Archive for the 'Digital communication' Category
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Seeking a perfect search
As ask.com makes a public onslaught against Google under the guise of democratising the world wide web and freeing us all from the virtual shackles of a monopoly, it is interesting to see a spate of new providers attempting to evolve search. The main reason for this is in large part due to the amount of online information growing phenomenally day by day - the quantity of pages Google throws up is soon likely to stretch from here to the moon and back. Some canny developers are therefore catching onto the fact that while Google’s eye is off the ball as it diversifies its offerings, creating more web-based applications in its lab, an opportunity in cyberspace exists.
As Chris Anderson states in his book, The Long Tail, the next generation of web users will have higher demands as they search for more relevant content, more quickly, more succinctly. In a nutshell, more information filtering is needed and how that is presented could change. While every web user is familiar with the simple Google library-style text listings, surely it won’t be long before user-interface
designers get in on the act to produce a new animal such as http://kwmap.net/uk.html and http://www.kartoo.com (pictured above)?Although these new filtering services are not always as accurate in their search results, it provides food for thought that perhaps another innovator is just waiting around the corner. Just type in the word ‘Search’ in Google and the most-widely used search engine provider turns up fourth in their very own listings - poor search engine optimisation or a warning sign?
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Windows under attack
Microsoft has been alerted to attacks targetting a flaw in the way Windows handles “.ani” files, the format used to create animated cursors.
The advisory says all of Microsoft’s supported versions of Windows for the desktop are affected, from Windows 2000 SP4 to Vista as well as versions of Windows Server 2003.
The affected software performs ‘insufficient format validation prior to rendering cursors, animated cursors, and icons’. An attacker can create a web page or embedded email and by persuading a target to view that content could install malicious code on the system.
GoTo: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/935423.mspx to read more details and how to protect your system.
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WUSB
WUSB is coming… What is that? Wirleless usb, cable-free USB technology to be more precise The technology promises wireless USB transfers between anything connected to the hub and a dongle that plugs into a PC over up to 10m. Speeds are similar to those from regular, wired USB 2.0 connections (480Mbit/s), so the attraction is in clearing up a little cable clutter. That and being first on the block to use yet another new wireless technology of course.
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An open universe
As the number of websites we ‘belong’ to grows and grows, we’re fast hitting the point where signing up for a new site becomes a significant impediment to joining.
When I start up my computer of a morning, I’m signing in to an increasingly diverse range of services - the local network, the wireless connection, instant messenger (x 3), my RSS reader, my photo sharing service. It’s a list that goes on. And on.
Consequently, we find ourselves pausing over the ‘Sign up’ button wondering do I really want this, how do I do know it will make a difference for me - it inhibits our desire to explore and try out what’s new.
This is something we have been thinking about at Precedent more and more as we work with clients to try and create ideal registration processes that are at the same time, unobtrusive and simple yet gather enough information to be made really useful to the application and to the user.
That’s why we are excited by the possibilities being opened up by Open ID. The idea is simple - that we can create a single address for ourselves (just like a website in fact) that identifies us and avoids creating yet more forgettable user name and password combinations.
It is a great idea that is generating a lot of momentum at present - AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Digg have all recently announced their intention to adopt it. It will be coming your way very soon.
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RSS & Yahoo
If your in to your RSS feeds have a look at http://pipes.yahoo.com/. Yahoo have launched ‘pipes’ where you can ‘mash up’ your rss feeds.
RSS was developed originally by Netscape.
RSS is short for “Rich Site Summary“, an XML format for sharing content among different web content. A website that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates
an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A
user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a
different site. Syndicated content includes such data as news feeds,
events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts
from discussion forums or even corporate information.I think this is interesting site and quite easy to use, but I also think this has reminded everyone that Yahoo is still a force of innovation.
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Something for the Office
Microsoft have just launched their 2007 office product, but if you don’t want the cost, try Open Office, A free office suite. It may take a short while to get used to but well worth having a look at.
Novell have just anounced it’s version, which comes with
Suse Linux 10, co-operates with MS Office documents. This means that you can view, edit, work on word, excel documents without any issues. -
Top or Bottom
Just five Internet Service Providers account for 88 per cent of the UK broadband market,
following the series of high-profile acquisitions that have taken place
of late.
In June last year, 10
providers shared 82 per cent of the market between them. Of those 10, AOL , Telewest and Virgin have since merged and AOL has been absorbed by Carphone Warehouse , while BT and Tiscali have both expanded their user
bases with the acquisitions of PlusNet and HomeChoice respectively.The latest figures compiled by Thinkbroadband show that BT including
PlusNet and Virgin Media (the new name for the combined ntl:Telewest an
Virgin businesses) each have 24.6 percent.According to recent Ofcom , just five percent of UK households subscribe to the UK’s 686 ‘niche’
providers. But when it comes to business broadband provision the
picture is very different, with around 30 percent of UK companies
relying on niche providers, who are able to offer tailored packages
and a much higher quality of support services.At
the same time as this research has come out a number of other articles
have appeared reporting a high amount of dissatisfaction. So what should you look for in an ISP?
The key to this centres around customer support and the level of
support you require. If you have to call someone, you want a quick
answer to your problems or at least an idea of where the problem lies.
Smaller companies do this better because you can usually speak to
someone, without going through a call centre. -
Vista and Office2007
Hello. You may be aware that Microsoft will finally lauch its Vista and Office 2007 products this week. So it may be worth waiting a month before installing Vista on your hardware as this will give other people time to find the bugs first. Office is worth an install though as a lot has been improved.
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Mobile to YouTube to Blog
Ok, so the grandparents live abroad, they sent the kids some presents for Christmas, and the kids need to say thank you and wish them a happy new year. They could write a letter, but ‘Hey’ this is the modern world and I have video on my mobile, and a blog. How difficult could it be? First the plan:
- Take video
- Upload to computer
- Upload to YouTube
- Take embedding code from YouTube, paste into HTML of blog post
- Send email to grandparents with link to blog
- EASY!
This particular plan took around 3 weekends to fulfill. The first part was easy enough, once I realised that the software that came with the phone was really difficult to get working and just used the phone as an extra drive instead. ‘Hold on though, what file format is that? 3GP! I haven’t seen that one before, lets see if YouTube will take that’.
The answer was “No” unless you want to send the file via email from your mobile. I needed to convert the file. It didn’t take too long to locate a free bit of software from a company called Miksoft that would convert the 3GP file into an AVI file, and it seemed to work fine. ‘Hold on though, that 1.5mb 3GP file is now a 200mb AVI file, that will take an age to upload and look, the limit when uploading a video to YouTube is 100mb - AH! But I have a smaller file here, its not the Grandparents one, but at least I can try this one, get it up on YouTube and execute the rest of my plan for satisfaction’s sake’.
I uploaded the file, looked at the thumbnail result on YouTube only to realise that the image was upside down. ‘Its only the thumbnail’ I told myself - it wasn’t - the whole damn video played upside down - ‘It didn’t do that in Windows Media Player - Now what?’.
‘I know, I’ll get some more conversion software’. I tried loads of different variations, but pretty much all the software I downloaded was for evaluation only and wouldn’t convert the whole file only half of it (you have to buy the product to get the full functionality). A friend suggested MIcrosoft Media Encoder. Now that would surely work, and it was free. It didn’t.
I did a series of searches prefixed with the words “How to..” and finally found myself on the Miksoft site again, but this time on its message board. The first question I saw was “Can anyone tell me why my videos keep coming out upside down?” The solution was another piece of software. ‘Ok just one more download’. My programmes menu was almost cascading off my screen by now with all the new software I had installed, so one more wouldn’t make any difference.
The message board suggested re-processing the AVI file through a piece of software called VirtualDub. This I tried, but the file size was still enormous at the other end. ‘Perhaps it would now go through windows media encoder and I could convert it to a WMV file, thus compressing it. I tried it, it worked - Yippee.
Uploading to YouTube is simple if you have an account, and not a whole lot more difficult if you haven’t, so this bit ewas easy, as was copying the conveniently provided code to embed the video and pasting it into the HTML of the blog. Just one thing to look out for is the size of the embedded video window, which you might need to adjust to fit the post column of your blog.
So I did it, and its easy. Well it will be for you guys if you decide to do the same, just use the links above, it will take you minutes rather than days, since I should point out that the description above is really only a precis of the numerous variations, combinations and file conversions I tried without success. And just to prove it works:
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No Beziers - still in Beta
My boy is always hassling me to look up websites on my computer for us to play on together. He often brings a tatty piece of paper out of his book bag and asks me to ‘Google’ the word scrawled on it. I am beginning to learn that his teacher has a good handle on websites that provide good wholesome entertainment ,and this weekend’s discovery is no exception. For a seasonal game, which is fantastically simple yet ridiculously compelling check out Line Rider - click on the graphic contained on this page to play http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/09/line_rider.php. It will take you seconds to get the hang of it, but a while longer to master it.
We have all at some time been on a fast moving ‘vehicle’ heading downhill with no brakes and even little control - so send a little guy on a sledge to his doom and feel for him! When you get to like him I would suggest you try creating a jump for him, getting him to do a somersault, and performing a loop de loop (you’ll see what I mean)
The game is still in beta, but the possibilities are endless. When the developers get hold of it and add an eraser and Bezier curves a whole fairground of fun will be available for the little chap and you - Enjoy.
