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 13th, 2009

Windows 7's first 100 days: So how were yours?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:35 am

Categories: Discussion, Downloads, Next-generation technology, Productivity, University, Windows 7, e-Learning

Tags: Memory Usage, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

It has been 100 days since the release-to-manufacturing copy of Windows 7 was available for download on MSDN and TechNet. I’ll put this very simply: I have never used an operating system which works so well, is as stable as it is, is aesthetically pleasing, and is a pleasure to use still even after three and a bit months.

There is nothing within Windows 7 which is particularly aimed at students or me specifically. The whole kit and kaboodle focuses on making it an all-inclusive “experience”, but after using it for so long now the experience fades into the background, like a sickly cough in a lecture theatre.

At the end of the day, all you want to do is check your emails or whop out a quick essay. You don’t particularly care about the experience and most of the time you don’t notice the surroundings. Even with Windows 7, this hasn’t changed.

Besides my computer going well and truly kaput, the way I noticed my positive experience so far is through the lack of negative experiences. I’m lucky in that I took advantage of pre-release builds and have seen Windows 7 grow from a small, insignificant Vista rip-off, into a mature, upstanding member of the technology community.

There is only one nit-picky thing that I still struggle to shrug off. The memory usage is far better than Vista but has a long way to go until it reaches levels that XP coped with. Even with a base level of applications open: Outlook 2007, Messenger, Skype and DisplayFusion to maximise my taskbar space, but it still looks like it uses more than it should. On a 4GB RAM system (in 32-bit mode, so only 3.5GB is really recognised), I’m still using 1.10GB on a dual screen system.

I understand why, as I have two screens and the Aero theme takes up quite a lot of memory usage, and doubled it naturally doubles (ish) the memory usage. But I like to keep my memory usage down as much as possible; at least that way I don’t hear my tower whirring away and going nuts.

The feedback I have had from other people, friends and colleagues, may seem somewhat cliched. But all have had a positive attitude towards it when mentioning it in passing. “Oh, Zack, by the way, Windows 7; I like”, for example. Seeing it running on my friend’s computer in a 24-inch crystal clear LCD screen combined with his justified semi-smugness about being one of the few, even still, to have the operating system on his computer, being another.

All in all, I’m extremely happy with everything as it is and how it works, what it does and when it does it. But what I say isn’t too important. How were your first 100 days?

More Windows 7 coverage:

November 10th, 2009

Size zero devices: How thin is too thin?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:42 pm

Categories: Hardware, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Phone, Device, Laptop Computer, Notebooks, Telecom & Utilities, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Zack Whittaker

I don’t have the thinnest laptop in the world. If anything it’s quite chunky and quite sturdy, with the exception of the 180° rotating screen, but even then it’s a hearty bit of kit. My BlackBerry is wide and deep in size, fitting my hand quite nicely and the keys are big enough to tap away on quite comfortably.

But I only really noticed this today in comparison with other devices. The fashion at the moment seems to be “the thinner, the better”, as if we would starve our technology in vain effort to slim them down. It’s like this crazed fashion stint we have at the moment is focusing on “size zero technology”.

Why?!

Take the Motorola Razr. The phone is incredibly thin which seemed to be the “killer feature”, besides the simplicity yet expandability of the features within the operating software. The name, stemming from the phone having a similar look to a cutthroat razor. Thin, stylish and incredibly popular with over 100 million being sold.

But for some, strange reason, if I was to be given one, the first thing I would do is stress test it: I’d flip open the phone and push the screen back and see how far I could stress it before it snaps. Perhaps it’s a standard “want” to do; if something seems flimsy or so thin it could break easily, I’d be tempted to give it a go.

Ultra-thin devices like these do seem to be a trend that is spiraling forward and sees no sign of subsiding. But if you were to look at other progressions in technology:

• Mobile phones started out huge, then got smaller, then got slightly bigger and thicker - where they seem to have stayed.
• Televisions started out with small screens but huge in design, then the screens matched the size of the design, and now the bigger they are the better they are.
• Laptops were initially small but chunky, and now they’re thinner and wider.

Maybe through time, the “size zero” phase will wear off. There may be a time where consumers (and therefore manufacturers) will realise that devices need to fit quite a bit of stuff in there. With the MacBook Air, it lacked FireWire and an optical disk drive because they would have thickened out the laptop too much.

I’ve never seen anyone with a MacBook Air. Perhaps those considering buying one realised the importance of an internal optical drive.

My personal opinion? I’d say try and make devices proportionate, but don’t aim for a specific thin design. Fit everything else you can in there first, and then figure out if you can slim it down a bit.

I don’t like my partners to be stick thin. I like a bit of chunk on them, along with the vast majority of English men. Just as technology should be; you know,  something that you can actually feel in your pocket, excuse the innuendo.

So, how thin is too thin? Do you prefer skinny or chunky? Strange question, perhaps, but I hope it’s at least in context.

November 3rd, 2009

Google Wave: Has potential, but let loose too soon

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:12 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Google, Multimedia, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Skills development, Social networking, University, Weird and wonderful, e-Learning

Tags: Google Inc., Google Wave, E-mail, Corporate Communications, Online Communications, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

Google Wave has annoyed me so far. Because I am set in my ways and stubborn enough to brandish anything new, exciting and radical to my everyday routine as “a giant waste of my time”, I saw Wave as more of a challenge than anything else.

At the moment the only real factor it has in its favour is the real-time collaborative space, and of course I see this as a positive from a students’ perspective in a university enterprise arena. But besides that, it has very little substance. Sure it has the avatars, the ability to change the colour of certain items here and there, and it’ll give you a contacts list. Besides that? Mostly unfinished features and no obvious end-game.

One of my favourite features so far is the “Sign out” button in the top right hand corner. This has been particularly useful when pulling out my own hair, trying to work out what the hell is going on, and becoming confused as to what is being said.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 19th, 2009

Windows 7 puts Vista into perspective: Only a 'failure' in retrospect

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:53 am

Categories: Discussion, Events, Microsoft, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Security, Skills development, Windows 7

Tags: Operating System, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Corp., Computer, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

For my 400th post on ZDNet, this is one mass response in reply to a barrage of emails I have had to suffer over the course of the last couple of weeks.

It seems as though I, and the just-over ten thousand students on my university campus, are not the only ones complaining even still about the abomination that their respective university IT department, hand in hand with the devil itself, Microsoft, have bestowed upon us: forced through product lifecycle periods to upgrade our campus to “the latest and greatest”. Feel free to detect any element of sarcasm in the last sentence.

Only short two weeks ago, I had high hopes for the upgrade. I genuinely thought that a new lease of life could be drawn through the lungs of Microsoft’. I was not only wrong, but overly optimistic.

For those who have been reading since day one, I started with a touch of empathy towards the then-new operating system. Over time, and predominantly over the course of Windows 7’s beta cycles, I became more attached to the lack of resource hogging, sluggishness and a general freshness which could only be rivalled by that of a gentle breeze on a summer’s day in the countryside.

But I did start off with a very good point. Vista back in the day was perfectly fine. Only in comparison to a better benchmark of Windows 7 do we start slating the former operating system. Something that widely popular blogger, Long Zheng, mentioned earlier on this morning on Twitter was this:

To begin, I start with the question as mentioned in the title. From there I hypothesise the potential failure of Windows 7 and look into the few people we can blame for the potentially epic failure of Microsoft’s next operating system.

Who do we blame for Vista, and Windows 7’s potential failure? –>

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 7th, 2009

Next-gen operating systems: Facebook on steroids?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 10:33 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Google, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Research, Social networking, Web 2.0, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Facebook, Operating System, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

The conversation I had with Mozilla Labs UX chief, Aza Raskin, last week has made me think about the future of the web. He envisions a future when the vast majority of things in the cloud are combined with a social web, and “something” where the two overlap. Stick with me on this one for a minute…

Readers of the ZDNet “All About Microsoft” blog should be aware that in the next decade, Windows will be phased out and replaced by a next-generation operating system, “Midori”. My guess is that it will run as a Software+Services model where the client machine will do processing but the vast majority of the “workings” will be run from the cloud, including applications.

It’s just a guess, mind you. There’s nothing definitive yet, and even the Queen of Redmond herself isn’t entirely sure, due to the tight-lipped nature of the Singularity/Midori teams. This is at very least my vision of the future operating system.

So based on this thinking (and I am keen to stress that this is purely conjecture), isn’t this to some extent what Facebook could turn out to be if it was stuffed full of electronic uppers and poppers, and poked very hard with an ingenious stick?

The very nature of Facebook is that of a social experience. You interact with others - friends, family and colleagues - in a way which has gotten modern sociologists wetting themselves with excitement. The psychology of the whole thing is blowing the minds of these radical professors into new ways of thinking, and technologists are seeing this sort of platform as the potential for the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 –>