10 Types Of People

Thought I would do another blog post with lots of exciting tech news. So, here is what I’ve been seeing over the past few days.

• Amazon buys “TouchCo”. Touchscreen kindle in the works? One might wonder if they are going to be using this company for just that. The other question, however, is “If it is made, when will it be available in Britain?”
• Symbian is officially opensource. Symbian^2 (previously S60) is now open-source. It turns out the #symbiancountdown was the number of packages left until Symbian was totally open source. Well done Symbian. Now you need to step up and make sure than Symbian^3 is amazing and it better really step up and do what Symbian^2 hasn’t done. It needs to do a lot to be any good.
• JooJoo near launch. Fixes lots of problems that would make you not want an iPad (except the price).
• With or without you: Arm Ceo to Microsoft. The market will grow with or without Windows arm support. Good news for linux?
• Sonic 4 in production. A blast from the past, in high definition. Thats right, Sonic 4 is being made and will be available in the summer on PS3, xbox and wii. On PS3 and Xbox it will be in 1080p. Thats great!!!
• Apple yet again show how pathetic they are, by turning down an app because it is “not interesting enough”.

So, theres just a few bits of random news that I thought I would share with people. Have a great weekend guys!

Just thought I would put a wee blog post out to let people know that I am now officially engaged to Faye (@framemybear on twitter). I will post picture and explain how it happened another time, but I’m kinda busy just now

**EDIT** Spelling mistake – “not” changed to “now”

• Google and China

So, I’m sure you all know the details, so I will spare you the details. I will give you my opinion however. I think this is a great thing for Google to do. Now, I am not saying that it is good that Chinese people won’t be able to use google services. It is a good thing that Google are no longer just doing whatever it takes to get money. I’m not saying that Google are an amazingly moral company, but it is a step in the right direction.

I’m not sure how the Chinese government will take this, but I don’t think they will just ignore it. They won’t change their ways, but it is quite embarassing to have a huge company like Google to just up and leave when they aren’t happy with the terms of what they wanted anymore. It isn’t a huge thing that will make lots of changes in the world, but it might help.

• Gmail https

Looks like Gmail is using https by default now. This is very good. Means that gmail is fully encrypted. Who can say this is a bad thing, except hackers

• Youtube possibly using html5?

Youtube are redesigning there website, and are asking for your opinion. The most popular thing that seems to be dominating the poll is using html5 with ogg instead of the default being flash. Google officially replied to these and said:

We’ve heard a lot of feedback around supporting HTML5 and are working hard to meet your request, so stay tuned. We’ll be following up when we have more information. We’re answering this idea now because there are so many similar HTML5 ideas and we want to give other ideas a chance to be seen.

So, it seems that HTML5 with ogg will be implemented in youtube 2.0. We don’t know if it’ll be the default instead of flash, but at least it’ll be there. It sounds great doesn’t it.

• Nokia 5800 firmware update

Not many people will be interested in this, but the Nokia 5800 firmware has been updated to v40. It has features such as

• kinetic scrolling
• much better homescreen
• better sensitivity
• new screens for calls

So yeah, I can’t wait till I get this update for my phone. At least it’ll make the phone useable for the next few months, until I can get a new phone. It isn’t the best phone ever, but I’ll survive with these cool updates.

So these are just a few things that have happened recently. None of them get a post of their own, as I don’t have that much to say, but I felt that I needed to give them more than just a tweet.

Ok, what is the point of patents? Now, here I thought patents were to stop big corporations stealing little peoples ideas and selling more than them and running them out of business. Is that, or is that not, the idea of patents?

Today I heard the news that Kodak are sueing Apple and RIM about image processing and image viewing. I, to be honest, think this is pretty pathetic. How are Apple and RIM doing image processing and viewing that Kodak do in their cameras going to affect kodak??? Would you use a cameraphone over a camera? And if so, would you buy a camera if they didn’t quite process them the same way? No you wouldn’t. How is this going to affect Kodak if they didn’t file this.

Software patents are so pathetic. Can you think of the last time you heard of a patent that was decent? I know that software patents aren’t valid in Europe (citation needed), but they are in general a stupid idea. The fact that you can patent an idea, for example apple getting a patent on docks, an unknown company getting a patent on podcasts and another company getting a patent on an xml-based way of saving word processing documents. Are any of these good? No…they are not. They are all stupid. What happens if I code something that is patented, that I honestly thought up all by myself. Does that mean I shouldn’t be allowed to use it? Really? What gives them the right to use it when I thought of it, just a wee bit later than them.

What do you think, internets? Do you agree?

**Edit** Just to prove my point, turns out apple just applied for a patent to “add a contact to a homescreen.” It probably won’t go through, as android and also symbian, already can do that. But still, it shows the patheticness of patents.

First of all, happy new year!!!

Ok, so, in light of the recent year change, I decided it would be good to do my 2nd annual tech predictions. I also realised that this is the beginning of a new decade as well. So, because of this, I’m doing a bunch for the coming year, and a bunch for the coming decade. Obviously, the decade ones will be a bit more exciting, and probably a lot more wrong.

This year has been such an exciting year, that my ideas of technology, and what will happen in the future, are hugely different from what they would have been if I’d been looking 10 years into the future this time last year rather than just now. We all have different ideas, however, so please please let me know if you agree/disagree with what I’ve said, or if you have made some predictions of your own, let me know. If I get a lot of people telling me their predictions I may post a blog post about what I think about them, with links to your blogs and stuff, so that might be an incentive to comment. I want lots of comments on this blog post in the coming months, and even years as I have put the next decades predictions as well.

I think I said in my last post that I would have 10 predictions, well, I couldn’t keep it to only 10 for each, so there are more. But anyway, on with the predictions. Go through the jump to see them. (more…)

It is that lovely time of the year again. “The 50 random things of the year” are on the telly, podcasts are talking about what they want for the coming year, people are saying what a great year it was, how many fantastic things happened this year. And I am writing my predictions. Don’t think this is them though, I’m not releasing them until the early hours of Jan 1st (although that is GMT, so some Americans may see them before 1st Jan). This is, however, my review of the year. Looking at my predictions from last year and seeing how correct I was.

So, go have fun reading over what I said this year, and if you were better than me in predictions, let me know. They are over the jump. (more…)

Discalaimer: Not safe for work, and not safe for minors or people who don’t like swearing. I like this song, this video is hilarious, but it does include the swearing bit in the song.
Now that I have this out of the way, lets chat about this. Many of you will know that there is an internet meme going around trying to get people to buy RATM’s Killing in the Name of to christmas number 1 so that Joe from x-factor doesn’t get there. It is nothing against Joe, it is against x-factor and the music industry. The fact that everyone has to be the same to be popular. It is rubbish, and I bought a copy of the song yesterday from amazon. My dad told me of someone he knows actually spent £15 buying lots of copies of the song.

Before I give you the video, here is a screenshot of youtube’s top music videos just now.

Now, do you notice anything interesting about that? There is 1 video of Joe’s song, and it is the spotlighted video. The only reason that Joe is on the top music videos on youtube is because they have obviously paid for that. Its stupid. Really is. Also, RATM are currently at the top of the itunes chart just now. I might post a blog post tonight after we hear the winner of the Christmas Number one. But now for the video. Remember, it has swearing in it, but it really is a hilarious video and very very well made.

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I was inspired to write a blog post about computer security due to a number of things. The World’s Technology Podcast had a security episode a couple of weeks ago (and I got a mention last week actually because I emailed them about it), and also the news that there has been a piece of malware distributed on gnome-look.

This malware for debian based linux systems, I believe, required admin priviledges because it was distributed as a .deb file. The funny thing was, this isn’t a security flaw in linux. Well, I think it might be partly. Why don’t we have a system to allow .debs to be installed locally? That would get around this partly. It would mean it wouldn’t be installed by root, only by the user. This malware then had a script that ran and I’m not sure exactly what it did.

The point is, however, that it doesn’t matter how secure an operating system is, people will still get around the security really easily. And what is the reason for this? People. Human beings.

Now, I don’t think a computer I have had has EVER had a virus. Even when I was running Windows. Is this because I didn’t have the internet? Nah, don’t be silly…I’m posting to my blog now amn’t I? Was it because I’m such an amazing computer savvy person? Nah, at one point I hardly knew anything about computers. But I do have computer common sence.

There is a very common thing that people say…common sence is not common. Which is even more so true with computers. And so, for this reason, I decided to write a list of things to make your computer safe.

• Run linux – this might sound like a stupid thing to say, but linux does have slightly better ways of dealing with these things, and as of just now there are hardly any viruses, etc on it.
• Run a virus checker – even on linux and mac. It will serve you well. Yes, there aren’t many viruses yet, but there still are some. It only takes one to muck your computer up.
• Only install from the repos of your linux distro – these have been checked by plenty of people and are safe and do not contain viruses, etc.
• If you must run something that isn’t in the repos (very rare for most distros) then check it out properly before you install it. Talk to people, look at reviews. Think about whether it is reputable (the creator and the distributer).
• Don’t download pirated software – not only because it is illegal and stupid, but because many viruses are contained within pirated software.
• Dont just type in your password to give admin priveledges to everything – think about it. If you haven’t opened up your installer, then why are you being asked for a password? If you just opened up a file you downloaded and it wants your admin password, ask yourself why it wants it. Most programs DO NOT need your admin password.
• Update as often as possible – there will often be important updates in these.

If you follow this advice, then your chances of getting viruses will be greatly decreased. Security is partly in the hands of the developers, but it is also hugely down to you. A normal user. If you get a virus, it is probably your fault.

Ok, this weeks video of the week is not actually called “but…freecell”, but it is my favourite quote from the video. This is a fantastic video. Yeah, ok, I don’t agree with everything in the video, but its still hilarous.

Oh, btw, there is quite a bit of swearing at the end. So, technically NSFW. Its only one word, just repeated quite a few times.

[edit] I forgot to say…don’t let Windows make you feel sorry for it. It had its day [edit]

Enjoy!!!

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You may have noticed there have been a few changes on my blog recently. First of all, and most notibly, it has been down on and off the for the past week, and yesterday and today, it went almost completely down for all of it.

Basically, my hosting provider decided to start to be rubbish. They were a victim of over-selling, and it caught up with them. So, last night, and today, I switched providers. Hopefully this will be much better.

Second of all, you may have noticed a few captchas and the word “OpenID” around the place. This is because I have integrated captchas and OpenID into my blog. Basically, I’ve been getting a lot of spam comments recently, and decided captchas are the way to go. But then, I realised, that people don’t like captchas, so I have set it up so that if you register, you don’t need to do the captchas. But then, I thought, people don’t like registering lots of accounts, and with my recent fascination with OpenID, I integrated the OpenID wordpress plugin into my blog.

Basically, what you can do now, is go to the login page, and enter your OpenID into the 3rd text box. Then you click submit, authenticate with your OpenID provider, and that is it, you are registered on my blog without a password.

A perfect example of how OpenID can and SHOULD be implemented. With my recent blog post on OpenID, and how it isn’t implemented how it should be, I am showing how it should be done, in the hope that people will follow my example. Also, if you don’t have a gravitar, but have an OpenID with an avatar, it’ll use that as your gravatar

If you have a wordpress blog, add the plugin to your blog, seriously, it is so useful.