Category: technology

I seriously don't believe this…

Apple has dropped DRM from iTunes — and is offering to remove their DRM from music you already bought for the low, low fee of $0.30 per song.

Why the hell should people who have paid for there music legally have to pay again to take the DRM off? I can't work out what's worst, buying DRM music or having to pay again to have the DRM taken off. Someone is taking the living piss out of the consumers who try to stay on the straight and narrow path.

Actually this reminds me of something else I saw the other day. Considering a life of crime by Euan Semple. Euan talks about how iPlayer and Audiable's restrictions are weakening his grip on the straight and narrow. Hey no wonder Usenet usage has grown exponentially. There's also estimates (not from the BBC of course) that the recent special of Top Gear was watched by over three times the amount of people online and outside the UK that on tv and iplayer inside the UK.

I got to say I also don't understand the point of paying 10 pounds a month for higher quality streams from iplayer. Something jars with my net neutrality thoughts, specially when I'm already paying over the odds for premium bandwidth and most isp's are not even giving you what they advertise let alone tricking you with there acceptable use policy. 

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Everyone knows i'm not the biggest fan of Apple products and services. So it was a shock when I went out and bought a Apple iPod Touch. I struggled from day one to do anything with it except turn it on due to the crazy notion that you must pair it with iTunes before it will actually work at all. There's a ton of tweets I sent out of frustration of this process. But how have I been doing since?

Well I tend to carry it with me everywhere because it slips into my pocket really well. I did have a shock when I saw the Sony eBook Reader on sale for 189 pounds the other day because I was thinking hummmm maybe i'd be better off with that. But then its not as portable and although it has a RSS reader, I doubt it can cope with my requirements.

The iPod Touch's shining and worst feature is the Apple App store. Its good being able to download apps quickly over a Wifi connection but its also painful to search (25 items at a time) and there's not enough information for somethings. For example I was looking for a decent RSS reader and the only way to really tell the difference was to try them out. So I tried out the Free ones and then spent 1.19 pounds (the only money I've spent on the App store to date) on a pay one which I used for 2 days.

Its also worth noting that many app authors create a Free version for you to download to get around the lack of a demo option on the app store. On Windows mobile you get apps like PC apps, demos which are time locked or cut down till you enter a serial number.

Then I switched over to Netnewswire because of its ability to sync with Newsgator on the web and on my Windows mobile phones. So I never end up reading the same news twice. But now how do I get my 1.19 pounds back for the app which I hardly use?  I'm also upset about the choice of ebook readers, maybe I need to pay out a load of money to test the paid for versions. But so far each ebook reader has its own storage container, so any new apps can't see the already uploaded ebooks!!! Yes maybe someone might create a decent ebook reader, but how would I ever know?

Multitasking on the iPod touch is painful!!! I hate this device for this thing. Here's a example of why, so I see a good news item and I want to email it to someone. I click the send via email button and it launches the mail app which I have setup. I send the email to the person (its usually stored in the outbox because I'm not online) then I have to click the one button to go back to the app menu then click the netnewswire icon again to re-start netnewswire. I have to do this everytime I want to send a message from Netnewswire and I got to say it becomes a bit tiresome after a while. Some real multitasking wouldn't go a miss, specially when I decide to have a ebook open and want to update my rss. Or even during the night, when I got the alarm set and want to use the ipod as a bedside night clock but also pull down rss during the night time.

I still can't put music on the device even if I wanted to because I'm not using iTunes and nothing I've found on Linux supports the iPod Touch v2 firmware even Hipo, Rhythmbox, Amarok, etc. When I connect it via USB it comes up on desktop as a camera device which Fspot wants to manage although it doesn't actually have a camera.

The keyboard input is still painful to use for me and I generally dread putting in my password to get updates from the app store. I also got to say the way it asks you if it can use your location is good but it would be nice to have a don't ask me again option. For all the fuss about the multi-touch I have used it a couple of times in my current ebook reader to zoom in a bit. Some apps like the first RSS reader I had don't even allow you to do it so its a real inconsistent experience. Something I'm sure Apple would love to stomp out.

The Wifi can be spotty too, sometimes my Windows mobile devices can see wifi that the iPod doesn't, but whats worst is if you get a wifi point which requires web page authentication like BT Openzone, The Cloud, Tmobile, etc. Safari will not attempt to navigate to that holding page. Instead it sits there like a lemon moaning theres no internet connectivity.

So overall, the iPod Touch makes a reasonable RSS reader device. Its true I'm reading tons more RSS that ever before but the move to Newsgator also had its part to play in that (although now i'm looking for a Linux Newsgator compatable reader). The screen makes a good ebook reader but the software is far off the mark. The best I can find can open pdfs and text files. I then have to use another app for chm ebooks and another one for .mobi ebooks. The first one doesn't even support reformatting of PDFs, so you can't really zoom in for that super fast reading. Once this is solved, I'll be happy and the ipod touch will have done everything I've bought it for. Although I got to say if ebook reader hardware got better and more open, I'll trade in the ipod touch no problem.

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I've been reading this fantastic ebook on my ipod called Security for People and Computers by Neal Puff. I had assumed because the cocoa application (what do you call ipod/iphone apps?) was free it would be available somewhere else as a PDF or another free format. However it seems like you can only get it free on iTunes, which really sucks. Because I really want to send all my computer literal friends this book. Its the kind of book I could give to my parents and they might actually make sense of. Its written as a refresher for people like myself and a overview for people who care less about computer security. I have a list ranging from my sister to friends who are still using Windows in a bad way, who NEED to read this very short book.

I noticed you can buy it too but its not cheap at 19 pounds plus shipping. But it might be worth buying a few copies for friends and family next time its there birthday. Its a shame because turning ebooks into ipod/iphone applications is almost like a DRM of its own. I totally get what Tom Peck is doing turning books into apps but I would much prefer he write a app which reads PDFs/RTF/Text files well instead. Anyhow, here's the description of the book…

This book is meant as general knowledge for people who want to live a safer and more secure existence in today's environment, covering both basic Internet safety and general advice for non-technical parts of our life. While this book was previously sold commercially, it is offered here at no charge in the hope that it will be of some benefit to help people in their daily lives.

Actually just going back to the ebook application as a DRM a second. I also saw, Project Gutenberg will be releasing Mobile eBooks. Great I thought till I found out there going to create *.jar files (java apps) which play the book rather that mobile versions of the books in pdf, text, etc. So once again, this sucks because I'm constrained to one player and the player is attached to the book. This means my ipod can't read it and my older ebook reader on my phone can't be used either. Can someone please just create a Ebook reader for most platforms including Windows Mobile, Symbian, Java, Blackberry and Apple which is open source and reads all types of free/open textual format

Technorati Tags: security, people, computers, nealpuff, ebooks, ebook, pdf, iphone, ipod, apps

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Well I'm selling mine on ebay over the next few days. Starting price of 150 pounds for my upgraded Netbook. I did record me doing the memory upgrade but it was 45mins long and the netbook wouldn't start properly afterwards because I hadn't pluged in the Solid state drive, But trust me its all working fine now, I just don't need it now I got a ipod touch.

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ReadwriteWeb has a article which pretty much sums up where we are with cloud computing on the consumer side. One of the conclusions is simple, Internet is not everywhere yet. Everyone knows the frustration of being on a train and trying to get anything more that a GPRS connection only to be disconnected by a series of tunnels. Or going to another country to find your mobile operator at home rubbing there hands with glee because of the huge premiums there throwing on top of the usual data charge. My Data bill for being in Berlin one week was a extra 40 pounds and I wasn't using it beyond the usual plaxo mobile sync and twitters. Even if there is ubiquitous data, the apps are not made for interuption. Readwriteweb point at Google gears problem with going offline.

Google delivered Google Gears, a simple yet somewhat clunky implementation that takes web apps offline. Why clunky? Gears doesn't automatically detect a lost connection, you see. (Switch off your Wi-Fi and see what Google Reader does. Oops, an error occurred, it will say.) Instead, using Gears means you must first click the provided button or link which saves the data to your computer for offline viewing. If it wasn't for the syncing it offered, this wouldn't be much more of an improvement over the good ol' “make this web page available offline” trick.

I also found some other apps including Adobe AIR apps will freeze-up when the connection drops for a short time. It might just be the way there written because for example snackr which is a Adobe Air app keeps running without a connection, so sometimes I'm not sure if I'm online or off. My Data portability senses also screwy when thinking about the cloud OS, I think this isn't the cloud OS I wanted. I'm actually leaning towards some lower level syncing mechanism like Livemesh now.

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Yes I bought one, I was thinking about selling my acer netbook which is a nice machine but as I thought it would be, was eclipsed by 12inch Dell. I twittered and yammered about it and some people got back to me. I also had a look on ebay and noticed I could get up to 290 pounds for the current machine because its got the extra memory and in some places it still sells for about 250 pounds. To tell the truth though, I wouldn't want to go back through the memory upgrade process again.

Basiclly I really want a smallish device which I can use for ebook and rss reading. I originally looked at getting a small HP handheld PC running windows mobile pro but I couldn't find one even on ebay for less that 240 pounds. So then I got thinking, maybe it was time to consider the ipod touch again. So I did and with the staff discount I dropped into the Apple store regents street London and picked the cheapest one up for 150 pounds.

So far I've undone the packaging (not going to do a unboxing as I think it doesn't deserve one) and plugged it in via USB into my Dell. Ubuntu sees its a ipod and asks me if I want to use something like Amarok or Gspot photomanager to manage it. Ignore those and try and look at the file system. Of course I can't. Worst still the iphone screen shows a picture of a arrow pointing at a icon for itunes. I'm going to be pretty ignoyed if I have find a pc running itunes just to get the thing started. I'm already feeling like I should have known better that to buy a Apple product.

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Ok need to keep this short because I'm typing on the small keyboard of the acer aspire. Its ok for my fat fingers but certainly not like my lovely dell keyboard or even better my ibm keyboard at home.

So I tried to do a few things over the last few days, and maybe wrongly rushed them.

1. I did change the partition on my old dell using the live ubuntu 8.10 cd. Everything worked but i over wrote the master boot record and had to install grub again. My idea of booting into xbmc from the media direct button is put on hold for now.
2. I also somehow while playing with resolutions and multiple screens during a video conference call yesterday, killed my xorg.configue settings and can't seem to get them back to a state where I can actual login to ubuntu. So i'm currently backing everything up (something i should have done when doing the partitions really) ready for a clean install of ubuntu 8.10 tomorrow. This means little email, twittering, etc for the next few days sorry.
3. I decided to upgrade the ram on both the dell and acer. The dell now has 4gig and the acer 1.5gig. It took me 5mins to do the dell and a best part of a hour to do the Acer. I filmed it which I'll put on online later

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