November 23rd, 2009

Chrome OS: More questions than answers?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:48 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Google, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Open source, Productivity

Tags: Desktop, Google Inc., Operating System, Google Chrome, Hardware, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

Hearing the news of Google’s Chrome OS at the end of last week left me with an uneasy feeling about the future of operating systems and computer use.

The general idea behind Chrome OS is that the operating system as you see it will be nothing more than a web browser with a few things plugged into it, and a massively slimmed down operating system which will load in a fraction of the average time taken with existing products.

But even as a man who looks towards the next generation, this doesn’t sit too well with me. Not only did the announcements and the coverage seem to ask more questions than give answers, but Chrome OS also seems to exclude a very important market - students.

Students won’t be able to take their laptops everywhere as they can now without access to the web. Students can’t live entirely in the cloud, which I’ve already proved once before, even though many university campuses are blanketed with a cloud of wireless signals. And even then, not all students should be able to anyway with applications which are absolutely necessary to run on desktop computers.

To start off, take a spare ten minutes and watch the videos that Jason Perlow added to his blog just before the weekend which will brief you on the latest.

Bandwidth issues

Everything is stored in the cloud is accessed through the web. Even the “applications” such as the calculator and the calendar - simple desktop applications for Windows and Mac OS X - but not for Chrome.

If you have no Internet, I have no idea how Chrome OS would even turn on. Perhaps it’s like the Chrome browser, which works offline with Google Gears enabled sites. But that’s hardly optimal. Will the Chrome OS work where the is no Internet access on the road, on a plane or train (at least in the United Kingdom anyway) or even sitting out in a park in the city. Sure you could use a wireless 3G card or your phone modem but this will cost a lot to run an entire operating system.

And what if the damned broadband goes down? This is something I seem to face quite a bit and frankly, without access to the Internet, the Chrome-specific device just becomes a very expensive paperweight.

Read the rest of this entry »

November 23rd, 2009

Let's get rid of usernames and passwords for good

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:00 am

Categories: Discussion, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research, Security, Web development

Tags: Password, Facebook Connect, OpenID, Zack Whittaker

Usernames and passwords annoy me. Expert advice says to have a different username and password for various services, but the amount of subscriptions, email accounts, social networks and other sites we subscribe to can run into the dozens, if not hundreds.

Password managers help, and single sign-on solutions for an array of sites are useful, and devices like smart cards and biometric devices save us remembering a whole array of combinations. But what if you’re away from your primary computer? You still need to remember all of the sequences and mishmashes of letters and numbers whether you like it or not.

Facebook Connect has helped me out greatly. On my home computer, I never sign out because there’s just no point as nobody else lives with me (thank God), and on my office computer, I always lock my screen so again, no need to log out. With this, it means I can not only sign in straight away to supporting services but it means I can cut down on the number of user names and passwords I need.

Perhaps it is time we worked on a new system. No longer should be need to push the “forgot your password?” link, or have to look up a long list of passwords in the filing cabinet, or even have to rely on a browser to take the workload for us. There needs to be a solution.

OpenID has the right idea, but it works in a similar way to university federation services and doesn’t really share any unique factor. Even CBS Interactive sites like ZDNet, TechRepublic, and BNET have a good idea by sharing the same login details across sites so you don’t need to re-register. But again, this isn’t enough.

I’d like something to change but simply don’t see a system being implemented which wouldn’t cost about a zillion dollars. For now, this thirty-year solution may have to stick with the byline of “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. Then again, Google thought e-mail was broken when it brought out Wave…

How would you fix it?

November 15th, 2009

How could Twitter help in a terrorist attack?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 11:33 am

Categories: Discussion, Events, Major breakthroughs, Mobile computing, Security, Social networking

Tags: Network, Mumbai, Twitter Inc., London, Terrorist Attack, Corporate Insurance, Homeland Security, Business Security, Telecom & Utilities, Networking

On 7th July 2005, fifty two people were killed when four suicide bombers detonated home made explosives on the London Underground. During this time, there was panic, confusion, miscommunication and a number of issues relating to where to go and what was going on. Even law enforcement suffered making the situation even more fragile.

With experience of hindsight, with a number of events which social networking from ordinary members of the public (”citizen journalism”) from the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the Hudson river plane crash and the death of Michael Jackson; Twitter especially has been a key point of communication.

Mumbai was a perfect example of how Twitter dominated the intelligence gathering process, using real people and human intelligence but through an unconventional, insecure medium. Photos were being uploaded to Flickr and Twitpic, and tweets were dominating the blogosphere, and being used as part of commercial news channels as their own journalists simply couldn’t be spread thinly enough.

However in the case of Mumbai, public and very widespread intelligence could have been used to the terrorists’ advantages, also. Not so much the case of the London bombers, though.

How could it have helped London?

Read the rest of this entry »

November 9th, 2009

10 technological changes in 10 technological years

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:39 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Events, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Multimedia, Social networking, Uncategorized, Weird and wonderful

Tags: TV, Computer, Internet, Productivity, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

My goddaughter is now of an age where she can talk, understand, and learn pretty well. She’s six, so she’s pretty on the ball with things already. The things that she experiences and sees are so different to mine, and she’s only 16 years younger than me. Times change quickly, I know, but it hit me like a wave of elderly welfare benefits disguised as a petrol tanker last night.

The differences between her generation and mine, even though separated by a few years, are stark and somewhat terrifying in hindsight.

1. There were nine planets in the solar system.

For years it was always nine planets and then one day, they decided it was either going to be eight, or about twenty. They chose eight. After seven years of primary education, the world I knew it was, well gone actually; they had just declassified it as a planet.

2. A BlackBerry was a fruit, and so was Apple.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if people heard either “blackberry” or “apple” and genuinely thought of the fruit. But I cannot seem to shake the association now built with my mobile device. People say, “have at least one of your five a day”, whilst I have my BlackBerry in my hand making a call. I’d say that counts, right?

3. To load up a program, you’d have to slam in a cassette tape and wait 20 minutes for it to load.

My first computer, a CPC-464. It was so heavy you could have used it as a concrete block in a mafioso novel. A ten year gap is a bit of an exaggeration but I knew people still word processing back then on green-screened computers. When the 5″ floppy disk came out, we saw that as a mini-revolution in itself.

4. You had to dial into the Internet.

You couldn’t just have the Internet flowing in and out of the computer like an out of control waterfall. No, you had to tell it to dial another computer and information would be sent to and fro through, what was essentially a computer-to-computer phone call. What’s even more weird is that it’s still available, even today.

5. A single gigabyte hard drive simply couldn’t be filled, through no will of trying.

My first computer bought for the family at Christmas 1996 (yes, it had Windows 95) had a 64MB memory and a single gigabyte of storage. My dad said, “we will never, ever fill that”.

6. Video tapes the size of Bibles would be the only way to record a television programme, and even then it’d only be able to record an hour and a half at best.

Even though I’m far too young to remember the Betamax vs. VHS war, I most certainly remember hoping to watch back an episode of The Simpsons which I’d recorded on the oldest VCR in the world, and it failing miserably with tape lodged and jammed in every bit. It was heartbreaking.

7. The only porn we could find was the shredded remains of a dirty magazine under a bush in the local park.

This generation of Internet kids has seen more porn than any other generation of children, ever. When I was a lad, one morning you’d be lucky enough to find a shred of it near where the local dirty old man sleeps in the evening. “Kids having kids… blame the parents”: no, blame the Internet.

8. There was only one computer in the house, and if there were more, only one would connect to the Internet at a time.

No such things as wireless back then. The only wireless you’d know of was the radio, and that would have been a main source of entertainment. It may sound like wartime England, 10 years ago wasn’t that far away. Windows XP hadn’t come out yet, I was still in a school uniform and the computers we used were running Windows NT.

9. There were no such things as flat screen televisions.

At least commercially, anyway. I come from a generation where our eyes are slightly closer together yet facing slightly the opposite way from being transfixed by a CRT television for all these years. And I laugh now at the “radiation warnings” from the sticker on the side of the box…

10. Twitter was called “text messaging” and the “tweet” only went to one other person.

Yes, a new phenomenon which many don’t realise that was basically text messaging. While sending a text is still far more popular than Twitter, the days where news would slowly seep its way through a friendship group (nowadays a “social network”), whereas now you can update literally anyone and everyone in the space of 160 characters.

A lot can happen in ten years.

October 31st, 2009

Web addresses to extend to non-English languages

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 8:46 am

Categories: Breaking news, Environment, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Web 2.0

Tags: Web, ICANN, Web Address, Channel Management, Domain Names, Marketing, Internet, Zack Whittaker

Since the very start of web addresses being introduced, only Latin-script (English) based web addresses would work. With the ever increasing number of web addresses in use, the regulatory body assigning domain name details has approved the use of non-English addresses.

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, have approved a number of internationalised domain names (IDN’s) which could be rolled out as soon as next year, the BBC report.

At the moment, only the standard 26-letter English alphabet from A-Z and including 0-9 can be used. This new process will allow in theory any language using any symbol to enter web addresses.

This move will see the next generation web for non-English speaking users, and in short, will make the Internet truly local to whoever may use the web.

From two weeks time, ICANN will begin accepting applications for IDN’s and will make the first ones available from mid-2010.

Starting with the most popular languages, according to the BBC article:

“It is likely the majority of early non-Latin net addresses to be approved will be in Chinese and Arabic script, followed by Russian.

Some countries, such as China and Thailand, have already introduced workarounds that allow computer users to enter web addresses in their own language. However, these were not internationally approved and do not work on all computers.”

This appears to be ICANN’s first major step since receiving autonomy from the US government last month. How web browsers will respond to this it is not so clear. However, with Firefox, by entering in a non-English set of characters, seems to convert it only to English when submitted.

Will this make the Internet more accessible? Have your say.

October 9th, 2009

Coin-sized nuclear batteries to revolutionise electronics

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:36 pm

Categories: Environment, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research

Tags: Device, Battery, Electronics, Engineering, Zack Whittaker

A nuclear battery is not a new concept. For years they have been praised for their longevity and ability to keep running for years, decades longer than the lifespan of ordinary batteries.

Research engineers at the University of Missouri have developed a battery which takes advantage of the decay of benign radioactive elements to create electricity. While nuclear batteries have been used in healthcare, space equipment and military devices, the potential they hold could rule out the need for wireless power.

The real development here is the size factor. Before this feat of engineering, due to the nature of the battery, the radioactive element would decay and provide power, but in the process would damage the semiconductor device which actually collects the energy.

But through using a liquid semiconductor, the particles radiating from the radioactive isotope can pass through more fluidly causing far less damage, as the particles in liquids are far more spread out than those of a solid.

According to the BBC, not only could these devices potentially last hundreds of years, the “renewable factor” could be fixed before the problem even arose.

Gadgets and items of technology last a set number of months or years through either a product life cycle or overuse. But the battery could be taken out, recycled and put into a new device which would carry on going. Why dispose of a battery which not only has a precious element to it, but will continue working for longer after the owner has died?

Digressing for a second - could nuclear batteries be device-generic in the near future? Manufacturers could cut the cost of devices down by removing any battery or power equipment, and have a slide-in battery which you buy separately, and can swap and change with other devices like a universal battery port as and when the device fails or gets replaced.

Some would be naturally concerned with the “nuclear” element to this. For example, terrorists using this to cause mass casualties or death; it simply cannot be used in this way.

But this technology strikes a personal note for me. I wrote a few weeks ago about an experimental surgery called deep-brain stimulation which can mask the symptoms of serious neurological illnesses - Parkinson’s, dystonia, and Tourette’s syndrome - the condition I suffer from.

By using this technology, the pacemaker which will be fitted in the space between my scapula (shoulder blade) and clavicle (collarbone) could be far smaller than the cigarette-box-sized device which is normally used. They now have these devices to just larger than a coin, and hope in the future could be even smaller and almost seamless with the devices they power.

Aesthetics aside, the battery will last far longer than the host patients’ life span, meaning that the battery will never have to be recharged or replaced through invasive surgery.

But take the medical element of the equation for a moment. Just think what this technology could mean for laptops, notebooks, mobile phones; perhaps even further - why couldn’t this be installed in televisions which eat up electricity like no other?

Could nuclear energy (in this respect, at least) be the saviour of the planet that we have all hoped for? Let me know what you think.

October 2nd, 2009

Mozilla Labs UX chief: What's next for Mozilla, Firefox and the Web

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:08 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Events, FOWA London 2009, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Open source, Research, Security, University, Web 2.0

Tags: Security, Web, Mozilla Firefox, Web Browser, Mozilla Corp., Aza Raskin, Web Browsers, Internet, Zack Whittaker

Shortly after having a door slam in my face and it nearly breaking my nose, I sat down with Aza Raskin, the head of user experiences at Mozilla Labs to discuss not only where Mozilla is heading in the near future but also what he sees in the next-generation World Wide Web.

This interview was done over a cup of coffee in a bustling room. Everything said here is from Raskin himself, with notes taken by myself and paraphrased to make it readable.

The views from the UX guy

As the head of user experiences at Mozilla Labs, he looks at future-proofing Mozilla as an organisation, and as a result focuses mainly on the web. He assists and helps out on other non-Firefox projects but does spend the largest portion of his time on the browser. Even though he and his team are separate from the Firefox development team, he has a large sway of input. On the other hand, some bits he suggests go in and some do not.

Firefox 3.6 will be the next release of Mozilla’s open-source browser and will be designed specifically with Windows users in mind. The new user interface will incorporate many of the technologies that Vista and Windows 7 have such as the Aero theme; more so with Windows 7, though, as multi-touch features will be included in the browser’s functionality.

The future of the web is difficult to guess or estimate in any capacity. Nevertheless, everyone desires an open web. Microsoft, Apple, and Google with their respective browsers are all aiming for the majority share of the market. Raskin assures me that this is not Mozilla’s aim. As a not-for-profit organisation, they benefit from having a wide range of users but for the most part the userbase is the size it is through personal, hands-on experience and “Word of Mouth 2.0″. The aim is not to get 100% of the marketshare, but enough to get the shift and the space to create.

Something Raskin mentioned in the “open web” were things such as Flash and Silverlight - technologies which are plug-ins but don’t allow you to view the source. In his opinion, it is important that everything you see, view and use should provide the code alongside it. Having non-view source so you don’t know what is going on is not an “open web”. There will of course be exceptions to this, but I’m sure you understand what he means.

I asked why Firefox 3.5 had slowed down, become more sluggish and more lethargic in quality and usage from personal experience.

Because Raskin struck me as an unflinchingly honest and supremely intelligent man who understands full well is responsbility to the end-user, I believed him whole-heartedly when he said it was predominantly Adobe Flash that slowed things down. More often than not, web sites hold Flash advertising which is why when you open a selection of ten random tabs, the collective memory going towards running these advertisements cause Firefox’s memory footprint to rocket. I believed himl it made perfect sense.

He told me that Firefox 3.5 was introduced to make things better. With different technologies incorporating a more user-centric set of experiences such GeoLocation, Private Browsing and SeaMonkey, these were base-level features to make the end-user more client (rather than cloud) based and provide an overall enhanced experience; not only on their own volition but to keep up with other competing browsers.

Google and Microsoft have huge research departments with thousands of people working towards making their browsers accessible but also house the potential for a wealth of features for future releases. Mozilla has “tens” of people, but as Firefox is open source, anyone from academics, students, universities, developers and ordinary consumers make the research process so much more democratic. This is what drove him to work on Mozilla Ubiquity.

Along with this and their “personas”, the customisable themes which you can see in the first image above, the browser should be yours and not be the company developing the browser to determine what it should look like. People love personalisation through their sites, bookmarks and add-ons, which is another reason  why Firefox has done so well.

The future of Firefox –>

September 9th, 2009

Real cash for virtual cash: FarmVille's business sense

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:03 am

Categories: Careers, Major breakthroughs, Money, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Skills development, Software development

Tags: Farm, FarmVille, Games, Personal Technology, Zack Whittaker

FarmVille has become of the most popular social game applications for Facebook for my generation, and the creators must be laughing in almost incomprehensible proportions at the millions they must be making.

The application is a simulation-based game that not only involves community spirit by other application users with gifts and extra tasks (which give the recipient farm coins to spend within their own game), but exploits the virtual cash (”farm coins”) based marketplace for real money.

See Screen Gallery: Real cash for virtual FarmVille cash

When a user accepts the game/application, you  are presented with a blank canvas with which you are expected to create a virtual farm. You can plant seeds and they grow over time, and when you harvest the produce you receive farm coins, which perpetuate further spending.

Like other simulation games, you build up to different levels and can purchase more and more items - decorations, animals, trees and produce of higher wealth which then give a more substantial return. It’s addictive and keeps you playing by offering the farm cash incentive.

I’ve been playing for only five days and the feedback received from the game in terms of farm cashflow, the experience level received and the number of neighbouring farms accepted (from other friends in my actual social network) all make the game quite addictive. It doesn’t take up much of my time and constantly offers further advancement to a better farm.

It’s pathetic that an online game has gripped me so much, but it’s truly fantastic. But what has impressed me more is the business side behind the scenes of the game itself.

If you tried hard enough, you could earn your farm coins and farm cash through buying and selling of produce and animals. This would take you through weeks of repetitive tasks. The urge to bypass this laborious process and inject your own, real money into the game to convert into farm cash and coins is constantly playing on my mind.

Until I did. I spent $160 (£97) in the course of one hour just so I could expand my farm and further my game.

The interesting side is the real money vs. virtual money system. While this isn’t a new concept, exploiting the popularity of the game and the exchange of real money for further tools, plants, crops and decorations would have no doubt gripped so many people - myself included.

The trick when generating games or applications such as these is the monetary remuneration. Nothing can be created for a truly free amount, therefore this system of money exchange has propelled Zynga, the creators of the game, into an entirely new dimension. The key fact here is that you don’t have to spend money to further your advancement in the game, but if you do then you have the opportunity to fast track.

The temptation to spend money to engage with this cultural phenomenon is constant, for myself at very least.

My point is that if you are a budding entrepreneur and struggling to consider ways of gaining financial reward from the software you create, something like this should be taken away with you to the next developer meeting.

Business software could work on a pay-as-you-use-a-feature process - such as Word which restricted areas of the application to only the very basic functions. By linking in your credit card and requiring the use of a feature - say a SmartArt feature once and once only - you pay a few cents to use the feature and as a result the overall price of the software would go down.

With this, every copy of the software would be suited to the person who may only use a small handful of features, each application would be customised for that particular person and piracy could also be nearly-eliminated.

Would this work? Could you see software going this way, or has Zynga got the nail on the head with their process? Comment away.

September 7th, 2009

Students exploit optical phenomenon to create 48-inch multi-touch surface

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:59 pm

Categories: Careers, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research, Skills development, University, Windows 7, diversITy, e-Learning

Tags: Multi-touch, Zack Whittaker

A group of engineering students at the University of Waterloo have recently completed building a 48″ multi-touch device, which could potentially rival the Microsoft Surface device, by exploiting an optical phenomenon.

The device is a massive multi-touch input and output screen, very similar in usage to a Microsoft Surface device but with a very different underlying technology. It was constructed during a fourth-year design project at the university. Running Windows 7, the first operating system to really utilise multi-touch technology, the input and feedback are impressive from the very start.

Although not an entirely new concept, the surface technology uses frustrated total internal reflection (FITR) where light reflects off the surface of an object such as prisms or fibre-optics. A real-life example would be to hold a glass of water and seeing the impression of your fingertips on the surface of the water.

In simpler terms of how FITR and indeed the device works, as described on their announcement post:

“If you shine light into the side of a sheet of acrylic, the light will be trapped inside due to total internal reflection. Now when you touch the surface, it ‘frustrates’ the light at that spot and so light escapes. You use a camera to capture this image and [through mathematics] figure out where the finger was pressed.”

Using FITR in this way isn’t new as was displayed by Jeff Han at the 2006 TED Conference in California. Multi-touch computing was being experimented upon in the 1980’s and since then, this concept isn’t the first FITR-based multi-touch device created.

What surprises me is the sighs and sounds of disbelief in the audience of the Jeff Han demonstration whereas now, we consider multi-touch technology as firmly embedded into our lives - the iPhone being a prime example.

But it’s still so damn cool.

What I am most proud of is the contributors to the blog where this is mentioned involve women in this engineering project.

Not only that, the university actively encourages participation of women in ‘non-traditional’ degree subjects, and clearly praises them when they are proud of the work and research they accomplish.

With female students clearly being as intelligent as they are to complete a project such as this, it again exposes the question of the glass ceiling in the IT industry. Even though I still believe the old boys network plays the major role in limiting women into success of higher paid jobs and those with greater responsibility, this will most definitely change when the old boys running the show either die or retire. Literally.

September 1st, 2009

Apology solicited for death of computing founding father Turing

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 7:48 am

Categories: Discussion, Government, Hardware, Legal and political, Major breakthroughs, diversITy

Tags: Work, Computing, Computer, Enigma, Productivity, Zack Whittaker

Alan Turing can rightly be called the founding father of computing. Born in 1912, he studied mathematics and logic, and was not only one of the most advanced computer scientists of his age, but of the entire generation.

During the Second World War, he solved the Enigma code - the code used by Nazi Germany to send encrypted messages from one place to another. He worked at Bletchley Park, the foundation of modern day GCHQ, which is the third leg of the British intelligence services, which provides electronic support and signal interception.

However, with decrypting the Enigma came a dilemma. It was, and still is to some extent, considered that during the Coventry Blitz, one of the most devastating air-raids on British territory, the Enigma code was intercepted and Winston Churchill, the prime minister at the time, knew about the impending raid.

But as not to let on that they had cracked the Enigma code, no defensive measures were brought in. Hundreds of people were killed, in the hope that the decrypted Enigma code would go on to save many others.

As a result of his work, the Allies were able win the war. (And yes, thank you America, even to this day we recognise your support, albeit a tad late).

With his knowledge of mathematics and computing, he developed further theories and understanding into artificial intelligence, which then led him to creating the Turing test - a test performed to a computer to gauge whether the computers’ response and that of a humans were indistinguishable.

Not only that, his work created one of the first primitive super computers (which wouldn’t even compare to that of a modern day computer, to be fair). As the Independent reported when GCHQ revealed details of his work:

“Colossus [the computer] contained 1,500 valves, 10 times more than other electronic machines of the day. It was designed to run through millions and millions of possible settings for the code wheels on the German enciphered teleprinter system, processing 5,000 characters a second.”

Turing was, and still is, a national treasure for the United Kingdom. But amongst all his achievements and his extraordinary work — work which helped the Allies win the war — he was gay.

• Read more: diversITy: can being gay hold your career back?
• Read more: Google colors their ads for Gay Pride week

Because of the now-clearly abhorrent laws we had, he was convicted under the gross indecency act of law which punished homosexuality. As a result of this, his national security clearance with GCHQ was revoked and due to the Soviet era already heightening tensions, he was essentially hung out to dry. He could not practice the work he had loved, and was not able to discuss the work he had accomplished.

Two years later, he committed suicide at the tragically premature age of 41.

As a result, the Number 10’s E-Petition service (which I have previously written about) has been inundated with signatures for a petition which asks the present Prime Minister to apologise for past the governments mistakes, and to posthumously exonerate him from any convictions.

It is mentioned that an official apology is unlikely due to the fact no known surviving family can be there to receive it. Nevertheless the symbolic nature of these actions would still go towards something rather poignant.

If you have or had British citizenship, you are more than welcome to sign the petition, which can be found here.