedIn to ask a question or to help me in resourcing a new place in my team. I end up having to go home and do my investigations there. IT departments are still driven by paranoia and fear, not for the loss of data, but for the loss of their job.
Unified communications, which is promoted by companies such as Microsoft and Nortel, will make an impact, according to IDC and Nortel. Networks will need to accommodate identity, presence, location, telephony and data.
And we see two companies uniquely qualified to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by making these solutions expensive, proprietary and failure-prone.
I wouldn’t describe myself as hyper-connected even though I’m sitting at a desktop computer with a laptop in my bag, an internet tablet on my right and an iPhone on my left. We need to establish a platform for the hyperconnected, get ubiquitous network access (is this going to be Wifi, WiMax or 3/4G?) and improve the battery life of these devices. And we should get right to resolving these issues as soon as we’ve defeated poverty.
Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is now available on Amazon’s US store. UK store to follow. This coincides nicely with my “Thursday Is Code Night In Bangor” plans. I already have second edition but I’d like third edition because things have changed. That said – even third Edition, though it covers Leopard … Continue reading “No excuse now…”
Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is now available on Amazon’s US store. UK store to follow. This coincides nicely with my “Thursday Is Code Night In Bangor” plans. I already have second edition but I’d like third edition because things have changed. That said – even third Edition, though it covers Leopard specific topics such as Core Animation, doesn’t include the iPhone.
This, on the other hand, pisses me off. So much for Sterling being stronger than the dollar.
| Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | UK price in $ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| RRP | $49.99 | £35.99 | $70.06 |
| Price | $31.49 | £28.79 | $56.05 |
Anyway, I digress.
Last night we worked from a different book: Wrox’s Beginning Mac OS X Programming. I don’t have any practical programming experience but I do have a couple of weeks of academic programming (spread across a dozen languages and over 20 years so I effectively know how to say “Hello World” in about 12 languages.) My brother has no programming experience but wants to spend his time constructively rather than sitting around tweaking his wolf.config file for a few extra FPS. We’d scheduled in a one-night-a-week session where we’d get together and learn to write code.
I’d previously considered my options. 50% of my head says to go with PHP or Ruby as they seem to be extremely marketable but I don’t think that I’d be happy with that. I want to make Mac apps and later, iPhone apps. And that realistically means going with Objective-C and Cocoa.
So we spent two hours last night having some fun with compile errors and yeah, it was fun. The material we worked on last night was basic to me but first time knowledge for D. And, to my surprise, at the end, D suggested that we increase this to two nights a week. As I’m in the house on weeknights I’ve been vegging out a lot, reading, writing stuff for lategaming and working through DVDs that I’ve not seen but this new productivity is quite motivating.
We typed in the sample code and then when we got it to compile correctly (the authors deliberately put mistakes in the code!) I suggested a couple of ways we could extend the code which wasn’t in the book and we resolved to do that as homework.
Good times.
I was on stage at WWDC presenting some new feature of the iPhone 2.0 and things were going really well. The Steve seemed pleased anyway and didn’t throw a camera at me. In the audience were a lot of my friends and also 5000-odd people I didn’t know. And then someone asked me a question … Continue reading “I had a dream last night…”
I was on stage at WWDC presenting some new feature of the iPhone 2.0 and things were going really well. The Steve seemed pleased anyway and didn’t throw a camera at me. In the audience were a lot of my friends and also 5000-odd people I didn’t know.
And then someone asked me a question about some code and it all went downhill from there. I think I did okay but my alarm went off and I was back to being a wage-slave at $BIG_COMPANY.
I think that’s the equivalent of the dream of being nekkid during a presentation. Some maintain that dreams are a sort of VR-simulation where we try out situations in the hope that we will better cope with them in real life. I’m unsure about that but if they’re right I’ll be excellently equipped to deal with WWDC presentations and shambling zombie attacks.
Of the two, I think the zombies are more likely!
Img credited to JustinJas Ars Technica writes in NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software’s built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying to record prime-time … Continue reading “DRM bad”
Ars Technica writes in NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks
Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software’s built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying to record prime-time NBC shows on Monday evening, using both over-the-air broadcasts and cable. Although the problem is being “looked into” by both NBC and Microsoft, the incident serves as another reminder that DRM gives content providers full control, even if by accident.
It’s not just TV shows. There’s discussion about the number of technical manuals that don’t appear as PDF. Publishers have to remember that someone is going to pirate their content, no matter what they do with it, so it’s not worthwhile punishing those of us who pay for content.
I don’t want to have to carry around this big thick “Beginning Mac OS X Programming” book but there are two reasons I do. One, because I have no choice due to the lack of PDF content (and there’s always the hope that knowledge will transfer via osmosis) and Two, because I need as much screen space as possible and keeping a doc open eats up a lot of screen space.
As a producer as well as a consumer, I’m not opposed to DRM. But DRM should be about keeping your stuff private and not punishing the paying customer. After you pay, restrictions should be decreased!
BarcampBelfast 2008 is planned for Saturday 21st June, 9am – 5pm. Last year I had other commitments and couldn’t make it but I intend to turn up this year. Mac-Sys did sponsor it last year and will be doing so again. I think we need more of these events. There’s already a set of speakers … Continue reading “BarCampBelfast 2008”
BarcampBelfast 2008 is planned for Saturday 21st June, 9am – 5pm. Last year I had other commitments and couldn’t make it but I intend to turn up this year. Mac-Sys did sponsor it last year and will be doing so again. I think we need more of these events.
There’s already a set of speakers lined up but they’re looking out for more if you’re interested. I would like to speak on something but fear that my areas of knowledge are sufficiently shallow that there’d be nothing I could really teach anyone, especially when faced with the people speaking there.
The subjects do tend to be tech-heavy but that’s the problem. The subjects I know well enough to talk about (or could brush up on) would be of little relevance to the audience (unless people really want to know about OSPF or MLTs…I know I don’t!) and I’m sure no-one wants to hear about my epic failure at becoming a programmer (it’s code night tonight in Bangor, oh yes…)
Make the effort to turn up.
Andy recently posted that his efforts to build Co-Working Belfast have been bearing fruit as he gets QUB and Belfast City Council on board. For my part, I’ve pledged that Mac-Sys will buy a desk every month and put some loaner kit down there as well to foster mobile types into using it. Co-Working Ireland … Continue reading “Co-Working”
Andy recently posted that his efforts to build Co-Working Belfast have been bearing fruit as he gets QUB and Belfast City Council on board. For my part, I’ve pledged that Mac-Sys will buy a desk every month and put some loaner kit down there as well to foster mobile types into using it.
Co-Working Ireland started over a year ago and I was invited to blog about it. I wrote a few articles there
The Closed Door
Working anywhere you pitch a tent.
Coffee shops: spacial logistics
but not long after I changed jobs (long story) and being office based I’ve not really had the time or opportunity to blog more about it on coworking.ie though I have managed to put some stuff together here in my Bedouin and Co-Working categories.
I’ve got an article in the making for coworking.ie, a year after my last one. Woo-and-hoo!
I got this Businessweek link from DaringFireball this morning. “A few weeks after announcing it will shut down its municipal wireless network in New Orleans, EarthLink Inc. said Tuesday that it has notified its Wi-Fi customers in Philadelphia that it is terminating that network, too.” This is what happens when ideas are put out there … Continue reading “Municipal WiFi failing again. Try FON.”
I got this Businessweek link from DaringFireball this morning.
“A few weeks after announcing it will shut down its municipal wireless network in New Orleans, EarthLink Inc. said Tuesday that it has notified its Wi-Fi customers in Philadelphia that it is terminating that network, too.”
This is what happens when ideas are put out there without a plan.
I’m putting my faith in FON.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to get free/cheap Internet access for my iPhone when I’m travelling around the Baltic capitals in August and with BT’s data roaming charges of £7.50 a megabyte (about $15 – which is 1.5 cents per kilobyte), there has to be another way.
Have FON, will Travel
Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki are covered in FON points. St Petersburg, Talinn and Warnemunde much less so. MUCH less so. A bit like Belfast, Bangor and everywhere else in Northern Ireland. But the potential to be able to access WiFi points while travelling is simply too strong.
I’ve never seen a FON WiFi signal when I’ve been out and about so I reckon I should be a bit pro-active and do something about that considering that there seems to be no-one else working on it for Belfast and I don’t have the time!
So, this morning I bought two FON routers and I’m putting one in the house. Not sure where the second should go.