Commentary – Page 95

Phones don’t have carbon footprints. People do.

Bernie Goldbach wrote a comment: And accepting the iPhoneâ€™s poor battery performance by suggesting a clever work-around is fine, as long as you also accept its leading role as the phone with one of the largest carbon footprints. My reply: Phones donâ€™t have carbon footprints. People do. When Iâ€™m using my iPhone Iâ€™m not using … Continue reading “Phones don’t have carbon footprints. People do.”

Bernie Goldbach wrote a comment:

And accepting the iPhoneâ€™s poor battery performance by suggesting a clever work-around is fine, as long as you also accept its leading role as the phone with one of the largest carbon footprints.

My reply:

Phones donâ€™t have carbon footprints. People do. When Iâ€™m using my iPhone Iâ€™m not using my MacBook Pro which has an 85W Power Supply.

It may seem crazy but this is an example of doing more with less. When I’m doing stuff on my iPhone (playing a game, tweeting, sending email, browsing the web), I’m not powering my MacBook Pro with it’s 17″ screen, dual core processors and kick ass graphics card – any one of which is likely to exceed the entire power drain of the iPhone.

My MacBook Pro has a 68-Watt-Hour battery holds 244800 (68 x 60 x 60) watt-seconds which equals 244800 joules. It drains in just under 4 hours of normal usage.

iPhone has a 1400 mAhour 3.7V battery. This means 1.4 Ampere-hours at 3.7 V. If the voltage remains constant (which is the real trick), this converts proportionally to Watt Hours so 3.7 V x 1.4 ampere-hours = 5.18 Watt Hours. Which means it holds 18648 joules. It drains in around 5 hours of normal usage (meaning constant usage. Standby is much better)

Can someone who knows a bit more about power check my figures? Being conservative with my power is important to me. (Point being that I recharge my iPhone using solar collectors – difficult enough in Northern Ireland)

Having a ready source of energy is important to someone who finds himself more often than not out of the office.

Chrome

Sometimes you have to wonder at Google. Yesterday they launched Chrome, a new WebKit-based web browser as a BETA for Windows. That’s not surprising considering that Android chose WebKit, S60 chose WebKit and, to be honest, unless you’re really into the politics of the Mozilla guys, you’d choose WebKit too. It’s lean, it’s fast, it’s … Continue reading “Chrome”

Sometimes you have to wonder at Google.

Yesterday they launched Chrome, a new WebKit-based web browser as a BETA for Windows. That’s not surprising considering that Android chose WebKit, S60 chose WebKit and, to be honest, unless you’re really into the politics of the Mozilla guys, you’d choose WebKit too. It’s lean, it’s fast, it’s where all the cool kids are.

Anyway. The real ‘new’ feature of Chrome as opposed to other web browsers is the idea of process proliferation. The Chrome application itself is really a process manager for Chrome sub-processes which spawn to handle a single page or tab each. This is a bit like the way Apache deals with increasing traffic by spawning new processes so the idea is not new (and I proposed that Apple should do something similar for the FTFF problem). The added benefit is that a single tab can crash out and not affect the rest of the tabs – it’s a shame that that alone is the ‘killer feature’.

Obviously it’s going to be attractive to some due to the ‘new and shiny’ but the minimalist interface might not be enough for some and my Twitter stream has been filled with people complaining about it not working as planned. And of course, it’s Windows only…

I’m currently playing with it as my default browser on Vista and will likely develop an opinion as time goes on. It feels no different to Safari to be honest which, in a way, is a big complement. Still leaves me wanting to try it on Mac OS X – Vista just isn’t to my taste.

So, there you have it. Download it (for Windows) or spend a few minutes reading about it in the Google Chrome online comic.

5 year Plan

Somewhat inspired by Ian Robinson’s declaration of his 5 year plan. I can’t really separate things like Home/Work (which is probably a bad thing) but here’s some things I hope for: learn to program. Seriously. Find a mentor who has infinite time and patience. Learn some cocoa and get something out there so someone other … Continue reading “5 year Plan”

Somewhat inspired by Ian Robinson’s declaration of his 5 year plan. I can’t really separate things like Home/Work (which is probably a bad thing) but here’s some things I hope for:

learn to program. Seriously. Find a mentor who has infinite time and patience. Learn some cocoa and get something out there so someone other than me will run some code that I’ve written.
lose weight and keep it off. I used to be a lean, mean fighting machine but I’ve definitely gotten a little fuzzy around the edges. But now getting to age where I feel like I’ll have to be careful.
take up photography. Properly. By watching the blogs and tweets of others, I know what I’m meant to be looking for but the step of getting into Aperture/Lightroom and working with HDR and the other acronyms seems like a big step.
convert the garage, the basement and the attic. Maybe not me personally. But get them all done. And plan the extension. Yes. And keep one of them for my geek crap.
retire. Not seriously. But wouldn’t it be nice…

So, go on. Make it a meme.

CENSORED

Image credited to Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s seminal work, Watchmen. Wikipedia says: Watchmen remains the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award, and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time’s 2005 list of “the 100 best English-language novels”, an annual feature of the magazine since it was founded in 1923. … Continue reading “CENSORED”

Image credited to Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s seminal work, Watchmen.

Wikipedia says:

Watchmen remains the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award, and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time’s 2005 list of “the 100 best English-language novels”, an annual feature of the magazine since it was founded in 1923.

Vivendi Games Mobile out the door?

PocketGamer writes: It’s an open secret that Vivendi Games Mobile isn’t long for this world, at least in its current form. Newly-merged parent company Activision Blizzard recently described it as a “non-strategic business unit” after all. … With Activision Blizzard now the world’s largest games publisher, it’s hardly a resounding vote of confidence in mobile … Continue reading “Vivendi Games Mobile out the door?”

PocketGamer writes:

It’s an open secret that Vivendi Games Mobile isn’t long for this world, at least in its current form. Newly-merged parent company Activision Blizzard recently described it as a “non-strategic business unit” after all.
…
With Activision Blizzard now the world’s largest games publisher, it’s hardly a resounding vote of confidence in mobile that it sees no need to have an in-house mobile division. Vivendi Games Mobile has recently seen big success with its Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D game for iPhone.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D was really successful but you have to ask what is success for a mobile game?

Desktop games these days are built with a huge budget and command huge profits. A mobile game would, in theory, be built with a smaller budget and due to the lower prices command much lower profits.

Is the mobile division unprofitable or just not profitable enough?

Anyone got cool technology?

…and fancy demoing to four universities in Northern Ireland? The dates are from the 3rd to the 12th of September. We’ve got a couple of cool things, in the areas of 3D visualisation, biological monitoring and games but we could do with a few more. The idea is to demo technology and science to kids … Continue reading “Anyone got cool technology?”

…and fancy demoing to four universities in Northern Ireland?

The dates are from the 3rd to the 12th of September.

We’ve got a couple of cool things, in the areas of 3D visualisation, biological monitoring and games but we could do with a few more. The idea is to demo technology and science to kids who are currently doing their A-Levels. Whether you work in hardware or software, you must have something cool to show off.

In the clouds…

Ian Landsman tweeted: I have a feeling many business iphone apps my come full circle back to just iphone optimized web apps. My reply: The USEFUL data is either in the cloud or being collected and SENT to the cloud. This is why apps like Google Docs are not going away. They’ll morph and change … Continue reading “In the clouds…”

Ian Landsman tweeted:

I have a feeling many business iphone apps my come full circle back to just iphone optimized web apps.

My reply:

The USEFUL data is either in the cloud or being collected and SENT to the cloud.

This is why apps like Google Docs are not going away. They’ll morph and change and become even more capable and sophisticated but in essence, the cloud is where the storage, the processing and the real bandwidth is.

Look at some of the cornerstone Web 2.0 apps. Youtube for instance is a player which relies on a powerful automated postproduction workflow. Docs is a lightweight web client for some powerful processing behind the scenes. More and more we need to keep our data safe and as can be seen recently, data on devices is non-secure. Keep your data locked up. Keep records so you can revoke access. And increase bandwidth and coverage to mobile devices so that there’s less need for aggressive caching.

And don’t design crap UIs

More on battery power.

I get about 2/3 of a day out of my iPhone battery. Guy Kawasaki recently explained how to lengthen your iPhone battery. Turn off a load of stuff. Balls to that. I have two phones. An iPhone 3G which lasts about 8 hours. And a Nokia 6300 which lasts about 3 days. Strike one for … Continue reading “More on battery power.”

I get about 2/3 of a day out of my iPhone battery.

Guy Kawasaki recently explained how to lengthen your iPhone battery. Turn off a load of stuff.

Balls to that.

I have two phones. An iPhone 3G which lasts about 8 hours. And a Nokia 6300 which lasts about 3 days.

Strike one for Nokia. Er, no. Because the only thing the Nokia actually does is sit there and do nothing. The iPhone is constantly downloading twinkles, grabbing email every 15 minutes (and receiving email pushes constantly) and footering with the GPS.

So it lasts 8 hours. Buy a PowerMonkey and get over it.

Nomadic Power

One half of the issues of being ‘Bedouin’ is the relative scarcity of net access. There’s heaps of WiFi out there, 3G and EDGE connections but every now and then you find yourself bereft of networks to attach to, for instance, in the middle of the North Sea. You can still work especially if you have a laptop with you and even if you’ve just got your iPhone or other ‘relatively smart’ phone, you can hammer out some ideas, prepare some emails to be sent when the network returns or do those boring jobs which you’ve been putting off.

Power, on the other hand, is a must. It’s not usually a problem at home or in the office but what do you do when out and about. First thing is to look for any power sockets you can find – it’s worthwhile noting where they are in cafÃ©s (and on the Ferry/HSS). Not surprisingly, most vendors take a dim view of plugging in even if you’re a paying customer.

So what do we do to deal with that? I’d blogged previously about The FreeLoader but I’ve added to this with a third party battery booster (which provides ONE good charge for an iPhone) and also a PowerMonkey eXplorer.

Check this out. A charger that can harvest enough motion from walking to replenish cell phones or other small gadgets, like GPS devices. It says that six hours of cumulative motion can add 30 to 60 minutes of talk time to a cell phone. The idea is to place the charger inside a purse or backpack and let it charge in the background

Dreigit, from Craic Design

Bit of a shout-out to John Kennedy of Craic Design, a software company producing games for the iPhone which so far has a single game on the App Store, Dreigit and an opportunity to highlight some of the work being done by local software developers. It’s an asteroids clone with updated graphics and some neat … Continue reading “Dreigit, from Craic Design”

It’s an asteroids clone with updated graphics and some neat features of John’s own making. As well as being one of the guys who pushed to get XCake on the map, John is on record on the Belfast Open Coffee Club mailing list for:

Once you have the knowledge and some experience, you will be surprised
what you can do. I (apparently) have started a successful company
using my laptop and my spare time on the Dublin – Belfast railway.

Available from the App Store.

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